This is not a perfume review.

So, I guess le chat is out of le sac, oui?  (Ma French, it is merde, non?  Oui?)  It’s true – I’m leaving for Paris next week with Angela of Now Smell This, along with another friend who wants her name left out of my blog shenanigans.

It was all pretty spur-of-the-moment and involved some funny coincidences (I’d contacted Angela about something else), but I also credit the Big Cheese for the trip.  It has been – how you say – a difficult winter.  Snowmageddon (Parts 1, 2 and 3) pretty much did me in, along with some other stuff, none of which is bad enough that I even feel I have a right to complain.

And I didn’t complain, precisely.  But the Cheese was asking – nay, begging – me to go somewhere.  Really, his emails direct to my inbox (remember, we share an office) are hilarious – subject lines for anywhere from London to Berlin and beyond.  Check out this deal!!  Look at these great hotels!! He’d have gotten me a ticket, preferably a one-way ticket, to anywhere on the face of the earth.

I’m not sure exactly what tipped him off that I needed to get away.  Finding me sitting in my closet, sobbing into my hands when I was supposed to be putting my shoes on, might have given him an inkling.  Also he may have detected that his wife, a modest drinker, had taken to opening her second bottle of chardonnay before bedtime … I mean, that can’t be good, right?  Your wife shrugs her shoulders when you ask, but what happened to the case of wine I just bought? Dude, I drank it.  Please go dig the Toyota out of the f*ing snow and get me some more.

So anyway the three of us – Angie, “Jane le Doe,” and I – are renting an apartment off Blvd. Montparnasse near the Luxembourg Gardens, and yeah, go ahead and hate me.  I’ve been google-mapping every patisserie, chocolatier and boulangerie in the ‘hood.  Angie is making the List o’ Fine Dining.  (I’ve requested: no organ meats, things that crawl, or animals featured in charmingly illustrated English storybooks.)  My guess is we will do some variation on Denyse’s Perfume Tours (here’s a handy link to Right Bank and Left Bank) and of course we’re getting together with her as well.

So, there will be perfume, and plenty of it, but I already have my Paris perfume, as you know – Mandragore, which I bought one bitterly cold January day at the Annick Goutal store on Place Saint-Sulpice and which, by default, thus became the scent of Paris to me.  I’m sure I’ll come home with something else as well.

In the meantime I used the pressure of the upcoming trip as the impetus I needed to grit my teeth and finally face the carnage that the snows wrought on my garden.  Many trees and shrubs emerged surprisingly unscathed, just a few broken branches here and there.  Other plants – like my laurel – were crushed but I pruned them hard and they’ll look fine by next year.  The roses, though… oh, the roses.  The astonishing weight and volume of those snows (we had 6’5″ snowdrifts against our back fence at one point) destroyed my trellis roses.  Destroyed them.  I had them climbing my back porch waaaay over my head.  The snow tore down the roses affixed to the porch and snapped the trellises themselves in half; the canes bent and broke two feet from the ground … my beautiful, fragrant Summer Wine.  My Darlow’s Enigma.  Of course, they will grow back.  They will.  Maybe they’ll be happier, with a fresh start like that.  But I lost several years of growth.  It’s done now, though.  They’re tidied up.  And I smiled as I pruned them in the rain last week, all the spring rain we’ve been having, because I could see those damn things already putting out their new leaves.  I’m going to Paris and putting out some new leaves of my own.

Paris links:

An excellent food blog Angela told me about, with a really interesting section on Parisian culture….

Musette showed me this Paris street fashion site, often the looks are high/low, or totally affordable (a lot of local students)…

I actually printed these pages out so I could torture my daughters – dessert porn!

Everyone probably reads this already.

March

Normally I’m reviewing new Serge scents as soon as I can squirt some up my nostrils, but Fille en Anguilles last fall almost knocked me over in disbelief when I smelled it. Then I read the almost unanimously great reviews (including March) and wondered if I was missing something and put it to one side.  Everyone kept loving on it, I kept furtively sniffing the bottle once very  month or so, hoping the pine-sol soaked urinal accord would clear and it would be something less than hate.  Nope. I finally sacrified my hand and sprayed some on just to be sure I wasn’t  reaching a snap decision.

