After reading all your amazing stories here, I’ve reached the realisation that I’m no longer a proper perfume addict. What in some ways might induce melancholia, also brings relief: I no longer worry too much about trying everything, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, godammit, and can count on one hand (I think) the number of new releases I’ve sniffed this year. At least, that’s what my ‘convince yourself it’s true’ mind tells me.

Hell, I’ve even gone a couple of weeks without wearing perfume. Partly that’s the fault of oinking swine flu, which came and went with two days of fever, aches and soul-weariness, followed by a tail of coughing, headaches and wheezing. I was lucky: one of the kids next door followed it up with croup and pneumonia. He’s fine now though (very mild pneumonia – when I saw him last, he’d just spent the night in hospital and was running around imagining he was a doctor, coughing that deep pneumonic cough as he attempted resusciation -or something – on a teddy in the hallway). Back on topic, please.

But also, the not-wearing-perfume thing is part of my usual summer malaise where my obsession slots get taken up with my other interests (growing stuff and home improvement, seeing as you asked. What I can’t paint, wallpaper, or plant I have no interest in. And armchairs, fabrics and blankets currently make me delirious in an entirely non-flu like way).

However, in spite of all this, I still have a list of things to sniff on a post-it on the desktop of my laptop, which I’m currently typing on in my sitting room on the oak table with Queen Anne legs on the wool carpet which we’re planning to change after I’ve painted the ceilings down to the picture rail an off-white, the walls a tertiary green and wallpapered the alcoves on either side of the chimney. Then I’ll move onto the study – French grays, sofabed cunningly concealed as an old fashioned couch, oak ladder desk, winged French armchairs, rug. See, I’m off again.

So the list. Here it is.

Fourreau Noir – even though it has the dreaded dihydromyrcenol (think nasty modern men’s stuff – for me, the throat-choker chemical) according to the ever-sagacious Carmencanada of Grain de Musc, old Serge remains a must-test for me, even though I detested Serge Noire and continue to vacillate over El Attarine. Though sheaths are new, I’m very bored of Noir in perfumes. Thrill me, Sergy, please.

Fille en Aiguilles – a sample will shortly be winging its way to me. Now this sounds lovely, from what I’ve read elsewhere (Happily, Hellenic Helg raved over at Perfume Shrine). Yes please.

Wazamba – I wonder, I wonder. Hilarious name. We had a drink in the UK in the 80s called Um Bongo, and this perfume name reminds me of the same facile and colonialist attempt to speak for all of Africa in one word, and get it wrong enough to be very bad indeed. But, at the same time, it does sound funny. And the ingredients – incense, fir, cypress (and apple. wtf?) – pique my interest.

CDG Laurel – I know nothing about this other than it makes me think of cooking and Caesar.
L’Artisan for Scent Bar/Lucky Scent and Havane Vanille – what’s happened to the Scent Bar release by Bertrand Duchaufour that’s supposed to smell of the LA hills? Wasn’t it due for release in October last year? Who’s fallen asleep at the wheel? And why didn’t Liberty send me a sample of Havane Vanille when all I’ve heard from Sniffa folk is ‘Oh it’s so lovely’, ‘Gosh, darn it, it’s the best vanilla ever’, ‘Streuth (an Australian, I imagine), it’s a beaut’, ‘Strikealight, sugarplum, it’s got me multi-orgasmic’. And I’ve bought from Liberty for years too. Snarl, snarl, and whimper.

The Different Company Oriental Lounge – another quiet one, but it’s Celine Ellena and seeing as I swear by her Sel de Vetiver, admire her Sublime Bal(l)kiss(ing), and am captivated by her jasmine at night, this ‘un should also be good, even if that name is a little too 90s chillout for my tastes.

Fahrenheit Absolute – I wore the original as though my existence depended on it back when I though secondhand suits with desert boots and braces was the best look evah!, and therefore this ‘need-to-test’ combines the best bits of nostalgia (saudade if you want to get Portuguese or pretentious about it) with the driving need of the reformed sniffaholic.

Oh, and a late addition. Patricia de Nicolai is releasing  Patchouli Homme in September. O.M.Freakin’.G. That might just be a blind buy. Read about it here. And let’s end with a few of that wonderful woman’s words:

‘I´m a bit fed up with the whole “100%-natural” thing. If some people want to go back to Marie-Antoinette´s perfumery, fine, it´s up to them. But as far as I´m concerned, I don´t believe in 100%-natural haute perfumery. We absolutely must need to change the way we look at synthetic molecules; journalists need to be brave enough to talk about them, to break the taboo. Way back in 1952, Ernest Beaux said, “Perfumery´s future lies in chemistry”…’

So, what’s on your list.? Share one, share all.

