Perfume Incident 1 – the guy at the Bobbi Brown counter got my Full Nasal Nuzzle, while I moaned a little in ecstasy.  I asked permission to dive in there first. I had to know, what was he wearing?  It was Mugler Alien, for women.  Wow.  It certainly didn´t smell like that on me.  Men, out with it – is there some ladies´ fragrance you wear regularly, and do you get any feedback?

Perfume Incident 2 – attending a band concert at Diva´s high school.  I was fooling around with my MDCI decants beforehand and threw on the one that Luca Turin mentions has “an intensely animalic jasmine.”  Whoops.  I had absolutely no time to do anything about it, so in desperation I … sprayed Coco Mademoiselle all over myself!  I reeked, but I tell myself at least I smelled like Macy´s and not some sex club.  Also, that Coco Mad is kind of growing on me.   If I´m wearing some skankalicious number like Youth Dew and need to lighten things up a bit, a little dab´ll do ya.

On to Lipstick.  This will be my last post before New Year´s, and probably be my last post on red lips, which appears to have turned into my signature look, including a quick swipe before I walk the twins to the bus stop in the morning.  There are people who cheerfully own 27 red lippies, and I am not one of them.  I want one or two in each category of red.  I tried dozens of red lipsticks (just ask Saint Louise) but only bought a few:

1) Two long-wearing matte reds — MAC Russian Red, which is when I lost my red lipstick virginity; and the slightly warmer NARS Jungle Red.  Dry lipped people would, I think, have trouble pulling these off without some kind of lip conditioner.  Also, a mirror and a lip pencil or brush are the only way I can work this, it´s a very precision look.

2) A glossy red lipstick.  Not a lip gloss, not sheer, not a shimmer.  The runners up:

• the ultra-hydrating Lancome Absolute Rouge I am still pining for but is clearly designed for someone with drier lips than mine. 
• Bobbi Brown Red, a fun, true red that is not quite as glossy as what I was looking for. 
• Clinique´s Party Red, a rich, true red with a light shine to it.
•  Shu Uemura 165 featured in Allure as being a universally flattering red, and they showed it on Caucasian, Asian and African-American models.  It looked great them but wasn´t particularly flattering on me – too pink and too sheer.
•  Sisley has a gorgeous bright red (and I´m sorry I lost the name) with delicious sheen, but I didn´t like the taste. 
•  Dior 999 Celebrity Red, which frequently winds up in makeup spreads in places like Vogue, an eyecatching red that is slightly warmer than the others I mentioned.   

In the end I bought … MAC Brave Red.  I am turning into quite the MAC fan.  Brave Red managed to 1) be glossy while 2) staying put without a huge amount of effort on my part.  It´s a true red on me, and pink on Louise (go figure), so YMMV.  I also got the MAC liner in Brick because … the SA was adorable and it looked good?  And also their lip primer.  And their makeup wipes.  And why not that ridiculous Bankroll green eye pencil because I´ve never seen anything like it?  I put it over my gray liner which toned the whole thing down. 

3) Eventually I relented and bought two blue-reds.  It is no surprise that, with my coloring, the SAs kept trying to overcome my resistance to cooler toned reds.  I fell in love with and bought:

Clinique in Red-y To Wear, a pinky red which is apparently a smash hit and is sold out at many of their counters, I had to try three stores to get ahold of one to purchase.  It´s only $15 and is one of their long wear colors. Surprisingly long lasting.  It´s moist enough I need a lip pencil if I want a crisp edge, which I do, but if you don´t care you could probably just slap it on.  I bought a cheapie Revlon bright red pencil for this at CVS and it works fine.

We end our lipstick saga with the elegant young Asian woman at the Dior counter at Nordstrom who insisted that I try on some random blue-red lippie, her favorite red in the line, it would look amazing on me blah blah blah.  She was so nice eventually I did: Rouge Dior Red Premiere 752, which turns out to be the winner of InStyle magazine’s Best Red Lipstick award for 2008.  I stared at myself transfixed, then looked away from the mirror long enough to hand her my MasterCard.  If Snow White moved to the big city and went to work in a store that sold expensive, slightly outre leather goods, her lipstick would be this color.  It skates the razor edge between red and pink, with color saturation that would make Walt Disney smile and that fabulous tooth-whitening effect that the right cool toned red gives you.

