So, this post is in three parts and I’ve labeled them clearly so you can skip ahead.  Part Three is perfume.

1) The no-buy week – I really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments on Patty’s post yesterday.  I invited participation in a one-week no-buy last week, having imposed it on myself as an experimental exercise that would force me to contemplate, hour by hour, my relationship with consumption.  Not to sound all highbrow about it.  But I was curious about motivation: what do I buy, and why?  Could I limit my spending to necessities for a week?  What’s a necessity?

Tuesday, Weds., and Thurs. were pretty successful, I bought stuff like gas.  Spent no cash.  There was some extended soul-searching in Trader Joe’s, which is where I buy most of my groceries, on Thursday.  I am feeding a family of six; I did buy the standard nonessentials like the kids’ favorite cookies, and ice cream.  My reasoning: this was my no-buy experiment, not theirs.  Also, they (particularly the teens) are already stigmatized among their friends by my household ban on high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils, which eliminates 95% of the “standard” snack foods found on American grocery shelves and in the vast majority of their friends’ houses.  So, they got their TJs treats and I kept the peace.  Sue me.

Friday was a cock-up; there was stress and drama, which I won’t detail because it wasn’t even my drama so it’s not my place to explain.  Anyhow, that’s all excuses – I think where to place the blame is pretty obvious. It’s shared equally by Gina the makeup artist who comments on here, who told me about a great lipgloss, and Anita, who’s constantly emailing me your friend thought you might like this item on eBay.  Anita’s like … the Bad Retail Fairy.  Staying away from eBay is incredibly difficult for me, I routinely have ten things in my “watch” list.  The damage on Friday wasn’t terrible – I drove over to the Wall o’Bling retail center and bought that lipgloss and an eye pencil and a striped sweater that reminded me of the Breton shirts in Paris.  In terms of “mindfulness,” I fully admit that it was a mood booster.  Next time I’ll try to skip directly to what I did afterward, which was take the dog (and myself) for a long, quiet walk in the woods.

Saturday we went to Target to get household goo (cleaning supplies, toothpaste) and, predictably, I left with a cartload of non-necessities (like cute knee-socks for Enigma, and one of those gallon containers of goldfish crackers.)  It wasn’t a $40K gambling spree, or even a $4K Hermes bag (can you buy one Hermes bag for $4k?)  But we could have been leaner.  Enigma’s outgrown most of her clothes again and really likes their tee shirts and shorts, and I’m guilty of the buy-two-they’re-cheap! mentality.  I also bought home hair dye for $10, which is hardly a necessity, but as it allowed me to cancel my hair color appointment it was economically sound.

And that was … it.  Sunday and Monday I think I bought, literally, nothing (oops, sorry, more groceries Monday.)  Tuesday: nothing.   As in: nothing.  This past week did help me clarify want vs. need, and it reminded me of how much I can do without.  Useful self-knowledge.  As you read this, Louise and I may be discussing my amazingly deep and profound enlightenment further.  Over coffee.  At Starbucks.

2) That lipgloss — I’m probably blogging on a new play area of mine, my last frontier, nude makeup/lipstick looks, on Random Sunday.  Stop by this Sunday if you have any interest in that discussion.  Nudes are really difficult for me (and maybe all super-pale people) and it’s been fun researching.  I’d love your input.

3) I mentioned Christian Dior Dune recently. Although I could go to Macy’s and smell it, I bought a used EDT of indeterminate vintage on eBay.  I do think it’s a bit older because it’s one of the stoppered bottles (like old Poison) that I haven’t seen in years.  The bottle itself is beautiful, much prettier than in photos- it’s a pale ambery brown that appears to have a faintly opalescent shimmer.

Researching for this post, it’s surprising how much isn’t written about Dune.  I didn’t find any particular blog raves or slams; for a fragrance that’s been around since 1991 and is still pretty easy to find, it’s not high up on the radar in perfumista-land that I can see.  Certainly it doesn’t have the love/hate status of other Dior offerings like Poison, Addict or J’Adore, nor does it have the (possibly waning) cachet of the (reformulated?) Dior classics like Diorella or Dioressence.  Notes for Dune vary, this one seems as plausible as any: bergamot, mandarin, palisander, aldehydes, peony, broom, jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, lily, wallflower, lichen, vanilla, patchouli, benzoin, sandalwood, musk.  It is generally described as a woody oriental.  I can’t resist the following blurbage from Osmoz, which I presume is at least partly based on Dior PR materials:

Dune is in harmony with the early 90′s: the need for serenity and a return to human values. A perfume that speaks of intimacy and closeness. Dune emancipates women, strengthening their intuitive side … Stop everything for a while. Gaze at the ocean, wrap your arms around your knees, unwind, enjoy being with yourself … Dune for women is not a threat to men: it is a quest for universal harmony governed by feelings. The unusual fragrance carries a brisk briny scent, coupled with sea wind and the sandy warmth of beaches.

