In my earliest memory she is pulling me on a wooden sled through the soft, wet snow. I watch her black leather boots trudge before me, her long brown velour coat dusted with white along the bottom. It is still snowing, and as she walks the wet flakes drift down from the gray sky and melt on my cheeks. I watch her boots, and her brown coat as it swings. I can remember this moment of utter happiness so vividly that it still stuns me to realize she died almost 20 years ago.She wore My Sin.

She was brilliant – she read anything and everything. She graduated from boarding school at 16. She received a special citation when she graduated from college, Phi Beta Kappa, for the grades she earned in her combined major of chemistry and mathematics. Then she married my father and stayed home and had children and became a 1960s housewife. She read. She drank tea. She talked on the telephone. She volunteered at the PTA and fed the dog and made us dinner. She didn´t drive. She was restless, and sad, and bored senseless. She balanced the checkbook and used her mathematical gifts to wow the cashiers at the local grocery store by keeping a running tally of what we were buying in her head. She had the total figured, with tax, before the items were rung up.

I used to look at her picture and and wonder: Did you ever love me? What were your dreams? Were you ever happy?

Long after she died I held my firstborn daughter in my arms, the daughter I had named after her in spite (or because) of everything. And suddenly I understood how it must have infuriated her to love us. Because at its core, there is nothing more terrifying than the knowledge that you have given your heart so completely, and you will never, ever get it back.

I visited my father before Christmas. We talked about her. I mentioned her perfume. He told me he had kept her bottle of My Sin all these years. She was not a frilly person, completely unsentimental, and it was the only perfume she´d ever owned. I thought he was referring to the empty bottle he kept in his bureau. But he surprised me by giving me an almost-full bottle, opaque black, still in its box. I put it under the tree.

I was afraid to try it. Because I wanted it to bring her back to me, the smell of her, warm and comforting.

“My Sin Perfume was created by the Parisian house of Jeanne Lanvin and has top notes of bergamot, heliotrope, neroli, aldehydic accord and carnation. Middle notes of ylang-ylang, lily of the valley, violet, iris, rose and jasmin. Dry down notes of musk, vetiver and sandalwood. My Sin Perfume is a classic, sensuous beauty.” — nellbutler.com

I smelled My Sin again today. The top notes are somewhat damaged, no great surprise after so many years. The bergamot is gone. On me it dries down sweet and floral, with a hint of spiciness, what I think is the heliotrope-carnation dynamic, and it is as well-mannered as a strand of pearls. It´s beautiful – a consummate 1950s powdery floral, although it was created in 1925. But on her…. my God. It was stunning. She brought out its musky darkness, rich and spicy and vaguely sinister.

I can find out very little else about My Sin, but here is another opinion cribbed from VintageVogue at basenotes.com, who clearly gets a whole different side of the scent:

“If you like Chanels´ Bois des Iles, you´ll like My Sin, and vice versa. Bois des Iles is very close to My Sin, which makes me wonder how much the Houses of Lanvin and Chanel drew from each other. My Sin is a classic aldehyde, but sharper than Arpege or Chanel No 5. It has a major sandalwood kick coupled with an animalic tang in the drydown. It´s supposed to have florals in it, but on my skin they tend to get lost. I smell mostly lemon, sandalwood, civet, and musk. This is like a triple martini, extra extra dry. An acquired taste.”

My Sin is available fairly regularly in vintage bottles on eBay, and in a well-regarded dupe from longlostperfume.com. I haven´t compared it to my bottle, but given that mine must be at least 40 years old I´m not sure I could judge which is closer to the original.

And now, with apologies to Marina, here´s something from one of my mother´s favorite books, Baudelaire´s Fleurs du Mal. There are many translations, but this is the one I remember.

Invitation to the Voyage

My child, my sister, dream
How sweet all things would seem
Were we in that kind land to live together,
And there love slow and long,
There love and die among
Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather.

Drowned suns that glimmer there
Through cloud-dishevelled air
Move me with such a mystery as appears
Within those other skies
Of your treacherous eyes
When I behold them shining through their tears.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Furniture that wears
The lustre of the years
Softly would glow within our glowing chamber,
Flowers of rarest bloom
Proffering their perfume
Mixed with the vague fragrances of amber;
Gold ceilings would there be,
Mirrors deep as the sea,
The walls all in an Eastern splendour hung -
Nothing but should address
The soul’s loneliness,
Speaking her sweet and secret native tongue.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

See, sheltered from the swells
There in the still canals
Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth;
It is to satisfy
Your least desire, they ply
Hither through all the waters of the earth.
The sun at close of day
Clothes the fields of hay,
Then the canals, at last the town entire
In hyacinth and gold:
Slowly the land is rolled
Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

March

My Very Own Darkly Gothic Poem

Untitled

Slender beams of accusation enter
this darkened church as I kneel,
always alone, always supplicating,
frozen here,
waiting.

