I am going out of town Monday morning to lend a hand in the packing-up of the Big Cheese’s family vacation home, which has been sold. This promises to be a bittersweet project, given that the house is my own personal Tara and has served as the backdrop for all sorts of hijinks, hilarity and heartbreak over a large slice of my life. So in the spirit of some of the scented-memory posts recently, here is a little moment of bittersweet fragrance nostalgia. If you feel comfortable doing so, I would love for you to share one of your own moments of nostalgia.

There are conflicting reports as to whether there is internet access where I am going. If I can comment, I will. Otherwise you’ll hear back from me on Thursday.

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When I was twelve, my mother took me shopping at Garfinckels, one of the old-line East Coast department stores, for my first pair of grown-up shoes in the ladies’ department. I think they were Amalfis, size 6aa. Well, Garfinckels is long gone, and those shoes, and so is my mother. And now I am mourning the passing of the last of the old-line local stores in my area, Hecht’s. I love Hecht’s. It’s unabashedly middlebrow. It’s the place I go to buy decent bath towels, a new coffee maker, reasonably-priced bras, cheap but cute house-brand tee shirts, and a box of Godiva chocolates, all in one go. It’s had that dying-dinosaur look to it for several years now, and I guess it’s been eaten by Macy’s. Macy’s has their own look, and their own merch, and maybe it’s just sour grapes but I hate their stupid stores.

Anyway, I dropped into Hecht’s to grab a few things on sale and breezed through their picked-over, pathetic fragrance department, in a fit of pure nostalgia. I wandered around forlornly looking for something to cheer me up, and there it was: Lauren by Ralph Lauren, in the little square red bottle.

I am dating myself here, but every girl who was A-list was wearing it in high school. All the girls I wanted so desperately to be and was not. Those gorgeous, blond preppy girls with plaid Pappagallo purses and perfect, shiny teeth. I loved that smell. To me it was the smell of naked envy. I was never good enough for Lauren – not pretty, not smartly dressed, not confident and blonde and cheerful.

So I put it on the other day in Hecht’s – I didn’t even know it was still being produced, I’ve never seen it elsewhere – and it was … perfect. The perfect smell of high-school perfection, before you grow up and enter the world and begin to have some understanding of the rollercoaster that life really is. It is the bittersweet smell of High School Success, a success I never felt except academically. It is the perfume apex of a world I passed through like a ghost. I have reminded Daughters No. 1 and 2, as they struggle with friends and the social scene while still in grade school, that the big stars of the school firmament aren’t necessarily the lifelong winners of the lottery.

I am living proof that you can be an ugly duckling in high school and go on to live a rich, fulfilling life, with its own measure of success. There must be another perfume that is the smell of a Late Bloomer. But Ralph Lauren, God knows, has never been aimed at the late bloomers. Ralph Lauren is all about success and perfection, American-style.

I don’t think that perfect, square red bottle of Lauren is for me any more, not really. I’ve moved on. But it made me happy to stand there for a minute or two, smiling, and know I’d made the cut.

Today’s Festival of Weirdness includes: a scent sleuth story; my new odd perfume love; the winner of the Candy Samples drawing; and a little weird music. Pick and choose.

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I was leaving the house, early and a little hung over, for training at an outdoor environmental research center. As I poured my coffee I caught a whiff of scent on my sweater. Suddenly I became obsessed with recalling a fragrance — not the one I was smelling, but some other fragrance it reminded me of. There was an earlier scent, a lovely and perfect smell, and it danced around maddeningly on the edges of my mind and wouldn’t stand still. Clearly something I had been neglecting recently, but what? Suddenly nothing else seemed more important. What scent was I trying to remember? I went up and peered into my perfume closet, rifled through the Candy Box, stared at my bottles. Hmmmm. Was it L’Artisan? Maybe Passage d’Enfer? No… the longer I looked the more the entire thing drove me nuts. What fragrance was I trying so frantically to remember? Finally in sheer desperation I started pawing through my earliest, most primal perfume loves. And yes. Of course. Really, what else could it have been?

It was Mitsouko. The spectacularly strange classic that probably more than any other launched my obsession. If you are reading this and you have never tried Guerlain Mitsouko, please give it a sniff some day. The EDT will give you the general idea, but (like most Guerlains) it pales beside the smoothness of the EDP. When I wear the parfum I am … the Queen. I am not even going to try to describe it, although I include this quote from Chandler Burr’s fabulous story on weird fragrances in the August 2005 New York Times:

Frederic Malle, the creator of the exquisite Editions de Parfums, defines {weird fragrances} nicely: “They are themselves.” For Malle (and lots of others), Guerlain’s Mitsouko is one of the smartest fragrances ever, “a bizarre accord of chypre, fruit and you have absolutely no idea what else.”

I realized suddenly why I had such a difficult time remembering such a distinctive fragrance. I was not trying to recall the weird smell of Mitsouko freshly applied. I was trying to conjure up what might be my favorite, most familiar Mitsouko: the way it smells days (or weeks) later on the sleeve of a wool sweater, on a scarf, on the collar of my velvet evening coat.

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Bad week for me. I thought I could manage to jet off a post today, but I’ve been doing training all week, having the flu on top of it, can’t slough this off since we flew these people in from all over to do this class, no one can fill in, and I’ve been trying to think what post I would write today, and all that goes through my mind is one Sunday I went to early morning mass, the 6:30a one, and the readings that day were pretty run-of-the-mill, just hard to come up with anything to say about them, and Father walked in, was putting on his garments, turned to the alter server, shrugged his arms and said, “I got nothing.” The homily that Sunday morning consisted of about two sentences. 

That’s how I felt when I sat down to write this post.

So I’ve thought about how I got into perfume and gotten so nutty for them.  I’ve always loved perfume since my high school days and my first bottle of Stephen B perfume (I *loved* that perfume and can’t find it anywhere).  Couldn’t afford much fragrance in college at all, but once I was a working girl and near a decent-sized store, I found my first grown-up girl fragrances.  I picked up Estee Lauder Private Collection because my most favorite aunt wore it.  I still love that fragrance. Then I had a series of sometimes quick and sometimes short love affairs with K de Krizia, Cinnabar, Caleche, Calandre, Escada (no rockin’ rio, the classic bottle with the gold cap), but always pretty much one bottle at a time. Mostly because that’s all I could afford, but it just seemed too slutty to be wearing more than one fragrance.

Fast forward to somewhere in my mid to late 30s or so, and I stumbled onto a Usenet group called alt.fashion, and that was such a great group, though a bit cliquey, so I mostly read, and a whole world of makeup and perfume opened up to me. Then I was probably more interested in the makeup, but once you have one shade of gray-green eyeshadow (or four), you probably have enough. I still love makeup with a passion, but I really have stopped some of the more excessive duplicates of color, except for brown. I mean, is 32 shades of brown wrong somehow? They all do different things, honest!  And I gave probably 15 of them or more away.

But the perfume nuts on that usenet group captured me. They all were so nice and happy, and they adored their perfumes and just went on and on about them. While I had always loved perfume, I then had the startling realization that I could have more than one perfume at a time. In a fairly short period, I went from one or two bottles to about 30. Lots of Creeds and Goutals and Hermes and CSPs, which I fooled myself into thinking I liked, but that I detested, but didn’t bad-mouth them so the cool kids would like me.

