As some of you are aware, last fall the FTC made rules requiring that bloggers disclose any freebies, or monetary payments they receive from companies for reviewing their products, all in the name of Blogger Transparency.  (I’ll note here that, as far as I know, no similar rules were passed regarding, say, magazine beauty editors, who I am pretty sure get tons of swag.  I suppose they’re all above reproach.)

Apparently each blog is supposed to have some sort of written guideline, so here’s mine, which by holy fiat is Ours, Governing All the Serfs and Fiefdoms of the Posse.  I thought I’d go ahead while I’m at it and spell out some of the things people have been curious about and issues I’ve seen raised elsewhere.

1) I receive less swag than you might imagine, possibly because perfume houses (or their distributors or PR people) view me as a snarky, unprofessional wackjob, despite the Posse’s substantial readership stats.  Life being what it is, much of what I receive is samples (and a few bottles) of scents that I wouldn’t wear if - hey! - you gave them to me.  I tend to foist those off quickly on whoever happens to be standing near me and breathing, thereby fulfilling my legal and spiritual obligation to spread those goodies out among the less fortunate — which my giftees are, as soon as they’re holding what I’ve given them.

2) I thought it went without saying, but apparently not, so I’ll say it: sending me a sample or a bottle of a fragrance does not guarantee that I’ll review it at all – or, if I do, that the review will be positive.  I review mostly fragrances that I like, and some that I hate.  The origin of the sample bears no relation to my review.  If you have trouble actually believing that – that I wouldn’t whore myself out for some free Estee Lauder (or, okay, even MDCI, or Amouage) then a) you haven’t seen my collection and b) you shouldn’t be reading this blog.

3) Perfume bloggers, amoral lot that we are, are now required to disclose in a review that we received swag from a house if – and only if – we get a bottle and elect to keep that bottle.  In other words, if we get a sample from a house, we don’t have to tell you.  If we get a bottle and we give away that bottle, we don’t have to tell you.  And so f’ing what if we got a bottle?  What the hell is this dumbass rule, anyway?  Hey, Fragrance Police – swing by my house and root through Ma Endless Collection while I see if I can come up with receipts for all my swaps and eBay purchases and presents from friends and Wetzel’s-pretzels-triggered mall discount fragrance runs!  How is this going to be enforced?  Are you serious?  I can barely remember whether I bought milk at the grocery store.

4) I have never received, nor have I been offered, a monetary payment from a perfumer or representative thereof, in exchange for a review (or for anything else.)  I think that whole topic is a myth, like Bigfoot.

5) If you are John or Jane Doe Perfumer, and you send me your lineup of samples of your beloved fragrances from your teeny tiny company, scents which (presumably) you’ve labored long and hard over, and I hate them – I probably won’t say a word about them on the blog.  I won’t say a word about them even if those samples are sent to me by a friend with a note that says, “Are these not the lamest, most pathetic things you have ever smelled?”  Ragging on scents from micro-companies makes me feel mean and petty.  I reserve my vicious reviews for scents from industry giants who, sensibly enough, couldn’t care less what I think.  I doubt Michael Kors cried himself to sleep when I pissed all over Very Hollywood.   I don’t think my endless whining about my hatred of Angel has negatively impacted sales one bit although, so help me God, I wish it would.

6) There has been some argument/discussion on the blogs and boards regarding the validity of disclosure of the source of perfume for each review for “transparency” purposes.  I find the source of my perfume samples irrelevant.  In fact, in terms of “transparency” as opposed to “purity,” I find the implication insulting, because clearly this means I’m not to be trusted to write an honest review if my 3ml sample came directly from Kenzo instead of Patty.

If we’re going to reframe the discussion of where I got my review product in terms of “purity” of those samples, a concept I understand, then my response would be, who knows?  I review samples and bottles of old stuff of dubious or unknown provenance all the time.  Should I review nothing I get from friends or decanters, or anything vintage, or from yard sales or thrift shops or eBay or anywhere other than directly from the golden hand of the manufacturer?  Because I can’t remember where I got them, or those samples or testers might be bad?  That would suck. I couldn’t review most of what I’ve smelled.  Further, that leads us in humorous Catch-22 fashion back to the freebie issue – wait, now I can only review swag?

