Serge Lutens Fourreau Noir has notes of tonka bean, lavender, musk, smoky notes.  Well, you know Serge loves to give us lots and lots of particulars on his newest creation.  *rolls eyes*  Let’s assume his next scent will be released with the explanation:  “Made of some stuff that smells.”

The lavender on the open about killed me, and it appeared as if it wasn’t going to moderate quick enough for me to avoid death by lavender. It’s pretty much the Lavender from Encens et Lavande, without the insense. Luckily! In a few short moments, the lavender sank under the surface, leaving a nice surface patina on the fragrance without overwhelming it, and then some kind of caramely smell wafted through, lots of smoke. Think of it like this, it’s the Sonic Drive-in where Encens Et Lavande, Chergui and Fumerie Turque all show up, their brakes go out simulataneously, and they all wind up in an incredibly interesting jumble on the menu, something like:  “Lavender Pancake Syrup with Hookah.”

Do I like it?  Yeah, I do.  Carmen and Lee were in the more “meh” category on it.  I like it more than they do/did.  It’s not over the top love. but an enthusiastic like!  It turns and stays pretty smoky on me, and I get just a hint of the lavender all the way through.  The immortelle is what makes it interesting and the part I really like, it gives it charm and  warmth that the lavender open really needed.  It sweetens the smoke and makes the lavender less cold.  I can see where the combination may miss its target with some noses and hit it pretty great on others.

Of course we’ll do a give-away.  Just drop a comment, you can just say hi, if you like, to be entered!

Patty

Yes, this is a review, but — first — who’s going to Sniffa?  Believe it or not, it looks like I’m going at the quasi-last-minute (Sniffa is Oct 17-18).  Yay! My friend Sarah is going, and she wants some company.  Are you going?  I have some goals this time.  Goal one is not to die of exhaustion at 8 pm.  Goal two is not to strain my vocal chords and lose my voice for almost two weeks afterward.  I know, I talk too much and too loud.  This shocks you, yes?

Second — thanks everyone for all your fabulous comments last Wednesday on my Taking My Sweet Time post.  I read them all, and responded to a bunch of them.  They were so much fun to read!  Now, on to my review:

I divide the Giorgio Armani fragrance line into three parts.  There’s the Armani Prives, some of which I like more than others, but all of which I think are at least adequate.  They smell like good taste and new money to me, and I want to line all those lovely stone-topped bottles up on my dresser in my (nonexistent) child-free, urban-hip, Zen-streamlined, fashion-forward Pacific-coastal house before getting back to perusing the latest images on The Sartorialist.

Next group has those Onde things, which I liked well enough but can’t remember any of the names of (great bottles, though) which – okay, I’ll take a set of those too, because they looked so good together, although I think I only craved one of them.  I could keep those in the guest bedroom of my fantasy home.

The last group is All That Other Armani Stuff; here, let’s play a game … how many Armani fragrances can I name off the top of my head?  I find them really unmemorable.  Here we go:  Code, Sensei, She/He, White… ?  White Diamonds.  Wait, or is that Elizabeth Taylor? City something.  Okay, that’s it.  I’m tapped out.  They have several on the shelves of Sephora, and I don’t think I could pick them out of a lineup in terms of their smell.  They’re all fine, as far as I can recall.

Comes along the new Armani Idole d’Armani, with notes of clementine, pear, ginger, davana, saffron, Egyptian jasmine, loukoum rose, patchouli, vetiver.  I remember Angela doing a review recently at Now Smell This in which she was not thrilled (the pear was bothering her), but I often like pear notes, and I thought her description of the base as an “intriguing mix of snuffed-out beeswax taper with saffron, the barest breath of patchouli, and the hot smell of burnt wick” sounded pretty awesome.

And I am doing this review today because I found Idole awful, but interestingly awful. The kind of bad I don’t run across too often.  Lola?  Just another slutty mall frag.  Michael Kors Hollywood?  Eh.  Another too-sweet hot mess of a gourmand, notable mainly for its ubiquity.  But this.  Giorgio, amico mio.  I don’t know how much you paid those folks at IFF to come up with this, but I can honestly say: you definitely don’t smell something like this every day.