This was somewhere around the time MUA was formed, and I think back then it was called the Lipstick board or something? Maybe not. I just remember there seemed to be a snit a day on both the alt.fashion and the MUA board, which is entertaining for a little bit, and then just gets old, and I felt guilty about spending so much money on perfume and I got incredibly busy with work, and I just stopped dropping in, and my passion subsided, and I had 30 or so bottles to work with, so I was set for years.

Time passed with me buying new things here and there that I liked, mostly the designer stuff from the store because I had been disappointed by much of the niche stuff I had tried before, growing bored with the same crap that came out, with just a new one or two that was interesting, like Gucci in the brown big square bottle. I love that perfume, it was such a radical departure from anything that was being done right then, and I still think it is unique and special Then one day  about a year or more ago I stoogled (cross between stumbled and googled) into MUA again, and reading there just fueled my old passion, and it’s all been downhill for my wallet since then, but just a slice of heaven for my nose.

This time it seems to have stuck for good.  How did you get into perfumes? Was there one thing or a series of things? Has it been a long time or a short time that you’ve been obsessed?

 

April Showers bring Perfume Flowers, and here are my latest Candy mini-reviews. Or just pretend you read this and skip to the end for this week’s Candy Sample Giveaway.

Cumming – What a great gift this was on a cold, crappy day recently. It doesn’t smell weird to me, although I admit my definition of weird has loosened up a bit in the past few months. A “guy� scent with notes of bergamot, pine, pepper, whiskey, cigar, heather, rubber, mud (!), leather, peat fire (!!), and truffle, it’s about as butch as Alan Cumming is (which is to say, not very) and I think it’s a great woman’s scent as well. I’ll take their word on the rubber, but I can’t smell it – mostly it’s a smoky, earthy rich cigar-and-whiskey delight.

Q: What is the first thing you do when you get into a hotel room?
A: “Well, it’s probably something dull like plug in my computer, but masturbation is never very far away. I think checking into hotels is so sexy. Of course when you stay in them for months they begin to pall a little, but initially, they give me the horn.� – Alan Cumming, Passport magazine

I love that guy.

Amarige Harvest LE – If Amarige is, as Scentzilla says, like being whomped with a frying pan of gardenia, Harvest is a really delightful twist on the original, moderating the heady gardenia, allowing the tuberose to bloom through, and adding an orange twist. As Scentzilla notes, if you don’t like Amarige, this isn’t going to change your mind. If you DO like Amarige, though, in my opinion this is different enough to warrant a sniff, and possibly a bottle.

Bond No. 9 Bleecker Street – This must be for “men,â€? using that term loosely …. Nope, looked it up, unisex ….this is a slightly sweeter version of a men’s cologne (from the 80s?) that I used to love and wear … square red cap, dark gray glass bottle … Liz Claiborne for “Menâ€?!!! So — I like Bleecker Street, I just don’t find it very original. Violet leaf, cassis, thyme, jasmine, cedarwood, oakmoss, suede, patchouli, musk, amber, vanilla. A note about the Bond bottles, having spent some time sampling them in the store — they look cool but they fall over like dominoes. I guess that’s just a picayune detail.

Wickle Chestnut & Vetiver — Whoever put those two smells together deserves some sort of Genius Award. The warm, velvet-fur of the chestnut serves as a perfect foil for the cool, earthy greenness of vetiver. A winner.

Etro Relent – What the hell is wrong with me? I can’t smell it, I keep trying. Patty, you sent it to me. Can you smell it? I mean, I could just lie and type in something I cribbed off of Google … here, I’m going to make something up and then google it. So: Relent is a mysterious Oriental fragrance, with jasmine, musk, vetiver, and, uh … neroli (hey, orange is the new black!) Okay, googling …. Talc, amber and frangipani?!?! Cripes, that sounds awful.

Comptoir Sud Pacifique Eau de Rose – this starts off as a frankly not-very-interesting rose soliflore on me, and since I’m not a huge rose lover, I didn’t swoon. (So far, none of the CSP stuff I’ve smelled has made me swoon.) However. After half an hour the rose fades and I’m left with a decent skin scent that is like standing in the middle of my herb garden on a hot day in July. Cool.

Molinard Tendre Friandise — This is making me re-think my whole gourmand aversion. A sweet, candied scent that reminds me of the almond-nougat goodness of marron candy, with a rich, honeyed drydown I find (dare I write this?) reminiscent of Serge Lutens.

Regina Harris Frankincense, Myrrh, Rose Maroc — Hippie oil. Don’t get me wrong, I love hippie oil, but c’mon, $125 for 15 ml of this?! Awhile back I ran my own recipe for making Malle’s Parfum de Therese. Here’s my recipe for this: go to your local crunchy co-op. Apply 3 drops of rose oil, 2 drops of frankincense, 2 drops myrrh. Et voila. (Yeah, I actually did this.) Spend the money you saved on crystal healing, tarot reading or a massage to align your chakras. PS If you want authentic hippie oil, you really need to add some patch.

The Unlabeled Vial I Found On Top of the Dryer – I wish I knew what this is. I think it might be the vial of Arpege Pour Homme I got from Nordstrom, but their vials are usually labeled with the store name, and somehow it smells too feminine. A nice unisex cologne along the lines of Dior’s Cologne Blanche, but a little greener. Maybe I’ll ship it around and see if anyone recognizes it…

L’Aromarine Cola – The L’Aromarine bottles are gorgeous, but I’ve been underwhelmed by the few I’ve smelled at Anthropologie (Fleurs, Oceane, Violette). This one is wonderful: a cheerful, effervescent whiff of cola (more RC than Coke) with a twist of lime that moves it away from cola-syrup sweetness and squarely into Perfect Summer Fragrance territory. I’m probably going to have to (sigh) buy a bottle of this one… if the Big Cheese sees too many more little packages rolling in here he’s going to stage an intervention.

Roger & Gallet Gentle Nature Gardener’s Lettuce Soap – Okay, this is not a fragrance. But it is a great summer soap – it smells exactly like lettuce and, believe it or not, that’s a fetching smell in a soap. It lathers and moisturizes beautifully, too. My only quibble is I wish the bar were a little smaller in my hand.

Micallef Gaiac – Patty, did this come from you? (Scratches head.) This is … this is incredible. A unisex wood/incense. A perfect example of something that is an “anti-perfume� (like Musc Ravageur) that is gorgeous on the skin.

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Today’s fragrance sample giveaway is: Out of Africa! Our Lucky Winner will receive samples of Tauer Perfumes’ wonderfully exotic duo: Le Maroc Pour Elle (rose, jasmine, spices, incense, musk) and L’Air Du Desert Marocain (amber, musk, incense), plus the smoky, spicy, resinous Idole de Lubin — a lovely composition done by Olivia Giacobetti. Leave a comment below if you want my samples and I’ll have Number One Daughter Pick a Lucky Number and announce on Friday.

I stop watches. Always have.  They are on me for sometimes a week, sometimes a year, but they will stop.  I can leave them sit for a while and shake them, then put them back on, but they will stop within a day after that. Once the watch is given to someone else, they will run for years on them.  I’ve heard it is because I am magnetic, too much iron, something. My brother stops watches too.  Neither of us can wear those little magnet things that are supposed to help with your joints and arthritis. I put those on and just turn hot and burn up.  I wear this great big kinetic men’s watch now — it is heavy and clunky, but it runs like a champ.  I like the pretty little women’s watches, but I can’t wear them.  This is how I feel about Guerlain. I love them all, but I can’t wear them, and it makes me sad because I think they are so beautiful, but once they get on my skin, they are just too potent and overpowering, like the magnets or iron I have has turned them harsh and not elegant, just too strong and powdery, like my skin just stops it. But I will always love them.

