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Hey, it’s not Trashy Friday, it’s Black Friday!
How many of you have been out shopping today? I haven’t gone shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving for 20 years, at least. And why? Because of the crowds, the fighting, the trampling on small children…
This woman looks happy, but she’s not!
She’s just decked that woman behind her and is cackling madly. So, those of you brave enough to go out, how was it?
Happy Thanksgiving!! Today we are grateful for our families and for all of the friends we have made through this blog. The perfume community is truly one of the most generous, kind groups of people. Thank you for reading, for commenting, for your kindness and humor.
We´re all heading off to various destinations for Thanksgiving, and I hope if you are too, your trip is a safe one. Everyone´s busy, so I thought today I´d blog slightly off-topic. I´m not a big beauty-product gal, and most of the testimonial fluff I read in, say, the Bliss catalog makes me snicker. But here are three things that I’m pretty much never without…
Olive Oil. I have dry, sensitive skin and dry (color-treated) hair. I keep a small bottle of organic olive oil in my bathroom and use it as body oil after bathing; makeup remover; moisturizer for my face and hands at bedtime; fragrance remover; and hair shine (I just pour a dime-size dab in my palm and rub my hands together, then run them through my hair). I didn´t invent the olive-oil thing – look at all the high-end beauty products touting its antioxidant properties. My oil comes from the co-op and it works great. Yes, I do smell like olive oil for a couple of minutes, but the smell fades very fast (and it’s a nice smell, anyway). In terms of an actual catalog beauty product, I highly recommend…
LipFusion lip plumper. I like them better than the cinnamon-based ones, which irritate my skin (which is also how they plump). This has some hooey about micro-encapsulated collagen or whatever, but man – it makes my lips soft and pillowy. The colors go on really sheer, and I recommend their two new colors — Dream and Smooch. Available at Sephora and elsewhere. A rare example of a product that lives up to the hype.
Naked Bee products, especially the shampoo/conditioner combo. It works; it´s super-concentrated; it´s gentle and doesn´t strip my hair color; it smells amaaaaaaazing; and its small size means you can take it on the plane. The lotion and soap are wonderful, too.
Finally, ladies – if there was ever a season for you to wear red lipstick, this is it. (Guys, if you want to wear red lipstick, who am I to stop you?) Seriously – right now there´s a red for everyone, not just Dita Von Teese. I´m partial to the Lancome line because they don´t have a waxy aftertaste (a pet peeve of mine). I have pale skin and red hair, and my new love is Lancome Color Design in Work It! Chanel has some awesome reds, as does the Guerlain Kiss Kiss line; the Guerlain cases are gorgeous.
Okay, what´s your favorite beauty product? What’s the one thing you’d never run out of?
Housekeeping — over on the left are two links, either through Feedblitz or Blogarithm, if you would like to be e-mailed when there is a new post. I think both of them only e-mail once a day, but you’ll get it in your e-mail box so you don’t have to go hunting on the internet if you don’t want. So click on either one if you’d like that e-mail notification.
I got the little Garden coffret from The Different Company directly, and it looks like Beautyhabit is doing pre-orders on full bottles only now. You can also get the little three-bottle coffret with 10 ml each in it directly from The Different Company, but navigating to their order page can be tricky, just be warned. Two of the three got snatched up for my collection after being declared FBW. The bottles are the pretty colored ones in the traditional TDC bottle. The descriptions below with the notes are from Now Smell This. Celine Ellena, creator of my beloved Sel de Vetiver, is the nose behind all three of these scents, and I am quickly becoming her biggest fan — no, no, not a Misery-like biggest fan, just a fan fan, without the blocks of wood and the sledgehammer.
Un parfum des sens et bois – notes of white violet, cedar, pepper, ginger, elemi, patchouli and incense. This goes on peppery and sagey spicy, and the violet hides itself, like most good little violets do, but you can catch a little of it here and there peeping it’s beautiful, shy head out. I always think of the violet as the shy maiden that is dressed in her slip that hides behind the door and keeps peeking around the corner, and you think she’s shy until she finally steps into the room dressed in a black bustier with a pretty purple whip snapping by her side. Sorry, I love violets, I’ll continue on.
As it unfolds, the wood, the incense, the violet and spice all spin together to make this a veritable feast for the nose — there’s just not one thing that stands out, though you will catch a discrete note here and there — but this is not a heavy meal that you’ll be burping up for days. This has the same subtlety that Sel de Vetiver and Osmanthe Yunnan have, a light hand that is intent on creating a watercolor (description on basenotes that I agree with). For as subtle as this perfume is, it doesn’t disappear in a an hour or so, though it is not something that will trail you all day at full force like that ex-boyfriend from high school that never knew what “we are broken up, I don’t love you, I don’t even like you” meant. It’s a ghost, a cloud of scent that whispers across your nose every time you move, but that you just cannot find in the same strength, if at all, on your skin. Charming beyond belief.
Un parfum d’ailleurs et fleurs – notes of neroli, tangerine, tuberose, black elder flowers, star anise, musk, plum and hazel tree blossom. Wow! This one goes on very sharp and just pops from the skin, not entirely tangerine, some neroli, but I’m not sure what else is pumping up the volume on the open (wish I was better at picking out notes, sorry, guys!!!). There is an earthy fruitiness to this, and I didn’t even know that kind of combination could exist in a perfume and smell good, but that’s the best description I have. The drydown is just gorgeously soft. It stays earthy for a while, but then you get a little teeny bit of fruit, enough that you know you have fruit in there, and the florals blend in the fruit notes beautifully, and fruit is just not a major factor for the rest of its stay on me — you fruity floral hates can rejoice here because this is not a fruity floral. I never get much tuberose as a distinct note, but I’m sure it is in there. Many hours later, this has the prettiest, lightest, cleanest smell. Again, it’s a watercolor. When I think I can’t smell it, it is there, just dancing around my nose like a butterfly.