Accusing forms wrought in panes of glass loom as
dust dances in the air,
forming an image in my mind,
sparing not my darkened soul.

Tears on humanity’s face.

I raise my head, now crying out for
this uncaring salvation.
_______________________________________________________

I have been wondering how my 16-year-old son was getting A’s for his poetry in English. You don’t suppose? Anyway, you too can create a “Put Me out of My Misery” angst-filled Goth Poem. Just click on the link at the top.

Poetry, ballroom dancing, fashion and perfume. Now, this is a seriously cultured-up blog.

Found at Crazy Jay Blue

Patty

Fifi first came into my life back in October. As I spritzed her out of the little decant I’d bought on The B*y, I was in love. Sweet, but not too sweet — tobacco, amber, coriander, powdered rose, mandarin, lily of the valley — sweet elixir. As I Googled my way to the Fifi Chachnil Cute Underwear Emporium, drilled down to the perfume area, the beautiful notes… ruh-roh, something has gone wrong here. Do I like this still?

Too late. There was that bottle, pink, with that cute little pink atomizer and the crystal stopper. Do I really care about the scent anymore? Furiously putting in my order before I could change my mind, it was done, and I had the e-mail confirmation of my order for 85 mls of something that really was turning on me like a high school drinking buddy. The brakes lights came on screaming, I dashed off an e-mail to please, please, please cancel this order.

Whew, saved from the charms of a cute little pink spritzer bottle. But it wasn’t over yet. I tried that little decant again and again, trying to make Fifi love me, and she would for a while, and then the little vixen would turn into the smell of an ashtray, it seemed like. Repelled and attracted, she kept calling me to try again. Every note of her was perfect for me, these are all things I loved, but alas…

she had to be sent away, that was all there was to it, if i was to have any peace at all. So I socked what was left of her into a swap package, closed my eyes and dropped her into the mail. It was over, we were finished.

Then Mrs. L. Monger (Perfume Smellin Things) had to go and write this review.

She was back…
the little tobacco-puffin hussy was haunting me again. Everywhere I turned, MUA, blogs, it was All Fifi All the Time. I went to sleep thinking about her, perplexed as to why. She wasn’t right for me, I had sent her away, enough other people loved her, she was a Loose Perfume of the worst kind, the kind that will not leave my head!

Then in the middle of the night one night, I decided the only thing to be done was to buy her. First I found her in parfum on MUA in the swap pages and arranged for her adoption into my home. Then I knew that that little 10 ml of parfum would never be enough, so I sent away to Paris again for the full 85 ml in the pretty pink bottle with the beautiful spritzer and the crystal top.

Menopause is a funny thing. What smells good one day does not the next, and vice versa. Everything is changing daily. I have been spritzing and dabbing Fifi with abandon for three days now, and she seems to love me at long last. The ashtray note has been tamped out and she is just a joyous little concoction that has me looking around for Pepe and a beret.

She’s one of a line of perfumes that have gone this route. What ones have been like that for you?

Patty

This is how I hoped Sand & Sables
would make me feel, young, thin, glamorous…
smelling of coconuts and hopefully my coconuts closer to my neck — like they were 20 years ago. March’s pick of Sand & Sables was pretty good. It was my runner-up and almost the winner until I spied Antonio languishing at the bottom of a shelf in Rite-Aid. I was so shocked because I thought this would have been in the locked cabinet, but no, so I was not cheating by buying it, though it was in the $20 range instead of the $5 range that I probably should have stayed.

I was glad I found it because I knew March would pick the Sand & Sables.
It was the only decent choice in a Sea of Musk and strippeddowntohorrificcheapreissuesfromformerlyoldclassics. Do I like Sand & Sables? It’s not a bad little perfume. It’s definitely beachy smelling, it’s not offensive to my nose or to others. It comes in a cheesy bottle, but almost everything in the drugstore does now. You can’t gift drugstore perfume without looking cheap.

Spirit by Antonio Banderas was way sweeter on me. I don’t have that incredible sweet-eating skin like March has. It’s not so sweet that it is offensive, and I could wear either without apologizing. The problem with both is that they are so inoffensive as to be forgettable and quite ordinary.

Did this picture scare you? The main reason I had to get the Antonio Banderas perfume is so we could talk about something really important, unneeded and bad plastic surgery that is destroying our society and women’s faces, as evidenced here with Melanie’s plastic surgery disasters. I’m getting older, I have wrinkles and things settling in places I didn’t know they were able to go, and I really don’t have a fundamental objection to plastic surgery for those who really want it. I’ve seen good surgery that has made people feel great about themselves, but their goal wasn’t to stay looking like they were 22 forever. But, Melanie, sweet Mother of God, you were and are a beautiful woman without the size 14 lips and the skin pulled so far back that you probably have a banana hairclip on the back of your head holding it that tight.

How could you think this is an improvement? Cheap perfume would not hurt this look at all.

