A favor, por favor!  I have been searching for Santa Maria Novella Eva in the U.S. for months, and it is out of stock and never seems to come back.  Anyone in Europe able to check their local SMN supplier and see if they have it?  This is my summer scent, and I’m getting a little freaked out that I may not have it.  If you do know of a bottle somewhere, click the Contact Us over on the left.

Olivier Polge created the newest pefume from Balenciaga with a nod to Le Dix, with a modern sensibility, so goes the marketing copy.  Notes are bergamot, spices, pepper, violet, carnation, oakmoss, cedar, vetiver, patchouli, labdanum.

This is another one I’ve been wearing around for over a week now, trying to decide what I think of it (this is my  new hobby, apparently, fussing over perfume samples for longer and longer periods of time). When I first smelled it in Paris (they were spraying everyone with it at Galleries Lafayette that came withing 30 feet of them), I was sorta uninspired.  Nice, easy to wear, nothing reallly stood out.  I’d wear it. It is supposed to be a modern chypre, but I’m not getting that on me as a prominent feature where I would loudly proclaim it is a chypre.  It’s heavily violet, which puts it in the “yeah, I’d hit that” category for me right away because violet always finds its way into my wearing pile.  I don’t find any of the other notes to stand out, they just seem to be the supporting cast. There’s just a touch of spiciness, it’s not overly dry, and it’s certainly not sweet.  This is kind of the perfect neutral violet for me.  There are a couple of frowny-face moments when it seems close to soapy aquatic, but the drydown veers off into a more earthy territory about an hour or so in.

What winds up working for me in Balenciaga is the waft.  It’s incredibly persistent, soft, and it follows you softly through the day.  It’s not big or loud, but delicately strong. Wearing it makes me happy. It’s not so distracting or weird that I can’t concentrate, but it isn’t so plain that you don’t really care that it’s there.

Patty

When I mentioned Inà¨s de la Fressange in my recent berry post, I was talking about the very-hard-to-find 2004 version in the skinny, upright bottle with the pretty gold embossed leaves on it and the acorn cap, not the plain, short, silver-capped original version from 1999 which is still all over the discounters for a song (e.g., you can get 1 oz. from BeautyEncounter for $22.).   Anyhoodle, doing research I discovered that the 1999 version was a completely different scent done by Calice Becker. Notes of the 1999 effort are aldehydes, peach, bergamot, brazilian rosewood, carnation, iris, jasmine, ylang-ylang, lily-of-the-valley, rose, sandalwood, tonka bean and benzoin.

(For anyone who wonders: Inà¨s was a Chanel model in the 1980s and a muse for Lagerfeld.  And if we ever get our image problem fixed I’ll show you, but googling will produce satisfactory results.)

I thought the notes for the 1999 version sounded really good – in fact, better than the 2004 one I own, which is a fun, lighthearted thing but pretty fruity/frivolous.

So … Someone sent me a decant of the original.  Thank you, Someone!   I was thrilled, because I’d almost bought it unsniffed, and my unsniffed buy history is dismal.  I am guaranteed to hate something I buy unsniffed.

On Monday, when I reviewed Martin Margiela Untitled, I mentioned that the fragrance didn’t smell anything like what I expected, given the notes.   With this version of Inà¨s, it’s the exact opposite – Inà¨s smells almost exactly (and quite pleasantly) like you would expect, if you found that list as intriguing as I did (uh, not to mention the Calice Becker part.)

The first impressions are aldehydes and peach – not canned peaches, or syrupy peaches, but the scent of standing in the vicinity of a basket of ripened peaches.  I’m going to hop right in here and use the word restraint – peach in quantity can be pretty overwhelming.  The aldehydes, while not particularly noticeable, do a wonderful job of creating a sense of openness and buoyancy; add the little herbal zing of the bergamot and something that might have been cloying is delightful and just a little tart.

The middle part of the scent, while not fascinating, is quite pleasant.  I can’t pick out any of the individual floral notes except the iris, the sweet woodiness of which is made more pronounced by the rosewood; that stretch is “diffuse floral” and the rose is, thank God, muted if not outright bound, gagged and stuffed in the trunk.

