On Friday we explored the complicated feelings some of us have for the oh-so-fickle House o’ Guerlain, which has started to resemble Hazel’s House o’ Pancakes in the terminal, cloying sweetness of some of its recent releases.

Today hopefully Patty will be waaaay too busy to drop by and discover that I continue to achieve a lack of Hermessence arousal that only a nuclear-strength dose of perfume Viagra might be able to overcome.   As everyone knows, Jean-Claude Ellena is Patty’s homeslice, and I envy their cozy little perfume affair.

So let’s start by stipulating that I’m an idiot.  If you’d like proof, my two favorite Hermanessences (as Musette so lovingly branded them once, and now I can’t make it go away) are Paprika Brasil and Poivre Thingy, which I am fairly certain are at the bottom of most Hermessence lovers’ lists.

As for the rest, I mostly loathe them, which is actually kind of funny when you consider that one of the general complaints about the line is their lightness and simplicity; what’s there to hate?  On my hate list: everyone’s beloved Ambre Narguile, of course, and Brin de Reglisse, which is like eating a lavender sachet and washing it down with ouzo.  Vetiver Tonka is unspeakable.  I am amused to see I completely deleted from my memory bank the newish Vanille Galante which some of you will remember my reviewing briefly as “I strangle you with my aquatic tendrils,” a wet, salty floral with a hint of banana Wonka Runts candy.   Rose Ikebana I can take or leave, so you might as well take it and enjoy it for yourself.

Today we have:

Osmanthe Yunnan, an oldie but goodie.  I bought yet another sample to try to decipher why I don’t own it, since I like it enough to keep using up my samples.  The answer:  it’s lovely for ten minutes until the Yunnan tea departs completely, at which point I find the Osmanthe floral a little sweet.   OY thereafter reminds me of Parfums de Nicolai’s wonderful Fig-Tea, only Fig-Tea works a lot better on my skin and has surprising lasting power (I think even Louise can wear it).

Eau de Gentiane Blanche – in which JCE raises his game by releasing a fragrance with so little aroma that it makes your average Issey Miyake feel like Bandit.   White musk, gentian, incense, iris.  Faint powdery smell that I have to capture by almost resting my nose on my skin and hoovering.  Musk anosmia?  I have no idea.

Eau de Pamplemousse Rose – orange, rhubofix (a Firmenich aromachemical with a “a zesty freshness and unique green rhubarb effect”), lemon, grapefruit and vetiver.  Notes for these ripped off from The Perfumed Court, btw.   Okay, I can’t hold JCE responsible for the unfortunate effect grapefruit scents sometimes have on me.  I have read and forgotten the chemical associations involved in making grapefruit smell like a combination of urine and/or sulphur on skin, and certainly I am out of luck with this one.  The collective effect is sour rose, old vasewater, and That Boxwood/Eggy Smell.

For a completely different take on these, here’s a link to Patty’s review.

As JCE is already clearly trying to kill me (you think I’m paranoid, but witness Hermes Mousson and the rebirth of the melon trend in perfumery) I suppose I’ll concede aesthetic defeat and console myself with the other 90-kajillion fragrances I own.

So.  In an effort to reduce people flaming me: are there any houses that seem not to work very well for you?  (Go ahead, rag Guerlain.  I deserve it.  Or tell me you finally tried my BFF Worth Courtesan and it’s the worst.perfume.ever and go suck on some of that, March!)

Also, Andy Tauer sent me samples, I’ll pick two of the first ten commenters who ask for it to receive samples of Rose Chypree.  US only please, sorry, USPS has just raised postage and tightened restrictions, so lines are long and right now I don’t have the time or patience to submit to the paperwork required for mailing small, scary packages overseas.  For stateside addresses I can just fling it in the corner mailbox and scuttle away rapidly.

Finally, I wouldn’t want y’all to miss this fascinating response from IFRA on Grain de Musc (two parts, here and here).  Nice work, Denyse!

March

Latisse update – I’ve been lining my upper and lower lash line with Latisse for two months now; maximum results expected at 16 weeks.  A week ago, even, I’d have said “not worth it” but my opinion’s changed.  I think people with a lot of short, stubby lashes would get the best result, because it clearly lengthens the growth cycle of the lashes.  For folks like me with longer, sparse lashes, results are less clear.  My lashes are longer, but I want more of them, and I want them to be thicker.  Having said that, my lower lash line is definitely less bald-ish,  I could have counted my lower lashes easily and quickly at the start of this – I had literally six lashes on the outer half of my lower right eye.  There are more lashlets there now, and I’m hoping they get thicker, but they’re starting to at least resemble normal.  BTW they’re charging $140 for Latisse at the dermatologist office, but if you can scam a prescription for Lumigan from your friendly GP it’s the same stuff from Allergan in the same bottle for 1/3 the price.  I use my own lash brush, and I’m doing my lower lash line against their instructions.  What else would you expect from someone who wears room spray on her skin?

