Bah, power outage!  I had most of this post written, and then the power went out, and I lost it.

Many of you who have read here for a while know that there is a note or two that my nose won’t read, it just translates to me as alcohol.  I believe it’s a musk note. It doesn’t read as nothing, which most people get when musk is a complete miss, but instead I just smell the alcohol in the perfume instead.  It’s weird, irritating, and I always know when I smell that that I can’t really tell what the perfume smells like.

Le Labo Rose 31 was one of those that smelled of mostly alcohol.  When I first put it on, I got some of the notes – Rose 31 has notes of Grasse rose, cumin, pepper, clove, nutmeg, olibanum, cedar, amber, gaà¯ac wood, oudh wood, cistus, vetiver and animalic notes – and just about the time I was thinking, oh, yes, this is amazing, woods, earth, spice, resin.  Then plop, alcohol got sprayed all over my nose and just took over everything.

Because of all the rave reviews for this scent, I’ve kept trying every few months on it, hoping – foolishly, I realize – that something will change and I’ll smell it properly and can fall in love with it like the rest of the world.

No.

Some time back I had heard The Laundress put Le Labo Rose 31 in her laundry soap, and it occurred to me that that might work for me to smell it.  Then I saw the price tag of $45 for 16 ounces and quickly closed out that idea.  $45 for laundry detergent?

Now, sometimes my life meanders along and a once discarded as too expensive idea somehow works its way back into my frontal lobe, and as I was browsing through Luckyscent getting something else I just clicked on that overpriced detergent and went on through checkout trying not to think about it too much.

When you get an overpriced detergent, what is the first thing you should use it on?  Sheets of course.  So one load of sheets later, I pulled these out of the dryer to see what Le Labo Rose 31 smelled like. Not alcohol, yes!  Just resin, spice, woods,  a slight rose, a little animalic and musky. It is gorgeous, and I have the sexiest smelling sheets in Denver.  My sister was visiting me this weekend and experienced the freshly laundered sheets, and we both just buried our noses in it for like 30 minutes with happy little sighs.  The sheets have been on my bed for like two days now, and they still smell wonderful.

Worth $45?  I don’t know.  Nobody can answer that question for someone else. As a luxury that doesn’t cost a ton, and if I just use it for lingerie, delicates and sheets, it should last me a long time, I’ll absolutely buy it again. I love that smell in my sheets. It’s just smutty enough to make me feel feminine, but beautiful enough so I don’t feel like a total slut while I’m sleeping.

Which leads me to ask, what smell do you want in your sheets?  Pick a perfume you’d put in a laundry detergent.  And do you think $45 for this is a ridiculous indulgence or one that can be justified as a small luxury?

Patty

Somewhere after the last stage of perfume obsession I talked about recently – resignation?  ennui? – comes another stage, apparently.  And the new stage is a funny one, because it seems to be: perfumes that smell beautiful.

Smelling beautiful (or attractive, or, at minimum, non-repellant) might seem to be kind of self-obvious when selecting perfume, but as perfumistas know, it isn’t.  I don’t think my multi-year Journey Through The Land Of Strange, Accessed via The Rabbit-Hole, was all that unusual a choice.  Smelling like a crypt, a mushroom, mimeograph ink?  Bring it on.  A dandelion, a mixed drink, a day at the beach – why not?  Wet dirt, spunk, funk, or man-junk?  I’ll try it.

But what happens after?  Part of what happens is that beauty, as opposed to strangeness, feels subversive.  Of course, beauty is subjective.  Your Mugler Angel is my own personal hell (although you might feel the same way about my Passage d’Enfer.)

I’ve been going to church again on Sunday mornings, for complicated reasons that have … not all that much to do with religion.  God hasn’t struck me down yet.  I like the pageantry.   I like doing outlandish flower arrangements for the altar of our staid Episcopal Church of the Dry Martini, and then seeing whether they’ve been re-arranged by the time I see them on Sunday morning.   I like the hymns.  I like the excuse to carry a cute purse.

But I digress.  This morning was a tasteful, careful application of Bois des Iles, the new one.  It does not get a ton of love – it’s not the old one, the one with the genuine, perfect sandalwood.  Thing is, the current version is so gorgeous I just don’t care.  I bought a 30ml decant recently and I’m thrilled with it.  The raspy sandalwood part (also known as “yucky,” according to 7-year-old Buckethead, not a fan) lasts three perfect hours on me, followed by a sweet, woody drydown that lasts another eighteen hours, during which I find myself lifting my wrist to my nose over and over and over, because I can’t quite believe that I can buy a product that smells that beautiful.

