By March

It started out innocently enough.  Louise and I were at Bloomingdale’s, playing in makeup and conducting a thoughtful, nonbiased exploration of some of the newer scents.  By which I mean, we were mocking them.  That new Gucci Guilty?   Pffffffffffffffft.   Those four man-scents, the Ralph Lauren Big Pony Collection?  Sporty, Seductive, Energizing and … Posh?  No, wait, sorry, that’s the Spice Girls.  The last one’s Adventurous.  We sniffed them all, trying to decide:  if they were actual men, which one would we … kiss if we absolutely had to?  The rest of the conversation is unprintable here, and I hope the SA didn’t overhear us. (I think I opted for Energizing.  These scents are a big ol’ polo mallet of fresh, right upside the head.)

Eventually we paused at the Hermes counter, where they had a little travel atomizer of the Parfum des Merveilles.  (An atomizer that wasn’t available for purchase, naturally.)  I was talking about how much I like the Eau des Merveilles, I bought a partial bottle awhile back and it’s almost empty.  It smells like salted orange, it’s a great exploration of ambergris, and a salty fragrance I can wear that doesn’t go hideously marine on me,  that dead-beach smell.  It’s lovely.  But maybe I should switch it up, get a bottle of the Parfum des Merveilles next time?  It’s not just stronger, it’s a different scent construction — richer, with a finish that’s more cognac, moss and patchouli, a smooth feeling of something like chocolate at the end.  I sprayed it on absentmindedly, raved over it, and we headed out the door to Sephora.

But that thing just stayed and stayed and stayed and … you know what?

Someone call the exorcist.  I’ve been scent-haunted.

A scent haunting isn’t a scrubber.  It happens with scents I very much like as opposed to ones I don’t.  Scent hauntings can manifest themselves in various ways.  There’s nothing like an incipient migraine to make any fragrance wear out its welcome fast.  Or, sometimes it’s just the wrong choice on an off-day.  This happens to me mostly with my snarlier vintage classics.  I’ll spray on Mitsouko or Jolie Madame and an hour later I’m thinking, kill.me.now.   I can also be scent-haunted in a good way – where the ghosts of multiple fragrances are more than welcome, their presence on a frequently-worn scarf or wool sweater quite enjoyable in the winter months.

But the scent haunting that baffles me unfolds as it did with Parfum des Merveilles.  I don’t understand what the problem is.  I like that scent.  I thought it smelled gorgeous.  I didn’t feel flattened by it, like Aunts Spiker and Sponge under the giant peach (Byredo Pulp will do that to you, as will MDCI Peche.)  Parfum des Merveilles just … started to work my last nerve, you know what I mean?  It wanted too much attention, like the kids whining in the back seat.  I was so put off that the next time I picked up the jeans I’d been wearing and smelled Merveilles, I promptly tossed them in the laundry.  But I still want a bottle.  What is wrong with me?

For those of you who are wondering what you Must Own – Lee’s invisible-to-some post on Friday – we’ll repost it and I’ll clear the formats.  In the meantime it was reposted in comments yesterday (Random Sunday.)

image: window ghosts, some rights reserved, flickr

March

Hey, everyone!  The weather’s fine and fall-ish and you know what that means – it’s time for a Random Sunday makeup post!

The fall makeup collections are out, and it’s been fun looking at all the palettes – lots of dramatic colors and burgundy and brown lippies out there, like the ones in the Lancome ad above, in keeping (it seems to me) with the retro runway looks.  These aren’t necessarily the easiest makeup colors for me to wear, but I still enjoy playing with them in the stores.   I did try on the wack Dior’s Mysterious Mauve, check out that color at left  – yep, a deep, shimmery purple.  Purple.  Look at that thing, how could I resist?  News flash: it was just awful on me, but it would be gorgeous on someone with dark skin.

Let’s talk about foundation.  Carter was pimping the new(ish?) Maybelline Dream Smooth Mousse foundation, which has gotten a lot of love already on MakeupAlley, with a high 73% rebuy rating.  It’s a drag you can’t try them on in the drugstores, but our local CVS lets you return opened makeup so I bought a couple so Diva and I could sample them.  SPECIAL NOTE – this is not the Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse foundation, which has much lower MUA approval ratings of 47%, although I did buy some for Diva to try since she’s a teenager.  She found the matte formula hard to work into a smooth finish, although the color was right.  She kept the light neutral shade (Light 1) as a pancake makeup for her dance performances.

