Sorry this is late – I’m still getting the hang of things.

<sigh>  Lord, I love a fruit.  I do.    I have run through nearly every lemon, lemon/lime concoction out there  and  I was Jo´s  Grapefruit gal back when you could only get it in London and her husband would take orders over the phone. The whole reason I´m even on the Posse is a tortuous journey. a quest for my high school love, Bigarade by Nina Ricci ( I got it and, uh….well, okay – what was all that about?).  So I know my fruit.  And fruit is funny.  Lemon can so quickly turn to furniture polish and while I usually  luck out on that drama I can still get smacked in the head by too much sugar or the Evil Musk Drydown indigenous to so many Lemons.  Grapefruit can be beautiful (helloo, Pamplemousse Rose, you weasel) or scorch your nose hairs (sorry, Jo).

However nothing incites as much polarity in my fruit-lovin´ self as orange (my love for Agraria Bitter Orange is legendary).   But bitter orange can go so razory it makes your teeth hurt, like my one night stand, Bigarade Concentree.  I swear I loved you,BC.  I did.  But you sunk your fangs in the  pith and green rind and it was a  Sad, Sad Day in Orangeville.

So I was excited when I literally stumbled (as in, I tripped and sent the bottles flying) across the Atelier Cologne Orange Sanguine at Neiman Marcus.  Notes from the N-M site:

Cologne Absolue concentrated at 15%.
Top notes: blood orange, bitter orange
Heart notes: jasmine, geranium from South Africa
Base notes: amber woods, tonka beans, sandalwood

Well, alrighty then.  If there´s jasmine or tonka bean in there it has been stuffed in the back of Orange´s gym locker.  Orange isn´t goofing around here, trust me.  And she´s gonna be on the playground for awhile.   You would think orange´ + cologne´ would mean gone in 20 seconds.  Uh, no.  I was  surprised to find this bad girl with her claws still in nearly 3 hours after application.  Very exciting!

Too bad I can´t stand the stuff.

Turns out that for all my fruit lovin´, it seems  I love the idea´ of fruit better, at least with orange.  Most of the orange scents I adore whisper in the ear of an orange, while veiling themselves in other, complimentary, notes.  Orange Sanguine is like you just spilled orange juice all over the kitchen (and in your shoooes!), the ants are coming out of the woodwork, you´re late for a meeting (so you’re stuck with – and in- the shoes).  It´s sticky-schweeeet.  And very orange.    I´m thinking it might take the pith out of that Bigarade, if it doesn´t kill it outright. My money’s on the new girl.

So the Orange Sanguine was a sticky mess.  This did not bode well for the new Marc Jacobs splashes with all the fruit and cookies and everything.  I´ve never been a huge Marc Jacobs fan, beyond his handbags but he did an excellent Lemon and hey!  I was right there so…what the heck.  Nerves shot from the orange juice and the ants  I squinted at this year’s splashes from the corner of my eye  – he has Apple, Pomegranate and Biscotti (apparently the Biscotti is a reissue). Well, I don’t want to smell like a cookie so I passed Biscotti by and, liver aquiver, gingerly approached  the Apple.  “Oh, crap.  Apple?  This is gonna smell like a county fair, I just know it”

Waitaminit! This is what I´m talkin´ about! This is not about smelling like an apple.   This smells nothing like an apple.  It smells like the ideal of an apple – a crisp, juicy, tart Granny Smith, all freshness and springlike and full of zesty life.   I was stunned at how much I liked it.  According to Nordstrom´s site this year´s offerings are supposedly ” inspired by the decadent indulgences of a patisserie” .  Well, maybe if the patisserie just put a dewy, chilled bowl of Granny Smiths on a sidewalk table.  And that sounds just fine by me.   I don´t know how it will play in intense heat but it´s a perfect  late-May Saturday morning scent, maybe with that first sleeveless dress of the season?

