I decided today (Sunday) was close enough to December to haul my Christmas decorations out and get my holiday mojo working.  We went to church first for some prayers and a dose of Christmas carols, then ransacked the attic for the balance of the day, with Rudolph in the background and a break to bake sugar cookies.  If you are looking for a quiet, tasteful display of elegant ornamentation, conveying the true, simple spirit of the holiday, then by all means don’t come to my house.  (Don’t go to Patty’s house either — I wonder how her butt-shaking motorized Santa survived the winter snows?)  I’ve gotten the Cheese to come around on this, sort of.  His mother was the kind of woman who thought putting a single string of white lights on the tree was gilding the lily.  In my house growing up we decorated the tree until I couldn’t find another square inch of artificial branch to dangle a seahorse or a handmade cyclops Rudolph from.

Today, in addition to setting out my parents’ ratty and beloved 1950s cardboard village (remember those?) replete with trees and one-armed, scary-looking elf revelers, we have a huge wooden, German-made, candle-powered spinning Christmas pyramid that fascinates my kids as much as it did me at their age.  We arranged my mother’s mantel nativity scene to which my children have thoughtfully added nativity elephants, snowmen, Chinese figurines, lions, a llama, a dinosaur, a Lego pirate and Kuan Yin, the goddess of compassion.

Tonight I snuck out to see a flamenco performance, which fed the only parts of my soul that hadn’t been fed by a day of shameless holiday revelry with my kids.  The result is a quickie perfume post.  Let’s tackle Byredo Pulp.

When I first smelled Pulp, I thought immediately of Roald Dahl’s wonderfully lurid children’s book James and the Giant Peach, and the scene where the peach breaks loose from the tree, hurtles downhill and smashes those hateful aunts Sponge and Spiker  — thereby introducing millions of young readers to the guilty pleasure of schadenfreude.   Pulp is something like that giant peach in terms of aim and effect.  It has no steering wheel, no breaks, no catalytic converter, no emissions control, no airbags.  Consider carefully whether you want to throw yourself in front of it.

Pulp’s notes are bergamot, fig, blackcurrant, apple, tiare, peach flower, cedar and praline, combined to make “a sweet, green fragrance.”  I know, I know, that sounds disgusting.  But on Louise and on me, it’s much more tart than it sounds — on Louise it’s almost pure grapefruit with some sap notes, and on me it’s more a tart berry – lingonberry jam, maybe, or homemade cranberry sauce with very little sugar.  If it were a taste, your mouth would pucker and your eyes would water.  It gets a little sweeter as it dries down, but not much, so don’t let the word “praline” frighten you.  The fig is very green, more leaves/bark than fruit.

Honestly?  I cannot imagine wearing this.  It’s huge — insane sillage and longevity, and no volume control whatsoever.   It’s the sort of fragrance that would have me chewing my own arm off after a few hours just to get away from it.  But I admit it smelled divine on Louise’s wimpy-fragrance-killing skin.  I can’t think of anything really like it; if you like big green galbanum-laced meanies (Louise also mentioned Miller et Bertaux’ Green Green Green and Green, although Pulp is much more aggressive) this might be your sort of thing.   It’s got that in-your-face attitude.

As far as I know, Byredo Pulp is available in the US only at Barney’s, for $190, and I think a bottle would last you forever.

image, Alexandria’s library: the extraordinary illustrations of the original volume of James and the Giant Peach, which I’ve enjoyed inflicting on my own children; German Christmas pyramid much like ours, christmas-treasures.com

March

The Big Cheese is stuck in Yangon, Burma (unless he’s still in Mandalay) because all the flights home involve – whoops! – Bangkok, and it doesn´t look like that´s resolving itself immediately.  There´s a lot of political posturing going on there, but it´s getting harder to imagine an outcome other than the Thai military going after the crowd of protesters occupying the airports.   The Cheese has been gone much of November, and he was coming home next week, until this happened.  The routes out of Yangon are pretty limited, and obviously he doesn´t have Uncle Sam offering him a helping hand either.  The Burmese (or maybe their neighbors) have now closed the borders so he can´t get out over land either.  It could be worse, of course – he could be in Mumbai, bless those people – but still.  I´m going to ask Santa to drop him down my chimney before Christmas.

How do I do it?  I am an excellent juggler.  I have a lot of balls in the air at a given time.  You should see my moves.  But sometimes I feel like dropping both hands, turning my back and walking away.  Let the balls fall where they may.  I´m tired of being a juggler.  I´m ready to audition for a different role in the circus.  Clown, maybe.  Even the concession stand is looking good at this point.

