I’m not dead – just off to Maine. Which some of you would say is the same thing … well, I’m back now, anyway. In my haste to pack the Ship of Fools and prepare for a trip during which I wouldn’t be online — including getting all those lovely folks to cover my posting days — I forgot to let more people know about my departure – and my apologies to those of you I worried with my unannounced absence.* We drove, which was less crappy than I’d anticipated with six of us and the dog in the car. I appear to be raising a brood of decent travelers.

The great thing about being in Maine with the things we can’t do (no phone, no internet) is all the things we can do. We stayed in a cabin so close to the water I could hear the waves lapping the shore. We slept with the windows open, under extra-large heavy duty wool blankets. It fogged and rained and sunned and I didn’t care. I built enough fires in our small wood stove that the Big Cheese took to calling me Jack London.

It’s not like I’m some outdoorsy gal. The great thing about not having any pride in that department is, I can ask advice and experiment with impunity and feel no shame. I have that geek curiosity. We were staying at a camp, with a lodge and other outlying cabins, and so I asked folks about the tides, lobster pots, bears, and the amazing, hard-core gardening going on there. How do you eat a lobster? How to cope with the wind and tide in a kayak? What’s the best way to build a fire in a stove (as opposed to a grate in a fireplace)? Can I bank the coals and/or work the draw to a degree that I don’t have to start from scratch twice a day? I had a little ongoing contest with myself to see how little kindling I could use.

I kayaked. A lot. Kayaking is the perfect boating exercise, as far as I’m concerned. Rowboating is a hell of a lot of work, sailboats are tedious with all the prep and rigging and what have you (although I’m happy to sail as long as someone else is doing all the work, and we did sail, it was a magnificent day, and I loved it). But a kayak is a one-person moving meditation. It’s silent. I don’t need, or want, help. I got a two-person boat so I could take the kids out, but I could also go out by myself and haul as hard as I wanted to, out to an island and back. The water’s so cold it’ll kill you eventually, or so I’ve been told, so I never got too far out. We saw harbor seals, and the porpoises came so close to the boat you could hear them blow. The kids just rambled around with their cousins and built fairy houses out of moss and sticks and waded in the cove on low tide. I taught them the fine, lost art of s’mores. I read a lot of books. We saw two black bears and plenty of mosquitos.

This is where I’m supposed to be moving on to sticking in a quickie fragrance review, and I fully intended to do that. Having written the above, though, I’m going to blow it off and address something else. Tasha Tudor died while we were up there, and my sister-in-law and I got into a friendly argument/discussion about Tudor after we read a brief article about her death in the Wall Street Journal somebody’d left on the front hall table. Now, let me emphasize here that neither of us knows anything else about Tudor other than what was in the WSJ (although I’m now going to get a biography), so our disagreement was philosophical rather than fact-based, if you follow me.

Tasha Tudor was born in the early 20^th century (1915?) but loved the 1830s and, as a young adult, went “back to the land” and lived on a farm, eventually in a house her son built by hand; she raised four kids in a New England farmhouse with no electricity or water. She wove her own fabric and dressed, if you have seen photos of her, like a woman from the previous century, which I suppose I must have known on some level but never really thought through – in long dresses and lace caps. She was twice divorced and lived, as far as I know, on the earnings from her considerable output of books and illustrations, which are charming, idealized stories and images of hearth and home. (BTW this is off the top of my head, feel free to correct factual errors.)

Anyhow – Kate was mildly horrified by all of that, as outlined in the WSJ, although she’s as fond of Tudor’s works as I am, which is to say: very fond. She though Tudor must have been nuts, and it bothered her to think about what it was like for Tudor’s children, being raised by a woman who seemed determined to live in the previous century.

And I found myself arguing with her, because I was … well, strangely charmed. There have been times in my life when I thought how appealing something like that might be. Okay, not as hardcore as Tudor (we’re not taking water and electricity off the table) but – I don’t know. To go put on a bonnet and a long skirt and chuck the TV and get the hell out of here.

But what does that mean, exactly? Let’s posit for this discussion that Tudor had enough independent wealth from her books that she could garden and weave and etc., but nobody was going to starve to death in a harsh winter if her cows died or whatever. On some level she had the comfort of choice – she could go buy food and provisions if she needed to. I’m not talking Back To The Land in a life-or-death way.

So, if you could have the fantasy, would you? Would you go move to (pick one) a rural Connecticut farm, or near a deserted beach or island, or a ranch in the scrub in New Mexico, assuming you had enough income that you didn’t have to bust your behind making the thing work for your survival? You could grow some stuff, but you could still drive to Kroger’s? What if you had kids? What about those renegade Mormons in Texas? Separate from issues you may have with some of their religious/lifestyle choices, and I know that’s a huge hump to put aside, is it wrong for their parents to raise them the way they do? No sugar, no TV, praising the Lord and respecting the elders? Living in some ways like it was 100 years ago? What about the Amish? How much of an obligation do parents have to put their kids in the swim of 2008?

I’m not trying to provoke anything here. This just happens to be a topic I spent several hours thinking about, alone, over the course of my vacation. What does it mean to leave? To opt out? To go to the ranch or the convent? Is it play-acting? (Heck, isn’t it all play-acting?) Do you have the right? What about people who don’t have the choice, like your children? On a lighter note, am I the only middle-aged woman who’s looked at re-enactment clothing online and fantasized about buying myself a calico dress and an apron and moving to just outside some little town, just to hear myself think? And would I die of boredom in five months if I did?

Okay, I have a pile of work on my desk (typing this Monday) I haven’t done, and I need to get on it. I won’t be hurt if you punt this post; I’ll see you tomorrow or Thursday for perfume.

*This doesn’t belong in this post, but it’s so long at this point I’m sticking it in anyway. Some of the rest of you probably read the New York Times magazine article a month or two ago about Emily Gould the gawker.com blogger, and how she also had a “private” blog, and how all her general snarkiness and over-sharing the personal details of her life eventually converged into something that blew up in her face. Separate from the specific people and details involved, reading the article got me thinking – hard – about how and what I share on here. Writing helps me think, and I like to write about all sorts of things, and this is my writing outlet for the time being. But I worry sometimes – e.g., what if someone reads my kid-related stuff and uses it as some sort of ammo that I’m an unfit mother? What if I embarrass my kids? I have already been startled a couple of times by the discovery that some of my kids’ friends, and the occasional teacher, and even some adult acquaintances of mine, lurk on the blog. Where do I draw the line? In the end I didn’t have much sympathy for Gould’s predicament, but parts of the article and her thought processes felt uncomfortably familiar. I am still trying to determine – in this brave new world of online information – where the boundaries are, at least for me.

photos: Buckethead and yours truly in the kayak; Diva’s photo of a daisy, and maybe I should get that girl a camera, she’s got an eye; Hecate and our sub-standard poodle, Kai; Tasha Tudor image from WSJ article; how I gained 5lbs. in one week (the lobster rolls and onion rings from the Bagaduce Lunch, which btw just won a James Beard commendation, only they didn’t go to the ceremony because it was their daughter’s high school graduation and who the heck is James Beard, anyway?); Diva takes the tiller on God’s perfect day sail.

I HAD to add this when I got it in my e-mail this morning. 

So… continuing on through my neglected sample drawer of new’ish releases, I reached in for the Odoris - with a sigh.  There are six perfumes for this new (to me/us) line.  Created by the same guy that did the Bois 1920s, which haven’t been a huge favorite for me, my thought:  this will likely be a waste of time, and I better come up with a backup plan for a blog post today.

I sprayed the Iris, with notes Star anise, heliotrope flowers, Madagascar ylang ylang, iris from Florence, oriental amber, bourbon vanilla.  Um,  hello, Fath Iris Gris, have you been reborn?  Well, not exactly, but there is a feel to both that is similar, a sweetness added to the iris that lightens it, exposes it to the sun and makes it sing.  Iris Gris is more effervesent, lighter, transparent, but Odori Iris is just as stunningly beautiful as you irises go.  There’s more oomph in Iris Gris, which is a remarkable feat for a perfume that has been aging for a few decades, but I’m quite smitten with the Odori Iris - it is sunny and bright and a very happy iris, not a brooding rooty iris.  It’s love for me and a must-try for any iris fan.

