March threw down the gauntlet the other day in the comments section of her “Blu Mediterraneo” post. Her mention of the “pitiful” L´Artisan Parfumeur selection at the newly opened branch of Bluemercury she visited sparked a bit of Vanilia bashing. I will make it clear right from the start that Vanilia is one of my all-time favorite scents. I could give a toss about what anyone else thinks of this beauty, especially Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. March suggested that maybe I write about some of the scents out there that are beloved by many and reviled by few. And, to stay true to my contrarian mindset, I will also discuss a few that should be getting their fair share of love, but don´t. Of course, these are based on my opinions and not influenced by any fragrance industry payola, or a hunting rifle pointed at my head. Here goes:

Overloved

Chanel No. 5: I´ve made no bones about how much I cannot stand this scent. Regardless of how much it is universally loved, I want it to be universally reviled. It never smelled good on me, or my mom for that matter, nor anyone else I´ve ever encountered who wears it. Yet, women are impelled to wear it because it is deemed a classic; especially when you read things like, “No. 5 is still the world´s most popular scent because, like the Chanel jacket, it radiates sophistication.” Frederic Malle weighs in and says, “It´s soft and warm like an oriental fragrance but has crisp, clean notes, so it´s sexy but not overwhelming” (from the October 2007 issue of Allure). So if a major magazine and a perfumer of stature are telling you this is what you should be wearing, why wouldn´t you? Who doesn´t want to “radiate sophistication” and be “sexy but not overwhelming”? Let me clue you in on something: it smells awful on just about everyone! Never have I encountered a single soul who I could say with complete honesty, smells terrific when they wear No. 5. Instead, it is stale, powdery and completely overwhelming. The fact that anyone can walk around in a cloud of No. 5 without succumbing to an epic migraine or asphyxiation is ponderous. Ponderous, man…

Thierry Mugler Angel: This is another ubiquitous scent that thrills the masses. And I will confess that I became somewhat obsessed with it when it first came out. That I wasn´t banished from my cubicle at work still amazes me. Now, when I smell it on someone, I want to tell them to stay far, far away from me – like three or four States away. Patchouli does funny things on peoples´ skin, including mine. Yes, I did mention that I wore head shop patchouli in my younger days, but this combo of chocolate, patchouli, vanilla, fruit and whatever else is in this noxious scent, now reminds me of a cess pool. How can a scent like Serge´s Borneo 1834, which lists cacao and patchouli in its notes, smell so right and Angel so wrong? Another enduring mystery…

Estée Lauder Pleasures: I have always found this one to be quite inoffensive, but I think it is the generic inoffensiveness of it that annoys me. I know it was groundbreaking at the time of its release because of the pink pepper note, and again, I sheepishly admit that I wore it for a time. What put me off Pleasures was being outed at a rest stop along the New Jersey Turnpike on my way home from a business trip during the summer of 1998. My co-worker and I stopped rather late in the evening for some food and gas, and while our Whoppers and fries were being rung up, the cashier looked at me and enthusiastically asked, “Are you wearing Pleasures?”  My male colleague shot me a strange look, and I responded, “Why yes, yes I am.” The rest of the way home he kept snickering, “Pleasures, huh?” I never wore it again.

Clinique Happy: Ah, the grande dame of fruity florals; the Helen of Troy of the fragrance industry. Actually, I think Trojan horse is more fitting, since who hasn´t been fruity-floral bombed by all the countless imitators? Every time I either smell this or see a bottle of it, the theme from “The Partridge Family” starts up in my head, and I get a visual of the bird wiggling its butt out of the eggshell. And, it is a “happy” scent. I guess the Lauder corporation was never able to license “C´mon get Happy!” as the tag line for their hugely popular fragrance. By the way, what´s the deal with all the flankers? Happy Heart, Happy in Bloom; just how many are there? Has anyone else noticed that they all smell exactly the same? Put me down for a bottle of “Happy to Be Alive” or “I´m Just So Happy to Be Here” if and when they are ever released.