I will not be noting the provenance of every bottle and sample I sniff for a review, unless I happen to mention it for other reasons (e.g., I was sniffing at Saks with Louise.)  I am too lazy and disorganized to catalog the tidal wave of samps I get and file away (mostly shares from folks like you!) and I have little idea how I wound up with 95% of the stuff I already own. SO TAKE EVERYTHING I WRITE WITH A GIANT GRAIN OF SALT.  You’re not supposed to be buying unsniffed anyway, right?  My sources (e.g., friends with a small stash of Doblis) wish to remain nameless.  I will only be revealing this information, as required by law, in a review if I got an entire bottle from a manufacturer, free, and decided to keep it.

7) While I’m on a roll – am I saying that perfumers/distributors who send me bottles or samples for potential review get nothing out of it at all? No, of course not.  They get something: they get the possibility that if I smell their scent I might want to review it.  It seems pretty straightforward to me.   It’s not called bribery, it’s called good business sense, and there’s nothing nefarious about it, I swear.

Because if I haven’t smelled the new Andy Tauer scent, the chances I’ll review it are zero, yes?  (Correct answer: yes.)  It’s why people make samples and have testers and do demos in the first place.  So, manufacturers of harder-to-find scents (things I can’t simply go sniff at Saks or Nordstrom) who send me samples are more likely to find their scents reviewed than if they didn’t because, awesome as I am, I still can’t use the psychic powers of my Magic Womb to know whether I like a perfume.  I have to smell it first.

8 ) I have seen suspicions raised elsewhere when commenters see several perfume bloggers write about a new release at more or less the same time; are we being paid to shill?

If several bloggers do these reviews simultaneously, it is not some Vast Perfume Conspiracy.  It’s because the scent (or line of scents) is new and (theoretically) good and/or interesting enough to write about, and we thought that, you know, one point of having a perfume blog is to review new stuff occasionally.  This happened most recently, off the top of my head, with the Van Cleef & Arpels, the Cartiers, and the Maison Francis Kurkdjians. (Honestly, when a new movie comes out and these folks read three reviews of it, do they think the reviewers are colluding?)

In the case of harder to find scents or things that haven’t been released in the US yet, we might have gotten advance samples from the house/distributor, or some of us got samples and we shared, which we do – bloggers do a fair amount of informal swapping.  Also we have Overseas Friends who might, for instance, forward something from France that isn’t here yet.  Again, if we all blogged on it, it’s because we liked it or we thought you’d be interested.  If anyone’s being paid to write anything, I don’t know about it.  And the idea seems silly to me, I’ll say it again.  I’m sure I’ve been responsible for more than one blind buy because you thought UFO sounded good in my review, but not enough for Kenzo to bribe me.

9) One final note I’m adding at the last minute as I just realized it, but it’s both embarrassing and true, so here it is: I often don’t mention a perfumer as a source because, to my thoroughly middle-class American soul, it feels like bragging.  Like, if I wrote, “Andy Tauer sent me a sample of his new perfume called X which is scheduled to be released next month,” to me it’s as if I typed, “So, Andy and I were chatting via email the other day, because we’re such buddies, and he said, ‘March, darling, denizen of the famed Perfume Posse blog, I adore you so much I’m going to send you a preview sample of X because you’re so special.’”  (I’m picking on Andy for my hypothetical because he really does seem like a nice guy and I don’t think he’ll mind and he does, in fact, occasionally send me samples.)  Anyway, it makes me uncomfortable to mention it – and that’s my problem, not theirs (or yours.)   After all, the Annick Goutal U.S. distributor no doubt sent me Ninfeo Mio because they hoped I’d like it enough to review it, which I did.   Seriously, how much do you folks care if my source is the house/distributor?  That’s an honest question.