The image is of a random list found on the internet. I quite enjoy trying to make sense of it.

Lee

Some of you may know I’ve been doing rolfing the last few month.  We’re getting near the end of the series, which is all the neck, shoulder, back, head work. Every time I go in, I have headaches for the next 3-4 days. This is one of those days.  It’s well worth it, but just a lot of lactic acid builds up in those areas. It was much easier to deal with when it was my legs or arms aching for those few days.

It’s not been a good day to sniff, so I’m going to do some cleanup on giveaways and let you know about a couple more Roja Dove splits going on.

Winners of the Creed Acqua Fiorentina sample:  Tammy, sheo, Scott, KathyT, Masha, Jill S, maitreyi, dagney, Linda and Amy K.

Byredo Bal d’Afrique sample winners:  pyramus and Ojeda.  Thanks to all of you for playing.

Just click on Contact Us on the left and remind me what you won so I can send you the correct thing.

So an unnamed, but reliable, person, is organizing some more Roja Dove semi-bespoke fragrance splits.  These run about $7 a ml in a split. I smelled all of these, I believe, and there wasn’t one I wouldn’t happily have, and I plan to get in on all of these splits.  If you are interested, click on the Contact Us, tell me which split you are interested in. Minimum splitting is 15 mls, so please tell me the amount as well. I realize these are unsniffed, but I can’t imagine that any of them wouldn’t be superbly swappable if it just doesn’t work out.

3 – bergamot, lavender, rose, jasmine, cedar, vetiver, vanilla, civet (lighter civet than the skanky fabulous 7).  The notes I got on it were that it was Jicky, but less lavendery. I have to note here that the person sniffing it doesn’t read civet heavily, so it could lean to the skanky.

4 – bergamot, orange, rose, jasmine, orris, musk, sandalwood.  Her notes were that it was more soft, like a Guerlain than hard-edged like a Chanel.  Her favorite perfume is Vol de Nuit, so this has a very classic feel to it.  A little like MDCI Enlevement au Serail’ish?

6 – bergamot, orange, ros, jasmine, orris, opoponax, musk.  Her notes are that this is all opoponax. So if you don’t like the ‘pop, you are gonna despise this. Opoponax lovers will adore it. She said it is very potent and her strip she sprayed it on is going strong after 4 days.

So some more very special splits, if y’all are interested! Sorry about the lack of anything resembling a review today, but I did sniff the new Divine briefly and am enchanted.  They sent a bunch of samples, so I’ll be doing a give-away on that next week.

Patty

Not too long ago, one of our perfumista buddies on here bid on a bottle of something on eBay, only to realize after she won that the price was listed in British pounds rather than dollars.  Oops.   So she wrote me in a welter, and I promptly reassured her.  First off, the price she paid was still worth it, IMO.  Second, hey – at least it wasn´t the old 2/1 exchange rate!  Finally, I don´t feel you can be a true member of our cult unless you´ve messed up an eBay purchase or three.

What does it mean to be a perfume addict?  Last week on the blog, there was a great comment from Pyramus I´m going to quote here:  “On a visit to Toronto in the year Yohji Homme was launched, on the day I was leaving, I sprayed some on my wrist at Holt Renfrew, went to a movie and got there about half an hour before the movie was ready to start because that´s what I do, sniffed my wrist compulsively, realized I would not have time to go back to HR after the movie, left the theatre, ran back to HR, bought the stuff, and then ran back to the theatre. That´s how desperately I realized I needed it.”

Now that is textbook perfume fetishist behavior.  Hmmm…. Sit in this movie theater, or go back to HR right now and get me some? I think we can all agree that Pyramus made the obvious choice.

So today I´m inviting anyone who´d like to air an anecdote from your own Perfume Journey (or walk of shame) to do so.  Whether it´s some amazing deal you got, or hoops you jumped through, or a purchase gone hilariously wrong – I´d love to hear about it.  You can achieve two righteous goals simultaneously: serve as a cautionary take for the  lurkers out there and allow us to laugh at you (or sigh in envy.  Inviting those of you who bought the $20 Gobin Daudes on clearance at Tak a couple years ago to come out and gloat).

