First!  The seven winners of the Divine samples:  Goose, 2scents, bellablue, chasa, Fiordiligi, ScentRed and smy.  Just click on Contact Us over on the left and send me your address and remind me what I’m sending you. Thanks to everyone for playing and also for the great Costa Rica ideas.  BTW, my birthday isn’t until December, but I’m just planning early and also yearning to run way to Mexico for a week of yoga and healthy food, but I think I need to do that like – Right.Now!  Srsly, a week of yoga, eating right, no phones, knocking around old Mayan ruins, sleeping almost on the ocean in a luxury thatched roof hut, reading, did I say sleeping?  Yes, I’m definitely going to run away from home soon.

Penahligon released four new fragrances in July, their anthology series, based on perfumes they used to make.

Night Scented Stock has notes of clove, heliotrope, violet, vanilla, musk and tonka bean, and this is one smooth scent.  All the notes listed are all right up front, clove and heliotrope taking a front seat on a backdrop of musk and tonka bean.  I love this scent, it’s blended beautifully, rich and spicy.

Extract of Limes is just what it says it is – all limes, with some lemon and neroli.  If you are looking for a great, tart citrus, this is the one. I could bathe in this during summer, it’s really refreshing and zesty that actually lasts.

Gardenia has notes of tuberose, jasmine, gardenia, ylang-ylang, spice and vanilla. It’s a nicely done gardenia, but I’m just not doing backflips over it as something really new or different from other gardenia scents, many that I like a lot more. But it’s a good gardenia with some spicy notes, it feels very southern.

Eau de Verveine, the description says “grassy aromatic, with citrus and woods. The scent of an Indian Summer, shimmering heat haze, soft metallics, crumbled herbs, spices, musk and vanilla.”  This is crisp perfection. Every person that I’ve been around when they smelled it really loved it.  It’s a great grassy green scent, but has a nice, rich, rounded drydown.

Another scent that I never see get any attention, and I don’t know what the EDT is like, but Louise and I split a bottle of Miller Harris Citron Citron parfum when we were in London. My reason – it’s the first citrus scent that didn’t fade on me after like 2 minutes. Though I now have to add Extract of Limes from above to that list, that sucker stays put too.

Patty

When I popped by Sephora last week to check out their new fall nail colors (see post yesterday), I ran into KenzoAmour Florale, which I am pretty sure was a spring release but has just shown up in our local stores.   I can´t resist pasting in the Sephora online blurbage for this: “In Asia, the light is written in flowers that whisper their solar freshness onto your skin. This scent’s gently dazzling impression begins with a luminous, airy top. The essence reveals its luminous, floral heart and comes to completion with a clear, sensitive base. The hours pass by gracefully, given away by changing light, enticing you to fall in love.”

Perhaps I´m becoming a bitter hag prematurely, but does that mean anything to anyone reading this?   I recognize the words as written in English, and yet.  The whole thing makes me tilt my head to one side in bafflement, like my dog when he´s watching the television.   My six-year-old could write something more edifying.

I am something of a Kenzo fangirl.  KenzoAmour is probably my favorite, with Flower Oriental, Flower (Le Parfum) and Indian Holi not far behind.  There is nothing out there quite like KenzoAmour when I need comfort on a miserable winter day.  If it is ever discontinued, I will mourn its passing.  The KenzoAmour LP was interesting, but what it gained in benzoin-ambery yumminess it lost in luminous transparency, and it never replaced the regular in my affections.  Also, I know that, for those who can work with the weight of Kenzo, scents like Amour and Oriental are surprisingly tenacious.

