Happy Labor Day, folks.  Hecate and Buckethead turned six this weekend.  I can’t believe it.

We’re out playing today — visiting grandpa to open more presents, then heading to the zoo.  I asked Hecate what she wanted to visit first at the zoo and she said, the pizza!   Love that kid.   They had a very successful first week of kindergarten, and with our recent faux-fall local weather I’ve been cheerfully digging out some of the fall frags.  I guess if I were forced to pick a favorite season, fall would be it, although they are all pretty great.  Fall smells really bring out my perfume love.

That photo is the twins (obviously) for Halloween last fall.  When we’re done with Halloween I chuck the pumpkins into the shrubbery to finish their decomposition.  Early this summer we were amused to discover one of the seeds had sprouted, and we enjoyed watching the pumpkin vine clamber over the bushes and across my suburban lawn.  It yielded one pumpkin somewhat larger than a melon.  Decent-looking thing.  They’re arguing who it belongs to (the raccoons, most likely).  I wonder if it will last until October?  I am looking forward to carving it.

I’m mulling topics for Wednesday’s post.  I’ll see you then.  Patty will be running the ship tomorrow.  Happy September!

Everyone (okay, some of you) is/are heading off for Labor Day. Here’s some random stuff:

1) Diva went fragrance shopping with me last week; I was looking for the new Lolita Lempicka L/Fleur de Corail, but it doesn’t seem to have shown up anywhere. BTW, having retried the Kenzo Peace … I dunno. It just doesn’t make enough of a statement for me to have to have it. And Diva and I then tried the new Gwen Stefani Harajuku Lovers things. They are really, really cute — the fragrance is in the base and the dolls are the cap. The juice? Well … Diva, at age 14, would seem to be in their target demographic, and they failed to arouse much interest. I asked her about a couple of them and she shrugged. One of them, G, smells like coconut, and Baby smells appropriately musky-powdery babyish. The rest of them are sweet and fruity — pomelo! pineapple! pear! — and to be honest, I am not sure I could tell them apart.

2) Out of curiousity I sprayed Narciso Rodriguez EDP on a paper strip and stuck it under Diva’s nose — she amused me by announcing, “It smells just like water.” I wonder if musk anosmia is inherited? I can’t smell it either. But. To put it more precisely — I can smell … something. It’s like I can smell that I am missing something, if that makes any sense at all? I can’t really smell it at all, but I still think I could tell it apart from water (Les Nez’ L’Antimatiere is the same for me.) For those of you with anosmia to particular fragrances, do you have a sense of there being something there beyond your smell range? Or is it a big fat zilch?

3) Last year Diva spilled cooking oil down the front of her light-gray school sweatshirt. I laundered it several times, which didn’t do jack about the stain. It looked like someone had wrung out a burger on the front. This year the sweatshirt’s been handed down to Enigma, who wasn’t that thrilled about the stain. Hey, I’ve got nothing but time, so I turned off Gilmore Girls and put down my box of donuts and googled “remove grease from clothing.” I checked out the advice on various how-to websites. Some of the grease-removal tips seemed nuts, but several people swore by rubbing the stain with liquid Dawn — the dishwashing detergent. Fine, off to the store I went. The worst that would happen was nothing, right? I can always use it to wash the pots and pans.

I rubbed the Dawn into the dinner-plate sized circular stain. While I was doing that I figured, why not smear some on the small brown spot next to the grease stain which looked like chocolate and, given Diva’s proclivities, probably was? I waited ten minutes and threw the thing in the wash with some other clothes and my regular detergent.

It worked! On the grease stain and the chocolate! Now I think I’m going to experiment on various other clothing stains — Hecate is spectacularly hard on clothes. In the meantime, you know how much I love collecting lists like this. Feel free to leave any handy hints in the comments.

Have a great weekend!

Harajuku lovers fragrance images: Sephora.com

Nothing, but nothing is catching my eye enough to write anything more than a sentence or two about it, so it’s time for just a general march of the perfumes:

Profumum Neroli — This is a pretty great Neroli perfume.  Light, effervescent on the open with some interesting long-lasting depth, while not losing that bubbly, beautiful open.  I love it, but what in the world is Profumum doing raising prices to $240 for 100 ml?!?!?  Last time I priced them, they were like 180-190, which was bad enough. This is ridiulcous.

