It is Hottie Friday, and it’s time to remind everyone that Christian Bale is simply the most gorgeous thing intheworldperiod.

And speaking of obsessions, and because I’m always thinking about you guys, and my obsession is your obsession, plus we can feed the world with this trifling obsession, just head over to Feed Rice, indulge your word knowledge and feed the world some rice. I’ve spent far too much time on there today and need to pass it along because now I feel singularly responsible for starving children when I can’t ferret out the meaning of tussock without heading to dictionary.com which –I would never do because that’s cheating.

Hey, did you know that Basenotes is doing their 8th annual Fragrance Awards? Well, sure, you know that. But did you know that they have a category for Best Fragrance Blog? Now, there are some truly wonderful fragrance blogs out there, but being the shameless, pandering, popinjays we are (thankyou, feedrice, for reminding me of all the best words I forgot I had!), we want to extirpate the competition — well, that’s a little strong, but we’d really like to win this year. So head on over and vote? There’s something in it for you too, a Basenotes drawing for a nice prize from Fragrancenet.com. And if we win…. well, there will be much merry-making, frivolity and sample giving away. So this is our time to importune you to shag your fingers over and vote, vote, vote! And do I need to add that one vote should be for us as Best Perfume Blog? I know, we really are shameless, and I almost feel bad about it, except if we don’t win, March and Lee will weep like puppies kittens baby lambs clubbed baby seals — oops, not pc — newborn owls.

Speaking of gorgeous obsessions, the winners of the Iris Gris and Candide Effluve samples are — Teri and Cathy/bluechile. Just click on the Contact Us button over there to the left, send me your full name and address, and I’ll shoot you off the samples.

As I’m dwelling on my own obsessions, it occurs to me that my trip this weekend could be Exhibit A. So while I head off to an overnight visit to Portland based on this post from Perfume Smellin’ Things, I’m thinking obsession, what obsession? This is an opportunity to smell some things that sound pretty special… snow rose? Come to mama! We’ll have a drawing for a sample of all of the ones that I bring back. If I bring back nothing… well, yeah, right. So just make a comment to get in the drawing!

If you haven’t already, go read that Perfume House article and tell me which two do you think would be your favorites? And what is your latest obsessions, perfume or nonperfume?

P.S. Anyone living IN London and able to run a quick little errand for me, let me know!

Patty

In my fragrance journeys I´ve had a chance to consider and reconsider my relationship with all sorts of individual notes in perfume. My carefully constructed belief system regarding vanilla as a dominant note is: no thanks. Vanilla people are different from you and me (well, me, anyway). Vanilla people swoon over the lower circles of gourmand hell in Sephora, spraying each other with those Maison de la Vanille and/or Lavanila scents and moaning with pleasure. I disapprove. If you´re going to be into fragrance, man up already. Get yourself a decant of some fragrance that, if you spilled it on your floor, you´d have to tear the house down.

My idiotic view of vanilla is triggered by two things:

1) I love desserts. I bake, and there are few dessert recipes that are not improved by some good-quality vanilla. Unless you have a pie-baking granny or aunt Ethel, I bake the best sweet potato pie you will ever taste. But I want to eat my dessert vanilla, not wear it.

2) Most vanilla-driven scents seem not only too sweeeeet but sort of plasticky – it´s one of those notes that can carry a whiff of overheated hair dryer on my skin.

In general, then, if a fragrance has vanilla as part of its title in any language, and/or it´s supposed to be all about the vanilla, I avoid it. Well, except for…

Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille, which was the start of the transformation. Yeah, there´s that V-word in the title, and Guerlain has a lot of vanilla in their scents anyway, often buried under something else (preferably something nasty). I´m a Guerlain lover but I´ve been mad at the house for awhile, none of L’art et la Matiere having done a thing for me until I was seduced by Iris Ganache, and I knew I´d try Double Vanille eventually.

