Yep, it’s that time again — Fall’s Top 10.   As usual we’re going to cheat it.  Here are some of the ways to welcome fall–

Skanky - you knew we’d start here, didn’t you?  If you’ve been holding back because of the warmer weather, now’s the time to break out your favorite cumin-rich, musk-ridden, armpit-redolent scents.  We recommend: Vivienne Westwood Boudoir, Party in Manhattan, CB I Hate Perfume Musk Absolute (just the best smut in a bottle), Muscs Koublai Khan (which, to Lee’s nose, is increasingly delicate with each subsequent sniff), and Patty has to have Amouage Lyric for women.

Smoky -  what is fall without smoke?  Whether it’s bonfire, fireplace, or pipe tobacco, now is the time for a good smoke.  We recommend:  CB I Hate Perfume Burning Leaves, Serge Lutens Chergui, Guerlain Bois d’Armenie, and the smoke king Le Labo Patchouli 24.

Gourmand — cold and rainy?   Break out those comfort scents!  We Recommend: Lolita Lempicka au Masculin for licorice woodiness, Ambre Narguile to make March and Patty scream and run for cover, Safran Troublant to feel like you’re a middle Eastern rice pudding, KenzoAmour for milky-woody goodness, and anything vanilla.

Woody — everyone needs a little wood, especially as the nights turn frosty. Try the terrifically tumescent Tumulte pour Homme at the bargain end, Serge Lutens Santal Blanc, or Chene if your penchant is more man oak than cedar pencil. 

Schpicy – and if you’ve got wood, why not throw in some spice to make it really sizzle (pomander provisos from previous posts temporarily foregone). Santal de Mysore is always Lee’s default choice, or there’s Arabie.  March votes for Malle’s Noir Epices. Patty sits this one out, unless you just want to go big on peppery carnation and load up with Caron’s Poivre.  Don’t overapply or you’ll be sorry.

Weird — there’s something about cooler weather that can really bring out your inner perfume adventurer.  Try something outside your usual comfort zone.  Expand your horizons.   We recommend:  something from the weirder Comme des Garcons series (leaves, synthetic), CdG White or 2, Versace Dreamer, the violets in the mushroom patch oddity that is Dans tes Bras. It’s the safest way to get your freak on.   

Melancholy —  seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness, on quiet days, have the almost pleasurable sadness of a year saying goodbye. Emphasise the sorrow with Iris Silver Mist, l’Eau d’Hiver. Perhaps best of all, the iris incense quietude of the wonderful Dzongkha.

Gender-bending.  If you’re a man, go for it — splash on something super femme and work it.  If you’re a fan of girly (or womanly) fragrances, why not try something uber-male?  We recommend: (femme scents for men) - Piguet Fracas, Serge Lutens A La Nuit, any Ormonde Jayne.  For girls who want to smell like men:  YSL Kouros (March triple-dog-dares you) or Caron Yatagan.

Over The Top — admit it.  A true perfumista often harbors a lust, public or private, for some ball-busting, room-clearing fragrance.  You know it’s wrong.   You love it anyway.  We recommend:  Christian Dior Poison or Hypnotic Poison or Mugler’s ubiquitous Angel.

The vintage — what better time of year to wear your hoarded collection with abandonment? It’s time to roll out your Youth Dew, Tabu, or 50 year old Mitsy parfum, baby, and spray as though recession ain’t today’s obsession.

For other Top Ten lists, check out these blogs:  Now Smell This, Perfume-Smellin’ Things, Scentzilla and Bois de Jasmin. Now, what would you slip into each category?

Tom Ford Italian Cypress is big salty, earthy cypress.  It feels very masculine, but I think women who like strong wood scents will be quite taken with this.  I can’t find a list of notes on it, except it mentions wood resins and scents of Italy, whatever that means.  I’ve put it next to CdG Hinoki, and they’re not close on the open. The Italian Cypress is greener wood, not as sweet.  It’s not so much rich as it is … um, fierce?  There’s something that feels like ocean breezes in it, but it doesn’t strike me as being marine or aquatic, mostly a little salty and earthy.  In the drydown, it does veer more to Hinoki as Hinoki loses that sweeter aspect that it has on the open.  There are similarities between the two that become more apparent on the drydown.  I think those who like the drydown of CdG Hinoki will find a friend in Tom Ford’s Italian Cypress.  Tom Ford’s seems to lean more into an earthy quality where Hinoki is more incensey or smoke.

Another gem that a lovely friend picked up while in Italy is the second perfume put out by the same people who put out The Party in Manhattan - The Ten Party.  These two could not be more different. Where Manhattan wants to shock and offend in an understated way, The Ten Party bubbles up and just laughs at you and all your seriousness.  Notes of bergamot, provençal lavender, lemon from Sicily, cumin essence, petitgrain from Paraguay, pink peppercorns, tarragon, jasmine, clove, maté absolute, incense essence, cedar wood, Indonesian patchouli, oak moss, white musks accords.  It’s like bubbling woods filled with champagne. Bergamot provides all the laughter over the wood nymphs flitting around in the trees.  I don’t get a lot of the spice notes in a way that they bite me on the nose, they seem to just frolic in the background nicely adding interest, but not pronounced. I very much like this in the same way I adore Santa Maria Novella’s Eva.  It has that same joy.  And for some reason… I think it would layer pretty beautifully with The Party in Manhattan.  One of those understated perfumes that grow on you and you wind up reaching for very often.

Now for a very serious question.  For the cooks out there, what is you most beloved tool/pan/thing you have in your kitchen?  I’ve got the big All Clad stainless steel pan that is terrific, and I’ve got a Le Creuset cast iron Dutch oven on the way.  What else do I really have to have?  We learned how to handmake pasta at class, so I’m stoked to try out my skills there. Whoever said that it’s easy to love someone that makes handmade ravioli was bang-on right.  What else is essential in the kitchen?

A fine perfume friend gifted me with a sample set of the new Humiecki & Graef fragrances, including the original Skarb, which was released last fall with the instant-fame-achieving news that it was a conceptualization of how men cry.  In my elegantly constructed sample set — a box with sample vials in individual niches — the enclosed booklet instructs us that H&G “is a warm and exciting emotional homeland in a virtual and global world.  Five rare fragrances mirror memories and emotions in incomparable ways, characterized by all facets of life and subtly but formatively integrated.”

There is further adulation of and inspiration by the creators’ grandmothers, which I’m not going to mock, because how sweet is that?  The grandmothers were “the inspiration for the name of the label,” and the line bears their names; the creators of the line are Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Muksch.

“Helena and Katharina embodied security and love, experience and the courage to face life for their grandchildren and they inspired confidence.  The designers dedicated their perfume label to their sense of family… In partnership with one of the most renowned ‘noses’ in the perfume business, Christophe Laudamiel, they created this homage to emotions.”