Profumum Dambrosia — weird on the open, really figgy in the drydown, which lasted overnight. I woke up to the smell of figs on my hands, which was lovely.  Again, see complaint about Profumum above

Yvona K. Possessive — biiiiiiiig white floral on the open, but it turns into a really beautiful little soft white floral that’s charming.

Montale Aoud Red Flowers - this is one of my favorites of the Aoud flowers series. There’s a sweetness to it that distracts from the oud bitterness, like a blend between the sweeter Montales and the more bitter ouds.  Was this one renamed something else?  A really annoying Montale habit.

My new favorite incense?  You have to trust me on this because I try them all.   Fred Soll.  He’s got clumps of dried stuff on his incense sticks, all hand made, and it burns beautifully and for about 2-3 hours per stick, it sets of a great cloud of whatever flavor you’re burning.  You can get myrrh, incense, white sage, pinon, cinnamon, nag champa, etc. I came downstairs today after my run, and  it smelled like a wonderful cozy fire had been burning somewhere.  Gorgeous stuff.

Before I forget –August 30 is the cutoff date for registering online for the Chi-Cocoa Scentsation. I think we have 35ish people!!! It’s gonna be fun. I think we’re getting a bunch of swag from the stores, plus our bottle swap, plus the afterparty… I can’t wait to meet some of you.

Also, Vogue in September has an interesting article about having a passion for stinky foods (durian, ripe cheeses, fermented fish), which you might want to check out from the skanky smell perspective, and Denyse has done another great post on stink.

* * *

Today we feature most of the PR blitz for Guerlain’s new LE at Bergdorf, Les Elixirs Charnels. My comments are at the end. Put your seatbelt on, and here we go. It’s LONG. Try to speed-read it without missing the, uh, flavor.

“Which woman are you tonight?

Guerlain has always celebrated femininity in the most audacious ways. Now, with a new collection of three deliciously deviant Eaux de Parfum, the perfumer breaks the rules and fires the imagination once again.

LES ELIXIRS CHARNELS, created by Christine Nagel and Sylvaine Delacourte, evoke the desires of a woman who loves to play with different personalities, the better to surprise and to seduce.

* THE SULTRY ORIENTAL OF A CREATURE OF SIZZLING SENSUALITY. * A MISCHIEVOUS GOURMET FRAGRANCE FOR A CHILDLIKE WOMAN. * THE CAPTIVATING CHYPRE OF THE FEMME FATALE.

“A creature of Sizzlin (sic) Sensuality” - ORIENTAL BRÛLANT

“I just love it. I love it when I become that unpredictable and compelling creature, sure of myself, and sure too that he will instantly satisfy my every whim. No words are needed, one sign says it all. That’s how it begins.

I hold his gaze in mine, stroke his cheek with the back of my hand, then slowly slide it down his neck. He is hypnotized, transfixed. He knows he is in my power, follows meekly wherever I lead. I put my hand to my throat to give him a little of my essence, then I start again. Capturing the ELIXIR CHARNEL, my skin becomes the scented seal of my call to love.

This silent prelude already simmers with a sensuality that is instantly perceptible in my fragrance. An oriental, naturally, vibrant as an embrace. Full and warm, it is irresistibly addictive with vanilla and tonka bean. At the same time, storax imparts an intensely animal quality, creating an aura as seductive as my feline form stretched out on the bed. Throughout the composition, contrasts and surprises fuse voluptuously, while – thanks to a touch of white almond – the Elixir also has the softness of my palm when I decide suddenly to come over all tender with him.

If my fragrance had a colour, it would be the colour of the blood that rushes to your cheeks and throbs in your temples. A deep, dark red, the symbol of an intense desire and a passion of which you can never have enough.

“A Femme Fatale” - CHYPRE FATAL

He has been watching me sleep for a long time. I can sense it. He has had my body, but not the most secret part of me, my ELIXIR CHARNEL. The two of us are but one: the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible, the deceptively innocent milky white of my skin on which I unveil my fragrance. The scent of an extremely elegant and innately rebellious woman, if you believe what people say about me. An icon of absolute seduction, like those legendary creatures who will forever inhabit the collective imagination.

