The country cousins are in town and we are off Wednesday, I got us all tickets to the Lego monuments exhibition at the National Building Museum (which is a cool place to visit in its own right.)    I can’t wait to see the Lego St. Louis Arch and the rest of it!

I am wearing a special scent right now, it’s called … here, let me look at the label … Icy Hot.  That would sound so much more chic in French.  What would that be?   Chaud glacé? Is that correct?   I actually love the smell of Icy Hot, although it pretty much eliminates the perfume option.  Don’t worry, just some minor soreness in one shoulder, the body’s still adjusting to the yoga.  Oh!  I went to class (for a change) at lunchtime today instead of the morning class.  The studio’s located right over a Chinese restaurant and my mouth was watering the whole time.  I restrained myself and did not run downstairs and order; I came home and had tomatoes from a friend’s garden along with some cheese and was just as happy.

In comments today – if you’ve been waiting for weeks or months for me to get back to you regarding an unanswered question, or an issue I said I was going to address, or there’s one you want to raise – here’s your chance! Regarding the site errors – the reason some of these things still aren’t fixed is I can’t find a person who’s a genius at WordPress to fix them.  I don’t know why the emoticons don’t work in your comments any more, and the nice guy who moved our site and set it back up can’t modify the template so that, for instance, our names appear at the top of each post.  This is supposed to be an automatic feature, but it doesn’t work when we add the plugin widget or whatever it’s called.  Shrug.  I know as much about open source coding as I do about Urdu and astrophysics, so until we find that Special Someone, it’s going to stay broken.  I miss your deployment of the emoticons!

March

King Tut exhibit is in Denver, has been for a month or two, and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz did a series of perfumes, based on scents that would have been around in that time period for the modern Egyptian man and woman to paste on.

If you’re thinking these would be heavy on incense and other “burial-type” oils, you’d be right!  I’ve been playing around with the Megaleion, Keni, Antiu, all heavy incense-type fragrances, dancing to  that Steve Martin Egyptian song – was that him? -  and they are really fun to wear to to think that perfumery has been around for so long, and we all still love our incenses.  The beauty of the group that I would so wear heavily right now is the 1,000 Lilies AKA Susinon.

Donna reviewed these a while back at Perfume Smellin’  Things, which is what intrigued me to sample them to begin with.

Megaleion, despite being based on a scent from not just a few hundred years back is pretty great to wear now. It does have a green aspect to it, outside of the resins, that makes it feel a little more modern.   By modern, I mean it could have been made in the last 80 years.  Well, what do you expect?  It’s got a little bit of a vintage Dior or Nina Ricci feel to it.  Notes are olibanum, pine resin oil, cassia, cinnamon, balsam of gilead, cedarwood, lemongrass, spikenard, costus root, sweet flag and myrrh.

Keni is all delicious cinnamon and cardamom spiciness on the open.  There’s more to it than that that enriches it in the drydown, mellowing it out, giving it some softer contrasts, but if you don’t like cinnamon, well, don’t them let mummify you in this.  Notes are cassia, cinnamon, myrrh and pine resin oil.

Antiu is, as Donna notes, serious bitter almond and galbanum out of the pipe. It is nicely fierce!  I like that in a perfume, there’s just no faffing about trying to decide what to be when it grows up.  There’s some nice touches with lemongrass and honey that float around this as it dries down, turning a softer woody resinous green. It softens out that fierce open, which is okay, but I really  kinda loved that open a lot.  Notes are galbanum, bitter almond, cardamom, lemongrass, balsam of Gilead, sweet flag, honey, wine, pine resin, myrrh.  Of the three incense-based ones, Antiu is the one I’d wear happily anywhere and often.

Susinon or 1000 Lilies is pure beautiful white greenish spiced floral.  Lily, lotus, iris, sweet flag, cardamom, saffron, honey, cinnamon, wine, salt, myrrh.  White, shimmering, it’s definitely white floral, but not ovewhelmingly sweet or cloying.  There’s this soft purity about it that has me pretty enchanted.  There’s something about it that reminds me just a little of Shalini, it’s like a little burst of sunshine.

Are there any other historical-based perfumes out there?  I was trying to think about this and recall some, and maybe I’m just stuck on museum-type ones and there are others like this. Am I wrong?  Based on just the list of notes, if you were a super-rich Egyptian with a waiting sarcophagus, which one would you be covered in?

Patty

There’s good news – if you read on a bit, this is an actual perfume review!

