Kenzo has a new fragrance out.  And it’s everything we hate – only 1,000 of them made, special freaky bottle, $188 for 40 mls – well, the price has certainly been worse.  You know how this goes.  Kenzo?  I thought they made all the super-cute, incredibly wearable perfumes that wound up at discounters for $30 a bottle.

Let’s get the particulars.  Ron Arad was commissioned to design the bottles, and they’re pretty cool little twisty silver ribbed thingies with the pumping mechanism buried in the bottle.   Aurelian Guichard composed the perfume, and it was to intended create the scent of skin, while avoiding the traditional scent pyramid scheme.  Notes are orange blossom, Bulgarian rose, frankincense and vanilla; the press release also talks of UFO having “a balance between a powerful heart, the ‘marble accord,’” and the other notes.

Expensive?  check.

Weird bottle?  check.

Limited edition?  check.

Fragrance live up to the rest of the hype?  Believe it or not, in this case it actually does.

Patty says: From the second I smelled it, I was in love.  I sprayed it on (I’ve been doing that a lot since I got it) when my youngest son, Harry, was in the room. He decreed that Harry’s Rules would now include that all women had to wear UFO.  Every time I walked by him this weekend, he would swoon over how UFO smells.  Remember, this is a young man that has been raised around perfume, he’s used to all sorts of smells.  I also burn incense and candles in my home.  It takes something pretty special to get his attention. In fact, I can’t ever remember him ever commenting on any scent I put on before except the ones he hated or if I wore aldehydes in the car when I was driving him to school.

UFO has this warm vanilla floral start that quickly, yes, seems to avoid the normal pyramid and moves right into the incense.  All the notes just dance on the skin together, blending a little, but still distinct’ish.  Lasting power is fabulous on me.  I can still smell it the next morning, though it’s mostly the incense that’s left.  Do I think they hit the scent of skin?  They did okay. There’s a slightly salty feel about it, but I’d never mistake this scent as someone’s skin – it’s just way better than that!  Given the limited number of bottles, I’m hoping they intend to only do 1,000 bottles of those modern colly ones, but release the fragrance in another bottle for, well, ever. Please don’t make me stockpile $188 bottles of perfume.

I tried to think of Guichard doing Bond’s Chinatown and UFO, they are pretty different. The more I thought about it, though, the more it makes sense. Chinatown has a weird duality about it that, love it or hate it, it gets your attention.  Chinatown ultimately wound up much too heavy for me to wear, the scent would get stuck in my nose.  UFO has that same duality of sweet and incensey, but without the heavy patch/floral.  It’s lighter, but keeps the same tensions in the perfume. Where Chinatown is languid and makes me think of Opium dens, UFO is the Angels singing and cavorting in the sun.

March says: I remember reading about this months ago and then I forgot all about it.  I decided to go at it blind and not look the notes up before I tried out my sample atomizer.  Can I just say?  Non-pyramidal structure aside, putting this on my skin and breathing it in for the first time made my heart soar the same way it did the first time I smelled Andy Tauer’s Orris.  In fact, my first sniff of UFO brought Orris to mind (UFO has a hint of the same incense/rose dynamic when it opens), only the Tauer has a bunch of other, heavier spicy stuff.   UFO is cleaner, airy and very much about the incense at the center, along with a musky warmth that I’m assuming must be the “marble accord.”

As the PR stuff suggests, this is a pretty straight ride.  I get a ton of incense, a little vanilla for warmth and roundness.  There is rose in there but (happily) in this case it doesn’t interfere with my enjoyment; it provides a sweet floral dimension rather than a thorny wallop.  The fragrance does seem to fluctuate slightly between a sweeter side (like Orris) and a drier side (reminds me a teensy bit of CdG 88 8 in terms of mineral clarity and weight.)   I definitely feel the “mineral character” in there, the same way 88 8 renders spices as slightly metallic.  After a couple hours the vanilla gets this smoky thing going on which I am very fond of.

For something that doesn’t wear that heavily, and seems to float in and out on me (nose fatigue?)  the sillage is tremendous.  I put two sprays on the back of my hand (which, yes, subsequently got washed a few times.)  Five hours later my daughter commented in passing how much she liked my scent; I am not always a crowd-pleaser in that regard.  I held up my hand to her and sure enough it was UFO she was admiring.

UFO is full of joy to me — that’s the most appropriate word.  There’s something radiant and uplifting about it.   The press release says Guichard “drew on the olfactive memory of his mother who was a sculptor working with marble, and has recreated the scent of marble powder against a woman’s skin.”   This fragrance has tremendous heart.  I like thinking of it as a reflection of his love for his mother.