Well, with that happy start, let’s go right on to Odoro Zafferano with notes of American cedar, Italian saffron, raspberry flowers, wild rose petals, Moroccan jasmine, lily of the valley, oriental amber, rosewood.  This is probably my new favorite saffron scent next to the L’Artisan Saffran Troublant and Laura Tonatto’s Safram. Not quite sure if it’s in first place or second or third, but certainly a very worthy entry.  Softened and mellowed by the floral notes, it’s not just about the saffron, but how it mixes with other notes, giving it the rich texture that only saffron brings.  This is another must-try for saffron fans.

Dare I spread my luck more?  Well, I could, but you’ll have to wait.  I found the other four in the line to be worthy of praise and am wondering why no more has been written about the Odoris?  They are $210 for 100 ml a Luckyscent, and I think First in Fragrance has them as well.  Not a cheap price, but certainly not ridiculous compared to what other import perfumes sell for given the exchange rate. 

I’ll preface today’s post with a thanks to Matt for giving me food for thought on the subject of wearing orientals in summer. Not only do I wholeheartedly agree with him that you should spray on whatever darn pleases you, I’m also a staunch supporter of the idea that oriental, spicy perfumes are made to be worn in summer. Why? Well because they, as we perfumistas fondly like to say, bloom and meld with our skin amplifying nuances and accords that can seldom be experienced in the dreary cold of hateful winter. What’s more, I love summer. I live for summer. Nothing in this world compares to the feeling of being hypnotized by the breath of hot desert air that muddles your senses and benumbs your limbs; of walking barefoot on the scorching beach sand; of having an unexpected, mischievous gust of wind tickle you undershirt and dry your sweaty brow as you lie in the cool of a linden bower; of your sun-taut skin sizzling when you splash into the sea…

So, in the spirit of Matt’s post, I spritzed Fumerie Turque on before going to work and waited for it to weave its magic. Sure enough, the winter-specific punch of tobacco ash burnt off in a matter of seconds leaving behind a breathing layer of spicy leather dipped into honeyed rum. Not for a minute did it feel heavy or overbearing, not even during my bus ride. In fact, it was perfect. L’Air du Desert Marocain, one of my desert island perfumes, is another favorite that will not reveal all of its secrets unless you let it blend with your skin at an egg-boiling temperature.

But then, there are sweltering days when the air is so humid your clothes will cling relentlessly to your body and the sweat will drip from your every pore. On such a day I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an oriental. Let me put it this way: I’d rather have my nipples pierced and my nether bits dry-shaved by a drunken, freshly jilted cosmetician than brave say, Chergui. I rather choose to battle the icky heat with greens and aromatics. A summer staple in my collection is Emporio Armani White, a widely underappreciated gem. White’s opening is a burst of juicy citrus and rosemary and is the equivalent of a refreshing herb-spiked lemonade, if such a thing exists. Cardamom and thyme appear in short order, the whole soon being overlaid by soft, white skin musks. White is a simple scent, really, but it’s the only one I’ve repurchased in the 100ml bottle and that says a lot, no? Reading comments on Basenotes, you’ll find however that many have longevity issues with this scent. Thankfully, I don’t have this problem as 3-4 spritzes last forever on me. A word of warning, though: if you’re a fan of White’s top notes, be sure to reapply it from time to time rather than overapply – instead of creamy musks, you could end up smelling like hairspray. Another green aromatic that appeals to me this time of the year is Calvin Klein’s Truth for men. I’m not much of a fan of the line, but this one seems to be the odd one out. Lovers of the scent of freshly cut grass, take note – the first few minutes of Truth will make you feel as if you were rolling in dewy grass, preferably with your loved one (sadly, my girlfriend hates the smell). Truth then gathers warmth from basil and cardamom and ends on a note of dry cedar, all the while keeping its natural vibe. An even better experience than Truth is its feminine version. I hear that the Lush flanker is more wonderful still. Do comment if you’ve tried both!

If aromatic citrus isn’t exactly your thing and you prefer your summer scent to leave a trail of transparent elegance, Eau de Cartier should work like a charm. It is easily my favorite ‘natural’ of the bunch. Eau de Cartier feels like… a spring shower on your skin, a smile, a crystalline marriage of violets, greens and lavender. I am surprised by how little it moved me the first time. Yes, it can be a ghost of a scent, but if you’re patient enough, at the right time and the right place the ghost will cast its shadow, and if you’re quick enough, you’ll step on that shadow, just like I did.

Sometimes though not even these will do. The title of yesterday’s post, August(e) in June, is so true of the kind of weather we’re having this week. Only, we’re talking humid August, and the one that comes as an assault on your senses after a long spell of shy spring weather. You can well imagine how I felt the other day after a lengthy mid-afternoon tutoring of a group of listless two in a non-AC room, not to mention the toing-and-froing in buses from hell. All I could manage when I got home was a quick shower (didn’t help much, btw) after which I crashed on the bed, nekkid and still comatose, my head pounding. And then it hit me – what little I had left of my sample of Guerlain Vetiver I dumped all over. Ahhhh! Instant Cooling. Dee-vine. Should Be Prescribed As Medicine. Lying there in the dark with a moronic grin, I remembered reading on one of the blogs about someone who keeps their bottle of Vetiver in the fridge. Isn’t that cool or what? I’m going to do the same as soon as my bottle arrives, hee.

So I got samples of the new Augustes that Luckyscent is carrying, and of course just set them to one side because they are $245 for 40 ml, but they have really super-cute bottles according to the pictures.  But in the spirit of not overlooking anything that is really spendy, let’s take a look at the Augustes.

Esprit de Chine has notes of Ambrette, Orange blossom, Lilac, Carnation, Muguet, White Musk, Tree Moss absolute, Sandalwood.  The open is a little bitterish, but not in a bad way, just slightly sharped.  The floral notes immediately soften that sharpness, adding a lovely floral quality, lots of interest from the distinctively greenish muguet and still slightly sharp ambrette.  It’s underpinned very nicely with the base notes, the musk the most prominent, but not overpowering the florals.  This scent is really lovely. It has a beautifully rounded feel to it that makes it grown-up without being “old Ladyish.”  I would happily wear this.

Esprit de Cuir has notes Citron, Geranium, Galbanium, Jasmin, Clove, Birch, Opoponax, Tonka Bean absolute, Oak Moss absolute.  Okay, it has a slightly citrus open that lasts for… a second, and then it goes right into full-on leather.  Rich, earthy leather.  You leather freaks should love this.  I like leather, but it’s not something I find myself wearing all the time.  This is elegant without being too refined.  Earthy without being too raw.  An interesting take on leather.

Esprit de Chypre has notes of Bergamot, Ylang, Citron, Patchouly, Nutmeg, Vetyver, Oak Moss absolute, Heliotrope, Cistaceae absolute (rock rose).   Very mossy open in a great way.  Just a hint of citrus.  The nutmeg lends a nice spicy touch to the florals.  I don’t smell the leather in any overpowering way, it’s very understated. Okay, this is probably my favorite of the three. It’s got a beautiful  symmetry to it that you could wear for every day or for a really special evening.

 Are any of them worth $245 for 40 ml?  It says it is extrait de parfum, which leads me to believe it’s a decent strength, and it seems to have good lasting power. If it is extrait, $245 for more than an ounce of extrait is just not a bad price at all.  I’d be in to buy the Chypre for sure at that price. I think all three are interesting, and I’m surprised there hasn’t been more.

Thanks for all the votes in the Top 25.  We need more guys voting for the Men’s Top 25!  You can vote by posting to comments at this post or e-mailing me at p geissler at gmail dot com.

Winner of the China Rain sample is Lora!  Just hit the Contact Us button over on the left and send me your mailing address, and I’ll ship you off your sample!

I originally wrote this a few months ago, and want to share it with all of you now, given my newfound love for the department store gem, Estee Lauder Sensuous.

As we are now in the midst of a recession here in the United States (don’t kid yourselves folks, it’s not coming, it has arrived like a biblical plague), I’ve been on something of a mission trying to find beauty in the many department store fragrances I’ve ignored over the years. Yes, I am a “niche snob”, mostly wearing scents available exclusively online, or in places that would require a very expensive plane ticket in order for me to buy them in person. Despite my admission of snobbery, I do tend to, on occasion, troll the shopping malls looking for something inspirational. Sadly, the malls in my area are now filled with empty walled-off spaces and there are no exciting “Coming soon…” signs to indicate that there will again be life in these barren retail shells. That they are simply gone is indicative of the hard economic times that have now befallen those of us in the dwindling American middle class.