I put on a single squirt of Idole d’Armani in Ulta after taking the kids to a movie (and thank God it was on the way home, not beforehand.)  In the best scrubber tradition, its sillage is astonishing.  Both girls begged and screamed until I hung my hand out the window on the way home.  No, really.  And it’s not like they’re unfamiliar with being trapped in a car with me wearing something vicious, like freshly applied Poison.  Or Bal a Versailles.  I am not sure what’s in that innocuous looking bottle, but you better fall to your knees and pray right now that this thing doesn’t catch on big as an office scent.  Just sayin.’  I just reread Angela’s review preparing this one, and I ran across the line, “I´ve been wearing Idole off and on for two weeks now…”  GIRL.  STOP THE MADNESS.  THAT STUFF WILL KILL YOU.  GO PUT ON A NICE ALDEHYDE AND PURGE YOUR SOUL OF EVIL.

Ah — dove e il Signore Yuck?  It’s hard to find the right words to describe Idole d’Armani, but I’m going to try.  It is very, very sweet, but big.  Molto something.  So, think structure.  Like an enormous bouffant.  Or scaffolding.  Maybe with a noose dangling from the top of it.   Go ahead, hang yourself.  You know you want to.  There is pear, but not just pear.  There’s also the Clementine and a whiff of something so wildly rank that at first I thought it was the fact that we were walking past the dumpsters.  Kind of a combo of indole and rotting garbage, in the underground garage — you know that smell.  Again, interesting, but hence the hanging of the hand out the window.

And no, I don’t mean this as some heinous, witchy rag.  I actually want you to smell this, preferably on your own skin, and let me know whether this takes you to a new, strange, disturbing place you’re not sure you want to go, like that feeling I get sometimes watching a creepier part of a Fellini movie, maybe a scene with clowns and midgets and insane laughter.  I am having trouble thinking what person might find this attractive.  I didn’t scrub it because I was curious whether it would evolve into anything less offputting.  Even the drydown six hours later, with a base that (yes) is pretty and reminds me a little of CdG 88 8, has that sugary-sweet overlay of goo still clinging to it like Swamp Thing.

Go on.  I dare you.  Anyone else tried this yet?

March

We have come to the last two in this series.

Notes of lily, ylang, vanilla, sandalwood and peppercorns compose Lys Carmin. The name is very apt. This is a spiced-up lily.  I get used to the more common pristine, virgin’ish lily, the one of Easter and springtime. This lily is more the in full bloom of summer.  It’s ripe and the stamen is spreading all of that yellow dust that gets all over your hands. It’s almost messy, but not quite. This is probably my least favorite of the six. Not sure why exactly, but I get almost a plasticky smell from it. I really like the spiciness and the angle they were taking, but it just doesn’t seem to work on my skin. If anyone else has smelled this and gets a different take on it, please post your thoughts.  After several hours, I did wind up liking it  more as that plastic smell seemed to fade, but the fading also muddied it a bit on me.  Liked it okay, didn’t love it.

Cologne Noire, while giving more of a nod to the masculine fragrances, is the one of the six that is the most unisex.  Created by Mark Buxton with notes of ginger, cardamom, pepper, bergamot, bitter orange, mandarin and wood notes.  Octavian reviewed it, and I’m not sure there is much I can add to his excellent review. It does carry the spiciness in a cool way. Not ice cold.  It dries down to a lovely woodsy scent, but still carrying the spices, deepened with incense.  It carries the Mark Buxton olfactory stamp, so if you already have a Mark Buxton that you love, you probably don’t need this one.  I definitely like it, but it fails to move me in some transcendant way towards my wallet.  If you were missing the Mosbudd whatever thing, this is pretty close to it.

So two of these that didn’t turn out as well on me. I guess it’s good that only four of the six won me over, but that’s a really good batting average.