Underappreciated

L´Artisan Parfumeur Vanilia (You knew I´d be leading off with this one): Discovering this scent was a watershed moment in my life. Never before did I want a scent so badly just from a written description of it. That description appeared in the February 1993 issue of Allure, and it read something like, “The vanilla L´Artisan brews is so bewitching…” I don´t recall the rest, but that was enough for me. At the time, I was unemployed and generally uninspired, but Vanilia changed all that. It was unlike anything I´d ever smelled previously, and I fell head-over-heels for it. A new chapter in my life began and with it, my love for all things vanilla. I have never found any other vanilla quite like it; Indult Tihota was a pleasant surprise, but I cannot justify spending $250 for it, and needing a membership card to do so. Vanilia is an abstract vanilla, not like the vanilla extract you use for baking, or the “candyfloss…devoid of chic…reference holiday from propriety and convention…” fragrance Luca Turin claims it to be. It does not conjure up images of bubblegum-pink lipstick, platinum blonde-bleached hair ditziness. It is just the perfect combination of cozy warmth with just the merest hint of sweetness and spice. It is, in my opinion, the ultimate vanilla; and it´s never given me a cavity in 15 years.

People of the Labyrinths A.MAZE: When you think about the great rock n roll bands of the 1970s, and some of their iconic, blockbuster albums, the following analogy is perfect when it comes to this scent: Luctor et Emergo is so beloved by the cultish, niche perfume community that the follow-up scent couldn´t possibly live up to their expectations; just like how the band, Boston, couldn´t top their debut album, or how Meatloaf was never able to surpass the brilliance of “Bat out of Hell”. I´ve read some of the reviews and, most if not all, describe A.MAZE as nice, but a major letdown when compared to Luctor et Emergo. The comparisons to other rose scents were inevitable: You don´t need this one if you have (fill in the blank). Having never been a really big fan of rose or heavy floral scents, I have found a few I like and wear with some regularity. A.MAZE is one of them. Rose combined with spices and woods can be intriguing if done right, and this one, for me, hits the mark. I also think Elton John´s “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” is his best album by far. It was the follow-up to “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”.

Philosophy Amazing Grace: Honestly, I am amazed that I decided to include this on my Underappreciated list. But, after giving it some thought, I decided to because it is probably the easiest fragrance to wear, when you need or want to wear something easy. By that I mean something relatively inoffensive and not likely to cause someone to recoil from you if you happen to find yourself on a sold-out transcontinental flight or a crowded subway train. In addition, if you are one of those individuals who enjoy layering your fragrance, there are countless ancillary products that accompany this scent. You can shampoo your hair with Amazing Grace, scrub, soap and lotion yourself until the cows come home. Even though the Philosophy brand is flogged no end on QVC, and spotlighted in just about every Sephora I´ve been in, it still has not attained the ubiquity of Angel and No. 5.

Fresh Sugar: The Fresh brand was another one of my late 90s obsessions. I fell in love with just about everything they sold, especially this scent. How could I not? It is the most impeccable vanilla based-citrus scent I have ever smelled. When I first smelled it, the first thing I thought of was Duncan Hines Lemon cake mix. And, there is not a flower to be found in the original incarnation of this scent, even though heliotrope and white lily are listed as middle notes. Unfortunately they´ve tinkered with it, creating the requisite stable of flankers: Sugar Blossom, Sugar Lychee and Sugar Lemon. Not even Sugar Lemon comes close to smelling as good as the original. There´s just something so perfect about the balance of tart citrus with the creamy comfort of vanilla and caramel that makes me reach for this over, and over, and over again. I used to be a huge fan of Annick Goutal´s Eau d´Hadrien, but my Sugar addiction has obliterated every trace of Hadrien from my scented memory bank. Sugar is flat out genius.

First, winners of the Serge Noire samples are: Pantera Lilly and momlady. Congrats!! Just click on the contact us on the left and let me know your address to get your sample.

Two new scents out this month, as we start to go full-tilt into the fall release season, are Van Cleef & Arpels Feerie and David Yurman.