I’m going to strap on my seatbelt, pour myself a glass of champagne and take a chill pill and open up this topic to questions and general discussion.  For anyone who read this far, thanks for your patience.

March

I´m staying true to my promise of introspection (and also filling in for Patty whilst she suns herself in warmer climes) by writing about one of my favourite Bond No. 9 concoctions, Andy Warhol Silver Factory.

I am not what you would call an art aficionado by any stretch; I consider my greatest piece of framed art (besides my diplomas) to be the poster of Elton John´s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy album. I´ve carried that LP with me everywhere since I moved out of my parents house, and finally took the plunge and had the poster framed last year during my short stay in the DC area. It’s not quite a Warhol or a Picasso, but it is the original poster from the record album I bought when I was all of 8 years old. Yes, I´ve been an Elton John fan since the tender age of 5, when my brother used to make me sing “Crocodile Rock” into his tape recorder.

I do love to wind my way through museums, gazing at paintings of just about anything, and checking out knick-knacks and treasures from centuries past. My biggest artistic epiphany came in the Sistine Chapel, risking permanent nerve damage to my neck from staring up at Michelangelo´s breathtaking ceiling.  I still want to kick myself for the utter cluelessness that doomed my trip to Paris from London on a Tuesday, sans the pertinent factoid that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.  That was over 5 years ago and I still cringe when I think about it. I will get back there one day even if I have to fly naked and handcuffed in order to satisfy whatever security regulations will be in place when I finally get around to boarding an airplane again.

I´ve never been very knowledgeable about Andy Warhol save for looking at pictures of him, Halston and Bianca Jagger  on Page 6 of the New York Post, as they sailed past the fabled velvet rope into Studio 54. I didn´t understand why he always had such a vacant expression, and his shock of white hair was startling to my 11 year-old eyes. I had no idea that he painted pictures of soup cans and flowers in a studio called The Factory. The name Edie Sedgwick meant nothing to me, and the only time I ever picked up a paint brush was every other week in grade school, usually to paint something that I thought resembled the shade of the Tiffany lamp that resided in my parents´ living room. I was not a prodigy by any means.

Years later, I watched the film Factory Girl in rapt fascination. If the depictions of Warhol and Sedgwick, his poor-little-rich-girl muse played by Sienna Miller, were anything close to reality, then Mr. Warhol belied his vacant facial expression with the narcissism and vapidity of the quintessentially tortured artist. Again, I´m no art critic, and I think I´m experiencing a bit of adult-onset rebelliousness, so please pardon my judgement.  Maybe one day I´ll have a different take on the soup cans, the flowers, and the psychedelic portraiture, but right now I´ve got nothing.  I even pored over the Andy Warhol Foundation website, and the site for his museum in Pittsburgh, and I´m still a bit, shall we say, unimpressed. I´m guessing that anyone from the art world who might read this won´t be flooding my e-mail with job offers.

As for Silver Factory the fragrance, I´ve got lots to say. First of all, it is one of the best scents Bond has ever done; it cemented my love of incense and woods, and even gave me a newfound appreciation for the austere beauty of iris and violet. Silver Factory was an artistic revelation of a different sort for me, even if the actual scent has little to do with its namesake other than its moniker. It has been written that Andy Warhol was buried with a bottle of Estee Lauder Beautiful, so he was obviously a fan of feminine floral scents.  Silver Factory is not especially feminine, and the iris and violet woven through the composition give the scent a metallic quality; though not in a cold way. The incense and woods are tempered with a slight sweetness, but not so much that it overwhelms the rest of the notes.  It is haunting and beautiful, the way the most beautiful incense scents are, but I also like to think of it as interesting. It doesn´t smell like anything you would find in a department store, even though Bond is sold in some high-end department stores.  Silver Factory is a scent that needs to be in the collection of every fragrance lover who counts incense among his or her favourite notes.

I feel as if I´ve stumbled inarticulately through this essay, because when you talk about an artist and something that was inspired by his life and work, the opinions about the artist and the object in question become even more subjective. What would Andy Warhol have thought about this scent? What was it about Warhol and/or his work that the perfumer used as inspiration? How would Warhol feel about the critiquing of a fragrance just as one would critique the kind of art he created?

