I got my hands on another sampler pack of the VCAs, so we will have a draw today for two sets of samples of all six of the Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinare scents. Just drop a comment in and you’ll be entered.

There have been some great reviews of Bois d’Iris from VCACE (just abbreviating this).  Robin covered it, as did Octavian.  Iris and I have been constant companions for years. It is one of two notes that surprised me when I first got serious about perfume. The other note is violet.  Who knew I would grow to love those two notes so much when I’d never really thought about either of them for decades.

Notes for Bois d’Iris are sweet notes, frankincense, iris, driftwood, vetiver, ambergris, labdanum, myrrh, vanilla.  After all the iris perfumes I have known and loved – Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist, Dior Homme, TDC’s Bois d’Iris, Chanel Bois des Iles – it never occurred to me that I could find another that was unique enough to add to my all-star iris lineup.  VCA did just that.  Bois d’Iris floats, but constantly calls up earthy components, so it never feels disembodied or ghost-like.  There’s a saltiness from the ambergris, joined by the smoky incense and wood that is warm and just whispers around the nose.  Although it has vanilla in it, which is noticeable, this is a far cry from a gourmand.  If you’re an iris lover, just go buy it, you’ll thank me later.  Everyone says it doesn’t stick around, and I just didn’t find that to be true.  As with all the VCAs, they emote softly and for a nice length of time on me.  So while I don’t get the whole when pressing my nose up to my skin, this one also just wafts as I walk.  I do get the smell of woody incense on the skin all the way through.  It’s persisted on my skin or in wafting for 4+ hours, which is pretty good in perfume years.

My father’s funeral was right before Christmas. Overnight it had misted and frozen all those droplets of water to the trees, the house, the grass.  I walked outside that morning, bundled up against that cold.  It was so cold, my tears would have frozen, if I’d had any left  The sun hit the blanket of tiny icicles covering the world, and the light exploded, shattering my pain in a blinding moment of beauty, leaving it forever etched in my head as the second in my life when sorrow and hope existed perfectly side by side without judgment or regret.

Muguet Blanc made me think of that second. It is breathtaking, its opening the perfect note soaring into the air on a cold winter day, something that feels like it shouldn’t exist, contrasts of cold and sweet and wood — conjuring up spring in your head where no spring exists.  As it dries down, it warms and softens into the skin and loses the chilliness. Notes of lily of the valley, peony, neroli and cedar are pretty simple, but rendered elegant.

It’s a stunnah.  And this last and lasts and emotes fairly loudly.  The first time I spritzed it on, the whole house knew in 3 minutes that a new perfume had arrived, they were all looking for it.  Several hours in, it’s still wafting and drifting and just being lovely.

A note on the VCAs that I got wrong before. It is $185 for 75 mls, which is 15 more mls than I thought was in the bottle.  That’s a better price point per ml, a little over $2 a ml.  You know.  I don’t have to say it anymore, do I?  If $200 is the new $100, then these are a bargain.

I’ve been thinking about this whole wafting thing.  Does anyone else notice that about a perfume?  There are some that it is hard to really get a nose-bead on if you snuffle where you sprayed it, but if you just walk through a room, you get the full effect. I often wonder if perfumers try perfumes that way to what kind of trail they have, or are some just a happy accident?  I adore the wafters, which I think of as different from sillage monsters. To me, sillage monsters are the ones that are overpowering and big. Wafters aren’t necessarily strong, but you don’t get how beautiful the perfume is until you smell it trailing off of someone.  I’d far rather a great wafter than about anything else.  I think it’s that effect of leaving ambience behind you that tickles a person’s sense, and they usually have no idea where it came from, they just know it is beautiful, and then it’s gone.

Patty

I really enjoyed the post yesterday, and judging by the lively comments you all enjoyed it too!  I’m going to do a quasi-related post today which might be entitled, Yo, March, so where’s your review of [insert name of new niche perfume here]?