I drown my sorrows in a bottle, as many of you do.  On Thanksgiving it was vintage Femme.  I was in a bit of a … mood.  And trying to get my game face on for the extended family.  I stared at my fragrance collection, sniffed a few atomizers.  It was all wrong.  Then I popped the top off my Femme lipstick spray.  That thing is so raunchy it makes me laugh.  It´s like being smacked across the face by an angry, damp civet holding a riding crop in one paw and a plum in its mouth.  A discreet little spray to one wrist, which I dabbed on my neck, and off we went.  The first thing Buckethead said when I got in the car was, what´s that smell?  And you could tell he wasn´t thinking about pumpkin pie, either.  More like, what died?  I don´t know whether my dining companions enjoyed it much (my brother in law is mostly anosmic, which maybe was a good thing) but it was just the get-over-yourself kick in the pants I needed.

I need to stop reading the news before bedtime – I have the most terrible dreams, dreams of conflagrations and destruction.  Dreams where I am always searching desperately for one or more of my children while trying not to lose the others, pushing against the fleeing tide of humanity.  I wake up at 2 or 4 am, panting in fear.  No wonder so many people drop dead in the small hours.

So.  We´re still fighting Buckethead´s stomach bug, about which I will say nothing further, and I´m catching up on some pleasure reading, and eating some tasty turkey leftovers.   Let me take my Mope Hat off and mention a couple things.

First off, the Lipstick Drama continues.  I fell in love with NARS Jungle Red, a slightly warm red that on my lips is almost true, but brighter than MAC Russian Red.  I´m assiduously avoiding the word “orange” in favor of “tomato.”  I had the NARS gal put some on and suggest a blush, and what the hell – I went for it.  NARS Exhibit A.  I´ll drop a picture in here at left.  There it is, folks – the clown makeup I need for my new life.  I have to put, like, seven grains of it on my face – the SA literally rested the brush briefly on the blush and then shook it off – but man, it is beautiful on my skin with a red lip.   If you go look at the reviews on MUA, the range of skin tones wearing this thing is amusing.  Lots of dark-skinned women are wearing it, but everybody else is too, including palefaces like yours truly.  Also, I forgot to mention this last time, but — have you all noticed how much the lighting in Sephora SUCKS?  Sure, it’s bright enough — but the colors read so, so off in their store lighting — I am shocked that they’ve done that poor a lighting job in a store that’s devoted to makeup.  Something about the lighting shifts everything in the orange direction and mutes the blue tones.  So — try a lipstick on, it’s neutral in the store and hot pink in the hallway.  Try an “orange” lipstick on and discover it’s true red in natural light.  How dumb is that?

I´m still poking around for a true neutral blush – Strada was just okay, a little muted on me.  Maybe one of the Bobbi bronzers?  It´s hard to find a neutral blush without shimmer.   The other thing that happened was, in the process of blotting off 55 red lipsticks, I discovered that in spite of all cool-toned makeup lore out there, I really can work a warm lip – think salmon or coral or even orange, if it´s more creamsicle and less pumpkin.  I think it´s because it balances out the weird tones of my lip (seriously, around the perimeter they are faintly blue, and ugh).  MAC Vegas Volt was just a hair too Faye Dunaway orange on me, but Crosswires and the (recently d/c´d) Eager were lovely.   So, two points – one, you fair skinned, cool toned gals might want to consider taking a walk on the warm side.  Two – if there´s one thing I´ve learned from this experience as a makeup newbie, it´s that I need to follow fewer “rules” and play more with the colors the way I play with paints.  I´m so boring the way I do my makeup.  This was really, really fun, and thanks to all of you for your suggestions, which I’m still ferreting out and testing, and a special shout-out to Louise for her patience and humor while I tried on 35 (55?) lippies, and to Gina for all her great advice.

One more nod in the fragrance direction – I´m infatuated with Le Labo Poivre 23.  I can´t think of a single thing to say in a review that Lee and Patty didn´t say already.  I´m less of a Le Labo fan than many of you.  In fact the only one I wear is Vetiver (which doesn´t even smell like vetiver.)  Poivre 23 is a pepper-incense of phenomenal sillage, with a vanillic-incense drydown that was astonishing in its beauty.  Every now and again on the blogs we kick around the idea of, how much is a fragrance “worth?”   If you´d asked me before I´d smelled it whether this London exclusive was the $400, I think I´ve got that right, I´d have laughed in your face and said, no way.  But I don´t really have anything that smells like this.  It´s not about complexity – it´s like someone hit a bell and struck a deep, extraordinarily beautiful note that just went on forever.  I still don´t want a $400 bottle, but I´m trying to weasel in on a split, and I encourage anyone who´s interested in incense to cough up for a sample.