Sources:  Atelier Cologne – Neiman-Marcus (all over the) counter ; Marc Jacobs Apple Splash – Nordstrom counter

(update:  Bigarade Concentree + Orange Sanguine = YUM! perhaps, like its juicy namesake, it’s the perfect mixer)

Sometimes life just hands you out these wonderful surprises when you least expect it.  Something lost that you gave up on and then reappears. Is it too much to hope that my lost Chanel earring would emerge from the  mists of lost jewelry?  Ah, perhaps, but I remain optimistic that one day, as I’m pulling things from the washer or vacuuming the carpet, it will appear.

I am one of those stubbornly optmistic people. Even when life is crashing down around me and raining tears, broken puppies and poisonous snakes, I am confident that it will get better from where I am that moment and also from where I was happiest.  I blame my dad. Not that my mom is any slouch in the optmism department, but he was amazingly undeterred from anything life threw at him.  Hail ruined the wheat crop that year?  Well, it comes, it goes, we’ll make it back on corn.  You know, all of my brothers and sister have that same ridiculous ignorance that things might not improve.  It is the one part of my familial inheritance that I feel grateful for every day.

Some perfumes do a great job of capturing the joy and optmism of life, but the one today that’s really blown my skirt up is Annick Goutal’s Ninfeo Mio.  Some Goutals work for me, some are too heavy or contrived. I like them in theory, but never wear them.  Ninfeo Mio has notes of Italian lemon, citron, petitgrain, bitter orange, galbanum, lentisque, conifers, lavender, fig leaf, and lemon tree and was ceated by Isabelle Doyen.  March reviewed it back in January, and I don’t think I can improve on her review at all, except to say ditto.

It does burst out of the bottle, with its  nose all wrinkled up, tartish, sassy pepper tossing its head, and then it doesn’t work its way down, but leaps off its joyful little cliff into a lovely, soft, comforting fig tree, with the milk of human kindness just oozing from its little molecules.  It’s light,  joyful, comforting, but with sharp points that let you know you’re alive, the sharper things that make you appreciate all the softness that is there.

It’s incredibly lovely, and perfection for spring and summer, though it will wear well any time of year.  Okay, that’s two full bottles in a week I’ve needed.  My sample came from Luckyscent.

Do you wear perfumes to improve your  mood or match your mood?  I tend to wear them to match my mood – joyous, playful, sensuous, slutty.  I can almost never pull off putting on the perfume that I want to feel like, there’s always a disconnect.

Patty

Evil Auntie Musette started this, and I´m continuing it.

This is not about weight, size, or how many times I haven´t been to the gym in the past couple of years. Light is a metaphor for a sense of being. Night owl that I am, I love it when the days get longer, especially here, north of the 49^th, where you can count on light until almost 10 pm on the longest days.  Dark is dreary, but not dreary enough to make me S.A.D. For now, it´s all about “light” and the fragrances I think represent light, in the following scenarios:

When you feel like a caged animal that´s been poked at with a stick relentlessly, and for a prolonged period of time:

Bond No. 9 Scent of Peace

When you´re happy and you want the world to know it, without smelling like a bunch of hideously dyed mums, daisies, roses, or an obnoxiously large arrangement filled with suffocating stargazer lilies:

Kenzo Amour Florale

Tom Ford Private Blend Neroli Portofino

Guerlain Iris Ganache

Bond No. 9 Andy Warhol Union Square

You find yourself in need of a good whiff of salt air to clear your head when you´re feeling landlocked, both literally and metaphorically (sorry, Lake Ontario is a lousy substitute for biting, salty ocean air):

Antonia´s Flowers Sogni del Mare

The Different Company Sel de Vetiver

When you want that same vast, salty quality, but with an underlying hint of mustiness, for when you´re sitting by a pool reading a book, as opposed to on a blanket at the beach:

Bond No. 9 Hamptons

Something that will transport you back to innocent childhood, when all you cared about was the last day of school and being outside playing with your friends:

MAC Naked Honey

Marc Jacobs Daisy

Bath and Body Works Orange Sapphire

…and please don´t hate me for this one: Sarah Jessica Parker´s SJP NYC, only because it reminds me of a giant Bonne Bell Strawberry Lip Smacker.