Off the top of my head – I think the most ridiculous effort I made to score a bottle was the Tan Giudicelli Annam I found on this wack French swap site (I couldn´t simply pay cash for it).  I managed to drag in a whole slew of innocent victims to help me with that one, including Patty, Louise and Carmencanada, since I don´t, you know, actually speak French (and the swapper didn´t speak English, and nobody wanted to ship it through the bs French postal system.)  I traded it for a bottle of YSL Cinema that I had shipped to Carmen from a British seller blah blah blah nutjob blah blah obsessive freak blah.  If you´re curious about the gory details, click here for my post.

My funniest eBay purchase, which some of you already know, was the screaming deal I got on a bottle of the difficult-to-find Floris Summer Limes on a German website.   Unfortunately what I´d actually bid on was a postcard of Summer Limes, presumably left over from some ad campaign.  As we say in German, dummass.  And I´ve gotten more than one empty bottle bidding on foreign auctions, although sometimes US sellers dump out the bottle contents before shipping or fail to adequately seal it, so you receive a great-smelling package with no juice remaining.  Some eBay sellers are used to dealing with us, but it´s always good to let random sellers know you want to wear the fragrances.  Funny as it may seem, many of them have difficulty grasping that you´re interested in the perfume itself.  Also, a special shoutout to Louise – if you read this post on your travels, please tell your Coke bottle story!  (Louise is still swanning around Yurrup – go ahead, make me jealous!)

Alrighty then.  Cozy up to your keyboard and tell me your perfume stories.  I won´t laugh nervously and back away.  Unlike your other friends.

March

Creed’s newest release is Acqua Fiorentina.  It has notes of plum, roses, carnation, bergamot orange, lemon, cedar, and sandalwood.  Prices are $130 for 1 ounce, $230 for 2.5 ounces and $350 for 8.4 ounces.

Did Creed’s prices go up?  A lot?

It opens fairly aquatic with a typical Creed base, but don’t get worried, it loses that watery feel and turns much more plummy and floral.  It’s not a sweet plum, not heavy on any of the fruitish notes at all.  Very fresh and springlike floral with cedary underpinnings.  It’s done well and doesn’t fall into the Creed side of the fence of scents I hate.  It falls on the much sparser side of Creed scents I like.  It’s very nice, though I like Love in Black a lot more, it’s just more my kind of scent.

But the pricing?  I mean, the $350 for 8.4 ounces is darn reasonable.  It’s good that they are offering it in a 1 ounce size, but $130?  Which brings me to my question of the day, what is a reasonable price for perfume in this year’s astronomical pricing?  Hard to believe we are in a recession with the hikes that have been going on just in the last three quarters. Ideas  on what marketing strategy is at play here?

Let’s give away some samples of this since I got some for my review.  10 winners will get a sample of this. Just drop your name in comments, and I’ll do a drawing.

Patty

It still hasn´t gotten very hot here (upper 80s) which by DC standards is moderate.  In fact I think we´ve broken 90 only four or five days this summer.  We´ll see what August brings.

So I´ve gotten to try one of those perfumista cult perfumes – Cher´s Uninhibited, thanks to Melissa!   I love the bottle, isn´t that a gas?  I had a heckuva time finding a decent image.  This is allegedly a factice, which I think looks like the parfum bottle, with a frosted glass (crystal?) half moon stopper.  The stopper on the EdT bottles is silver toned.

I personally would expect Cher´s fragrance to suck, only because so many celeb fragrances do.  According to Basenotes, Uninhibited was inspired by two fragrances Cher wore together: Charles of the Ritz and Jean Laporte Vanilla. Since I don´t have either of those I can´t say, but Uninhibited has been discontinued for some time and fetches premium prices online.  It shows up on eBay and it appears to be available at a couple other sites.

Notes are lily, peony, dried fruits, ylang, orris, magnolia, vanilla, heliotrope, musk. I´m finding that list a little suspect, only because Uninhibited doesn´t smell as sweet as that list would suggest.  In fact, the opening smells like aldehydes to me; for the first few seconds you could be smelling some chilly Chanel.  It´s a dry cocktail of a thing at that point.  Then the fragrance opens up and sweetens on my skin, but never gets all that sweet.  It´s powdery the way orris can be powdery, and the heliotrope isn´t overwhelming.  The drydown´s really nice, a slightly tart musk that manages to convey both sensuality and aloofness.

I think Cher Uninhibited fits in nicely with Cher´s image of the time – it´s fierce and strong and yet retains a sense of humor.  It also has that pre-gourmand vibe when “sexy” smelled like musk and patch and civet instead of like baked goods.  I’m not sure I’d go to the ends of the earth to get my hands on a bottle, but if some comes your way it’s worth a sniff.

March