Hard times have suddenly and severely curtailed my niche perfume habit to the point that I’ve been looking for a fix at the department store level.  I’ve been “slumming”.  Sure my current collection could keep me wonderfully and excessively fragrant for the rest of my life, but as a perfume lover, there is never enough. I am always on the trail of something new and exciting, but I’m beginning to realize that my avoidance of what’s out there in the fragrance Zeitgeist has been for good reason.

There are two things contributing to my malaise: Firstly, a good many of the department store fragrances I’ve smelled recently have two things in common: fruit and flowers. Secondly, I read Chandler Burr’s latest book, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York. Admittedly, the book was more of an olfactory wake-up call than the actual concoctions I was sniffing. Who among us can claim insider status in the world of commercial fragrances the way Chandler Burr can? I may not be a New York Times book critic, but I say with heartfelt honesty that reading this book has completely changed my perspective on fragrance; especially the mass-marketed scents for sale in department stores. I’m not saying there aren’t any appealing options, but more often than not, there is safety rather than edginess; fresh, clean and friendly as opposed to lewd, nasty and interesting.

Of course, not everyone wants to smell like jasmine left to macerate in an ashtray (Etat Libre d’Orange’s Jasmin et Cigarette), but on the flipside, if my only choices were Ralph and Tommy Girl, I’d blow my brains out. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the art of fragrance – I do now, thanks to Chandler Burr. Generic department store fruity-florals are, after all, the creations of artists: Perfumers. But, when it comes to scents created to appeal to the masses, these artists are not invoking their own creative instincts; they are given an olfactory road map laid out for them by a bunch of marketing execs in monkey suits sitting in a boardroom. I have this vision of Donald Trump sitting, “Apprentice-style”, at the head of a table the size of a hockey rink with Jean Claude Ellena, Dominique Ropion, Olivia Giacobetti and Michel Roudnitska, giving each one of them grief for screwing up the task assigned to them. I can literally hear it: “Jean Claude, your version stinks! YOU’RE FIRED!”

I have great admiration for these artists and their willingness to comply with the marketing wishes of the monkey-suited set. They are paid handsomely for their time and trouble, so why not? But, there’s got to be some degree of frustration at having their creativity stifled in the name of capitalism. Long before I knew who Chandler Burr was, some of my favorite niche fragrances were those created by the perfumers I mentioned: Parfums DelRae’s Bois de Paradis by Michel Roudnitska is a scent I adore, along with Bvlgari Eau Parfumee au The Vert by Monsieur Ellena, Idole de Lubin by Olivia Giacobetti, and Frederic Malle’s flat-out amazing Carnal Flower, courtesy of Dominique Ropion. Of these, only Bvlgari’s green tea scent is now considered mainstream. When it was introduced in 1992, it was something new and different. The others wouldn’t be able to command even an inch of a square foot of retail space in the fragrance department of any American mall-anchoring department store. It is partially for this reason that I love them so much. When I put them on, the likelihood of running into someone else wearing the same scent as me is pretty slim; except maybe if I’m spending a fair bit of time browsing at Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman or perusing the offerings at Henri Bendel. But, given my present financial state: penny-pinching and prowling Macy’s, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom, I am more likely to be assaulted by Angel or whatever the fruity-floral celebu-scent du jour might be.

It would be unfair of me to conclude this essay without revealing some mainstream perfumes that don’t make me want to blow my brains out. They would be: Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely and Covet, Givenchy’s Organza Indecence (a bit hard to find these days, but not impossible), L de Lolita Lempicka, Donna Karan’s Cashmere Mist, and her very first scent, Donna Karan New York, Burberry Brit, Kenzo Amour, and my most recent discovery, Max Mara Le Parfum. This is just a partial list.

In happy times, as well as not so happy times, I can manage to find scents that will lift my spirits, regardless of their cost and availability. It all depends on how motivated I am to look for them. There are gems hidden everywhere, even in department stores.      

Now for something completely different.

MUA used to do a Top 25 scents list every year, and one hasn’t been done in over a year, and it doesn’t look ike anyone is going to do one…. so!

Let’s do it!  Pick your top 25 Women’s and/or Men’s Scents (We’ll have them separate, but there will be several unisex that could go on either list). If you can’t come up with 25, send in the number you want less than that.  Either post them in comments or e-mail them to me at pgeissler at gmail dot com (inserting the correct periods and @ signs).  We’ll open up the voting for 30 days, until the end of July.  Once we get to the end of July, I’ll compile all the votes and publish your top 25 for Men and your top 25 for Women.  They don’t need to be new, they can be old, vintage, don’t care.

I’ll have them all tabulated by August 15, so look for the list then. As an incentive, there will be a prize or maybe more if I can round up more prizes.  I’ll draw one entry for men’s and one for women’s, and the winner will get all the samples in their respective top 25 list. So the women’s winner will get the Top 25 for Women samples.  Any questions?  Yes, they must be currently made fragrances, no discontinued (that leaves out Chaos, etc.)  Feel free to vote in both men’s and women’s polls, regardless of gender, but do note which poll you want to enter your list for, men’s or women’s.

Vote in comments or at p geissler at gmail dot com.  My top 25?  Hmmmmm….. in no particular order:

1. Guerlain Apres L’ondee
2. Guerlain Mitsouko
3. Guerlain SpiriteuseDouble Vanille
4. Guerlain Bois d’Armenie
5. Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan
6. MDCI FK2 (the rose one)
7. CdG Zagorsk
8. Le Labo Vanille 44
9. Le Labo Patchouli
10. Serge Lutens ISM
11. Serge Lutens Encens et Lavande
12. Gucci EDP (brown bottle)
13. Bvlgari Black
14. Hermes Parfum des Merveilles
15. Caron Tabac Blond
16. Caron N’Aimez Que Moi
17. Caron Parfum Sacre
18. Shalini
19. Estee Lauder Cinnabar parfum
20. Frederic Malle En Passant
21. L’Artisan Dzing
22. Lostmarc’h Lann-Ael (guilty cereal pleasure)
23. Ormonde Jayne Woman
24. SIP Lady Day
25. NOOOOOOO!!!!  I have at least five more to put in here!  TBD

Summer’s here, my friends, and as much as I love the beach and cut-off shorts and flip-flops and fun in the sun, there’s a whole heap that I ain’t so crazy about. Humidity. Here in North Carolina, it’s thick and it’s bad and it’s no friend to me and my scents. Chances are, in addition to working hard to please the tourists who provide my paycheck, I’m going to be sweating. Not glistening, mind you, but sweating, and that means, unless I’m wearing an absolute powerhouse with the staying power of family visitors at Christmas, by late morning, anything I spritzed before leaving the house will be gone and all my efforts to smell intriguing or interesting or exotic or whatever mood I was aiming for will have been in vain. Add to this the fact that what are usually considered appropriate summer scents are generally the ones I find least interesting of all. I don’t really like to do clean, fresh, or citrusy; eau de colognes are just wasted on me. These fragrances will last all of an hour, maybe, and I’ll be stuck smelling like everyone else around me. I like heavy. I like intense. I like loud. Last week, temps here were pushing 100 degrees and I found myself craving leather scents all week long. Go figure. Needless to say, I’m already ready for fall.

But we soldier on, doing whatever it takes to survive, finding comfort in those scents that can go the long haul and take us where we need to be. There’s a handful that I’ve found in heavy rotation lately, some that might not always be a good judgment call on my part, some that have may have abandoned me come quittin’ time, but all somehow getting me through the fire.

I don’t know why I ordered it blind, other than the fact that it was on sale and only a 30 ml bottle, but Parfums de Nicolai’s Eau d’Ete ended up arriving on my doorstep just in time for summer. Lord knows the name alone sounded like something I would hate, but I think I just threw it in my basket in an attempt to have something in my wardrobe seasonally appropriate. Turns out, I kinda love it. No, it doesn’t last all day, but will anything with eau fraiche written on the bottle? Yes, it’s got the blast of citrus to be expected, lemon, lime, grapefruit, pretty much everything except Sprite and, yes, I guess it is fresh and that’s not such a bad thing after all. But underneath it all, there’s something just a little bit skanky that holds my interest and keeps me coming back for more. As the citrus burns off, there’s jasmine bringing in the funk and just enough musk to take it on home. Clean and fresh just like a summer day should be, but enough extra there to remind you how much fun summers nights can be, too.