As he contemplates my curves in the moonlight, he breathes in the Elixir that I have left on my shirt. He loves to feel it change, from one minute to the next, as he bends over me. It is a fruity chypre with an intense aura, composed silently to announce my presence and to impress my image on the memories of others. Around a hieratic rose to which patchouli brings its spicy, woody overtones, vanilla and white peach sensually soften the harmony.

I always open my collar to put more fragrance on my décolletage. Playing with the appearance of a strict suit, I can thus arouse passion with the mere glimpse of a curve unconstrained by the artifice of lace. That is what people prosaically call “the fire beneath the ice” of Hitchcock heroines. Fascinating women who are never completely won.

In a few hours from now, I will leave without a word. As always, he will watch me put more ELIXIR CHARNEL on the scented cotton, and he will not try to make me stay. He knows there’s no point. Will I be back? Maybe. Or maybe not.

“A Charming Childlike Woman” - GOURMAND COQUIN

The moment I like best? When I tie my scarf around my neck before going to meet him. I let the silk become suffused with ELIXIR CHARNEL, the essence of a deliciously mischievous woman.

He cannot resist my childlike charms. Especially when I snuggle up to him like a kitten before sliding between the sheets for a not so restful siesta.

It’s time to play my favourite game, the one where I blindfold him and drop onto his skin a sprinkling of black peppercorns and a trickle of chocolate. Those are two of the notes of my fragrance – a sexy and very feminine gourmet composition. A dash of rum, and the spice and cocoa bean become quite intoxicating.There’s also a rose harmony with voluptuous overtones of vanilla.

He knows my smell, but he always forgets the names of the ingredients. That makes me laugh, but of course I never tell him, so his senses can discover them through these tantalizing olfactory riddles.

I curl up beside him once again, and this time I tie the scarf around his wrist to show that he belongs to me.

We drift off vaguely into sleep, but I know he is keeping one eye open. And quite right he is too! After all, I might awake at any time, ready to tempt him with new discoveries.”

* * *

Did you make it through? Wow, huh? So, let’s all towel off and grab ourselves something restorative to drink, and discuss.

1) Who did they write this for, and why? I mean, bless them, are the folks at the Guerlain counter supposed to pass this on to the consumers? Or is stuff like this written to keep the owners’ relatives employed while driving me slowly insane?

2) And charnel is the French word for carnal, fine, but I had to look that up. Does that make me dimwitted, or did you figure that out on your own? If you didn’t, did the word instead conjure up (as it did for me) a charnel house, i.e., a place of death, and/or where they keep the bones? Does that bother anyone besides me, or am I shamefully Anglocentric in my thinking?

3) Two of the three of these are gourmand, and twenty bucks says they smell pretty much like the last few gourmandy releases from Guerlain. Let’s dump them all in a vat and call them Plus Que La Pluie Ganache. Another ten bucks says the “intensely animal quality” in Oriental Brulant will be mostly undetectable to the human nose, because that would funk up the scented seal of the call to love of which you can never have enough.

4) Sizzlin sensuality aside, it is hard to pick the most startling lines from this. I think “the softness of my palm when I decide suddenly to come over all tender with him” sounds deliciously porny. “He has been watching me sleep for a long time. I can sense it. He has had my body, but not the most secret part of me, my ELIXIR CHARNEL…” sounds simultaneously creepily stalker-ish, vaguely obscene and kind of hilariously wack. On the third hand, there’s the Charming Childlike Woman, whose favorite games involve blindfolds, pepper and chocolate – as opposed to Boggle or Old Maid, I guess. “He cannot resist my childlike charms. Especially when I snuggle up to him like a kitten before sliding between the sheets for a not so restful siesta.”

5) For anyone who is now getting irritated, thinking I’m smirking about the as-translated-from-the-French quality – I am not. It’s the whole over-the-top fever dream aspect that astounds me. How do you say I need some hip waders and a bigger shovel in French?