As everyone has already blogged, Spiritueuse Double Vanille is stunning. One of the most frequent comments I read about it goes something like, I don´t really like vanilla, but… which prompts my question: how do you avowed vanilla-lovers feel about this? Is this a vanilla only for vanilla-haters? Spiritueuse is vanilla, benzoin, frankincense, spices, cedar, pink pepper, bergamot, Bulgarian rose and ylang-ylang. The key to its success is its wisp of smoke – like you wore vanilla to the bonfire – and a hit of something boozy, not in a nasty mulled-wine way, more like a seriously spiked whisky eggnog. The result is a very sophisticated, adult vanilla, not remotely foody. It´s heaven. My only complaint is the smokiness fades sooner than I´d like, so I´m doing what a bunch of you are already doing and layering it with CB I Hate Perfume Burning Leaves.

Bois 1920 Sushi Imperiale is another key to my conversion. For reasons I´m still not clear on, the first three or four tries I got a nice vanilla. I kept trying, and eventually I got the delicious spicefest (notes are citrus, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla) that the rest of you are getting. It´s more linear, less expensive-smelling, stronger and more gourmand than the Guerlain, but it´s spicy enough to retain interest and not especially foody. It too layers nicely with Burning Leaves.

Having fallen in love with the vanilla/smoke combo, I rooted around in the sample drawers to see what else I might play with. Unsurprisingly, I don´t own a lot of vanilla scents, even in samples. But I can attest that layering Burning Leaves with Lolita Lempicka L (that´s the immortelle/vanilla one in the little mermaid bottle, not the anise one) is a great combo. I like L a lot, but the immortelle fades away too quickly and then that vanilla base sticks around like a drunk at a party. I can´t keep reapplying because eventually L would kill me. Throwing Burning Leaves on top gives me something interesting to sniff.

I also dug up Indult Tihota, which I think a lot of you vanilla freaks really like. The notes are vanilla and musk, and I know it´s done by Francis Kurkdjian, and the musk helps, but apparently I wouldn´t wear it if you gave it to me, which Patty did months ago for a review, and I haven´t touched it since. It´s a really nicely done, rich vanilla scent that for me undergoes a vast improvement with some smoke on top.

After playing these smoky vanilla games with CB Burning Leaves, I ordered up a Humongous Mini of Demeter Bonfire. Bonfire´s nice – it really suffers only in direct arm-to-arm comparison with CB, so if you want to play the smoky vanilla game, you can buy a ½ oz mini for five bucks (or 1 oz. for $20, am I doing that math right? That seems …. wrong) vs. the CB Burning Leaves for $55 (although I note CB himself also has a 15ml of something called Bonfire absolute for $25, which I really should try….) … um, where was I? Demeter´s Bonfire starts off with a brief, sweet note I don´t like (must be the “maple” part of the maple-leaf bonfire) and its scent is a little more generic – vaguely Liquid Smoke, if you will, whereas Burning Leaves is more complex, with that heartbreaking drydown I´ve blogged on before, a drydown that is just a big ol´ leafpile, one of those signature smells of childhood for those of us lucky enough to have grown up with leaf piles (and I´m ancient enough to be able to remember when you could still burn your leaves.) In conclusion: if you´ve been looking for a way to liven up a vanilla scent and/or make it less sweet, vanilla and smoke is a pretty unbeatable combo.

What didn’t work out: using my vintage Kolnisch Juchten as the smoky part of the scent. I love KJ and its wacky smoked-sausage/leather cologne smell, but layered with vanilla I got a bratwurst and kraut served a la mode with Breyer’s Old Fashioned Vanilla, and please feel free to learn from my mistake and don’t try this.

Two more complex vanillas I tried recently which I really like:

First, Annick Goutal Vanille Exquise, which I am pretty sure is not universally loved, with words like “bitter” and “sour” popping up like mushrooms in negative reviews. Notes are: vanilla, angelica, almond, benzoin, gaiac, and musk. I like Vanille Exquise for two reasons. First, I like the AG line in general, and Vanille Exquise is very Annick – it has that signature aridity and a touch of vermouth-like bitterness. Second, for a vanilla, this is about as non-edible as you can get. Vanille Exquise elevates vanilla to a decorative quasi-floral, its job being to brighten the funky angelica note; the bezoin and gaiac give the fragrance a gloriously smoky, woody facet. If vanilla could be a dry cocktail, this is it.