Skarb, “a fragrance about melancholia, inspired by a deep Slavic soul,” contains lovage, musk, barley, incense, myrrh, chamomile, absinthe.  This one came out awhile ago, and reviews of this were varied.  I think it’s … sort of delicious.  It’s weird, and there’s a metallic tinge and a hint of bodily essences up front that kind of calls up Laudamiel’s Mugler coffret for Perfume, for those of you lucky enough to get a sniff.  (Longtime readers may recall I got my hand slapped in Vienna for poking around in it, but how could I resist?)  At the risk of worrying you that I’ve drunk the H&G Kool-Aid, there is something tender about this fragrance, although I’m not sure I’d go so far as melancholy.  Its oddest moments are the top notes, when it’s watery (those Slavic tears?) and I worried some giant aquatic accord was going to bubble up and make me cry in horror.  Instead it becomes more incense-laden, and along with the hay-note of the chamomile and the sharpness of the absinthe, it’s like some herbal tisane made by weeping angels.  (Oooh, I’m ready for a job at H&G!)   It’s … equally of the head and heart, if that makes any sense.  It feels a little too calculated to be truly emotional for me.  I have nothing that smells remotely like this. I’d definitely wear it.  It’s light; you could spray this all over and not kill anyone, it lasted forever on my hand, a little flattened but still interesting.   Worth exploring if minimalist weird-yet-wearable scents like Comme des Garcons 2 do it for you.  Unisex.

Geste, “a fragrance about intensity” that was “inspired by a mature woman who loves an adolescent” with “the pureness of white shirts and the sweetness of fresh bread and the mystery of a mature love.”  Wouldn’t you love to know what grandma was up to that inspired that story?  Notes: soft amber, musky soft violet petals, soft fir resin.  Okay … in my opinion (shared by my kind friend who gave it to me) this has Laudamiel’s fingerprints all over it.  This has that not-quite-nice musk, eau de humanity.   If you multiplied it by 100 and bottled it, you’d have the execrable (to my nose) Miller Harris L’air de Rien, which I have always found less about the proverbial English mansion than its nearby village with the stinking peasants and animal pens.  But this!!   This is naughty and wrong.  This is Rien meets Guerlain’s Apres l’Ondee, powdery violets and tumbles in the back bedroom in twilight.  I can’t smell the fir.  I am not entirely sure if (or where) I would wear it, but it’s wonderfully strange.   Gets skankier by the hour.   Two-hour update: Probably over my line, but (depending how you feel about Rien) maybe not over yours.

Multiple Rouge is missing from my sample set, fortunately or unfortunately, because it sounded the silliest note-wise.  “A fragrance about extreme folly and fun,” with notes of cinnamon bark, frozen orange, green pineapple, immortelle, Vietnamese cilantro, green violet, peach kernel, freshness of ozonic red berries.   Hmmmm.  Maybe I would like to smell it, it’s got immortelle.  But I can’t, so let’s move on to…

Eau Radieuse, “a fragrance about desire, a futuristic remake of an Eau de Cologne,” notes of green banana skin, fresh mandarin peel, fresh Italian lemon, mint leaves, rhubarb juice, bamboo sape (sic) accord.  Oh.my.god.  That’s so cool.  Live-moment blogging here – this totally provokes my synesthesia.  The exact smell of green bananas at the market, followed by mandarin (so juicy and tart!!!  my mouth waters)… yep, here comes the lemon … minty lemon!!!  I die, I die!!  It’s a perfumer’s elaborate joke, how do they do that?  … yup, we have rhubarb!  And then – voila!  This awesome sap accord.  Not “sap” like any sort of normal traditional perfumery.  It’s sap glopped on top of the fruit-stall lineup.  I’m not sure it’s cologne, or even proper perfume in any traditional sense.   But it is absolutely the kind of scent that, were I to pass someone wearing it, I would throw myself in front of them and demand, what are you wearing?!?!  Also, it’s really, really strong and minty at the same time.  Seriously, it’s like mint drops for the nose, in a good way.  A nasal palate cleanser.  But it displays its true cologne-ness only by fading away within the hour, preparing us for…

Askew, “a fragrance about fury, inspired by the deconstruction and destruction of the classical perfume for me, full of fire and explosion, energy and virility.”  Notes of birch tar, cardamom, soft leather, ginger, grapefruit, vetiver, Egyptian mimosa.  Sniffing the atomizer before spraying, I was a little afraid – it had that marine/male essence smell.  On the skin the first note is a powerful, smoldering tarry leather.  It’s wonderful, and just as I was starting to think, well, this smells a bit like … the citrus and ginger appear, and can I tell you what a winning combination that is?  It’s a wonderful role reversal, with the citrus functioning as the cheerful, effervescently sweet moderator rather than its ubiquitous role in modern mall perfumery of tarting up some toothache-sweet confection.  The birchtar softens into a gentle leather (along the lines of L’Artisan’s Bottega Veneta leather) pretty quickly – it’s there, but if you’re looking for something butch and smoky you won’t find it here.  The cardamom and vetiver are very faint on my skin, while the mimosa adds a fairly significant floral aspect to the scent before it fades down into a lovely vetiver/leather.   This does a fun transformation from a “masculine” to a “feminine”, and back to masculine, although really anyone could wear it.

All of these are of that high-art-concept school of perfumery that either appeals or annoys, depending.   For a line that bases its fragrances on feelings and emotions (desire, melancholia, etc.) there is a concomitant sense of thought put into these – and not the kind of thought that boils down to: let’s make something on trend so we can sell the hell out of it.   I did my share of eye-rolling when I first read their marketing materials.  On the other hand, they appear to be reaching toward an end result that I haven’t seen (or smelled) a hundred times before, and on that score they succeeded.  The fragrances hang together nicely as a group in their unisex quirkiness, and not one of them smelled familiar.

Of all of these, Skarb is probably the most conventional, although still interesting.  Geste is the most over-the-top, and Radieuse is the most fun.  Askew would probably appeal most to fans of things like Bulgari Black, which I admire rather than love.

Skarb is currently available at Luckyscent, and I can only assume the others will follow eventually.  The company’s website is www.humieckiandgraef.com

Skarb bottle image from luckyscent.  Each scent has the same-shaped bottle but varies in the cap (porcelain, plastic, metal, wood) and the color tape.

Well, I’d like to say that I’ve done more than cursorily sniff the new Milan store Tom Ford exclusive, Italian Cypress, but I haven’t.  Just on the cursory sniff, it is very, very woody and cypressy, and it leans much more masculine, though I do like it. That’s as far as I have gone, sorry!

Between being away until today, having a sore throat that’s threatening to ruin my week, running to cooking class tonight (Italian!) and trying to catch up, yes, this is another lame post. But let me make it worth your while. 

First, winner of the Le Labo Poivre 23 and Amouage Homage samples is:  Janet.  Hit the Contact Us button on the left and let me know your address.

Next, I’ll give away three samples for the new Tom Ford Italian Cypress to three lucky commenters in a drawing. So just drop a comment, and you’ll be entered.

Third, the recipe for that Roasted Red Pepper Sauce that is to die for:

• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 2-3 red peppers, roasted, peeled, sliced
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 2 Table spoons unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2-3 Tablesppons Pernod (tarragon can substitute)
• Salt and pepper

Place butter in a large saute pan and melt over medium heat.  Add the onions and a pinch of salt and saute until soft, being careful not to brown.  Add peppers and cook just to combine.  Add stock and simmer 5 minutes to meld flavors.

Place enough of the mixture into the blender to fill it up halfway.  Puree and strain through a coarse strainer into a clean pot.  Repeat with remaining sauce. Whisk butter into warm sauce and flavor with Perond, salt and pepper. 

You can easily freeze this if you want to make extra. It goes great on any meat, any pasta, your breakfast, Cheerios, you name it.  Just use it as a dipping sauce for bread.