Let’s talk about the notes first.  All I could find was pine needles, vetiver, frankincense, fruit and spice notes. March gets forest when she sprays it on. I get just-cleaned-after-a-Friday-night truckstop bathroom, and not in a good way.  March says it barely lasts on her and is transparent. This thing has stuck to me like resiny goo stuck on the bottom of my foot from above-mentioned bathroom.

This is one toxic, nauseating mess. I would kill for the fruit notes to surface any time I have it on, it would be a welcome relief from Pine Urinal Cake.  Am I the only person who hates this and smells it like this?

Palate cleanser. I read recently or had been told that Paco Rabanna Calandre is being discontinued. is this true? Judging by how it is disappeared from all the discounters and the price per bottle on ebay has gone up from the normal $29 for 100 mls to $70 plus, I guess so!  You seem to be able to still get the 50 ml bottles for sub-$20, so snap them up while they’re still good for getting.  So it’s either being discontinued or reformulated and all the old bottles are out in the stream and they’re readying the new revision that I’m sure will suck spectacularly.

Gorgeous little aldehydic green floral that does a great job on hyacinth – one of the few perfumes that do.  A little green, a little bubbly, a little one-off on the floral with that cocked lily of the valley sharp greenness floating around, feels a little like hay or narcissus wound up in it.  I wore this thing to death in the ’70s and ’80s, it was the go-to scent for spring and summer. It floated around me effortlessly- full of youth and sunshine and hope, while being grounded in the green from the earth.  How can they discontinue this scent?  It is so classy and classic and deserves so much love and everyday wear. Couldn’t the world be overfilled with this instead of Angel?  I did what any good perfmista does, went and bought more than enough bottles to last me.

The list of change or discontinued scents I love keeps getting longer.  The saddest for me is still Diorling. I found a bottle of vintage EDC recently that I opened the top and almost cried.  How can that scent slip into the mists of memory?  But when the el cheapo scents like Calandre that I thought would be around forever dirt cheap start going down that same path, I wonder where it will all end.

What is the most regretted reformulation or discontinued scent on your list?

Patty

I’ve gotten several packages over the last week or two.   Some of them … honestly, you people.  Some of them put me to shame.   I’ll mention in particular the two Patricia de Nicolai decants from Anonymous, who has never looked anything other than wildly chic in her entire life, as far as I know.  So the atomizers are beautifully wrapped, and they themselves are lovely, and everything is professionally packed.

My outgoing sample packages?   Look like they were styled by the Unabomber, or a five-year-old with some lingering small-motor-skills issues.   First off, I recycle all the packaging.  Second, I … well, there’s no excuse, is there?  Hug a tree, right?  Hey, it’s FREE!   Patty has mocked me to my face about this, wondering whether it’s just my general cheap-ass tendencies, or some other flaw.

Among the incoming gifties was a sample of vintage, circa-1980 Chloé, mentioned and batted around in a recent post.  Generous Sender was worried about being busted by the USPS for Contraband Substances, so she’d wrapped it up super-carefully, nesting-doll-style.  And when I finally got to the middle and popped the lid off the little earring box … well, there it was.  Ghost of Chloé.

I meant to get to the mall this week to do a comparison with a new bottle of this still-available scent, and I’m afraid I forgot to do so.  But several commenters on the last post said that the version you can buy now just doesn’t smell right.  (And we’re talking about new bottles of “old” Chloé, not the “new Chloé ” with Chloé Sevigny as, I guess, muse – which in my opinion is perfect, as it tells me everything I needed to know about how awful it would be.  And if you’re in the mood for an argument, go ahead and stick up for her as a Style Icon.   I think in terms of style and taste levels, I’d place her on the spectrum somewhere between RuPaul and Lindsey Lohan, with maybe a sprinkling of Lady Gaga.)

Back to Original Chloé … notes are honeysuckle, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, hyacinth, lilac, coconut, bergamot, aldehydes, peach, jasmine, rose, narcissus, tuberose, carnation, orris, oakmoss, sandalwood, amber, musk, cedar and benzoin.  It had Karl Lagerfeld’s name behind it – he worked as the head designer for Chloé, the French fashion house, at the time.  To what degree, if any, Lagerfeld was actually involved in the scent’s development, I have no idea.  At least in the U.S., it was a runaway hit that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fashion brand of Chloé – that is, women didn’t wear it the way they might choose No. 5 or Cristalle in order to project the image of Chanel.   They wore it, in droves, or so it seemed to me, simply because they loved the smell.