L’Artisan Tout Simplement –  I’m kinda surprised no one is loving this so much. It goes on tart and green and not at all sweet on me.  Now it’s true that it disappears fairly quickly, but it’s a great summer scent and it does come in the great big bottle, so spritzing with abandon in your hair and all over is a great thing to do and should help keep the scent alive! It is a little linear and not complex for as long as it does last, but crisp and refreshing nevertheless. I normally get along with almost all of the L’Artisans pretty nicely, so I was pretty sure I would at least like this one if not love it. Given that I don’t want my perfumes hanging around in summer, this seems pretty perfect to me, the way Osmanthe Yunnan is perfect for summer.  Notes of green mandarin, ginger, yellow mandarin, frangipani, red mandarin, and white cedar. I get all the goody of this on my skin, it smells like the best of an orange peel with a little zest thrown in and just a dash of wood to make it interesting.

Trapp candles –  It seems I am always hunting for the perfect candle. I used to have all Trapp candles, but they only had a handful of scents back 10 years ago or so, and I grew bored and got lost in Yankee Candles for years, which I don’t like as well as far as smells and throw, but my tries of some of the really high-end candles at $50 a pop made my wallet cry, so the price point of the Yankees made it a better choice. I love the Votivo too, though it must be that soy base in it, they just don’t have the smell that I want all the way through, except the Tomato Leaf Votivo, which is just excellent.  So I ran across the Trapps again, and my goodness, they’ve expanded the line!  My favorite right now is the Rhubarb, but I found some great wood scents for my darling husband.  Why does Rhubarb smell so good?  Trapp makes their rhubarb a little sweet for my taste, but it’s still tart enough that I get to meander through the memories in my head of fresh rhubarb picking and the smell all over our hands, and then the smell of rhubarb pie baking and how tart it tasted.  I used to laugh when old people told me that it was easier to remember 30 years ago than it was to remember yesterday, but now I understand. It’s like the memories, whether scented or not, have a potency when they were made in your youth, they made treads that were so much deeper and more accessible, and they are well worn because they have been there so long, and scent deepens the memory and makes it emotionive. The smell of Rhubarb makes me think of my mom, as does fresh baked bread and Palmolive soap.  I’ve never told her that. 

Pumping Perfume onto the Dance Floor – Apparently once they banned smoking in some nightclubs in Scotland, patrons began to complain about the body odor that was no longer covered up by cigarette smoke. Now they are pumping perfume onto the dance floor, they said it was strawberry and cream. I’m thinking that’s probably just going to smell like B.O. that’s been dipped in strawberries and sour milk.  All in all, I’d far rather smell smoke than body odor. [source]

My new cute haircut –  It’s all about the summer now!  Short-ish, but long enough that I can flip it out, heavy on the light part of the highlights, it’s just a shaggy, short mess, and I mean that in a good way.  So now that I’m all ready for summer or at least spring, we are having a cold, awful, horrible day? #&%*$ Colorado weather. It will probably snow a foot tonight just to chap me.  Snow in April, I never seem to get used to it.

The nicest thing about Colorado is that I can grow Daphnes here.  If you haven’t smelled a Daphne in bloom, you have missed the best smell in the world.  Whenever I smell them, I think of my boys who are mostly grown now, and I feel like a young mom again. I had three huge Daphnes growing in front of my old house that I rent to my nephew now, and that was the smell of my boys, of spring, of them out front playing in the evening as soon as it got nice, and the daphne smell just assaulting my nose in some ephemeral way. Every time I would try and get close to it to whiff, it would go away. You had to just breathe the perfumed air in the evening and not try too hard to find where it was coming from. While it had blooms, you couldn’t pick the blooms to capture the scent, you just had to enjoy it while it was there and wait another year for it to come back. 

So I don’t have Daphnes at my new house, but I will this year!  I’ve ordered tons from Wayside, plus some roses from Heirloom, and I’m so ready for spring gardening. How many of you are gardeners, and do perfume people also love flower gardens too, and is that a necessary thing?  And if so, what are your favorite flowers as far as smell?  I need more gardening ideas because I plant for smell. Do all perfume lovers plant for smell? I used to plant for show, for beautiful blooms, but I’m happier now having an ugly old plant that smells like heaven than a great-looking tarted-up bloom that smells like nothing. 

I opened up a package from The Unnamed Friend (but you know who you are – hugs!) and there were small tastes of not one but TWO things that are too special to drop in the Candy Samples: Guerlain Djedi and Guerlain Plus Que Jamais. For a dedicated Guerlain Love Slave like me, this is about as good as it gets, fragrance-wise. I exercised superhuman restraint and tested them on separate days. My samples, so generously sent, were already close to depletion and I didn’t want to waste a drop.

A feature you can all “look forward to” (wink-wink) on the weeks when I post on Fridays is my penchant for goofy reality shows and celebrity gossip, but since I’ll also be giving things away, this seems like a good time to indulge my classless idiocy.

I was talking to a friend, who shall remain nameless, recently, and we both go out on Fridays (for me, sometimes Sat or Sun) and pick up the trashy celebrity gossip magazines like People and Us.  I lurve them, I really do.   Then I spend the weekend, or at least a couple of hours of it, flipping through them and indulging in one of my favorite guilty pleasures. The best weeks are when “In Style” comes out.  Anyway, go see Gallery of the Absurd, if you don’t already visit it, for some of the funniest celebrity cartoon art around, like the cartoon on the left of Tom-Rat.  So the baby has arrived, and coincidentally at almost the same time as Brooke Shield’s baby.  Coinkydink? I don’t think so.  It’s some evil L. Ron Hubbard plot to something something Xenu something.  I’ll fill in the blanks later.  But did you see that the name of the baby, Suri, doesn’t mean what they said it meant, Princess?  It apparently means pointy nose pickpocket. Suri is seriously going to be pissed one day about that, among lots of other things.

And who will get that part in the  Dallas move, Lindsey or Jessica?  I have no idea why Lindsey would want it, that’s not a part with a future.  She laments that she doesn’t get the Scarlett Johannson roles, then fights for crap roles?

A new book that I heard about at Beauty Addict (not sure about this one, sorry if I heard aboutit somewhere else and you didn’t get credit) – Free Gift with Purchase - my Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup by Jean Godfrey-June should be here tomorrow, wheee!!!  I also bought this book, Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard because it sounds kinda interesting and because it’s set in Kansas.  (Oddly enough, I’ve never read In Cold Blood. It’s sent in Kansas too, but I just can’t do it.)  It shows up tomorrow too. Now, if I could only concentrate for more than 35 seconds so I could read just one book. If only I had longer arms so i could see those books without the 30 pairs of reading glasses we have laying around the house.  I used to read a book every couple of days, but my mind and eyes are shot, and now the only time I manage to read anything is when I go on vacation on a beach somewhere, and usually I’m drinking too much on vacation and can’t remember what I read.