The drydown’s soft and delicately pretty.  The peach fades; I can smell iris and jasmine, but mostly it’s … sandalwood, tonka bean and benzoin.  It’s more of a wallpaper scent than a powerhouse at this phase – Tam Dao or Samsara it is not.    I assume the sandalwood is the same fake-y stuff most folks are using now, but it’s hard not to like sandalwood, tonka and benzoin.

Now, let me tease you for a moment: I began to think, sniffing over and over, of how Ines reminded me vaguely of something.  Check out these notes of another perfume, and a popular one back in the day: honeysuckle, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, hyacinth, lilac, bergamot, aldehydes, peach, jasmine, rose, narcissus, tuberose, carnation, iris, oakmoss, sandalwood, amber, musk, cedar and benzoin.

That’s a more ornate list, and sweeter, but do you see any resemblance?   Most of the notes of Inà¨s are in there.  Guess what that is?   Give up?  It’s Chloé, the 1975 original, not the wan, pathetic thing on offer now.   Original Chloé was a huge sillage monster – I never wore it myself, and I liked it better after two weeks (or two months) of drydown, on a friend’s scarf, or in the lining of my mother-in-law’s fur coat.  Inà¨s is like that Chloé drydown, a scent writ on a smaller, human scale – the same fragrance “idea” made into a cashmere robe rather than a suit with big shoulder pads.

I get asked periodically about my interest in perfume by people who (clearly, albeit diplomatically) think the entire thing’s peculiar.  As I sniffed this scent, I got to thinking about the types of reactions that a fragrance might trigger.  Since I (and most likely you) sniff a lot of quite expensive, oddball, “niche” scents, more often than not I feel that I am placed in the position of receiving a “message” from a sample.   Some fragrances seem meant to be puzzled over; some appear to be anti-fashion in the same way that, for example, some of Prada’s clothing is frumpy and peculiar in a quite deliberate way.  A fragrance like Tubereuse Criminelle might have a particular element (camphor) that is designed, if it works for you, to highlight the beauty of the rest of the fragrance even more brightly.   Some fragrances are fairy-tale strange (Byredo Pulp.  Unicorn Spell.)  Some are just … strange (L’Antimatiere.)  Some are jolie-laide (Bandit, in my opinion.  Niki de St. Phalle.)

If perfumes are sending us a message, what does the 1999 version of Inà¨s say?  It says: I smell pretty.  Nothing more or less.  Calice Becker’s Inà¨s warms my heart because it is clearly pre-gourmand; there is nothing remotely candified or Lolita-esque about it.  It is woman, not child or “old lady.”  It is neither fruitchouli nor cotton candy.   It is not “retro” – faux or genuine.  No oakmoss, no civet, no martini-and-cigarette aroma.  Inà¨s is more like the warm embrace of an old friend, one maybe from high school, a woman who makes you happy and with whom you’ve always clicked.   You could run into each other after ten years and you’d be caught up in minutes.   You sort of avoided her for awhile, entranced by your circle of more interesting, avant-garde friends.  But you are older now.  You’ve come to appreciate her lack of pretense, her kindness, her warmth.  You always thought she was pretty, but a little quiet.  Maybe she was just comfortable in her skin.

Addendum (prompted by mals’ comment): my late mother-in-law wore Chloé for years and years, before I was ever interested in perfume or knew what tuberose smelled like.  I simply thought of it as … her perfume, although I didn’t know what it was.  I kept some of her clothing, and if I take out the things that have been put away, even after four years, I get the ghost of Chloé — more warm benzoin and sandalwood base than anything else.  I did a post on it here.

Source: private sample.  As I noted up above, if you’re curious, this definitely falls in the cheap thrill category — it’s quite easy to find at the discounters for less than $30.

March

There’s that really great friend that you crawl in bed with one night because it’s late, you’re tired and a little drunk, not to mention it’s just really comfortable being a little snuggly with someone that doesn’t get the blood pounding, and then in the middle of the night, um, heat shows up.  It surprises you, and it makes you a little uneasy, but you aren’t saying no.

That’s Guerlain Tonka Imperiale for me.   This sample has been sitting and staring at me for over a week now. I spritz it, meander around a while, go back and forth between loving it and thinking, “Ew, maybe not,” only to give up and try again another day.  Rinse, repeat, until we got stuck together for a few hours alone.