My go-to beach scent has become Estee Lauder’s Azuree and if anyone understands the necessity of a fragrance to wear to the beach, I’m sure it’s you, dear readers. It smells like lounging by the pool in the Poconos in the 1960s, drinking sloe gin fizzes and smoking cigarettes, playing canasta with old ladies. And I mean that in a good way. It was love at first sniff. Every sunny Sunday finds me unfolding my beach chair, grabbing a book, and reeking of Azuree. The citrus business covers the obligatory summer stuff and all that glorious leather satisfies the jones I’ve had for that as of late. Nothing beats getting a whiff of it when I’m putting on my shirt and loading up my truck after a lazy, leisurely day at the ocean and just so you know, it layers quite nicely with sunscreen.

Off topic somewhat, but related to beach reads, I’ve hit some good stuff lately. I usually have a theme for my summer reading, be it Jane Austen or true crime or Patricia Highsmith, as the last few summers have run. This year I decided to lighten things up a bit and I’ve gone for humor. Chelsea Handler has become my new celebrity obsession and her books are funny as hell. My Horizontal Life details her history of one night stands and Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea? continues with all the absurd details of a sharp, shrewd comic with a very crazy life. To make the summer even sweeter, David Sedaris has a new book out, When You Are Engulfed in Flames and, as is usual with his stuff, I find myself laughing out loud with strangers looking around to see who the crazy man cackling is. I love it. Anybody know of anything else good for a laugh?

So I latch on to whatever I can to survive the sticky chaos of this season. I try to think it through and make smart choices, but sometimes I just gotta do what I love. So if you’re walking along the coast one day and you find yourself thinking, “My God, someone reeks.” Just know that it’s Matt and he’s been in the Muscs Kublai Khan or the Kouros or the Eau d’Hermes, remembering just how impatient and impractical he can be. And pray for fall to hurry and arrive.

By Nava

If there was ever any doubt as to whether the behemoth cosmetics and fragrance companies are paying attention to what’s going on in the world of niche fragrances, Estée Lauder’s latest offering, Sensuous, is absolute proof. They have succeeded in bringing a woody feminine scent to the department store masses.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a bunch of niche scents that I love, that are reminiscent of Sensuous. I’ll get to them a little later on. First, I must say that I am not especially adept at comparing a scent to a feeling, or a scenario, the way Luca Turin and Chandler Burr are so spectacularly capable of doing. What I’m aiming for here is to tie this in with my post from last week, bringing my thoughts together with this fragrance and the massive advertising campaign Lauder will most assuredly inundate us with. So far, Sensuous is exclusive to Bloomingdales, and the ads haven’t reached that in-your-face stage yet.

Speaking of the ads, there is a website, www.sensuousis.com, dedicated to the launch of the fragrance. Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from esteelauder.com alerting me that the scent is now available online at their site. Much of what is on the launch site is now on their company website as well. They’ve certainly done their homework vis-a-vis the advertising: there is a Q&A section with Aerin Lauder, as well as short videos of the spokesmodels, Hilary Rhoda, Carolyn Murphy, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Hurley, explaining what “sensuous” means to them. I’m pleased with how this particular bit of the pitch has been constructed; they picked four women to represent different age groups: Rhoda, the twentysomethings, Murphy and Paltrow, the more introspective thirtysomethings, and finally, Hurley as the elder stateswoman in her early forties. Each woman looks absolutely gorgeous in those androgynous white button-down shirts. And, they look womanly – even Rhoda, the youngest, is photographed to portray a maturity that belies her youth. In keeping with their respective age ranges, each woman defines “sensuous” differently as it relates to their particular stage in life. It all sounds very cerebral and intellectual, but I can’t help but be reminded of the scene in the movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House”, when Eric “Otter” Stratton meets up with Dean Wormer’s wife in the supermarket scene where they debate the sensuality of a cucumber. Mrs. Wormer, being older and more experienced, tells Otter, “Vegetables are sensual, people are sensuous.” Later on, we see a drunken Mrs. Wormer show up at the Delta House toga party and have a Mrs. Robinsonesque encounter with Otter. Although, I don’t think Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson would have ever been as sloppy as Mrs.Wormer.

For her part, Aerin Lauder espouses some very heartfelt sounding thoughts about their newest fragrance offering. She feels that “Women can be sensual at any age,” and how “Each of our models represents a different side of sensuality. Hilary conveys youth while Carolyn’s classic look communicates elegance. As an actress, Gwyneth brings an emotional range to sensuality and Elizabeth portrays confidence and wisdom.” I was intrigued by her inspiration for the ad campaign, “A great photo of Lauren Hutton in a white shirt from the 1970s. It was so timeless and beautiful.” What would have reeled me in completely would be the inclusion of Ms. Hutton, who is now in her 60s and still gorgeous. “Confidence and wisdom” and beauty, certainly don’t diminish after 50.

While I am reasonably impressed with the images and inspiration behind the scent, I feel the selling of Sensuous is done with the same banal marketing claptrap as a thousand other department store scent launches: “Estée Lauder Sensuous was created to evoke the warmest, most feminine side of a woman.” “Her softness. Her confidence and grace. Her strength.” And, my favorite: “You are luminous. You are real. You are Sensuous.” The groupings of the notes go to great lengths to make the scent sound unique and unlike anything anyone has ever smelled before: The “Atmospheric Florals – feminine and airy. A veil of petal-soft textures: sheer jasmine, Ghost Lily, lush Magnolia, and an exclusive Ylang Essence.” The “Glowing Amber – rich, glowing amber pulses with a warm, luminous, feminine passion.” The “Mandarin Orange Pulp – a surprising accent of Mandarin Orange Pulp creates a touch of juiciness to tantalize the senses.” The “Black Pepper – captivating traces of Black Pepper add mystery to the delicious woodiness and sensuality.” The “Molten Woods – a rich mysterious core of smooth, fluid woods exudes a sleek, modern sensuality.” The “Addictive Honey – addictive nectar-like honey blended into the body of the fragrance enhances the warmth lingering deep within.” At this point, I’d like to invoke another strong, sensuous cinematic female character: Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy from that classic baseball film, “Bull Durham”, and say in her breathy, Southern-belle voice, “Oh my…”

So what does Sensuous really smell like? Personally, I get none of the “Atmospheric Florals”. On me it is woody and somewhat peppery, which I love, and turns pleasantly sweet as it dries down, leaving me with the lingering honey note, which I find very nice, but not “Addictive”. There is very little amber, and the “Mandarin Orange Pulp” is barely discernable. What truly surprises me is how lightly this scent wears, since if you rely solely on its description, it sounds like one of those really intense woody-amber scents that for me would be akin to wearing a fur coat to the beach. I am a devoutly seasonal scent-wearer; I retire all my heavy incense-y, woody, peppery, spicy scents when the warm weather arrives and never so much as crave them until the first autumnal chill. My initial sniff of Sensuous came courtesy of a scented strip of ribbon given to me by a salesperson in Bloomingdales. It was a warm day and the ribbon was so thoroughly saturated, I thought there was no way I would be caught dead wearing this in the summertime. When I read Robin’s review on Now Smell This, I had to re-evaluate it, and alas, I concur with her completely when she says that Sensuous “[wears] beautifully in the heat,” and is “appealing to both the niche snob perfumista, as well as the general public.” I couldn’t say it any better myself.

Now, back to what Sensuous reminds me of. I got into woodsy, incense-y, spicy, less gourmand niche scents a few years ago. I sampled many of them and came away with a number of favorites: Satellite Padparadscha – when you want something dry, woody and spicy, there’s nothing better than this one. Donna Karan Black Cashmere – this is my “fur coat on the beach” scent which, on a frigidly cold day, could keep you warm even if you were to stand buck naked at a bus stop during a blizzard. Idole de Lubin – sweet, boozy, almost syrupy woods. I think the noses employed by Estée Lauder might have had a snort or two of this one when Sensuous was in its developmental stages. Profumum Olibanum sits at the summit of the niche woods/incense mountain for me: Sandalwood, incense and the merest hint of orange blossom; this scent is perfection. Finally, the grandmamas of the category, Shiseido’s Feminite du Bois and Serge Lutens’ Bois et Fruits. These last two are quite difficult to get one’s hands on (not that that would deter the lovely March), but if you want a scent somewhere along the lines of these niche beauties, you need look no further than the Estee Lauder counter, and will not have to dig deep into your pocketbook (1 oz. sells for US $39.50) for a surprisingly pleasant, eminently wearable fragrance. Sensuous may not be an original by any stretch, at least not to a niche perfumista like me, but I like it. I really, really like it.