Face/mineral powder foundation. Louise and I both ponied up for the Lancome mineral foundation powders – I got the starter kit with the brush, and Louise got just the powder.  I think she hooked Melissa up with some too.  The finish is amazing.  It does get a little shiny on me, so after some experimentation with various setting powders I went with the Laura Mercier Translucent ($34 from Sephora) simply because I put it on and had one of those oh my god moments – I have pore-magnification issues if foundations/powders sit wrong, and the Mercier is flawless.  It’s super fine milled. It does lighten the color of my face a little, which for me was a good thing, as my face is slightly darker than my neck and that can look weird.  I also got the Mercier velour puff and am experimenting with her recommended press-and-roll application, which looks great on my cheeks and forehead but is hard to do around my nose.

While I was at Sephora I tried the new Sephora/OPI Mermaid in the Shade nail polish collection.  I’ve included two pics so you can see the colors. Three of them (the two silvers and the very light blue) are similar on the nail – sheer micro-shimmers, if I’ve got my terminology right.  A fun, fresh look but you only need one, if you don’t have something like it already; I’d pick Just a Fairy-Tail, an iridescent shimmer that simply isn’t done justice by these photos.  The cornflower-blue is sheer and kind of meh IMO, I’m not putting on enough coats (four?) to make it interesting.  The alleged star of the show – that dense, gorgeous metallic green – I was underwhelmed by, to be honest; I can’t escape the hunch that we all owned something like this from Milani or Wet n’ Wild in our past.   It looks prettier in the bottle than on my hand, but maybe I’d like it better on my toes.  For me the winner was Blue Grotto — the only matte color, an opaque mid-darkish-blue that doesn’t go vampy, and in my world you can’t have too many matte opaque blues.  I know some of you feel the same way.

March

Look at that picture.  Gaze at it.  Take it all in.  Stare at it, dwell on it, let your eyes roam like wandering slugs from top to bottom.  Then feel free to join me in my initial reaction upon hearing about this new Guerlain, this flanker of my most holy of holies, this unholy misbegotten thing that appears to be blue (blue!) and calls itself Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus, and let out that cry of agony — a cry that in my case went something like AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH  MY EYES, MY EYES!!!!!!  IS NOTHING SACRED ?!?!?!!?

Really.  What’s next?  Mitsouko Eau Fraiche?  Mitsouko Sensual Musk?  Mitsouko Strawberry Kiwi?

There was nothing to do, of course, but grit my teeth and order a big sample from The Perfumed Court, so I could examine the monster more closely.  I haven’t found a list of notes anywhere, but one could presume this would smell something like Mitsouko with a hint of lotus blossom.  And/or possibly a hint of Windex, based on that color.

Sniffing the cap and for the initial spray of Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus, I get a hefty serving of whatever Guerlain’s been pouring out of that vat for the last five years, the powdery-almondy fluff they’ve stuck in various bottles called Quand Vient Plus Que Insolent Purple Elixir – a kind of LHB retread with less interest, although still an improvement over the I-just-puked-up-my-ganache sweetness of their terrifying gourmand scents.

I wish I had a YouTube video of my face as I smelled this, because that would have been the point of the maximum lip-curl – not that it’s bad, just that it’s done already.   And what on earth does that have to do with Mitsouko?

And then – then, just as I was thinking whether I really was going to write that open letter on the blog to Guerlain to tell them to go suck an oeuf – then … something interesting happened.  A deeper, sonorous note that smells to me like – are you ready?  wait for it!!! – something that smells like … leather.  Not a super-dark stenchy leather, but that smooth, rich hay/saddle smell you can still get from a vintage bottle of Vol de Nuit in an EDT concentration.   It’s a pretty delicious underpinning for the powdery floral smell at the top.   I think what I perceive as Vol de Nuit’s leathery smell is oakmoss and narcissus and/or something earthy in the base, and I get a sense of the same thing going on here.