Reason for it?  Not sure exactly, but there’s enough L’Heuere Bleue (in my serious hate pile) in here to give me discomfort, as it starts pegging over to the FULL POWDER setting, but never quite gets there.  It’s gourmand, verging on sweet, pulling back before my teeth ache and my thighs expand.  There’s a sumptuous dessert vibe surrounding it that’s a little roasted.  Tonka is my crack, so how could this possibly miss?  Well, I finally decided it didn’t miss, I just had to move the target a squidge.  Though it has edges that make me uncomfortable – hey, didn’t I do a whole post about edges? – they are edges I can live with, it lets me breathe into the parts that I’m not sure I like, while savoring that rich, mesmerizing almost roasted dessert.  Maybe it’s the rosemary that throws me?    Just as I’m sinking into this sinful, tasteful gourmand, it buzzes my nose a little, and gives a discordance that isn’t jarring, but makes me think about what I’m smelling again.  Enough that I can never get quite easy with it.

Top notes: Rosemary, Bergamot, Bitter Almond; Middle notes: Tonka Bean, Light Tobacco, Jasmine; and Bottom notes: Incense, Cedar Wood, Pine.  It’s beautifully made.  Guerlain continues to impress me with creating another scent that fits in with the other Matieres seamlessly, but sparkles all on its own.

I’m not sure where it’s going to sit in the pantheon of Guerlain La Matieres that I love, which would be all of them – below Armenie and Beluga, next to Angelique, above Iris Ganache, unless I’m feeling very sweet (this is rare, but it does happen).  Oh, why do I bother trying to rank the Matieres. What’s your ranking, if you’ve smelled them all?  Anyone have a bottle they want to split?  Or you would you want in on a split with me?

Sample source is a teeny squidge from TPC.

Patty

Unfinished business:  first off, regarding yesterday’s post on tattoos: y’all are freaks.  And I love you.  I knew I could count on you!  I knew everyone would be lifting up their shirts and dropping their drawers and offering helpful advice … I live in the D.C. area as some of you know, and I’m not traveling to get a tattoo (not that I’m getting one!!) so right now I’ve been browsing local websites, looking at portfolios, and reading reviews on Yelp.  Any local recommendations appreciated.

Second, I keep forgetting this – my own dear darlings, chat amongst yourselves in comments and arrange hookups to your hearts’ content, that’s why we’re here, but please don’t type your regular email address in comments. Spambots troll for that stuff, and then next thing you know you’re getting adverts to Empower your trouser serpent, to quote an actual email in my spam filter.  If you must, at least type it like this: jane doe at verizon dot net

Threed: Robin at NST smelled my CB I Hate Perfumes Wildflower Honey and thinks it smells just dandy.  So.  It’s me.  (sad emoticon here).  She suggested that maybe whatever musk is in there that I can’t smell is further blocking out the other dimensions of the scent … like the actual honey.  Sounds plausible to me.

So – today’s perfume review!   Martin Margiela Untitled!   Which Patty already reviewed and about which I didn’t care; if they can´t be bothered to name it, why should I bother to smell it, especially since I’m pretty sure right this second you can only get it at Colette in Paris?  Is that right?  (Oh, I don’t know, March – you’re the blogger.)

Notes are: boxwood, galbanum, bitter orange, incense, jasmine, cedar and musk. “The fragrance reinterprets aromas of greenery after rain.” (via Fragrantica); the perfumer is Daniela Andrier.

I don’t know if you’ve read many reviews yet but Untitled is not what you’d expect from those notes – or at least what I’d expect.  It’s not sharp/green, and it’s not pissy.  It’s certainly not floral, and if I were going to stereotype I’d say the “masculine” end of the unisex spectrum.  Patty mentioned Bois Farine in her review (which BTW smells doughy and awful on my skin) but I see what she’s saying in terms of comparison.  It’s woody/nutty but not yeasty.

