Happy new year, everyone!  Thanks for making the Perfume Posse so much fun in 2010.  I’m out of town and we’re taking the weekend off.  I’ll see you Monday in 2011!

image: wikimedia commons

March

Diorrissimo and J’Adore l’Absolu met, had a two-week fling in Tahiti on a bed of tuberose and nine months later Dior New Look 1947 sprung into the world as the fruit of their lusty floral loins.  The End.

Octavian has a great history of 1947 fashion and perfumery.  In the book “Cutting for Stone” that I’m listening to in my car this week, the author notes that we live our lives looking forward, but only understand it looking back.

Demachy, in making New Look 1947 took all the tools of modern perfumery, then looked back at the history of Dior and created a perfume that understands where Dior has been while still moving foward. This isn’t an homage to the great old Diors that still make me weak, but it encompasses what some of them were – the feminity, a little edgy, but not so much that it would tweak any society noses – and infused them with the best of Dior’s modern perfumes.  J’Adore may be a perfume you love to hate, but it sells like hotcakes, and I like to wear it as well. I feel feminine and adorable and sweet, without feeling mass market.  Any perfume company could do a lot worse – and have! – than J’Adore.

So taking the best of their history and modernizing it to fit their current best part of their lineup produced a beautiful, creamy floral that doesn’t scream tuberose, but whispers it like a caress of warm sun on your face.  It is a perfume that is not defined by that note, but never strays far from it.

Listen, I just spray it on with abandon and let the tuberose fall where they may. This is one perfume that I can say – if you love it, you’ll be happy to plunk down the cash for the big bottle since you’ll spray it all over the place – bedroom, sheets, clothes, car.  There are few things that would not be happy smelling like New Look 1947.  You know what? It feels really good to love a Dior perfume again.

I didn’t forget the four sample sets of these perfumes!  Winners are:

Doc Elly, Tiara, aotearoa, and Roberto.

BTW, if you are trying to order these, there is a super-nice salesperson at the Dior boutique at the Palazzo in Las Vegas – (702) 734-1102.  So they’re not easy to get in and sniff, but once you’ve tried them and want a full bottle for yourself or to split, they are darn easy to have shipped!

Patty

by the Shivering Musette

Is it true?  Is 2010 almost over?  I don’t even remember it starting!   But I do remember my favorite new fragrances from the past 12 months or so, that counts for something, right?  Alas, most of them were vintage finds, which misses the point of this kind of post…..but! there were a few  new-release gems . Here’s what ‘we’ think – I can’t wait to read what you guys think was ‘best’ in 2010~

Bas des Soie (Serge Lutens).  Everybody take a minute to catch your breath at this one.  Yes, it’s iris.  Yes, I can smell it.  Yes, I love it!  Well, I don’t LOVE it, but I liked it a whole heckuva lot – it’s the first Serge I’ve ever taken a second/third/possibly FB look at!   I love the initial blast of cool, ladylike iris and the hyacinth followup, though warmer than I expected, was intriguing.  I kept sniffing my wrist and wondering what that great scent was  (don’t ask – my short-term memory is gawwwwn).  I like it!  I really like it!

Frederic Malle 1er Mai candle. While not technically a perfume, it could – and should – be (and you know that came up at the Candle Thingie, right?)!  If I could scoop this out of the Red Glass Jar and apply it to my wrist, I think I just might, though I’d be thrilled to just have it sitting on a table in my clean, newly-renovated house (that should give you some idea of the fantasy of this whole concept).  An absolutely beautiful scent, redolent of May flowers, with no waxy buildup!  And here I thought I hated candles!

Dior Diorama.  I’m not exactly sure if this qualifies as a 2010 release since it’s 61 years old.  But the current iteration was released in the States in 2010 so I’m running with it, okay?  March thinks the new iteration dries down like current Diorella and she’s not wrong – ish.  I get   a minty note in both drydowns but Diorama seems a bit embarrassed by it, rather than embracing it, as has Diorella.  So why am I so keen on it?  Well, I’ll tell ya :  this entrance into the US market makes my heart go pitty pat in hopes they might send Diorling over soon!  Hope springs eternal…

Tom steps in with this elegant review (and I should beat him because I do NOT need to be lemming any more perfume):

My best of 2010 is the one I’ve found myself reaching for most frequently since the bottle was acquired: Mocktail by smell bent.  The sparkling citrus and almost aldehyde-like woods make for a perfect answer to drab winter days, spreadsheets and 4:30 sunsets, while the price point makes spritzing with abandon a guilt-free pleasure.  I couldn’t be happier if I found zero-calorie champagne!

