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?

Lee

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, provenà§al 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?

Patty

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.

March

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.

Patty

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

March