This morning, my cautious, meditative application of BdI was completely overwhelmed by the woman two pews in front of me, who was wearing a heavy drenching of what I am pretty sure was J’Adore.  To paraphrase Tom in his comment in a recent review, she spritzed her ample poitrine until her socks were wet.  She smelled so powerfully of industrial-grade public-restroom air-freshener that nobody sat within six feet of her in any direction.  J’Adore’s nice in reasonable doses; I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking.   Can she not smell it?  Does she love it that much?  Does she put all her fragrance on like that?  I shrugged.  I was curious, but who am I to judge?

Beauty can be angular and strange.  Beauty can be novel.  But for me, right now, beauty is a game I play in my head.  If someone asked me, skeptically, but why do you wear perfume at all? And I wanted to make it clear instantly, to reveal the most undeniably beautiful scents I own, which scents would those be?   The ones that would make my imaginary critic stop, and sniff, and say, oh.  Well…. of course.  I beg your pardon.  Now I understand.

It’s a short list.  It’s a cluster.  It’s a Venn diagram.  It’s also a post I keep fiddling with and never manage to write correctly.  It starts with Chanel 31 Rue Cambon (whose only flaw is unavailability in a stronger concentration) and fans out from there.   There’s a piece of paper connected to that unfinished post, and on it are Patricia de Nicolai’s Odalisque and Maharanih; MDCI Promesse de l’Aube and Enlevement au Serail.  Guerlain Chamade gets added to the list and crossed off again.  Somewhere in there is a masterful essay on jasmine and orange blossom, on indoles and chypre, on florals and vanilla, but apparently I’m incapable of writing it.  Instead I wear these scents, over and over, on rainy days and (even, especially) on recent sultry days, and (even, heretically) most/all at the same time, a spray apiece on various parts of my body, if I don’t have to be worrying about killing anyone around me with the sillage.

We have our go-to scents, but my go-to scents (e.g., Mitsouko) are different.  I seem to be on some beauty bender, as surprising to me as Nava’s fruit-salad fragrance jag is to her.  Is it the change of seasons?   A desire for comfort in uncomfortable times?   I wonder.

image: Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, John Singer Sargent, National Gallery of Scotland

March

I know it´s only the beginning of June, but you´re all going to have to indulge me for a bit. My aunt´s air conditioning has been busted for the past week, and I´ve been schvitzing like a pudding at a picnic. Not that I wish I was buried under 5 feet of snow right now, but I miss the air conditioning! And yes, it does get hot here in Canada, contrary to popular belief; unless you want to live in Nunavut where you can enjoy the arctic climate, pretty much year round.  Thankfully the new AC unit is being installed tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I´ve been craving not only citrus, but fruit. I think I am desperately in need of a fragrance shrink, because my scent schizophrenia seems to be out of control lately. Last week, I posted on my Facebook page that I woke up wanting to smell like a fruit salad.

Well, I did indulge in a bit of a drive-by “fruiting” at Bath and Body Works.  I went in, just to appease this ridiculous craving of mine, and damned if I didn´t walk out with a “Buy Three Get Two Free” bag o´ goodies. I have to say, what I bought really hit the spot, and it didn´t cost me the proverbial arm and a leg. Their new White Citrus scent has the perfect bit of sharp, tangy ginger and it doesn´t pull the disappearing act most citrus scents tend to.  And, I finally bought that bottle of Sweet Pea Forever, the one with the cute little peace sign on it. If you want fruit salad, that one is fruit salad in a bottle.  Check out their new Exfoliating Shower Gels; three tubes completed the BOGO deal, and they´re pretty awesome if you´re into body wash/scrub/shower gel.

The real surprise discovery for me is Burberry Sport For Women. Like Kevin over at NST (he reviewed Burberry Sport For Men on Wednesday), I´m well aware that “sport” fragrances are generally scoffed at.  I was turned off of sport scents rather early on, traumatized as a teenager by à” de Lancà´me Pour Le Sport. Now, I see they´ve dropped the “Pour Le Sport” from the name, but I am reluctant to go near it again. I doubt it smells anything like I remember, but honestly, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Burberry Sport for Women´s notes include mandarin, sea salt, vetiver, freesia, honeysuckle and something called “Solar Sand Notes”. What it boils down to is a tangy, slightly floral citrus, with the clean saltiness I love in certain summer scents. Two of my hot weather faves are Bond No. 9 Hamptons, and Antonia´s Flowers Sogni del Mare.  I wouldn´t go out of my way to purchase a bottle of Burberry Sport for Women, but at least I know the whole “sport” category of fragrance seems to be undergoing a bit of a makeover.  The bottle is in keeping with the casual sporty vibe this fragrance attempts to convey, and it is rather charming. I like the contrast of the red glass with the white rubberized material, and the rectangular shape. The women´s version also comes with a red rubberized bracelet around the cellophane wrapping; just what we need – another LiveStrong rip-off. But, all in all, it is wearable and gets all nice and salty on my schvitzy skin. Once I´m back hanging in the meat locker, (as much of a meat locker as my aunt will allow) I´ll have to go back and try it again.

