The Slick and the Damned Real

Perfume Pr0n for a Friday!!!  Just two shelves of my collection.

Here’s two more.  I actually filled them in more after I took the pictures… and there are many, many more shelves and drawers that are fuller.  Obscene and excessive, no?  I agree, but I didn’t have another picture to put up today.

Jalaine perfume oils are one of the great unbought tragedies that ramble around in my head, along with YOSH parfum. I adore almost everything in both lines, but every time I go to hit the Buy button for 7-8 ml of parfum oil for over $100, my normally extravagant shopping mind just arches its back, digs in its heels, peels my finger away from the mouse button and revolts.

One day I was dreaming at the Jalaine site, taking things in and out of my shopping cart — (I know y’all do that too!) — and looking again at their excellent sample deal, which I have ordered before — a half ml sample of all of their nine perfume oils for $18 — it struck me that if I just bought four or five of these, I would be sitting pretty on about 18 mls of perfume oil for $80. Do I have a pang of conscience over that?  Um… yes and no.  Yes because I know this is not what they intended from their sample program and no because I love their perfumes and may eventually buy one or two of the refill bottles for $90 at some point… maybe.

Jalaine has some incredible scents in their line, and even the ones that I’m not that fond of (Vanilla, I’m looking at YOU!), are really well done and compelling to smell.  They all are very linear — what goes on initially is what it will be the next day, maybe a little softer, but when they are this pretty, I don’t really want them developing into something I like not so much.  They do last a lot longer on me than the Yoshes.  Vetiver is earthy, rooty goodness.  This one always gives me the underpinnings of the meth-like addiction I have for Hermessence Vetiver Tonka, but with a slightly lower jones factor.  Amber is rich and resinous, a great pungency that is not too much.  Putting on both of these together is amazing.  Gardenia is is pure, heady gardenia, but without the “ick” factor that usually sets in once Gardenia stays too long at the party.  Citrus Dream is a beautiful citrus scent, but it just doesn’t last long enough for me to give it a good thumbs up, but it is great while it lasts.  Ocean is a very clean, slighly aquatic scent, but I wish they had thrown some salt in there and it was less sweet.  My two favoriters are Green Tea and Silk — these are the two that I keep thinking about buying.  Green Tea is gorgeous and slightly sweet, but it works with the tea, even though I hate sugar in tea, it’s a nasty combination that people should NOT be doing. *looks sternly at tea sugarers*  Silk is the best known in the line, and it is really the best in many respects as far as popular appeal, smooth, a little sweet and pretty gorgeous. I prefer the Green Tea over the Silk, if I had to choose.  The Silk is just a little too sweetish vanilla for me, where the Green Tea is perfection.

Now that we’ve toured a few of the Jalaine oils, let’s head over here my to reality scents.  March turned me into a huge fan of Christopher Brosius, who started Demeter and now owns CB I Hate Perfume.  Some of my favorites I think I love every scent he does, but I very much love his earthy scents, like Black March and To See a Flower (flowers, stems, dirt, just criminal gorgeousness if you are a flower gardener).  When I put on the Winter 1972 scent, My husband sniffed it and proclaimed — snow, mittens, radiators!  It is that, just the snuggliest scent I can think of.   BTW, March, Violet Empire? is just perfection, more leaf than violet, but the violet peeps its shy little head around and smiles from time to time. 

I was pretty bowled over by some of the Demeters as well.  Firefly, which is absolutely the out of doors, after a rain, in the summer… on the farm. It is the smell of my childhood summers spent outdoors, straining to see in the dark during a game of Old Mother Witch What Time is it or Mother May I or or Red Light/Green Light.  Now, I will mention here that Demeter has sent us several of these to try – that’s my disclaimer – and I’m glad they skipped all the syrupy sweet ones or I would have just ignored them, like I do most stuff, but there are too many way too good to ignore, especially in this last batch.  Holy Water, Holy Smoke, Greenhouse.  It completely floors me over when a reality fragrance just nails something spot on, and I know it’s just molecules.  It’s the same feeling I have when I think too deeply about how we can snatch something waving through the air in our ears and figure out they are words.  Reading and Writing make far more sense than hearing.

So two questions today:  What unbought perfume tragedy do you still obsess about? or  What perfume or type of perfume floors you in that way?