Finally, nail polish note – my local CVS has Barielle, and I bought Misbehaving Mistress.  Wow – a color that reads right in between gunmetal and brown.  It´s so cool.  It´s a faint shimmer, technically, but on the nails looks more like a super-glossy cream.  Fans of odd colors like Jacques, Metro Chic and some of those RBLs should check this one out.  Mistress gets extra points for not fading to black, even in dim indoor light.

March

Happy almost-Thanksgiving, everyone!   Safe travels if you´re heading off somewhere.  We´re going to leave this post up through the weekend.  Continuing our efforts to overcome the massive estrogenic overload on the blog due to my recent lipstick/nail polish posts, I´ve found two tasty men´s scents I want to blog about.  With the holiday season coming up, and in the spirit of gift-giving to someone other than, you know … yourself, today´s post is on a couple of giftable men´s scents with the added bonus that you may want to sneak a spray of them too. 

Zirh Ikon – new at Bloomie´s.  You know what I love?  All sorts of things, including hot buttermilk biscuits and big, sparkly cocktail rings.  But I also love running into a new fragrance and sniffing it and falling into instant love, which as you know is expressed by the mathematical formula:

E=mcSqueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Total, total love on this one. Notes are: cardamom, davana, ginger, lemon, orris, labdanum, cinnamon, clove buds, frankincense, patchouli, cedarwood, vetiver, amber.

My first thought smelling it was, this would fit right into the CdG Incense series.  You know where I´d plug it in?  Right on top of Ourzo — Ortzo … Ourzazo … that spicy one I can´t spell, much less say.  I´d delete Orzowhatsit on the grounds (sorry!) it smells bad on me, and replace it with Ikon.

I popped over to Kevin´s review and was amused to see he immediately came up with the CdG as well, although to him Ikon is softer and lighter.  This is one of those men´s-shelf scents women could wear without hesitation and without waiting for some guy-signifier opening (e.g., citrus-bergamot) to fade.  In fact I kind of wonder whether men might find it a little feminine – although I guess you´re supposed to be reassured by that very manly-looking bottle.

I get the mother lode of cardamom and ginger up front, which I love.  The orris is more powdery/violet than rooty on me, and contributes along with the frankincense to the instant “spicy/incense” read of the scent.  I kept waiting for the other guy-frag shoe to drop.  You know what I mean – a big fat hit of cedar or some man-cologne accord – but it never happened.  The cardamom fades a bit, sadly, but never goes away, and the clove helps keep things from getting too dark.  It´s very smooth; the patchouli is there but pretty clean and not camphorous.  It gets a little woodier in the drydown, but still very unisex.  I thought it was wonderful just the way it is.  Kevin doesn´t get much iris so he layered it over Prada Infusion d´Iris with nice results.  I did the same layering thing with the Jo Malone Black Vetyver Café  – and okay, you could probably call the result Cliché Pour Homme, but it smelled wonderful. 

I liked it so much I did three big sprays at Bloomies, and days later it´s still lingering on my scarf, making me very happy.  The bottle, as you can see, isn´t stunning, but it isn´t hideous either.   And best of all, because it´s a department store man-frag it´s $50, and what´s not to like about that?

Second — Chanel Allure Homme Edition Blanche.  The Allures (male and female) don´t do much for me, but Kevin liked it, and he and I clearly like some of the same things, so I thought it was worth checking out.  They have it at Bloomies but I´ve never seen it anywhere else, maybe it´s exclusive. 

Like Kevin, I can´t argue that Edition Blanche is in any way wildly innovative, but it sure smells nice. Jacques Polge did the scent, notes are lemon, bergamot, cedar, sandalwood, tonka bean, white musk, vetiver, ginger, amber, vanilla, white and pink pepper.  I might buy Zirh Ikon for myself, but if I wanted a younger, hipper-looking Chanel that smelled delicious I´d go for this one.  Again, apologies to Kevin – I swear I´m not blog-lifting – but we both used the word  “delicious” and it smells expensive and sophisticated, two concepts pretty much missing from the original and Allure Sport.  Yeah, it´s got your standard-issue top, but the ginger and pepper kick it up into something fun, and it dries down into an elegant musk-vetiver that´s saved from utter guy-frag dullsville by that creamy vanilla.  The bottle´s elegant in its own quiet but kinda hip way — it’s a matte metal and feels great in the hand.   I think the guys on Basenotes are pretty meh about this – again, no argument from me that it´s breaking new fragrance ground.  But sometimes … particularly if you´re giving a gift, and you want to play it a little safe and not look like a total cheapskate … you just need a very nice, approachable man scent.  This definitely qualifies, in my opinion, as a good choice for the less experienced consumer.

