After reading some of the early reports on this new collection from Van Cleef & Arpels collection Extraordinaire, I wasn’t expecting much. Nieman-Marcus was offering a set of samples as a freebie when you buy something else, so I was happy to get them and see for myself. The price point doesn’t make me happy, $180 for 50 mls. Is this the new price hurdle? More importantly, are the worth it?

I had intended to blast through all six of them in one post, but I think it will take longer.

Orchidee Vanille was created by Randa Hammami. Notes of mandarin orange, litchi, bitter almond, dark chocolate, Bulgarian rose, violet, vanilla, cedar, balsamic tonka bean and white musk make up the perfume. Octavian has reviewed all of these perfumes, and if you look at the bottom of his post, there are links to the others. Like him, I was surprised. I don’t have his knowledge of the chemicals/ingredients that go into the perfumes, but this is clearly a well made perfume. I expected a much sweeter concoction, which is what you usually get if a perfumer/designer chooses to pair orchid and vanilla either in the notes or the name. This is slightly smoky, offering up the vanilla pod as the main feature, with a little bit of a booziness floating around. This isn’t the heavy gourmand vanilla scent, it floats like an evening on a tropical beach with the soft breeze blowing across your face. It reminds me a little of Le Labo’s Vanille 44. Some may complain that it’s just not strong, but it has that same wafting quality that I found in the Vanille 44. I’m a big fan of wafters, I don’t need the perfume to be completely present as I press my nose against my skin, but I do need it to gently scent the air so I smell this great echo as I walk through a room. I think it is so delicate and gorgeous. Like Octavian, if I hadn’t been told it was from Van Cleef & Arpels, I would have pegged it more for a Guerlain La Matiere scent, though a much lighter one, a more ethereal Spiriteuse Double Vanille. Spraying this perfume is essential. So if you get that little sample set from NM, get a sprayer. You’re welcome in advance.

Gardenia Petale has notes of green and citrus, lily-of-the-valley, jasmine and gardenia. Wow. The full smelly gardenia shows up on first spritz, but it’s tempered with the other notes so it’s not as bleu cheesey as it could be and as some are, like the Tom Ford. It just feels lush, like a fully in bloom gardenia. The gardenia always makes me think of ripe women. No, not like that. I mean, as women age, we get a softness, a decay that I’ve always thought is incredibly sexy, and the gardenia just seems to embody that change that women go through in their lives. Gardenia Petale blooms in the open, ripening until you’re thinking, oh, dear, and then it just pulls back into the lily, jasmine and tuberose. It’s not as sweetly pretty as the Isabey Gardenia, which is another gardenia that I love. I typically don’t like gardenia perfumes, Lady Day from SIP and the Isabey being two exceptions. This is another.

Okay, there you have it! I’d offer a sample set, but I’m clearly going to spray all of my little vials of this, sorry! From just the sniffing in the vial and these two, this collection clearly belongs together. I’m sniffing the Gardenia next to the Vanille, and they sit side by side beautifully. I’m pretty sure you could layer or combine most of these to create something else. I’ve heard some complaints about tenacity. These two seem to have good staying power. They aren’t muscle perfumes, flexing their little olfactory biceps all the time until you beg them to stop with soap and a scrub brush. They seem softer, but linger. The gardenia is pretty darn tenacious, though, but I expected that one to be the most tenacious of the six.

So Van Cleef & Arpels delivered with their big high-end launch for me. I’m hoping Cartier doesn’t fail me when they launch theirs. But is it too much to ask that they do a darn coffret of 1/4-1/2 ounce of all of them? I’m not sure I can answer the question if they are worth it or not. I think that price point is too much for any perfume, but I do understand when they do it because someone else has already been there. Would I pay that for at least these two? Yeah, but I’m an idiot that way (hey, Mon Precioux, I’m looking at you!)