Another excellent vanilla fragrance that turned up in my weird bottle swap was Lostmarc´h Lann-Ael, and Gail, I totally understand why you kept bringing this magical thing up and finally gave up and sent me some. Holy moley! Notes are cereals, milky notes, apple and vanilla. I admit to the fragrance sin of spending exactly zero time with this line, which is from Brittany, the names allegedly being Breton for various things, but they (sorry again!) strike me as a bit twee. Well, I´m a fool. They can call this fragrance Vanilla Spam and I´d still wear it. It´s not listed in the notes but – alert! alert! – this scent opens with a note that is very immortelle-ish. Not the Log Cabin in Hell immortelle note, mind you, but that intoxicating solar-pollen-pepper-hay-seaside-musk smell that makes me weak at the knees. There are no spice notes listed but I smell some in there; perhaps the “immortelle” is a trick combo of, say, fenugreek and the apple? BTW all you people who read “apple” and think ruh roh – I´m smelling sweet farina, sort of; there´s a spiced vanilla sweetness but no obvious fruit note at all that I can detect. My favorite part of this fragrance is the first 45 minutes with the spiced hot cereals, after which I either reapply to send myself skyward again, or give up and add some smoke. Either way, lovers of cereals, immortelle and/or vanilla might want to give this a sniff.

So, there you have it. While I haven´t exactly come around to the whole vanilla-cupcake fragrance concept, I´ve figured out how to add vanilla to my comfort-scent lineup.

Your turn. Given what I like, are there other nonfoody vanillas I should try? Other than PdN Vanille Tonka, which I would rather stab my hand with a fork than ever smell again? Don´t be shy, I´m not judgmental. Also, are there other related two-note combos I should consider? Vanilla-leather I didn´t really love. Also, how else can I play with the smoke? Smoke and jasmine was okay but not as fabulous as I thought it might be, but then again I like my jasmine in the summer. Have any of you parsed the finer points of the various smoke options CB has? (Demeter´s Holy Smoke is an excellent scent, but it´s more the inside of a stone church with incense). Finally, Elle – if I´ve embraced even this small corner of the world of vanilla, will you ever speak to me again?

burning leaves: intricateart.com

March

Those of you that already decant wildly for your friends or do bottle splits, etc., you get the day off today, or you can just add your own favorite suppliers and tips in the comments.  Robin alredy has a great How to Decant article, and I’ll wind up repeating some of it, but I hope some of it is new and useful.

What you need in general

1. Containers – at least 1 ml size vials and 5 ml size bottles. You can do different sizes, but these are the ones most common for swapping.  If you are doing bottle splits, most splits have at least 10-15 ml minimums, so you would need those size bottles to do splits.
2. If you are a klutz or nervous or both, you’ll want funnels and bulb syringes and a Xanax, though the bulb syringes are of minimal use for most perfumes because they are sprays where you cannot remove the sprayer. Xanax is helpful all the time for most stress life hands you.
3. Electrical tape.
4. Labeler and labels.

The biggest single problem in decanting supplies is that you need to order a good number of bottles/vials at one time or suppliers will kill you on shipping and/or price. So if you’re ordering just a few, be prepared to pay for it. But if you only need a few, paying for a quantity that you can’t use or don’t need is ridiculous.  It’s far cheaper to buy a few if you know you won’t use up a lot of them than to buy cases that you will never use.

Favorite suppliers

• Madinaonline.com for sample vials. You’ll get killed on postage if you only order 100, but if you know you’ll decant enough over the next many years to justify a tray for $80 or so, that’s your best bet.   In defense of the suppliers, shipping glass gets expensive fast. Madina also has good 5 ml glass roll-on bottles as well as splash bottles.  Best Bottles also has great bottles at a good price, and it looks like they’ve now got some 10 ml spray atomizers too.  I’m not crazy fond of those plastic atomizers either, but they can work well enough, just be careful of cloggage and spray some hot water through them if that happens.
• Plastic atomizers, I won’t use them for long-term storage and since I never know what will be long-term, I just don’t use them. If you think you want to keep that scent around for a while, transfer it to glass. If it’s a short little trial thing, plastic is fine.  Accessories for Fragrances has great plastic atomizers, funnels and amazing customer service. 
• Larger spray bottles, 15 ml and 30 ml, you can’t beat Scentworks. 
• Funnels and syringes, again, go back to Accessories for Fragrance, who has all of that sort of thing and has little decant kits, which is a great place to start for supplies for your first decanting experience.