I had a crushing perfume blow last week that I can’t quite bring myself to talk about yet, mostly because I’m embarrassed by how much it bothers me the way things didn’t quite work out.  So I, your trusty perfume handmaiden, turned to my long-ignored stash of biehl parfumkunstwerke once more, figuring that if the first two I’d tried at random (mb03 and al02) turned out to be sniff-worthy, maybe I’d find some more love in that bag of samples.  I did a little pre-research on Luckyscent and decided to sniff two by Egon Oelkers because the notes sounded interesting.

eo01 is described as a “woody oriental” with notes of tangerine, blood orange, cardamom, nutmeg, apricot, coconut, rosewood, pimento, iris, orchid, lily of the valley, styrax, vanilla, cinnamon, tonka bean, cedar, vetiver, patchouli.   I was kicking myself for not trying this earlier, because I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a list of notes that sounds more like something I’d be guaranteed to love.  I’m also laughing because somewhere (I think on my Baume du Doge post) we all solemnly agreed, enough with the spice-box scents! 

Really, this is lovely.  It opens with quite a kick – the citrus in combination with the spices veer in the direction of spicefests like the original CdG.  But it calms down pretty quickly within the first two minutes into the sort of creamy spicy-woody comfort scent that some of us can’t get enough of.

Or can we?  As lovely as eo01 is, it is not wildly original.  Sniffing it reminded me strongly of two scents, Organza Indecence and Annayake Tsukimi.  (I noticed later, when I went back to bloglift the notes from Lucky, they state “this is our holiday treat for the fans of Feminite du Bois and Organza Indecence.”)   Well, okay.  It’s less vanillic than OI, and less woody than Tsukimi, and I’m not entirely on board with the comparison to FdB, which is in my opinion on a higher plane of perfumery, and feel free to argue with me.  If you want another spicy-woody comfort scent in your arsenal, check this one out.  I will concede that it smells “niche-ier” than OI, which I adore but would be the first to admit is maybe not the most highbrow thing I own.  If OI is a moist, delicious vanilla cupcake, eo01 is tiramisu.

eo02 is “a men’s fall or winter fragrance mixed just perfectly so that it becomes appropriate in any season …. Blending gourmand notes of clove, cinnamon and vanilla with the deeper elements of incense and patchouli then surprising you with a robust and zippy citrus.” Notes are: bergamot, grapefruit, galbanum, cardamom, cilantro, thyme, davana, fir, rose, jasmine, clove, atlas cedar, patchouli, sandalwood, incense, vanilla, cinnamon, ambergris, musk.   Unfortunately I don’t have a sample, so let’s move on to…

eo03 — green leaves, orange flower, pepper, peach, raspberry, neroli, lily of the valley, egyptian jasmine, tuberose, ylang, clove bud, violet, elemi, sandalwood, vetiver, almonds, ambergris, musk.  The Luckyscent blurb talks about elegant understatement and discreet luxury.   So.  You don’t smell this every day, particularly at the department stores.  For those of you who read this blog and use me as some sort of reverse indicator in terms of scent preference, you may want to sample this one.  It opens on a tart citrus, peppery, sap-green note so powerful its astringency literally made my eyes and mouth water, like I was sucking on a sourball.  It is elegant, but very much in the high-style green-and-white organza rustle of galbanum/muguet/white florals that simply doesn’t suit my personal tastes.  As the spicy middle notes emerge, the fragrance calms and it becomes warmer and woodier without ever really losing its edge.   The blurb-writer makes a point about its diminishing potency – “the quiet opulence of the base of almond, ambergris, musk, balm and sandalwood, finishes this white symphony in pianississimo … a wonderful comfort skin-scent”.  Which raises an interesting point.  Lovers of big green meanies and white flower bombs like Vent Vert, Sous le Buis, and Givenchy III should find something to love here.  At the same time, the drydown is pretty sedate compared to the rest of the ride.  I prefer the soft, musky drydown myself, a non-powdery, white floral musk, but fans of the bombast at the opening would probably be re-applying.

Who bought these?  Not too many people would be my guess.  Honestly, I’m as much of a niche snob as anyone — by which I mean I’ll put up with some foolishness if you give me a really awesome scent.  But a certain amount of perfumery is the wand-waving hokum-pokum of marketing.  Biehl clearly puts the effort in there, insofar as you can read all sorts of blather about what a genius Thorsten Biehl is — I mean, the man’s not exactly hiding his light under a bushel.  And he gives good coverage to the perfumers.  But how much excitement can you feel browsing through 15 scents named mb01 and eo03?  Not that much, in my opinion.  And that’s too bad, because I really feel like they deserve better.

image: luckyscent.com

I’ve been learning a few things as a nail polish newbie.  One of them is, there are many shades that are really, really wonderful in the light, but they all basically look black indoors.   To each his (or her) own, but my feeling on that topic is, unless you work as a hand model or under the glamour lights in a retail store, that’s a bummer.  How many of those do you need?  I have 3 and I’m done, thanks.  So I’m backing off and exploring medium-dark polishes that manage to retain their color indoors in regular lighting.

I’ve also discovered I love deep blue and dark green.  I also really love creams and jelly finishes, which look incredibly sophisticated.  However the choices are surprisingly limited in the green or blue cream/jelly categories in darker shades, and some of the coolest looking (like RBL Recycle) are expensive and not available for sampling first.  So on a whim at the polish store I decided to franken my own after some basic tips from Louise, who’s messing around with gray.  This was a bottle of dirt cheap LA Girl Flare that caught my eye, in a medium-electric-sky-blue called Twinkling.  I added some drops of black cream (Sally Hansen Black Out), shook vigorously, added a few more drops … I went slowly and didn’t measure, sorry.  You can always add more black but you can’t take it back out, right?

Swatch of Twinkling (it’s brighter in person):

My final franken:

Sorry the photo isn’t better, my camera doesn’t have a good enough short focus.  But I wound up with a grayed-out blue that looks kinda teal in indoor lighting, gray-blue in natural lighting.  It has a jelly finish and is weirdly matte but looks nice with a layer of Seche on top.  BTW my other nails are NARS Midnight Express.

 By Shelley

Perhaps if I told you my story, it would help.

I had no plan to be in this tribe.  Nobody in my family was.  I hadn’t had any friends who were.  I was happy with my life, with plenty of fulfilling activities and friends who cared about me.

Then along came Norell.  Without even meeting it, something… changed.  I’d heard about it, knew that my grandmother had always kept her own.  I thought I’d just go along, see what kind of life Norell lived.  Learn a little about its history.  Okay, try it.  Just to see if I could understand why other people said it was so great.  Maybe, learn to love, if not all perfume, just that one.

(You know what?  It was really a complex creature.  Unappreciated by the masses who had once flocked to it.  Remembered by a few, still appreciated by experts who were exposed to it in blind meeting. Once noble, relegated to the blue light special.)

Maybe I should have realized it might turn out this way.  After all, my grandmother had had her own Norell.  Come to think of it, she had another love that was hidden in plain sight:  Halston.  And there was an aunt who was rumored to have a stash of bottles taking up closet space.  But we didn’t really talk about it, and it wasn’t on my radar.

Beep, beep.  Something wicked this way comes.

I found myself starting to read about it online.  Sneaking looks at blogs, where other people would confess their passions.  Their habits.  The objects of their desire.  Realizing that they seemed to be nice people, really.  Regular people, who just happened to have this… thing.