March: 2010 marked the year when I gave up trying to keep up with new releases – even from the niche houses.  If you’d like to torment yourself, go browse the list at Now Smell This, or the new releases from the last six months from The Perfumed Court.  I throw up my hands in defeat.

So this is (what else?) my highly subjective best-of list for 2010, what I enjoyed the most or thought most interesting from the scents I got around to smelling.

Serge Lutens Boxeuses, in which Monsieur Lutens quits goofing around (has anything been more disappointing than his L’Eau?) and gets back to what he does best – those Hammam/Souk Delirium scents which I, and apparently many of you, never tire of.  I’d wear this in a heartbeat, and would love a bottle.  This also marked the year that I developed a new appreciation for some of his older scents, including Chene and the cumin-y El Attarine.  I will not be surprised if Arabie is next, god help me.

L’Artisan Nuit de Tubereuse and Traversee du Bosphore – in which I am forced to eat my whiny-baby words about how Bertrand Duchaufour can’t make a scent that doesn’t smell like old vase-water, at least on me.  Love it or hate it (and I loved it) NdT was a fascinating new take on tuberose, spicy and dark and strange.  Traversee du Bosphore sounded even less promising (Turkish Delight?  Rose and pistachio?  no, thanks) and yet is lovely, not too sweet, with a nice tobacco note.  Some of you have complained it’s too light.  I find it, a la the Three Bears, just right.

Finally, I find myself reaching (on crappy winter days) for my Tauer Eau d’Epices.  I should note here that, no, it’s not particularly spicy on me.  It’s less the list of its notes, which sounds all spicy – cardamom and clove and what have you – and more what I’d think of as Tauer-ade – if you took just the drydown of Andy’s fragrances, that rich, warm ambergris base, this would be it.  It’s the sort of scent I spray on at the end of a tiresome day, and delight 0n finding traces of on my sweater.

Patty: Ive been pretty simple this year, and I’m giving my best of to what I keep wearing more days than not – L’Artisan Nuit de Tuberose (March already picked this one).  There’s something spice, rich, deep and lovely about it that makes it easy to wear, but stays interesting from start to finish – not so interesting that I’m trying to figure out if I can leave the house in it, though.  It’s also the one people compliment me on.

Do I need a second one?  Well, yeah, and I do this with trepidation since I”m not quite certain that it rises to this because I’ve only been smelling it for a couple of days – Dior New Look 1947. More on this on Thursday, but it is also a tuberose entry, one that captures a time, a look, a place, but keeps it modern so you can avoid all of those ignorant “old lady perfume” comments.  I think that one is going to see me into 2011 for a couple of months and is now putting some pressure on Nuit de Tuberose for what gets worn more.

Nava: I didn’t get the opportunity to sample much this past year, but one standout for me was Thierry Mugler Womanity. I know; the house that brought us that devil, Angel. But I’m helpless when it comes to salt and fig. The other was Balenciaga Paris: violet, musk, labdanum, and just a hint of chypre that doesn’t send me screaming in the opposite direction. I wore it constantly in the spring, but it turned a bit suffocating on me in the hot weather. Honourable mention goes to L’Artisan Havana Vanille. I blame the shivering Musette for this one. I have been coveting a bottle of this for months.

We’ll leave this post up on Wednesday; please join us on Thursday while Patty reviews one of the new Diors.  For other best-of posts, please see Bois de Jasmin, Grain de Musc, Now Smell This, and Perfume-Smellin’ Things.

Photo:  Best of Halter Class Stallion – 2010 World Percheron Congress/ “Moose” of Windermere Farms. My new stallion – just as soon as I can figure out how to pay for him/buy the farm/build the state-of-the-art barn to house him/feed him…

Happy holidays, everybody – hope you’re well.  It’s snowing here as I type this, with the weather service predicting anything from one to ten inches, so … who knows.  We’re ready.

I thought I’d steal borrow an idea from Now Smell This and have a holiday open thread – anything perfume-y you want to talk about.  Did you get a special scent as a present?  Did you wear a scent for a special occasion, and how did it work out?  Do you have any questions for your perfume buddies, like a good gift scent, or a source for a fragrance you’re having trouble finding (or remembering the name of), or anything else?