American Idol – Did the bottom three this week surprise anyone?  Two yawners and a tart are safe, and, well, Taylor.  Now, sending home Ace was okay, though I will miss me some Eye Candy, and Paris needs to just be herself, but Chris?!?!?!?   You can always catch recaps of all trash reality TV at TVGasm.  I haven’t had to watch America’s Next Top Model yet this Cycle, thanks to them.  But I watched it last night, and I don’t remember why I ever watched that show, and I won’t do that again — well, until the next time I forget that I really hate that show.

For those of you that are Catholic, remember that this Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday, my favorite day of the year! If you aren’t Catholic or religious at all, just skip this paragraph. If you have not done confession yet, it’s not too late to get your No Purgatory for the Crap I’ve Done So Far Ticket punched by Jesus.  For those of you that think I make light of this, I’m not!  Good grief, I’m a horrible person most of the time, I need all the help I can get, and aiming at and hitting this little window is harder than you think, I’ve missed it three years in a row. It is a good thing I’ve stayed healthy. Now I can go back to drinking and sloughing off on the health stuff for a while.  This is the end of my Sinful Catholic PSA. 

 Perfume — oh, yeah, this is a Perfume Blog.  Sorry about that!  So I couldn’t just pick one winner, I had too many entries, so I pulled out three:

*****Drum Roll*******

Flora, Rachael and Dusan

Send me your snail mail address by hitting the Contact Us Button, and I’ll jet you off the two Malle samples you picked, plus other goodies.  Thanks so much to all of you for your comments and for reading what we write.  The comments are the most fun thing of writing, hearing what you think and learning something new.

Now, time to…Trash the comments. 

Comment on whatever you want, celebrity gossip, Brangelina having a baby in Namibia, is Brad really about fed up with her yet, reality TV, whatever occurs to you that is the opposite of high brow and erudite. 

I’m off to get my hair cut and highlighted — shinified.  Have a great weekend, everyone!!!

Spring’s bustin’ out all over, and here are March’s Top 10 Scents for Spring (yeah, okay, I cheated a little and slipped a few more in there). These are things I’m loving now that I won’t necessarily be wearing in a couple of months when it’s Sultry Summer in my humid climate:

1. I Profumi di Firenze Arancia Dolce in a tiny bottle of concentrate, which is really designed to be mixed into a larger bottle of lotion. I love it because it’s a bright squeeze of orange and it reminds me of Florence, which is where I bought it (and as far as I know, the only place you can buy it – the concentrates are not exported to the U.S.) My other orange loves: SL Fleurs d’Oranger and L’Artisan Fleur d’Oranger, and it just killed me to leave them off. There is no such thing as Too Much Orange.

2. Lorenzo Villloresi Garofano – I must have been having a Bad Skin Day when I panned this on our blind sample swap. It is a gorgeous burst of fresh, spicy carnation with a little leaf to keep it interesting. My other carnation love is Floris Malmaison — A perfect carnation with a little clove that will be too heavy once the temperature hits 80, so I’m wearing it now.

3. L’Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons – a confection of blossoms (linden, lemon, orange), jasmine, and tuberose that makes me smile every time I wear it. My also ran: Pre de Provence Linden, if you want your linden straight up. If you want your linden to stay the hell away from you because it smells like buttered socks, you’re reading the wrong blog. P and I are All About the Linden.

4. Guerlain Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat – because what list would be complete without Guerlain? By the way, I’ve smelled the new juice in the Bee Bottle, and … my old juice in the ugly bottle is better. They must have taken out the stuff that was making people’s arms drop off in that worldwide Guerlain epidemic and replaced it with the stuff that makes your nose fall off and doesn’t smell as good.

5. Annick Goutal Mandragore – I smelled this for the first time last spring in the boutique near my hotel in Paris and bought it on the spot. On me it’s pure grapefruit, with a little bergamot, and I think it’s perfect.

6. Laura Tonatto Eleonora Duse — The only LT I’ve fallen for. A dark, sweet violet along the lines of Molinard’s — but richer.

7. Santa Maria Novella Eva — Patty turned me onto this one. A happy, springy citrus-bergamot scent.

8. Frederic Malle Carnal Flower – the perfect smell of the tuberose while it is in the florist’s shop. The faint, almost camphorous chill of the wintergreen is either delightful (my view) or unpleasant (Colombina’s view), but it is much less intense than SL Tubereuse Criminelle, which I find essentially unwearable (go ahead, all you TC fans — comment on what a bonehead I am.) I am not a huge white-floral fan, but this one is astonishing.

9. Bond No. 9 Eau de Noho – a bouquet of violets with a big wet smack of linden. This and the Chinatown are my only Bond loves so far.

10. Hermes Hiris – Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist is judged superior by greater noses than mine, but on me ISM smells like the cedar tree fell on the iris and squashed it. Hiris is my Iris Holy Grail, the closest I can get to my idea of the way iris blooms smell.

10. Shiseido Saso and Tentatrice – I can’t leave these off. I mean, they’re perfect for now, they’re fairly strong (which I like) but will be too much in our sultry summer weather. Saso is the most amazing smell, vaguely osmanthus-jasmine-ish, and if I’m lucky my New Mexico transplant Russian olive will bloom this year so I can smell it again.

Finally — check out this Ines de la Fressange (Original Price $65, now on clearance at $20 at Sephora)

“This quintessentially Parisian fragrance is a lush blend of white roses and peonies that seduce with their alluring aroma, deep and mysterious iris, zesty mandarin and blackberry, and finished with rich, lingering neroli, musk, and patchouli.

Notes: Neroli, Mandarin, Bergamot, Blackcurrant, Lily of the Valley, Peony, Orris, White Rose, Patchouli, Benzoin, Musk, Vetiver.”

C’mon, how fuh-REAKING gorgeous is that bottle? I’m way overdue to fall in love with something they’re discontinuing. Thanks to Cheezwiz for the heads up! Hey, Patty — I’m gonna buy this. If it’s too rose-y I’m sending it to you, you rose-lover.

carnation image: www.kidlingtoncameraclub.co.uk

This is my top 10 for Spring and Summer, in no particular order. And I have to say this was so hard. There are a bazillion great spring and summer scents, and I wish I could have a top 50!  So because I can’t, I’m going to cheat like crazy to make it seem like I’ve picked only 10 when I’ve really slutted a few extras in. Now I know what Hugh Hefner feels like. I’m normally an intensly loyal person, to the point of being a huge, yawning snore, but when it comes to perfumes, I just can’t keep my hands off the little darlings and want to make sure they all feel loved and admired.  I will stop short of putting bunny tails and ears on them, but I do think all the bottles would be cuter like that.

 Santa Maria Novella Eva — Spring in a bottle — convertible with the top down, breezing down the Pacific Highway. The cheaper version of this is 4711 in a Yugo on the Gulf Highway. Both are great for what ails ya. Rainy out? Spritz on some Eva.  Everyone forgot your birfday? Spritz on some Eva.  Everyone remember your birfday?  Spritz on some Eva.  Not enough time to shower before you run to the store? Spritz on some Eva.  Fat pants not fitting?  That’s right… spritz it like you have it.

Osmanthe Yunnan – I’m not sure why I like this one so much, but it haunts me. It’s that sour, dry grapefruity open with that tea under it all.  Just when I think it is gone, it will waft so delicately around me and sends my nose hunting for it again.  Much as I love Vetiver Tonka and Rose Ikebana, and they please me more than OY generally, this is the Hermessence that will be heavenly for me in summer.  Laying in the hammock in the shade of my weeping birch, just pondering how this wispy scent can be so enchanting.