Of course we’re going to give away some samples.  Just drop a comment to be entered for a chance of winning one of 3 samples.

Patty

Today we finish up March´s Mojo Madness with the third fragrance that caught my eye at Saks – the new Narciso Rodriguez For Her Eau de Parfum Intense, which is allegedly a limited edition at Saks and comes in a pink metallic bottle (shown left.)

I have an idea!  Let´s hire Narciso a life coach and get him to give his fragrances real names!  As it stands, you can´t tell them apart without a spreadsheet and photos – they´re all various combinations of the designer´s name with micro-clues like her, musc, and eau de parfum.  It drives me nuts.  Here´s a link to Helg´s exhaustive guide to the NR oeuvre on Perfume Shrine, which I like to think of as “what is the name of that Narciso?  Wait … is that the pink one or the black one?” and for which she deserves some sort of award for patience.

Many of you know I mocked the entire NR line brutally for a couple of years as non-scented dreck until I went to LA with Patty and … whaddya know, fell in love with the plain old original NR EDT, in the black bottle, which I promptly bought and reviewed.  Most of the rest of the line I still pretty much can´t smell, and I put on some Musc for Her (the oil) recently and stuck it under the nose of five perfumista buddies, and guess what?  They couldn´t smell it either.  The Narciso EDP in the pale pink bottle I can smell but it´s much more floral and I don´t like as much as the regular.  There´s always other weird bottles of NR sitting around too (this time they have a purse size bottle that´s labeled hair scent.)

When the nice ladies at Saks, having already wowed me with Issey Miyake´s A Scent and Natori, whipped this one out, I gave it a go.  Along with Natori, this is the other fragrance I may purchase to thank those long-suffering ladies over there for their patience.

The notes for the For Her Intense are musk, ylang-ylang, jasmine and orange blossom.  In terms of character, it´s much more in the style of the original EDT from 2004 than the later, more floral EDP.   By the way, somebody correct me but I think all of these were done by Francis Kurkdjian and Christine Nagel.

For comparison purposes, the original For Her EDT´s notes are (more or less) musk, orange blossom, osmanthus, amber, vanilla, woods, vetiver.

On my skin, the Intense is less focused on the orange blossom than the original EDT.  While the fragrances resemble each other, Intense is more what I imagine Musc for Her would be like if I could actually smell anything.  I put Intense on at Saks and pretty much forgot about it while I was all aquiver over Natori, etc.  Then (you know how these things go…) I found myself hoovering various parts of my body later that day, trying to sort out where that delicious smell was coming from.  It was the Intense.

Intense is about the warm, slightly toasty smell of another person you find attractive.  It is the For Her EDT minus the part that smells recognizably like perfume.  As such, Intense is the consummate wallpaper scent.  It is very much in the background, unobtrusive, and if that holds no interest for you, well – there you go, move on, nothing to see here.  However, if you share my admiration for the subtleties of these sorts of scents, Intense is probably the one I have enjoyed most in terms evoking the warmth of another human being.  I have devised my own two mental categories for these scents – “skin” scents that I can´t smell unless I jam my nose into my wrist, and “aura” or “halo” scents that project a delicate – but detectable – perfumed presence around me.  Intense is an aura scent.  It´s very subtle but noticeably there for me, and as I have discovered with other scents of this type, if it works for you it really works.  I can smell Intense for a full day after I´ve sprayed it, a delightful, comfortable presence around me.

***BTW – both Helg and an online shopping site refer to the fragrance as The Musk Collection and Limited Edition Musk; I can tell you that the outside of the bottle says Narciso Rodriguez for Her (at the top) and eau de parfum intense (at the bottom, which for some reason is not on the bottle pictured here).  What is the precise, legal name of this scent?  I have no idea.   Blame Narciso.

March

Years ago, when I was a fragrance neophyte, I only wanted to smell like vanilla. That was during the early 90s before the proliferation of food-as-fragrance, and sadly, before I was able to appreciate a scent as groundbreaking as Cher´s Uninhibited. My entrée into vanilla whoredom (way before almond whoredom) was L´Artisan Parfumeur´s Vanilia. From there, I moved on to Comptoir´s Vanille, Vanille Abricot, Vanille Tiare – even though I usually run from gardenia as fast as I can, Vanille Amande, and so on. There was never enough vanilla for me; until it became as common as a Starbucks on two out of every four street corners. When I started smelling that plasticky vanilla flavoring smell – you  know, that stuff that comes in the small brown plastic bottle that´s supposed to resemble vanilla, I knew it was time to move on.