I can see both sides of one of the arguments put forth yesterday about what “should” be included in The Guide.  On the one hand, it seems to me that LT/TS set out to make it as comprehensive as they could, reviewing both niche and mass-market fragrances, and they made an effort to cover most (if not all) of a lot of lines they picked to review.  On the other hand, I think Tom’s point in comments yesterday is well taken, and it made me laugh so I’ll quote it here: “Pick and choose. Architecture critics don´t review everything from Frank Gehry´s latest to the addition to the public library in Ferd, New Jersey.”  I agree.  If Luca and Tania want to nitpick their way through a hand-chosen set of scents to review, so be it.  I’d be thrilled to read them.  I think having to find 200 new and different ways to say swill would take the wind out of my sails too.

Which brings me back around to … me (and doesn’t it always?  Sigh.)  Some of you must have noticed by now that the frantic pace of my reviewing has slowed somewhat, although I like to think that occasionally we’re trading quantity for quality, or at least a good laugh.  My explanation is that I’m just not as desperate to get my hands on, much less review, every new niche scent that comes down the pike.  And your response might be, so what?   Get on with it, perfume blogger!  So let me phrase my conundrum a little differently:  if the pace of my perfume testing and reviewing has meant that, for example, I have not worn Fendi Theorema once in the last nine months, well… that’s not a world I want to live in.

If I never bought another bottle of fragrance, or came home with another bag of samples, I already own enough fragrance right now to last me the rest of my life – and I know I own a lot less than some of you.  Guess what’s happened to me?  I want to wear some of these masterpieces, for an entire day or even (gasp!) two days.  Instead of trying one or two or five new things, I want to revel in the glory that is Feminite du Bois like a normal person who isn’t constantly looking for a new review angle.  At this point I have nothing new to say about FdB, and frankly I want my enjoyment of it to be selfish.  I don’t want to put it on and immediately have my mind drift to how I might write about it.  Eventually that starts to Feel Like Work, and that’s probably what happened to The Guide.

Today, as I type this, is a weird, overcast, gloomy September day that is still not cool enough to kill off the mosquitoes, and if I looked at it wrong it would be … well, depressing.  But it isn’t, because I’m wearing Fendi Theorema, a fragrance that still makes me literally tear up at its beauty, particularly if I haven’t worn it in awhile.  I have reached a phase in my perfume journey where I wouldn’t say that I’m any less enthused about perfume, I’m just approaching it a little less like a junkie looking for the next fix.  I want to wear and enjoy my really great perfumes, and – hey – where can I find a more sympathetic audience for that than on here?

So today, in lieu of the perfume review I did not write, here is a by-no-means comprehensive list, in no particular order, of some of the fragrances I’ve been wearing regularly because I have decided after however many years we’ve been together that they live up to every desire I have for a perfume.  Some of them I would put on a “Perfume Greats” list, and some of them are merely deeply personal great choices for me.  (It goes without saying, but I’ll say it: Mitsouko and vintage Femme would both be on this list, but let’s talk about something else for a change, shall we?)  Links go to my past review of each scent.

Shiseido Feminite du Bois.  A great.  I hear it’s been reformulated lalalala, I don’t want to know.  Buy the parfum stylos on eBay, if there are any left.  Gateway drug.  Less woody.  You will love me and hate me at the same time if you try the parfum.  Blame Louise.  As is so often the case.

Fendi Theorema.  One of those perennial discontinued perfumista favorites that I sampled, swooned over mightily, and unlike a lot of other things never fell back out of love with.  It is impossible for me to wear Theorema and be unhappy.  This one is Robin’s fault at Now Smell This.

Donna Karan Chaos.  Interestingly… this is the one on the list that can bite.  There are days when I deeply regret putting it on, it gets a nail-varnish thing going that makes me headachy.  At the same time, I can’t imagine life without it.  I bought my bottle on eBay for a ridiculous sum before the reissue (about which I have never quite made up my mind regarding its smell, feel free to weigh in).  If you are looking for a cheap fix, let me endorse the Irma Shorell Anarchy, which I feel is a great dupe, possibly better than the new stuff.

Worth Courtesan.  I have no idea; I can’t argue for its greatness, although Pierre Bourdon did it. I know it’s fruit salad on a lot of you.  Probably the closest thing I have to a signature scent in terms of repeat wearing.  For awhile I totally stopped mentioning it on the blog, because if it (inexplicably) became popular, even among perfumistas, I would feel pain.  Musky sexy goodness that has never overwhelmed me, and feels good whether I’m at the grocery store or a party. It’s me, plain and simple.