Ormonde Jaynes – all of them, but Frangipani has found a special place in my heart this spring. It is just charmingly lovely. Rich, buttery, like a hot island filled with flowers. The base in the OJs scream joyful weather, and I wear them all year round, but they seem to be even more ebullient in warm weather, like a wonderful flower that smells heavely year round but saves its sweetest perfume for the heat.

de Rosine Un Zest de Rose – Y’all didn’t really think I’d miss out on doing a Rose perfume in this list, did you?  Love this one, citrusy rose done like no other, I just want to drink this darn thing.  Right behind it is Rose D’Ete. More fruity rose, but also summer in a bottle.

Hermes Un Jardin Sur le Nil – Anyone disagree?  I didn’t think so.

 Malle En Passant – As I mentioned before… laying in a pile of grain with a little bouquet of lilacs pressed up to my nose. This is a perfume that makes me feel young again, and that’s all about springtime.  Just stunningly beautiful.

(painting is Girl with Lilac by Sophie Anderson)

 

Chanel Bois de Iles – I can’t leave this one off of a list again.  I tend to ignore this during the winter months, but it is just perfection once the weather warms.  Woody, Chanel-y perfection.  I always feel like I need to put on my little sundress, pearls, hat and little white sandals, grab a bottle of gin and find a garden party to crash. (Picture from the artist Judy Free found at this gorgeous Seattle Gallery site)

Serge Lutens Un Lys or Malle’s Lys Mediterranee –  Lillies have to be on a spring list, and these are my two favorites (oh, no, I know I’ve forgotten one!).  Lillies don’t remind me of sad things, like funerals. They remind me of renewal and beginning, of rebirth and hope, of finding great beauty when you least expect it. They are such an impractical flower, and they don’t grow so well in Colorado some years, but I must have them because they are always beautiful against the odds, and then they flop over and wilt and get brown, but they come back again just as beautiful.

Either SL Fleurs D’Oranger or L’Artisan Fleur De Oranger or Le Labo Fleur D’Oranger – Again, there must be an Orange Blossom or nine on the list, and these three are gorgeous, but different aspects of the same smell. See March’s wonderful review from a while back on the SL and FM (what, like I have a link?).  Sunshine in a bottle, but not all-out sunshine. It is shrouded, muted, in shade some of the time and out burning hot other times.

Marc Jacobs (Essence, Blush or the regular) – White flower heaven, any of these are just beautiful and made for the warm weather months, though they work perfectly well any season. One of the few designer perfumes I am totally smitten with.

SL Bois de Violette – Has to be a violet on this list, and this is my very favorite.  Runner Up is Laura Tonatta E. Duse.  She might have been in first place, except I haven’t gotten around to buying a bottle and drowning myself in it — I really need to do that soon!

 

AND

MY TOP SUMMER SCENTS

The Daphnes that grow outside of my old house, Russian Olive blossoms, the salty skin of sweaty babies who have been in the ocean, and smoky barbeques.  As much as I love perfume, the smells in nature will always show them to be just imitations.  But imitations though they may be, getting a sniff of one that brings back a time and place and emotion is just magic and why perfume is the most fun thing to have as a hobby — obsession – fun thing to do!

Last week I shared my thoughts on acquiring samples. This post covers a different kind of acquisition, the Scent Bender. Does that sound like fun? Well, then, just hop in my car and ride along with me.

Our destination is the Tysons Galleria in suburban Washington, D.C., the kind of high-end mall that is anchored by NM and Saks and patronized by blown-out neutral-polish uber-mommies, the bored international set, and ghost-thin, ethereally beautiful Asian women wearing the kind of wildly chic clothes that whisper Anywhere But Here.

I stop briefly at the Cartier counter in Neiman Marcus to smell the Delices de Cartier that Robin reviewed, and I have to say I prefer the parfum, which is all fruit (cherry) and much less jasmine (they are so proud of their three-part jasmine!), although I don’t like it enough to buy it (and am guessing it is fairly expensive.) I am in a hurry, because I am heading for Art With Flowers.

I owe my thanks to Robin at NST for pointing me to Art With Flowers, which I might eventually have found on my own, but I doubt it. It is on the top floor, in the most rarified atmosphere of the mall, and from the front it looks like a very expensive flower shop (which it is), along with a tastefully edited collection of objets d’art that would probably get my attention if I weren’t in such a hurry to get to the back where they keep the fragrances.

Art With Flowers is the only local source for Serge Lutens and carries an alphabet soup of niche perfumes: TDC, SMN, MPG, CSP, etc. Les Parfums de Rosine, Carthusia, Nanadebary, lots of candles, stuff I’ve forgotten, and some one-offs that are carried at, say, Takashimaya in New York. I love this place. I love this place because attitude-wise they are the polar opposites of the department store fragrance counters. They couldn’t care less if I stay all day, drink my lattes, eat their expensive chocolate, and clear my nose using their coffee grounds before applying yet another niche product… and then leave with nothing but a bag of free samples. I go there for a semi-monthly Scent Bender with purchases, because I owe them, because it’s fun, and because if they close, then what will I do?

I especially love Bill, because he obliges me by spraying himself with all the things I love that smell wonderful on him and terrible on me (like Apothia’s Velvet Rope). I have buried my nose in his chest enthusiastically more than once, huffing Serge’s Un Lys. Bill has put the entire Diptyque line on sale at 40% off because he wants the shelf space for other things, and he complains that it’s still not moving. (Diptyque junkies – that’s $36 for a bottle of EDT! They have the soaps and candles on sale too. Interested? Call 703-903-6837, I assume they can send it to you.) I pass on the Diptyque Oyedo, which is citrus but smells completely boring on me after 90 seconds, but purchase a bottle of my beloved L’Eau Trois, which I am fairly sure they will discontinue since nobody else will wear it (although Bois de Jasmin gave it a thumbs up, and I think Robin doesn’t hate it), and then the Eau D’Elide (bitter orange, aromatic shrubs), which (this is how the mind begins to twist when you smell a lot of product) I cannot say smells good on me. However, it smells very interesting – an intensely green, macerated-herb scent that I buy only after I realize I’ve been compulsively re-sniffing it over the previous hour, in between the other dozen-odd things I’ve applied. I smell Apothia’s L, which smells infuriatingly like fruit crap on me, I was wishing for something edgier, and almost buy Apothia’s If EDP, a gorgeous gardenia-bouquet (the roll-on oil version has some citrus) except it’s gone in 15 minutes, so I decline (although I notice I’ve come home with a sample of it, and L, and Velvet Rope.)

Wow, look, another lost Guerlain! Well, no, not really. It’s Rosine’s Rose d’Homme, which is God’s gift to those of us who are not entirely on board with the rose. I was expecting a masculine rose-guy-cologne thing, but the bergamot-vetiver-citrus-vanilla-hesperidic base makes it, I swear, smell on Bill (and on me) like a classic, not overly sweet Guerlain. This is not simply a great rose fragrance. This is a great fragrance, period. By the way, there is nothing particularly masculine about it, although it would smell wonderful on a man.