I´ve reached for Silver Factory so many times over the course of the past couple of years to try and write something about it, but I could never get it quite right. I still don´t think I´ve done it justice, but having made the attempt, I appreciate it even more than I used to. I can now add the following to my list of “what ifs”: What if Andy Warhol was still alive to bear witness to the current trends in art, fashion and fragrance? What would he think of all the celebrity scents that are being churned out in such copious numbers?  Finally, what would he think of Bond No. 9´s interpretations of what he is best known for: his flowers, shoes, soup cans and workspaces have all been used as inspirations for fragrances. I used to think that “Success is a job in New York”; I never knew Andy Warhol was the man behind those words.

The Big Cheese and I like wine.  We’re volume consumers, buying it by the case and drinking it with lunch and dinner, and our price point is around $10 a bottle ($7 on sale.)  If someone serves me a glass of something better I enjoy it, but my palate isn’t sophisticated enough, at least at this point, to be able to tell the difference.

But I don’t begrudge anyone their pricier bottles of wine, because I assume it’s providing them with a corresponding amount of pleasure.  When conversation on here and elsewhere drifts toward guilt about how much we spend on the frivolity of perfume, and how we already have more than we could wear in a lifetime, I shrug.  Perfume, ounce for ounce, still provides me with the great sybaritic pleasure in my life.  At the start (or the end) of a miserable January day, is there anything more wonderful than the smell of Serge Lutens’ Fleurs d’Oranger?  What could possibly make a perfumista happier in the moment than a whiff of one’s sillage of Timbuktu, or Shalimar, or Vetiver Tonka, or (name your poison, or Poison, here)?

Annick Goutal‘s latest release, Ninfeo Mio, is inspired by and named after the Gardens of Ninfa in Italy, about 40 miles southeast of Rome, and if you’d like to break your own heart right now, here’s a link to some pictures.  (Has anyone been there?  Is it that spectacular in person?)  The notes are Italian lemon, citron, petitgrain, bitter orange, galbanum, lentisque, conifers, lavender, fig leaf, and lemon tree (as interpreted by me from the press kit), and it was done by Isabelle Doyen.

Ninfeo Mio opens on a bright, citrusy, slightly peppery burst that smells very Goutal to me, so you sort of know who you’re sniffing, and on a cold January day it’s a smell of such infinite cheer it brought a smile to my face.  If it stopped right there I’d still love it for its unadorned happiness, but it doesn’t.  It just keeps getting better.   There’s a green twist of galbanum that is perfectly sharp – astringent but not too bitter – overlaying a woody, herbaceous middle (lentisque, or lentisc, which smells woody/resiny to me); the lavender is very subtle and I wouldn’t have guessed it.  If I hadn’t already loved it, the fig would have cinched the deal.  The galbanum becomes enveloped in a really interesting sweet/milky note, which I assume must have something to do with the fig.  The drydown is spectacular, a woody, leafy, musky/resin base with fig and another note that smells, weirdly, like green mangoes to me.   (Here’s a link to Octavian’s review, where he discusses the scent in more interesting technical detail than I’ll ever manage, he mentions lactones and the smell of mango leaf oil, among other things.)   As the fragrance dries down it deepens and becomes more complex, and it’s pretty robust for a Goutal, with good lasting power.

I don’t have any other scent just like this, and the only one I can think of that is vaguely comparable is Hermes’ Un Jardin Sur Le Nil.  But they don’t really smell alike, any more than two rose scents do – Sur Le Nil is more bitter, dry and peppery (and much as I try to love it, there’s something in there that starts to bug me after a couple of hours.)   Sur Le Nil also smells, for lack of a better term, more “perfume-y” – it smells more like a Hermes-inflected statement about a place via perfume, whereas Ninfeo Mio smells, accurately or not, more like the essence-notes of the place itself.