I signed up for a month of yoga at this studio I’ve been test-driving, after going five times in a ten-day unlimited-class special I purchased on a whim.  I don’t want to jinx it but I think it’s a really good fit for me.  The studio’s clean, close, the schedule will (I think) work when the kids go back to school, and it’s an open/flow structure.  Which means that I’m neither in way over my head nor stuck in a class where we move at a snail’s pace while we are talked through each detail. (I’m over-analytical enough already, thanks.)   The room’s a perfect 90 degrees (32C), which helps me and everyone around me bust a sweaty move without (I hope) the rosacea-aggravation and migraines that dogged me in the 105F+ (41C) of Bikram, as much as I loved it in other ways.  Finally, I alternate between a tall, serene Korean instructor who delivers a meditative, slo-mo yogic asskicking — you know, where down-dog is the rest position — and a short, gruff American gal maybe in her 60s, who manages to constantly help/correct/adjust those of us who suck are beginners in our practice without making it feel like nagging.

So there’s my backdrop for Pure DKNY, rolled out in every fashion magazine I read this month, with Angela Lindvall in a white dress, the essence of purity, against one of those whitewash backgrounds.  The photo’s interesting because it’s actually suggestive of an urban aesthetic – the top of a white-painted old-style radiator to the left, paneling to the right (she’s sitting on a windowsill).  It’s a big  office/apartment windowsill, and in the background is what looks to me like a high-rise, blurred almost into abstraction in the magazine ads.  There’s a glass of water to her immediate left.  All of this is signaling that she’s either kicking back in her white-washed urban living space, or maybe this is the floaty cover-up she wears to the yoga studio.    Do you want to find peace and serenity in your stressful urban environment, like this (expensively groomed, faux-natural blonde-highlighted) avatar?  Well, Pure DKNY is your mantra.

“A drop of vanilla sourced from Africa, a drop of goodwill.   Pure DKNY supports local communities by taking small steps to help make a difference.”  Go to their website and you’ll learn that the vanilla in question comes from Uganda and this is some sort of partnership with CARE to support women in a fight against global poverty, although if you can find any firm financial details you’re a better reader than I am.  The box is environmentally friendly and recyclable and (as you can see from the image) very clean-looking in an understated way.  Notes are Ugandan vanilla, dewdrop, floral petals, lotus, Bulgarian rose, jasmine, freesia, orchid, white amber, sandalwood and vanilla in water.  It is “a soft floral scent with a signature vanilla accord,” according to the ad.

That list might predispose you to think this is a heavier floral – maybe something along the lines of DK Cashmere Mist – but you’d be wrong.  Mostly what it is is fresh.  Not fresh laundry, or fresh linen.  No, it is the kind of fresh that torments yours truly (and Robin at Now Smell This, apparently.)   I never quite understand what’s happening to the smell as it renders itself in my brain, but this … note?  aromachemical molecule? –  is the antithesis of fresh, in that it smells to me mostly like that peculiar, sour note of sweat in synthetic garments.  It’s the smell of a basket of sour laundry, the UnderArmour shirt or the $6 black Target polyester that you throw on after spin class, with a focus on the armpit area.    I can smell the vanilla, soft and not overly sweet, against a background of attenuated, indistinct watercolor florals whose purpose seems to be to prevent this from being a gourmand.   Absent the pick-axe edge of the FRESH pounding into me, I’d describe it as a wallpaper scent.  I might have guessed a light summer scent from JLo, marketed as more “sophisticated” for the “mature” audience over the age of 25.

I’ll take another deep, cleansing breath and point out that, vague assertions of charitable aspirations aside, there are plenty of actual “natural” perfumes out there if that’s the way you want to swing.  I respect the idea of natural perfumery just as much as I respect the concept of people who want to, say, construct or clean their houses with a minimum of potentially toxic compounds.  There are great blogs about natural perfumes and related products – let me provide a link to Scent Hive – with plenty of diverse perfume styles.  Natural perfumery does not provide me with everything I want in a fragrance, and it’s susceptible to fraud – if the perfumers aren’t sourcing everything themselves, for instance, they have to trust their suppliers.  Beyond that, the more the merrier, and if we could not turn this post into the merits of natural vs. synthetic in comments I would be grateful.

Why did I bring this up?  Because to me, and I believe to the casual magazine-reading consumer, one might take away the impression from all this “pure” imagery that Pure DKNY is in some way better for the environment, or more “natural,” or less toxic for the wearer.  You know … pure.  Says so right there on the label — or it would, if the bottle weren’t blank in the top advertisement (you can see the name on the bottle at left).  But there’s nothing here to support the idea that Pure DKNY is any safer or more natural than Mitsouko or Gucci Rush.  Instead we’re offered an aesthetic, a sham purification ritual, that troubles me on some level.  There’s nothing pure about Pure, other than the level of b.s. in the marketing of it.  I bet there are women right now spraying this scent on before their yoga class, and if I wind up next to one of them while I work on my down-dog, I’m going to be pissed.

What did I wear to yoga this morning?  The very faint remnants of the majmua attar, which I could smell only because the room was hot, and only with my face inches from my wrists.  (I’m a big fan of fellow exercisers using deodorants, which are often scented, so I’m not going to issue a no-frag policy for exercise, but nobody should be wafting scent.)