As you start pricing things, you’ll get some idea of how expensive this decanting thing is. Anyone who does/has done a lot of decanting or bottle splits will tell you how labor intensive it is and how much supplies will wind up running you, not to mention overspray loss from a bottle.  So if you are thinking of doing bottle splits, factor in about 5-10 ml or more (some bottle sprayers are horrible for overspray and will have higher loss) per bottle loss of juice. There is nothing worse than doing a bottle split, and you get down to what’s left for you, and you don’t have enough juice to fill your own part of the split.  Factor in potential spillage, all the decanting supplies, shipping, etc.  As Robin said in her post, make sure you know what size the bottle is for sure.  I keep using the same ones over and over because once I’ve measured them, I don’t want to do it again.  For just swapping, this isn’t a big deal, but for bottle splits, it can become a big deal fast.

How to decant

• Labeling.  You want to get a label on the bottle/vial that won’t smudge, should stay on pretty well, and will stand the test of time.  Skimp somewhere else, but if you plan on doing any perfume sharing with friends, love them enough to provide them with a good label. This is Patty Pet Peeve territory, so just ignore the amount of peevish that permeates the post. A lot of people have samples/decants around for years, and there is nothing more frustrating than having a label you can’t read on a sample that you fall in love with. Anything missing a label or that is smudged, I throw away immediately. Who needs that heartbreak?  You can pick up a manual Brother labeler here for less than $30. It may be manual and take some time to make each label, but it is well worth it.  If you plan to be doing a lot of swapping and sharing, invest in one that connects to your computer so you can store labels, one of the desktop models, like this one for under $50.  You can get the label tape there as well, which runs about $10-15 per cartridge, which is far less than the $20 that OfficeMax charges.  The bonus, you’ll be thrilled having a little labeler around to label everything else with. Trust me, your labeler will wind up being one of your favorite ancillary tools that you never knew you needed.  So make the label and put it on the size container you are decanting.
• Filling the bottle.  This is where the nervous get more nervous. I recommend using some other spray bottle of something else you don’t care about to practice here, like water.  Not so many perfume bottles are splash. For those that are, then decanting is easy. Just get your little funnel, if you need it (not me, I go commando), put it on the bottle, hold carefully so it doesn’t tip over, dump in the perfume carefully, put the lid on the bottle/vial, and it’s ready to go. For sprayers, most of them won’t come off, so you have to spray from the perfume bottle into the vial or decant bottle.  For vials, you’ll have more problems with overspray than anything else, and I don’t recommend a funnel here, it will just make a mess.  Feel around on the vial for the open end, line it up with the the hole on the sprayer for the perfume bottle, and gently squeeze in enough perfume to fill it without overfilling, and then snap the cap on it.  As easy as that sounds, snapping that cap in firmly the first few times will give you a heart attack as you’re sure you will crush/snap the vial in two.  Just push, you have to, or it won’t go in.  I’ve snapped on hundreds of thousands of these, and I’ve had maybe five break over the last three years from just putting in the cap. For filling the bottle, this is the point where a funnel can be of some help to catch the overspray. If you don’t buy one, you can use some aluminum foil shaped as a funnel.  Just fill the bottle, then put on the lid/roll-on cap.
• Securing the bottle.  If you are sending several vials at a time, and if one of them happens to be something particularly raunchy, think about putting it in its own teeny zip-lock bag (available at Uline.com).  For decant bottles, make sure to take a bit of electrical tape and wrap it where the bottle cap meets the bottle. This will keep the cap on and prevent almost all of the jiggling that sometimes occurs in transit that can cause bottles to leak.
• Mailing. I use a padded envelope, which works well for sample vials and a few smaller decants. I’ve been using them for years to ship, and have had almost no breakage.

Hope this helps you all, and feel free to chime in with your own tips/tricks/suppliers/horror stories. The winner of the Iris Gris/Candide Effluve drawing will be announced on Friday.

Also, anyone living in Japan or going to Japan, I need you desperately to get something for me.  Drop a comment or click on the Conctact Us over there on the left if you can help me get a perfume only available there.