Patty

I ripped open a package from UPS thinking it was a book I’d been waiting for, and it turned out to be a promo bag for the clothing store Bebe’s new fragrance, which is called … wait for it … Bebe.   This is apparently the third iteration of their Bebe scent.  On some other day I’ll do my long-promised post on It Crawled From the Mailbox (aka how I get some of my review samples from people paid to shill them) but let’s stay on track right now, and for the record, I have no idea how/why Bebe found me.  I think at the top all perfume companies are now owned by the same corporate giant — Monsanto, maybe.  I took a long look at the black Bebe bag, which features … a photo of a really young-looking stripper, I guess, her nether regions blocked from view by the perfume bottle.  Inside was a pink powderpuff, a DVD (which I can’t figure out how to open the files of, so here’s a small, different, somewhat NSFW pic), and a little black cardboard box adorned with the same photo that rattled because it contains candy.  No, really.

At that point Diva and Enigma, my teens who are obviously way closer to the target demographic than I am, were already fighting over the contents while we argued about how you actually pronounce “Bebe.”  Meanwhile I continued to look in vain for what I hoped would be an actual sample of the fragrance, which doesn’t seem totally unreasonable if I’m going to review it, does it?  And there it was, albeit in one of those single-use foil-sealed gauze wipe-on things.  Note to PR people:  look, you succeeded!  You made it on the Posse!  And btw I really wish you’d send a small glass sample vial of the fragrance so I can try it more than once.  Notes for Bebe, which is labeled an oriental and which they describe as a blend of florals and musks, are mango, sweet pea, tuberose, rose, jasmine, sandalwood, musk and cedar.

It’s not much of a riddle, but I’ll ask anyway: what do you think my expectations were for this scent?  Do you think they were low?  How low?  Can you drop it to the floor?  Can I remind you their PR kit included actual candy?  Can I mention that there is also a teabag-like infuser for a drinks recipe called the “bebe-tini” which calls for vodka?  So the marketers are aiming for the over-21 crowd, and I guess that’s fair, more or less, if they want to pretend but YO FIFTEEN YEAR OLDS ARE SHOPPING IN BEBE TOO.  Enough with the PR kits that include both candy and a vodka recipe. Shall I mention here that when I pass Bebe in the mall, I think of it mentally as that slutty store?  And that’s saying something.  (In case you are not, or do not own, a teenage girl: Bebe sells mall clothing and accessories for hookers, and the high school girls who want to dress like them.)  Diva is counting the days until she can find something from that store that I’d let her wear in public other than a purse.

Anyway I unwrapped my scent wipe and applied it liberally to myself and Diva – hey, live large, people! – and thus we get to the punch line, which is:  okay, I didn’t drop to my knees moaning in ecstasy, but I would totally wear this.   It’s super peppery on me, and quite musky, surprisingly un-sweet, with a big drip of a liquidy jammy thing like the death knell in Poison (which you know I love.)  You know what it smells like?  It smells like a sick three-way between Poison (the cough syrup), the peppery bits of Sonia Rykiel For Women, and the weirdly masculine parts of Euphoria.  It smells pretty commercial – I mean, I don’t think I’d have mistaken it for the new Malle – but I’m kind of loving it.  It is so resolutely not candy on me.

And here’s the rest of the punchline, because guess who the perfumer is?  Francis Kurkdjian!!  Yes, it’s true!  Now, that doesn’t guarantee success, but in this case I have to say I feel the perfumer both fulfilled the brand requirements and exceeded my wildest expectations.  It falls apart after an hour or so, but the drydown’s not bad, just pepper-musky, and Diva described it as “sexy without being slutty.”  I’d describe it a little differently; to me it’s a third-base-behind-the-bleachers type of fragrance (or, again, if you just want to smell like you might be that girl).  I mean, the message is pretty clear.

On the other hand … fine, maybe I’m overthinking this, but at one point I realized part of what works with Bebe is:  it smells like one of your sexy-girl scents (Addict, Euphoria) as if you were smelling it on the skin and clothing of the slightly sweaty boy you were making out with. Get it?  You’re smelling your scent as it rubbed off on him.  Come on, how great is that?  For a minute I felt like I was behind the bleachers all over again, not that I am suggesting I was ever that girl.

March

First, I am in need of someone in Greece to help me with a small project.   Click on contact us over on the left if you are a someone who could/would help or know someone that can help!  I just need someone that could get a package that they’ll only ship within Greece, and would reship it to me, of course with my paying for the shipping costs and any little favors I can do in return.