I linger awhile over Tann Rokka’s Kisu (ylang-ylang, rose, cedarwood, musk) because the Japanese-motif black bottle with plum blossom spray is so beautiful, but the juice is just a slightly gingery musk on me. Instead I purchase a box of what looks like beautiful nuggets of frankincense and myrrh resin, but which are actually Burn’s Rare Ambient Rocks – “naturally crystallized acacia resin permeated with amber, copal resin, palisander, Javanese ebony, Sandarac balsam, and cascarilla bark.� Does that sound heavenly? It is. I also buy the faux-tortoise bowl they’re using for display in the store, because it’s just so perfect. Now I have to think of a place to put them that will escape the attention of the twins…

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend. The weather is just beautiful here, so we’re heading out to get bikes, which is something I’ve missed having around for many years.

I’m going to do a sample pack give-away. All you need to do to enter is just respond to this post with two Frederic Malle perfumes you would like to try.  I’ll have my dog, son or husband help me draw a name out randomly, and whoever I draw out will get one or both Malle samples they want to try, if I have it. I think I have most of them, but I might be missing one.  I’ll also throw in a bunch of other samples, and I will take requests from the winner of something you’ve been dying to try, if I have it. I’ll draw the name on Thurs evening and post it Friday morning.

Mona di Orio Carnation – Notes of bergamot, giroflee (Wha?!), geranium bourbon, ylang ylang, violet, jasmin, precious woods, musk, amber, styrax.  I am trying to give this some time because there are some nice notes floating around in it, but it must be the musk or syrax that is ruining it for me. This one is deep and really earthy. As long as I don’t get my nose so close, it’s not bad, but get too close, and I’m nauseous.  I’ll leave this one alone for a while and get back to it later…. (later) Gak!  Smells like I spread a tire on my hand.  No, not for me, not even a little bit.

 Random Sample of the Day — Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier Grain de Plaisir.  Just pulled this one out of the sample pile. Notes of celery seeds, amber, precious woods, lemon, citrus and musk.  This one is pretty fun.  Very green and citrusy with enough woody notes to keep it from going over the edge into sharp.  I really like this for a summer scent to a certain extent, but there’s a note in there – must be the celery seeds? — that’s keeping it from being love in the drydown, but I’d certainly wear it, just not sure I want to buy it.  It didn’t seem to last on me, which is a shame.  Any other MPGs I should try? The Or Des Indes sounds fun, as does the Bahiana.  Ideas?

Kai — I’ve had this sample for like 100 years and just never got around to it.  Gardenia and white flowers, designed to emulate the tropical flowers. It certainly is pretty enough, but at $45 for 1/8 oz of oil (4 ml), I think I can take a pass on it.

Malle of the Day –  naw, I’ll do the new Sel de Vetiver from The Different Company instead.  Robin at NST  lists the notes as grapefruit, cardamom, Bourbon geranium, lovage, Haitian vetiver, patchouli, iris and ylang ylang.  This is that dry, salty smell, the dry grapefruit, with just a little tang. I get some of the Iris too. I think Marina posted that it was supposed to be the smell of wet dirt. If I think of it more as the rain hitting the dirt during a spring thundershower, I think they’ve come pretty close to pulling together that magical smell of dry dirt and rain, with some green things in there as well, though it does miss it alittle.  Those of you (yes, March and Marina), if you like that salty earthy smell with iris in the mix, I do think you’ll like this one.  I need to do more testing to make sure this is FBW for me, but it is certainly an interesting entry into their line.  The drydown is scrumptious.  Definitely need to do another test with just this on.

The picture over there on the right and below are pictures we took during a dirt storm in Kansas about two or three years ago.  I had never seen one this bad, but that big billowing thing is all dirt, not a drop of rain in it.  We watched it roll across the plains towards us for what seemed like hours, and I thought back to the ’30s when this was a daily occurrence, and they lasted for hours and how the sight of one of those meant ruin for so many families.  This left a trail of dust everywhere, pushing dirt into places you didn’t think dirt could get.  I took a bunch of pictures that day, and I never could really capture what it looked like. Normally when a spring storm comes rolling through the plains, there is the smell of green and grit and electricity, as if everything is more alive then, but this storm wasn’t like that. It just smelled like dirt, extra dry, extra dirty.

Got a request in comments to jot off a couple of notes about Frederic Malle’s En Passant.

The best way I can describe it, for me, is it is like lying on a pile of  freshly harvested wheat holding a little bouquet of lilacs. Or my mother in the kitchen baking bread, and I come in from outdoors with some lilacs in my hand. It just feels like home.  Those are memories of my youth.

 The lilac note starts off pretty strong and sweet, but that really doesn’t last long, though the lilac note is there constantly, just gets joined with that yeasty smell. I don’t notice much of the other notes, the cucumber and something else, except they give it a sort of ephemeral feel, keeping it from being too strong, too real, so it just constantly feels like a nose memory of another time, just a little out of your reach.

This is an amazing spring/summer scent. I hadn’t paid any attention to it much over winter, but it really comes into its own when the weather starts warming.

 I think maybe next week we’ll work on our favorite spring/summer scents. My mind is definitely turning to those now.

CW, if you love lilacs and you aren’t horrified by a little wheaty smell, you should adore En Passant.

And here’s Buddy, the Wonder Dog. He’s the World’s most joyous dog, leaping and bounding like he was a kangaroo, but he is so sweet and lovable and just a rotten thief who steals everything, raids the trash can, snarfs along the countertop. He’s just rotten to the core, but I just adore him, he’s my best friend.

March and I have discussed, and we think that doing a giveaway of samples each week will be fun for us and anyone who is reading. Since we both accumulate so many samples, it’s a way of passing along the fun.  March will have one of her daughters draw when she is doing it, and I’ll have my dog Buddy put his paw on the winner on the weeks I do it. And if he won’t cooperate, I’ll press one of my sons or my husband into service. Mine for next week will probably be a mix of a couple of Malles, like the 5 ml Lipstick Rose and Iris Poudre and a couple of other surprises that I’ll figure out this weekend. Tune in Monday!

 Mandarina Duck — This one starts off citrusy and tart, and I’m thinking I like it for a minute or four, and then it starts doing that ozonic shuffle so you have no idea what it is anymore, and since I don’t understand what it is and what it should be, I’m just going to put this picture of the bunny with a pancake on its head over there. It makes as much sense as Mandarina Duck does.  What a hot, manufactured mess.

Have you ever put on a shirt you wore earlier in the week just for something to wear for bed, and you smell some amazing scent all over it and you’re just not sure what it is, and it may be a combination of something. I think it’s partially En Passant, but something else is in there too, but this shirt should be framed in the Smell Hall of Fame, it is just glorious. 

Floris Malmaison – March just covered this one a couple of weeks ago, then assisted me on finding my own bottle with lotion on eBay, and good Lord, this is yummy!  I might be able to live without Coup de Fouet a little bit.  Oh, no, I didn’t mean it, honest (covers Coup’s little ears),  but it sure is a beauty of a carnation.

Going on with my Malle samples — Angeliques Sous le Pluie, angelicas in the rain. I dig the pink pepper and cedar, and the angelica or the corriander is just strange to me and I usually don’t like either of them very well, but this is one of the few that I like okay. Not a favorite in the Malle scent stable, but if you like those notes, it’s very nicely made, and the cedar is fairly subtle, I think you would like it. 