Just so I’m not completely worthless – I got asked in a post recently about how I organize samples. I have a ton, since I’ve been at this for a few years, and I keep most of mine for reference.  Anyone who’s been at this for more than a couple of months will discover pretty quickly that The Samples Are Everywhere, sometimes to the annoyance of anyone else who shares your living quarters.  Here’s my response, with some edits and extra info:

I keep my samples sorted by house (so I can find all of a line at once), keep the houses together in small Zip-lock bags, and then sort them alphabetically into shoe-box-sized sealed plastic tubs from the Container Store.  You could use Tupperware or something equally sturdy.  It’s good to have them all the same size. They are stackable, labeled A-C (or whatever) and I keep them on a shelf in the closet. When lots of samples are carded or one tub gets too tight, I add another tub – I bought extras, not knowing how many I’d need. (Example – L’Artisan has its own box now.)  I have 12 tubs at this point.

I tend to let all the samples pile up in a big silver bowl and then, once a month or so, when the bowl’s full, I spend an hour making piles on the bed and putting the sorted samples into their correct boxes.  A glass of wine helps.

I really do get them out for reference, like if I’m trying to decide if something new smells like something else. I have at this point, thousands of samples, probably.

My biggest fail, since I don’t keep a spreadsheet is: did I file Serge Lutens under S or L? So sometimes I discover “missing” samples like that.

There are flaws in this system.  Larger samples and decants might be in the box, but probably not in the little Zip-lock bag.  Also, if it’s something I have a decant of, I probably like it enough to want to wear it occasionally, and those I keep out, which requires some rummaging, although you’d be surprised how quickly I can find something.  If I had to do it all over again, and I probably will, I’d buy taller boxes – ones I can fit 10ml decants into upright, since I don’t like storing them on their sides.  Most of my large decants are in a dresser drawer, or on a shelf in my walk-in closet.

I know some of you are much more exacting about this – you have Excel spreadsheets detailing every sample, where and when you got it, the notes, etc.  Feel free to comment on your system.

When I’m contemplating a review of a scent, I google the fragrance(s) and see what’s been said already. I read other blog reviews, and I often look at what people say on MakeupAlley (MUA). The MUA reviews are not highbrow — which I like.  They’re just a broad swath of what people (not necessarily perfume nuts) thought/felt about a scent, which I find useful.  The lists of notes for a scent I try to grab first from the manufacturer’s website, or, failing that, from LuckyScent (which likely got them from the perfumer), Osmoz, Fragrantica, and/or other blogs. You might be surprised how much those note lists can differ; I try to go with whichever combination smells most plausible to me, noting, where appropriate, if there’s not much to be found, or if there are wildly divergent lists, which can happen with older scents.  Since manufacturers, old and new, can be pretty coy with those lists – or write things like breath of praline or throbbing zebrawood or molten river of musk — your guess is as good as mine.  Also, since the notes themselves are suggestions of what we’re meant to smell, as opposed to the actual ingredients (a fragrance with blooming iris and notes of warm sand doesn’t contain either) you’ve got to take it with a grain of salt.

Okay, your turn!  Perfume comments, questions, gripes, thoughts – knock yourself out.

image: wikimedia commons, some rights reserved

March

On this Christmas Eve, we’re sure everyone is running around like those proverbial chickens with their heads cut off, and the last thing on your mind is reading a perfume review. So, all the elves at the Posse decided to give you, dear readers, a Christmas present: some holiday memories from the vault. We hope you enjoy them. Merry Christmas.

ANITA: I’m not a huge fan of Christmas.  For one, it’s a whole lotta pressure for One Day – what if you wake up and you are Not In The Mood?  What do you do then?  For another, I don’t like hanging around in my pajamas – really!  I’m That Kinda Gal.  A shower-get dressed (WITH SHOES) kinda control-freak gal.  I didn’t use (used) to be like that, though?  All those photos of me and my brother, in our pjs, having a great time….

Growing up we had some great Christmases…my favorite memories are of specific ornaments – y’all have any of those wackadoo ornaments that mean nothing to anyone else in the world…but mean the world to you?  Mine was this delicate porcelain-headed angel.  She had a pink maribou skirt (cardboard underskit) and she was a thing of beauty.  My brother’s, equally beloved, angel was this incredibly cheesy styrofoam cutout with glitter…don’t ask.. mine was a thousand times better…but you couldn’t tell it by the bliss on both of our faces, as those angels were stuck on that tree.