Chloé smells very much of its time (1975) – it is a huge, easily-overpowering floral.  There is nothing “fruity” in the modern sense – it is not a Sour-Patch-Kids-candy-fruity-floral, or fruitchouli, nor is it remotely gourmand.  While I suppose it is “tuberose” more than anything else, it’s not tuberose in the manner of, say, Fracas, or something newer and nichier — it’s a much busier combination of florals.  My 30-year-old sample gives a sense of elements having been compressed – the top notes are off a hair (a bit of that “old-perfume” varnish vibe) and the aldehydes I recall are mostly missing.   From the vantage point of 2010, Chloé is intensely sweet and old-school, the sort of scent I immediately associate with Farrah-styled hair, Famolares and a Gunne Sax lace dress, perhaps on Prom night.  And wow, I wish I still had my prom dress, because it looks like I could make some dough on it now!

Chloé is not a gentle melody of individual notes.  The floral, vaguely tropical notes move at you like a Phil Spector-esque Wall of Smell – ylang, honeysuckle, coconut, jasmine and tuberose; the peach only adds to the sweetness.   This is not a fragrance that one should overapply.  As we move into the drydown, the intense sweetness fades, and the scent takes on a quietly smoky bitterness on the skin, reminiscent of papiers d’Armenies.  Unsurprisingly, it is quite tenacious.  I wonder what Karl would think of it now.

I’ve made no secret in the past of my personal feelings about scents, particularly vintage ones that I remember from back in the day.   Chloé, as many of you already know, is inextricably bound up in my mind with my late mother-in-law, the Big Cheese’s mother, who died in 2006, having drenched herself for at least two decades in Chloé each time she left the house.  (She had a very late, and mercifully brief, flirtation with Cartier Dragon’s Breath.)

The clothes I have of hers, some of which I wear regularly, some occasionally and some not at all, still carry the Ghost of Chloé, a smell that surely impregnated every surface of her bedroom and enormous dressing room — a spare bedroom in their apartment which she had converted into mostly mirrored closets housing her quite extensive clothing collection.   I still smell the Ghost of Chloé on her coats, on her furs, on her scarves.

And so I find myself in a situation I think many of you have experienced.  I happen to love that smell – I think Chloé ‘s beautiful – but I could no more wear it than I could jam my foot into her size 5.5 shoes.   It makes me feel both happy and sad, and I am tempted to dab a bit of my sample on the items I wear most that are now losing their Chloé smell.  But Chloé was hers, and apparently it always will be.

March

Roxana Illuminated Perfumes GreenWitch

Yes, you’re reading the byline correctly; I’m making a special guest appearance here on the Posse! Of course, I’m still at Perfumesmellinthings; while Marina is taking a short Vacation, March and Patty kindly allowed me to participate in Roxana’s celebration of the Solstice by publishing me, and I thank them as well as Marina who made the suggestion.

This weekend is the Solstice, the date where Winter cedes to Spring, at least on the calendar. I can wage that in parts of the country people are looking at the calendar and the weather report and thinking “really?”

Roxana Illuminated Perfumes is celebrating the Solstice with the release of a green chypre called GreenWitch, inspired by the eponymous novel by Susan Cooper.

Chypres are perhaps my favorite kind of fragrance. Donna at PST earlier covered the genre in far more detail that I ever could, so I won’t even try. GreenWitch is a literal green: galbanum, limes, fern and tonka with a base of vetiver, patchouli and (YAY) oakmoss. This time of the year can in some parts of the country seemingly stretch for eons facing grey weeks awaiting that day when the trees finally bud and the grass is finally green (one that I remember seemingly happens overnight, like a blessing). While I would welcome this at anytime of the year, the sharp, deep springiness of this scent is particularly nice heralding (hoping for?) Spring.

Please visit the other participating blogs:

Bitter Grace Notes

The Non Blonde

Scent Hive

The Windsphere Witch

Perfume Shrine

Portland Examiner

Illuminated Perfume Journal

Why is it that the best laid plans always get shot to hell? I know; I’ve asked that question before.

