By March

I had a different review written up for today, a tongue-in-cheek piece spoofing Serge Lutens, which I’ve now decided is stupid and wrong and not funny at all, like reading the Tiger Mother try to explain (as she did in a local reading) that to some degree she was just funnin’ about her parenting creed.  You know, sorta like reading David Sedaris.  Heh heh.  And no, the local audience of peasant-liberals, wielding their hand-knit, locally sourced, eco-friendly pitchforks weren’t buying her line of defense any more than I am.

Which brings us to the scent of the week, and today’s review, L’Artisan Al Oudh, which thanks to Lee I never fail to think of as  “‘You Can Call Me Al’ Oudh,” complete with Paul Simon’s voice and that nose-flute-thingy tootling along in the background.  (Damn you, Lee!  I miss you.)  Notes via LuckyScent are cumin, cardamom, pink pepper, date, rose, neroli, incense, saffron, leather note, oud, Atlas cedar, castoreum, civet, sandalwood, patchouli, myrrh, vanilla and tonka bean.

My recollection of the arrival of Al Oudh among the perfumistas was: a big, fat yawn, as hardcore oudh fans aren’t going to find what they’re looking for here.  And also, that as it dries down, it’s a kinda generic man-scent smell.  Also, oudh is apparently the new lychee/pink pepper/martini – Robin pronounced 2009 as the “year of oudh” in her review of this thing a year ago, and I’d say 2010 continued the trend, and 2011 … isn’t every third review on a perfume blog now stocked with the word “oudh?”  Personally I find that odd, as (personally) I find oudh’s somewhat medicinal smell, and its frequent pairing with a shovelful of rose, not exactly universally appealing.

The weather’s crummy and we continue Blahfest 2011, The Boxed Set in 3-D over here at my house – a deadly concoction of snow-days off from school, too many rugrats (who had all these children?!) and the usual work/life drama… it’s the perfect time to continue March the Maleficent’s current theme of Scents With Too Much Cumin, in no small part because it keeps the other inmates far, far away from me.

How did I miss all that cumin in Call Me Al Oudh?  I have no idea.  I also have no idea how I’ve managed to fall in love, or at least serious like, with yet another scent by my faithful nemesis Bertrand Duchaufour – to the extent that I am concerned I have dropped into an alternate universe, or sustained some sort of nasal damage.  How can people not love this thing?   I get spicy, peppery incense, a truckload of cumin, saffron (! love love love!), some leathery vanilla, and a nice dollop of …. uh, wow, whut is that — ahahahahahaha the civet, and it goes on that way all day without either getting boring or starting to work my last nerve, the way, say, Navigateur does sometimes.   Al Oudh is to oudh as Traversee du Bosphore is to Turkish delight, and I’m fine with that.  Also, those two smell great side by side (not precisely layered – I put one on the left arm and the other on the right.)  The creamy sweetness of Bosphore and the animalic funk of Al Oudh suit each other perfectly, a match made in perfumista heaven, at least for me, this week.

sample source: private sample; bottle image from L’Artisan website.  The bottle’s gorgeous, but I still miss their old-style caps.  I think those big bolt-looking caps are so inelegant.

March

Well, cats and kittens, in addition to being on my home at Perfume Smellin Things, I’m going to be posting here on Tuesdays for a while.  I’m considering it a “special guest star” type of deal, since I’ve secretly always wanted to be Amanda Woodward.  Really I’m thrilled.

For my first review, I’m not going to do a review.  What I’d like to do is get a discussion started about buying perfume.  Personally, I’m at the point where I don’t think I need to buy any more perfume.  That’s right.  Even ones that I’ve tried and absolutely adored I don’t necessarily want to buy.  Why?  I can’t do so without thinking about The Collection.  I think if I actually numbered them for you all some of you would sneer- it’s most likely not even up to the number of my age.  So many of them are sadly neglected, and not because I don’t love them.

Some are just too, well, too much.  For instance, Ambre Sultan. It’s stunning: the penultimate amber, thick, warm, almost glottal in its resiny heat.  It’s also almost unwearable for me outside of my house.  Somehow this tall pasty WASP cannot pull it off.

Some just get lost in the shuffle.  The other day I rediscovered the bottle of French Lover (Bois D’Orage in the States, but I had it shipped from France so I could have the name) and wondered where it had been all my life?  It smells like Clark Kent about to rip off his shirt in a phone booth.

Some are kittens that sometimes develop claws.  I love the bottle of Mandarine Mandarin that my friend brought be back from Paris as a thank you for some task I had done, but once in a while that happy satsuma delight becomes celery tendrils that threaten to strangle me.