I found my brother’s angel ornament a few years after my mom passed and I finally got around to unpacking our family Christmas decorations.  The thing was a shell of its formerly shell-like self (this was cheap styrofoam, remember? – I wonder who gave him that tacky thing – and why he loved it so) .. anyway, it was headless and had only 1/3 of a wing left…but it took me back to 1962, when the world was still all about What You Got for Christmas and did mom make enough corn pudding to go around and would there be snow – please let there be snow…and……cliche, I know, but it really was a simpler time.. I got such a kick putting it up on tree again.  Alas, it was the last year it went up on the tree.  I did say cheap styrofoam, remember?  The following year I unpacked the ornaments and ….it was foamy dust.  But hey!  it lasted nearly 45 years!  And my brother loved knowing it was on the tree, at least one more time.

Btw – that cheesy angel outlasted my chic angel by 20 years, like a mutt v. a purebred.  Maribou stuck on cardboard….somewhere, that cheesy angel is laughing his headless self right into Cheesy Angel Heaven.

MARCH: I was late arriving to the annual holiday chorale at the local Presbyterian church on Sunday.  It’s this time of year when I feel most acutely the distance between my desires for my life and reality.  The sun was just setting, it was bitterly cold, and the church was jam-packed.  I ended up sliding in near the front, two pews from the Christmas tree, next to an elderly gentleman who was already nodding off in the toasty warmth.

I was wearing Mandragore, simply because that’s what I’d put on that morning; Victoria at Bois de Jasmin and I have chatted about how we’re drawn to cologne-y scents this time of year, they seem so refreshing and hopeful.  The church had run out of concert programs so each piece was a surprise.  I settled in.  I smelled the familiar church scents from my childhood Christmases – the fir tree, candles, old wood and wax, and knew myself both blessed and happy.

Toward the end they dimmed the lights so that only the lit Christmas tree was visible.  I thought, this cannot be more perfect.  And then the choir began to sing, a capella, in the darkness, Christina Rossetti’s simple, beautiful words, rendered in the old hymn: In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone…  Best Christmas present ever.

NAVA: As a Jew, I’ve never technically celebrated Christmas, but I did love going over to my next-door neighbors as a kid, in my pajamas, to watch them open their gifts. There was always one under the tree for me, and it made me feel like part of the family to sit there in my jammies watching them open their gifts. My mother would always send over some latkes with me, sharing a little bit of Hanukkah with our Italian-Catholic friends. There was nothing religious about it, and it always gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling to be included. I still think about those Christmas mornings every year, and the memories never fail to warm my heart. Then, it’s on to a movie and some Chinese food.

PATTY:  Christmas Eve growing up is when our farm world came to a stop.  Yeah, we still had cows to milk that night and twice the next day, but my parents wound down and stopped giving us extra chores, so it was a huge vacation for us.  Every year, we had all spent a couple of Saturdays at the Baptist Church (I converted to Catholicism later in life), learning our parts for the Christmas Eve program, which always included “We Wish you a Merry Christmas” with lots of hissing ssssssssss’es.  And every Christmas Eve, my mother would bundle us all up, my dad would wave goodbye to us since he wouldn’t step foot into that church again — oh, there’s a story there.  He used to go every week as a kid, and one Sunday when he was probably 13 or 14 he and his friends and probably a brother or four were sitting in the back, someone farted – not him, oddly enough – and he laughed, as did most of the other boys. His uncle was the preacher, stopped whatever barn-burner sermon he was on, and said, “Dick, since you can’t behave with your friends, you’ll need to come up front and sit with your mom and dad.”  He was mortified, but figured he deserved it. But when Uncle Curly didn’t call out any of the other boys who had laughed, he just got mad. He had an overdeveloped sense of justice and was willing to do the time for his crimes, but wanted to make sure everyone else did theirs.  He swore from that moment on he would never set foot in that church again. And he didn’t, except for funerals of his parents and brothers and sisters and, finally, his own funeral.

So he stayed behind while all five of us kids and mom went to that little country church out in the middle of nowhere. The real tree they had scraped the ceiling, and the smell of pine was everywhere.  Back then they had those bubbling oil candles on there – I think at one point they had real lit candles! on there – and big ornaments, and underneath the tree was what seemed like a mountain of presents – one for every child in the Christmas program.  And when we were done, they’d pass out the presents, and also pass out a little brown bag of goodies – milk chocolate stars, orange slices, peanuts, walnuts, ribbon candy.  They always gave us one extra for “Uncle Dick.”