Grain de Musc once categorized many AG scents (in general terms) as either more sophisticated “mother” scents, like Passion, or more lighthearted “daughter” scents like Camille. It was an idea that resonated with me.  I’m now going to climb out on a limb and suggest that Ninfeo Mio bridges that gap, growing up as it progresses.  While the top notes are full of youthful exuberance (that aha! moment when you see something that delights) there’s a woody/herbaceous dryness throughout and a drydown that is rich and sophisticated and fully adult.

In terms of feel, I’d place this between Mandragore and the original Hadrien, probably, although Ninfeo Mio is rounder and more complex and certainly heavier (and they all smell quite different) – and I should note that, having tried it as many as three times in one day, there’s a faint but definite urinous note on my skin after the top notes fade, boxwoody would be the more delicate term, that bothers me not one bit, it fits in with the herbaceous-woody aspect of the scent.  But if you have trouble with that sort of thing, particularly in Mandragore, I’d be cautious about buying this unsniffed.  Me, I’m delighted that one of my favorite “wearable” houses made a scent with fig in it.

The bottle is frosted glass, like Mandragore, in a pale gray-green that is supposed to evoke the leaves of the garden reflected in the Ninfeo river.  It appears either light sea-glass green or grayish depending on the light, and it’s lovely.  It’s available in the round bottle in 50ml and 100ml, and the square in 100ml.  The bottle selection should give a hint: I’d define this as unisex, in the same way that Mandragore and Hadrien are unisex, although the drydown is richer and sweeter.

If you’re not a fan of the line, Ninfeo Mio probably isn’t going to convert you – it retains what I think of as the quintessential Annick Goutal charm, certainly more so than Les Orientalistes (which I liked very much) or Un Matin d’Orage (which … I didn’t.)  But if you like some of the “classic” AGs, particularly the citrusy/aromatic ones, or if like me you can’t get enough fig in your world, this would be worth investigating.  The scent is supposed to be released in the US in February.  If you’re curious about it I’d suggest calling Tom at the Annick Goutal counter at Bergdorf in NYC, I think he gets things in on the early side, and he’s great to deal with.

For another perspective on this scent, be sure to check out Robin’s review on Now Smell This today – she’s another fig fan, and she liked it too.

Disclosure (which we’re supposed to do now under the new FTC rules, more about that on Wednesday):  I received my preview bottle from the US distributor for Annick Goutal.

March

I´ve decided to steal one of March´s Maxims from earlier this week; she may be self-published, but was there any mention of a trademark or copyright? Seriously, I don´t think she´s going to mind.

I, too, have decided to focus on my existing collection, rather than always seeking out the new. There are a lot of neglected scents in my stash and they are deserving of some attention. As Jerry said to Elaine in the “Dinner Party” episode from season 5 of “Seinfeld”, “Look to the cookie.” I can´t remember the last time I had a black and white cookie, but the harmonious commingling of light and dark is certainly an axiom applicable to many things. Cookies, fragrance, life…what else is there?

I´m starting off with Donna Karan´s Cashmere Mist Eau de Parfum. Many of you know I am always at the ready to sing the praises of Chaos, even though it is a reformulation; I adore it utterly.  In fact, I enjoy all the scents from Donna Karan´s signature collection, especially this time of year, because they are warm, comforting and subtle. Unlike her DKNY collection of Delicious fruity-floral bombs, her eponymous scents are something altogether different.  I refuse to classify them as scents for the more mature, sophisticated woman, nor do I think they are akin to literally wrapping yourself in cashmere – I´m not a big fan of cashmere anything, except Cashmere Mist.  Instead, they are more like old friends: the fragrance equivalent of being comfortable in your own skin, by yourself and with others. You don´t feel the need to put up a faà§ade or act in such a way that you become unrecognizable. Cashmere Mist doesn´t pull any punches; it´s all about warmth and comfort and closeness. Not the closeness you feel with another person, but the closeness of being at peace with yourself. Mind you, this isn´t a 24/7 Zen state I´m talking about. Rather, it is about being true and honest and not hiding behind all the b.s. we tend to get caught up in. OK, I´m getting carried away, but you do know what I´m talking about, don’t you?