Second – winners of the Tom Ford Musk sample set are: : Lora and Sue and Billy D.  Just click the contact Us on the left, send me your address, remind me what you won, and I’ll get these mailed out to you!

This will be annoying perfume house creation day.  Nothing gets people a more irritated than Tom Ford and Guerlain’s prices on their more exclusive scents, and I’m right in the front of that line.

After grousing last week that I only got some of the new Tom Ford musk samples from BG, this week the Grey Vetiver and PB Arabian Wood showed up from the lovely people at BG, Jhanie and Raquel S., along with three more of the musks I already had.  Hey, are you guys reading? *blowing kisses* Love your work, ya’ll rock, seriously and everyone should call you at the Tom ford Beauty Counter and buy product from you – 212-872-2813 – even if it’s for other stuff in the store.  Seriously, this kind of great service, and I know they do it for a bunch of customers, not just because I write for a blog, is spectacular and should be rewarded.

Tom Ford Grey Vetiver is going to at least be in their more mainline scents, with White Patchouli and Black Orchid, and will be $85 for 50 mls, and I’m guessing probably about $120(?). Notes of grapefruit, orange flower, sage, nutmeg, orris, pimiento, amber woods and oak moss make up grey vetiver, along with, I assume, vetiver.  It’s not a heavily earthy vetiver, leaning more to the “banker” vetiver – an elegant, restrained take on vetiver, but it’s still pretty darn wonderful as it is.  There’s some really nice spiciness with this and a touch of rootiness coming in with the iris  after a more traditional fougere’ish open. On my skin, I’d really say it tends to be more masculine because of the more traditional men’s fougere notes.  I think that’s just more my expectation or sense of masculine scents than it actually is.  A woman could very easily wear this, and I’m sure I will!  It’s got a great length to it, lasting for several hours and smelling even better, less fougere’ish, more vetiver and spice, which is the cool aspect of this scent.

It’s a great vetiver scent.  I don’t find it incredibly ground-breaking, but it is a great take on vetiver, especially the spicy aspects that get played up more after it’s been on a while.  Tom Ford will sell a billion of these -  I’ll absolutely guarantee that – and it will become a men’s classic.  Again, not because it’s ground-breaking, but because it is well-made, easy to wear, easy to like right out of the bottle, and holds your interest as you wear it without driving you to distraction trying to figure it out. And it smells great.  AND it’s not $180 for 50 mls, it’s just $85.  I’m never wrong on this stuff, so you heard it here first.

Arabian Wood, also from Tom Ford, has notes of lavender, Bulgarian rose, freesia, orange blossom, galbanum, bergamot, rose de mai, ylang ylang, rose absolute, jasmine, gardenia, honey, orris, patchouli, cedar, oak moss, sandalwood, tonka bean and amber.  It was exclusive in Kuwait before it released generally to the rest of the world. I don’t know why I was thinking this would be highly oud’ish and middle eastern. It’s just not.  It’s a fairly well rounded fougere with some great floral notes that don’t take up too much space and a sharp’ish base that’s interesting – green sharpish, definitely the galbanum.  The woody parts of it are more green wood and continue to lean that way all through the drydown, though much of the sharpishness blends in nicely.  They have an interesting taken on dealing with the wood, and it seems almost Dior’like on me.  I still don’t think the name really suits it very well.

Then I made the mistake of throwing some Kilian Pure Oud up next to it, which prompted a phone call to Luckyscent to order another bottle, but I asked them instead if they thought this was going to go in wider release, and the answer was — MAYBE!! Not sure on the refill situation yet, but they’re going to check and get back to me.

Now for the most annoying scent created this year, Guerlain’s Mon Precieux Nectar.  62 bottles were made and sold at 6k Euro, I believe, apiece.  You do get 1000 mls of pure parfum and a great Baccarat fountain.  Well, one showed up on eBay – Ha, take that on exclusivity, Guerlain! we lowly perfume minions always find a way – and it sold for about half the price, which a bunch of us reckless fools went together on and split it about 30-40 ways to get the darn thing bought.   I know many of you were opposed to this ridiculous, opulent Guerlain display, but there is something about breaking that exclusive system or bringing a perfume into the hands of some ordinary perfumistas without having to fork over that kind of dough individually that just makes my little cracker heart glad.