I found myself going out by myself, sneaking little sniffs at Sephora.  Sneaking into Neiman Marcus just to eyeball the bottles.  And then… surreptitiously ordering a small, unmarked package from an online decanter.  Which led to a full bottle purchase at Loehmann’s.  One day, I got on the dance floor wrote a response on a blog.

The dam broke, and there was no going back. Next thing you know, I’m starting to float the concept of my new identity to a select few friends who I suspect won’t freak out when I tell them.  I stop hiding my activity from my family.  I go to a perfume support group and bookmark a dozen favorite online information sources.  I no longer protest that “it’s not really anything” when others ask me if it’s true.

My name is Shelley, and I’m into perfume.  If you’re here, you’re probably into perfume too.  How did it begin for you?  Were you alone, or did you have company?  Did it start with a trickle?  Or an avalanche?  Or has perfume always been there for you, like air?

This Saturday is my sister’s 50th birthday, so I’m getting ready to head out of town to pick up my still-recuperating mom and take us both down to celebrate with her in Kansas.  Yes, I’m being nice to her since I have a 50th next year, and I don’t want anything mean done to me. I got her that cute little Breakfast at Tiffany’s sleep mask, the matching blue tassel earplugs and the anniversary edition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  Probably a great bottle of booze just to round things out.

I’m also waiting for a couple of things to show up for review that the post office is being super-slow on - the Tom Ford from Milan, and The Ten Party from Italy, and I just can’t work up any energy to review something else.  I get my heart set on something, and nothing else will work.

The last 25 in the list get even more interesting and just makes me giggle:

• Ormonde Jayne Ta’if
• Rochas Femme
• Serge Lutens Borneo
• 10 Corso Como
• Caron Bellodgia
• Caron Farnesiana
• Comme des Garcons Zagorsk
• Creed Virgin Island Water
• Frederic Malle Une Fleur de Cassie
• Frederic Malle Une Rose
• Guerlain Nahema
• Lubin Idole
• Molinard Habanita
• Montale Black Oud
• Parfumerie Generale Bois Blond
• Serge Lutens 5 O’clock au Gingembre
• Serge Lutens Daim Blond
• TDC Bois d’Iris
• YSl Opium
• Annick Goutal Songes
• Amouage Jubilation 25
• Armani Prive Bois d’Encens
• Bella Bellissima Perfect Night
• Bond New Haarlem
• Cartier Must de Cartier

Now… that is a hell of a list.  BTW, for any of you that like this sort of thing, there’s quite a lot of perfumistas on Facebook now.  I did set up Perfume Posse as a blog on Facebook, not sure how that works, but you can join that group or something?  Anyway, if you’re already on or if you get on, friend me at pgeissler at gmail dot com.

We had a theater event on Saturday night, a family-level thing rather than elegance.  (Diva’s in a belly-dancing performance troupe.)   In such a situation I want my fragrance to be more “personal” — having been trapped more than once at, say, the Opera, in a seat next to someone wearing a heady fragrance like Giorgio, I try to be mindful of other people’s space.  On the other hand — hey, I’m going out, perfume is as mandatory as shoes.  It’s now kind of fall-ish outside.  I sniffed a few bottles to remind myself of various scents and settled on KenzoAmour — woody, milky, comforting, not too intrusive.

And so wrong.  KenzoAmour is my fragrance equivalent of a favorite sweatshirt, and the second I put it on, that’s how I felt.  Even though I was working my middle-aged assets in a mildly theatrical way that night (I have this fun kimono-style sweater in a bronze I ordinarily would never wear, big soft gold earrings, etc.) KenzoAmour, through the power of suggestion, magically transported me back into my velour mommy pants and deposited me on the doorstep of Trader Joe’s, canvas grocery bags in hand.    Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!  It wasn’t the DEFCON-2 crisis level of, say, knocking over a vintage flacon of Mitsouko parfum, but still.   I had about 45 seconds to do something to it.  But what?

So I winged it.  I bypassed my current heavy rotator, Esteban Sensuelle Russie (too much short-term sillage), in favor of something else I’ve been toying with — al02 — one of those biehlparfum(dirty-German-word-by-accident)-werke joints that all got mixed together and ignored by perfumistas because if you release 12 or 15 or whatever simultaneously and call them things like eo03, that’s what happens, dawg.  (my new favorite slang: dawg.  Diva’s boyfriend calls almost everyone, including me, dawg, and it makes me smile every time.  He calls Diva the German word for cookie or bunny or something, which melts my heart)…. gah, where were we?

Luckyscent describes biehl parfumkunstwerke’s (Arturetto Landi) al02 as “full of Italian drama” and the notes sound like they’d live up to that — mandarin, lemon, bergamot, peach, plum, jasmine, rose, carnation, cardamom, cinnamon, incense, labdanum, tonka bean, vanilla, vetiver, patchouli, sandalwood, white musk.   It opens with a light, playful citrus, and then the florals unfold, but they do so as seamlessly as a cashmere sweater — this is not a nightmare-ish bouquet of over-the-top florals hitting you over the head.  This is an “elegant” style of perfumery that in general I admire rather than want to wear, and yet I seem to be working my way steadily through this decant.  It is a cashmere-sweater-and-pearls comfort scent, but so warm and engaging it presents as a charming dinner companion rather than a drama queen.  The peach and plum are more dominant (if you hate plum, you probably won’t like this), the jasmine is present but clean, the rose is subtle enough I can’t even pick it out, and the carnation comes into play with the spices that enter as the fragrance transforms from a floral to a full-on spice comfort scent, complete with a vanillic-wood drydown.   As lovely as the opening is, my favorite part unsurprisingly is the first few hours after that.   The mannered florals at the front remind me a bit of Chanel Beige before morphing into the woods/spice/vanilla love child of Fendi’s Asja and a couple drops of Organza Indecence.   Certainly al02 is lovely enough on its own, but layering it with something woody (like 10 Corso Como) renders it more unisex and amps up the wood in a way I find pleasing, although you need less 10CC and more al02 to make that work.  It ate most of KenzoAmour’s lunch, unsurprisingly, but the creamy woods of Amour were a nice addition.  As usual, I would love to smell this on a man.

I wonder — have you ever found yourself wearing completely the wrong thing?  Did you shower?  Change clothes?  Layer?  How did it work out?  Or do you just shrug your shoulders and say, hey, I’m going with it.  I’m not going to ask if you think I’m nuts, because — I know y’all are as nuts as I am.  Insert smiling emoticon here.  Also, I guess I need to dig around a little more seriously in the biehls.  Anyone find any love in the line besides Marc Buxton’s wonderful, incense-laden mb03, which I think is the only one that got much attention?

* * *

Sylvia asked for the silver nail polish equivalent of Essie’s Steel-ing the Scene or Chanel Kaleidscope, both of which have a slightly greenish-gold tint.  I know nothing, so of course I jumped right on her request.  Sylvia, based on my brief online browsings, for a truer silver, you could try OPI’s Gone Platinum in 60 Seconds, or China Glaze’s Avalanche (slightly darker and blue-ish?), Platinum Pearl (white-ish), or Platinum (the most silver, along with the OPI).  All of these are online at head2toebeauty.com   Anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about, feel free to chime in — I think she’s looking for the bling equivalent of Kaleidoscope, which is blingier than Steel-ing the scene (a softer shimmer) but maybe either is fine.  Also while I was looking I ran across OPI nail polish for dogs on Amazon — wow, now there’s a product for people who have too much time on their hands!  Says the woman who spends plenty of time on perfume (and some on nail polish)… Sylvia, I kind of like that silver one for dogs, too.