Patty

A couple of weeks ago I picked eight people as part of my weird bottle swap – my eight unloved bottles went to more deserving homes, and those folks were free to send me, well, whatever they wanted to, and I´d blog on it. (Each box also contained extra samples from my goody bag.) Here´s what I got back thus far. I´ll do another post later with Part II (packages arriving after this post).

I sent Matt a smallish bottle of Estee Lauder Pleasures Delight (he said he´d take whatever bottle nobody else wanted, and that was it.) For the record, it´s a pretty fragrance, it’s just not something I’m going to wear. I got back: an Elvis CD (“Aloha from Hawaii!”), several samples, tea, a yummy-smelling bar of ayurvedic soap, a pack of Post-Its, a postcard, and a fridge magnet with Andy Warhol´s pic that says “I am a deeply superficial person.” I loved the randomness of it — anyone who´ll send me tea and Post-Its is okay in my book. I also love that he gave the Estee to his mom. Regarding the sample he sent me of CB I Hate Perfumes´ new Fire From Heaven, an incense scent I have been anxious to try (notes are frankincense, myrrh, opopanax, cedar, sandalwood, styrax, labdanum) — it starts off medicinal, you get some peat, smoke, woods, and obviously incense. It´s nice – it smells like the base of a great fragrance, but it doesn´t seem …. finished somehow? I’m Christopher Brosius’ number-one fangirl, and I love incense (I’d actually bugged him about doing an incense frag when Patty and I met him in NYC last year), but I feel oddly let down by this thing. If you´d like to read CB´s thoughtful journal entry on what he was after (including his own struggle to come up with a fragrance he considered finished), click here.

I gave Louise a decant off the Floris Malmaison bottle (which got sent elsewhere) since she wanted to try it and it’s a pretty big bottle, along with some other samples, including the SMN Acqua di Cuba, and she gets honey sans manly essence, if you are wondering. I expected a couple samps/decants in return. I got back: a bottle of Montale Jasmin Full (heh heh! a gloriously skanky soliflore, a bottle of which will last me approximately forever) and a bottle of Versace Crystal Noir, both of which she knows I love. And a sample of Guerlain Spiritueuse off her decant. Oh, yeah, and samps of the new Roja Dove scents. I loved all of it, except the nagging guilt involved in publicly mentioning a score on this level, but I´ll make it up to her somehow, I promise. I´m aware there are readers of this blog who undoubtedly view Crystal Noir as beneath them, and, hey – more for me, baby! Now that I have the bottle in my possession, I´m happier than ever with its goofy, giant-sized purply-black plastic gemcap. It precisely and joyously meshes with my perception of Donatella Versace´s concept of classy, if you follow me. I plunked it between two bottles of Serge, and they´re resolutely refusing to acknowledge it.

I gave Sariah the bottle of Diptyque Eau d´Elide, she loves its herbal goodness. I got back: First by Van Cleef and Arpels, housed in a big, gorgeous, gold cocktail-shaker of a bottle that looks sort of like the refillable Guerlain sprays. (And I´m laughing that´s it´s labeled a “purse spray” – you would need a seriously large purse for that thing. How big do they make those Kelly bags?) This floral aldehyde manages to both embrace and transcend its 70s-era provenance (notes are: bergamot, mandarin, blackcurrant, aldehydes, jasmine, rose, ylang, hyacinth, vetiver, vanilla, amber, civet): it is glorious and aloof. Instead of the clean champagne-bubble aldehyde notes of Baghari and Le Labo 44, it´s got a faint smell of cigarettes, which I happen to love in this instance. First smells a little louche to me, like something Jerry Hall might have worn to Studio 54 back in the day. It makes No. 5 smell almost cuddly by comparison. I got a bunch o´ Demeter samps, which are always fun (hey, you´re right – Beetroot is wonderful, a great, earthy scent.) The other bottle was Le Labo Vetiver – an identical bottle of which I gave away recently, and regretted ever since. Le Labo Vetiver is on a short list of fragrances The Big Cheese would prefer I never wear, and so mostly I don´t. Vetiver as a dominant note I don´t care for. Vetiver Tonka, Encre Noir, Sel de Vetiver – no, no, and no. I´m not sure Le Labo even is proper vetiver (Lee says no, it´s incense, and at the end I´m inclined to agree). To me it´s the smell of a tumble in the mud with Mr. Wrong, followed by picking twigs out of your teeth and vows to renounce your evil ways and live a better, cleaner life. I love it. This time I´m keeping it.