Notes for Florale are neroli, grapefruit, blackcurrant, cardamom, frangipani, rosebud, gardenia, white musk, cedarwood.  The original KenzoAmour is built around woods, incense, and rice steam.  So, you might take a guess that the Florale flanker doesn´t have much in common with the original beyond the bottle (and more about that bottle in a bit.)  In this case, you´d be correct – Florale is, as its name implies, a floral.  It is sweet without being sweeeeet - certainly by the standards of much of what lurks on the Sephora shelves, it is relatively restrained.  The fruit and citrus is around only briefly, although the cardamom adds a welcome, nuanced spiciness.   The florals read as an indistinct, pale haze rather than as individual accent notes.  As it dries down it gets a bit muskier and woodier, and despite the list of notes I don´t find the fragrance particularly “feminine.”  The musk is a little sour on me.  Florale is a light skin scent after a couple of hours.  I found it a disappointment, although I’m having trouble deciding precisely why.   It’s not like I find Kenzo scents (collectively) provocative or awe-inspiring, and I’m not saying they’re genius.  But for what they are, they are often delicious little things.  This one, not so much.  It’s the sort of scent that is just good enough to remind me that I could be wearing something better, but not comforting or warm or X enough to justify its floral-musky existence.

Online photos like the one at top really don´t do the KenzoAmour Florale bottle justice.  It´s clear glass at the top and bottom, while the center portion appears etched on the interior, with the clearness slowly fading into the etched (frosted?) portion, which looks like milk glass.  Unlike the Amour parfum gold bottle, which looked  kind of cheesy (in my opinion), like it had been spray-painted in a craft shop, the varied glass of Florale works beautifully with the clean, organic lines of the bottle.  Assuming you find that iconic bottle attractive in the first place — and you´re forgiven if you don´t — rendered in a heavy, frosted glass it is eye-candy in a refined, less-is-more way.

Trying to figure out how I felt about Florale, I retried Kenzo Flower (technically, I think: FlowerByKenzo) for the umpteenth time.  I appreciate the irony of my long-standing dislike for Flower, which must surely be Kenzo´s best known and best selling scent.  Its popularity remains inexplicable to me.  I can´t say that I liked it this time, either, but repeat exposure means that I dislike it less, and I definitely prefer it to Florale.  Part of it is smell dissonance; the first 20 minutes of Flower on my skin is almost pure baby powder, and baby powder to me doesn´t mean pampering – it means babies, and babies are pretty much nothing but crying and work, no matter how much you love them.  It´s like the people who smell eugenol (cloves) in fragrance and can´t think of anything but toothache and miserable trips to the dentist.  Our smell memories are so individuated – on vacation in Maine, we were giving all the kids baby aspirin for their sunburn one day, and my sister-in-law mentioned how much she hates the smell of baby aspirin.  To her, the smell is unhappy because it is associated with being sick as a child and needing medicine.  I have the same association but in my mind it´s a happy one – baby aspirin is the smell of my mother taking care of me when I was sick.  In other words, the smell of baby aspirin is the smell of being lovingly tended to.

The drydown of Flower has really grown on me, though -once the violet and rose blow off I´m left with the funky, resin-y kick of opoponax, musk and hawthorne, along with the luminous glow of hedione, and what´s not to love about that?  I wonder if I keep trying it whether I´ll find myself wanting a bottle in a year or two.

March

I went by Sephora to check out their new SOPI nail polish colors, particularly the forest-green Dark Room I was lusting after, and … meh.  Don´t bother.  It´s streaky in application, oddly dull on the nail  and, unfortunately, pretty much a fade to black with the necessary two coats.  Total fail.  I know there are a bunch of new greens either out or coming out, I’ll have to get that list from my pal Louise who knows about my dark-green fetish…

In the Shadows is also much darker in person than this online swatch – your standard dried-blood vampy, nice finish, looks good but nothing you need if you already own five shades just like it.  If you’re a vampy fan, you’re probably already covered.  An aside: I can’t own too many blues, greens, reds, grays or random fugly colors, but give me three or five vampies and I seem to lose interest in any more.