6) HIERATIC? Oh, for Pete’s sake. What, it had better flow than sacerdotal? They couldn’t work in gnosis? Or chthonic? Or maybe they were meaning it in the Egyptian sense, I don’t know.

Which woman am I tonight? I am the woman who finds all this a bit befuddling. I think: 180 years of perfumery and we have come to this? Multiple pages of white noise, just so much soft perfume porn that feels like it would smell if it were written on dryer sheets? I am the Guerlain house whore – and yet, I am bored with these games of chocolate and blindfolds. Will I be back? As they say in the ad for Chypre Fatal … maybe. Maybe not.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Kristy for extracting the bottle photo from my pdf file so I could load it in here!

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Hey, look, I have eyes!!!  And without makeup.  Normally when I would smile, my squinting would make my eyes completely disappear. so that they are still visible, even with some remaining swelling, is just outstanding.  The chin has a funky thing on it.  Some scar tissue normally forms around the site where they put in the canula (sp?), so I use warm compresses and massage to work that out quicker, though they say it will resolve itself even without that over the course of about three months.  But that’s why there’s the little almost cleft in the chin, the scar site is in the middle, and there there is a little bit of overscarring on each side that I’m massaging out, and there is still swelling from the chin back to the neck that very slowly is disappearing.  All the makeup I have on my face is a little MUFE Body and Face Foundation, that gorgeous new Chanel blush, and I put on Trish eyeshadow base and groomed my eyebrows.  The scar is there in the crease, but with my eyes open, you can barely see it, and it is disappearing more every day, but anyone looking can easily find it still.

For those of you keeping score or who just need to be updated that are new to the site, this is what I’ve done to my face in the last year or so:

• Juvederm in the lips and a little on the side of my mouth running to my chin that has a crease

• IPL laser (about 3-4 treatments) to help broken capillaries and sun damage

• Lipo of the jowls

• Upper Bleph

 What I think I still want to do:

Fill in the tear troughs under the eye with juvaderm and… well, I think that’s it!  It’s been an interesting two weeks, with one bad low as I looked in the mirror and thought… what have I done?!?!?! and the feeling now that it was worth it, and the change is a good one that will just keep getting better.

Scented Note:  I was out shopping for the new Smokey Eyes from Chanel quad today, along with their new mascara, and I looked and looked for some new, interesting perfumes to smell… and nada.  Harfumph. So instead I’m here to tell you that the new beige/chocolate brown Chanel quad that’s the LE for Christmas is TDF.  Get on a wait list now.  I’ve only seen the picture of it, but all the Chanel quads are so much more beautiful in person, so I’ll buy this one as soon as someone will take my money for it.  I really have a serious addiction to the Chanel quads, it’s a sickness, truly.  Okay, me below with my eyes on, and this is th enew Chanel Smokey Eyes quad, which dark grays/blacks normally are much too dark on me, so that I can get by with this dark of an eye is either due to the surgery or to that lovely Chanel quad.. or both!

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First off, several people have asked what those Total Beauty posts are. We are signed up with them and they link to us to help grow our readership, and we run their ads and link to some of their articles. They cover a lot of topics besides fragrance, and I’ve read several fun articles on there. We’re still fiddling around with the formatting and the timing of their posts on here to have them visible but minimally intrusive. Feel free to check them out (or not!) and give us your feedback.

Okay, on to today’s review.

I believe the story goes something like this: Once upon a time, Estee Lauder, a perfume visionary, marketed a fragrance called Youth Dew as a bath oil – to get women to buy it for themselves, rather than the (traditional) fragrance route of finding some man to buy it for them. I’ve always been interested in this. I have a bottle of vintage Youth Dew Bath Oil that is – literally – slightly larger than my thumbnail. I can only imagine it was a freebie in a gift package, or another type of giveaway, decades ago. The stuff is fabulous, but it’s so strong I think the tiny bottle would level the city. A single drop on my skin, applied with a toothpick, is – to be honest – slightly more than I can bear. Yes, my Youth Dew has had some extra fermentation time in the bottle. And maybe, if I could grow a pair, I’d try dropping that toothpick’s worth of Youth Dew in the bath to see if it diffused the scent some. But I’m afraid to. What if I can’t get it to go away? Ever? What if we have to tear that part of the house down to the studs just to get rid of the smell? The Big Cheese would be vexed with me, I am pretty sure.