I include this … okay, partly because I find it hilarious, but in part because that blurbage feels so 90s, and also because all that talk of brisk and briny and sea wind and (elsewhere) fresh scares the bejusus out of me, because I’m expecting some monster wallop of fresh musk or aquatic notes.  But no.  Dune starts off with a strongly resinous/herbaceous/cocoa combination.  It’s similar to munching on one of those lavender chocolate bars from Dolfin.  (I also recommend the Earl Grey bars, which are really weird.)  While I’m eating the lavender bar I can never decide: is this disgusting or fabulous?  The top notes of Dune are bitter and discordant and yet so compelling I found myself putting it on over and over and over again, trying to parse it.  It’s sharp and dry at first, not so much aldehydic as sour bordering on bitter (hello broom, wallflower and lichen?), and the “sandy warmth of beaches” feels to my nose more like a cold pebble beach with some prickly sea urchins sticking up.   Briny?  Well … salty.  Yes.  The illusion of salt, the parched, arid feel of it, odd in so dense a scent.  The further the nose moves away from the skin, the less difficult it becomes — the jasmine, ylang, vanilla and benzoin soar up and away with a soft, warm, inviting sillage that couldn’t be more different from the bitterness which is rendered up close on the skin.  Twice this week I had a daughter compliment me in passing on my fragrance, and yet wrinkle her nose when she smelled it up close.

I actually dug up the thesaurus, trying to find a better word than “disenchanted” — Luca Turin’s apt description of Dune in The Guide.  And I can’t do it.  LT says that Dune is “a strong contender for Bleakest Beauty in all of perfumery.”  (He gives it five stars, fresh oriental.)  The drydown, as LT notes, contains the inedible chocolate of new-edition Cartier Must (and to my nose, the choco-patch of Angel) and by all rights I should loathe it, and yet I don’t, I think because of the counterweight of the woodsy florals (and that sandalwood! My goodness!)   And while we try to avoid gender stereotyping here on the Posse, in my opinion this could easily be a masculine fragrance.  I wonder what Dune Pour Homme, done by Olivier Cresp in 1997, smells like?  From the descriptions on Basenotes, it sounds like a green figgy-woody thing. (TS gives DPH four stars in The Guide but her description is a perfunctory two-liner.)

Dior Dune is hands down the strangest theoretically-mainstream scent I have ever smelled; I can’t believe it’s still in production, or why anyone would have made it in the first place.  Every perfumista’s closet needs some odd things in it, and even if I don’t end up wearing it often, I’m rather pleased to have my bottle.

March

March issued her challenge last week – take the consumer cure, stop buying anything that was not an essential for one week.  I’m thinking, how hard can that be?  It’s seven days. I just write the stuff down I want to buy that come up during that seven days, then buy them later.

I have to preface this with a little bit of background.  I have ADD/OCD. It’s not the light switch/hand washing OCD – I have some subjects or interests that flitter by like Butterflies that catch my attention, and once one has it, the attention that is so hard for me to focus at will turns into a laser, and all my energy goes into whatever it is that has captured me, and I bore into that subject for days, weeks, months, years, until I’ve gotten out of it what I wanted and my fascination is over. Some things stay with me the rest of my life, some just go into my knowledge bank that I use as I need, and others get forgotten entirely.  That’s the fun part of my OCD. The ADD component doesn’t really bother me, it just annoys everyone me because they’ll be talking to me, but if they can’t make whatever they’re talking about interesting to me, I wind up drifting off or suddenly changing the subject. Not because I”m rude, but because I just can’t focus and forget I’m supposed to be paying attention.  If people talk to me about emotional issues, things that I find compelling, then I can stay with them.  It’s difficult to be my friend and expect a lot out of me on that front, I dissapoint and annoy all of my closest friends.

It’s the ADD that leads to some of my more erratic shopping. I often just buy something out of boredom.  Something interesting flits by, I think it sounds cool, and I got find it on eBay or Amazon.  This happens most days. It distracts me enough from things that I usually don’t want to do for a little bit, but allows me to do that for a couple of minutes, then get back to work.  It’s a push-pull of attention that I’ve delicately worked out so I can be a gainfully employed, productive person.