Also FWIW I now have my first np heresy — I like Steel-ing the scene better than Kaleidoscope.  The color is almost identical; I have it on every other nail, and in regular indoor light you really have to stare to see the difference (Kaleidoscope is a hair more gold).  But I like the weird matte shimmer of Steel-ing.  The Kaleidoscope glitter is blingier, and don’t get me wrong, it’s really nice, a very elegant shimmer (teeny glitter?)  It just doesn’t thrill me quite the way Steel-ing does.  Oh, well.

image, cashmere yarn: supplierlist.com

Continuing in our countdown of the top 100 - mostly because I have a headache the size of Texas - I give you your Top 51 through 75, which are getting more interesting:

• Comme des Garcons Kyoto
• Chanel Cristalle
• Dior Diorella
• Dior Miss Dior
• Etro Messe Di Minuet
• Hermessence Ambre Narguile
• L’Artisan Passage d’Enfer
• Ormonde Jayne Champaca
• Parfum d’Empire Cuir Ottoman
• Piguet Bandit
• Strange Invisible Perfumes L’Invisible
• Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist
• Serge Lutens Un Lys
• Bond Silver Factory
• Caron Nuit de Noel
• Dior Diorling (my love!)
• Diptyque Tam Dao
• Donna Karan Black Cashmere
• Frederic Malle En Passant
• Guerlain Chamade
• L’Artisan Dzongkha
• L’Artisan Fleur de Narcisse
• L’Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons
• Miller Harris L’Air Rien (can I just say how proud I am y’alll voted this stinky stunner into any of the top 100?!?!)
• Montale White Oud

See, much more interesting! 

I also need to talk a little about my cooking classes, which are really thrilling me.  Last week was Sautes and Pan Sauces. The point of the class, besides me finding a roasted red pepper sauce that I want to marry and have its babies, was to learn how to follow a technique and not just a recipe to cook your meats and make some kind of sauce to flavor it.  Chef Shellie did a fantastic job in breaking us all away from that “I must follow zee recepeeeee!” mindset into thinking of just what do we have in our kitchen that we can throw together.  So now I have to toss in a plug because she’s making a set of 8 DVDs with her approach to teaching cooking, only two are out right now. It’s from Kitchen Cue, and I don’t know how the DVDs are, but if she’s doing the same them in them as she does in class, those of you wanting to break away from recipes and really understanding the elements of cooking should find it really interesting. She has a Soups & Stocks and Sautes & Pan Sauces (the class that I took). 

There, and you thought this was just a perfume blog!

(Notes for Eau d’Italie Baume du Doge: sweet orange, bergamot, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, fennel, black pepper, myrrh, frankincense, clove, cedar, saffron, vetiver, vanilla, benzoin)

 (Cue the background music: Right Said Fred’s immortal lyrics…)

I’m too sexy for my shirt too sexy for my shirt
So sexy it hurts
And I’m too sexy for Milan too sexy for Milan
New York and Japan
And I’m too sexy for your party
Too sexy for your party
No way I’m disco dancing…

If I had a conversation with Eau d’Italie Baume du Doge, it would sound something like this:

Baume du Doge: Hey, sweet thing.  Howzit goin’?

March:  Uh … fine, thanks.

BdD: You can call me Da Bomb, girlie.  Da … bomb.  Heh heh.  Get it?  Hey, hand me that ashtray, willya?

March: Sure – hey, I’m—

BdD: That’s great, sweet lips.  So, you come here often?

March:  Not really—

BdD:  I smell good, yeah?  You smell me?  Nice, huh?  Quality.  That’s what I’m saying.  I’m a quality guy.  No cheap shit on me, ya know?   Check it – that orange.  It’s big, yeah?  You like it?  You like a big orange?  Girls always tellin’ me my orange is huge!

March:  Look—

BdD:  I know, I know, ladies loooove the orange!  And how ‘bout those spices!  Those are something.  Got some big ol’ spices goin’ on there.

March:  Big orange.  Big spices, yes.

BdD:  My clove!  My cedar!!   Baby, check out my WOOD!!!!  That’s some huge, spicy orange wood right there!!  Lean on in.  Lean in and smell the wood!  I’m tellin’ you!   Qual-it-tee stuff right here!

March:  No offense, but … I’m just not that into you.  I mean, you hit all the right notes.  You look good on paper.  But in person, you’re annoying.  There’s no subtlety.  There’s a big fat pepper-mill opening, then a spicy orange … Even the frankenmyrrh drydown is a disappointment.  There’s some benzoin there, but it’s so muddy!   I didn’t like Sienne l’Hiver either, and you might even be worse.  Why does Bertrand Duchaufour do such dank scents occasionally?   You smell a clove-studded orange left in the trunk of my car a little too long.  

BdD:  Studly orange!!!  That’s me, baby, thanks for appreciating my finer qualities.  I am STUDLY.

March:  … you are a hot mess, you know that?

BdD:  HAWT!!!!  Say, you want to rooolll like an orange with me?  Get it?  Get it?  Roooollll????

March:  Waiter, could you please call me a taxi?

BdD:  My place or yours?

March:  Go away already, you pimped-out pomander.

BdD:  But baby—

March:  Scram!  Adios!!   SHOO!!!!!   

image: random guy who popped up I think when I googled “lounge lizard” and I hope he doesn’t run across his image here and leave me hate-spam.  I wonder why he’s wearing that thing on his head? Also, anyone with an iPod should have I’m Too Sexy on there, and if you can listen to it without laughing out loud and/or vogue-ing your way through it, you are made of sterner stuff than I am.

PS You nail polish nuts, please drop by my post from yesterday and advise me.

Today’s polish is Essie’s Steeling the Scene (thanks, Louise!), which is touted as being a kinda-sorta dupe for Chanel’s Kaleidoscope without laying out twenty bucks (or in my case, any money at all).   My verdict — squeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Steeling the Scene presented a couple of interesting issues I’m going to use as the jumping off point for this post, hoping that those of you with more np experience can give me some advice.  It’s fun being a total newbie at something, and what’s the point of having the blog if I can’t ask you all some questions?

1) Steeling the Scene, on my nails, is a fabulous faintly green-tinted silver — as opposed to in the bottle, where it looks like a not especially interesting straight silver.  Seriously, if I were looking just at my nails, I would not match them with the correct bottle of polish.  Leaving aside the issue of whether it’s a reasonable dupe of Kaleidoscope, this keeps cropping up — the bottle color is different than the nail color.  Fine, but is this always the case?  Are there tips and tricks to cope?  Are some brands/types/colors of nail polish more likely to be true to their bottle color, which is what I’m looking at when I’m considering it?  By the way, kind readers have already turned me on to sites like Scrangie, which has many colors (and comparisons of similar shades) featured and I stumbled across the community nail polish gallery (nailgal?), which I like because it shows a variety of photos of the same color taken by different people, so I can build a mental consensus about the polish’s potential “true” color.  I also like the formats at polishaddict.com and alllacquredup.com  Your thoughts?  Is the crap-shoot aspect just a basic part of the fun?