One recent craze that I never really got into is ouds. Any of the ones I´ve smelled have been so overpowering that I could not imagine wearing so much as a microscopic drop. I don´t think I knew what oud was until the Montale line of fragrances hit North America. Having never traveled to Southeast Asia or India, I had no idea that oud is the resin distilled from agarwood, a species of evergreen indigenous to Southeast Asia and India. Well, now I consider myself informed; but my relationship with ouds is still in its infancy. It makes me think of when I went to Rome, and had dinner at a lovely restaurant around the corner from where I stayed. It was my first night there and I just about fell face-first into my dinner plate from jet lag. At the end of the meal, some of the people I was traveling with ordered coffee and grappa. I tasted a few of the grappas and made the grave error of making a couple of not very attractive faces when I tasted ones I didn´t like. We were a party of 12 and one of our waiters spotted my distaste for the grappa. He was so upset that he came back with a tray of about 8 different bottles of grappa and gave me little tastes until I found one I liked. The resulting hangover, combined with my jet lag, was epic; but now, I can do with a little grappa from time to time, as long as no one catches me making any nasty faces.

I´ve negotiated the same sort of détente with ouds, now that I´ve smelled the ones from Comptoir. You can insert the adjective “wearable”, in front of just about every note in the fragrance universe, including ouds. And these are some wearable ouds:

Aoud de Nuit: Bergamot, black currant, black rose, iris, vanilla, cardamom, saffron and cedar wood. This one is my favorite; one guess as to why. The vanilla blends so well with the saffron and cedar wood that it stays clean all the way into the drydown, without becoming overpoweringly sweet.

Aouda: Rose, geranium, chamomile, amyris, niaouli, copahu balm, cedar wood, tolu balsam, patchouli and oud accord. I found this a bit heavy on the rose, with some strong vegetation in the background. I think some of you vintage jezebels out there would love this one; it has a very classic twin-set-and-a-strand-of-pearls feel. Mind you, that would be a twin set and a strand of pearls worn with a pencil skirt and heels. Jeans and flats would be far too contradictory.

Nomaoud: Saffron, ylang ylang, purple rose, rockrose, cedar wood, cashmeran, oud wood, amyris, sandalwood, warm amber, leather and black musk. This is by far the sexiest of the four. The rose notes aren´t nearly as strong as they are in Aouda, and the drydown is warm and musky with just a hint of leather. I wouldn´t call this dirty or animalic, but it definitely exudes a not too subtle sexiness.

Oud Intense: Black currant, lemon, rose, patchouli, amber, pine needles, musk. Here, you have to really love pine, because it is the strongest note by far. This oud is also the most masculine. Don´t get me wrong, women can definitely wear this, but again, you have to love pine. I can envision Philosophy´s Cristina Carlino pitching this one out an office window, since pine is one of the notes she´s always bleating about when it comes to what she thinks we should never smell of. Wasn´t there a pine debate here on the Posse not too long ago? Help me please, because my short term memory is shot right now. I fear I may be working on a dementia.

These are all packaged in Comptoir´s signature aluminum bottle; 100 ml for $110.00. You can find them now at lushoasis.com, and for the MD/DC/VA crowd, I believe Art with Flowers will have them soon. Right now, you can snag 6 CSP samples for free when you order a 100 ml CSP over at Lush Oasis.

Lee asked me to pass along congrats to Alica, who is the lucky winner of his sample drawing from his “You Repulse Me” post last week. Alica, hit the “Contact Us” link at the top left of the page and leave your info. And don´t forget to warn your postal carrier!

EDITED TO ADD: There is one of those uber expensive Guerlain La Fontaine Imperiale with Mon Precieux Nectar inside thingies on Ebay .  Notes are orange blossom, jasmine, bitter almond, wood, vanilla and musk.  If it’s reasonable in the end, I’ll bid if there’s enough takers to split it.  So if any of you were thinking, um, yeah!  But wanted it at a better price, clickety click on the Contact Us and let me know!  Even if you told me before.  If it can be bought for 5-7k, it’s 1,000 ml, so the cost would be $5-7 per ml.  hey, it’s better than $9-10!  And there are only 63 of them that were sold in the world.  I know, it’s annoying, but tell me you don’t want some.

After the great success of Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere, they decided to go back and see if lightning would strike twice. could they take a classic and update it enough to keep the admirers of it happy, but entice in a new generation?