Dior Poison.  Both the death-by-syrup vintage EDT in the stoppered bottle, and the Grim Reaper-esque Esprit de Parfum, for those of you who believe, like me, that the EDT isn’t quite strong enough.  I wore this out in the 80s, ignored it for twenty years, and dug it up last year on a whim.  I’ve come to appreciate its homicidal beauty, although I understand and respect the feelings of those of you who wish it had never been created, and I am careful about where I wear it.  BTW a single drop from the tip of a toothpick of the Esprit is detectable at a level that can be correctly identified by alarmed bystanders.  Not that this has happened to me.

Annick Goutal Mandragore.  Yes, yes, I know – it smells like pee (or worse,) it lasts five minutes… I’ve heard the complaints.  On me it is a bright, cheerful ginger/herbal/grapefruit/spicy thing of reasonable lasting power and one of the very few bottles I have actually had to replace because I ran out, which in my world happens pretty much never.  Next time I’m getting one of those awesome square bottles.  Also, shamelessly begging — can anyone hook me up with a small sample of Mandragore Poupre?  I can’t get my hands on it, wah wah.

Estee Lauder Cinnabar (wait… have I really not reviewed this?!? hmm)  – I feel I should end this post with one of my wack pronouncements, which is: I believe everyone is either Cinnabar or Opium (or, okay, neither).  After several years of trying to decide, I am Cinnabar.  Clearly.  This decision was made for me by a vintage parfum flacon I scored on eBay.  I wanted to be an Opium girl, but Cinnabar is sweeter and less screechy on me, although by no means a shy thing.

Anyway, thanks for your patience.  Never feel you owe me a pity comment, I’m a big girl.  If you’d like to play along and name a few fragrances you’ve decided really are All That, feel free!

March

Serge Lutens is not my bitch.  Neither is Chanel or Guerlain or Dior.  They don’t have to make the perfume I want them to make or think they should be making.  They make a bottle, and if I like it, I buy it, and I get to use the whole bottle or dump it out or swap it or sell it, but their duty to me ends once I’ve purchased it and the bottle doesn’t leak and the sprayer works reasonably well.  Our relationship is over. They don’t have to make a masterpiece every time they hit the creative perfuming bench, nor do they have to make a perfume I like or want to wear.  They don’t even have to make another bottle of perfume ever again.  How they develop and execute their business plan is up to them.  If they’re making money, it’s apparently working out okay, and they don’t need me telling them what to do.

This thought crept into my mind as I was reading this discussion on Basenotes last week (with some help from Neil Gaiman).  Luca Turin gave an interview and said he won’t be updating The Guide anymore (and I’m paraphrasing some of this, you can read the actual comment by following all the links) because he can’t bear to smell so much dreck -  that 1500 out of every 2000 perfumes created are completely inept.

Note that he didn’t say just bad or not to his liking, but inept.  The conversation on Basenotes then delves into what perfume should be, what we expect, are they masterpieces or simply commercial items created to sell.  It’s a good discussion, as many are on Basenotes.  If you don’t visit that site regularly, you should. I just wish their women’s section were as vigorous as the men’s section.  But I thought we could talk about this here too!

We write about 5 days a week on perfume and cover 1-3 perfumes on average per post, sometimes more.  Over the course of 52 weeks, we probably cover 150 or so perfumes a year with at least a short review or impression.  If I were sniffing and writing about 500 of them in a year, it would be a job, not a hobby, and I’m sure it would lead to me feeling very differently about the crap they were making me smell just because they decided to release the fifth Paris Hilton flanker.  I think probably about half of what is released every year doesn’t even deserve a mention.  It’s something some people will buy because they love the celebrity or designer that made it.  Fair enough, but it doesn’t need a review.  It’s like reviewing Harlequin romances or some of the more formulaic science fiction.  If you’re a fan of the genre, you don’t really care much about a review as long as it stays true to the formula.  I’m not bashing either of those things with that statement.  I like a good formula book from time to time, I used to like them more, but I want to get what I’m expecting, and that’s pretty much it.  If that happens, they’ve done their job for what I want and owe me nothing else.