Molinard Iles D’Or  — says it was inspired by the golden era of the ’30s.  WTH does that mean?  Um, Great Depression doesn’t strike me as incredibly golden, just mostly brown.  Notes of citron vert, mirabelle, freesia, jasmin, amber, cedarwood, sandalwood, vanilla, musk and nougat.  From the notes, I pretty much expected to hate it, it’s definitely a gourmandy mess, designed to bring out the smell of nougat with some tropical  stuff. I don’t think I’d wear it much because I don’t care for vanilla or gourmands much, but it really isn’t horrible.  Gourmand fans should find something to like here.   After some time on my skin, this has turned into a scrubber, too sweet for too long, I have cavities and an upset tummy from too much candy.

Molinard Nirmala — mango, passion fruit, grapefruit, mandarine, jasmine, tonka bean, sandalwood, vanilla and cedarwood.  Pretty fruity and sweet, and there is something in there that’s not smelling so good., it’s gone body odorish. What is that?  Gak!  Do all the Molinards run sweet? I remember the Violette being pretty sweet, but that worked with the violet.  

 Any other Molinards I should try that aren’t as sweet?  I like them to some degree, but the sweetness in  at least the ones I’ve tried seems over the top, like CSP is over the top on sweet and vanilla.

Here’s my feedback on Patty’s, uh, little surprises, a section on samples, and the announcement for the winner of the Serge Sample Pack!

The Surprises — my feedback on Patty’s blind sample selections:

100% Eau de Slut (Paris Hilton) – I said it was crap. It was Paris Hilton. So I … guessed that one correctly.

Big Moustache (LV Garofano) – a big pat on the back to me for at least recognizing its similarity to Floris Malmaison (another carnation) in the drydown. I’m still waffling on this one, wore it again today. I wish it were a little more carnation and a little less rose at the opening, but man, the drydown is just stunning. Robin at NST suggested this as another carnation to love, and I may well end up doing so. Uh, Patty, you don’t have a bottle of this, do you?

Cheeseburger (Imaginal Beyond Forever) – I’m far more embarrassed about this one than the Britney. It’s just so pretentious and overwrought. Plus (sue me) it sounds like Vaginal. I don’t want to wear anything called Frenulum either. Or Prepuce. Or Cremaster – though, hey, that’d make a rockin’ name for a series of weird, art-house movies…

Daisy (Le Labo Fleur D’Orangeur) — I completely whiffed this one. I went back and re-smelled and I’m stunned. It’s clearly a very pretty orange flower, a bit soapy (which doesn’t especially bother me), a little green. I think I tried this one at the same time as the Doctah – maybe it just couldn’t fight with the Skank? Thanks, this is lovely.

Doctah Doctah (Le Labo Vetiver 46) – When Patty reviewed this awhile ago I commented “this sounds like the exact opposite of anything I’d ever like,” which illustrates how wrong I can be. This rocked me right down to my toes. A hole in my Incense Wardrobe I didn’t know existed. P — since you think it’s such crap, you should split whatever you have left and send it to me and Marina.

Gramma (Le Labo Rose 31) – Rose? Are you sure you sent me the right juice? You didn’t pop a contact out and then accidentally mix it up with that manure tea you keep under your sink, decanting at 2 a.m.? I thought about re-applying to see if I could get any rose at all, but life’s too short to smell that again.

Hotel California (Missoni) – too bad, the bottle is really cute. I think I was pretty close with my Escada Summer scents.

Low Rider (Britney Spears Curious) – well… you could buy a lot worse stuff than Curious or Fantasy (Baby Phat Goddess comes to mind). They are both professionally done, decent fragrances (Curious is a little less sweet and the more interesting of the two). My horror of Britney and the fact that I am decades (eons?) away from being the target audience for these perfumes doesn’t change that. The only part that surprises me was what a hard time I had registering its smell; subtle it ain’t.

The Samples

There was some discussion in the comments section regarding where to get fragrance samples. Here’s my Two Cents, which you can skip if it’s not a topic that interests you:

When I was a nascent scent slut, I started lurking the fragrance blogs, reading about the different lines, trying to understand the categories and terminologies and export designations, and eventually it dawned on me that a lot of people were buying samples of the fragrances, not the whole bottle. Oh. Well, okay, that makes total sense. But … where?

eBay is a great place to start; Sellers on eBay have samples of rare, discontinued, vintage or non-export fragrances that you probably aren’t going to find anywhere else. You can buy samples using Buy It Now rather than bidding (FYI, in case bidding drives you crazy), plus a lot of them throw in freebies of other stuff. I like to order several scents from one house (The Different Co., L’Artisan) because that’s the way my mind works. This is also where I’ll violate the Blogger’s Code of Ethics (hah, yeah, right!) and point out that my blogmate Patty is a Professional Scent Slut who sells fabulous niche stuff on eBay, including sample sets of the really cool non-export Shiseidos I reviewed recently. There’s a link on the left side of our homepage or click here. (And yeah, Flora, SL Tubereuse Criminelle should be illegal in the lower 48. A LOT of great stuff probably should be illegal. The DEA’s going to show up any day and take away my Jicky parfum and my Bal a Versailles.)

You can buy samples from a number of online niche perfume stores like Aedes, Luckyscent, or Luscious Cargo for nominal amounts of money ($13 gets you 8 samples plus a couple of freebies from Luscious. Okay, once they sent me somebody else’s order, but they fixed it right away when I emailed them, and I got to keep the 8 mistakes, so I was happy.) Some of the niche perfumers also have their own sample programs.

Where to start?  Just start … anywhere.  Pick something you’ve read about.  Or sample your way through a particular line, if you’ve found one scent there that really appeals.  Or pick a note you like (rose, incense, vetiver?) and sample some of those.

If you already own a bunch of stuff, and you want to trade it for different stuff, check out Basenotes or MakeupAlley, both of which have active swap programs and interesting discussion boards.

Of course, making friends among the other perfume nuts online also leads to endless rounds of share-the-love freebies, particularly if your fellow blogster (not naming any names here, P) happens to own the equivalent of Fort Knox in niche perfumes…. but that’s another story.

Well, now I feel good and a little bad, because there were so many of you and only one set of samples.

The Winner of the Serge Lutens Sample Set is … Jenny! (#11) Congratulations! Email me your address (use the Contact Us) and I’ll get it in the mail. The rest of you: keep trying, Patty’s now threatening to Bust Loose her Mother Lode, and I’m going to have some other giveaways, so far I’ve come up with S-Perfumes, I Love Incense, Out of Africa, Skank Me, Shiseido, Malle…

This has been such a fun thing for us to do. If anyone else would like to join in next time we do it, just holla!

100% Eau de Slut

(Marina) I 100% hate this. Bright pink girly concoction with a raspberry and /or strawberry note. Givenchy Hot Couture? No, wait, something more primitive than that. One of the limited edition Escadas? Island Kiss, Ibiza Hippie, Pacific Paradise? Something like that. Alternatively, it could be Jessica Simpson Juicy. Ugh. I hear Red Delicious by DKNY has a raspberry note too; is it Red Delicious?

(March) Man, if that isn’t some kinda drugstore crap, my name’s Shania. Although, really, there’s an argument to be made for drugstore crap, some of it, anyway. (Hellooooo, Antonio! Sand & Sables!) This is an inoffensive pink smell, my 8-year-old might like it. Or it could be Paris Hilton for all I know. If you had to pay more than 10 bucks for this, you were euchred. PS This is drying down into something that smells like burnt plastic. Let’s see them write THAT in the base notes.

Paris Hilton is the 100% Slut, of course! I already reviewed this one this week, and it is a sugary mess, but if you can stand it for 5 hours, it will turn into a nice thing…. eventually. And her perfume too.