The first two days were pretty much what I expected. Lots of opening my Amazon and eBay browser windows to snag small items, only to close them quickly because I remembered I couldn’t shop for a week.  That was Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  It made me a little uncomfortable and left me feeling vaguely deprived on some way.  But not so much that I was squeamish about it, and I did get okay with feeling that.  By  Friday morning, I was confident as a cock (rooster for those of you that might be offended by the correct technical term) in a henhouse about my ability to have my way with this challenge.

I do a lot of yoga. It helps me cope with vague or strong emotions.  I’m not sure exactly the mechanics of how it works, except it gets me out of my head and into thinking about breathing.  So in my toughest times, I go to the mats (isn’t that a Godfather reference?), often finding the hardest yoga classes available.  Last week, for unshopping reasons, I found myself in an inversions class that was pretty amazing and has left me working on my handstand every day, along with wheel.  I need to have more emotional trauma, it’s healthy for me.

The downside of yoga is the cute little shop full of yoga togs in most of the studios I go to.  Because I do so much yoga and work at home, I pretty much live my daily life in yoga-type clothes – body hugging, breathable fabrics, move easily, colorful.  The first part of the Consumer Cure, I went to my teeny studio nearby, and their shopping area is small and varies little. Friday I went to the big yoga studio downtown that has an excellent retail manager who changes out their stuff every coupel of days, and they have this huge selection of some of the cutest things.  There on the rack, staring at me was this adorable long sleeve white shirt with a purple design in it. It cried at me and made eyes and moaned a little, I swear.  Then it was in my arms along with a cute little white top that I needed to go under it.  And then we were at the counter, buying it.  I had taken precautions, I didn’t take my purse in with me, but I never do.  Oddly enough, that doesn’t matter, they have my credit card on file for my monthly fees, so they can just charge it to that.  This is probably not the most helpful information I’ve ever been given.

I’m thinking, this is fine, it’s one little slip. the top was so cute, they just had one in my size, so I had to act quickly because it definitely would have been gone by the next day, not to mention the next week.  I’ll confess it, and it’s just not a really big thing, yes?

Apparently it opened the floodgates. What followed was not anything approaching a shopping binge at all, but it was a slow and steady slide right back into a little bit of my normal shopping patterns.  I snagged a full length mirror because, oddly enough, I don’t have one!  And then I needed an air purifier for my front room.

I did put off the champagne purchase of the very limited availability champagne that I adore and can only get rarely because they have almost 100 bottles, surely it will last until later this week?  I’m still crossing my fingers on that one. If it’s not, I’ll blame March.

Then it was Saturday.  My friend and I had to prepare for a wedding shower, and she needed to go down to Sol and pick up some lingerie as a present.  I got a little squirmy then, but thought, it’s lingerie, I can resist that, right?  We stopped and had a drink first, but it was just one drink, and we split a roasted artichoke to cut the hunger.  It occurred to me then that I was already outside of austerity eating with the champagne, not to mention the roasted artichoke.

Off we went to Sol, but only a little buzzed.  And the outfits.  Can I just say I haven’t bought lingerie in a really long time?  Can I skip the skanky details and mention that I now have two bad girl outfits and one good girl outfit, and I shouldnt’ have bought the velvet burnout black robe, but it really made the bad girl outfits so much better?

But that was it.  I haven’t made any cosmetics purchases – no lipsticks, no eyeshadows, not anything.  So far, just clothes, which isnt’ something I buy that much of anyway.  And I have today to get through, which will be over over soon.

Damn Chanel!!!  They sent me an e-mail about their new New Limited Edition gold and black nail polishes and eyeshadows.  Okay, so that was another oops.  I’m locking myself in and unplugging the internets and e-mail through tomorrow morning so no more accidents can happen.

Overall?  I think I did okay’ish.  Worse than I thought I would do, but not as bad as it could have been.  Anyone else care to confess how their week went, if you were playing the home game with us?

Patty

Today’s post is a bit of a grab-bag.

Angie bought The new Etat Libre d’Orange Tilda Swinton Like This in Paris and wore it beautifully, and Patty reviewed it last Thursday.  (Notes: mandarin, ginger, winter squash, jungle essence, everlasting flower, Moroccan neroli, Grasse rose, vetiver, heliotrope and musk.)  I thought I’d put my two cents in.  I experienced it after the first ten or fifteen minutes as very much a skin scent, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect given that list of notes, although a quiet skin scent seems so … Swinton to me.  You have to be pretty darn close to whoever’s wearing it to smell it, although as I believe Angela mentioned, it does come up to you in bits and wafts.  In my limited experience with it, compared to Tilda, Eau des Merveilles, for instance (which I find a bit similar in feel) is a sillage monster.   So don’t be ordering Tilda unsniffed if you aren’t willing to settle for something that wears as close as a favorite tee shirt.  It does have a little of that peculiar metallic/orange blossom vibe that S-Perfumes’ Sloth had, to reference a really obscure scent.