All markets have segments in them that are created for various reasons.  Perfumery has a low-end, budget market made for those who just want a little pick-me-up, may be young and plan to throw it away quickly and don’t want  to pay much for it, or they just prefer those types of perfumes, likely somewhat sweet, fruity floral.  I’m not going to judge their taste, people like what they like, and their tastes hopefully grow and improve with age.  If not, it’s okay with me. I can bear being in the elevator with someone doused in Pink Sugar for 5 minutes. Just relax a little and enjoy it for what it is – air syrup.

There’s the mid-range/department store segment that’s really geared  for the younger or professional person with not a lot of time or knowledge about perfumes.  They aren’t looking for a masterpiece, they may or may not love perfume, and they don’t spend hours sniffing at Bergdorf’s or Macy’s.  Typically they find out about a new perfume by reading it in Allure or Vogue or from  their Sak’s or Neiman’s catalogue.  They want to find something fairly quickly that smells good.  It’s not that they want to smell like everyone else, but they sure don’t want to smell weird, and becauseof that, they can often be found trailing a trend.  They want to smell businessy or sexy or hawt or seductive, but they aren’t willing to spend a lot of time on this and tend to be swayed by marketing hype  or a name and associate how they want to be perceived with the perfume they wear.  Or they just want a bottle of fragrance that doesn’t suck.

Then there’s us, most of you that read this blog. We are obsessed by scent, and we’ve smelled  it all or are in the process of smelling it all, or we are just starting out on our obsession.  We want great, we want masterpieces. We don’t want dreck, and we often perceive ordinary and mundane as dreck.  We are a little snobby about our perfumes and are looking for the rare, unique, discontinued; the disappearance of the Gobin-Daudes still cause us much angst – more so if we never got to smell them; we swamp some poor Hermes boutique in Istanbul if we hear they have one bottle of Doblis; we have small vials of Guerlain Bouquet des Faunes regular and Jasmine in our desk drawer that we check every day for leakage; and every single one of us have Guerlain Djedi in our Ebay daily search.   Okay, I probably just listed stuff for me there mostly, except the G-Ds, which I did smell and still cry about.

The bar a perfume company has to get over with us is much higher than the casual sniffer that wants to smell good. We’ve sniffed a lot and have a whole catalogue of scents in our head to compare new things to, and we sort and sort and sort and find much of the new entries to have been done before, probably better, or it’s a scent that was never meant for us to begin with. In that case, I simply note it as that and stop the critique in my head. Except with Lola, I’m still not over that.

I don’t find perfumery to be any different from any other commercial market – shoes, makeup, skin care, clothing, books, paintings, music.  There is a target market inside of a commodity, and if the target isn’t me, I don’t really feel disappointed that I don’t like it.   I think the reason Lola made me so mad is because I was its target market.  I thought Daisy was fairly ordinary and somewhat innocent, but an easy to wear perfume that was made well enough that would find a lot of fans. Lola was supposed to be the more daring, floozy sister, and instead Lola was a spoiled, nasty, vain tramp with no taste. {March, de-cloaking: hahaha.  That one really got you, didn’t it?  Here’s the part I added in my review comments that day: “Lola stalked me for the entire evening, threatening to drag me to the food court and make me eat a Big Mac and a Blizzard. I could feel my face breaking out.”}

My bigger problem with Luca’s head-tossing at the horrible state of the perfume industry is the reviews he did of the Be Never too Busy 2 Be Beautiful line.  5 stars?  4 stars?  I’m not saying they were the worst smelling perfumes I’ve ever run across, but the highest I got on any of them was maybe a 3. They were pretty typical Body Product perfumes, what you’d expect to find in scents that were really intended to scent body lotion and hand cream.  I give a lot of allowances for taste and even came to accept that Tommy Girl did break some ground, even if I personally don’t care for it.  One man’s art is another man’s dreck.

I don’t mean any of this as a personal criticism of Luca Turin. I have loved reading what he’s written about perfume, and I wish he’d continue. I’ve learned a lot, tried some things he loved because of the way he wrote about it, disagreed with him, but learned even in disagreement more about what I did like/dislike and why, and I found him to be a source of information and understanding about scent.  He has enriched my understanding and love for perfumery.