I have several variations of Cristalle around here, but I deliberately did not smell them because I wanted to evaluate this on its own as far as the success of this updated flanker.  It’s got a nice fresh green open that fairly snaps and pops at you, and I very much like that, veering off into some citrus.  It stays fresh while the magnolia emerges as we enter the heart. Notes are Sicilian lemon, bergamot, neroli, jasmine, magnolia accord, abstract white flowers.  It’s certainly a nice perfume, feels Chanel-like, definitely a more modern approach to Cristalle, if you were wanting it modernized, but it lost the chypre’ness that was part of the original Cristalle EDT (differentiated from the EDP, which I never liked so well).  I think it’s beautifully done, though I think you really have to look it as a completely different perfume from Cristalle EDT or EDP.

Eau Verte is a lovely green magnolia fragrance, easy to wear.  I’m not doing backflips over it because it doesn’t smell very distinctive or special in the way Cristalle or I think any Chanel should smell.  Do I think Chanel succeeded?  Yes, I do, for the same reason I think they did with Eau Premiere.  They have taken a classic, retained a piece of the classic, but rendered out a lot of the “old-fashioned” parts that turn off a lot of young women. Whether we old ladies like it or not, women in their 20s – not all of them – don’t want to smell of aldehydes and oakmoss, that makes them feel old, and they want something fresh and modern. Cristalle Eau Verte  is made for them, but I wouldn’t turn down wearing it from time to time – old biddy that I am.

Now, Chanel did send me a small bottle of this, so you know what that means!!  We’ll give away 10 samples of it.  Just drop a comment in to be entered in the drawing.

As for this updating of classics, what’s the best update of a classic that’s been done, in your opinion.  And secondly, if you were a perfume company with a long and storied name, like Guerlain or Chanel or YSL or Dior (Dior, you disappoint me the most), what kinds of perfumes would you put out that would keep your old customers happy, but draw in new customers?  What’s the business model that would work?  Two different lines, flankers like Chanel does?

Patty

Continuing my March Mojo Trifecta, today we have  Natori – which in some ways is less interesting than Miyake´s A Scent.  It´s also something I´d really like to own.   Is it genius?  Nope.  But it sure smells good.

When I was first trying to describe it to Louise I called it a “lingerie scent.”  That seemed a little vague; what kind of lingerie?   But Louise got it immediately.  I´m not thinking of some vampy man-trap stuff.  Instead, Natori is the perfume equivalent of an expensive but very soft, flattering set of underthings that you´d wear as much for your own pleasure as anyone else´s.   Amusingly enough, I figured out while writing this post that (duh) Natori is a lingerie company, and judging by the photos online, the fragrance meshes with the brand perfectly.

Natori´s notes are aldehydes, rose, plum, ylang, peony, jasmine, patchouli, amber and musk.  I have to say, I get very little in the way of aldehydes, even up front where you expect them.  Instead it´s got a broad, sweeping profile with a little of the (dare I say it?  I don´t want to scare anyone off) almost candied sweetness of Poison.  Must be the plum.  The rest of it is as seamless a surface as a lacquered box, with the florals and amber presenting as a rich, creamy, slightly spicy sweetness rather than individual flowers.  The patchouli on my skin is very clean, and there is just enough musk to keep things sensual rather than blatantly sexy.  It wouldn’t be my first choice for office wear, but it wouldn’t be ridiculous either.

Please don´t run away screaming – Natori doesn´t smell anything like Poison, really, and it doesn´t smell like Annick Goutal Passion either, which I blogged on recently, but I´d drop Natori in to the same slot in my perfume wardrobe as Passion.  Natori is unabashedly pretty without being girly.  It goes through a middle phase where it´s a tiny bit gourmand, which makes it feel more “now,” but mostly it seems timeless (neither “current” nor dated) in the same way that Passion seems timeless to me.

I am a person on whom scents last, and Natori was going strong eight hours later on my skin.  I could still smell it on my inner arm, if I looked for it, a full 48 hours later, although at no time did I regret my generous application.  And remember, this is in August heat.  So the worn-out-your-welcome factor on this one seems to be surprisingly low for a scent that wears as richly as Natori does.  Back to my lingerie comparison, it´s so well constructed that no individual parts begin to emerge and chafe over time.

I didn´t whip out my credit card on the spot for this – for one thing, I hate paying retail – but I´m thinking about it.  I´d certainly wear it if a bottle fell into my lap.  And let´s talk about that bottle – I am not a big bottle nut and I can´t think of a bottle recently I´ve coveted more.  My only complaint is that the hole in the middle is – practically enough – translucent, so you can see the liquid inside.  (I think either the juice and/or the window is tinted pale purple.)  In photos it looks to me like it´s a hole in the bottle, like the thing´s donut-shaped, and I personally would have preferred that.  What do you all think?

Natori is, I believe, an EDP.  I sniffed it at Saks and was told it is an exclusive there, at least for the time being.

March