Cashmere Mist´s notes are Lily of the Valley, suede notes, bergamot, ylang ylang, jasmine Maroc, sandalwood, orris, amber, vanilla, cedarwood, patchouli and musk.  Even with the inclusion of florals and patchouli, the sum of these parts is not overtly floral, or overly patchouli-ish. What they amount to is warmth, comfort, peace. If you´re looking to disturb the peace, Cashmere Mist won´t do it. If you´re craving quiet, Cashmere Mist is all about understatement. And sometimes, that can be a good thing.

The version of Cashmere Mist I chose to write about is the eau de parfum. This was released a few years ago, and has much better staying power than the eau de toilette.  How it came to reside in my collection was through Fragrancenet.com, not long after it became available. I don´t remember how much I paid for the bottles I have (yes, I have 2!), but it was not the current $70.00 for 50 ml. In addition, I have a 200ml bottle of Cashmere Mist eau de toilette, a limited edition at Nordstrom from a couple of years ago, during their anniversary sale. It is still swaddled in the original cellophane. I know – I should be arrested by the nasty porn police.

There is also a new “Luxe” edition for sale, celebrating the 15^th anniversary of the scent´s introduction. I have yet to smell it, but I´m in no rush. The contentment I feel when I wear my Cashmere Mist cannot be surpassed. Well, maybe it can, but right now, I´m not interested. I do, however, have a mad hankering for a black and white cookie.  “Look to the cookie.” Therein lay all the answers.

Thanks to March for the inspiration for this essay.  I´m looking forward to reading your musings on your collection, as much as I am looking forward to contemplating my own.

The trip down to Costa Rica was long, tedious.  Have you heard about the roads?  Some of them are like washboards, but if you ever driver here, don’t expect road signs except right where you have to turn. We only got lost twice going from the airport to the hotel we were staying in just one night in San Jose.  Lost twice, we had to stop and back up about ten times looking for the black gate with the red stripes or the zoo or the school gateposts, which is the address for anything outside the city limits of San Jose.

Our motto is:  “It’s an adventure,” and then we don’t mad or irritated or frustrated with each other, we just keep going until we can figure out what to do next. This is mostly how I live my life too anymore, ,which works.

If you ever need a hotel to spend the night in in San Jose, do Margarita B&B Inn. The hospitality there is amazing. We got in at night, so had no idea what the place was like. We went to sleep with insect and bird sounds through the windows and woke up to lush tropics all around with a beautiful hillside view.

So GPS?  Note to self, make sure to get a Central American map update before you go.  I have the European map option and thought it was a world option.  If you don’t have the map, the GPS puts you over somewhere else, about 20 miles from where you really are.  We could have rented a GPS that worked for $3 a day.  Car rental insurance?  I think I have enough insurance through American Express, the extra insurance I bought when I rented it through Orbitz and the policies they sold me when I picked up the car that I could replace a fleet at any medium sized corporation.  Try and sort this all out for yourself before you get here. Even then, with enough car rental insurance to make State Farm smile for a decade, they make sure you put down a several hundred dollar deposit on the car.

Now that I’ve driven in Costa Rica, I think it’s not excessive in the least.

I’ve visited a lot of tropical places – Caribbean, Hawaii, Florida, Mexico – and while I enjoy visiting, it has never once caused the thought to cross my mind that I wanted to live there. When I woke up in Costa Rica, I decided this is the one tropical place on the face of the earth that I could live.  Now I just need to figure out how to make a ridiculous amount of money so I can do that in a place overlooking the ocean.

Kilian Pure Oud.  I brought my teeny vial with me, which is always in my purse. Today turned out cloudy and rainy up in Arenal, which is it 70% of the time.  We are hoping for sun tomorrow so we can see the volcano, or even for it to clear off some tonight so we can see the red glow.

Hey, I did manage to get in one perfume thing.

Patty