I gave Catherine the S-Perfume 100% Love {MORE}. I got back: three beautiful, handmade bound paper journals, along with a note suggesting that I give two of them to my daughters, which … okay, how lovely a gesture is that? I´m really feeling a little overwhelmed by these goody boxes. Now I´m wanting to save them to open individually on crappy days so I can cheer myself up. That idea would work wonderfully if I had any self restraint, which, sadly, I don´t. I also got some great samples (including a set of the Givenchy reissues, whee!), and a sample of Malle Noir Epices, which thrills me because mine just ran out and now I can stave off buying more temporarily. (Notes of orange, rose, geranium, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, pepper, patchouli, cedarwood, sandalwood.) It´s more elegant – like something by Guerlain – than the niche spicefest of, say, the original CdG. Noir Epices is not for the faint of heart (you geranium freaks – that note is huge on me in this thing), and I wouldn´t be throwing it on with abandon, either. It´s an odd combo of spicy and sort of sour. But if you´re a fan of spice notes, this is definitely one worth sampling.

I gave Gail a sample of the Diptyque Elide because she wanted to try it, along with a couple other things I owed her. I was expecting nothing in return. I got, out of the blue, her bottle of the original Donna Karan (that great robo-duck black and gold bottle) along with some most-welcome decants – Sushi, Te Nero, and my new BFF, Lostmarc´h Lann-Ael, which I had not tried and I´m wild for and now working into my separate vanilla post – which I know I keep mentioning and which, like Godot, never quite manages to show up. But it will, soon. I can never decide whether I like that Donna Karan, although I´ve always found it interesting. Spraying it on and writing this, it´s definitely growing on me. Apricot, ylang, apricot, cassia, rose, jasmine, Casablanca lilies (of course! I had no idea), sandalwood, patchouli, amber, suede. The opening I´m learning to understand better, and the suede-like drydown is killah.

I sent Rosarita the Prince Jardinier. Her package back was really touching. I got dressups for Hecate and Buckethead; a giant bag of Amish-made cashew crunch — it´s like peanut brittle, only leagues better– that I have hidden and am refusing to share, on the grounds that nobody here would appreciate it as much as I do; a jar of pear butter; an old-fashioned manual fruit/vegetable chopper with Rosarita´s family recipe for apple crisp, which I will most definitely be making; and a small bag for me with chic scarves (I am particularly fond of the large black-and-white check one) and costume jewelry (I have the flowers pinned to my mohair beret because – yes – I am the sort of person who wears berets without irony) and, most unbelievably, a very thin, beautiful pair of navy kidskin gloves that – you guessed it – fit me like a glove. Another great exchange.

I had absolutely no idea how this was going to go. I mean, I figured if I got rid of my unloved bottles and got back a few samps, it was a win-win situation. As a general comment to all the packages I´ve received, I´m interested in the fact that almost all the samples were things that are very much “me” – whether folks are sending me things they think I´d like, or things I´ve said I liked, really — they did a great job hitting the target. As you can imagine, I am pretty blown away by all the thought and care that went into these packages that came back to me, and the extraordinary generosity behind the fragrance gifts. I´ve been having a tough few weeks, to be honest – the Cheese is on an extended trip – and I´ve got my game face on, but still. I actually cried a little over this stuff and the good feelings that came with it. All of you – thanks.

March

$232 for a 50 ml bottle. No, this is not the same perfume snipe hunt that Lee took you on last week. That price is for one bottle of the By Kilians.  But!  Once you buy a bottle, you can get it refilled for $95, which is a veritable bargain these days.  yes, $200 is the new $100. Before we get started, let’s just make sure we all take a look at Kilian Hennessey. That’s him over there on the left.  Who doesn’t want to buy from that face?  Oh, y’all actually want to know what they smell like?  Oh, piffle.  Fine.  