Feerie has a bottle just TDF. I mean… look at that. My little sample bottle doesn’t have the cute little fairy on it, darn it, so I’m going to have to get this one. do I care one whit what this smells like before I buy it? No, I do not because I will have that bottle. Notes of violet, red berries, mandarin, rose, jasmine, iris and vetiver. It opens with a candied violet smell, fairly sweet, I suspect amped up by the red berries and mandarin notes. A little too sweet on the open, and I was very much worried that we had another fruity candied violet on our noses. I mean. that bottle!!! I know I don’t care, but I don’t want to buy a dog just for the bottle deep down. After about 15 minutes, the sweet aspect diminished, and the iris and vetiver asserted themselves enough to talk Feerie off the sugar ledge it was on. The rich jasmine meandered through, but it stays very much a violet/iris scent, but a rich, sumptuous one. It’s not powdery on the iris or earthy. Those of you that don’t like your violet or iris sweet at all probably won’t be wearers or buyers of this scent. Since I’m buying it regardless for that darling bottle, it’s good that it fits the kind of violet/iris I do like, because it’s a pretty great violet/iris. Nothing groundbreaking, just a scent that’s easy to wear.

The famous jeweler to the up and coming rich, David Yurman makes his entry into the perfume market with a concotion of mandarin, fresh green petals, cassis, peony, water lily, natural rose otto, patchouli, exotic woods and soft musk. This one couldn’t go on any different from the Feerie. Just the opposite. It’s a big-shoulder-pad floral that shoves its way into the room with sillage floofing about like dust-devils on the Kansas plains in summer. That’s not a bad thing, though, because one thing it is not — shy. It knows what it is- it is a rich, luxury perfume made for those who want to make the statement: I.have.money….lots.and.lots. As Robin notes, it does change remarkably about 30-60 minutes into it, morphing into a still rich, but much more woody, musky perfume, but it keeps a metallic tang on me – the water lily? Chandler Burr is right, they will make a fortune on it. This is what I hoped Donna Karan Gold would be. As long as you let that open settle down before you head to the office and you do a teensy spritz, you can wear this for day and not be banned from the office.

Up next week: My Wii, which should come to live with me hopefully yet this week.

Patty

Friends, I’m a little overdue for reminding everyone of this, but don’t forget — there’s still time to register for the Chicocoa Scentsation! Join us in Chicago on Saturday, September 13 for an incredible, decadent day of fragrance and the Universe´s favorite food: chocolate!

Patty and I will be there sucking down the Caron urns and the bon bons – come play! There will be samples, raffles, treats and a casual cocktail party, featuring two niche perfume lines: Liz Zorn Perfumes and Neil Morris Fragrances.

Liz Zorn will join us at the party for a special presentation, sniffage and raffle. This is a great opportunity to meet Liz and learn more about her incredible lines of fragrances, including some from her new Studio Collection. Neil Morris will be in Paris, attending a show with his NEW EUROPEAN DISTRIBUTOR <applause!!!!> but he is graciously sending along testers of his new Vault Fragrances along with the best-sellers of his regular lines. We´ll also have samples and a raffle gift!And don´t forget the Blind Bottle Swap and the (optional) Sample Swap — a chance to unload your slightly used, mildly unloved bottles for something you might like better! I know who’s donating the Aromatics Elixir, but I ain’t tellin!

A special HUGE THANKS for Musette and Shelley, who have put a ridiculous amount of effort into organizing this puppy.

Questions/registration: chicocoascentsation (at) gmail (dot) com or click on the link in the left-hand column.

