I’m just going to follow March’s rules on this. I do try, as much as I remember, to note when the manufacturer has sent something, and then I usually try to give away samples of it to run out the amount I got, which is usually small.  The number of full bottles of anything I’ver ever gotten I can count on one hand, and most of them are tragic and get given away or tossed.

Some comments in March’s original post noted  my association with The Perfumed Court could be looked at as a problem.  I do see how that perception could come about and really have nothing that I can say that would change anyone’s mind if they thought it was or might be. I do have a financial interest in TPC.  I have a full-time job in a totally nonrelated field that provides the bulk of my income.   I tend to review a lot more of the new things because I get ahold of them pretty early, either by buying them for my personal collection, getting a sample with an order I placed for other perfume, or because I’m doing the decanting of them for TPC, or I asked Lisa or Diane (my  partners in TPC) to send me a sample of something to sniff that I didn’t have.

I’ve always thought that because I like some things and trash some things, most of which is carried in TPC by me or someone, would suffice to indicate that I’m not willing to sell an opinion on a bottle of perfume for maybe a couple of bucks proft.

So either you think I’m honest about my opinions or not.  Nothing I say will persuade anyone thinking my opinion could be impacted by that assocation otherwise, so I don’t spend any time worrying about it.  I make no secret of my association with TPC, but I also never flog or link to the site in posts because that would be just, well, wrong.  But knowledge is usually the key – as long as y’all know that I’m involved with TPC, you can assign any skeptitude you feel appropriate to any of my perfume opinions.

Can we talk about Costa Rica now? We had an amazing time.  That little Capuchin monkey picture at the top was taken while he sat in the tree right next to the house we rented, along with about 30 of his friends and 30-40 of his Howler friends and even more of his spider monkey friends – not all at once. They’d make the circuit daily, sometimes several times.  It was like Monkey-vision entertainment off our deck.  Howlers woke us up every morning at 4:30 and serenaded for hours, and sent us to bed every evening.  If you’ve never heard a howler, google it.  They used that sound, with modifications, for some of the dinosaur sounds in Jurassic Park.  It’s spooky, but incredibly beautiful in some weird way.

I’m not going to touch on our stupidity when we were shocked that it got dark at 6 p.m.  Earth, angle, sun, seasons just weren’t computing for an hour or so as we puzzled our way through it.

I’ll have more about the trip on Thursday, today’s post just needed a little bit of follow-up on the Swag Wanking with respect to the TPC association.  My best advice, though, if you ever the chance to got to Costa Rica, do, and go to the Osa Peninsula. It is still so wild and beautiful.  AND one of our perfume friends that comments on here and I did manage to find each other. How weird that we were both going to CR and staying in the Osa about 2 miles away from each other.

Patty

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on the Swag Wank.  I knew it was going to be a controversial topic, and I’d like to say how proud (and unsurprised) I am that we could natter on and people could disagree and even get their dander up a little, and yet maintain civility – no tears, no drama.  As many of you have figured out, the blog is part social experiment for me.  I like to watch the commentary unfold, and the way it does is often interesting and thought-provoking.

I thought I’d go over the new source disclosures I’m going to use on an experimental basis for, let’s say, the next month – because enough of you voiced why you valued it.  I’m looking for a balance that provides those who care with some useful information in terms of provenance, without the process being a big inconvenience for me or a bore for those who don’t care.  I’ll make these notations at the bottom of my posts.  I haven’t actually done it yet, so things could change, but I’m thinking along the following lines:

1) Disclosing when a perfumer/distributor is the direct source.  I mean, I’m not ashamed of it.  If you guys can live with my getting some freebies, I can live with you knowing it.   If I got the bottle or sample from the house/perfumer/distributor, it’s probably the good stuff, right?  (Unless it isn’t; based on my recent pan of TDC Oriental Lounge, Carmencanada at Grain de Musc thinks I got an early, bum version of the juice.)

2) “Private sample.” This is going to cover a multitude of sins, but the point is it’s a sample or a decant from my private collection,  and thus of indeterminate age and/or origin.   This also covers sampling where an acquaintance of mine is the source, but that information is private.  No friend is going to share Doblis, Nombre Noir, or Coty Chypre with me and then thank me for putting his/her name on the blog.  I am hoping this needs no further explanation.  Private samples may be old, or tainted, or dissimilar to “the new stuff.”