2) Dang, these lighter shimmer colors (is that the right nomenclature?  cream, shimmer, glitter/sparkle?) really show the brush marks.  I had that problem with Steeling the Scene, and I noticed it on the polish board pictures.  I really hate those streaks.  The way I overcame it was to do a thicker coat, which minimizes the brush marks, but I think that’s a no-no, although they ended up looking fine.  Any advice?  Also (this sounds weird) putting a top coat of clear polish on the Steeling the Scene affected the finish in a way I didn’t like.  It slightly magnified the brush strokes and it gave the polish a glossier “plasticized-look” finish that looked great on my dark silver-gray and navy polishes, but on this looked cheap.  Is this a light-shimmer-polish vs. dark polish issue?  Should I leave off the top coat?  Learn to live with it?

3) Last question.  Okay, totally my fault for having on (I think) seven coats of polish by the time I took it off last night for a clean-slate start.  I had a base coat, two coats of gunmetal, a top coat (that’s four) plus a coat of navy and a couple coats of glitter mid-week when the gunmetal chipped and I didn’t have time for a polish change.  But holy cow, it took me half an hour to get the polish off!!  Seriously, 30 minutes of hard work.  I knew people said glitter is hard to remove, I assume it has to do with its non-porousness, so big chunky glitter would be even worse.  It came off eventually and the nails looked good and unstained (yay, basecoat!) and I conditioned them last night and this morning with jojoba oil, aka The Oil Of All Miracles.  But short of a teeny chisel, any other tips for expediting removal?  It’s the glitter that’s the issue, right?  Should I just settle in with a shrug and a larger glass of wine?

images illustrating The Color Conundrum:  maybe it’s just my browser, but the top image from flikr is closest to what I perceive as the true color of Steeling the Scene.  The other two images are from polishaddict.com and you can see the issue perfectly illustrated here — in the middle photo, Kaleidoscope and Steeling look remarkably similar, but they both look “blingier” than reality, IMHO.  And note that in the bottom photo from polishaddict.com, the color looks different yet again.

The blog was down when I was around yesterday, so no real post today. Plus, I have a cold that has now managed to block up my sinuses and destroy my sense of smell - the words of wisdom (ha) about Dzongkha, Baume du Doge and other Duchaufour marvels will have to wait. As will my readjustments regarding Poivre 23… But the winners of the samples are Kathleen and Helelnviolette - ladies, you both have mail. I’ll throw a couple of other things in too for your delectation, though you might well have sniffed them before… See you next week. 

This above is my new obsession - the sleeping mask Holly Golightly wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  I have one on the way, and when it’s here, I’ll post updated pictures of me a good long time post-surgery and include this cute little mask. 

Lee has already done a great review of Le Labo Poivre 23, the city exclusive for London from Le Labo. On first sniff, I would have thought it was Annick Menardo that made it, there are some full-on whiffage in the same vein as Bvlgari Black.  Smoky, thick, meaty.  We know now that it wasn’t Annick that created it, but someone took a page out of her scented book. This is pungent, and in all the best ways.  Peppery, smokey and magical.  I think Lee got less (or no) smoke than I do, and maybe my mind is just flipping that fresh, great pepper smell into something that reminds me of smoke, but I don’t think so.  I’m getting major incense and smoke on me.  Great sillage, too - I just leave trails through the house as I walk around.  Notes of cistus, patchouli, bourbon pepper, sandalwood, gaiac wood, incense, vanilla, styrax.  It is distinctive and beautiful.  Of course it is uber-spendy, 400 plus U.S. for 100 mls.  I’m thinking of layering it with Patch 24.  Too much?  Oh, no, I think not, that will be great!  People might think a coal-fired locomotive just went by with that combination.

Reviewing Amouage Homage Attar is a skosh painful because this takes spendy and vaults it to a whole new level AND it is a limited edition, so who knows how long they will sell it. Running about $360 for 12 mls, it is an oil created by Amouage for its 25th Anniversary.  Notes of rose Taifi, silver Frankincense, Tayyiba (jasmine), sweet amber, white musk, silver oud and Al Andalus (blend of orange, lemon and sandalwood).  If you don’t like ouds/attars, the good news for you!?  This won’t change your mind.  There  is the familiar sharpish oud smell right off the bat, but this is almost molten oud, smooth, rich, some bite, but like it’s cradled in a rose incense velvet glove.  It’s not as sharp as I find a lot of the Montale ouds, but not as sweet as some of the Arabian Ouds.   The Al Andalus blend adds a slightly sunny brightness to it that doesn’t seem out of character at all and persists in keeping it from brooding.   As with all ouds, once you get past the open, there is a certain linearity because of the overriding note of oud going all the way through the drydown.  It’s beautiful.  Is it worth it?  You know, my ridiculous-price-meter is just pegged out after the last two years and has no sense of decency.  It may be - if you are a huge fan of ouds and you like yours not as sharp as you get in the Montales and you want it surrounded in a cloud of seriously rich notes.  As ouds go, at this point, this would be my go-to oud. If ouds aren’t your thing or you can take them or leave them or already have a favorite, you can probably keep on going past this. 

As my penance for reviewing two horrendously priced perfumes in one day, let’s do a drawing.  Drop your name in comments to be entered in the drawing for a teensy sample of the Amouage Homage and the Poivre 23.

I got malled at BBW — on a research project regarding pumpkin scents.  I ended up trying their three different pumpkin room sprays on my hands and arms (Caramel, Spiced and Perfect?) along with some other fall-ish stuff … by the time I left there I smelled like I’d been in an accident at the pie factory.  I smelled like The Pie Slut.  I smelled like Pumpkin Greedy.  The funny part?  A random guy followed me through the mall telling me how great I smelled.  And then in line at the post office, another guy did the same thing!  I guess men really do love it when women smell like dessert.

Today’s nail (quick, someone, stage an intervention!!) is Nicole OPI in Ni-Coal (a gunmetal silver nail polish) with NYC’s Starry Silver Glitter on top.   The multi-colored glitter looks fantastic on that background, if I do say so myself.  But let’s move on.

Since Patty is doing the highfalutin’ scent blogging this week, with two obscure, niche $$$$ scents, I’m here with Perfume For The Masses Part Whatever — two new Kenzos!   Because you know I love me some Kenzo.  First up: Kenzo Winter Flowers (a flanker of the original FlowerbyKenzo) which I was kind of afraid to smell, because I keep seeing the word “powdery” and because the consensus at reliable sources like Now Smell This is that if the original Flower didn’t do much for you, this probably wouldn’t either.

I admire the original Kenzo Flower (she said diplomatically), but I much prefer the woody-incense Flower Oriental, or even Flower le Parfum.  And I am really looking forward to the upcoming KenzoAmour parfum, while we are on the topic of Kenzo.  The Winter Flowers bottle, as always, is lovely.

And the juice?  Very interesting.  I won’t be buying a bottle (and you will soon see why) but it wasn’t because I was bored.

Kenzo Flower the original has wild hawthorne, rose, violet, cassia, hedione, cyclosal, opoponax, white musk and vanilla, and smells like very expensive face powder to me.  It’s a nice, pretty powder, but powder is powder and that’s that.  The dominant florals are the rose and violet, in the exact powdery way some makeup smells like rose and violet.