I´d love to hear:  are there any scents you bought for your man just so you could borrow them?  Or, are there scents of yours he´s run off with, without any prompting from you?   The Big Cheese has just done this for the first time – my Jo Malone Black Vetyver Café seems to have found its way to his dresser.

March

Today we have two perfumes that couldn’t be more different.  Let’s start with Beauty – Parfums de Rosine’s newsest release, Rose Praline.  Notes of cardamom, bergamot, rose essences, Geranium, Rosen, grated chocolat, Lapsang Suchang Tea, Ambra, sandalwood, musk, cocoa make up this scent.  It’s a little bit of a departure for Rosine. I’m not sure they’ve done a rose gourmand before, have they?  Now, just as my bias, I love rose perfumes as much as March doesn’t.   But only when they are done right, and I’ve been a big fan of the Rosines for a long time because they are so darn obsessive about roses and have tried about every treatment possible.  I’m anxious for them to get to a wheaty/bready/hay rose next – I mean, they should, shouldn’t they?

But let’s look at this one instead of the one I want them to make. It goes on somewhat sweet, with that little girl beautiful dewy rose quality, slightly candied, like a sugar crystal rose or wedding cake rose… but with a tartness.  Just when I’m thinking ruh-roh, this may be too much, that crystaline quality starts fading, and I get tea and a little cocoa and chocolate rolling up, and I swear, there are moments when I think it is a Montale and some oud and chocolate is flipping around in there, but that can’t be.  The chocolate and tea are not overpowering, but has this very subtle quality that takes the sweetness down to the proper notch.  Okay, it’s still a candy rose, but one that has a nice dark chocolate and a cup of tea sitting by it for a proper scented meal.  I really like this, and I’m not sure why since it really shouldn’t be something I like, but Rosine tends to make these things usually work out for me, no matter what, and it is just sweet and lovely.  If you’re not a fan of the rose or gourmands, keep walking, but if you like either the rose or gourmands, give this a sniff.

Now let’s take a look at the beast – Social Creature’s newest creation, Frankfurt Kitchen. Made to celebrate the independence of women, I presume from the kitchen, it has notes of resins, peppermint, coffee and osmanthus.  That line-up of notes sounds pretty good.  And it is, ohmy, resiny beyond belief, with a big peppermint thrown right in the middle of it.  Those two things pretty much drown out the coffee and osmanthus, though the coffee is there if you like it burnt.  But there’s something somewhat compelling about this, even though my nose is complaining bitterly about it.  It feels much more masculine and leathery, like I’ve had my chaps on for a couple of days.  Do I get any kitchen out of this? No.  Mostly leather – rough leather with a little mint.  It’s sure not uninteresting and mellows out to something I’m pretty much compulsively sniffing.

One hand — all sweetness and confectionary light.  Other hand — leather pants with a melted peppermint in the pocket.  Oddly enough, I like them both.

Drop a comment to be entered in a drawing for a sample of each.

Patty

As regular readers know, I am an unaplogetic fan of the original KenzoAmour.  I think you either like it or you find it completely boring.  As Robin (a fellow fan) notes in her thoughtful review on Now Smell This:

 “Amour is, if anything, an extraordinarily tame fragrance: there is nothing to ruffle the surface other than a persistent undertone of dark wood and a dash of incense. But as with rice pudding, it is the blandness itself that is compelling; it just smells nice, and there is something rather calming about it.”   

Which pretty much captures the allure of KenzoAmour for me.  I wear it the way I drink tea – without a lot of thought, on a regular basis, in pursuit of comfort.  Maybe KenzoAmour isn´t that scent for you, but I think many/most perfume fans have a fragrance that does the same basic job for them.

So I´d been waiting impatiently for the new KenzoAmour Le Parfum to arrive in stores.  It went “live” in the online Sephora store several weeks ago, but I refused to order it because my unsniffed-purchase track record is so terrible it approaches jinx level.  It´s like the fragrance fairies put a curse on my unsniffed buys.  Even something that looks like a sure thing, and that I could return to Sephora if I didn´t like, would almost certainly be a failure.  So I haunted our local store like a cranky ghost.  Just when I gave up in despair and begged a sample off Robin (thus avoiding the curse) it showed up in our mall, and I´ve had the chance to try it several times.