Un parfum de charme et feuilles – notes of marjoram, peppermint, Sambac jasmine, sage and clementine. I thought I would like this one the least only from the notes. This goes on very minty with a light spice, quite a lot of sage, but it’s tempered so well with the peppermint, it is not too much. I cannot ever remember being a fan of minty perfumes… but this one is probably the only one that would ever get me to change my mind. The longer this is on, it retains a little of the mint, but the jasmine and clementine and sage break through. I used to have pots of jasmine in my garden with catmint and Russian sage around it. This is that smell, but better. Again, this is a very subtle scent, it doesn’t whack you over the head with any of the notes. Just about the time my nose gets a little weary of the mint, it starts dissipating and letting the jasmine through, but maintaining a crisp sagey mintness througout the drydown, which lasts approximately forever (I’m at 8 hours when I wrote this). This is probably my least favorite of the three, but only because mint is not a favorite note, but it is definitely lovely and well crafted.
Can I just say that Celine Ellena is slowly moving to the top of the list of perfumers I adore? She has such a light and subtle hand, but the subtlety is never too light so that the scent just disappears. There are days I want perfumes that make a statement and days when I want a perfume that flutters about my senses, and these three fit the bill on the latter.
Giveaway this week!!! A set of all three of these perfume samples. Just drop a note in the comments that you’d like to be included in the drawing, and I’ll put you in!
Patty
My oldest daughter sniffed my sample of Russisch Leder and said, “it smells like some nasty thing the dog would roll in.” She´s always looking for a more poetic way to say my perfume is disgusting. But it never stops her from smelling something; in fact, there´s a certain Fear-Factor thrill to sniffing mom´s perfume which she clearly enjoys. (Number Two daughter, on the other hand, has never forgiven me for CB Musk.) This post is partly inspired by a recent blogversation in which the idea was raised that one can own too much leather fragrance. I, March the Maleficent, am puzzled by this concept and cannot make sense of it, although it appears to be written in English. That is like saying “too much wine.” Or too much air. You can have enough of something (for instance, rose fragrances – I have five or six and I´m done, thank you). But there is never too much leather, and here are a few that, while not new, are new to me. An aside: all of these were gift decants that appeared on my doorstep. Where would perfume addiction (and blogging) be without the sharing of samples, particularly the rare, the unusual, the vintage and the otherwise-impossible-to-get? I am amazed at the generosity of some of my fellow perfume fans (you know who you are!). Anyway, on to the post…
Farina Gegenuber Russisch Leder does, in fact, smell like something my dog would roll in, and if I could get my hands on a bottle (hope springs eternal on eBay) I´d roll in it too. Notes are bergamot, lavender, lemon, petitgrain, basil, fern, vetiver, cedarwood, patchouli, carnation, aldehyes, leather, moss, musk, civet, castoreum, vanilla, labdanum. Okay, take in those last few ingredients in that vintage formulation – because Russisch Leder is a filthy, rank juice, and if you ever see it on eBay, don´t buy it, because it will give you nightmares and make your nether parts shrivel. (While you are not bidding on Russisch Leder, you can amuse yourself by typing “leder” into the search engines of eBay – the mind boggles, really.) I’m in awe of the amazing morph from the “classic cologne” petitgrain-bergamot-etc. opening of the topnotes into Skankapalooza, with strong notes of leather and musk before the civet rears its dirty little fanny.
Le Labo Patchouli – It bears a resemblance to the newer version of Kolnisch Juchten – smoke, some leather, not much development, no discernable patch. That´s the whole story, and sometimes short stories are the best stories. A winner for your smoke and leather fans. You might not need both LL Patchouli and the new KJ, but you definitely need one of them. By the way, here´s Judith´s Special Sauce: Le Labo Patch layered with Lonestar Memories and CB Musk. Caution: I cannot be held responsible for neighborhood dogs following you down the street, howling.
Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia – my own answer to Bvlgari Black, which I admire as a concept, but I cannot get past the sex-shop rubber in the opening. Nostalgia is a wonderful amalgam of leather and car-repair-shop that dries down into a moderately civilized “men” scent. One of the weirder things I have smelled that turns out to be quite wearable, and a significant departure for the genteel SMN line, along with Kyoto.
Santa Maria Novella Peau d´Espagne – is this really from 1901? What were those people up to? Why did it take me until 2006 to discover it? Unlike some commenters on Basenotes, I get no “Tabasco” note – it´s pure, unadulterated leather to me. It´s refined and genteel, but not quite so expensive smelling as…
L´Artisan Bottega Veneta Intreccio room spray – I have a sample of #1, not #2 (both are available on lusciouscargo.com). It is a room spray but don’t worry, your arm won´t fall off. I am assuming the name refers to the distinctive intrecciato (woven) style of the Bottega handbags. I believe the scent (this is a candle too) was created by Olivia Giacobetti, and it is supposed to smell like an old farmhouse, with a library, old wood and new-mown hay. To me it smells more like burying your head inside a brand-new luxe leather purse, an opinion I´m going to confirm with my next trip to Saks (do you think sniffing the handbags will prompt a call to security?) The most luxury-leather fragrance I can think of.
What are your favorite leather scents, and why?
PS– if you care, my list of tolerable roses: SL Rose de Nuit, 100% Love, Malle Une Rose, Rosine Ecume and Homme, OJ Ta´if, the loathed TDC Rose Poivree, Paestum Rose, and Creed Fleur de The Rose Bulgare. (Wow, nine!) In general, nothing brings on a migraine quite like a prominent rose note.
Patty
March