3)  Mall blitz fragrances.  If I sniff something in one of my occasional mall or department store blitzes, I might only have tried it once; I was probably unable to score a sample for further consideration (stingy bastards!); and – hey – there are a lot of bum testers out there, at Neiman Marcus as well as at Macy’s.  Testers sit around until they’re broken, empty or stolen.  I’ve casually smelled any number of testers of fragrances I’m familiar with that seemed off, subjected to bright light and heat — the enemies of perfume.   If I discover later, having tried a fragrance two or three times elsewhere, that I like it and that my initial impression seems badly mistaken, I generally do a re-consideration post.

4) A special note on older/vintage perfumes.  I have built entire posts around perfumes – e.g., Chanel Coco, YSL Paris, and Dior Poison – that smell different than I remember from the bad old 80s, even though these scents are still in production.  It’s probably worth mentioning here for perfume newbies that many (most?) scents appear to be reformulated over time, although which ones, when, and how much is a topic of hot debate and mystery on the perfume blogs and boards.  Fragrances are reformulated for any number of reasons: cost of ingredients, lack of availability of ingredients, IFRA regulations, inventions of chemical replacements, etc.  In some cases the goal appears to be to produce a fragrance that smells as much like the original as possible; in others there appears to be a subtle tweaking (toning down the aldehydes, adding a gourmand note) to try to make the scent more “current” in terms of popular trends in perfumery.

Perfume houses don’t issue a press release telling you they’re messing with your fragrance.  Off the top of my head the only frank revelation I can recall is Serge Lutens discussing the reformulation of Feminite du Bois.  I actually assume that older fragrances have a different chemical composition than their newest versions, whether you or I can smell much difference.  And reformulation isn’t just a problem with 20-year-old fragrances.  Particularly given the new IFRA regs, there’s no guarantee that the scent released a year or two ago smells like what’s being produced today.  (Someone chime in: I think the consensus is that fragrances heavy on oakmoss and/or citrus seem the most impacted in a noticeable way?)  In any case, I will try to note at the bottom of a review, even if it’s obvious in the review, that I’m blogging on what appears to be an older iteration of a scent that I got on, say, eBay, that is rumored (or appears to me) to have been reformulated to a degree that even I can smell the difference.  And, obviously, my old bottle of Chanel Coco bought on eBay is likely to smell different than your old bottle.

This is a full-disclosure conversation so I’m disclosing.  I’m stating.  I’m pointing it out: there are no guarantees.   Any sample, tester, or bottle I run across might be “off.”  Unless I’m standing directly in front of Frederic Malle or Isabelle Doyen saying, hey, does this smell funny to you?, which I am not – I have no way of knowing.  If you like what you read and you buy a bottle of something, even if you tested it in the same store you bought it, there is no guarantee that what you tested and what you bought will smell the same.  (Raise your hand if this has happened to you!)  Shit happens.  This blog is meant to be my impressions of what is under my nose and on my skin.  I am not a professional perfumer.  I am not conversant in the chemical components.  What I am is honest and enthusiastic, and occasionally prone to fits of self-doubt and reassessment, which you end up reading about (several fragrances I hated at first sniff have become favorites.)

Okay, enough of this foolishness, this is already waaaay too long.  I’ll be back on Wednesday with a look at several versions of two of the sandalwoods that came up repeatedly in comments on my sandalwood post: Guerlain Samsara and Chanel Bois des Iles, including some vintage.

March

My teenage daughters do all sorts of nail art with pens and fine-tipped brushes.  I think it’s great, but I am a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing.  However, when I saw Louise recently, she’d done a nail-art trick that is so easy and so lovely – and grown-up appropriate – that I can’t resist blogging on it.  Louise had done the tips of her nails, where the white in your French mani would go, with a very light touch of pale gold glitter over a vampy crà¨me polish — more at the tips, fading down to no-glitter by halfway down the nail.  It ended up looking like a Japanese abstract on lacquerware, or a tiny detail from one of those stunning Whistler Japonesque works.

She forwarded the details, and I am using the image here with permission from the Polish Hoarder, which is also where the instructions come from.  As you can see in the photo and directions, this is a variation where you start the glitter from the bottom, the base of the nail, but the concept is the same:

“I painted my nails light blue and let it dry completely (overnight).