Kenzo Winter Flowers has notes of mandarin, violet leaf, camellia, hellebore, patchouli and vanilla.  I have never smelled a camellia that had any scent other than a faint vegetal plant smell (I thought they were grown for their appearance?) but I could be wrong.  The best part of Winter Flowers is, given a few minutes it reeks — first of what I assume must be the hellebore on me, and then later of the patchouli — the dirty kind, not the medicinal kind.  Someone chime in here — it’s got that distinct stink of hawthorne, that buttered-feet smell that is both wildly compelling and a little gross.  Robin at NST notes in her review that hellebores are part of the buttercup family, and hawthorne smells to me like buttercups times ten.  Hellebores can have a variety of scents, and maybe there’s a reeking hawthorne-ish one too? I know you can buy stinking hellebores — literally, helleborus foetidus.

I have tried this several times (courtesy of Sephora) and on my skin 1) it is unisexy/masculine once you get past the first five citrus-y minutes and 2)  I find it mildly repellent, yet I cannot stop sniffing my hand when I am wearing it.  There is something wonderfully, compulsively sniffable about that patch-buttered-feet-vanilla drydown I can’t get enough of.   The vanilla reminds me a bit of Annick Goutal’s Vanille Exquise — sharp and a little burnt.  I am pretty sure I don’t want to walk around wafting this, but I may change my mind.  Stranger things have happened.  As always, YMMV (your results may vary).  Robin found it a palatable alternative to Flower and not much more, really.

Kenzo Power, I am sorry to say, was a snoozefest.  Despite the gorgeous, heavy bottle (the heft in my hand, you have no idea!  look at it!  that’s it to the right, the photo doesn’t do it credit), the creative work of Olivier Polge, and the delicious sounding notes — bergamot, coriander, cardamom, tolu balsam, cedarwood, labdanum — it goes on light and citrusy and … well, kind of dull.  It falls squarely into the category of those super-light Kenzos for people who don’t want to smell like much of anything.  It’s inoffensive, less weirdly powdery than the Peace/Vintage Edition, and … meh.  It’s possible to do a light, weird spice scent — CdG 8 88 comes to mind — but this thing I can do without.  Keeping my fingers crossed for the lovely gold KenzoAmour Le Parfum…

Finally got my little sample of Frederic Malle’s newest, Dans tes Bras.  Created by Maurice Roucel, it has notes of bergamot, clove, violet, jasmine, sandalwood, patchouli, salicylates, incense, Cashmeran (a mix of musk, woods, and resin), heliotrope and white musk.  DtB starts off very rooty and earthy, the dirt elements of woods and iris.  There’s some hints of musk, but it stays right in that very gorgeous dirt smell for a long time.  There are hints of the other notes floating around, thought I get more violet early on, and the incense and musk embellish the composition.  Oddly enough, I sprayed it on my arm instead of my hands, and I get much more violet.  This fragrance feels like fall to me, the outdoors, crisp and cold. I went out for a run on Sunday morning - it was cold and drizzly, and as I ran looking up at the trees turning color on the parkway, my eyes filled up with tears at how beautiful this world can be.  I should have been wearing Dans tes Bras, that would have made it perfect

This won’t appeal to everyone, but it certainly has itched my fragrance scratch in an almost pervy way.  It is different, knows what it is, and isn’t afraid.  More like this, please.  Oh, wait, there will be another on Thursday as I sniff Amouage’s hidden and sky-high priced treasure, Homage.  I should have picked my nose up off the floor by then.

Hey, guess what?!?  In this month’s Elle (with Nicole Kidman on the cover) there’s an article about hardcore perfume addiction, featuring an interview with the Karens of Sniffapalooza, as well as mentions of Now Smell This, Bois de Jasmin, and … the Posse!!!  Congrats, everyone! Polishing my sidearms and brushing my cowgirl hat in anticipation of some new readers!

I was over at Saks last week, as usual, but not for the usual reasons.  As I detailed yesterday, I’m on a bit of a nail polish kick.  What I wanted was Chanel’s Rouge Noir nail varnish, which is the original Vamp color, rather than the glittery burgundy Chanel is now calling Vamp in the U.S.   I was irritated to discover it’s only available in a set of three different polishes (for $60) and, while one of the other colors is okay, the pale one is of no interest.  I waffled about buying Chanel’s Kaleidoscope instead, which is such an amazing color.  Online photos don’t do it justice – they make it look like a true silver, but when you’re looking at it in person, it’s this fantastic pale color that’s a perfect balance between green, silver and gold.  I wish someone like OPI or China Glaze would get busy and make a dupe of it.  But I digress.

 On the counter was Jeanne Lanvin – in a tall, elegant bottle that vintage collectors would recognize as having been recycled from My Sin and Arpege bottles of the past.  The cap is silver-toned, with the mother-and-child monogram most familiar from Arpege, and it’s one of the rare bottles that looks better in person than in photos.  It is the sort of bottle that I immediately want sitting on my dresser, projecting its quiet elegance.

And if all I were interested in was the bottle, we’d be set.  Unfortunately, I care about the fragrance inside, and here the news is not so wonderful.  Jeanne Lanvin is clearly designed to appeal to the same younger, fruity-floral-loving audience targeted by the re-make of Rumeur, which was also (presumably) designed to reel some customers into the venerable house.  Notes are blackberry, citrus, pear, peony, freesia, raspberry, sandalwood, amber and musk.  The fragrance was done by Anne Flipo and if you poke around online you can read quotes of the press releases articulating the desire that the fragrance be young, simple, and yet (!) sophisticated.

They hit two out of three.  The very nice SA showing it to me guessed apple and peony and she wasn’t far off.  The development is pretty minimal – it goes on in a burst of  idealized (rather than juicy) fruits and flowers; there is a slightly more powdery phase; then we’re on to the requisite PG-rated slightly gourmand musk.  It makes the new Rumeur look edgy in comparison.  The fragrance is also very light, at least to my nose; although it is (I think) an Eau de Parfum, it wears like a cologne.  An hour after application I could barely smelling it.

There exists in my mind a distinct perfume category: fragrance for women who like the idea of fragrance but don’t want to … you know … actually smell like anything.  They want a pretty bottle and a decent aspirational brand and the grown-up appeal of putting on perfume before work or a night on the town.  They just don’t want to smell it.  This would fit in there nicely, as would more than one of the Hermessences.   I can’t say I’m opposed to the idea, exactly – after all, I would rather smell (or more accurately, not smell) this on the women around me than some other gag-worthy fragrances I could name.   But I expected more from Alber Elbaz, their designer of often-breathtaking dresses like the two I’ve dropped in on this page from the fall collection.  I guess I’m not getting it.

I blame Louise, mostly.

Back in the day I had a spate of painting my nails various office-unfriendly colors — glittery, fire-engine reds, mostly — because … well, because I could.  I have super-hard nails (nobody appreciates things unless they don’t have them) and I can grow them to ridiculous lengths if I’m not paying attention.  Sort of, damn, got to cut those claws down.  Yes, I know you soft nailed people are reeeaaallly feeling my pain on that one.  Anyway, then I got a real job and had kids and blah blah blah and painting my nails became one of those things I did before, say, going to a wedding, using some monumentally boring pale pink like Essie Ballet Slippers.  The other 360 days of the year I kept them clean, short and varnish-free.

Then I was going to Chicago and figured, why not?  So I borrowed some random cafe latte-looking deal from the girls, and in a fit of creativity painted fuchsia glitter on top, and whoa Nellie.   It was really fun.  It looked great.