Another (possibly apocryphal) story springs to mind: Tom Ford bought the house of … somebody (his aunt? Estee herself?) who wore Youth Dew on a regular basis for decades. The smell permeated every surface pore of the interior, like cigarette smoke, or possibly anthrax. It was impossible to get rid of. Youth Dew’s notes are orange, bergamot, peach, spices, aldehydes, clove, rose, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, orchid, amber, tolu balsam, patchouli, benzoin, and vanilla. In the end, I am not sure whether it is the spices or the resiny-balsamy wallop upside the head that does me in, but I have decided that Youth Dew (at least my bottle of it) is best appreciated in occasional whiffs, my own curious version of smelling salts.

Angela at Now Smell This, in her recent review of Dana Tabu, did an arm-to-arm comparison with Youth Dew, which has similar notes and similar killer sillage, and said “Youth Dew was almost prim by comparison. Youth Dew smelled spicy and musky clean while Tabu smelled like the leftovers of a dessert buffet in a medieval hall.” I thought, wow, that Tabu is something I have to try. I mentioned this in a post and – voila! – the wonderful Amy offered to send me a sample of her vintage parfum.

Tabu was born in 1932, and there are all sorts of stories about it; I am not entirely sure I believe the assertion that it was designed for/to be worn by prostitutes. That sounds like some marketing alchemy to get women to buy something naughty. Even if it’s not true, the construct works – don’t most of us, at some time and in some place, want to brush up against taboo? There is a great tradition in fragrance, from My Sin to Poison. Fragrance as boundary-pusher. Fragrance as elixir of transformation.

Tabu’s notes give you an idea of the potency — bergamot oil, coriander, neroli, spice notes, clove bud oil, clover, jasmine, narcissus, oriental rose, ylang ylang, amber, benzoin, cedar, civet, moss, musk, patchouli, sandalwood, vetiver. This is, like many strong fragrances, a love it/hate it on Basenotes.

Given Tabu’s popularity and production run, I’d probably try to get ahold of a vintage bottle. Tabu parfum is stunning. It is animalic but not intensely so. The spice notes are strongest at the top, but never at the smother-me-now levels they maintain in my vintage Youth Dew. (Other spice-burial frags off the top of my head: Malle’s Noir Epices, CdG original or Kenzo Jungle L’Elephant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) For a fragrance allegedly designed for prostitutes, the florals are elegant and restrained, adding their soft, lightly sweet voices to the skank notes rather than dominating the composition. Like the glorious Bal a Versailles, the vintage Tabu smells strongly of incense on me. Of course, every vintage bottle is a roll of the dice, and Amy – the benzoin in yours is lovely.

Angela says her parfum “smells less sweet and stays closer to my skin” than the current EDC, which makes sense and is reinforced by Basenoters describing the drugstore variety as too sweet and cheap-smelling. I think my assumption that the EDT from CVS is swill compared to a vintage parfum is probably reasonable, and I promise I will find out at some point. Angela says: “I don’t know what Tabu smelled like when it first came out, but today Tabu smells to me like a viscous brew of maple syrup, patchouli, and incense. It is an odor that is almost tangible, like walking through a thick-napped velvet curtain.” (Tabu won the 2007 and 2008 Basenotes award for best mass-market, drugstore, budget or direct-sell fragrance, so the current iteration maybe isn’t so bad, but that’s a pretty low bar.) I checked the local drugstores, and this most venerable of drugstore scents doesn’t seem available, but maybe it will appear before Christmas. In the meantime, I’d like to report that I wore the Tabu parfum in our recent mid-90s weather. It is always interesting to experiment with “cold weather” fragrance in extreme heat. Super-sweet, gourmand winter scents in the heat can make me gag, but marinating in Bal or Tabu in sweltering weather brings out all the incense. Bal and Tabu have an oddly cooling effect I think Patty and others have mentioned – like stepping into the cooling shelter of a stone cathedral.