A scent that will act as a harbinger of winter, but still provide enough light to keep you from fading into darkness:

Giorgio Armani Onde Mystà¨re

Finally, a couple of scents that surprise you, just when you were ready to draw the curtains, hide under the covers and  write off anything new as unadulterated dreck:

Balenciaga Paris

Givenchy Ange au Démon Le Secret

OK, my fine fragranced friends, it´s your turn: tell me which scents bring light to your life.

Disclosure: All fragrances, with the exception of SJP NYC, B&BW Orange Sapphire and Givenchy  Ange au Démon Le Secret are part of my personal collection. The exceptions were tested in store.

It is officially official; I spend way too much time on the Internets.

I started off the year thinking that my introspective meanderings would shed some light on my mercurial fragrance collection, but no such luck. If anything, I find myself even more confused than I normally am about why I gravitate towards certain fragrances. It all seems to tie in with what I spend most of my time doing: surfing the Internet and writing about subjects that are relevant to most people, such as real estate, carpet cleaning, left handed golf clubs, behavioural assessment testing, wheelchairs and commodes… OK, I know I´m about to lose some of you, so I´ll stop. I´m literally overloaded with information and my head is on the verge of exploding. By the way, I´m not using the Queen´s English as a pose. My Microsoft Word program is Canadian!

I´m desperately in need of a spell in one of those 19th century sanatoriums; you know, the ones people went to with the hope they would not succumb to tuberculosis, or where women went to recuperate from wearing too-tight corsets. Place me in the too-tight corset category, please, since I am not suffering from any pulmonary ailments right now. I am guilty of “overthinking”; and I believe I have “overthought” myself into oblivion.

I love writing about fragrance; I always have and I always will. Fragrance has always had a place in my life as far back as I can remember. Lately, I find myself wishing I could think less, and just enjoy the things I love to smell. I don´t want to have to justify what I love and what I can´t stand. We´ve all been down that path millions of times. We´ve poked fun at celebrities, respected design houses and individual designers, niche brands, drug store brands, department store brands, natural, organic, synthetic, et. al. Is it time to literally stop and smell the roses?

As an almost non-existent winter (with apologies to everyone on the east coast of the US) draws to a close, my senses are shifting into warm weather mode, and I don´t think I´ll be dipping into any of my cold weather comfort scents for a while. Mind you, an April blizzard isn´t totally out of the realm of possibility, but even so, something inside me just clicked, and I am no longer craving incense, woods, and all the heavy stuff I normally do. I want to see light, feel light, and wear light. If I´m not careful, I might just spontaneously combust.

So, here´s the deal: I´ll be back on Monday, pinch-hitting for March while she flits about in Paris. I´m working on a list of what I feel are “light” scents, not necessarily because they are meant to be worn in warm weather, but because they make me feel “light”. It´s going to be similar to what Musette did last week, but I´m just going to stick to this one category for now. Please take the weekend to think about your own choices, because you know I´m going to ask what your “light” favourites are.

Happy Easter to all, and a belated Chag Sameach to all my friends celebrating Passover.

Lily Has Chosen: Lily took time out of her oh-so-busy schedule to pick the following commentators as winners of the Lise Watier Folies Nieges samples. They are: CynthiaW, T-Rex, MarieKel, K.R., Shelley and K.Scott. Please click Contact Us up top, leave all the pertinent details, and your sample will be sent PDQ.

Just don’t work out like you want.  Yesterday was a long day, and somehow, when I found myself curled up in my bed last night, it didn’t occur to me it was Wednesday and y’all might like a new post today.  Sorry about that!

Winners of the Byredo La Tulipe samples are — Mary, Style Spy and Karen G.

Winners of the Hermes Voyage d’Hermes samples are — Hemlock Sillage, Tiara, Suzy Q, and Francesca.

If you’re a winner, click on the Contact Us Button on the left, remind me what you won (this is really important when we have two drawings!) and send me your address, and I’ll get this out to you!

From Evil Auntie Musette:

Since Patty’s biiiizy, if y’all want to play Scent of the Day, I’m game!

Mine is Jicky.  Dunno why.  I’m feeling kinda scary today – Jicky is one of my ‘arrrgh’ scents.  However, I might change to Diorissimo a bit later  – it’s 70F here!

Patty