I was looking for something easy to review for today, and my nose took me on quite an unexpected sniffing expedition. I started contemplating a barrage of samples I´ve accumulated lately, thinking I would get inspired by one of them, Lise Watier´s Folies Neiges in particular, since I somehow wound up with about a dozen samples of that scent. They´re those flat little soaked cotton pads, not vials, and I think a Shoppers Drug Mart SA might have gone a bit overboard stuffing them into my bag. She may not have intended to give me quite so many.  Folies Neiges is quite possibly the greenest of any green scent I´ve ever smelled. Miller et Bertaux Green used to be the greenest scent I´d ever smelled. Then came Issey Miyake´s a scent, which is green on steroids. Having now smelled Folies Neiges, what is greener than green on steroids? Nuclear green? How green was my valley? More like, how green can green possibly be?

So, I went to Shoppers Drug Mart this past Monday, since I was picking up dinner at my favourite falafel restaurant that just happens to be in the same shopping centre. I immediately spotted Beyonce Heat, and without even a shred of trepidation, I spritzed some on the back of my hand.  March was right; canned peaches and unwashed ladyparts. And patchouli.  What was I thinking? I had to do a vigorous scrubbing before attacking my falafel.

Yesterday, I went to Yorkdale. I always manage to find something at Yorkdale. My first stop was Bath and Body Works. After the Serge love fest two weeks ago, I figured I needed a little lowbrow sniffage to balance out the high-end niche bender I´ve been on for the last little while. I was looking for the new Orange Sapphire scent, which Robin had good things to say about on Now Smell This. I was also curious about Sweet Pea Forever, mostly because of the cute pink bottle with the abstract peace sign on it. Orange Sapphire wasn´t available yet, so I spritzed a bit of Sweet Pea Forever and proceeded to walk around. It was the usual syrupy fruit cocktail concoction that I´ve come to expect from B&BW, but that bottle is so darn cute. I´m a sucker for peace signs, but apparently not enough of a sucker to spend $30.

From there it was over to The Bay. I´d remembered that I smelled the latest Givenchy Ange au Demon flanker, Le Secret, a few weeks ago, and I went back to check it out again. I liked it – green tea, cranberry, citrus, a bit of jasmine. Perfect for the faux spring weather we´ve been having lately, which I´m quite confident is not going to hang around much longer. As I was doing the wrist-snort, I spotted Balenciaga Paris; and then the walls fell.

It isn´t very often that I get bowled over by a department store fragrance, but for all the “meh” I´ve smelled lately, Balenciaga Paris more than makes up for it. I fell in love with the bottle the first time I saw an image of it, but the scent description left me a little cold. I don´t normally go for anything chypre, modern or otherwise, but experience has taught me that these “modern” chypres that are out there now don´t bear any resemblance to anything chypre. So, I am usually willing to give them a sniff.

It turns out the bottle is beautiful in person, and the scent is quite wonderful. It is a lovely, understated interpretation of violet, combined with a bit of fizzy bergamot and spicy pepper, and just a hint of woods and labdanum. The other notes listed are oakmoss, cedar and patchouli, but as far as my nose is concerned, they´re non-existent. For me, this is Bond No. 9 Andy Warhol Silver Factory turned on its ear. The stunning combination of incense and violet is breathtaking in the cold weather, but stifling when it turns warmer. If you remove the heaviness of the incense from Silver Factory, I´m convinced what you would be left with is Balenciaga Paris. And that makes it perfect for now, and for when spring is really supposed to arrive. I really enjoy the fact that this is a violet-based scent that does not smell like laundry detergent. Violet is a tough one to get right, but Olivier Polge and Nicolas Ghesquià¨re hit the bulls eye with this one.

Sample Mania: If you´d like to sample the overwhelming greenage that is Lise Watier´s Folies Neiges, I´ll have Lily cat draw 6 names from the comments section to receive a foil-sealed sample. I´m warning you: you have to LOVE green scents to appreciate this one. Lily will be celebrating her 13^th birthday on the 23^rd, and would love nothing more than wishes for continued good health and happiness.

Disclosure: I was given a sample of Balenciaga Paris by Marcos at The Bay in Yorkdale. I also bought a 75 ml bottle that I swore to him I was going to “wear the crap out of.”  That is one fragrant promise I intend to keep.