But what’s any of that got to do with Mitsouko?  That question gets answered after about five minutes on my skin, which is where The Queen — Mitsouko herself — makes her entrance.   You can pick her out; she’s unmistakable.  The only major tweaking I can feel is a lot less peach; the whole thing’s less baroque and softer feeling than any version of regular Mitsouko.  You can hear the right chords being played, but they’re in the background.  Somewhere down the hall, but still there.   So.  I don’t mean this literally, because I’ve no doubt it would be a disaster, but Mitsouko FdL smells something like:  Mitsouko after 12 hours plus L’Artisan Narcisse plus L’Heure Bleue.  I think this flanker was destined for the Asian market (hence the lotus blossom).  If that’s true, I wonder what they’ll make of it.  It’s certainly lighter than regular Mitsouko, but I wouldn’t call it subtle.

Is it an “easier to wear” Mitsouko?  I struggle with that.  Mitsouko is Mitsouko.  You either worship The Queen or you don’t, and there isn’t a lot of middle ground, in my opinion.   I’m going to link here to Marina’s somewhat different opinion, which I think is a useful counter-argument – she’s not a Mitsouko fan, and this really won her over.

I’ve struggled with this review, so I’m going to stop fiddling around with this paragraph and throw it in – there’s something cheerfully crass about Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus, and I don’t mean that negatively.  Remember Luca Turin saying Balenciaga Talisman “made vulgarity feel like a richly deserved holiday from good taste”?   Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus strikes me the same way.  It’s unserious, and that’s its greatest difference from regular Mitsouko, which is many things, but frivolous she is not.

Imagine viewing a reconstruction of part of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in an art gallery, and then discovering on closer examination that the entire thing had been made out of colored M&Ms.  You’d think, well, it doesn’t  measure up to the original, and also how weird is that, are they nuts? And also, wow… that’s cool; I wonder how they did it?  That’s how Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus makes me feel.   I wouldn’t say, precisely, that it honors the original, but it doesn’t diminish it, either.  And yes, I want a bottle.

PS Louise will probably chime in, but unless things changed it was very short-lived on her; also, my sample does not appear to be tinted blue.

March

Okay, for those of you that really hate off-perfume-topic posts, let’s do a sample giveaway so it’s not a complete waste of time for you today.  Drop a comment and you’ll be in the drawing for a sample of the two Guerlains, the Robe thing and the Mitsouko flanker and also the two new Hermes scents, Pamplemousse Rose and Gentiane Blanche.  I’ll even give away two sets of all four.

Since we do delve off into the beauty realm from time to time, this will be tangentially related to beauty since we have to be pretty on the inside to be pretty on the outside.  But first, can we talk about American Idol and The Biggest Loser briefly?  So booting Allison off  last week just made the winner totally predictable.  Yes, Adam probably deserves to win it, but with the three they have left, there’s no other winner but him possible.  I’m bored, I’m turning it off for the season.  And Biggest Loser, I am so torched that Tara didn’t win.  I adored her spirit and drive and how she kicked those boys’ butts at most of the physical challenges.

And Real Housewives.  Kelly in RHof NY is — OMG, I throw things at the TV every time she’s on.  But Ny is over, and we are in NJ now.  How come I got addicted to this show now?  I avoided it for years, but Atlanta sucked me in, and NY completely unhinged my vow to never watch it. It’s like crack, and my brain feels like it’s been watching crack.

That leads me into my new fitness obsession.  I’m not sure where it came from.  Maybe boredom, maybe it helped me work out a lot of stuff in my head?  Don’t care, but somewhere along the line in the last year, the girl who has hated exercise all of her life got hooked. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m muscle challenged.  I’m not. I grew up on a farm, and  we worked all the time, so I built max muscle capacity in the first 18 years of my life, and I’m genetically built for strength and endurance.  I took all that for granted until I hit my 40s, and then I realized it’s either use it or lose it.

And where does that all lead to?  Well, you can’t laugh.  You can, but don’t tell me you laughed. You have to know, first of all, that I’m deathly afraid of heights, and I hate to be cold. What I really want to do is to climb Denali.  It’s brutal.  You need to be in top condition on endurance, cardio, strength.  It’s weeks of going up 1,000 vertical feet a day, dragging 60-80 pounds on a sled behind you in snow and ice.   The summit is 20,000 feet.

Why?  I don’t know exactly, but I had this aha moment a few weeks ago where I wanted to take all the limits off, that I didn’t want there to be any place on the face of the earth I couldn’t go.  And that meant I had to get in the best physical shape of my life to make sure that my body wouldn’t hold me back.

