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.
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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 BRà›LANT
“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.”
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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!
March
Patty