* * *

Okay, I’ll ‘fess up — I’ve spent a delightful week mostly at the pool with my kids — DC is so dead this time of year that driving through our leafy ‘burb on the way to the pool, it’s like a scene from one of those movies where they’ve dropped the bomb that eliminates all the people. I like it that way. The soundtrack: cicadas in the background, which (along with crickets at night) is the sound of summer. The scents in heavy rotation on my skin this week: sunscreen, bug spray, and tomato leaves as I battle the dang squirrels for the rights to some of my fancy tomatoes. Anyhoo, at the pool yesterday I was catching up with a friend and ended up telling her about ABE books (abebooks.com) — the ginormous used book website. It’s a consortium of sellers ranging from Joe’s Used Books to (more and more often) the Friends of a particular library system, or a fundraising arm of a school system. I started off on ABE buying hard-to-find books for my dad, who has esoteric tastes and a yen for something he read 25 or 50 years ago. He thinks I am the greatest daughter ever when I hand him some cheap, musty sci-fi paperback from the 50s he wanted to re-read that I paid $5 for on ABE. But it’s not just “old” books — you can get almost any book on there, including bestseller “new” books a couple of months after they’re released. I do most of my book-buying on there at this point – there is almost nothing I search for that doesn’t turn up on the site, and I’ve never been burned. I didn’t know there was anybody left who didn’t know about ABE, but that’s just because I’m so used to using it, I guess. There I was telling my friend, a big reader, about this wonderful resource that she’d never heard of.

So, today, I invite you to list in the comments any website, musician, movie, gadget, or anything else that, if you were king (queen? quing?) you would make sure everybody knew about, just because you think it’s so great. I’ve learned a lot from you all on here (etsy! who knew?! and Anthelios sunscreen! Makeup For Ever face and body liquid makeup, greatest.thing.ever!) All from you commenters. So, share away.

Hey, I FORGOT TO ASK — any of you have any experience with zipping your pillows/mattress into something hypoallergenic? Can you only do that when the mattress/pillow is brand new, to keep the dust/mites OUT, or does it help to do it later, I guess theoretically sealing them in?

March

Hey, It’s almost August, so that means it’s time for two Serge releases.

First up, Serge Noire, which joins the export line, available in Europe now and in the U.S. in late August to September’ish.  Notes listed for it are patchouli, cinnamon, amber and black woods.   The marketing hype goes on and on about the phoenix, grey something, swirling night.  The scent says: “Hey, I’m cinnamon, nice to meet you!”  Well, that’s what it says to you as it slams on the brakes of its black, dusty Porsche right in front of your house.  Because you are then in a swirl of dusty incense and cinnamon is as close as I can get to it in the early stages.  There is a healthy amount of incense that develops early after a pretty slight start and that camphorish smell that’s in Tubereuse Criminelle and Sarrasins that kind of tickles the nose and you can’t decide if you like or no.

Those of you that aren’t fans of the cinnamon aspects in Rousse will likely be a little skeptical in the first 15 minutes of so of this scent, but the cinnamon recedes on me, and has more of the cinnamon bark snap to it than red hots.  This is a hot, dusty, earthy scent.  I’m not sure how else to describe it, but it keeps me sniffing because it just has a lot of facets that go in and out – dust, warmth, cool incense, woods.   I swear, somewhere deep in there is a hint of Borneo… must be the patch.  It’s a beautiful, interesting creation from Lutens and one of the best things he’s done in a good while.

It’s hot red dust swirling through the evening breeze. I don’t know about a Phoenix, but this is a scent I’m happily wearing.  Hey, and you can be too. It’s a new release, it’s Serge, let’s give away a couple of samples. Just put a note in comments if you want in the drawing, and I’ll announce the winners on Thursday!

Patty

Until last week I’d probably spent less time and attention on Acqua di Parma´s Blu Mediterraneo line than on picking the chipped polish off my nails. I tried Fico di Amalfi on my fig jag and found it nice enough, but anything that sounds like “fecal” when you say it isn´t on the top of my list, no matter how dumb my thinking is. Yet there I was recently in our newly opened, kinda mediocre Bluemercury (seriously, do the mediocrity fairies live here in the area? Are they employed by the CIA in Langley? What.is.the.problem.with.our.retail?) because I wanted to re-smell L´Artisan Vanilia based on its review in The Guide. And I am sure that, reading those words, there are a number of you who wish you had a tiny button you could push that would give me a short, sharp electrical shock through my computer keyboard so I´d shut up about The Guide and never mention it again, but honestly I feel like I need to give credit for an inspiration where it´s due.