So, who here likes salt? Do you like a salty rim around your margarita, salt and vinegar chips, or a salty fragrance on your skin? Speak up please…

Disclosure: White Citrus and Sweet Pea Forever are part of my personal collection. Burberry Sport for Women was sampled at The Bay.

Hey, we can just never have too much chatter about a new L’Artisan from Bertrand Duchafour.  I know March has talked about it twice, the most recently yesterday.  I could just shut up about it and say LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVEIT and have done with it, but I feel the need to talk about it just a little just to make sure we have ratcheted up the overkill on this new release.

Before going further, the winners from Tuesday’s drawing for samples of this are:  morpyk, tally, gator grad and eric..  Just click on the contact us over on the left, remind me that it’s a NdT sampler you’ve won, and give me your address, and I’ll get it mailed out!

Notes for NUIT de TUBEREUSE: tuberose, cardamom, pepper, clove, citrus, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, rose, mango, angelica, gorse, sandalwood, palisander, musks, benzoin and styrax.

As March said, if you are expecting a big old tuberose room-clearer, you’ll need to go hug your Fracas and Carnal Flower and Tubereuse Criminelle.

I don’t get that weird note on the open of NdT, it shows up later just to creep me out when I’m settling into thinking this scent is just one thing. It’s green, rooty tuberose, and then promptly splays right into a really warm, nutty incense’ish thing, which sounds completely different than what March and Robin and others are smelling. I keep sniffing around it, trying to find the vegetal, the weird, the bitter, the whatever, and I just get comfort and cuddly with some wafting tuberose as the cherry on top.  Angelica is probably the note I get the strongest besides the incense and tuberose, and I’m chalking that nutty sense to that, even though I normally don’t read angelica as nutty.  Clover and cardamom nutty?  I don’t know.

What fascinates me about this scent is that on me it is warm and comforting, but not in a way that leaves me comforted.  It’s a disturbing comfort.  Like that moment when you are doing crow or a handstand in yoga, and it’s not something you feel confident about in the least, but you hit that one sweet moment when you know you’ve lined it up and that’s what it should feel like.  Then you realize you are probably going to bang your nose on the floor or your arm might give out, but it’s almost weightless and without effort for a second and you may even look good doing it, but deeply disturbing in feeling right.

Patty

I had a different post contemplated for today, but since Patty announced a drawing yesterday for samples of the new, hotly-anticipated L’Artisan Nuit de Tubereuse, I thought I’d revisit it.  As you may remember, I got to try a dab from a private pre-release sample – a couple of drops on the skin – in Paris in April.  We all liked it, and (paraphrasing here) Louise said and I agreed that it smelled like something that would be commercially successful.

On Sunday, I got to try two (okay, three) generous squirts on the skin from an actual NdT bottle from an Unnamed Source.  I was so excited about the juice that I didn’t look carefully, but I think the bottle was etched.  Duh.  LMGTFY.  Here’s an image.  The bottle’s etched, it’s pretty in person (although I still like the old-style caps better, grrrr).  There wasn’t a ton of juice left but I think it’s a pale, clear pink — it looked pinker to me in person than what I’m seeing on my screen.

Based on the comments for the drawing yesterday, and since most people haven’t tried it yet – let me do a little refinement/management of expectations regarding this scent.  First off, for all the people wondering if it will equal their first love, Carnal Flower, or (INSERT FRACAS, BEYOND LOVE, OR ANY OTHER GIANT, PAINT-PEELING, NOSE-SEARING, SKIN-BLISTERING GODZILLA TUBEROSE HERE) – uh, no.  Nuit de Tubereuse is a completely different animal.  So if you’re going to love it, in my opinion, you’re going to need to be looking for something different.

It’s not a giant tuberose.  It doesn’t smell essentially/obviously tuberose – or even tuberdenia, since the two, tuberose and gardenia, are often faked up together in a fragrance, whatever they’re calling it.   It’s … well, it’s quirky.  To my nose, it bears not much relation to L’Artisan’s earlier/original tuberose fragrance, and much more of a resemblance to another recent Duchaufour creation, Penhaligon’s Amaranthine, which I think (if you’ve tried that) might give you some idea how you’re going to feel about the L’Artisan.

Notes for AMARANTHINE: green tea, freesia, banana leaf, coriander, cardamom, rose, carnation, clove, orange blossom, ylang ylang, Egyptian jasmine, musk, vanilla, sandalwood, condensed milk, tonka bean.

Notes for NUIT de TUBEREUSE: tuberose, cardamom, pepper, clove, citrus, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, rose, mango, angelica, gorse, sandalwood, palisander, musks, benzoin and styrax.