To me the standout was Under My Trench Coat, which they describe as “light grey khaki with gold shimmer” and again their photo´s off – it´s a much more subdued micro-shimmer on the nail, I’d say a semi-matte — on the nail you have to stare to see the shimmer.  This falls squarely in the jolie laide camp (subcategory: mushroom) for those of you who share my passion for quirky colors.  Darker than Run With It!, less purple than Metro Chic, and lighter (and warmer) than Jacques, this is a dove-grey khaki neutral with a gorgeous two-coat finish.  A winner.

Finally, I´ve just started playing in their dirty pinks, gray-salmons and mauves, all jolie laide shades that are a decidedly acquired taste and IMO some of the trickiest colors to wear.   Here´s a link to their color swatches, scroll down and check out the section of swatches starting with Nonfat Soy Half Caff on down to It´s Somewhere In My Purse if you´re not clear what I´m talking about.   The key with these colors is they have to be just funky enough not to be mistaken for the lame-o Revlon Dusty Desert Rose I wore with my nylon taffeta bridesmaid dress and crimped hair in 1986.   I ended up falling for the bruise-like pink-purple On Stage (shown above), which I put on because it looked ugly in the bottle (huh, and you wonder how I end up picking my fragrances out).   I thought it would be a total bust, but somehow the deep slightly pink-y gray purple looked interesting instead of heedious.  Call Your Mother is an attractive, slightly pinker alternative to Metro Chic.  All these colors made me look forward to fall.

Anything new on the horizon you’re looking forward to?  Oh, also — np fanatics, which I assume you are if you read this far — did you see All Lacquered Up’s polish collaboration with Barielle?  Yummmm!!   Here are links to Part 1 and Part 2.  If you scroll down you can see them on the nail.  I’ve been very pleased with my Barielles in the past, and I can’t wait to try at least half of these.  I thought it was fascinating to see which colors a polish junkie would come up with in a collaboration like this.

March

Two weeks ago, I posted a picture of a post-spaghetti western, pre-Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood for an essay in which I compared the allure of foody/gourmand fragrances to a “fatal attraction”. The reason I chose Clint instead of Glenn Close, the notorious bunny-boiler from the 80s classic Fatal Attraction, was because I think Clint´s ill-fated encounters with Jessica Walter in Play Misty For Me are far more terrifying than Michael Douglas´ trysts with Ms. Close. However, Jessica Walter doesn´t harm any small defenseless animals with her butcher knife; just an unsuspecting housekeeper and a well-meaning police detective.

This week, I´ve fallen even deeper down the retro rabbit hole by digging up another “moldy oldie”: the song, “Lola”, by The Kinks. I´m not going to compare a ditty written about an encounter with a transvestite to a new fragrance, but ever since I heard about Marc Jacobs´ newest addition to his eponymous fragrance collection, there´s been an earworm of “Lola” wrapped around my brain, and images of Lady Gaga burned onto my retinas.  Why I´ve chosen to associate the two is beyond my comprehension; especially since I am completely unfamiliar with any Lady Gaga material, save for her outrageous, drag-queenly attire.

There seems to be a number of retro redux trends gripping the world right now; I´ve been inundated with vintage images of Michael Jackson and The Jackson 5 for reasons I´m sure I don´t need to explain, as well as cheesy late night commercials for the “BumpIts” hair accessory, which promises to deliver a beehive hairdo that would rival Priscilla Presley´s, circa 1967. Along comes Jacobs’ newest scent, packaged in a bottle that can best be described as an homage to an Edible Arrangements bouquet, or Formica and vinyl furniture from the 1960s.

I´ve made no secret of my love for Jacobs´ Daisy fragrance; despite it being an innocuous, ubiquitous fruity floral. My love for it is augmented by the adorable bottle it comes in. I don´t often fall for scent packaging, but Daisy sits atop my list of best bottles, keeping company with Fifi Chachnil, the sweeping couture gown silhouette of Givenchy Organza Indecence (the 100 ml size), and many of the glorious Bond No. 9 bottles. I´ve compared the vinyl Daisy daisies to a kitchen table and chairs my parents had: a round white Formica topped table and vinyl chairs in a shade of green that could only be vinyl. In other words, don´t bother looking for it in nature because it doesn´t exist. Now we have Lola, circa now, and she certainly doesn´t smell like “cherry cola”.