Then, with the glitter, I put a small drop on the inside of my nail, removed the excess from my brush, and spread the glitter out lightly across my nail.

I repeated that 4 times for each nail but with each time you do it, you spread the glitter less. You want the majority of the glitter to be on the inside of the nail.

I suppose it depends on how much glitter is in your polish. I wanted to keep the tips un-glittered so I was careful not to get too much glitter on my nail at once. Less is better because you can build it slowly.”

* * *

I was so taken with Louise’s nails that, armed with the info above, I tried it (also at the tips) with a small silver glitter (China Glaze Tinsel) over the pale pearlized-pink mani I was already sporting, and got subtle but smashing results.**  My only suggestions/clarifications — I’d do one nail at a time, I don’t know your climate, but I worry about the glitter setting up too much and not spreading properly if you let it sit on your nail for long.  Also: you definitely want to clean the glitter off the brush before you start using it to spread what’s on your nail, otherwise you’re adding to what’s already there.

The first time I did it my nails weren’t uniformly perfect like this photo, but they still looked great – both my girls commented on it.  Instead of doing a small dot of glitter at the tip, I painted the tip with a narrow horizontal streak of glitter – like a sloppy French mani – and dragged it down with the cleaned-off brush.   As Polish Hoarder notes (she did 4x for each nail) it’s easy to add more, but it’s hard to add less!  I just did 1x per nail and then added more to the ones that looked a little sparse in comparison.

If you are like me, I don’t change my polish until it starts to look tired – usually micro-chips at the tips.  The silver glitter gave my mani a whole new look and bought me an extra four days of wear.  If I’d slapped some Seche Vite on top it’d probably have lasted even longer.

In terms of color combos, two basic strategies: the more subtle pale (gold or silver) glitter on a light base, and the more striking pale glitter on a dark base (vampy, dark blue, green, etc).  Personally I feel that the results are more elegant if the base is a crà¨me.  If your base is light-colored the glitter polish needs to be suspended in a CLEAR base – I made that mistake, testing things, with a blue microglitter that was in a pale clear-bluish base, and it looked terrible.   Obviously you could do a dark or colored glitter or what have you, but if you’re concerned about the propriety of the bling, probably gold or silver microglitter on a crà¨me base is the way to go.

I am going to add a link here to a gorgeous, much trendier look:  a dark-colored nail on MUA with two different colors of glitter on top, pulled down the nail like this – the perfect party nail – but I don’t know if the link works if you’re not a MUA member, apologies in advance.

I know some people are doing this/spreading the glitter with Orly Smudge Fixer.  I haven’t used that, and would be curious to hear from anyone who has in terms of advantages (the disadvantage I thought of is, you’d have to clean the brush carefully, right?  That’s the nice thing about using the glitter brush itself.)  Also, anyone who has winning glitters, or color combos, or questions, please chime in!

**For whatever reason, my natural nails are long just now – nothing that would raise an eyebrow on a nail polish blog, but of a length that would pass as a set of acrylics.  I used CG Tinsel at the tips of my existing base coat of CG Tantalize Me – an opalescent pink with a slight blue tinge that I have a soft spot for because it’s a dupe of a L’Oreal polish called something like Pink Pearl that I wore the heck out of in high school.

March

It’s raining outside as I type – that fine misty rain that causes aches in all the wrong places. It’s replaced the snow. Roll on spring, baby.

I don’t buy many perfumes any more. In fact, I don’t even test that many. Of our shared list of the best of 2009 here at the Posse (I didn’t exactly pull my finger out to contribute, knowing little of the territory…), I’ve tried precisely one out of the twenty four or so mentioned. Ouch. Isn’t it time someone disbarred me from contributing?

It’s not that I like, admire, or love smells any less. It’s just somehow my puppy energy is now being sent out on errands to other obsessive ports of call, still wagging its tail, nose moist, eyes eager. Instead of trying and buying new things, I’ve been ploughing through my three boxes of decants, and methodically considering if there’s anything there that might become fbw.

Front runners – long term, have been l’Artisan’s Timbuktu and Parfumerie Generale’s Cozé. They have some connections – both strike me as strong on patchouli and vetiver, and are exotic enough to say, ‘hey, I’m different’, without being wacky enough to say ‘bring on the gimp outfit’. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if it’s your bag, my beloved kinky reader.