When we arrived back home, throwing off our coats, running into the house, we’d give Dad his little bag, which he was hollering for when the door opened, just to make sure we didn’t make off with it. He’d paw through it, pulling out the orange slices, which he loved, and the peanuts. Then we’d each have to hand him our sack, after we’d taken out the stuff we really wanted, and he’d take out the peanuts and things he wanted that we didn’t care about.  This took the rest of the evening as we happily chomped through our Christmas treats, told stories of who had screwed up during the Christmas program, laughed, until we fell into bed, waiting for 4 a.m. when the house would be alseep and we could sneak out into the living room and start unwrapping presents.

But those two days, my parents were both soft and sweet – it was like Christmas waved a magic wand over them, and no matter how little we had, how few or many presents we could afford that year, they would set aside all the worries of the farm and never-ending work and stress.  It was their gift to us.

Merry Christmas!!!

TOM: Christmas in my family was a Big Deal. Not so much about the presents, since my parents didn’t believe in giving extravagant gifts on that holiday. We didn’t get bikes on Christmas (which since it was December in New England would have been more torture than tribute), we got model cars (me), Barbie detritus (sis), and radio-related stuff (big brother). Luckily they didn’t give necessities as gifts the way that some of my neighbors did: there were no passive-aggressively wrapped packets of underwear masquerading as Christmas presents at my house, thanks. The big deal was about the decorating. The tree wasn’t real. My mother I think didn’t want the mess of a real one. In my re-written family history I tend to paint her as a tireless defender of the forest, standing up to the needless slaughter of conifers by using and reusing a fake tree every year. Surely that had to be the reason since the particular tree in question was basically a thick green-painted wooden pole into which different sized individual branches were placed, a process that took about four hours. Of course this also meant that at the year end the tree had to be carefully packed back up, lest the various lengths of branches got mixed up making next years set-up like a jigsaw puzzle that’s all one color. Other boxes of ornaments and lights were brought down from the attic tested and inspected, new ornaments and light strands were added as old ones wore out or the theme for this year was changed. The tree could be all blue lights and tinsel one year, white lights and red ornaments another, colored lights and hodgepodge a third. What never varied was the placement: in the large picture window in the family room facing the small park on the corner that lent out street its name. The eaves of the two porches were strung with lights, electric candles were in all the street-side windows and I’m sure if she could have engineered it that would have been a Santa ho-ho-hoing on the roof. The first thing anyone cresting the hill on Pine Street would see was our house, blinking blinding holiday cheer. People made a point to drive by. There were also parties, open houses for the neighbors with cocktails and the particularly lethal eggnog we were allowed just a taste of, mostly to keep us from ever asking to again. New neighbors would grudgingly accept a cup, taste that it had more bourbon in it than the state of Kentucky and happily quaff; we thought it disgusting. It was the 70′s and people still drank, and a small town so not many needed to drive.

Christmas morning was sheer torture. We had to get up and eat breakfast before opening our gifts; everything in it’s proper order, thank you. Standards, you know. I think it might also have been punishment for having previously opened our (well, mine certainly) gifts. My parents and my siblings and I had a running, unspoken years-long war over the idea that gifts should be a surprise. When I became about 9 or so I started to stealthily unwrap my presents and wrap them back up rather adroitly. Just one end, so I could see what it was. The next year preventative measures were taken; the gifts were double wrapped. Then boxed up and wrapped. Then wrapped and hidden in the attic. One memorable year, they were secreted someplace in the house and despite searching every corner of two attics, 15 closets and every room in the cellar we were stumped. Until it occurred to me: the car. The wagon was out- all open space. But Mom’s Oldsmobile? Massive trunk, closed up. Of course we didn’t have the keys to that massive trunk. Dad and I used to play chess and in my head I heard “Check”. But in one of those rare moments as in chess where you realize your opponent on the board has made a fatal error, I tried the driver’s door. It was unlocked, as it would be in a closed garage in New England in the 70′s. Then I tried the glove box. Unlocked, giving access to the shiny black button that popped the trunk for you, something Dad forgot. Check and mate.

Sadly between Thanksgiving and Christmas the next year my father had a fatal heart attack while on business in Germany. Token gifts were bought, but until my mother died and the house was sold that tree never left the attic. My last several Christmases were spent with the family of my godchild, reliving decorating the tree (real this time), making the over-the-years more hilariously complicated holiday cards (so complicated one year they were finally in the mail in February) and invariably receiving a 7am phone call to please come over now because said godchild wants to open gifts but refuses to do so until I am present. It’s the only 7am phone call I’m ever happy to get.

I’m even finally old enough to enjoy the eggnog…