Of course some of this could be that I have chosen to write about these scents.  I’m not getting paid in any way to do so mind you, and I would most likely do so even if there weren’t the internets for me to post to, much in the same way that I would continue to try to find the perfect gelato, hair goop or bath salts.  I suppose in my own way I am a sensualist: I cannot afford to indulge myself with trips to glamourous locations or luxury automobiles or designer duds.  There’s also the reality that I hate to fly, don’t care about ostentatious transportation that’s going to be at the tender mercies of supermarket parking lots and could neither afford nor fit into those clothes.

But I can (sort of) afford the sniffage habit.

I think I’ve reached a tipping point.  I’m going to sample endlessly, write perhaps more than you’d like to read.  But I’m not going to buy.  The bottle of Cravache I got last week I don’t count because that was a gift certificate from Bitsy for Christmas.

illus.  pourya’s blog (terrific Iranian music reviews).  some rights reserved

You’d think I’d know how to handle this by now – I’ve lived in the Midwest for the bulk of my life and we have these absurd blizzard-to-tropics events every Winter.   Two weeks ago it was Apocalypse,  4 feet of snow with -4F.  Yesterday it was 65F with a warm, wet wind.    Now it’s that bitey cold, dirty Spring…the ice is still at the turn of the shallow part of the river (a more poetic take on it here)  but I can smell wet dirt in the fields…nothing’s dumb enough to try to grow just yet ..but you can tell it will happen soon.  Or not.  Maybe it’s that quick-tease of spring to come….there’s nothing like a wet wind to give one hope……but then the weather drops 25 degrees in 12 hrs…the onset of Spring actually creates more anxiety for me than the onset of Winter, a restless uneasiness caused, perhaps, by the fear that the world (my world, at any rate) could slip back into darkness.  That those clouds, skidding in on that warm, wet wind, could be bearing yet another blizzard.  Perfume choices are tough right now.  It seems faithless to cling to the heavier scents when Nature is maybe trying to cut me a break, yet the really light scents just can’t handle the mercurial temps.   The solution seems to be  GREEN - but not the sunny, warm, greenery-yallery greens of later spring.  No, this weather is calling for  the resinous, balsamic,  sharp and intense green of Galbanum, with its aura of wistfulness and melancholy.

There’s something rather romantic about Galbanum.  I always think of rainy, windswept moors and stolen kisses on the heath (never mind that I wouldn’t be caught dead on a rainy moor and I suspect heaths in February require boots  – sooo over that!)..Galbanum scents are the scents of promise, the idea of  a new adventure, with a slight tug of Things Left Undone.  Until I did a bit of research I didn’t even know that the scents I reach for at this time of year were so galbanum-centric (because I don’t pay attention to notes).  What I don’t do, though, is actually wear these scents.  Not yet.  They can be thin and precarious in the treacherous, shifting temps and the few times I’ve tried it I’ve gotten all itchy and chilly, like when you forget that cotton sweater and need just One More Layer between you and your jacket.  I’m in luck with my galbanum collection – most of them are pretty inexpensive which means I can enjoy them in the safety of my home.  I have been  going all Heathcliff and Cathy, scenting my sheets with Balmain de Balmain and playing water sprite with Jacomo Silences and the shower curtain.  I am skirting the edge of profanity here – according to this site, this sheet-spraying spree puts me in danger of being cut off from my father’s kin.  Hmmm….if I spray the dogs. …..nah!   I’m not louche enough to waste vintage Miss Dior or Chamade that way – I’ll be ready to spray those on skin in about 3 weeks.  February is…well it’s FEBRUARY!  That means it’s psychically cold, even if it’s 65F for a day.   I save No. 19 for August.

What’s going on with the  rest of you?  Are you ready to transition from one season to another? We’re now back to frozen sleet.    I’m so ready for Spring  – mud, fog and all!

photo:  Foggy Island – Denise Bratschun

Maison Francis Kurkdjian Pour Le Soir was a lovely revelation – warm, cuddly, easy to wear.  So when MFK released Absolue Pour Le Soir, my first thought was -  More yummy!!!!

Sweet Cuminy Moses!  This is a sweaty body-fest that makes my eyes water.  Notes of benzoin from Siam, cumin, ylang-ylang, Bulgarian and Iranian rose honey, incense absolute, Atlas cedarwood and sandalwood.  In other words, cumin, cumin, cumin and more cumin, amped up by some incense to make sure you don’t miss the cumin.