Speaking of skin scents, on this trip I also gained a new appreciation for the other scents of Olivia Giacobetti at IUNX, which – even if you aren’t fans of her work – is a fun store to visit, in a little room off the entrance of the Hotel Costes.  Each scent is set up with a cone affixed to the wall which you sniff from, and there’s a little fan that goes on automatically when you lean in – it’s a neat way to sample and gives you a good impression of the scents.  I never got to try the original IUNX waters before she closed down the first time, but I still have my original decant of L’Ether, and it is great stuff, probably my favorite from the line.  I put it on while I was writing this to remind myself how much I like it.  It’s stronger than the others (notes are myrrh, benzoin, rosewood, saffron, maplewood, sandalwood), a woody, slightly sweet saffron-incense that feels like a kissing cousin of Passage d’Enfer.   If you’re a fan of her ethereal scents it’s well worth a sniff.  (UPDATE: a commenter below says you can buy the small 10ml bottle of this separately at the store;  I misunderstood that it came with the big bottle.)  Splash Forte is sort of the world’s best cinnamon mouthwash in a scent, but if you’ve got Lutens’ Rousse I’m not sure you need it.  Also, I wish they didn’t sell the IUNXen in those ginormous 200 ml(?) bottles.  Since my nose wasn’t fatigued and the shop is clean and spare and not overwhelmed with other scents, I could appreciate the laundry/steam-iron-esque (sound familiar?) L’Eau Blanche (linen, white iris, teak wood), which I found more appealing than the new Serge Eau, and L´Eau Sento, (“a tree stands near peaceful waters in Japan.  Its moisure-filled blond wood is smooth and warm.  Close your eyes and feel the heat of wood-infused steam…” seriously, that’s all I can find), Denyse described it in an email to me as “green and incense-y, like a luxury spa,” and I think that’s an excellent description.  She said she’d like her apartment to smell like that, and I have to agree.  They also sell the Hotel Costes scents in there, the original and the new Costes 2.  Costes the first is too rose-y for me, lovely though it is (it’s also done by Giacobetti, notes are lavender, bay-tree, coriander, white pepper, rose, incense, woods and light musk.)   Costes 2 is benzoin, Ceylon cinnamon essence, Turkish rose, Tunisian orange blossom and gaiac wood … come on, you know you want it.  Look at those notes. You want it, don’t you?  I waffled for awhile about this one while still in Paris; did I need it?  (Although you can get it here at Lucky.)   It’s another wallpaper scent, a skin scent of the most excellent, whisper-of-spice, breath-of-wood sort that makes all us OG fangirls squee.  But here’s the thing: after the spiciness at the top has settled and we’re well into the drydown, I swear on my skin it smells kind of like Barbara Bui. Which is not a criticism, I mean, I love love love Barbara Bui, but I haven’t decided whether this is sufficiently different.  Possibly.  I think I need a decant for further consideration.

I’ll wrap this up by talking for a minute about the new, much-anticipated L’Artisan Nuit de Tubéreuse done by Bertrand Duchaufour.   Angie, Louise and I were lucky enough to be able to try it in Paris, thanks to Denyse.  It’s in production now, and apparently they were passing around testers at Sniffa in NYC a couple of weeks ago, so I know some of you have already had a chance to try it.   I still have the Paris scent strip (on which I wrote “secret”) sitting here.   Historically, I’ve had more admiration for Duchaufour’s scents than a desire to wear them – I find signature BD compositions like Timbuktu and Eau d’Italie Sienne l’Hiver murky and sour, like old vase water, and (for me) mostly unwearable.  All I can offer on that front is a shoulder shrug – we like what we like, you know?

IMPORTANT UPDATE #2: commenter below says it’s at Barneys NYC, which surprises me, as my Secret Perfume Insider Decoder Ring insists that it’s in production and I should “try again later…” oh, wait, that’s my magic 8-Ball.  I’ll try calling Barneys this morning or wait for Carter to report back! There is A TESTER at Barneys (and other places, for all I know … didn’t you all smell it at Bendel for Sniffa?)  But Barneys will not have the actual BOTTLES in for “several weeks.”  Price will be $95 for a 1.7 and $135 for a 3.4  This info courtesy of Atique (“ahTEEK”)  at Barneys, and wth here’s his direct line since he was nice and helpful: 212-833-2002.