I thought this would be a Venn-diagram-type review, where I´d be discussing where the two scents overlap and where they differ, but instead I´m left with the persistent image of two distinct musical pieces being played on opposite ends of the piano. 

The original KenzoAmour EdP´s notes are cherry blossom, rice steam, white tea, frangipani, heliotrope, thanaka wood, incense, vanilla and musk.  It´s played at a higher pitch – the sweet, cherry opening smell of flowers and heliotrope giving way rapidly to the heart of the fragrance, woody and with the smell of cooking rice, followed by vanilla, soft musk and incense.  It´s not remotely foody, despite that list of notes – there´s nothing there you would eat – but if it works on you as it does for me, it is a day-long skin scent, and extraordinarily comforting.

KenzoAmour Le Parfum, in a matte gold version of the same funky, modernist Karim Rashid bottle that the original came in, might have been simply a stronger version of the original.  Here´s the blurb from Sephora: “The gold of the East dwells at the heart of KenzoAmour le Parfum—a woody, oriental fragrance composed of rich and precious ingredients: Patchouli, Benzoin Balm of Siam, Amber, and Incense mixed with the original KenzoAmour notes.”  Sephora lists the notes of Le Parfum as incense, rice steam, amber, patchouli, frangipani, benzoin, vanilla.   Regardless of what Sephora says about mixing in the original notes, the old, sweet heliotropin top of the EdP is missing – probably a blessing for those who found it either too sweet or too evocative of Play-Doh.  Instead, Le Parfum takes place on the low end of the piano.  I get very little development – some (clean) patchouli, almost no florals, the original, lovely rice steam, lots of benzoin, and a dark vanilla over a woody, ambery base.  My favorite part of the parfum is that benzoin.  Le Parfum is hardly masculine, but it´s considerably darker and more unisex than the original.  It´s a little burnt, in an attractive way, like a flan instead of rice pudding.

Out of curiosity I did one of those seven-spritz numbers on myself one day in Sephora, including my hair, just to see what would happen – and it was fine, other than the SA looking at me strangely.  I thought at a higher concentration I might get a hint of the Play-Doh that Robin mentions in her review of the parfum, the heliotrope of the original having been supplemented/replaced with the even more Play-Doh-evoking amber.  I don´t know how you make “amber” in a fragrance, and I assume there are different choices for the chemical construct, as there are for musks.  Thankfully (crossing myself frantically and spitting over my shoulder) I, who have brought out the Play-Doh in more than one otherwise attractive fragrance, get none here.

I thought Le Parfum might resemble Kenzo Flower Oriental in its woody masculinity, but a resniff of Oriental proved me wrong.  Oriental is much more floral with the incense grafted on.  KenzoAmour Le Parfum and the EDP get closer together in the drydown, and I can´t help but think they´d layer beautifully.  As with the EDP, I find the lasting power very good  for a scent that does not wear heavily.

I delayed this review for a week, pondering the questions:  if the original didn’t do anything for you, might you like this any better?  I’ll offer a tentative yes — assuming you get benzoin and not just, say, ambernilla.  Which did I prefer?  Honestly, I’d have to say the original.  Lovely as Le Parfum is, without its peculiar, sweet milky-floral top, it doesn’t comfort me quite as much.  For others, that same lack of sweetness might be just the ticket.

The gold bottle´s getting some love on the blogs and boards, but seeing it at Sephora next to the others I admit my heart sank a little.   I came to appreciate the original, distinctive bottle shape, although it looks a little odd in my collection.  To my eye, the exterior finish for Le Parfum seems better in the concept than the execution, and is darker in real life than in the photo above.  It´s small (only 30ml) and ideally the matte, dark gold exterior would look like painted, burnished wood – my idea of what they were maybe going for.  But instead it looks a little cheap, like that spray-on antique-gold-leaf you´d find in a craft store.  A bright, shiny, mirror-finish plasticized gold might have been another fun option with that mod-design bottle, or black, which I think would be quite elegant.

top image: KenzoAmour Le Parfum, online at Sephora, $65, free shipping, and I feel compelled to point out they have the wee bottle gift set of the regular KenzoAmour again, 3 mini bottles for $38, image also included here because they are so darn cute.

March