Registration Information for the Chicocoascentsation event on Saturday 9/13/08 can be found by clicking on this line!

Nose — only marginally better, but thanks for all the well wishes.  I’m still insane with trying to catch up, and I always feel terrible when I don’t have time to respond to comments, but I know you guys understand.

So with the nose on half speed, you might have to take today’s reviews with a grain of, um, salt?  Well, something like that.  I’ve started uploading photos from our trip to my photoblog (link on the left there).  The biggest problem I had taking pictures in Tuscany was that you would look at that view, put your camera up to your eye, take the picture, look at it and know that you just really hadn’t captured it.  You’d gotten some of it, but essential parts were missing, and the person looking at the picture couldn’t really know what it really, really looked like.  That picture above, I probably have about 50 shots taken over the course of four or five hours and into the night because I wanted to just, you know, “get IT.”  And it wasn’t going to happen.    So I carry around that countryside in my head, along with how the walled City of Siena looked, and that’s where parts of it will always stay.

Nasomatto, with the annoying lack of perfume notes listing, has a new perfume, China Rain.  I’m a huge fan of their Absinth, though I haven’t found any of the others so far compelling enough to add to my personal collection.  China Rain is, um, interesting.  Soft and a little woodsy powdery’ish, but it has an underlying tinny earthy, almost humanish smell, just something that I can’t put my nose quite on - I sorta get it, but then it’s clear that I’m missing something, so I keep sniffing.  I’m going to chalk not having a better feel for what it could be up to my nose not being up to par for now, but I find it weirdly compelling - not really beautiful or classic, just an interesting freak in the vein of freaks I like.  Whether it’s $148 for 30 ml of extrait worth of compelling, I can’t say for anyone but me, but if you’ve liked the line and found it interesting or you like your perfumes to run to the more odd, you probably want to try this one.  With a name like China Rain… it sorta reminds me of some parties I went to in the late ’70s and early ’80s.  You know.

Then my sister left me a little of her Banana Republic Woodrose that her and Samanatha fell in love with.  You know, it’s really just a nice, fun, pretty little perfume.  I like it.  The rose isn’t overly sweet, but it certainly feels very feminine, and the woods side of it isn’t earthy and uber-woodsy, just takes away a little of the sweetness.  If you don’t like rose, this won’t change your mind. I’m assuming it runs in the same ballpark as the rest of their edts, about $30 for 100 ml or so, but it’s a great little soft perfume.

There, you’ve got the high and the low - interesting/expensive and cheap/wearable.  To make up for my lack of commenting yesterday, let’s do a drawing!  This for a sample of the Nasomatto China Rain.  Just comment on the post, and you’ll be entered in the drawing!

Today’s theme is: What I Was Not Expecting.

Some of you must be familiar with the St. John clothing line, of the expensive knit suits and other pricey wear. The Big Cheese’s mother liked St. John, and I wound up with a couple of lovely things. For years the line was modeled in ads by a woman, Kelly Gray, who I’m pretty sure is the daughter of Marie Gray, the woman behind the company. Kelly was not (IMO) model-fabulous looking but in her own slick, tanned, bleach-blond way fit the image – and does any one else remember those fabulously wacky ads? I found one, which I dropped in here to the left. They were always the same: Kelly surrounded by half-naked hot guys in some exotic locale. I never quite got the message (come here, pool boys, and service me?) but they were fun to look at.

Anyway, now they’ve got Angelina Jolie up top there on the job, Kelly presumably having aged out, and – let’s face it – Angie adds something to the line. Angelina Jolie could, of course, make a feed sack look alluring, but I think she’s gorgeous, and the other thing I love about her modeling is – hey – she’s a grown woman. A woman with an impossibly, freakishly gorgeous face and killer bod, but a fully grown woman with hips and lips and boobs and more gravitas in her look than most of the very young girls modeling these days. Maybe having her as their model was an attempt to garner some new, possibly younger interest, although it didn’t seem to me that anything much changed about the clothes themselves. (In addition to the Kelly Gray ad here is a photo of a St John suit and some pictures of Angie, so you all can see what I’m babbling about if you don’t know.)

My St. John blazer looks a lot like my Adolfo knit blazer – reminiscent of Nancy Reagan and lunch at the club, although I like to wear it with jeans. What are you expecting, perfume-wise, from a company with those clothes? I was expecting something vaguely Chanel-ish – something between Cristalle and 22, maybe. Something a little sour and a little sweet and reasonably grown up. Alternately, it might smell even more tightly wound – like 24, Faubourg, or Judith Leiber – fragrances that smell of rich women and which convey, essentially: Talk To The Hand.

Instead, what I got is a sweet confection that smells distinctly (disturbingly?) similar to a hybrid of By Kilian’s marshmallow number and that ridiculous Oscar Fresh Vanilla thing I blogged on not too long ago, only without the fun toasted bits. You could throw a little jasmine in there too. I can’t find any notes at all, but it is I think some sort of idealized white flower. Or breakfast cereal. Cashmere Froot Loops? Dubble Bubble gum and tennis? Diva insists it smells like bubble gum and says she can’t decide if she loves it or hates it, if that helps at all. I don’t know whether this is a reissue of their (discontinued?) gardenia scent I found while looking for notes online; I guess it could be. But it smells more modern – less Liz Taylor, more Liz Tyler. It smells very 2008 in that gourmet marshmallow latte way that I’m thinking is going to smell dated a few years from now.

I’m kind of fascinated by St. John the fragrance. It’s not bad; if I smelled it Sephora, and they had a mini, I might buy it. It’s a mindless, throw-it-on gourmand little thing, decent lasting power, relatively close to the skin. Spray it all over at your peril, but really – on my wrist? Kind of cheerful. But it just seems so … wrong. It doesn’t smell like money. It doesn’t smell sexy, and Angie looks to me like she’s selling both. It doesn’t smell “old lady” but it doesn’t smell particularly young either. Finally, it doesn’t smell finished. If you’re a St. John customer, then by God you want a finished product – probably adorned with some really nice buttons and maybe even some interesting braid, and I don’t mean that in a snotty way. Even their looser clothes feel tailored to me – less flirty than Escada, but very done. Polished. Blown dry, waxed and buffed. This thing feels like the start of an interesting idea, not the stuff you put in a bottle. But what do I know? Maybe it will sell like hotcakes to women who want a piece of the legend but can’t afford the clothes.

Now that we are back in the land of the nonvacationing, it’s… allergy season!  I barely hit the U.S. when my throat got sore, I started coughing and my sinuses went nuts.  Apparently it’s big cottonwood and Ruissian Olive time.  My house is now all closed up, and I’m finally feeling a little relief this evening.

So… I can’t smell, which puts a crimp in my perfume smelling and writing plans.  Instead, let’s talk about my perfume vacation.  I forgot to pack even a squirt of perfume in my bags.  Other than the mandatory stop at Serge and picking up that bottle for March, I didn’t smell one perfume for three weeks.  After living with perfume daily for the last three years, trying on samples like a hen pecks at corn, it was really nice… for about a week, and then I just started feeling naked and like some essential part of me was missing.

It’s disorienting to have something that has become such a quiet expression of your daily emotions not be readily available to you for that long.  So can I live without perfume? Sure, but my world was thinner, paler, with less expression of  who I was surrouding me in a perfumed cloud.  While I’m glad I took that vacation, it’s only because I appreciate now much more what perfume does subtly in terms of my well-being.

First perfume I put on when I got back?  Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan.  Even though I couldn’t even smell it.

Have any of you ever taken a vacation from perfume?  For how long?  Hey, and wish March a Happy Birthday too!

WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT FRAGRANCE ADDICTION AND HARDCORE SCENT ACTION.

(This post is dedicated to Carmencanada, Louise and Patty, my partners in crime! Special thanks to Carmen for putting up with me on this — now you see what Patty has to deal with…)

As some of you have figured out, my Annam post from last week was actually written a couple of months ago. After I finished writing it, all wistful ‘n stuff (I’ll never have a bottle and I’m Okay With That), I was googling for images to put in the post and – lo and behold – came across what looked like a hand holding a bottle of Annam on a baffling website in French. Huh. I stared at it awhile and grabbed the text. Running it through Babelfish got me something like “exchange,” so I emailed Louise and asked her to please take a look at it. Louise confirmed it looked like a swap site, and suggested sensibly enough that I email our mutual friend Carmencanada in Paris to investigate further – like, was this legit?