I bought what appeared to me to be the two lightest, most neutral tones in the Smooth Mousse – Porcelain Ivory and Classic Ivory.  There are two other light colors that are much more obviously yellow and pink, for those of you who swing that way.  The Classic is too dark for Diva and me, but the Porcelain was excellent.  I wore it for a few days and Diva’s wearing it now.  The formula’s packed in a wide pot with a built-in sponge in the lid storage area. The formula for these things is amaaaazing – they really are incredibly creamy and the coverage is buildable.  They stayed just fine on me, they are dewy but not too shiny on my dry skin, and they didn’t break Diva out.  In the end, I decided the color is just a hair off to be a perfect-perfect match – it’s one I’d wear if I really had to, but I’ve got better matches, and I hate being able to see my foundation.  If you’re looking for a reasonably priced drugstore foundation and you can find a color match (they have 10 shades), this is well worth checking out, and thanks, Carter!

Bringing me to Make Up For Ever’s two obscure lightest colors in their Face & Body Makeup!   Some of you may remember my ecstasy over this iconic product.  It’s at Sephora, and I think the finish is gorgeous (and I’m not the only one, based on MUA ratings.)  The main problem, as always, is finding a color match.  For whatever reason, Sephora stores don’t usually stock the two lightest colors, 36 and 38, in the store – I didn’t know they existed.  (And no, I have no idea what’s behind MUFE’s totally random numbering system.)   I’ve been wearing 20, their palest in-stock neutral, but I’d admitted to myself earlier this spring that it wasn’t the perfect shade for me, it’s a hair too yellow and I have to powder it to tone that down a little.  So I read all the comments on 38 and 36 from fair-skinned folks on MUA and based on that, I ordered 38.  Then two days later I discovered that – ha, ha – those two shades are now stocked by our swank Sephora in the Wall o’ Bling.  So I tried them both, one on each side of my face. The 36 is the paler and pinker of the two – it looks scary, like super-pale calamine lotion in the bottle.  I could actually get away with it, but it was a little pasty on me.  I envision it on those porcelain-doll beauties who are even lighter than I am, and they’re out there.  But #38 was just right.  It looks darker in the bottle and on the application sponge than it does on the skin, it’s closer to 36 than you’d think.  It’s neutral, sheer (more sheer than the 20) and buildable.  I like that I can just do the center of my face, where I’m the most red, and it still looks natural and blends away perfectly at the edges without full coverage down to my jawline, so it’s less “made up” looking.  It doesn’t look like great foundation, it looks like no foundation.  Unlike, say, the MAC girls with their supermatte, very hard-edge makeup, the less-is-more look is better for those of us who are no longer young women, in my opinion.  Too much makeup is oddly aging.

PS: A change in the MUFE bottle – I put the stuff on with a sponge, so the bottle’s open-mouth design, which ooks people out, has never bothered me.  (The weird jello-like consistency doesn’t bother me either.)  But the new bottles, at least the one I got in the mail, have a pump-top on them like the Hi-Def.

Finally, a MAC lament and a score. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I knew Strada was being discontinued, those bastards, I should have stocked up.  The perfect non-blushy blush for us pale girls who want a little “color” that isn’t orange or dirt.  The d/c’d Strada is now selling on eBay for … $35 a pop.  Anyone find another match?  I’ll probably go to a MAC pro and ask.  In the meantime, Louise forced me to try on lipstick, and I have to say – Viva Glam in Gaga is the pale-pink bomb.  It’s the first one of their Viva Glam lippies I’ve bought.  Their description: “named after celebrity spokesperson Lady Gaga. Features a high lustre finish and cool blue-pink shade.”  It is a pale bubblegum pink unlike any other pink I have.  It’s paler than my actual lips (it’s also paler than the color at left as it appears on my monitor).  It is NOT any of the following: sheer, YLBB, pinky-nude, bright, neon, fuchsia, or (conversely) too pale and mod, speaking of looks that don’t work so great on those of us who wore that the first time around.  It’s wow without being POW.  It’s pale pink as a color rather than a bold statement, and it works great with a modern, pared-down natural look, which is humorous when you think about who it’s named after.