Long story short – I received a 100ml bottle of Cozé from Les Senteurs last week. Let me make this clear – I paid for it; it was no gift. And yes, you got that right – 100mls.

See, there’s something about Cozé that has haunted me ever since I first smelled it, back in 2005 or something. It’s clearly the sum of its parts. You get all the ingredients exactly defined – the vetiver and patchouli already mentioned, the triumvirate gourmand thrum of chocolate (dry, dust, dark – think 85-90% cocoa solids), coffee ( a hint on the breath of a secret lover, if you’ll pardon my silly whimsy) and vanilla (but not in overkill or plastic doll head sense – it never dominates), peppery wood and spice facets, and that ever-present allusion to hemp/cannabis/ganja/weed/draw – at times a touch of ashtray, other moments a hint of the great green outdoors – all leading to a strangely surprising earthy, rather than oriental, effect.

But it isn’t the ingredients that haunt me. Like all brilliant scents, it’s their interplay. This is Pierre Guillaume’s best work (imho, naturellement) and I’ll tell you why. You can intellectualise this scent into the sum of its parts if you want to, and the whole smell of the thing isn’t diminished by it. Wearing it, however, you realise that each element weaves impressively in and out of the others, shifting the shape of the smell each time you catch a waft of it, and never settling on a fixed form. I love mutability in scent, and though the earthiness dominates throughout its wearing, though the heart of this perfume is a hippie (even if he’s more dedicated to cleanliness and hiking than covering up stank with headshop oils), this wonder tells you that you can be whoever you want, godammit, and that whoever smells bloody wonderful. Isn’t that what great perfume is all about?

As for Timbuktu – I need to decide whether I need another green earthy oriental in my life.

If you’ve never smelled Cozé, I can help you out. Three samples to people chosen at random from the comments below. And oh, if you have a shapeshifter you want to nominate as top notch, spiffing, da bes’, please do so!

Lee

Guest Post – By Musette

Snow  and ice is gorgeous – and if you tell anybody I said that, I will have to kill you.

Hahahaha!  Jes´ joshin´.  No killing, I promise.  It´s just that it´s our first heavy snow of the season and I´m a bit overwhelmed by it – a spectacular sight but I am rather atavistic in my fear of it. Living in the country doesn´t help  – vast stretches of ice and snow are somewhat terrifying – yet  I´m fascinated by Winter´s frozen beauty and long to really embrace the concept.  Of course, my concept´ is High Drama:  I wish I had the sleigh and furs and the whole shebang – you know, Tilda Swinton in Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.  Yes, yes, she was Eeeevil.  But!  She rocked the furs and the sleigh and the whole smashed ice goblet thing.  With the hot chocolate?  That was so cool.

And that smashed ice goblet got me thinking about what I love most about Winter – the don´t touch/ shattered Ice/ Deathisjustafingertipaway feeling that is woven into the blanket of ice and snow and leaches into your core if you stay out in it too long.  In the City ice is at best, inconvenient and at worst, lethal, with sheets of it hurtling off buildings and slippery plazas threatening to shoot you into the frozen river.  Out here in the open fields it´s a thing of beauty, with huge frost heaves covering the riverbanks and frozen corn stubble.  But it really won´t do to underestimate its capacity for destruction.

Most of the winter I spend indoors, wearing warm´ perfumes and drinking lots of tea and hot chocolate.  But this recent snowfall and cold snap got me thinking – hey, do y´all remember last summer when we yarked about heavy winter´ scents blooming in the heat?  My big surprise was Cuir Ottoman.  It was just okay in the frigid temps but somebody suggested it for really hot weather and YOWZA!  Howyadoin´, baybee!  From there I went to some serious skank, like vintage Bal in August.  Hurts so gooood.