Anyway, shutting down my usual sidewinding mental amble through the weedy hills of my mind and getting to the point, next to their pitiful L´Artisan collection was the Blu Mediterraneo, which I know some of you think is kind of heinous-looking but to me appears intended to be a spa-brand product extension of the AdP line – clean and calm and simply packaged. Actually, I think the bright colors and blue bottles are cheery. In the teeth of the heat that day (high 90s, matching humidity, air quality index = unhealthy), I couldn´t face the L´Artisan, so I gave this line a go instead.

Fico di Amalfi – bergamot, grapefruit, lemon, orange, tangerine, cedar leaves, jasmine, Rose/pink pepper, fig nectar, cedarwood, fig wood, guaiac wood. A dry, herbal/woody fig, more about the wind through the grove than the fruit, and totally absent that sweet coconut smell you sometimes get with fig sometimes. Although I don´t like it as much as, say, Philosykos, my appreciation for its subtleties has grown the longer I sniff its figgy kin. The woodiness is smokier and more nuanced than I’d given it credit for.

Arancia Di Capri – probably the least interesting to me, although it´s fine. A pleasant citrus (orange, mandarin, lemon, grapefruit) with a hint of petitgrain and a little musk. Worth trying if you like orange blossom-type fragrances.

Mirto Di Panarea – myrtle, bergamot, Calabrian lemon, sweet orange, basil, jasmine, rose, green lilac, sea accord, blackcurrant, lentisc, juniper, cedarwood, amber. The sleeper of the bunch — a lilting, dry cocktail of a summer scent, woody and faintly sweet, like the breeze coming off the sea and across the small sunny Mediterranean garden to reach you. Unisex, tilting interestingly (interesting to me, anyway) in reverse order from the slightly more masculine woodiness of the opening to the softer citrus and florals, still with plenty of woody herbs to ground it. Don’t let that “sea accord” scare you, I don’t get anything that isn’t delightful. It made me smile. I want some more.

Mandorlo Di Sicilia – bergamot, star anise, jasmine, white peach, green almond, coffee, cedarwood, white musk, vanilla. The gourmand of the bunch, obviously, although lighter than you´d think reading that list. This strikes me as a love-it-or-hate-it, depending on your tolerance for its sweetness. It´s supposed to be almond-scented, but instead was weirdly reminiscent of either sassafras or birch beer. It´s fun to try, but I can´t say I´d want to wear it more than once. It dries down into a pretty musky/gourmand floral that my girls quite liked.

Cipresso Di Toscana – grapefruit, petitgrain, clary sage, basil, rosemary, ferns, lily of the valley, jasmine, coriander, cardamom, woods, pine needles, cypress, oakmoss. My other strong favorite of the bunch. A delicious, straightforward masculine herbal/woody scent that manages to avoid cliche and that I´d borrow in a heartbeat. You know what I love about this? It´s the perfect non-romantic gift scent for some nice man in my life (nephew, brother, friend, dad) – something I´d smell very happily that isn´t laden with a weird ad agenda (I’m rich!! sexxxy!), it looks nice but not too nice (no guy-perfume vibe), not too pedestrian either, yet would be fairly easy to replace if he wanted some more. That´s a harder combination than you´d think.

Trying these all together, I found myself charmed — and reminded that when exploring fragrances, sometimes a lot can be learned from sniffing one line together and nothing else. No, none of them is going to win the Comme des Garcons award for perfume innovation (on second thought: that Mandorlo is pretty strange), at worst they’re merely pleasant, and I´d cheerfully wear the fig, myrtle and cypress scents. Their lasting power isn´t anything to write home about, but somehow that seems right. I think each also comes in a body cream and shower gel, with a couple other ancillary products for particular scents, and now I´m thinking a gel would be pretty fabulous. If you´ve fallen into a summer rut and are looking for something to wear in brutal heat that ends up feeling refreshing, but isn’t a straight-up cologne, these are definitely worth a try. Maybe it’s living in such a status-conscious area, but I am appreciative of a line of fragrance that doesn’t immediately conjure any particular marketing message, highbrow, trendy or otherwise (Chanel! David Yurman! Gwen Stefani!) These say: hey — smell nice,simple, relax, enjoy, and they do so beautifully. At $65 for 2 ozs. of sunshine, I can think of worse ways to spend my money.

March