Since the blog was down last week when I did the announcement of the drawing for two sample sets, I’m going to make it three and draw from commenters on this post and the one last week.

We do think the blog is working again. We finally got the upgrade notice to a new software version that’s been out a while, so we think some of the weirdness may be fixed.  I sure hope it is!!

Moving on.  Has anyone sniffed the Cartier things yet? I read a couple of quite notes on Basenotes that they were fine, but not that special.  At 225-250 (?) per bottle, I guess they have a higher bar to get over, but I’m still anxious to sniff them since Cartier’s stuff is normally pretty interesting, or has been.

Patty

(Hey, everybody – Friday was such a mess on the blog, I’m leaving Lee’s post up for Monday.  Enjoy!)

Dear All

I was intending to write about the new Patricia de Nicolai men’s scent, Patchouli. However, the diminutive store (synecdoche or its friend coming up, folks) either forgot to post it as per my polite phone request (they’re so lovely there), it’s lost in the post, it’s been delivered to the wrong address (two very similar addresses nearby mean my post does tend to wander) or it’s been held up in one of the interminable postal strikes that seem to happen in London all too frequently, and all too unreportedly. October, I hope.

Given the above, I’ve pulled a topic out of the bag. There’s dirt under my fingernails and soil in my socks (does soil have negative connotations across the pond? – if so, I’m sorry – I don’t mean poop), and the scent of change in the air. Yes, it’s that late-summer-becomes-early-autumn moment and I’m going to tell you how it’s been smelling down my way.

First, of vegetable gluts. The problem with growing food on a plot of land near others who do the same, is the rapid spread of pests and diseases. I’m used to plagues of cabbage whiteflies, the caterpillars that chow down on my brassica more readily than I do, the flea beetle holes that pepper my rocket/arugula. Normally, tomatoes succumb to blight by July here. But this year, perhaps because most of my fellow allotmenteers gave up on tomatoes after three terrible years of curling leaves and wizened stumps, I’ve had no such problems. That near acrid aroma of crushed tomato leaf and freshed picked fruit has filled me to bursting, and I’ve had pounds and pounds of tomatoes for immediate consumption, pasta sauce making, chutneys and pickles. The best producers have been a mixture of old faithfuls and surprises – cherry tomatoes Sungold and Gardener’s Delight, and Kellogg’s Breakfast and Marianna’s Peace in the surprises (all thanks to C for the seed for the last two). But the best of all has been Black Krim, or Black Russian, a gorgeous heritage variety that produces vast, sliceable beefsteaks, green-black on top to pinkinsh orange underneath. Slightly salty, rich and smooth fleshed, they’ve been one of my summer highlights. And I have two waiting for me, with basil and olives, for my supper tonight.

Ripe corn, starchy sweetness. Small green peppers, that galbanum hit before the fire strikes. The clean cool caress of a cucumber, picked young. The strange otherworldly perfume of French beans, whose aroma reminds you of their tropical origin. More mint than I can cook with, slice into salads and turn into cordial. The milky sap of multicoloured lettuce leaves.

And now, the smell of turned earth is starting to dominate. At home, in the back garden/yard, I’m relandscaping. Removing plants that have become dominant, getting blistered hands from mattock-swinging action and making room for more colour and more light and more scent. But for now, the most striking scents are the parsnippy nuttiness of pulled roots, the mentholated quality of cut down eucalypts, the incredible hit of petrichor, artificially produced. It’s parched here, and I’ve broken my self-imposed hosepipe ban in order to dig out plants. I miss that smell or rain on earth. We’ve only had meaningful rain twice in three months.

But my favourite smells this year have emerged from a newfound love – pickling and preserving. I’ve made plum and ginger jam, green tomato chutney, quince and squash chutney, pickled shallots, pickled garlic, sweet cucumber relish. Spice, sugar, vinegar. Yum.

What smells are ringing your bell and knocking on your door, right about now?

Lee

Yes, we know — the blog’s been up and down for a couple of days, we’re trying to sort out what the problem is… we hope to vanquish the gremlins soon!

March