So I did, and Carmen did, and she reported back that it was indeed a swap site, which you have to register to post on, and she would make some inquiries, including whether the swapper spoke English. I wondered if the person would swap me that Annam for some nice Euros, the simplest solution, as I could Paypal her the money. Carmen followed up and let me know I would have to offer a fragrance up for swap, and she would need to broker the deal as the translator. I offered to buy my end and send it to her, whatever the swapper wanted, was there something from the US that might be hard for the swapper to get otherwise? We kicked some ideas and details (sizes, etc.) back and forth, with Carmen translating. Eventually the swapper decided she wanted YSL Cinema, an easy enough transaction, right?

Except I hit my first bump, which is: I can get YSL Cinema on US eBay (and probably our discounters) for $35.00, but it was going to cost me $110+ on French eBay, thanks to our exchange rate and the French apparently having less of a gray market in things like fragrance. This chafed me. Should I buy a bottle here and ship it? I dug around on the internet some more. Eventually, (and this is insane) I figured out I could buy a bottle significantly cheaper in pounds from a UK discounter who shipped in the EU, so I went ahead and did that instead.

Which brought us to the second half of the problem: neither the swapper nor Carmen wanted to go through the French post office rigmarole to ship to the US. I’m not sure of the specifics, but I guess the French are making the perfume shipping even more onerous than the U.S. How was I going to get the bottle of Annam back here?

At this point, one or two of you readers are thinking: wow, March, you really to get a life. One or two others of you are thinking: so why are you not making arrangements to fly over there and pick it up already, you lazy sow? And bring me back a bell jar while you’re at it! But fortunately at that point my BFF Patty was on her way to France and Italy, and I was sure she wouldn’t mind hooking up with Carmen to get my bottle, right? Right?!?! I mean, it’s not like she’s got anything better to do on her once-in-a-lifetime vacation with her family!!! I’m just adding to the glamour! And Paris is so teeny and easy to get around in!

So, Patty and Carmen agreed they’d connect in Paris. Carmen would meet first with the swapper, a student at the Sorbonne (this assuming my bottle of Cinema showed up at Carmen’s place quickly), make the swap, give the bottle to Patty, and … Patty would send the bottle home with her mom!!! Thanks mom!!! Then all that would be left would be for Patty to get the bottle back from her mom, who lives in another state, and send it to me! Easy peasy!

Okay seriously. We spent how many hours on this? For a bottle of perfume I haven’t seen, and probably won’t see any time soon. I hear “the transaction” went down. As far as I know, the bottle made it home with mom, although if it didn’t, Patty – this would be the perfect hilarious time for you to chime in that someone stole it out of your mom’s luggage! If not … well, it’s not like I don’t have anything else to wear.

Newbies: you laugh. But I’m telling you straight, keep at it and this will be you in the not too distant future. Don’t say you weren’t warned. You’ll be trolling for someone Hungarian to track down a little something you heard was only available in this little kiosk near the central train station in Budapest…

Fellow addicts: I invite you to write your most absurd swap/acquisition rigmaroles in the comments below, as a cautionary tale for our more virginal readers.

This is not a piece about the raging gender debate or a political rant about how pissed-off I am about Hillary Clinton being denied the Democratic presidential nomination. At this particular moment in time, I am interested in Girl v. Woman from a purely fragrant standpoint, and it goes no further than that.

What is it that differentiates a “girlie” or “girlish” smell from a “womanly” smell? And further to that, when is it appropriate to smell like a girl, or to smell like a woman? I’ve read countless entries in the perfume blogosphere and on the message boards about what constitutes “girlie”, “girlish” and “womanly.” I will not even touch the “old lady” moniker since prevailing opinions are that “old lady” is an unflattering description of a scent comprised of face powder, roses and, well, age. I think I have an abundance of life left ahead of me sufficient to tackle that one at a much later date.

Of course, marketing and advertising has much to do with these labels. A woman is expected to adapt to her advancing years by changing her style of clothing, cutting her hair to a certain length, and adjusting her makeup and skincare routines in order to correspond with her age bracket. The same can be said of fragrance, as is illustrated by the print ads we see in all the magazines. It is obvious that scents like Yves Saint Laurent Elle, Miss Dior Cherie and the entire Ralph Lauren “Ralph” line target the late teen/early twenties age range, and more “mature” offerings like Vera Wang’s signature scent, and Estee Lauder’s Beautiful, are marketed to appeal to a woman who has arrived at the “marrying” age. The rest seem to fall into chronological ambiguity, thanks to advances in digital photo-retouching, rendering pitchwomen Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Hurley stunningly ageless. We can certainly smell like them if we choose to, but realistically, the vast majority of us cannot PhotoShop away the marching of time across our faces and bodies.

So, where does that leave me – a woman of 41? I’ve certainly made a few appropriate concessions in the wardrobe, makeup and skincare areas, and consider myself fairly well preserved for my age. I wear sunscreen year-round; utilize a vast array of anti-aging skin care products, and haven’t smoked a cigarette since high school. Right now, I refuse to consider indulging in any cosmetic procedure, be it Botox or collagen, or any of the other poisons some women choose to get injected with in the name of vanity. I am too big of a wimp to even contemplate any future surgical procedures; I have never been under general anesthesia for anything and I hope to keep it that way.

As for the fragrance issue, I prefer not to attach the “girl” or “woman” labels to anything I wear. Yes, I enjoy scents that are considered “girlie” and those that are “womanly”. I base this not on what the blogs or message boards say, but on my own opinions. Some days, I am in the mood for a scent that is fresh and slightly fruity – but not fruity in the syrupy sweet way a lot of the celebrity scents are. I like Marc Jacobs Daisy, even though I am 20 years past the targeted demographic. It gets the job done on a pleasant spring day, and does not offend when the temperature shoots up to sweltering. Plus, the bottle is so darn cute; who can resist those vinyl daisies? Lately, I’ve been drawn to Bond No. 9 Coney Island, maybe because of the graphic of a futuristic Astroland from March’s Dior Addict post from Monday. Although, I don’t remember that area smelling anything like margaritas and clean ocean air. It was always redolent of dead fish, garbage and Nathan’s hot dogs. Fifi Chachnil is another favorite I like to wear on occasion, but please don’t cue up Aretha Franklin on my account. I love the tobacco smokiness combined with rose and a nice bite of citrus in the background. A lot of fragrance aficionados consider Fifi a very womanly scent, but I don’t buy into the categorization. Lostmarc’h Lann-Ael is one that I keep around for those days when smelling like sugary breakfast cereal is what I need to make it through a stressful day. I’ve been getting into more iris-based scents lately, and really dig Guerlain’s Iris Ganache and Prada’s Infusion d’Iris. What categories do these scents fall into? Honestly, I have no clue, nor do I care. I wear them when the mood strikes, rather than when I want to evoke feelings of girlishness or womanliness. For me, it’s the scent, not the label. If we paid more attention to how we feel, instead of letting the marketing powers-that-be pigeonhole us into specific categories, we’d all be much happier.

 Some days, the girl trumps the woman and vice versa. Nothin’ wrong with that!

About the time most of you read this, we’ll be on a plane back for the United States.  Forgive any typos and misspelling because I’m in a hurry to make sure I get this posted!

Where did we leave off?  Oh, yeah, right before we pilgrimmed to Cascia.  St. Rita hums - that’s the best way I can put it - and in all the best ways.

Leaving Cascia, our GPS plotted us a course to Todi.  When it insisited I drive down what looked like stairs in Cascia, I knew we were in trouble. I dutifully followed the directions, bumping down the stairs, and then it gave us a left turn onto an almost single-lane sorta paved road going straight up a mountain, with a sheer drop-off on the right and no guardrail.  Um.. have we ever mentioned my vertigo and fear of heights?  I can deal if there’s a guardrail or if I’m driving on the inside lane, but driving on the road ahead of me had my heart racing and my little fists clutching the steering wheel like it was my grip on sanity. The boys kept offering to have me pull over (where?!?!?!) and they would drive, but I told them I couldn’t sit on the passenger side of a sheer dropoff either.  After about 10 kilometers of that, I finally was  breathing somewhat normally and dealing as best I could.   The mind has a way of starting to block out what is terrifying, which is handy.  This route took us through more windy, obscure mountain passes than I thought existed.  A couple of hours later, it dumped us out on the highway going into Todi.  Simply.not.fun.  But an excellent method to cure me of some of my fear of mountain driving.  By the time we drove into Orvieto to the train, I was passing cars on windy mountain passes.