So, that’s all great, March; how is that Nuit de Tubéreuse already?  Well, I can’t add anything to the review Denyse did; what else is there to say?  Except this.  I took a deep whiff of Tubereuse, first on the scent strip and then (after shameless begging) on my skin, and then I said something really elegant and March-esque.  Something along the lines of: damn, they are going to sell the sh!t out of this thing.

Because it’s just that awesome.  It’s commercial in the best possible way — interesting but totally wearable – and if you like tuberose, I can’t imagine your hand wouldn’t drift down to your credit card as if you were in a trance as soon as you sniff it.  It doesn’t go the Fracas route (powdery Sex Bomb) or the chilly intellectual route (Serge TC or my beloved Carnal Flower.)    Cribbing from Denyse again – she uses the words rooty and resinous, and there’s something … there’s something in BD’s tuberose, spicy and wet and green and milky and poisonous all at the same time, that made me feel like I was in the presence of something dangerous, which tuberose is and should be, and that it was so stunningly beautiful and not weird, so it has to sell despite its white-flower handicap.   After all, my understanding is that the white-flower-bomb La Chasse is one of the biggest L’Artisan sellers in the US, if not the biggest, and that thing’s a sillage monster.  If Kim Kardashian can do a big ol’ white flower bouquet as her recent signature, God love her, then maybe white flower sillage monsters are the new pink pepper.  A girl can dream.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to the rollout of this one in the summer, I think.

Notes for Nuit de Tubéreuse, consolidated by me from their website: cardamom, clove absolute, pink pepper, citrus fruits, white flowers (tuberose, orange blossom and ylang-ylang) rose essential oil and absolute, mango, tuberose root, angelica, gorse, sandalwood, palisander, musks, benzoin, styrax.

PS The imaging feature on here continues to be broken, and will likely stay that way until we nag Patty to move us to another host.  In the meantime,  I did finally upload a few pics to FaceBook, for those interested.  Photos of food, of course!  And the passage d’Enfer, and some other things.

March

It’s my turn, but my tennis elbow is such that typing is very painful. I did ask one of my servants to do it for me, but they’re busy with all the other labours I’ve ascribed them – full body waxing, shiatsu massage, cold compress preparation, pedicure etc. And they know nothing, NOTHING I tell you, about perfume, the schlubs. So I’m left to type these words.

Sorry for the typing fail, injury win.

I’m wearing – l’homme de coeur by Divine – the perfect transition scent. How about you?

Lee

Tilda Swinton and the people who brought you sperm perfume – together at long last. Exactly. Tilda Swinton is everying I’d like to be – (insert picture of odd-looking woman who is strangely hot and approachable in her weirdness if our picture-uploading capabilities were working – crap, need to contact new hosting company).

When the news came out that Tilda Swinton was doing a fragrance for Etat Libre d’Orange, maker of Secretions Magnifique, which seemed to somehow combine the worst of semen and blood smell  -  only perfume to date that made me want to heave, and that includes the completely pissoir-smelling Humanity from Mugler Coffret – I jumped for joy. Everything could go wrong here, which would be a crashing mash-up that I wanted a front-seat for, or it may weirdly come together in something kind of or very oddly cool.

Notes of yellow mandarin, ginger, pumpkin, immortelle, neroli, rose, vetiver, heliotrope and musk. Okay, it starts off a little citrus-ish, the ginger and heliotrope waves some flags to let you know it’s not gonna be like that. There’s a little bit of a tinnish feel in the open. And then the nutty pancake syrupy immortelle buzzes – not loud, soft and wafty, like a smoky tendril. The tin is gone, and it starts warming up in some fabulous ways that make my toes curl. I’m not sure I get pumpkin exactly, but there is this pulpy-ness blended into the immortelle that feels like pumpkin with some spice. Pumpkin pie, almonds and pancake syrup without the calories or sweetness. But it’s not really foody. Gourmand quality to it, but just not that. It’s warmer, richer, but completely light and wispy.  I would sooner believe my one-week “shopping cure” will last for a couple of months than to believe a perfume with this list of notes would be light and floaty.  But it is.  Warm, rich, light, floaty and a great big soft hug.

Yeah, it’s like this. Very weirdly wonderful. I can probably squeeze two samples out of the spray I have that I’ll share for two commenters.  So drop a comment and talk about whatever you want – your reaction to Secretions Magnifique or the whole Etat line or what’s the worst perfume you ever smelled or just talk about nothing at all.   Like this.

Patty