Thus far I haven’t managed to get Amaranthine and NdT on my skin simultaneously, but you can see they share some notes and, while they both have floral aspects, I wouldn’t characterize either as being particularly “about” a flower.  They’re florientals.  Nuit de Tubereuse is less weird than Amaranthigh, but it’s got a top note I didn’t catch the first time around and that a couple folks have already complained they find terribly bitter, while others have found it very sweet.   I didn’t get the sweetness of Juicy Fruit gum at the opening that Robin did – to me it is green and hazy, the rooty, slightly pissy/sulfurous smell of unripe mango, and while it’s not as aggressively peculiar as the green/metallic front end of Amaranthine, it’s still odd, somewhat like picking up a mango and sniffing it for the first time ever.  The mind grasps at the smell, trying to categorize it as pleasant or unpleasant – and it’s both.  If you acquire a taste for mango, and ripe mango contains an additional, slightly garbage-y overripe smell, the whole thing becomes delicious in the mind.  (Is there anything on the planet better than the perfect plate of mango and sticky rice?  No.)  But it’s not necessarily love at first sniff.

The two scents diverge further in style as they go along.  Amaranthine is the sweaty, dirty one – the cumin-y one, which I love, and many of you hate, and there’s none of that sweatiness (at least on me) in NdT.   Amaranthine becomes decidedly cuddly later on in the relationship – it’s milky and soft spices, without ever becoming edible in construct.   In contrast, Nuit de Tubereuse is one-half tuberose, one-half all that stuff in the base – woody and green and resiny.  Again, the amplitude you often expect from Giant Tuberose (hellooooo, Kilian Beyond Love!) just isn’t there – half the scent is base.

I’m now going to bloglift directly from Robin’s Now Smell This review: “The base is that particular blend of earthy and resinous notes that any fan of Bertrand Duchaufour will recognize as his signature, and that really ought to have a name by now. Duchaufourade, I suppose, is a little unwieldy? At any rate, it smells like dirt and soft wood and incense and hot skin, and I find it very sexy.”  I stole that because I wanted to comment on it.  While I totally get where Robin is going with this, and her description of the base is spot on, I have to disagree with the Duchaufourade part only because I dislike most of his famous, signature scents, including those for L’Artisan.  That earthy Duchaufour base he’s known for smells horrible to/on me, like musty old vase water.  I’m no aromachemist.  Whatever he’s doing now, and both Amaranthine and Nuit de Tubereuse are definitely earthy, smells fabulous on my skin, if I do say so myself.   Point being: if you’ve avoided his scents like the plague because of that Duchaufourade, you might like these.  But if you love Duchaufour for his signature base, I wonder, are these are going to seem different to you?

Nuit de Tubereuse has decent lasting power, not extraordinary – remember, I’m the scent-clinger.  The sillage is lovely, to use a word I overuse regularly – but dammit, it is.  NdT is a wafter.  It wafted up beautifully from my arm all afternoon and evening, quietly slipping away before I awoke the next morning.

I have been enjoying reading the early reviews and comments, because folks are all over the place on Nuit de Tubereuse.  Here’s a sample from commenter ScentRed on the Posse a couple days ago:  It was not at all what I expected. I was thinking big honking tuberose layered with tuberose and a bit more tuberose. It was much more complex than that, with many players doing their part to create an intriguing overall effect. It´s unusual, but not crazy weird. And yet it is somehow simple and subtle at the same time. I do remember someone describing it as “approachable” or “amiable”, and I think that´s true – but not in a boring way.  I also was surprised at how green it was on me, despite the presence of the florals…

Robin called it “stunning” yet admitted she’d put off her review because she still hadn’t decided whether she liked it.  It’s a funny place to be in as a reviewer, to be confronted with something that seems to have all the right moving parts – that appears to be everything it could or should be, in a genre you typically like – and yet it leaves you kind of cold.   I’ll be interested if her feelings change.

This thing, though?  It does something for me.  It’s a tuberose that even folks who don’t especially care for tuberose might love, because it’s more muted.  So I’ll finish playing my game, just because.  If I were backed into a corner and forced, on pain of … something or other, to choose between Amaranthine or Nuit de Tubereuse (let’s make this easier and say they’re offering me a free bottle, which BTW they AREN’T), I’d take Amaranthine.  I’m fascinated by its journey of weird skankiness to post-coital spooning and then a browse of the Sunday Times.  But I don’t have anything like NdT either (for the record, my personal Holy Grail tuberose is Carnal Flower), and so, of course, I want both.

PS For anyone who missed my link last time, Grain de Musc has reviews of Amaranthine, NdT, and interviews with Duchaufour himself.

March