So, it’s your turn.  Anyone out there working a new look, trying some new polish or a great new eye quad?  How do you feel about this fall’s burgundy and brown lips, like at Lancome?  Any other makeup comments or questions to throw out to your fellow commenters, some of whom are much bigger makeup fiends than I am?  (Not naming names.)  Has anyone busted out their red lips yet?  I wore them a few times this summer, actually.  Counter-intuitive and fun, but not when my face is sweaty.

March

It’s always a pleasure when Andy Tauer has a new perfume, and he so generously offers to perfume blogs the chance for one of their readers to win a bottle.

Hey, today’s that day!  He has two new perfumes coming out that are debuting in Florence at Pitti Fragranze this weekend.  You know, I tried to figure out how to go to that thing, but just couldn’t come up with the time or a good enough reason, though going to Florence really is reason enough.

Oh, sorry, got travel distracted!  The winner (one of you commenters) will pick a bottle of one of the two new fragrances, which Andy will ship to you.

Scent N0. 12-EAU D’ÉPICES, eau de parfum, in the classic blue Tauer 50 ml flacon.

• HEAD NOTES     An Indian basket of spices with cinnamon, cardamom, clove and coriander with red mandarines.
• HEART NOTES   An opulent heart of orange blossom, jasmine, orris root and incense.
• BODY NOTES     A woody cistus ladaniferus resin, softened with ambergris, Tonka beans and vetiver.

Available worldwide end September, about 120 $US

Scent No. 10-UNE ROSE VERMEILLE, eau de parfum, in a new 30 ml flacon, presented for the first time in Florence, September 10.

• HEAD NOTES     A citrus chord with lemon and bergamot with a whisper of lavender.
• HEART NOTES   Sumptuous bouquets of roses and violets, kissed by luscious raspberries.
• BODY NOTES     The richness of vanilla, sandalwood and Tonka beans, touched by the elegance of ambergris.

Available worldwide end September, about 130 $US

Okay, discuss. Which one are you most looking forward to?  I kept thinking No. 12 first, just because the spice notes sound so amazing, and I like spice perfumes more than rose perfumes, but that rose perfume doesn’t sound that traditional and has some real potential, especially with the violets and the basenotes.

I’ll post the winner next Thursday to give you guys plenty of time to comment and be entered.

Patty

By March

When I was test-driving the new-ish Donna Karan Iris last week, I kept thinking about Serge Lutens’ Iris Silver Mist.  According to legend, when Maurice Roucel was creating ISM, Lutens kept nagging him for more iris, more iris until Roucel threw up his hands and put in every single iris-smelling thing he could think of.  (This story is told more elegantly by Luca Turin in The Guide.)  The result is a must-try, a masterpiece of iris.  It’s the Queen of iris.  It’s the Marilyn Monroe, Taj Majal, and Rolls Royce of iris.  It’s also the Godzilla and the Burj Dubai of iris – it’s not just iconic, it’s huge.

If Lutens kept saying more, more, more, then Donna Karan must have been saying less, less, less. Donna Karan Iris is iris primarily in the sense that it’s not violet or rose.  It’s a shy, wan wisp of a thing, a lil’ rooty and a lil’ powdery, but if it weren’t called iris I think it might scent a nice Caswell & Massey handsoap with images of violet and marzipan.  It bored me to tears.  The result was that I spent the next three days wearing Guerlain Chamade, so it all worked out fine in the end.

Robin at Now Smell This, master of the polite, dignified review, says the Donna Karan Iris “has a minimalist feel, and is more transparent than not: you’d be hard-pressed to over apply.”  Ain’t that the truth, R.  I’m not opposed to understated, office-friendly fragrances:  as I’ve mentioned before, Prada Infusion d’Iris is hugely popular among office worker bees in our area, I smell it all the time on the streets and in the subway.  I like Infusion d’Iris, and if I ever run out of all my samples I’m buying a bottle.  But my larger point is that Infusion d’Iris manages to be distinctive.  Donna Karan Iris, assuming I could even smell it while standing beside someone wearing it, smells sadly generic.  It doesn’t add anything – not even something fun and insubstantial, a giggle or a whisper – to the ongoing conversation of perfume.

