There´s a fragrance review down there. But first, some housekeeping:

The winner of the bottle of Baiser du Dragon is … Jill! Please email me your address using “Contact Us.” I´m sorry I didn´t have a bottle to give to everyone who wanted it (well, not really – but you know what I mean).

Next: we´re tinkering with our blogging schedule; Patty´s now doing some regular posts on Fridays, so if you missed her excellent post this last Friday, do yourself a favor and go back and read it. Or you could subscribe to our blog, because sometimes she gets a wild hair from smelling too much product and decides to post on Saturday or Sunday.

Also: I know — our archives are a mess. The reviews sort of grew without us paying much attention or sorting them early on; the search feature is broken; there´s no list of fragrances we´ve reviewed; and when we moved to the current web address last summer, the older posts were badly garbled in punctuation. We´re working on a new format, and I keep going in and tediously cleaning up random old posts. Bear with us. (Sometimes I can´t find my old posts, either.) Okay, on to the fragrance:

What is it with Creed? You´d think for a line that´s been around since, what, the Battle of Hastings I´d have fallen in love with something by now. Part of the problem is the sheer number of fragrances lined up in formation on the counter (Bond No. 9 – heed my warning.) Part of the problem is I get distracted reading their cheat sheet, looking at which fragrances are/were worn by which celebrities (Marlene Dietrich, Princess Diana, Errol Flynn, Prince… okay, not Prince). Part of the problem is the Creed base in many of their fragrances — what I think is a combo of civet and ambergris – tends to smell very bitter on me. However, I took the challenge and decided I´d keep sniffing until I came up with five I´d wear cheerfully. With the exception of the first, I think they’re some of the line’s more obscure offerings.

Cuir de Russie – sandalwood, leather, ambergris, bergamot, amber. Released 1850. Wow. Which one of you said your skin just eats this thing up? A skank sandwich of such Plutonian proportions I felt a wee bit of shame walking around smelling like this. An earthy, fishy, post-coital leather. You people? Are perverts.

Cypres-Musc – bergamot, mint, ambergris, oakmoss, musk and cypress. Released 1948. Green and woody, with a resin-y quality further along in the plot. Gorgeous, long-lasting drydown.

Himalaya – bergamot, grapefruit, sandalwood, cedarwood, musk. Released 2002. This one I loved, although I concede it has a more distinctly modern smell than much of the line, and that´s maybe not a good thing for hardcore Creed fans. A unisexy citrus-bomb with a stiff wood chaser. Where have you been all my life?

Epicea – Russian Pine and spices. Released 1965. Colombina, have you smelled this? It made me think of you. Yes, pine and spices (pepper and cardamom, maybe?) A fragrance with zero development that also manages to be compelling.

Aubepine Acacia – bergamot, galbanum, mimosa, ambergris, hawthorne, acacia. Released 1965. Confession: I tried this in a fit of sheer pigheadedness, because I thought the notes sounded so horrible. Galbanum and hawthorne in the same fragrance? Please, kill me now. But it wasn´t the trip to Satan´s greenhouse I´d anticipated. It was sweetly green and honeyed with a touch of hay.

Okay, which Creeds do you like? What do you think of the ones I´ve chosen?

image: Cypress Trees, Vincent Van Gogh, allposters.com

March

My dad’s nickname for me used to be Pud, and my sister’s was Sud (her name is Shirley). I have no idea why, he took that with him to the grave. Our best guess is because it rhymed. Though he also called us Salt and Pepper too, which eventually got shortened to Sp when he wanted us both for something. My brothers had nicknames too — this is the infamous Tom, Dick and Harry — but their nicknames aren’t fit for a family fragrance blog or even a not-so-family blog.

Every time we were getting ready to go out for some frilly social obligation — being farm folks, playing Pitch at the neighbors would suffice — my mom would spritz on some scent or another, as would my sister and me. My dad’s comment, unfailingly, was, “Smells like a French Whorehouse in here!” Then he’d head out to the car or truck and start honking the horn to hurry us up.

When I first heard about the Etat Libre d’Orange line and the names of the scents and descriptions, all I could think of was my dad and his “french whorehouse.” When the perfumes came in yesterday, I quickly opened them, trying the ones I had heard good things about like Jasmin et Cigarette and Putains des Palace and Rien. I’ve found some that I really love in here and some that just baffle me. As my nose meandered from the Divin’Enfant to Bubblegum and Encens to Palace Slut, then I held Secretions Magnifique at an arm’s length and recoiled with the inappropriateness of that.. um, smell, then lit up a jasmine cigarette after on another wrist, followed by the mellow beauty of Rien… I thought… yeah, absolutely, French whorehouse. And I started to laugh as I sniffed the secretions, then covered it up with my sweatshirt because it was too raw, too real, too… it shouldn’t be there, not in the crook of my arm!