But first! You do know it’s Black Friday and you all are supposed to be shopping, right?  Yeah, me neither. This is the time when the amateurs are out and I stay home. Everything is over the internet or phone right now.  Buying for Harry was easy, he wanted an electric violin. Yeah, exactly what I said. An electric violin?  Why?  And why not acoustic?  Harry:  Because I always wanted to play violin, but need it plug it in to make it howl, mom.”  Huh.  He was inspired by that group of boys on America’s Next Great Band that plays only strings, The Clark Brothers – fiddles, steel guitar, etc — and they truly make the electric violin howl mournfully.   Alex has not told me what he wants for Christmas. I suspect some combination of money/money. I know I sometimes talk about things Harry does/says more than Alex. Not because Alex is less interesting, but because Harry has become the quirkier of the two. That wasn’t always so. I spent about four years conversing endlessly about Alex during his teenage years. Then he did the strangest thing and has become, well, normal and grown-up.  We still have great conversations, and he’s so bright and interesting, but our conversations can’t be summed up in sound bites for blog posts.  Harry, on the other hand, is at that interesting stage where he’s so random and OCD about whatever thing he loves right now that he is an endless supply of anecdotes.  

Cruel Intentions has notes of (I’m cutting out all the over the top ad copy) Oud, Bergamot, Centifolia Rose, woody heart notes, Papyrus, Vetiver, Guaiacum Wood, Styrax and Castoreum. Created by perfume Sidonie Lancesseur, this is probably my favorite of the six, and I just have a sample, and I fear this one needs to be spritzed. It starts off bright and sunny with the bergamot.  Then the oud peeps out, giving it some depth.  The vetiver grounds it with an earthiness, and the incense and wood notes keep it warm.  Now, it doesn’t exactly live up to its name. I was expecting some cruel bite to it, but perhaps it only had intentions and dropped the cruelty to a teensy love nip because it just couldn’t find it in it to be cruel, but the notes have all the intentions and potentiality to be that.  It’s easily one of or my favorite of the six. 

Speaking of cruelty gone astray, did I tell y’all what Harry did for Halloween?  Oh, of course not, I wasn’t here. Every year, Halloween is a big production at our house — hanging things from the trees, bodies dropping off and heads dripping blood, sliding scary things. I think I’ve told y’all that before.  Mostly it’s done because Harry wants it that way and he does all the work and only requires that I pitch in some money here and there.  He has a $500 fog machine from a couple of Halloweens ago. Yes, I pitched in half, but he paid for the other half. He was the only 15-year-old I knew that had his own high-powered, “can fog the entire block in 30 seconds” fog machine. Anyway, this year he wanted a big production, wanted to scare the little kids so bad they wouldn’t even make it to the first step. Those that braved it would be the cool, fearless kids.

As time got closer to Halloween this year, he just couldn’t do it.  At 17, his empathy factor has kicked in that overrides what he thinks is cruel fun, and he just couldn’t scare the little kids – he said they’re so small and helpless, it just wasn’t right.  So what he did that night was got the fog machine out and had it running at full blast on the front porch, covering the front of our house, lawn, block in fog, and he sat behind it with his guitar and his amp and special effects doodads cranked at full blast and serenaded the trick-or-treaters, the block and all of the neighborhood with some spooky music that he made up, some bluegrass, some blues, some rock, some jazz, for the whole night. They loved it.

Beyond Love was created by perfumer Calice Becker and is all about the tuberose. There’s something else in there, gardenia definitely and orange blossom maybe?  I wax hot and cold on tuberose, loving Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle and Estee Lauder’s Tuberose gardenia and Malle’s Carnal Flower, but hating Fracas (Yeah, I know!).  This one is firmly in the love camp. If you love tuberose, it’s definitely worth sniffing. To me, it’s a little bit of a cross between Shalini and Estee Lauder’s Tuberose scent.  Is it worth $232 for 50 ml to you?  Well, let’s see.

