One of you mentioned on here not too long ago that somebody – Nigella Lawson? – dabbed vanilla extract behind her ears.  So I tried it; why not?  Yes, I wore vanilla extract behind my ears and on my wrists for a day, some decent-quality stuff.  The sillage isn’t great, and the lasting power is pretty minimal, but while it’s on there it’s nice enough.  I totally understand why men are supposed to find it arousing.  It’s edible and familiar and uncomplicated.

I love the smell of vanilla extract.  We go through it fairly quickly in my house, not because I’m wearing it but because we bake a lot of sweets, particularly in the winter.

So if I love the smell of vanilla so much, why don’t I own any plain-Jane vanilla scents by now, although I tried quite a few again recently?  I don’t really know.  I think it’s partly because I’ve always felt that by the time a perfume was reduced to that simple a concept, I might as well just go ahead and wear some vanilla extract.   The closest thing I own and wear to a plain vanilla is my oft-mentioned big-mini dab-on of Demeter Egg Nog, which sounds awful but smells great – not egg-noggy at all, really, but a warm, lightly spicy, not gaggingly sweet vanilla.

Guerlain’s Spiritueuse Double Vanille starts off almost vanilla-extract, with a nice touch of smoke, but unfortunately on my skin dries down to a honey-tobacco, which is lovely, but if I’m swinging that way I’d rather have the Kilian Back to Black.  For some more smokey-vanilla ideas, here’s a link to a previous post on the subject.

Leaving us with a very short list of two oddball vanillas I own a bottle of and wear:

L’Artisan Vanilia – ylang, vanilla, sandalwood.  This one has been discontinued, which shocks me, as I think it was relatively popular, and one of their oldest scents.  It was replaced by last year’s Havana Vanille in the lineup, which, in a weird plot twist, Robin at NST has reported will be renamed Vanille Absolument, I’m not sure what that’s about.

Vanilia is the one LT gives five stars to in The Guide and clearly adores, calling it a “candyfloss vanilla” and “so totally devoid of chic it has become the reference holiday from propriety and convention … there will always be time for refinement later.”  He says, and he should know, that its huge, weird candy wallop comes from ethylmaltol.  All I know is it’s loads of fun, a trashy, synthetic-smelling thing that thrills me the same way the (equally trashy, possibly even more strident) Gucci Rush thrills me.  It’s about as far away from a “natural” vanilla smell as you can get, while still being something I very much want to wear, and just dark (burnt?) enough that it’s not cloying, which is a problem I have with regular vanilla scents in the first place.  I’m not sure how old my bottle is but it’s old enough to have the lovely old-style cap, and it has some nice sandalwood in it as well.

Annick Goutal Vanille Exquise – angelica, almond, vanilla, musk, sandalwood and guaiac wood.  One of the reviews in The Guide I totally disagree with.  TS dislikes it and says it smells like burning hair.  I admit I was a bit taken aback the first time I smelled it. It’s odder, in its way, than Vanilia. You have to search out the vanilla, which is woven into a scent that smells heavily of woody-incense and a bit of bread.  To me it’s a great example (like Shalimar) of a vanilla scent that has been stretched toward loftier ambitions, which in my book Vanille Exquise achieves.  Folks who like sweeter, resiny incense scents and are willing to push their boundaries might find this worth a sniff.

No list of oddball vanillas would be complete without a mention of Hermes Vanille Galante and Guerlain Shalimar, neither of which I care for or have anything nice to say about, so I’ll give it a rest, except to say that you Shalimar freaks really ought to think hard about getting your hands on a few ml of the Shalimar Ode de La Vanille, which throws more of the focus on the vanilla end of things.  It’s still quite recognizably Shalimar, unlike the dreadful new Opium flanker.  I can’t say I like Ode, which is probably as it should be, but the drydown’s stunning.  And while I’m at it I’ll throw Givenchy Organza Indecence on here, a niche-frag perennial favorite that often doesn’t even have vanilla listed in the notes but smells nicely spicy-vanillic to me, and has comforted me through many a dark January day.