King Kong vs. Godzilla: cinemastrikesback.com

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I like it. Growing stuff, that is. Today I had a general tidy of the allotment, which meant:

1. Squishing caterpillars. I used to relocate them from my cabbages in some right-on, hippyish vein, but I realised I had to relocate thousands, and got bored of being beardy. I now squeeze them between my gloved and ungloved fingers, their green gunk squirting psychedelically across the ground. First of all, I feel squeamish; something about their lack of skeletal anything and their vibrancy seems wrong. Then, I get gung ho. Look at the damage on my brassica! They’ve made lace and filigree of my purple sprouting broccoli! Die, you b’stards, die! After nearly 30 minutes of this, I begin to feel squeamish again. My hands, the plants, and the ground surrounding them are coated with slimy caterpillar remnant. Yuk. I desist, and do something different. As an aside, caterpillar poop, at least on green vegetables, looks almost emerald like in its clustered intensity. Sure there’s a gelatinous gooeyness to it to, but in the right light and the right mood, it has a strange beauty.
2. Weeding. It’s a constant battle. The allotment was fallow for eight years, and when I took it over a year and a half ago, I cut swathes through brambles and nettles and bindweed. Those weeds still invade and threaten to take over if I turn my back for longer than a week. The allotment, by the way, is a portion of land 75 yards by 25 yards. It’s quite a lot! And there must be billions of annual seeds in that ground, a goodly portion of which germinate on a regular basis.
3. Picking vegetables and flowers. I grow both there as I prefer my garden flowers to stay in the garden, mostly. The photo above is from today, and I pick about as much every day. Bells of Ireland, dahlias and zinnias (I love the rich colours of late summer blooms); courgettes/zucchini (every vegetable growers’ glut this time of year), three types of bean, pimientos de Padron (if you’ve never had them… man…), cucumbers (normally three a day), potatoes, summer cabbage. I could’ve brought more home (no carrots, tomatoes etc), and left the artichokes I cut there by mistake (always tomorrow).

And the rest of the time is taken up with Gracie - who delights, infuriates and licks her way into my heart more each day. She spent the first week with us overbonding and not sleeping at night. She lost her voice. It’s now back. Now she’s good, except for the occasional whimper, even if the not getting up in the night routine (doing so was an utter disaster) means the occasional poo in a place where it’s least expected (in front of the fridge, this morning). And now we’re working on leaving her home alone for short periods each day, to be ready for the three hours she’ll be left for by the beginning of September. She’s currently my shadow, my lap her favourite spot, and my return from sleep in the mornings an orgiastic, pee-herself, delight, no matter how nonchalant and non-committal I am. But oh, she’s soft and loving and playful and sprightly and impish and silly too.

I love the way she sits up during her daytime naps, groans prolongedly, scratches her ear like a wind up toy nearing the end of its clockwork, and slumps back into a sleep, the groan subsiding as she does so. I love the way she has already learned to sit and stay. I love the way wiry hair, still baby soft, is developing on the tops of her ears, her eyebrows, chin, shoulders, back and legs. I love the way she delights in the world around her, even if it leads to destruction in the garden. Her favourite hobby is chewing bamboo. I’ve put this to good use. I’ve got one that’s a vicious runner at the root. All I need to do is expose the runners and she sets to severing them from the main plant. It’s easy to find a job for her to do. She’s not yet taken fully to her crate, her kongs, or being in a room where I’m not. But we’re going slowly.

I love the way she’s learned to look at me, waiting for our short but sweet training sessions (she’s training me, I’m sure of it). I even love the way I’m finding it impossible to get her into a down position. She’s too full of wriggle energy for any lure. In summary, she’s a wonder and though my eyes are tired from less sleep than I’m used to in my pampered, privileged life, that’s more than compensated for by a wagging tail, play time, and those almond eyes, whose colour has moved from blue to green to grey in a week and a half.

I love the way she lives for fetch games, and will retrieve anything, anything from the garden. I left Matt and her alone the other day and returned to find a heap of leaves and twigs in the living room, piled outside her preferred nest. I didn’t mind.

In short, I love her. She’s my favourite growing stuff.