Then Louise gave my girls a bunch of fun, hip colors she was weeding from her collection, and now I am going to hell, because not only am I stealing colors from them, and hissing when they try to take them back, but I sort of skipped the fun, cheerful intermediate stuff and went right to Full Goth.   I am pale, and I ask you — if you aren’t going to wear something Scarlet Whore-ish, why not something almost black?  Every deep, dark shade provides a wonderful contrast with my skin.  This week’s favorite color combination (yessss, my pretties!!  Already layering!!!) involves OPI’s Lincoln Park After Dark, a vamp-y scab-colored red-brown, on top of any random shade of mid-blue or green — resulting in something the color of a deep, dark bruise.  Go ahead, shudder.  It’s beautiful.  No, seriously.

Only sticking this up here today (I have to go slap on another coat of OPI Russian Navy and pick up my father) because I’m sensing some interesting parallels with my perfume addiction.  First: years of playing it safe/lack of interest.  Then: for some random reason, noticing that nail polish comes in fun colors, not just dusty rose and beige — and since I’m not arguing a case before The Supreme Court tomorrow, who cares what people think? (After all, if Chanel is making navy and black, it just can’t be that outre any more, outside of my stodgy little neck of the woods.)  The result:  my teenage daughter looking askance at my nails and saying, “wow, mom… that is really … dark.”  Voila — the nail equivalent of their not infrequent comment that my perfume is really strong.

My current infatuation with extreme colors reminds me of when I started to sniff fragrance — first, a little niche-y stuff like L’Artisan, and then more oddball stuff like Messe de Minuit, and then I only wanted to sniff the darkest, ripest, skankiest, leatheriest, most rubbery, civet-infested … you get the picture.  It was like playing Fragrance Fear Factor. I’m not sorry I’ve moved on from that phase of my sniffage, but gosh, it was fun while it lasted.   There’s something very addictive and perverse and strangely intense about that level of infatuation with fragrance.

images swiped from eBay: OPI Russian Navy (top) and Lincoln Park After Dark (bottom.)

(Today’s guest poster – Shelley!  Talking about our good times at the Chi-Cocoa Scentsation in September.)

Three Perfumistas walk into a bar…

Well, 30+, not 3.  The bar was part of a film production house.  And despite the fact that almost nobody knew anybody else at the start of what at that point was a very long day, no punches or punch lines ensued.

In the best demonstration of how conventional wisdom just isn’t always so wise, I fully enjoyed the time I spent with a big space full of people who, until that morning, I had never laid eyes on in my life.  Tall, short, outfitted in sheath dresses & full jewelry or jeans and a sweater, able to discuss the implications of “headspace technology” or still clarifying what a drydown means.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have piles of chocolate out on the table, good eats on the counter, and a little vino by the glass.  And we were all wiped, having spent the day putting our sniffers through quite the workout, with monsoon windsprints marking the space in between huffings.

But wait:  there was a piece de resistance to our pampering — not one but two set ups of samples from niche perfumers, one of which came with the perfumer herself.  In one anteroom:  a range of Neil Morris scents, including… Burnt Amber, Spectral Violet, le Parfum d’Ida, Izmir, Cathedral, Afire, Burnt Amber, Dark Earth, Gotham, Spectral Violet, Clear, Flowers for Men: Gardenia…and yes, the anxiously awaited Prowl.  In another anteroom: a set of Historical Fragrances, Soivohle’ blends, and LZ fragrance accords… along with La Liz (Liz Zorn, on left in photo) herself, answering every question that came her way.  

Aside:  I had been waiting nearly a year to try Spectral Violet.  Who knew that Burnt Amber would divert me?  (Well, maybe I should have; I do tend to like ambers.)  But it was Prowl that took the cake for me.  That’s now at the top of my “order these samps” queue…

Let’s see, was it a bit decadent to have a sort of personal perfume party? Yes.  Was it nearly overwhelming to have such an embarrassment of scent riches?  Yes.  Was it the best idea since niche perfumery/scents for layering/sliced bread/if we can send a man to the moon, why can’t we have a private perfume party?  Heck, yeah.

I mean, c’mon:  you could go to the perfumer’s display, sniff, have a nosh, go back and apply a sample (or two or three) to explore skin chemistry, and check out the drydown with a couple dozen new best scent friends, go back AGAIN and if it was Liz, ask questions about what was going on with the blend/drydown/philosophy of the scent, AND still leave the joint with vials of samples to further test drive at home.  Seriously.  Online swapping and begging samps from your favorite perfume rep is great and all, but wouldn’t you rather just have it waiting for you…with eats and a pleasant party down the hall?

While I had no idea at 8:00 that morning what was in store for me, I know that at 8:00 pm, with my shoes off, my feet up, surrounded by a bunch of folks I would happily invite to share a cuppa in my kitchen, booty from the day in my bag, fresh samps on my arms and in my hands…I was happy.  And that would have been true without the chocolate.

I don’t know who Riley is, really, but I’m pretty sure I was leading his life, at least for one night. 

(PS – from March – today’s photo of Liz Zorn showing her stuff courtesy of Musette, and don’t forget to check the other photos if you haven’t, they’re in the photoblog at left!)

Being raised on a farm, my parents were very traditional about the roles of men and women.  Women did women’s work and men’s work, and men only did men’s work. That left the women to do farmwork, plus all the cooking, cleaning and housework.  It took me until about the age of 8 to see that as the crap deal it was.  From that day forward, I hated cooking, and I never looked back on that decision to hate.

Up until now, I do as little of it as I can and caterwaul every time I get stuck cooking anything. By Jeeves, my favorite delivery service, can never go out of business or I will live on toasted cheese sandwiches and crackers.

This thought has entered my mind recently:  perhaps the things I think I hate bear the scrutiny of an adult and not a torched little girl. So… I’ve signed up for some cooking classes. Tonight was fish and seafood, and it was flipping great!  Sometimes it turns out that what hate are the things you don’t really know how to do well, and when you learn about them, without fear, the door opens to something you may learn to love.

For those of you new’ish to perfume and overwhelmed, especially when we trot out these lists of perfumes you may never have heard of, think of it as a reference list to go back to over the years.   Don’t be scared, you just sniff a few things at a time, these perfumes will be around forever.

Without further ado, these are the next 25 perfumes voted on by you guys for 2008 (not perfumes new in 2008, but of all perfumes).  It’s an interesting next tier to the list.

• Bond Chinatown
•  Guerlain Vol de Nuit
• Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan
• Serge Lutens Musc Koublai Khan  (woo-hooo!!!)
• Caron Narcisse Noir
• Comme des Garcons Avignon
• Chanel No. 22 (for you, March)
• Frederice Malle Parfume de Therese
• Guerlain Attrape-Coeur
• Guerlain Bois d’Armenie
• Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles
• L’Artisan Tea for Two
• Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle
• Serge Lutens Un Bois vanille
• Bvlgari Black
• Caron Parfum Sacre
• Chanel Coco
• Dior Diorissimo
• Hermes Un Jardin Sur Le Nil
• L’Artisan Safran Troublant
• Parfum DelRae Amoureuse
• Serge Lutens A La Nuit
• The Different Company Sel de Vetiver
• Balmain Jolie Madame
• Caron En Evion

Tomorrow or this weekend I’ll post the rest of the top 100, just so y’all can have the entire list.  What perfume are you most disappointed did not make the top 50?