Okay, your turn – what have I forgotten from the oddball vanilla list?

March

I’m trying to remember why I planned to get on a plane for Paris on 1/11/11.  I’m not normally superstitious, but traveling on a day that is the same number seems, well, not smart?

The good news is I’ll be posting from Paris this week and Florence next week. I have no idea if I’ll be talking about perfume, but bouncing around Europe in January has become one of my most treasured things I try to do every year.  Nobody is there, it is quiet, the Fashion Tribes have not descended, no lines for gelato, museums.  There’s a peace in the more empty cafes, being bundled up against the cold.  I’m always surprised at how warm the department stores are there. You have to shed your coat within 5 minutes or you will melt.

I’m quite a lot behind on sniffing last fall’s new releases.  Parfums DelRae normally gets moved up in line – sometimes to my great dismay (Emotionelle’s melon, bleah!!) and sometimes to my great delight, like Mythique (a heavenly iris) – because they are interesting and trend off just a smidge the beaten path.

Panache has notes of Vetyver, ambrette seed, baies roses, magnolia flower, bergamot, rum extract, jasmine Sambac absolute, ylang ylang orpur, cardamom, oakwood, olibanum Somalia orpur, musks, amber, white honey.  Why vetiver is listed first is a mystery.  Not a vetiver perfume. It opens a little boozy and then quickly settles down to be a nice, warm floral honeyed hug. Not heavy on the honey, just enough to give it a smoothness that sits close to you and curls in delicately with the musk.  Entirely warm silk.  Not getting the vetiver at all or minimally, but I don’t care either. It’s beautifully made and lovely to wear.

Okay, I’m gone for a couple of weeks, so I won’t have the winners of this drawing until the end of January, but I will give away 3 samples of this to three commenters.  Are you superstitious about this 1/11/11 thing?  Do you do anything when you are superstitious? I’m not even sure what to be worried about except that sense of weirdness and my tendency to just stay home on days with numerical oddness.

Patty

by Musette

They are the stuff of legend.  That freaky little shop in San Francisco where the guy won’t even open the door, let alone sell you the sausage perfume.  The wacky ‘ fell off the back of the truck’ storefront in LA where you found the old Mitsouko jammed behind 15 bottles of Soul Curve, the treasure chest tucked in that rundown Nebraska strip mall with dusty old boxes of vintage  Diors and Cotys  (okay I made that one up)….

..I’m talking little perfume/beauty shops.  The real, indie deal.  Sometimes they are jewel boxes like Bridget Lescher’s Odalisque Beauty in Geneva, which is two rooms tiny and beautifully filled-to-the-brim with niche makeup, intriguing perfumes like Kai and Juliette has a Gun ( I scrabbed 3 Esteban samps that I will review anon), crazy-cool treatment  that I cannot resist (if you are a weird substance from Japan, you OWN me)….and Bridget, glowing like a jewel herself, making all 7 people who can fit in there feel wonderful~ (except El O who was way too big for the place.  Almost too scared to move, he backed nervously, like a Belgian in a pony stall, not taking a breath until he bumped into the door). 

Odalisque is the place you go to when you want to “enjoy being a girl” and no matter what’s going on for real,  in there you are oh! so pretty and Bridget is gonna make you prettier.  And smell good (or weird), too!  She’s too busy to do online orders but NEVER too busy to take a call.  And they ship daily.  I’m not nearly cute enough for this little shop, I swear.  But it’s still my little girlie treat.

And I’m still trying to figure out how the bathroom, shared by 5 different businesses, is always clean.  There are only two of us here and ours is always…..oh, wait.  Those 5 businesses:  all not El O.

