L’Artisan Coeur de Vetiver Sacre (Patty)

Before we kneel at the temple of sacred hay vetiver, we have the profane pisstivity. Where the hell is Etro Messe de Minuit?

Oh, wait, I don’t want to forget.   Serge Lutens Boxeuses sample winners: waftbycarol, K.R. and patuxxa.  Clickety-click on the contact us link on the left, remind me what you won,and I’ll get your sample in the mail!

Now, back to missing, murdered midnight mass.  Just a few short months ago, Messe de Minuit was available at discounters everywhere for the price of cab fare from the Denver Airport to my house. Rumors abound it has been discontinued’ish.  One of those rumors that never seem to be official, but the dwindling availability and the rising price (retail?!?!?) for it give you pause to believe it truly is going, going…

…gone.  I have scoured everywhere, even calling Bergdorf, who used to carry the entire Etro line, willing to pay any inflated price to put another bottle in my empty moldy incense fragrance quiver, and they have dumped Etro – the whole line.  Discounters – absolutely nothing. One place let me order four bottles for $50 apiece, but I have no bottles after a month of waiting.  Aedes says it is on backorder and they should have some in two weeks. My fingers are crossed, because if they do get it, I’m gonna have to pay the 4x cab fare price to get it. It was one of my first oddball niche fragrances (Oh, March, don’t cry, you know I love it, but it is a musty weird thing and should have been on your weird list if it wasn’t) and one of a few fragrances that I have absolutely clear memory about how it smells.  Borneo is another.  So is Pink Sugar. I never claimed that I only had good taste in my scent memory.

If any of you know a source (European?) for bottles of this, would you drop me a note or comment and tell me where, how, how much? I somehow feel naked with none. And Christmas is around the corner, and I switch this out with Nuit Noel for Christmastime.

Did you guys know March and I met over a decant of Messe?  It was back when I was on eBay in the days they still allowed decanting, I’d only been decanting all of like a month or so as a hobby I took as seriously as I take politics (not at all, they all lie), and she ordered some Messe from me. After patiently waiting a couple of days for it to arrive (kidding!), she e-mailed me to find out where her damned decant was, thinking I’d never sent it. I knew I had sent it, I had the confirmation number to prove it. She’s thinking thief, I’m thinking liar (wonder where that “Dodgy last name” came from?), but I sent her another one, which arrived in a few days.  She graciously e-mailed me saying it was there, and thanks, and then proceeded to pour her heart out about perfumes over a series of e-mails for the next couple of months. I had two teenagers, a new marriage, a full-time job and that pesky, annoying decanting thing I was doing, and as much as I loved reading her e-mails, which were so well-written, interesting, odd, finding the time to respond to them with the care I should became a challenge. I had the blog then, but only had time to post a couple of times a week, and I’m thinking, hey, she needs someone to talk to like — commenters!!!!!! I asked her to write some blog posts to help me out, and the rest is history.  My e-mail got a rest, I still got to read her perfume thoughts and giggle over the things that came out of her head, like comparisons to wet possum, old socks and decaying bones, but in a good way, etc., and y’all got the same rich gift of peeping into her fascinating head two days a week. How lucky we all were because of that missing Messe de Minuit decant. So help me find some more, we all owe it a debt of gratitude!

I smelled the new L’Artisan Coeur de Vetiver Sacre when we were at Robertet in Grasse this summer.  I didn’t  get enough time to spend with it, no sample to take with me, but I loved it immediately.  Notes of bergamot, black tea, date, dried fruits, saffron, ginger, pink berries, vanilla, incense and musk.  My nose joyously shrieks “ginger tea and hay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  and then does little carthwheels in the cobwebs where things I don’t remember used to be.  I don’t know that anyone else reads hay when I do, but the vetiver in this takes me right down the hay path, I’m guessing with some influence of the ginger and some of the sweeter notes with that brightening that adds some sharpness.  Don’t care, it’s a hay fix for me.  The open is more tea and bergamot, but as soon as they get out of my way a bit, yup, hay, hay, glorious, delicious, yummy, delirious hay.

Is this a vetiver fragrance? No, sure isn’t.  Thank goodness. There are plenty of great ones out there that are full of that scratchy, earthy vetiver. I’ve got a bunch of CB vetiver accords I love to sniff to get my vetiver fix.  If I want polished vetiver, I drown myself in Vetiver Tonka, which never fails to make me swoon and roll my eyes back in my head.  For a refined, but still vetivery vetiver, nothing really beats Malle’s Vetiver Extraordinaire.

What we don’t have enough of is fragrances that give me hay and tea and ginger all in one place.  Fortunately, this one doesn’t change after the first opening gambit.  Good thing, or I’d be huffing a spritzer on me every 20 minutes.

I’d like to tell you there was enough in the sample I got in my Barney’s bag to give some out, but there isn’t, I’ve used almost all of it, rolled around in it, it’s all used up. Sorry!  But if anyone will give me a lead that scores me some Messe de Minuit, I’ll go beg, borrow or steal a sample, if necessary, to send you.

So favorite vetiver? Do you even like vetiver?  Messe de Minuit?  Good oddball weird or just plain old weird weird?