Can we talk about the box for a second?  If you are a box whore at all (and I know who you people are), this is the perfume box to end all perfume boxes.  Done in black lacquer, it has a scrolly design on the sides.  Turn the silver key with a gorgeous black tassle on the end and open it up to black velvet where the perfume lives, breathes and looks stunnin.  If you’re one of those people that don’t care about the boxes and presentation of a perfume, you can probably skip the whole By Kilian line. You may or may not find something in here worth $232 for 50 ml.  If you love boxes, trust me, you will find at least ONE scent of the six that you love enough to buy for that box.  Find it, then beg, plead, stomp your feet until someone who loves you gets you it so you can have this box.  I’m sending the sample set to my sister to pick one so I can buy her a bottle for her birthday.  Because if I don’t, she will sigh and moan and salivate until I give in and give her my box.  Well, that, and because I love her and want her to have the box of her dreams. She’s the worst box whore I know, and this box will provide hours/days/years of orgasmic fondling pleasure. I’m shuddering thinking about what kind of hits we are going to get from that paragrph.  Listen, I’m here to help y’all find your Kilian, if you want, so you can have your own Absolutely Fabulous Kilian Box.  Enabler? Me?  You’ll thank me later.

Where were we?  Oh, yes,  Liaisons Dangereuses has notes of plum, Egyptian Geranium, Cinnamon, Sandalwood and musk notes. Created by Calice Becker, it goes on pretty sweet with the fruity notes, but is warmed with the cinnamon and geranium, the two other notes that are apparent early on, and rose.  Not sure why rose isn’t listed as a note, it’s definitely rose.  While I’m not in deep love with this, it is well made and lovely to wear. It reminds me a little of MDCI Rose de Siwa, the rose one that I love and maybe slightly of Rose d’Ete from Rosine. If you like your roses a little fruity and spicy, this could be the one that gets you into your own Kilian beautiful black lacquered box. 

Love takes its “inspiration” from the Marshmallow, and it was also created by Calice Becker. Notes of Neroli, Sambac Jasmine, Rose, Iris, vanilla and musk.  If you like vanilla and sweeter perfumes, you should find love here.  It starts out with oodles of vanilla.  Not sure if there’s actually a marshmallow note or not, there could be, but I’m getting lots of vanilla, held up and filled out with the floral notes and musk, so it does not stay a flat, linear vanilla scent.  I find this one addictive like that Tihota thing from Indult is addictive. I don’t like vanilla perfumes, so what is wrong with me!?!?!?  This one does not stay as loud as long as Tihota or Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille. So if you like vanilla in limited, more understated doses, this one could definitely work for you. 

Straight to Heaven  was created by Sidonie Lancesseur and has notes of rum, Patchouli, Nutmeg, Cedar and Brazilian Rosewood. Okay, I got nothing here, it’s got a note in there (maybe the rum) that makes me smell pure alcohol, which means that note is killing the others, so I can’t do a proper review at all.  What I do get is patchouli and, well, more patchouli, but Marina gets more booze, so go read her review on this one instead.

Last, but not least is A Taste of Heaven.  Notes of Absinthe, Orange Blossom, lavender, bourbon vanilla, Turkish Rose, Patchouli, Oak Moss, and Amber. Created also by Calice Becker, this one is pretty much working for me on the open, but I’m not sure why. It seems a little foody at first with lavendar roaming around in the composition. Lavender is not one of my favorite notes in a perfume, so making that work is tough for me personally, but it’s not hate, just don’t think it’s love either. If you are fond of lavender, this one may work for you…  it’s interesting in how the notes are combined, and I suspect this is one that depends very much on chemistry. I read Marina’s description of what it did on her skin, and it didn’t devolve that way on me, I’m just not a fan of some of the notes in this one, which keeps it off my fave list, but it stays an interesting contrast between the lavender and the foody aspect, almost gingerbread note, which I probably wouldn’t wear, but have had fun sniffing.

The names? You really have to just skip the names and how they apply to the perfumes on these.  They’re great names, but I don’t think they reflect the juice inside.  So getting past your expectations is the first step to appreciating these fragrances, which are all well made.  Now, are they overpriced?   When you factor in that gorgeous box for the intial bottle, I think no.  I’ve got a beautiful white porcelain box and bottle for some Nuit de Noel that I would have paid twice the price I did to get it. Sometimes the trappings around a perfume are worth it, and when you factor in that presentation, it’s not as bad. When you further factor in that you only have to pay $95 for a 50 ml refill after you buy the first one, the price point actually makes sense for the perfume.  My work is done here.

As a Thanksgiving treat, for those of you that don’t subscribe to the Perfumed Court newsletter, we are doing a Thanksgiving sale of 10% off with code thanks from midnight tonight 11/22/07 through Monday at midnight 11/26/07.

Patty