So there you have it.  The Big Cheese hasn´t said much about my lips, but I´m kind of enjoying my suburban mom Dita Von Teese moment. Be sure to mention any great holiday loot or guilty pleasures below, particularly of the perfume sort, I love those. I bought myself some vintage Estee Lauder Cinnabar parfum and am awestruck; still waiting for my manky vintage bottle of Youth-Dew bath oil to arrive. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

photo: me and my red lips –  NARS Jungle Red — photo courtesy of 12-year-old Enigma.  I’m wearing a (fake) Mongolian lamb scarf which is what all those wiggly lines are.

March

We’ve done our Best of 2008, but 2008 in perfume was more than just coming up with the best perfumes.  What did we get this year?  Scads of new releases, many of them pretty awful, some of them that were okay, some that were good but overpriced, and a few that were really great.  Considering there were hundred of releases, it was disheartening to see so few that were great.

I’ve been thinking a lot about which of those released this year will endure and become classics.  When I think classics, I think those perfumes that will be around and selling well in five years.

This is my prediction for the niche/mainline perfumes that I think will make that cut from 2008. My opinion is not necessarily based on the genius of the perfume or its merit.  It is based on the line it comes from, its marketing, name, etc.  We’ll see how good my crystal ball is in a few yars.

• Chanel Sycomore – Chanel brand and a great scent
• Chanel Beige – ditto
• Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere – ditto again
• Comme des Garcons Stephen Jones – I may be wrong on this one, but it’s my hopeful pick, and the packaging may be enough to help it along into a mainstream breakthrough.  One mention/picture in Allure or a star’s interview should do the trick
• Creed Love in Black – The name, the name, the name. The juice is perfectly fine, and I like it on me a lot, but it’s not a classic just based on the juice, it’s the Creed name and the image the name of the perfume invokes.
• Prada Infusion d’Homme – Prada, guys, nonoffensive, what’s not to love here?
• Ralph Lauren Notorious — not sure why exactly, but this one just seems to have some legs to it, though I think the actual perfume is a little bland.  I think the name will drive sales on it and make it one of RL’s bestsellers
• Van Cleef  & Arpels Feerie — I like this scent well enough, but I think that bottle captures attention and will drive its sales/popularity for quite a while

Now, looking ahead to what’s out there for 2009, these are the things I’m most looking forward to sniffing and believe, based on my very cloudy crystal ball will be great:

• Annick Goutal Un Matin d’Orage (Feb)
• Serge Lutens Cellophane thing (Jan)
• Hermessence Vanille Gallante (Jan)
• Monique Lhullier
• Two new CdGs, Daphne Guinness and Jun Takahashi
• Bond Brooklyn

Hmm, that’s a pretty short list for 2009.  So what’s on your list for classics for 2008 and what you think will be big and great in 2009?

Patty

The Best of 2008

The first thing that hit us when we went to pull this list together is the monumental number of fragrances released in 2008, many of which we have yet to smell, even though we’re doing our best to keep up.  We’ve revised this list several times and could just as easily have added or deleted various fragrances, so feel free to mock us or offer your own list in the comments.