I´m bringing up the rear in terms of a technical review of Lola. If you´re interested in the nuts and bolts, surf on over to Now Smell This or Bois de Jasmin. Robin and Victoria have done their usual bang-up jobs reporting on the who, what, where and why.

To me, Lola is a cheeky, playful little scent that pushes all the right olfactory buttons. It starts out all cute and fruity, becomes girlishly floral, and winds down with a nice bit of vanilla and musk. That description can be used for any number of scents currently on the market, and it makes me think of how I recoiled in disgust from Jessica Simpson´s Fancy the first time smelled it. Lola encompasses all the elements that make you want to avoid department store fragrance counters at all costs; but the one thing it isn´t is a doppelgà¤nger of all those fruit/flower/vanilla/musk mash-ups. It is exceedingly well done. And the bottle is spectacular. My Visa card floated out of my wallet as if on angels wings…right into the hands of the Bloomingdales SA; $85.00 for the 100 ml bottle. How could I not?

Thanks for hanging with me through my retro rewind mode. I recently read an essay written by one of my former professors about the concert Paul McCartney gave last month at the New York Mets´ new stadium, CitiField. It inspired me, and got me thinking about the British Invasion bands and how at the age of 42, I´ve managed to see quite a few of these musicians in concert. I never did see the Beatles together, but I did see McCartney at Giants Stadium back in the early 90s, and George Harrison as part of an ensemble in a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in the mid 80s. I´ve seen Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, The Kinks, The Who and the Rolling Stones in concert. I´ve also seen Elton John on every single American tour he´s done since 1982. And I still have all the ticket stubs.

Once again, it´s your turn: Tell me what your favorite cheesy late night commercials are. And, which musicians/bands have you seen multiple times? Finally, to keep this on topic: Your favorite fragrance bottles.

Divine’s newest fragrance is Eau Divine.  I’m a big fan of all the Divine fragrances, and they’ve always struck me as being underrated. I wish they sold the bigger, cheaper bottles in the U.S.  that they have on their website, I think they would get a lot more of a following.

Notes are green mandarin, star anise, rose hip, ginger, nutmeg, orange flower, violet, cardamom, white amber, hot musk and labdanum.

I’m never sure why sometimes notes have descriptives added, like “hot musk.”  Is that as opposed to cold musk?  Or Tepid Musk?  Just wondering.

This opens crisp and green with all sorts of interesting notes floating around with some tartness and spiciness layered in as it dries. there’s a little bitter note almost which blends pretty seeamlessly with the anise.  The florals don’t play a huge role in this perfume except as the  quieted string section, except the violet which seems to trill around all the other notes without feeling out of place. violet and spice and incense?  Well, yeah, that works, who knew?  The longer drydown reveals more emphasis on the incense with little blips of bitter and spice, but I wouldn’t call it an incense perfume at all, it just supplies a depth for the other notes to melt into. All notes seem to blend more the longer it’s on so I can’t detect them individually as easily, it’s just this lovely, sometimes off- kilter symphony that so works.  This is just another beautifully done Divine perfume.

Divine was kind enough to send several samples for us to do a giveaway on.  So to be entered in the drawing for one of the 7 generous samples, just drop a comment in!

Have we talked about my 50th birthday?  It’s coming up, but later in the year. I’ve pretty much decided to go to Costa Rica for 2-3 weeks as my present to myself in January, after my birthday.  Any of you that have been there, if you have places I should stay, etc., let me know!  I plan to do Arenal and probably a week by Jaco or Tamarindo (sp?).  Definitely want to do the cloud forest as well.  Other things that are can’t-miss, hotels that are perfection without killing my budget?

Patty