And here we are in Rome. All my life I had heard of Rome cab drivers, that they are crazy, drive crazy, just close your eyes when you get in a cab.  My suggestion when our train got into Termini was to take the Metro to our hotel, which a metro stop was really close by, we had a map, it would have been perfect.  No, the boys wanted the “convenience” of a cab.  I had major doubts, but…. we hailed a cab.  Any of you ever play the Grand Theft Auto game?  The boys couldn’t figure out on the drive over whether to jump out at a stop light in terror or take notes on his driving technique for GTA4.  I was terrified, so I just blocked it out and didn’t look.  Now, we gave him the address of our hotel, but I guess he decided just taking us to the other side of the Tiber was good enough, and he basically dumped us out there, indicating Viale Vaticano and gesturing up the hill.  Well, hell, I had no idea where we were, and maybe it was around the corner, and then he just threw our bags out and sped off.

Where were we?  We had no idea.  Luckily we had the GPS, which we pulled out, only to find we were still about a kilometer from our hotel, So we walked there, dragging our bags and hot butts behind us.  

St. Peter’s Basilica (again, we don’t have pictures yet, no SD card adapter for this computer) is… hmmm, I don’t have words. It is a place you can see thousands of pictures of and still not get it.  It’s just a place you have to go inside of and see. I could have easily spent a couple of days just in there.  My not-so-little nontourists at least let me spend an hour before they jetted out.  

Wednesday, tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. Sistine Chapel…. meh.  Kidding!!!!!!!  It is truly a work of art on a scale that you just have to see.  Paying for the tour was worth it, just the little asides on how it got done, the politics between artists, but seeing it is something you have to do if you are anywhere near it.   

Follow-up for the afternoon was the Coliseum.  Holy Emperor, McFly, I’m sorta moved that I was standing on some of the same spots that people stood almost 2k years ago.  Rome is full of that, excavations, bits of stone buildings.  Rome itself?  Yikes, it’s a dirty fright of a city, but I get its magic because I want to come back, but only for a day or two at a time.

These places are like Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, if you’ve never seen them, you take the “idea” of them for granted, but once you go in person and see how truly vast or rich or beautiful they are, your perception of those terms are changed forever and some of the significance of your life is both dwarfed and magnified. 

Now it’s a good night’s sleep and home.  How I long for home. My own bed, unlimited coffee in the morning, my dog, my books, my kitchen I never use.  It has been a wonderful adventure and one I would do again.  Taking a trip like this with your grown children is a treat - you learn about each other in ways you would have never done in just daily living.  By the end of three weeks, we are now picking apart how each other eats or clacks a fork on teeth.  It is both frazzling to nerves and endearing.  We’ve learned how to be more patient with each other because the world’s a big place out here and can be lonely and scary unless you have some people to laugh and share it with.

Thanks for sharing this with me.  Ciao until next week!

Every now and again it’s my sacred duty to blog on something that is almost impossible to find – a counterbalance, if you will, to what’s new at Sephora and my posts on Dior Addict. And thus I begin this story at the beginning – when, poking around on Now Smell This several months ago, I ran across Robin’s mention of Tan Giudicelli Annam.

I’d never heard of it. I’d certainly never smelled it. But given her description and the love Robin and I share for those funny, milky comfort scents, I was desperate to try it. I poked around on the internet and did some research. The package design for Annam, a shell-shaped glass bottle etched with symbols in Mandarin, was drawn from Giudicelli’s experiences and memories of his childhood in Southeast Asia. The packaging for Annam won a 2001 FiFi award for Women’s Packaging of the Year. The FiFi awards site lists notes of milk, lily, tuberose, rice, and rare woods.

I trolled eBay for awhile, but it never popped up.

Googling one day, I stumbled across what I think is a French auction site called Delcampe, and there on the site was a mini. The seller spoke little English, and I speak no French, but we worked it out, kind of. I sent her (him?) the money via Paypal, got back a receipt and a note saying it could take months (!) to get here, and shrugged – maybe it was a bad translation? After a few weeks I forgot about it.

Until a small, battered envelope in the mailbox jogged my memory. Inside was a tiny bottle in a slightly battered box. It’s funny what happens when manufacturers translate the larger bottles into miniature sizes. Some of them are charming; some are horrible. In this case, that fabulous Zen-looking thing up there becomes a little white lima bean.

But it hadn’t leaked, and that’s all that matters. I popped it open and threw some on.

It’s lovely. On me it is somewhat reminiscent of the milky-sweet incense drydown of Barbara Bui after the fading of the powdery heliotrope, crossed with 10 Corso Como, or Diptyque Tam Dao, without, of course, being exactly like any of those things. It is sweetest when I first put it on, when the florals are at their strongest (I’d guessed mimosa before I found the notes) and then the milky sweetness melts into the base of soft, velvety sandalwood, which becomes more prominent but never harsh or headache-y. There is a faint spice note like cardamom. It is a very simple smell, but slightly strange – foreign, more precisely. The lasting power is just okay. I’m going to try to layer Barbara Bui with 10 Corso Como, or Tam Dao, or KenzoAmour, or Annayake Tsukimi, and see if I get anything similar.

If I could buy Annam today at Sephora, I would (heck, I’d buy it just for that bottle), and wear it happily. As it is, I am happy to have smelled it and content to let it go once my tiny bottle runs out. Strange as it may sound, I am on some level grateful for the ones that got away. Would I really want that bell jar of Serge Lutens if I could pop over to Macy’s and buy it? I would like to tell you that such superficialities don’t matter, that for me it is solely about what’s inside the bottle. But I would be lying.

What do I want from a perfume? On my skin, on any given day, mostly I want from any given perfume is happiness, some beauty, sillage, and/or some lasting power. But what I want from Perfume the Concept is less simple. Some of the most beautiful things I have witnessed in this life are ephemeral; the sunset fades, the storm front moves on, the ice melts, the lilacs bloom, the leaves fall, my children grow. My daily application of perfume mimics that relationship. If I use up all my little tester of Annam, barring some miracle there isn’t going to be any more. I’m okay with that.

Postscript: stay tuned for Tan Giudicelli Annam, Part Deux – The Odyssey, or In Which I Seem To Find A Bottle While Searching the Internets for the Illustration for This Tear-Jerk Post…

The last few days have seemed like a dream. From the overnight train ride from Nice, France, to Firenze, Italy, to staring out the hotel window on the Tuscan countryside wearing low-hanging clouds like a favorite gray sweater, to spending way too much money on a few bottles of Brunello and a super-tasty Supertuscan in Montalcino, I can’t tell you what has been the best. It’s just all one big blur of BEST.

Night trains – um… well, it was an adventure! When I first looked in and saw the claustrophobic space and bunk beds we’d all be occupying, I about freaked. But once you get settled in your prison bunk for the ride and the train starts moving, rocking you to sleep, I sorta dug it, ya know? Boys loved it, even though we didn’t get great sleep. I’d sleep for a while, and then a stop would wake me up. Then I started thinking we must be going through mountains, and do you suppose there were sheer cliffs… right OUTSIDE MY WINDOW!?!?!?…. yeah, I’m afraid of heights, took me a while to get back to sleep.

Arriving in Firenze was easy, snagged a cab to the airport to grab our rental car, and I girded my loins for Italian drivers, and off we went. Now, can I just say briefly that my opinion has reversed on round-abouts. They really are the way to go, just blowing throw a stopping place instead of stopping would save oodles of liters of gas, and that’s pretty much how I prefer to go through stop signs. Once you get the hang of if, it really doesn’t suck. I only almost killed us once at a yield/pseudo-roundabout. Looked like a roundabout, really wasn’t, more like a slow down, look both ways (which I didn’t), but we survived it.