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so they only sell Cradle of Light at the CB I Hate perfume store now, not online.  Is some kind New Yorker going to be out on Brooklyn in the next month or so, could I prevail on you to send you money to pick me up a bottle?  I’m hording my last few precious drops like they were my last… well, they are for now!!!

Puredistance I is a perfume built around exclusivity.  Now, before y’all start sighing and rolling your eyes, it does have those elements if you get the really spiffy Swarovski crystal bottle for a couple thousand euro, but if you just want the perfume, you can get the refill at an expensive price, 165 euros for 17.5 ml, but it’s 32% perfume oil, so that makes it comparable to about any parfum/extrait price.

I waded through all the hype and marketing, which is beautifull presented, btw, so you don’t have to, and what we get is:  Puredistance I was created by Annie Buzantian of Firmenich.  She had created the perfume for herself initially and called it her personal masterpiece. When she heard about the Puredistance concept, she felt her perfume was a perfect fit for them.  From their website, it ”is intriguingly complex. The perfume’s rich and sophisticated tones are a discreet statement of elegance. The perfume opens as top note with a fresh, ozone-tangerine blossom blend with a hint of cassis, complemented with neroli bigarade and crisp watery nuances. The heart of the fragrance warms to a sophisticated, modern blend of magnolia, rose wardia and jasmine; parmenthia & natural mimosa, before finally settling softly into the rich classical notes of sweet amber, vetiver and white musk.”

After reading through all the marketing materials, you really, really want to hate this perfume or at least make fun of it …  but I just can’t.  It’s stunning and beautiful - lush and rich without falling into the uber-rich notes that scream “expensive!” like the Amouages and Hermes 24, Faubourg.  There’s some greenness on the open that seems to weave through the scent all the way through. It morphs into a gorgeous white floral, but like something fresh from the garden, not heavy or indolic at all.  It almost has a little bit of a Shalini feel to it,  though not with the emphasis on the orange blossom - the emphasis here is on the magnolia and mimosa.  It has a great sillage that’s enchanting as you walk through the room.  Put together perfectly, and it holds up through the drydown, changing slightly in its angle on the notes, but never getting muddy or less crystal clear than it is at the beginning.  The base notes become more prominent in the long drydown, but the floral heart stays with it to the glorious end.  I needz this. If they had not made the refill available, I’d be all curses now, but happily this still falls in the high end of perfume pricing, but not out of line. 

 Available from their website for 165 euro for the 17.5 ml refill. 

See reviews

Top 23 “As Seen on TV” Skin Products Find out which acne fighters, anti-aging creams and moisturizers are worth the shipping and handling fees Admit it: On nights you can’t sleep you may stay up watching infomercials or checking out what Suzanne Somers is hawking on the Home Shopping Network. After an hour or so, those products all start to sound pretty great. But which ones are really worth picking up the phone for? TotalBeauty.com readers bravely ordered and found out. Check out their favorite “as seen on TV” skin care products. …More

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Today’s a quickie because all the kids are home underfoot until school starts next week and I have a work project to attend to. The girls and I had a great time smelling some new scents from Demeter:

Tootsie Roll. I am the Tootsie Roll Queen. The Tsarina of Tootsie. They are my drug of choice for movies, winter nights, and moody blues, and I bet you five bucks there’s at least one wrapper in the bottom of my handbag right now. So it is with some authority that I pronounce: this fragrance, my friends, is no Tootsie Roll. The girls and I agree: it is Canned Chocolate Frosting. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. To those of you who are now thinking, who the heck would want to smell like a Tootsie Roll? I reply, who would want to smell like half the stuff we wear?

Also slightly off kilter: Junior Mints. It’s chocolate-y and minty, yes, but has an additional cookie accord that makes it, in fact, much more reminiscent of Girl Scouts Thin Mint cookies. I want a box now, so am thinking this would not be a good fragrance if you are dieting.

Tropical Dots — It’s been awhile since I’ve eaten these, but the girls felt it was right on target. What I find amusing is the fact that I think you could stick it, sans label, next to the Escada summer LEs and various similar scents at Nordstrom or Macy’s and it would blend right in.