So.  Yeah. I know, right?  Well, I work out about 2-3 hours a day now.  An hour walk, an hour of cardio or  two (hot yoga, spin, running, intervals), and 30-60 minutes of weight lifting, plus a 6 to 8-hour hike once a week to build endurance.  I do that 6 days a week and rest a full day.  I’ve also signed up for a basic climbing class to try and tackle this height fear thingie and get at least minimal technical climbing skills.  I’ve changed my diet, added plenty of vitamins, now drinking that Amazing Grass green superfood 2-3 times a day, chugging protein shakes. It’s ridiculous.  But you know what? I’ve never felt better.  I had no idea that jacking around with your muscles, tendons and innards could be quite that exhilarating.  Well, I would have known if I hadn’t tuned it out for the last 30 years.

It’s never too late, is it?  I may not make the top of Denali the year that I’m 50, but I’ll be in shape to go even if I can’t get the timing quite right next spring/summer.  Am I crazy?   Tips, things I should be aware of, other things I’m missing?

Patty

Let’s face it – you and I, we’re in the same boat.  When it comes to sampling, I end up trying many things for the same reason you do – I read about it somewhere recently, on our blog or somebody else’s.  Then my greedy little mind says, oooh, I have got to get me some of that – and off I go to the discounter, The Perfumed Court, eBay, etc., to score my fix.

Today I’m looking for your comments on what you’ve tried recently after reading/hearing about it here or elsewhere, and whether it lived up to your expectations.  How about those of you who bought some vintage Emeraude, I know some of you did.  Anyone try any Replique?  Shout out to Anita – how’d that Yves Rocher Gardenia play out, hon?  Fess up, all of you – did your search yield satisfying results?!??  You won’t hurt my feelings if you hated something I loved.

Also, regarding those comments: It’s fun when everybody plays, I love when you strike up conversations with each other, and I’m letting go of the concept that I have to reply to each and every one of your comments.  It’s our fault we’re such comment whores, and/but now that the volume of comments is high, it can take literally most of the day to respond to them.  I want you to know I do read every single comment, even if it takes me a day or two, and it’s one of the chief joys of this blog.

In the meantime, we’re way overdue for a candy samples post, wherein I wax brief and semi-coherent on a variety of things.  Here’s some of what I’ve gotten my hands on just in the last two weeks.

KenzoAir – one of those scents that keeps popping up like a Whack-a-Mole in online perfume discussion, and since I don’t maintain a proper to-try list I forget about needing to try it, plus also since they’re all named so generically I keep thinking I have tried it.  Notes are bergamot, anise, vetiver, amber, woods.  It disappointed me as a dabber; then I do what I do in such cases and just pour some in my hand and splash it on with abandon, figuring what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.  This deserves a heavy hand; I’d have loathed it two years ago (vetiver and anise, kill.me.now) but now I just sniff it happily and think what a perfect duo they are.  I wish it were a little less woody, but I guess you can’t have everything.  Although I can’t see why not.  Done by Maurice Roucel, if you need a little shove in the try-me direction.

Replique dupe from Irma Shorell/Long Lost Perfume. Just before hell freezes over I’m going to learn to love green chypres.  I’m aesthetically incapable of appreciating the top of this or any other green chypre, they all strike me as a mélange of chocolate and grasshoppers, but the drydown!  The drydown is totally worth it.  It’s not as dirty as my vintage bottle, and it’s soft and alluring without being powdery.  FWIW my girls, who mostly refrain politely from telling me how much they loathe whatever I have on (unless I goad them) liked it too.  I still think it’s probably better appreciated by Melissa, or Louise.

Caron Eau de Reglisse – which I won’t yammer on again having just mentioned it in my anise post, but once I figured out you could buy it for 3 cents online (okay, $30) I got a bottle.  I really love how gingery it is as well, I hadn’t really noticed that before.  It’s so tall I bet it immediately launches an attack on my Serges, forcing them to choose between the taint of Betsey Johnson or hurling themselves off the shelf to certain death.

Guerlain Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus – hahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!   Wow… whiskey tango foxtrot!  Okay, holding this one back for regular review, sorry!

Still awaiting my delivery from Mr. Postman, pleeeeeeaaase:  Carla Fracci Giselle, which is Patty’s fault, plus those two new Hermanessences (thanks to Anita for getting that spelling permanently imbedded in my lizard brain) because I’m too lazy to drive to Tysons, and some Osmanthe Yunnan, another decant, for what I’ve spent on OY decants why don’t I just buy the damn thing?  I don’t know.

Okay, your turn!   What foolishness have you been up to lately?  Go on, spill, I won’t tell anyone, your secret is safe with me!

image: monster, Maple White’s sketchbook, forgottenfutures.com.  No, it doesn’t have anything to do with this post, but isn’t it fun?   We could call it March Meets Angel for the first time.

March