All I can do is stare at my hand and wonder how in the world I could ever wear that out in public without people commenting on how nice it was for “that jezebel” to appear in public right after being freshly fu exercised.

To be fair, it does settle down a bit after the open, moving from a 18.7 on the Skank Projection Scale (out of a possible 15) to a 15.4.

You’ve been warned, and I’ll share!!!!  Two lucky (?!) commenters will win a small sample of this, appropriately enclosed in a double baggie so your mailman or children won’t get hurt.

What’s the scariest skank you’ve ever whiffed?  Love it, hate it?  I remember smelling MKK for the first time and recoiling, but now I think of it as a wonderful, soft skin scent because that open is so brief, and the rest of it is so gorgeous.

Patty

For the life of me, I can’t remember if I visited the niche perfumery Memo on my Paris trip last spring.  I meant to; it was on Grain de Musc’s left-bank list.  I was definitely in the area.  Maybe I couldn’t find it, or they were closed that day.  I don’t know.

Then a sweet friend sent me a decant of Memo Manoa out of the blue, the way sweet friends do sometimes.  You perfumistas know all about that.  This was some weeks back, and I’ve been working through my decant, which is sitting right here beside my laptop as I type this, trying to decide what to write about it.

As you know, I have a weakness for quoting the folderol on perfume websites, so here’s the partial blurbage for Manoa: “In the heart of Inca country lies Manoa, the City of Gold. Legend has it that El Dorado, a young man entirely covered in gold, would carry the offerings of his people aboard a diamond-studded boat once a year. He would navigate on an immaculate lake to unload these gifts on Manoa, an island formed over time by the accumulation of treasures…”  Man, I can picture the cover of that soft-core novel on the shelf in the romance section of Barnes & Noble right now, can’t you?  El Dorado, with his, uh, entirely-gold-covered and airbrushed six-pack abs; and our awaiting maiden above, all lipsticked and smokey-eyed.  Also, for some reason, the immaculate-lake detail cracks me up.

Fragrantica was a bit more specific: “warm and spicy, exotic and mystical, with fresh hues that radiate a golden aura. It opens with sparkling bergamot, lemon and ginger. The heart contains notes of iris, tonka bean and cypress, laid on the oriental base of opoponax, vanilla and labdanum.”

At first, Manoa smells most strongly of the (un?)holy union of opoponax (sweet myrrh) and labdanum, for which we could run together a whole slew of adjectives – sweet, resiny, powdery, animalic, woody, musky, leathery, amber.  Only that list doesn’t work at all, because Manoa has to be taken in as a whole.  Smelling Manoa is like gazing intently at a single, large sheet of hammered gold leaf.  It has a soft, dense, seamless opacity, both hypnotic and mildly narcotic, a little strange – a resiny comfort scent worn by David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth.  It’s both baffling and impossible to turn away from.

Then, the sheet of gold leaf is turned on its edge and, improbably, begins to separate into minute, individual layers as I go about my day.  There’s the smell of smoke at the top, like brush being cleared at a great distance in the desert.  In the middle:  the faint sweetness of vanilla.  And it all rests in a basket woven from wet, fresh-sour reeds, an exotic smelling item I might find in a street market in Cambodia.

Sixteen-year-old Diva loved it, exclaiming (after I’d sprayed it on for the 27^th time), “that smells soooooo gooood.”  When pressed for details, she came up with “spicy” and “smoke, but not like a fireplace.  More like something outside.”  Then fourteen-year-old Enigma said “something smells fantastic, what is that?” and gave it “three thumbs up.”  Considering the amount of perfumage they’re subjected to over here, that kind of reaction is notable.

Do I like it?  I still have no idea.  But it’s so interesting.  If it were less weird it’d be a comfort scent, sort of like Via del Profumo’s Mecca Balsam, only waaaaaaay less sweet.  But if it were more comforting it wouldn’t be anywhere near as wonderfully peculiar.

Browsing the Memo website, I could kick myself for not investigating further.  “Inle – An osmanthus submerged in a cloud of tea.  Moon Safari - The leather side of Vetiver. Siwa – Vanilla revealed by a cereal.”  (I really want that one and Inle.)  And there’s more on their site.

I’m wondering if any of you have smelled any Memos?  I see Siwa and a couple others on The Perfumed Court.  I might have to break my vow of poverty and order one up.

PS.  Here’s TPC’s notes for Siwa: cinnamon, aldehydes, narcisse, whiskey, popcorn, musc and vanilla.   As they say, lol.  That’s either got to be great or awful.

source: private sample;  image from Memo website.

March