Many of these scents are sketches — a quick jot of notes that suggest the thing it is supposed to be or the thing it is supposed to express — some are complete portraits and beautiful, like Vraie Blond and Rien and the Palace Slut.

Now, it’s really late at night, and I’ve been decanting these little things most of the day, and I reek, but I’ve been snickering and guffawing for several hours over these little oddities of smell, and somewhere I can hear my dad chortling too. Pud Etat gets my vote as Most Amusing Line of Perfumes 2007.

And this post makes absolutely no sense, nor did my dad’s comment about whorehouses make sense, and I’m not sure the Pud Etats make sense either. Making sense is highly overrated.

Patty

UPDATE: MONDAY, NOON-ISH: Did everyone notice Patty’s post from Saturday with her MDCI winners and her Etat Libre Sample Special she’s running until tonight? Uh, me neither. I think she’s shy about pimping her decants on the blog … so let me do it for her. Have you been in there? Lock up your Visa, honey. Since the last time I looked (what, last week?) she’s got the Juozas, Shalini, Doblis (!)… anyway, on to the post, but take a peek into her store if you haven’t done so recently, up there in the upper right hand corner of the blog.

If Guerlain Mitsouko is sublimely elegant, and Apres L´Ondee is divinely tender, then L´Heure Bleue is profoundly evocative. Notes (via Osmoz) are: Bergamot, anise, carnation, orange blossoms, rose, tuberose, heliotrope, iris, vanilla, musk.

While L´Heure Bleue shares a number of notes with Apres L´Ondee (including anise, rose, violet, and iris), the driving force behind L’Heure Bleue is the cherry-almond smell of heliotrope. I’ve noticed how little love and/or attention L’Heure Bleue gets relative to Apres or Mitsouko (hence this post). I’m also surprised by the number of people who appreciate Apres and can´t stand LHB, and I´m guessing (extrapolating from the reviews on Basenotes and MUA) it´s the heliotrope that does them in. If POTL renders itself as entirely Play-Doh on some people, clearly L´Heure Bleue comes across as a too-sweet, powdery mess on others.

L´Heure Bleue has a rush of bergamot at the opening, and a little anise (prompting the mind´s association with Apres), but from the start it´s a much heavier, sweeter, denser scent than Apres. The rose and tuberose chime in (sweetness and light!) and then cue the violins, here´s the heliotrope and the iris together, and whether you find that spicy, almond-ish smell, swaying back and forth into cherry-vanilla, divine or horrible is impossible to know until you try it.

I´m lucky enough to have a sample (thanks, Co-Skank-mistress!) of the parfum, which, like every Guerlain parfum I´ve tried, takes the idea of the EDP, makes it richer, and smoothes all the edges off. In Guerlain, I don´t always consider that an improvement. L´Heure Bleue parfum does have the advantage of moderating the blast of heliotrope into a tighter fragrance, more concentrated on the other florals (particularly iris), rendering it both smoother and spicier than the EDP. It´s stunning. But it´s also expensive and hard to find (although NYC Bergdorf has it and most of the others in parfum) and, really, the EDP is well worth owning.

L´Heure Bleue translates as “the blue hour,” the time between daylight and darkness that can be transfixingly beautiful, if you put down what you´re doing and go outside to enjoy it. In the long, late summers of my childhood the Blue Hour seemed stolen, being well past our normal bedtime. The ripe smell of sultry Washington evenings, indoors and out, captivated me. I loved chasing the first fireflies in the early dark serenaded by the sound of crickets and the occasional cicada. My mother was an indifferent gardener, but we had several highly fragrant, spicy tea roses that are sadly long gone, and huge beds of nicotiana, pollinated by moths, a scented wonder in the dark. The powerful smell of those flowers at dusk, and the sight of them in the darkness – the blood-red roses blooming black, the nicotiana ghostly white – added to the mystery. Maybe I was just a weirdo, but all of it together in the gathering night, with the sound of bats chasing insects overhead, and the smells, and the changing colors in the deepening darkness, filled me with a pleasure so intense it felt illicit.

During the day I was a bookish, clumsy tagalong in a neighborhood teeming with mostly older kids, all of us shooed outside by our mothers to play. I had a sense of myself as a terrible actor in some play with a complex plot which perpetually escaped me. The Blue Hour was when I began to fit into my own skin, to see and hear things differently, to have an understanding that, out there in the gloaming, something magical was waiting for me. The dark was beautiful, and I felt more beautiful in its presence.

To some people, L´Heure Bleue is a melancholy smell, and I can see it. What is more symbolic than the quiet, inevitable approach of darkness? But to me the smell conjures the vague, sweet promise of mysteries to come.

Blue Hour, Mary Maginnis, 2003, www.antreasiangallery.com

A note on the concentrations, because I can´t stop myself. If you´re sniffing Guerlain for the first time, please, please do not smell the EDTs. With the exception of Jicky, the Guerlain EDTs are such pale, sad, bitter semi-dupes of the stronger concentrations I almost wish they´d do away with them, particularly since the EDPs can be found online relatively easily.