I do agree, though, that the minute you do find yourself lamenting the lack of anything great or new out on the horizon for months at a time, the problem is likely in yourself, and it’s not really a problem. You just may have reached end game for your obsession, and it’s time to take a break from it for a while or permanently.

That’s all.  What do you think?

Patty

I think some of you know what a fan I am of Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’ creations.  I don’t love all of them (some of them don’t work on me) but in general I find them at least interesting, and it’s always fun exploring in her extensive line.

But I hadn’t tried her color series because … oh, I dunno.  The whole idea was too abstract for me?   No good reason, I guess — probably I was too busy messing around in her comfort/spice scents that I adore.  This is series 2, I still haven’t tried series 1.  Notes and descriptions below are from the DSH website and my sample tags.  (oh, and btw, remember our DSH brainstorming session earlier this year?  She listened, and she now has sampler pack suggestions and smaller sizes.)

“Each aroma-color collection is a continuation of the color-into-scent exploration that I began in 2007.  With these new aroma-colors, I have been able to deeply delve into a new realm of expression, the translation from one sensory experience into another and to create new art pieces with an abstract approach to the use of materials.”

Cyan – “Created for Sniffapalooza NYC Spring Fling 2009, Cyan is our newest ‘aroma-color’ interpretation. Inspired by this ultra-modern blue color with a slightly greenish tint, our Cyan scent is as light as air; an eau fraiche scent that wisps in like the freshness of Spring … an ultra-modern blue with a greenish tint; one of the primary colors that make up the CMYK printing wheel.

Top notes: Bergamot, Blue Chamomile, Crushed Mint, Yuzu, Middle notes: Cucumber, French Linden Blossom (accord), French Linden Blossom absolute, Jonquil, Orris, Orris Concrete, Base notes: Ambergris, Australian Sandalwood, Seaweed, Silver Fir, Wild Chamomile, Wood Violet.”

Verdict:  Wow that’s pretty.  Exceeded my expectations wildly, the words “airy” and “fresh” always scare me (so does “seaweed,” urgh), but I should have known Dawn wasn’t going to throw in any of Patty’s patented TFA.*  The opening on me is VIOLET VIOLET and I love that, not too candied, with the citrus and the cucumber trotting right behind.  Cucumber’s kind of a mixed bag for me, but it works beautifully here.  I like how the linden, jonquil and cucumber give it a wet, green, buttery aspect but in a good way, I’m loving the linden in this… I went through a linden soliflore phase but linden all on its own can get on my nerves.  I’m seeing sandalwood, fir, etc. listed up there, but this stays more in those top and middle notes on me.  Girlier than what I’d normally choose, but not fey or precious about it.

Viridian – “Organic. Sultry. Enchanted.   A true GREEN aroma that is deeply saturated and unmistakable. Based on a semi-transparent, green-blue-green artist’ hue (paint), Viridian embodies the concept of a rich foresty green color in aromatic form.  A unisex fougere scent.

Top notes: Angelica, Artemisia, Bergamot, Celery Seed, Middle notes: Aloe (accord), Chrysanthemum absolute, Galbanum, Orris Root, Base notes: Australian Sandalwood, Brazilian Vetiver, Green Oakmoss, Lovage, Myrrh Gum, Patchouli, Violet Leaf Absolute

Verdict: Another pleasant surprise.  I am not wild for fougeres and I was doubting the “unisex” part of this – to me, fougeres say MAN and that’s it.  I love all the herbal green goodness of this, TON of galbanum on me, but it’s a nice balance for the herbs … it’s sweeter than I’d have expected, but I can’t decide what that is, and there is a definite medicinal edge to it – maybe the lovage?  It reminds me of clary sage.  Tingly, like mint and patchouli together.  You know what?  This is the way I wish Aveda stores smelled, instead of the heinous way they actually smell, how can anything that makes me back away from the door like that actually be good for you?)

Quinacridone Violet – “Neon. Shocking. Fantastic.  This aroma-color, based on an intense, man-made fuschia – pink – purple artist hue (paint), is strangely wonderful and vibrantly modern in every way. Many artists find this color addictive…we feel the same about the scent.  A fruit-infused floral scent.