It is so hard to describe perfumes sometimes, but as I smelled Untitled with Louise, I knew instantly what Untitled reminded me of!  Let me quote myself:  Untitled smells pretty much like the part of the smell of marijuana that I really like.  Not the acrid smoke – this smells like a bud, that green/grass/resin smell, neither super-high-grade stuff nor skunky ditchweed.   It is … decidedly hempy.  If it “reinterprets aromas of greenery,” we’re not talking about your lawn here.  Fresh Cannabis Santal to me is sweet/earthy, and Nasomatto Hindu Grass smells mostly like patchouli … although, hey, it’s not like either of these is advertised as smelling like weed.   (Nasomatto’s now done hash, heroin and pot – where’s my Nasomatto Crystal Meth?  Eh?  Or maybe that’s too …. synthetic for their aesthetic.)

Untitled is not virtual-reality pot – I bet CB could do an excellent rendition if he wanted to – there’s a musky component at the base and a hint of dry citrus that makes Untitled smell more like a cologne.  Dope cologne.  It smells great, it really does, and unlike actual dope smoke it wears lightly (delicate sillage) and doesn’t last more than five or six hours, which (for me) is pretty brief.  I think this would be very refreshing to wear in warmer weather.  It would never have crossed my mind as the sort of thing I’d want to wear, but … I do.   And since I’m queen: anybody doing a split I can weasel in on?  I really want a decant.

Source: private sample.

March

I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo.  In some discreet spot, probably a place that nobody would see unless they shared a locker room (or a bedroom) with me.  Why have I been thinking this?   I have no idea.

There are problems.  First off, I have no existing tattoos, and the reason is: even when I was twenty and had a buzz cut and a pierced nose, I couldn’t imagine affixing any permanent image to my body.  I mean, in twenty years, would I really want that tattoo of a skull, or Jiminy Cricket, on my shoulder?   Probably not.

Second is the cliché aspect – how about a heart?  Scattering of stars?  Yin-yang?  A unicorn?  Puh-leaze.   I could argue that, at my age, even considering a tattoo is a cliché.  I might as well cut to the chase and have the word “cliché” tattooed on my wrist instead, in some small, illegible font.

Then there’s the double standard – my own very mixed messages.  I tell my teenaged daughters (the 15-year-old has friends with tats): if you get a tattoo your legs will fall off.  The other variation of this message is: DON’T GET A TATTOO.  NOBODY WILL EVER HIRE YOU.  Or, sometimes I say:  YOU GET A TATTOO AND I WILL (MESS) YOU UP, DO YOU HEAR ME?!  Subtle stuff like that.

And yet, I’ve caught occasional glimpses of a few young women around here who are, it appears, slowly working on full sleeves – which I think are gorgeous.  Now there’s a double standard.  What is wrong with me?   Part of the problem, of course, is a double standard.  I used to work at an ultra-male, financial-services place that was extremely conservative.  And I worked with some bodybuilder-guys who were getting seriously large tattoos, and the only reason I knew that was: we went to the same gym.  They wore jackets and ties at work.  With women it’s not so easy to hide.  And hard as it is for my daughters to believe, there are people (men?) of a certain age who will look at a visible tattoo on a woman and think something like, trollop.  There’s a reason those lower-back tattoos are called tramp stamps, as much as I dislike the term.

A tattoo should mean something, maybe, but what?  A milestone, a celebration, a reminder?  Typing the words meaningful tattoo makes me smirk.  Maybe that’s my problem right there.  A perfume bottle would look boring.   I LUV SERGE 4EVAH done with swirls and that big gothik-gangsta lettering seems … like overkill?  Yeah, I thought so too.

The problem with hindsight is it’s so backward-looking.  We’re (always?) at that age, that dangerous age, where the grass is definitely greener somewhere else, maybe five years ago and to the left.  I was apparently already too old for a tattoo when I was in college, and I haven’t gotten any younger.  And still.  And yet.

All you young whippersnappers out there, you sweet young things in your twenties, I want to say to you:  Go Ahead.  Do It Now. Go on and shave your head/move to Bali/change your name if that’s what you feel like.  But that’s easy for me to say and it’s hardly fair or applicable, is it?  Our lives are different.  I was so busy trying to grab onto what I thought was adulthood in my early twenties, I wonder if I missed some of that foolishness.  Or maybe I didn’t.  Maybe there’s still time to be foolish, who can say?  Although I’m drawing the line at the unicorn.

March