Donna Karan has created some of my favorite scents – and some of the most intense.  Black Cashmere, Chaos, Gold, Fuel and even the original DK robo-duck are all things of startling beauty, no wallflowers among them.  I’m also a fan of the Essences, although I thought they were wildly overpriced (I think the newest reissues are priced lower.)  I’m not a fan of Cashmere Mist but I think it’s a nice enough scent, and in exchange for all that I’m willing to overlook the Be Delicious franchise and its endless spawn, along with their summer-fluff and duty-free releases.  I find myself strangely disheartened by Pure – it feels cynical to me, gimmicky, capitalizing on an Eat/Pray/Love level of self-regard in a way that seems even more dishonest because it implies a kind of purity which Pure doesn’t have.

Now, I’d like to end on a happier note.   WITHOUT DEVOLVING INTO A FLAME WAR, THANKS – I welcome suggestions from readers regarding particular scents they’ve enjoyed from houses that purport to be natural or botanical (can we phrase it that way?).  Off the top of my head, I’ve enjoyed L’Artisan Jatamansi, which I think is “botanical” and smells like a very expensive spa to me, as well as Strange Invisible Perfumes and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz (search for “natural” in the product search box).  And of course I’ll mention the attars again, from Tigerflag and White Lotus.

source: private sample

March

OK, who else is sick of life being dictated by the freakin’ weather? Am I the only one who is exhausted by the fact that it is so ungodly humid outside that every morning for the past week, I’ve woken up with the most monumental of sinus headaches? I’ve been popping Tylenol like Skittles and I still suffer from chronic throbbing between the eyes. I don’t have a sinus infection, and I’m fairly certain I’m not growing a brain tumour. A friend took pity on me recently and gave me a bottle of this Chinese White Flower Analgesic Balm you’re supposed to rub on your top lip so you can breathe it in to clear your sinuses. I’d rather snort raw, grated horseradish to be totally honest. This stuff is nothing but methyl salicylate, eucalyptus oil, peppermint oil, and camphor. Hello? Vicks Vapo Rub?

So between the sweating and the sinus headaches, I’m grumpy beyond belief. I really wanted to tackle the rest of those “Humiecki and Dafts”, but I would literally be endangering my life by popping open those vials at this point. And I’m dying for some new sniffage in the worst way. I love/hate this time of year because August is the harbinger month that signals the end of summer, the beginning of school, and the end of yet another year. But I do look forward to the fat magazines, fall clothes and the promise of warm cuddly scents to come. Summer has gone by in a literal blink this year; I’ve done nothing but stare at my laptop, stare at my cat, and write. A solitary existence to say the least. Thank God for air conditioning.

Here’s your assignment: Where do you think would be the ideal place to live? Someplace where there’s no wild fluctuations in temperature, no freakish mountains of snow, or violent thunderstorms; just moderation. I’m thinking a lovely home in San Diego, or an igloo on a glacier in Antarctica. What about you?

BTW, someone asked how to tell who writes what posts just so they can have context, and we do have the little icons at the bottom, but I think it may be much easier to put the name at the top just for ease of knowing who is writing before you start reading.

Today I’m going to get peaches fresh from the orchard.  There’s only one month each year you can get them, and this is the month, and I can’ t begin to tell you how my stomach is flipping around in joy and my tastebuds are already salivating at a pace it’s difficult to keep up with.  We have a recipe that’s been passed down for ages in my family for Honey Cream Peach Pie. I have no idea where it originally came from. Could have been Ladies Home Journal for all I know, but we have been making it faithfully every year with Colorado fresh peaches for about 100 years.  I’ll be making mine this weekend – like 3 pies worth.  Wearing Mitsouko, I think.

The Different Company de Bachmakov, released in July 2010, was created by Celine Ellena. Notes of Cedar, coriander leaf, bergamot, white freesia, shiso leaves, nutmeg.  I could bathe in this. The Iunx Blanche on one side of me and this on the other, and would I really ever need anything else?  de Bachmakov is crisp, refreshing, slightly woody, warmed with nutmeg like the sun barely hitting an iceberg – never melting it, just making it feel cozy as its time on your skin lengthens.  The Freesia in the list of notes was scary, I was thinking this was give it a mortal overdose of sweet, but nope.  There is something really remotely candied that the freesia brings, but I can’t pin it down any more than that.  Not sweet, just another angle in that reflects instead of absorbs.

March needs to wear this while reading her Scandinavian novels.

Really gorgeous and elegantly easy to wear all day and night.  I had a little 2.5 ml spray of it, and I already spritzed through most of it, but I smell great doing it.  Robin’s review is Here, and Octavian’s review is here.  I think there is a close to uninanimous love vibe going ’round on this.

Now for my pie. Mmmmmm, pieeeee.  But I have an open mind if anyone wants to share their peach pie recipe or any other recipes for peaches.

Patty