So why not the reverse?  I wanted to try a perfume experiment that runs counter to what most of us tend towards as the temps plummet so I´ve gotten up early these past few mornings to try out a couple of weird crystalline, grey/green/silver perfume choices, out in the pre-light, truly frozen break of day.  I swear, the things I do for you…

8:30a.  Shoveling sparkling-clean snow.   It´s maybe 22F out there.   I´m wearing TDC´s Charmes et Feuilles which has a minty freshness that usually evokes a rainwashed Spring morning but the minty/camphory open runs through the entire experience, making it a perfect smashed-crystal scent for Winter.  I would never wear this if I were looking to warm up – it´s not aprà¨s-ski.  It is for skimming down the slope and matches perfectly with those little bitey pellets of wind-whipped snow.  Wearing it, I actually felt as one with the elements, which is bizarre, given that I am tropical by nature.   This is beautiful in Winter.   Notes are Marjoram, Peppermint, Sage, Serpolet, Jasmine Sambac, Grapefruit, Clementine and Patchouli.   It is very silver  and tinkly and works perfectly for a walk along the frozen riverbank.    (what the heck is serpolet´?)

I loved Onda in the early autumn.  It has this weird, woody/rooty/dirty thing going that works well with a rich brown cashmere twinset and Trust Fund Pearls.  Today, in the freezing wind and snow (around 17F), I wore Vero Kern´s masterpiece to walk my boy and it scared me half to death.  I felt like my heart was ready to fly out of my chest!  It was so weird that I had to stop and bury my face in my dog´s warm chest to ground myself.    He thinks I am very strange.  Onda is a stunner, with that “thing” so similar to the grave dirt found in Djedi and in the cold it morphs into something truly scary.  Perfumista Scary, as in ” wow!  This beautiful stuff is….scary!  Gimme summa dat”.  The cold amps the black, seemingly dead dirt and that weird little dish soap note plays a creepy little antiphonal tune… Fascinating.  .I would definitely wear this in the cold, just to remind myself of my own mortality (as if fear of freezing to death weren´t enough.)  Notes are vetiver, ginger, mace, coriander (Luckyscent describes a leather note, which I get a bit of in the autumn but not now -  it is not listed in the notes but is referred to in the lovely copy).  This is definitely Ice Queen material.  Think Tilda Swinton, painted that eerie blue, with a mouthful of platinum fangs.

Vintage Coty L´Aimant.  I put it on this morning  and went out to shovel the drifts from last night.  I really stacked the deck on this one -6:45a, pitch-black and cold as a gold-digger´s heart. …AND I wore the way-thinner Eau de Toilette (hey, go big or go home). Well.   L´Aimant hit the cold, swelled up like a balloon and burst into a million crystalline pieces!  Wow!  Like plunging down one of those old, rickety wooden roller coasters  (Riverview´s The Bobs comes to mind).  I definitely have to do that again. It´s still on my wrist and it´s having a good time but it´s a different creature altogether from what it is when I wear it in temperate climes.  It has little icy claws!  I kinda like it.  All the ladylike qualities have been frozen off and it´s like a vicious little sword-wielding elf.   TPC lists the notes  as bergamot, neroli, peach, strawberry, jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, vanilla, vetiver, and sandalwood.   They forgot to list the stainless steel sword. Very aldehydic and sparkly as all get-out, especially in the cold.

Last but not Least.  My new preciousssss:  Cartier L’Heure Brilliant.  I have worn this two nights out in the pitch-black permafrost and something really wonderful has happened to it each time.  It´s icy-cold here right now, with a gale-force wind and Brilliant, like L´Aimant, gets all those flowery bits frozen right off in this cold.  Of course, I  can´t smell it when I´m outside, as I´m mostly just trying to stay alive and get the damn dog to hurry the hell up and Pee, already! but when I come back in, that vaguely annoying oily-flower note is gone, burned right off in the extreme cold.  What´s left is something akin to the frozen dregs of a really good bottle of gin, with a hint of lemon rind.  And maybe a cocktail onion.  Srsly.  I mean, it doesn´t smell like a cocktail onion.  You just feel the crunch of a really cold, gin-infused cocktail onion snap between your teeth. If I were just a tad more insane I would be tempted to go outside (it´s 14F) expose a bit of skin to see how this really smelled outside.   Instead we´ll just imagine it, okay?   I dunno the notes on this one (and I´m too lazy to look them up) – I just know I love it and I really love it in the cold.

Have any of you tried this twist?  I´d love to know your take on some of the fizzier, chillier scents in the cooler (or downright frozen) weather.

PS.   I am SO over winter now.  Is it May yet?