March

Hey, a post on Saturday!!

I forgot to put up the winner of the MDCI samples this week. And I decided to give away three sets of samples. The winners are: Amy K, Fragrant Funster and Nina. Just hit the Contact Us button on the left and send me your address to get your samples!

Etat Libres are at Bendel’s! Call Gerard at 212-247-1100 (main number, ask for him in Perfumes), and he can set you up with any bottles you like. They also have candles, and one of them translates to Boots and Whips, and as Gerard was reading me the descriptions for all three of them, I felt myself breathing hard and a small drop of sweat was running down my bosom…. Lord, it was like a bodice ripper, only more porny! Now, I know some of you have objections to these because of the ludicrous names, but the names just crack me up. In a world full of perfume releases, it is hard to get attention, and these guys certainly picked names that have started buzz, both good and bad. Does that matter? Any buzz is good buzz. Exhibit A is Tom Ford’s Black Orchid. I see people panning it over and over and over, but it is flying off the shelves from just the buzz, and part of the buzz is from the name, which sounds exotic and rich and a little, well, hot!

I’ve got the Etat Libres coming to my little sample/decant store, and I’m offering a limited time special for 1 ml ($27) or 2.5 ml ($55) set of each of the 11 scents at Fragrant Fripperies. It’s only good until Monday at 5 p.m., and I’ll be sending out those sample sets no later than 1/31/07. I’m not going to do too many more announcements on my decant/sample thing here just because I like to keep them separated, so if you want to know about special deals, just sign up for my newsletter (a link is on the Fragrant Fripperies site).

Patty

Nose scoop on the new Chanel Exclusifs — Some of you laugh at my “I know a guy” things, but… I know a guy (girl) who has tried the new Chanel Exlusifs, and her favorites were the Eau de Cologne at first, but she said the No. 18 and Coromandel, which she wasn’t sure she would like at first, had a drydown that kept her nose glued to the Sweet Perfume Spot all night.  18 more days…. 

One of the best things about perfume is that you get to change your mind. The scent you turned your nose up last year may be the one you absolutely cannot live without this week – and those you loved and spritzed with abandon last week can quickly be rejected as no longer worth your time or attention.  Your nose is very fickle.

Now… the only thing I ask is that March please not snigger when I recant — recanting on perfume is sober business, not to be chortled about. When we were at Tak in NY last August, March went on a squeeee about the Divine perfumes, and I sniffed them, curled up my nose and pronounced them horrible — not just one of them, but the whole line.  Recently the lovely Nas at The Perfume Shoppe sent me samples of two of the Divines — the standard issue Divine and Divine L’aime Soeur.  Divine has notes of peach, coriander, gardenia, Indian tuberose, May rose, oak moss, musk, vanilla and spice. These should be notes I love, and upon smelling them again, I do!!!  Why in the world was this perfume so distasteful a few short months ago and is perfect now? This opens with a sparkly fruit note and has a gorgeous floral-spice-musk drydown.

So, puzzled as I was, I went on to the next sample, L’aime Soeur, which I thought was even more horrible than all the others put together.  Notes of jasmine, otto bulgar rose, ylang and ambergris.  What’s not to love here?  There is one note that feels a little sharp on the open, but the sharpness disappears quickly, and this turns into a gorgeous, but still spunky jasmine-rose perfume.

Huh.

Shall we continue?  The largest single sin against perfume I have made was sniffing Jean Desprez’ Bal a Versailles, shrugging my shoulders and pitching the little bottle into my sample basket.  Maybe I just hadn’t explored my inner slut enough then or maybe the parfum is just much better. I recant, regardless, Bal a Versailles is something every woman should have in her wardrobe for when she’s feeling like too much of a mommy, a wife and not enough like Miss Thing on the left. 

So what brings about this change in how I feel about a perfume?  I’ve thought maybe just aging is the culprit, but these are turn-arounds that I’ve made in the last year.   Mostly, I think your nose becomes more, um, tolerant.  You see past that dirty socks and sweaty man note of MKK to the glorious drydown it has.  You overlook some of the more pungent tangy notes to see how beautifully crafted a perfume is, even if it’s not one you will wear much.  One thing I am certain of, I would not have appreciated the gorgeousness that is Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue parfum five years ago or maybe even a year ago.

What perfume have you done the biggest turn-around on?

Update on Caron splits. We are doing a 200 ml Alpona and 100 ml Narcisse Blanc split (Diane is doing the splitting) right now. If anyone is interested, let me know by hitting the Contact Us button over on the left and e-mail me.   We are also going to rerun the Tabac Blond and Poivre splits since they are the most popular ones we have done so far.  If you want in on those, do the same, click on the Contact Us Button on the left and let me know how many mls you want!

Patty