If I met a budding perfumista who was interested in iris, I would say, at some point you need to smell Lutens’ Iris Silver Mist.  If that perfumista were interested in incense, I’ve no doubt I’d mention the Armani Prive Bois d’Encens.  I adore incense frags, it’s one of those notes I can never get enough of.  But if backed into a corner, I’d have to name BdE first, although it’s not necessarily my favorite.  But it’s incense as high art – and devoid of the churchiness of, say, CdG Avignon (which I adore.)  I’d like to quote the entire Luca Turin review, which is both funny and insightful, right here, but instead I’ll grab the last line:  “If you can afford Bois d’Encens, buy it: there is nothing else like it.”

So now I reach out to you, commenters and lurkers alike!  Newbies read the blog all the time.  If you were chatting with a friend who had a general fondness for perfume, and s/he asked for a recommendation for a single (yes, I’m going to make you choose just one!) fragrance featuring a particular note or accord of interest (rose, woody, tea, citrus, whatever), which one would you recommend to sniff, and why?  As I’ve already noted, it wouldn’t necessarily be your favorite fragrance featuring that particular note, but the one where you’d say, well, if you’re going to explore lily of the valley in a fragrance, you’ve really got to smell Diorissimo.  (In vintage, sadly, or so I have been told.)  I’d love a list here in comments of what you think the greats are.  Also feel free to argue with each other, as long as you do it with reasonable politeness.

image: iris, flickr.com, some rights reserved

March

I have a few winners from last week:

First, for the manufacturer’s sample of the Le Metier Peau Vierge – maggiecat.

The samples of Chantecailles three new fragrances – odonata9 and Junebug.

Just click on the contact us over there on the let, send me your address and remind me what you won, and I’ll get it sent out to you.

Update on the Peau Vierge, it really is that good – so far – on me after six days plus of daily use.  My sister and my niece (51 and 22) also tried it this weekend, and both fell in love with the coverage and how it lasted, looked and felt.  I really don’t know if anything is worth $125, and I think if you find something that costs less and works great you should use that and feel grateful.  The mascara is also great.  I’ve been using it since last Thursday daily, and it doesn’t smudge, it doesn’t move on my eyelashes at all, gives a nice eyelash that’s not clumpy or spidery, two coats gives it plenty of thickness, and I love the light tints in them that take out some of the harshness of the black.  They cleanse off easily with normal cleanser.  So that’s the quick update, I will update again in a month or two, because by then most products tend to lose their initial effect on my skin/lashes/mouth/nails/eyes/hair.  If these hold up, they will be pronounced long-term keepers. if not, the search will continue.

Just to squick you all out, does anyone watch that show on A&E called Hoarders?  I’m trying to figure out how I missed this until this weekend.  They showcase anywhere from mild’ish hoarders -trashy homes, but not quite or only slightly health hazards – to Level 5 Hoarders – the ones you read about in the newspaper.  It’s seriously so gross, but I’m fascinated by the mental illness that manifests in this way that allows it to happen to people who at one time, many were normal.  From this point forward, every time I feel a twinge about a little bit of clutter on my coffee table, I’m going to pick it up quickly, kiss the cleaning staff that comes in every two weeks, give them a bonus, then throw out some things that “I’m sure I’ll use again some day” just as prevention.

Nothing perfumey for me today, I went out of town this weekend to visit family and just got off the perfume train for a weekend. I did get in some new candles, though, the Voluspa White Truffle Cocoa and the sampler box of their new Rouge Collection, none of which I have lit up yet because I’ve been too busy burning the White Truffle Cocoa.  Chocolate candles and perfume normally have something in them that bothers me, but this one smells much more like cocoa, which really works for me.  I think I’ll watch another old episode of Hoarders and go throw out some old candles I don’t burn anymore as well.  Maybe an old perfume bottle too.  Oh, no, I’m not gonna do that!!!

What do you hoard, and what do you throw out?  Perfume?  Are we all perfume hoarders?

Patty