For those of you that hate the Sylvaine Delacourte trajectory Guerlain’s been on and who hated Quend Vient la Pluie, you will be happy to know that you don’t need this one.  Notes of petitgrain, bitter almond, jasmine, orange blossom, sensual woods, incense, vanilla and white musk are the notes.  Word for this – gourmand, indulgent. plump and plush. Grain de Musc reviewed it and she’s pretty spot on.  I’ve really liked what Sylvaine has done. I like the old school Guerlain too, but I find the La Matieres and Double Vanille much more to my everyday wearing and liking than L’heuere Bleue and Jicky.  Fine, you can boo and jeer if you will. I admire those fragrances very much, but they just aren’t things I can or will wear every day. I could happily wear the La Matieres or Quand Vient or Nectar or Double Vanille every day, if necessary, and be quite content. They are full-on comfort scents, all round edges, warm, inviting. They call you in to get closer, not make you back up and wonder what in the world is that smell.  Mon Precieux Nectar is very much like that.  It opens a little sweet, vanilla and almond enveloping you.  If it stayed that sweet, it would be a problem, but it doesn’t.  It gives way to a more lush woody floral quality overlaying the gourmands that just feels like velvet to the  nose.  The incense is a bit player in this scent, but I certainly pick up on it as it dries down,  as well as the petitgrain, and the gourmand qualities continue to diminish, leaving a more ephemeral, beautiful scent that’s much more interesting than the big gourmand open.  The white musk gives it a nice, soft base to land on.  Not a skanky musk in the least, just a plush one.  I think it’s beautiful, but I like this kind of scent a lot, so there you have it.

The price point is ridiculous, even considering you’re getting 1000 ml of pure parfum.  It’s for collectors and the idol rich, but as much as I want to protest this silliness and make Guerlain sell to us in smaller quantities without all the hoopla, I’ll still give in and try to find a way to get ahold of them.

Now, for my happy fools that love to bust Guerlain exclusivity vats, how do we get our hands on the Habit Rouge extrait?  Thoughts? BG has it, as does the Guerlain boutique. I don’t even know how much it is or how much you get in a bottle, but it seems like enough of us should be stupid enough to try and get some, right?

For those of you that still would like a taste of the Nectar, I will give out four small samples of it to four lucky commenters.

Patty

I was malled.

Marc Jacobs Daisy is a little nothing of a fragrance that I happen to like.  I don’t even think I need to go look at my original review to quote myself: it’s a fragrance entirely devoid of sex appeal.  In this case I mean that as a compliment; Daisy is the perfect gift for your eight-year-old niece, your aunt, or anyone whom you think might appreciate the whimsical bottle.  By the way I’m referring to the EDT; the EDP has just a hint of muskiness to it that barely registers on the skank scale, but the EDT smells entirely clean to me.  Anyway, I don’t want Daisy and I don’t wear it, but I get the point.  It’s got the generic, sexless appeal of D&G Light Blue without Light Blue’s astonishing sillage or tenacity.

Enter Marc Jacobs’ Lola, which is supposed to be Daisy’s slightly older, vampier sister (I’m laughing at the way spellcheck keeps correcting vampier to vampire.  What would a vampire wear?  I’m voting for Lutens A La Nuit or Datura Noir.)  Notes for Lola are pink peppercorn (is that trend not dead?  Someone drive a stake through its heart), pear, ruby red grapefruit, pink peony, rose, geranium, vanilla, tonka and musk.  Unlike Daisy, this perfume is a little nothing of a fragrance that I don’t like.  Its generic ubiquity is every bit as imaginative as the outfits of the last 150 teenage girls that strolled by me in the mall in their vaguely trashy camisole-and-bra-strap getups (and yes, one of them is my daughter.)  Lola starts off with some citrusy action, and by citrus I mean something one step up from the wet-wipes you get on the airplane, and then it’s all warm vanilla sensual-muskiness.  In terms of sex appeal, this is the 50-foot Woman constructed out of marshmallows.  My guess is it will sell like hotcakes.  Fairness dictates that both my (female) movie companion and another woman mentioned how very much they liked it, which also should give you an idea of the sillage.