Top notes: Cherry Blossom, Lime Peel, Plum, Quince, Middle notes: Aglaia Flower, Italian Neroli, Osmanthus, Sweet Pea, Violet, Violet Leaf Absolute, Base notes: Atlas Cedarwood, Cassis Bud, Incense Notes, Musk.”

Verdict: Wah.  The only disappointment of the three.  I love VIOLET VIOLET and I was expecting this to BE violet.  But it isn’t, at least on me.  I have the same problem with this that I do with Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan – the osmanthus just gets bigger and bigger until it fills up the room and obliterates everything else.  It’s not terrible, more a middling-sweet muddle, and I’m not digging the plum in this either and I like plum.  Oh, well.

Here’s a link to Chandler Burr’s review of Viridian with some musings on DSH.

*Tampax Fresh Accord.

Cyan – wikimedia.org, Viridian – webexhibits.org, QV – dickblick.com

March

I was originally going to title this essay “Nava Sniffs TIFF”, but alas, time got away from me this week, and the “TIFF” to which I refer, The Toronto International Film Festival, is over tomorrow. I was looking forward to heading downtown to combine two of my favourite activities: sniffing and voyeurism. I was hoping to eyeball some celebs, stop in at Holt Renfrew and some of the other fragrant establishments in Yorkville, and have lunch at one of the trendy hotspots. I´ll definitely try my best for next time. 

All I could manage was an uninspiring trip to Yorkdale, and I came up empty. There was a new Lolita Lempicka scent at The Bay, in a funky butterfly-shaped bottle, but I couldn´t get near it, unless I interrupted a pleading SA, trying like all get-out to sell something to a very resistant customer. I´ll definitely try my best for the next next time.

Then, it was on to Sephora, where I convinced an SA there to bust open a bottle of Stella McCartney Nude for me to smell. The tester had gone missing and I was counting on this one since I wasn´t able to get near the new Lempicka. Nude was a disappointment in every sense of the word; it left me muttering about the wastefulness and utter lack of imagination we perfumistas must contend with. I´d love to print up a t-shirt along the lines of the “Got Milk?” ad campaign. Mine would scream, “Another Flanker??!!” Flankers are really starting to get under my skin, similar to how unauthorized biographies, celebrity tell-alls, and ghost-written memoirs by disgraced professional athletes make me shake my head every time I wander into a bookstore. Do they have any idea how many trees must sacrifice their lives so they can put their worthless drivel down on paper?

Just as I was contemplating a sushi snack from the very yummy Mac Sushi kiosk, I stumbled upon the eco-chic emporium, Pistachio. I had heard from some friends and family members that Pistachio had some cute, supposedly earth-friendly products, including toiletries and such. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the 50% off table. There were lots of goodies looking for a home, and the most surprising items (at least to me), were the Tsi-La line of organic fragrances. I´ve always liked these, especially the scent, Kesu. I bought the set of four minis from BeautyHabit a while back and found them interesting and wearable. Kesu was the standout; its notes of amber, smoky incense, woods, jasmine petals, davana, spices and lime were right up my alley. There was one lonely bottle of Kesu, marked down to $24.00, and at first I passed it up. I walked over to the Fruits and Passion store, and then to The Body Shop, assaulting my nose with the overwhelmingly sweet, fruity stew emanating from both establishments. It was back to Pistachio where I grabbed Kesu; my one regret was that it was the only bottle they had. The girl at the cash said she was sad the line never caught on, and it made me sad as well. Are we destined to exist in a world full of unimaginative, mass produced fragrances and their even more embarrassingly inferior flankers?

Autumn is upon us here, and I´ve got on some Kesu today. I´m marvelling once again at how my sense of smell has evolved and how wonderfully comforting this scent is. I´m trying to ignore the fact that my skin is freaking out and that I keep hatching zits like a factory farm chicken. I´m sure my agitation will pass and I will again embrace the thrill of the hunt. In the meantime I am revelling in my latest purchase; practically free in our world, and better than free in mine, because I love it so much.

Is there a flanker out there that you love? Have you recently found a new scent that was practically free or better than free?

Happy New Year to my Jewish friends; May it be the start of a sweet, healthy and prosperous one for all of us.