•  Chanel Beige and Sycomore — Both part of Les Exclusifs, they demonstrate indisputably that Chanel still has something interesting to add to the conversation.  Sycomore is a woody vetiver that’s a must-try for any serious vetiver freak (and is also more of a powerhouse than much of Les Exclusifs.)  Beige is a classic-manner Chanel along the lines of 31 Rue Cambon that surprised both of us; for something that’s not particularly our “style” we found ourselves turning to it again and again.
• Le Labo City Exclusives — Poivre 23, Gaiac 10 and Musc 25.  As Patty notes, we are on a roll now.  March didn’t even care about these until she smelled Poivre and promptly muscled her way into a split.  Bonus points for actually smelling like their names.  Points deducted for being ridiculously expensive and difficult to get.
• Amouage Homage Attar – Smoky, woody oud and ridiculously expensive, but should we hold that against it? It really is lovely, and one little drop lasts all day.
• Amouage Lyric Women – Spicy, smoldering rose, it has a soft, enveloping, addictive quality that had Patty squirming in joy.
• Dianne Brill — March adds this as her dark horse.   Celebrity fragrances seem almost destined to fail the interest test — even people like Gwen Stefani end up releasing dull juice (albeit really cute bottles for the Harajukus.)  Dienne Brill’s not an A-list celebrity, and the fragrance is not everyone’s cup of tea/cigar/sawdust/poppers, but hats off to her for setting out with an oddball vision and producing a fragrance that achieved it.
• Stephen Jones Comme des Garcons – we are seriously overdue for another interesting violet, one of the early notes in perfumery that we swooned over together.  What is not to love about a CdG fragrance in a milliner’s hatbox that is supposed to smell like a violet colliding with a meteorite?  Smoky, inky, toasted, spicy, leathery, violet and strange, and highly wearable.
• Serge Lutens Serge Noire and Five O’Clock Au Gingembre - Noire is a love-it-or-hate-it, depending on how much armpit you get, among other things.  Five O’Clock seems either to enchant or irritate.  But both of these provoke enough rabid reaction and devotion the list seems incomplete without them.
• Cartier Roadster - Unisex, earthy, vetiver goodness, slightly mineralic, a scent you can happily wear every day or all night.  Elegantly Cartier, but keeping it unique.
• Frederic Malle Dans tes Bras - Strange and wonderful earthy, mushroomy violet, it’s a walk in a beautiful forest with a little sprig of violet posies in your hand on a sublimely happy day.  Beautifullly executed and never slick
• Rosine Rose Praline - A Gourmand rose that somehow splits the difference perfectly.  One of Rosine’s best efforts in years and a line that is far too underappreciated.
• The Woods Grow in Macy’s — okay, maybe a “molten river of woods” is the new litchi, but we’re still happy to see woody/ambery mainstream scents that don’t smell like someone barfed up a daiquiri.  Honorable Mention Shout-Out to Estee Lauder Sensuous and Amber Ylang, and Calvin Klein’s Secret Obsession.

Note: image is Bottles & Reflections (Revised) by dvaires at flickr; some rights reserved, image of “Modernity, Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely” by Josiah McElheny (2003), MOMA

For other Best of 2008 lists see Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, and Perfume-Smellin’ Things.

Patty

Every December I come up with some malarkey, outwardly expressed or not, about how things are going to be different in the new year.  A friend said something sensible to me recently about our foolish Yankee ways, wherein we transition from a holy (insert holiday here, or not) to this upbeat honey-do list of upgrades and achievements for 2009.

For days I´ve had these two lines of TS Eliot´s Ash-Wednesday stuck in my head like the world´s longest running poetry earworm:

Teach me to care and not to care

Teach me to sit still.*

I should clarify here that 1) I took a class in college which was, I think, devoted in part to Eliot and this poem because 2) I was entranced by the professor, a tortured-by-inner-demons type with deeply expressive eyes, and 3) even though I understand a fair amount of the religious reference I´d still feel like an idiot discussing it, although don´t let that stop you if you´d like to enlighten me.

But those two lines always hung with me, and they are haunting me now.  Where do I begin, as in, where does the world end and I start?  How can I live a life less revolved around strange suns and minor planets with their trajectory disturbances, or is it a joke to even think I can change familial gravity?   How do I live this … whatever it is … this life, being both the legitimate, authentic person other people have come to count on, and the other (legitimate?  authentic?) person begging to get in?  Or maybe out.  I can´t really tell which way the door´s swinging.

Teach me to care and not to care

Teach me to sit still.

It´s some kind of meditation for me now, in lieu of screaming at the twins at bedtime because their gd wet towels are on the floor of the gd wet bathroom.  Again.   To care or not to care?  I mean, somebody has to care, but I don’t care to care, at least not right now.

Teach me to care and not to care

Teach me to sit still

But does that person even exist?  Where is she?

*checking the verse online reveals the correct version as published:

teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still

Cribbing from Wikipedia: “Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.”  Also …isn’t there an Old Testament reference along the lines of, Be still and know that I Am God? Here’s an interesting discussion of the Hebrew, I wonder whether it’s correct.  Okay, now I’ve wandered off into religion.  Please don’t flame me.

March

Hey, everyone — have a wonderful holiday, however and wherever you are spending it, and we’ll see you soon!

image of snowflakes: classzone.com

March