While I at least understand Lola conceptually, I am totally baffled by Michael Kors’ newest fragrance, Very Hollywood, which is being marketed as a “sophisticated floral” for women.  The fragrance notes are mandarin, frozen bergamot, moist (!) jasmine, raspberry, ylang ylang, gardenia, iris root, creamy amber, white moss and vetiver.  Again, while I am not a huge fan of the original Michael by Michael Kors signature scent on me, I feel obligated to note that it tends to crop up regularly when I ask women around me what that pretty perfume is they’re wearing (the other one: J’Adore.  Clearly I enjoy these two, albeit at a distance.)

But this thing?  Please.  Michael.  “Sophisticated?”  This thing brings out the witch in me.  Look at that trashy bottle (okay, it’s trashier in person).  If this were presented on Project Runway, I’d make it cry by telling it to its face that it looked cheap and tawdry.  But that isn’t even the bad part.  I don’t care how much bergamot you froze to make this, it is toooooooooo sweeeeeeeet.  It makes Lola look like Vol de Nuit.  It has all the sophistication of a Whitman’s sampler, without its charms.  This thing is atrocious.  If it were a frozen blender drink it would involve something like crà¨me de menthe, curacao, Bailey’s and cotton candy.  Also, that moss/vetiver accord at the bottom is the pine-tree air-freshener version of “fresh” on me, and you know how much I love “fresh.”  Other than that, it’s perfect.

March

I get sent the wax sample updates. I immediately rejected Serge Lutens’ latest Paris only (well, maybe not…) offering, Fourreau Noir, as dreck. A standard, run-of-the-mill masculine with obvious fougere overtones and an overdose of synthetics to suggest freshness and manliness. No thanks. Then I get to try a real sample.

It’s not a Damascene conversion or anything. Y’all know I’m a Lutens fanboy, so I am very cautious of automatic adulation. If I do a quick rundown, I have Lutens loves, Lutens loathes, and Lutens mehs, and only a few of these seem properly constant:

Loves: Santal de Mysore, Encens et Lavande, Arabie, Borneo 1834, Chene

Loathes: Serge Noire, Miel de Bois

Meh: Daim Blond, Douce Amere, Nuit de Cellophane.

Fourreau Noir currently floats between ‘meh’ and ‘love’, but sits closest to meh. I’m an inconstant, procrastinating fool, and have long since accepted the fact that I’ll never know my own mind. Unless I do. And only sometimes.

In the early 80s, both my sisters had Pierrot clown obsessions. Their beds were covered by these winsome faced girl-boys, tear in place, soft pinks and blues contrasting sharply with black make-up and the omnipresent painted tear. There was often a moon somewhere in the polycotton print, and a suggestion of arch melancholia and sadness as performance, naivete as a pretence, excusing one’s own failings through the trappings of unrequited love.

I didn’t think of any of this then, but knew I hated the pompom buttons, the flouncy tunic, the overall girliness of the ‘look’. As an individual prone to melancholia in spite of my sunny disposition, I’ve always disliked seeing it paraded and performed.

But I’m thinking of the Pierrot because of the Lutens limited edition bottle – a strange departure from the usual Orientalist themes, to an almost cutesy cat silhouette, floating in a night sky bejewelled with Christmas stars. Somehow, some way, this is what echoed the remembrance of the Pierrot in my head.

Because Fourreau Noir, for all its masculine posturing, is a sad little scent, a front of machismo hiding a well of tears. The black sheath (Fourreau Noir’s actual meaning), for me, is the costume of  the introverted melancholic, from Hamlet to the malcontent Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, to the teenage version of me.

It’s the 80s writ large. All front up front: the male fougere smells of lavender, coumarin, and synthetics such as dihydromyrcenol to give the thrusting metallic edge, the purr of the engine. All sadness beneath: smoky melancholy, myrrh, quietude.

I realise I’ve written pretentious codswallop and revealed no real sense of how this perfume smells. So let me be clear. It’s alright.

Lee