Big Moustache

(Marina) Roses. Tea roses, to be precise. Quite sweet. Don’t get much apart from roses. Could be Borsari Acqua de Rosa Thea, could be Creed something or other, could be Perfumers Workshop Tea Rose. Rose soliflores all smell the same and boring to me.

(March) A completely weird scent that I won’t buy but will probably use the rest of your sample. This smells like a men’s cologne to me; is this that weird Sap thing? Or maybe one of the Abinoams I haven’t smelled? It’s pretty strong. Almost, but not quite, cat pee. And floral – nah, this is a really green rose. Isn’t it? That’s what it is. A really green, sappy rose, one of your Rosines, maybe. You’re such a rose slut. Objectively I smell the sort of juice that rose fanatics swoon for. But … I’m Just Not That Into It. (2 hours later) Wow. Complete reassessment. The rose has modulated and been joined by a gently spicy smell; the effect is reminiscent of Floris Malmaison. If only it didn’t take 2 hours to get here

Lorenzo Villoresi Garafano is the Big Moustache. carnation, laced with rose, jasmin and geranium. Nuances of lilac, cyclamen, ylang ylang and aromatic spices. Top note: lavender, floral notes, green leaves. Middle note: carnation, jasmin, rose, cinnamon, cyclamen, ylang ylang, geranium, pepper. Base note: heliotrope, vanilla, musk, cedarwood. How odd that it took so much for the carnation to come out? Like a big moustache, lots of flourish, but I can’t seem to find anything to love in this line.

CheeseburgerÂ

(Marina) Holy Tuberose! Mamma Tiara! Creamy, buttery, tropical. Sand and Sable? Aloha Tiare? Does not smell bad at all, just kind of robust and straight to the point, no subtlety here. Let me put it this way, I won’t be surprised if it is a $90 scent by some company like L’Artisan, but I won’t be shocked either if this is a $9 Coty fragrance. My guess is it is somewhere in the Coty league.

(March) this smells like cheap-as-sh!t juice built around a Cherry Coke accord.  Probably comes in a pink bottle shaped like a soda can. Let me further embarrass myself by saying I really like it, and would probably wear it regularly.  (Later): well, in the drydown this has a full-bodied winey jasmine richness and I am a fool, since this is where the budget stuff tends to go seriously off the rails. I am now guessing a hideously expensive niche LE harvest fragrance that captures, using the finest ingredients gathered by barefoot nuns at sunset in August, the elusive smell of the Cheap-Ass Cherry Coke Flower. Smells like AG Songes without that awful, bitter armpit part. NOTE: Could NOT resist: layered with Doctah, it rocks!!! I’m probably going to be consigned to some special circle of Perfume Hell for doing that.

Immaginal is Cheeseburger. I reviewed this one too, and I didn’t hate it, just hated the hypey text that surrounded it. It’s a cheeseburger, not truffles, but being a cheeseburger is really okay. March, layering it with Doctoah somehow seems just, well, wrong!

DaisyÂ

(Marina) Seems to be a classic Eau de Cologne along the lines of Guerlain’s Eaux. Lemon blossoms? Orange Blossoms? Some jasmine? This would be quite nice for summer.

 (March) I need, like, an industrial-size spray paint canister to apply this so I can get a bead on it. It’s completely inoffensive and herbal, but that’s all I can tell you. Smells tres niche. Let me go dump on the rest of the vial. (later) Smells like Dior Cologne Blanche, only stronger. It’s fine. I wouldn’t snipe it on eBay. If you gave it to me, I’d wear it.

Le Labo Fleur D’Orangeur Is Daisy. I do adore this one. You, March, Orange Flower Slut, how can you not love this? It’s the only Le Labo I’ve become smitten with so far.

Doctah DoctahÂ

(Marina) Now we are talking. This is interesting. Savory, smoky, salty, leathery, woody…I might need to get this. I really might. This to me spells “niche� or “vintage, long forgotten classic men’s scent�. I need this and I think Judith (lilybp) might like this too.

(March) Mmmmmmm. Is this Armani Prive Encens? Something similar. A dry, dry, dry (water, please!) meditative (did I mention dry?) incense smell, with a hint of woods (dry woods) because it’s trying to do the armpit thing but hasn’t. Yet. I’m hoping/praying it won’t because it’s just gorgeous.  Wow. Hey, maybe this is Coty Wild Woods, gotta go smell my decant! (later) No, Wild Woods is more resinous. That Prive Encens is amazing, huh? But this is different …. Wood-smokier somehow. One of the CDG ones I haven’t smelled? Avignon? The Russian one? Or, wait, the Japanese one …. mmmmmmmmmm.  Uh, can I have some of this and some Cheeseburger? Please?

Le Labo Vetiver 46 is Doctah Doctah. You two are both just sick and twisted. This thing is just nasty, it’s embalming fluid in a bottle. It could be that I just hate Vetiver, but that can’t be true because I adore Vetiver Tonka! I tried it on again just to be sure, and I’d rather have Tubereuse Criminelle without the tuberose than this. Maybe my nose is damaged and not smelling some notes because I completely am mystified on how anyone can like this. And Robin liked it too! Color me clueless. And hand me a syringe full of something narcotic before I’ll ever want that thing on me again. This is one I’m going to do free sample giveaways on just because I have to find one other person that will agree with me.

GrammaÂ

 (Marina) So delicate I can hardly smell it, and yet it has the same nose-hair-burning note that Vanilla Exquise had (benzoin?). Me no likey and I am sure this is some highbrow overpriced la-di-da thingie.

(March) What did I ever do to you to deserve this kind of evil? Oh. My. God. It must be, basically, cedar. I cannot come up with anything else that would smell that horrible on me.  If you could smell my left wrist right now you would curl up and die. Cedar and … pepper?  Mustard? Cumin? Excuse me, I have to go remove this. Immediately. Okay, I’ll wait 5 minutes but that’s IT. (15 minutes later)  I am going to have to cut my whole arm off. Honest. You don’t OWN that, do you? I’m gonna have to send in the DEA guys in those hazmat suits like they do at the meth labs to throw that stuff away. (Next day) I couldn’t believe it was really that bad, maybe I was off? So I put it BACK ON. Mother of God. I am sitting here laughing, tears rolling. Don’t you f*%uking EVER send me anything like that again.

Le Labo Rose 31 is Gramma — gramma on a Harley. That you both jointly hated it makes me feel better somehow. And not even hated slightly, but detested. *Vindication!*

Hotel CaliforniaÂ

(Marina) “A Department Store Scent. “ Some designer’s attempt at an “interesting� perfume. Floral, fresh and with an annoying, unnecessary gourmand (chocolaty) note.  The new Missoni scent? Chocolovers? Another Ugh.

(March) That is some nasty, sweet juice. My teeth hurt it’s so sweet. This is one of those frootylicious things that I absolutely loathe. Smells like …. melon … musk … muskmelon? … icky plastic Glade floral … Raid? I wish you could see my face all squinched up like I’m sucking on a lemon. This is either your rank drugstore entry, or this could be one of those dag-nasty Escada summer crap scents. Ibiza Hoochie. Rio Bimbo.

New Missoni Fragrance is this one, Marina guessed it!  This is the second accurate guess at what a perfume was so far. Why can’t I find a name for it other than that? Well, I guess that one will do. You can check out any time you lik