From there, down the rabbit hole, via Mother Courreges. Nova Shoes and Perfume in Uptown.  Luckily sweet Furriner met me there – it was one of those experiences that had to be shared.  This is the Bizarro World of indie perfume shops. Ditch the Birkin and grab the Walletini – you have to walk sideways in this shop, it’s so crammed.  Craptastic shoes, funky hats and knockoff scarves by the boatload, with insane levels of vintage/ rare perfume jewels and current ickola scattered around the shelves.  Orange price stickers on everything, which Domenico, the delightful owner, tears off as he sees fit.   Once I was vetted as a non-thief he went outside for a smoke and let me play a bit ….this tiny shop is a blast.  Barbara Bui jammed behind bottles of JLo Glow and Ice Mountain Spring Water and old newspapers….Yvresse!! Van Cleef Burmane (huh?  Never heard of it but it’s purty!)…Paco Rabanne Metal, which I never see anywhere (where the hell did he get that?) – and I think he had Chaos though it ain’t cheap….btw prices depend on the mood he is in, if he thinks it’s rare/discontinued and if he’s not jonesin’ for a cig, I think. If he doesn’t like you, he raises the price – right in front of your face!  Gotta love it.  It’s worth the haul up Broadway.

That’s all I the shops I know in New Rahmland, ooh!  wait!  I almost forgot about Merz Apothecary !  If you are looking for old-school European beauty/fragrance/health…that’s your Holy Grail right there.   I’m talking the Original, not that trumpery thing in Macy’s.   Beyond Chicagoland what other indies are out there?  Surely every decent-sized town has somebody who flies the funky perfume/beauty freak-flag?  So they might  have to sell CKOne to keep the heat on.   But I’ll betcha they have a bottle or two of something wacky in the corner, hmmm?   I’m throwing it open to you, my darlings.    What’s out there?  I know March’s love for Art with Flowers, and the vaunted Roger Beck in Minneapolis used to do something similar..  And Scent Bar and Aedes are in their own galaxy of Fabulosity.  But there’s gotta be more… Is there ‘little shop’ life on other perfume planets?  Cough ‘em up so we can do a Road Trip!

Otherwise known as what I like to smell when I’m trying to shut my mind off for ten minutes.

With the new year, I decided to do the 30-day meditation challenge. It’s pretty simple, you just take 10 minutes every day to sit with yourself. I’m sure many of you do meditate or have tried it or at least are familiar with why/how you do it.

Given my proclivity to be a flibbertygibbet, meditation is a challenge, but I’ve got three days under my belt. The first day was torture, the second day was more torture because I remembered how much I hated the first day.  Yesterday, I sorta looked forward to my torture, which wasn’t all that tortured.  I expect that to vary from day to day, but I’m fully committed to doing this because someone like me really needs something like this.  I don’t even want to talk about my latest OCD that involved a lot of vegan cookbooks, a pressure cooker and — well, it won’t be pretty, I do know that.

As I sat om mani padme om’ing in my head last night, my hand went up to brush my hair back, and I caught a whiff of something spectacular and comforting. I had complete forgotten I had put on Soivohle’s Meerschaum on my hand.  Then I spent the remainder of my ten long minutes thinking about what a great tobacco scent it is, and it reminded me of my dad and some of my best memories of late nights and the scent of burning tobacco when I was happy, content, protected, loved in that kid way that just can’t happen to you gain after the age of 13.  This isn’t the more sweet version like Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille, nor is it as way in your face as Kilian’s Back to Black.  It’s rich, pungent, but wears close to the skin so you don’t walk around screaming “I’m a Tobacco shop!!!” with your sillage.  It’s got an exquisite little cinnamon note that floats around in the tobacco leaves and the burnt matches.  I don’t know what memory she is working off of, but is the ideal of tobacco for me.

Clear, not overpowering, and deeply meditative in the most comforting way.  Now, I don’t know that it helped my meditation at all. Meditation doesn’t have a goal except to just do it and keep working it out, but it did get me to thinking about good meditative scents. So I’m adding to my 30-day meditation challenge by taking a different scent with me each night and seeing if that impacts my fidgeting or not.  Ideas?  Incense scents are a natural, so I’ll be trying all of the CdG incense series, and I’ve got some Cire Trudon scent bombs that I’ll try. I’m thinking some PdNs would work well here, like D’une Fete.

If you do meditate, do you take scent with you?  Is it distracting?  Not?  What scents work best?

Patty