And another Jessica – Ms Lange – Stop. For the love of all that is good and beautiful about women, please stop committing this violence on your face! Eyebrows do not belong halfway up your forehead, seemingly held up by invisible wires, looking like they belong to the person behind you.

Many years ago I read an interview you gave, and this was when you had wrinkles starting. You looked like a woman should look, and you were still incredibly smoldering. In that interview, you stated you would not do plastic surgery, that wrinkles were a part of you and your life. Apparently you changed your mind… the one that is tucked and sucked behind those overarched, way-too-high caterpillars masquerading as eyebrows.

Ladies, get a mirror, you look awful!!!!

Thank you for indulging me.

Does this make me a perfume snob? Yes, probably, but I will always long for the days when a trip to the perfume counter at the drugstore was an adventure in scent. For the price of a Cherry Sprite and an hour of your time, you could walk out reeking of perfumes that were really pretty charming, many of them classics. A time when women with wrinkles and sags were charming as well, classics, never trying too hard to be what they were not, content to be Women of a Certain Age, women to look up to who wore their years well, for all the laughter and sorrow was etched on their faces, the signs that they had truly lived and loved. It is the attempt to render the life out of classic perfumes and women that make them cheap and, well, ordinary.

Patty

If you´ve been following our posts you know all about the drugstore losers Patty and I selected, and the general sorry state of affairs at the drugstore perfume counter.

Here are the bright spots:

1) The “winner” I picked to send to Patty: Coty´s Sand & Sable. Notes: gardenia, tuberose, rose, jasmine, musk. This one made me smile the moment I put it on. It took me a few minutes to remember why: tanning oil. Although it´s not listed in the notes above, this has a definite hint of the old Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil (remember those dark brown bottles?)

Sand & Sable is the smell of being 16 years old and driving home at the end of the day from the boardwalk at Ocean City, Maryland with a wicked sunburn, some friends in the car, a lot of sand, and the 8-track cranking Lynyrd Skynyrd while we all sing along. A survey of the MUA boards reveals that Sand & Sable has a 3.9 rating out of 5, based on 30 (!) reviews, and elicits comments along the lines of: “very beachy,” “takes me back to my high school years,” and “the perfect summer vacation scent.” Sand and Sable is Bobbi Brown Beach for about $30 less. I could think of worse things to say about a fragrance. It’s basically the same smell start to finish, and it has decent sillage and surprising lasting power. I hope Patty enjoys it. (But is that an ugly bottle or what? Yeesh.)

2) The “winner” I picked for myself: okay, technically, it would have been Sand & Sable for me too. But I decided I had to pick something else, and that something is… Wind Song Perfume by Prince Matchabelli. Go ahead and laugh, I don´t care. I picked it because of everything it wasn´t: another drecky musk, a nasty frootylicious floral, or whatever else it is they´re flogging. Here´s a crib from fragrancenet.com: “Launched By The Design House Of Prince Matchabelli In 1953, Wind Song Is Classified As A Refined, Flowery Fragrance. This Feminine Scent Possesses A Blend Of Florals With Fruity, Green Middle Notes Finishing With Hints Of Musk And Amber. It Is Recommended For Evening Wear.”

Wow, when they capitalize all the words like that it just screams classy out the ying-yang, huh? Anyway, it´s strong, it´s mean, it´s green, it´s a little skanky on the drydown, the sillage approximates the left hand of death on your shoulder, and I guess it´s so cheesy it doesn´t even appear on the MUA boards. Be the first person on your blog to own it. Which brings me to…

3) The “winner” Patty picked for me: Antonio Banderas Spirit for Women. I´m thinking about telling Patty she cheated, because I was at the hair salon leafing through Self (or possibly Shape) and they had an actual ad with Antonio and some hot young thing (NOT the current Mrs. Antonio, Melanie Griffith, who’s had so much done to her face she´s no longer recognizable, but I digress….) posing for this fragrance, with a genuine scent strip.

Not sure if something that appears in a magazine with a scent strip truly captures Eau de CVS. But I´m not complaining, because, you know what? It´s not half bad. It´s too sweet, but it´s got a little spice, and it got a whopping 4.5 rating on MUA. Here´s the description: “SPIRIT fragrances for men or women by Antonio Banderas were launched in 1996. This designer fragrance is a flowery blend of flowery aromas. SPIRIT by Antonio Banderas fragrances are recommended for evening wear.”

So I took them up on it and wore Spirit to a dinner party and elicited feedback, while keeping the perfume anonymous for its own (and my) protection. Comments included “sexy,” “romantic,” and “I´d wear that on a date.” Results averaged an 8 out of 10 score! It’s not very complicated development-wise (starts spicier and gets sweeter on the drydown) and has good lasting power. On MUA someone compared it to Dune. So I went and sniffed, and I don´t think they´re similar, but to me it´s a quite similar to …. Givenchy Amarige! Heh. Antonio, you sly devil.

Stay tuned for Patty’s post on her “winners.”

March