Finally, there is:

Swimming Pool, an oddball thing that does in fact smell like an idealized swimming pool, sort of along the lines of Snow — a broad-brush scent that is appropriately chemical with maybe a little touch of the surrounding lawn and some warm concrete. Ultimately we decided it is significantly less skeevy than the smell of our pool, which if bottled would probably be labeled Sewer.

In closing, let me once again wax poetic over the range of fragrance coverage in the new issue of Allure (September) which arrived today — interesting fragrances referenced in various features, in addition to the regular Frederic Malle Fragrance Guy column (maybe they can get Lagerfeld to be Dress Dude?) and a nicely-thought-out article on the unisex fragrance trend, including asking various couples to try out some scents. I am particularly pleased with the Allure coverage because Allure seems targeted to a relatively young audience, and broadening the perspective of young female consumers regarding the simple existence of fragrances like Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille can only be a good thing.

If you need me I’ll be by the pool, reading Allure. Bring me a Coke, will you? And some more Tootsie Rolls.

Guest Review: Marco Pelusi Anti-Frizz Leave-In Conditioner Rated 9.5 by TotalBeauty.com Editor Charli Schuler It’s easy to see why Marco Color Anti-Frizz Leave-In Conditioner with Collagen Color Guard is hairstylist Marco Pelusi’s signature product. Just one or two pumps miraculously detangle knots and tame frizz on all hair types. …More

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I am the most unphotogenic person I know, but with no makeup, 6 days post-surgery, this isn’t the most unfortunate picture I’ve ever taken.  Trust me, we did like four of these, and usually my mouth is open, my eyes are half-closed and I look sad/drunk/tired/irritated.  I’m being very brave stupid oblivious posting a picture this, um… unvarnished.

There’s still considerable swelling under the chin and in the neck, but it’s gone down a lot since last week, I can see my cheeks again. The swelling/brusing under my eyes is much, much better, too.  Everyone says that continues to subside noticeably for two weeks, then it continues for up to six months after that, but in much more subtle ways.  My right eye (your left) is more swollen than my  left eye, which is why you see more of my lid and the stitches in the crease, where on the other side, the swelling is down so much, the stitches are less noticeable — hey, it looks like an “almost normal” eye again!  Man, I should have done something with my hair.

Am I happy?  Ecstatic.  It’s a subtle change, nothing dramatic, I don’t look decades younger, I still look just like me and I put up one of my pictures taken back in May of this year on the right for reference.  I just have my eyelid back (well, I will eventually) and a nice, more defined, less jowly jawline.  Okay, now, seriously, don’t look at my before picture where I had my hair all done, full makeup, etc., and think… you really are insane, you know. There was a moment or two mid-week last week as I peered in the mirror that I felt that way, but now I can see what the end result is sorta gonna be like, and my face has come a long way from where it was four days ago.

Now, one thing you should know, this is not a piece of cake surgery where you’ll be back at work in a week looking spiffy.  The pain won’t keep you at home, I have/had almost no pain, just a little soreness. You may be able to camouflauge, but you can’t wear makeup or put on mascara or do any of those things, so you’d be going in bland/bruised.  Better to plan on two weeks of working at home or working in the office with dark glasses.  The pain post-surgery is almost nonexistent, just some headaches for me and minor achiness in my neck from the lipo.

Let me think here, this is… Oh!  a perfume blog.  And I snagged a sample of the new Strange Invisible Perfumes Musc Botanique. Not sure if it is the edp or the parfum. Notes are geranium, white amber, angelica and frankincense.  The geranium is the most prominent note in the open, a little bitter, distinct, crisp, and it takes a little while for that bitterness to fade back.  Now, musc isn’t listed in the notes, but I assume there’s some botanical equivalent in the notes because you start to get a musky smell along with a light amber.  It’s not super-animalic, but it has enough there to take this out of the lightweight poofy musk area.  I;m loving this treatment of musk and will be anxious to try the parfum if this is the edp, which I suspect it is - it just doesn’t have the chewy smell thickness that most of SIP parfums have.  If you don’t like SIP in general, there won’t be anything here to change your mind. It’s just a base thing.  For me,  I need to go layer this with Lady Day and make some magic.