San Gimignano is packed with tourists through the day or until the rain starts coming down in buckets, which it’s done about every day that we’ve been here, but the nights are truly brilliant– quiet, perfect, all the old Italians sitting in the cave-like thing by the old cistern in the middle of town. This town, with all the old towers and walls is what every Renaissance Fair is aiming for and never gets close to. It sits on the top of a hill, and the view from everywhere, especially our windows, is everything it is supposed to be. Harry said, “Mom, I can die happy now. It’s like someone gave me a postcard of a beautiful place I’ve always wanted to be, and I was able to just step into it and live.” And the smells…. From the cooking to the pungent jasmine growing behind the walls, to just all that lush earth in every direction, everything about Tuscany smells fully alive and present.

I’ve also become an Italian driver… ignoring speed zones (what speed zones?), passing on hills to get around slow-moving tourists. It’s not all that bad. I only passed one super-slow guy, but I became my kids’ hero in that moment, so I am satisfied.

Siena.is.beautiful. I want to stay there forever or at least a week or two. It’s too busy with tourists in the summer, but I want to go back in October or November, when you can wander the brown city surrounded by walls, walk across the slanted, bricked beautiful center of the city, staring up at the striped tower of the Duomo without the other hundreds of tourists hanging around. My sons had a weird reaction to St. Domenic’s, which is where St. Catherine of Siena’s head is and is the basilica built in her honor. They found St. Denis in Amboise (founded by St. Denis, who was martyred by having his head cut off, who picked it up, ,tucked it under his arm, walked up the hill with it and then died, which is where they build the church) to be completely peaceful, and we spent a long time in there, all three of us, just smiling and meandering about, sitting in solitude, with the sound of chanting as accompaniment. They found St. Domenic’s not peaceful in the least. I didn’t either, but I didn’t feel that in a bad way, more like it was full of energy and presence, which is how I expect St. Catherine was. Anyway, they think the head isn’t real, I’m positive it is, and a big friendly fight ensued as we wandered the streets of Siena in pouring rain. It was lovely, and I do mean that, probably one of the memories I’ll most cherish from this trip.

Montalcino is underrated – nobody was there! Now, true that the city is pretty focused on Brunella wines, but, um, they should be. They are extremely tasty, as are those new Supertuscans. We bought ten bottles of one of them because as soon as it hit my mouth, it was like something was doing a twirling tap dance in there. Completely charming.

Now I sit here writing this staring out my window at clouds. The rain has stopped, but all of San G. is covered in clouds.

Tomorrow we are off to Umbria, to go visit Cascia - St. Rita, you know, my very favorite saint besides St. C., is there and is an incorruptible. Yeah, yeah, I know, but when you’re
Catholic, this is just stuff you do and actually enjoy and argue about. After Umbria, it is two days in Rome and then home. Home, yikes, is it time already? Yeah, I think it is.

First off: there was confusion and word incorrectly got out that the Chi-cocoa Scentsation event in September is “by invitation only” and people are asking how you get invited. ANYONE CAN COME to the event. Just please RSVP to chicocoascentsation (at) gmail (dot) com so we can set up for an accurate number of people. We’re charging a fee (I think it’s $20?) which covers the refreshments and doodads for the presentation space for Neil Morris and Liz Zorn to do their thing. If Musette will chime in here with the details, I think the PayPal account is set up.

Okay, having yanked everyone’s chain recently with the Dior Addict post, I felt the irresistible urge to touch the third rail again after reading during my research that a number of people like Addict Eau Fraiche better, consider it a superior fragrance (I know for some of you that’s a pretty low bar) and think that, in the words of one Basenotes reviewer, “Dior Addict Eau Fraiche is the UPGRADE!”

Dior Addict Eau Fraiche – and is it just me, or does the weirdness of that name make anyone else giggle? – was also composed by Theirry Wasser in 2004, two years after the original, with notes of mandarin leaf, vanilla, bergamot, gardenia, Bulgarian rose, tuberose, jasmine, rosewood, and sandalwood. For comparison purposes, the original Addict is a floral oriental with notes including mandarin leaf, silk tree flower; night-blooming cereus, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, bourbon vanilla absolute, Mysore sandalwood and tonka bean.

I love Addict. I took an informal survey among a few male friends (having allowed time for the drydown) and the unanimous vote was: sexy. If there’s anything addictive about Addict, it’s the fact that it lies somewhere between a dozen cupcakes and something more illicit. Diva smelled Addict on me and gave me an extremely rare omigodyousmellsooooogood! She’s hammering me for my little bottle, but I told her I’m not giving it to her until next fall, because it’s definitely not something I want to encounter for the next five months. I know a few of you came out of the woodwork on my Addict post to join me in my one-woman fan club, and the rest of you think it’s dreck.

Anyone reading those notes can spot some overlap between the two, but honestly, scent-wise the relationship is pretty tenuous. Addict Eau Fraiche pretty much misses the entire point of Addict, which is to experience the Poison-ish sensation of drowning in a giant vat of floral-tinged, spicy, vanilla-honey sweetness. In fact, I’m not the first person to note that the original Addict bears more than a passing resemblance to Hypnotic Poison. If Eau Fraiche blows in your ear, then Addict gives you a sloppy, drunken French kiss before staggering down the street and passing out on the hood of a car, hopefully without vomiting on your shoes first.

The top notes of Eau Fraiche are weird – tart and leafy and a little sour, and you can tell right away it’s much, much more civilized than the original. The rose, tuberose and jasmine are sweet but not overbearingly so. I was at the point of dismissing it as not interesting enough to review when I caught a smell reminiscent of tanning oil on salty skin. The sandalwood is more prominent than in the original, giving Eau Fraiche a pleasingly raspy counterbalance to the florals.

Looking for an illustration to accompany this post, I stumbled across this New York Times rendering of “a revived Coney Island” that clarified my attraction to Addict Eau Fraiche. There’s something surreal and exuberant about it — it’s a little Coney Island, but a cleaned-up version, and it doesn’t work my last nerve after three hours with its mania like Gucci Rush does.

I’m impressed by Eau Fraiche. I have no idea what the brief was – I assume it read something like: make us a lot of money. But it manages to be both commercially approachable and interesting. I have a fondness for a kind of subtle scent that conjures up the sense of skin – warm, salty, and subtly sexy. Eau Fraiche peters out a little after three hours, at which point I can reapply and (unlike with many of my other fragrances) not worry overmuch about where I’ll be heading next and whether it will offend anyone. I think you could get away with this in your office. At the same time I enjoy its oblique, playful sensuality. You could do a lot worse, and I wish this were available at Sephora along with (or maybe instead of) Addict’s other flankers. I have never seen it in stores (and I think it’s an LE) but it is found easily enough online.

Coney Island rendering: nytimes.com

PS. Progress in the shoe dept.! In addition to finding a couple pairs of wedges I can fit my orthotics in, I have purchased the following: an open-toed wedge so my tootsies can breathe; a thong sandal (yay!) with an allegedly deep-enough heel cup and high arch (we will see when they get here, aren’t they fab? they come in hot pink croc leather too); and those cute red sporty wedges that go great with the red patent leather purse.

The Trader Joe’s near me has tyke-sized metal grocery carts for toddlers to push, painted in the same signature red as the regular ones. They’re really cute. The last time I was at the store they were down to one cart. According to the manager, parents are stealing them. They leave with their groceries and their kids and chuck the carts into the back of their SUVs. I’m sure if you asked those parents they would tell you they are not stealing. Hey, they bought groceries, didn’t they? They earned those carts! They (and their children) deserve them! Little metal carts for their kids are just another perk, like the free coffee.

The manager says the folks in regional management keep bugging him; this is not a problem they’re having across the country. You wouldn’t expect this in such an affluent area, would you? He’s worried they think he’s selling them on eBay or something. I told him I’d be happy to write a letter attesting to the sense of entitlement, the self-righteous greed of many of the people who live here.

I grew up in D.C., and there are things I love about this area. The museums (free!) are astonishing. Much of the area is beautiful, if you can learn to take the heat in the summer. We have lakes and rivers and miles of trails. But sometimes I want to kill five people a day. Starting with the guy behind me at the bank making impatient noises at the elderly man at the counter who is putting his money away too slowly. Next: the woman who groused at me because I was talking to the clerk while bagging my groceries at TJ’s, thus speeding up the process considerably. (You can bet she doesn’t bag). “Some of us are in a hurry!” she exclaimed to me. I didn’t say anything, I just looked at her. And if I ever look at you that way, you’ll move your toned little te