Hope you all had a fabulous Valentine’s Day.  Mine was, well, surprising.  The best kind.

First the winners of the Xerjoff, using a random number generator

The winner of the big discovery set – Madea.

Winner of the sample set of sample sets of Elle, Irisss, XXY and Homme – Tara and Linda B

Winner of the sample set of Oesel, Lua, Nio, Oroville and Ibitra -Dremybluz.

Winners of the Richwood samples – Hemlock Sillage, Nozkoz, taffynfontana, Silvia, tammy, Ms Christian, goose,  Gail S.,  sherobin, and Abyss.

To get your prize, click on Contact us on the left, send me your address, remind me what you won (the names in the samples), and I’ll get it maile dout to you!

A couple of weeks ago, I started Yoga Teacher Training.  At this point, I have no wish to teach yoga – but I always remain open to all possibilities – but I did want to go deeper into yoga theory, alignment, anatomy, meditation, ayurvedic practice, and this is a great course to do that.

One of the principles of the Yoga Sutras is not to take more than you need.  I’ve been thinking about what that means practically. I’m a girl who likes her stuff.  Not a hoarder, I give lots of my things away if I find out I don’t use it or don’t use it enough or someone needs it more.  And I’ve been trying to think of how I deal with material things and making sure I only take what I need.  And how on earth does that fit in with my perfume habit?

But while I have a lot of perfume in my personal collection, I don’t hoard it either.  Even the super-rare stuff, I spray it, use it, let other people try it.  I’ve always believed that stuff is fun to have only to the extent that I’m not attached to it or want to have more than someone else.

I think this is how the yoga sutras could be interpreted. I supposed they could be interpreted as well to mean austerity. If that’s the case, then I’m probably out. I like being comfy and surrounded by lovely thing that smell good, look good, feel good.

In your perfume collection, where do you fall on the collector spectrum?  Do you collect just to collect?  Do you collect to enjoy and share?  Do you treat a few precious drops like gold and keep it up in the proverbial fragrance china cupboard and never use it for every day, but only for special occasions?  Do you just get a thing here or there, use it up, then maybe get more?  I’m interested to see how people look at the fragrances they have or want, and is our love of scent spiritually risky in terms of forming attachments to something.

It strikes me that fragrance is a terrible hobby to have if you have attachment issues.  Anything you love will be discontinued, will go bad, will evaporate.  It’s almost like we love something we all know absolutely won’t/can’t last. We spray it, enjoy it, and then it is gone.

Patty

A warm welcome back! to our Guest Poster, Ann!

Thank you, Mrs. K. I guess you did me a favor all those years ago. As odd as it might sound, I can give partial thanks (or blame) to a school-bus driver for my perfume addiction. It was sometime in the late ’60s and I was riding a bus on a field trip to a Native American community in Florida, near Lake Okeechobee. I think I must have been around 9 or 10. After we finished our visit, we were allowed a few minutes in the gift shop before getting back on the bus for the return trip. As I browsed, I happened upon a bin of tiny silver tins, filled with the most gloriously scented orange blossom solid perfume. I was enchanted! They tickled my fancy so that I used my lunch money to buy two of them on the spot, caring not a whit that PB&J sandwiches would be my lot for days. Little did I know that in that moment the stage was being set for a lifelong obsession.

Fast forward several months and we have a new bus driver. This woman is all-business, no-nonsense, and shows it by (horror of horrors!) assigning seats. This is not so bad in the mornings, but on the ride home, in the hot Florida afternoons (with no A/C in my ancient school), it turns disastrous for me. For my assigned seat is behind a boy, who despite being in my grade, is several years older (due to juvenile delinquent tendencies) and — he SMELLS!! Not just a little B.O., mind you, but a potpourri of unknown scents that combine to stink to high heaven. My childish nose has never experienced an assault quite like this. I lower my window as far as it will go and am just about to stick my head out like a dog, when the proverbial light bulb goes off over my head. I dig into my purse, pull out my little tin, apply liberally, and ride the rest of the way home in relative bliss with scented wrists pressed to nose. Saved by the solid perfume! Who knew a good smell could be such a life-saver?

After this fragrant epiphany, my curiosity bubbled over. I sampled my grandmother’s Evening in Paris (not too bad), and later, my mother’s Ma Griffe (whew — too something! I didn’t have the words or experience to describe it then except perhaps “bitter”), and her YSL Rive Gauche (better, but only just). And then came the fun of exploring the crop of “young” scents: Avon’s Sweet Honesty, Coty’s Sweet Earth solid perfume compacts, and Love’s Baby Soft (although I was far more partial to the rain and lemon varieties in that line). I did a lot of baby-sitting and had more than enough experience with that powdery scent on the business end of little ones’ bottoms.

Anyway, from then on, I was hooked. As my horizons broadened through high school, college and the work world, so did my perfume discoveries, which happily continue to this day. And now I’m delighted to be along on this ride with all you wonderful fellow perfumistas (unless any of you insist on wearing Alexander McQueen’s Kingdom, and then I’m finding another seat). So I would love to know, what was your perfume epiphany? When was the moment that the world of scent opened up and pulled you into its fragrant embrace?

Happy Valentine’s Day !!!!

photo: girl on stinky school bus – some rights reserved

candy photo: candyaddict.com – some rights reserved

Don’t worry; this isn’t going to be a lecture about how you should love your neighbours, be kind to animals, or stuff like that. This is actually a pretty inspiring story, and it involves perfume. What’s better than that?

Wednesday night, I was typing away on a project, and sort of paying attention to the show Dragons Den on CBC. I believe there’s a US equivalent called “Shark Tank” or something like that. Anyway, it’s like “The Gong Show” for entrepreneurs. People pitch their ideas to 5 very successful Canadian venture capitalists to see if they can entice them into investing in their ideas. Of course, more people get turned away than receive financing. It’s almost like watching Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” without having to invest weeks and weeks watching the assorted soap operas develop. Either the Dragons say, “I’m out”, or they make an offer. It’s up to the individual entrepreneurs whether or not to accept.

One Barb Stegemann from Nova Scotia faced the Dragons with her fragrance. She handed them each a bottle and explained that it was made with organic orange blossom essence grown in Afghanistan by farmers whom she had contracted to grow the flowers for her, instead of growing poppies. She was asking for financing to expand distribution of her scent, explaining that her project was offering an honest living to farmers who once grew poppies for opiates. The Dragons were intrigued, and a few of them had very strong, positive reactions to her fragrance. When asked why she was embarking on this venture, Stegemann replied that she was doing it to fulfill a promise to a friend of hers, a Canadian Forces soldier who was badly wounded while serving in Afghanistan. After she revealed that, the tears started to flow, the wallets flew open, and the purse strings were untied.

I could tell right away that Barb Stegemann meant  business. Her demeanour and her determination were obvious. In other words, the woman really had her shit together. The Dragons were not only impressed by the scent and the story, they were impressed by the packaging and the overall presentation. Good for her. I immediately Googled “The 7 Virtues”, landed on the Web site, and was ready to order up a bottle of the scent, when I saw that Barb got her wish: The 7 Virtues is now available at 13 Bay locations across Canada, and at several independent boutiques. One of the Bay locations is Yorkdale, and I couldn’t get over there fast enough.

The 7 Virtues Afghanistan Orange Blossom Eau de Parfum is heavenly: it is the perfect blend of orange blossom, freesia, with a bit of jasmine lurking in the background. I loved it on the spot. And many of you know I’m a sucker for a good orange blossom. And it is good.

The story gets better: the second scent, The 7 Virtues Noble Rose of Afghanistan, is a spicy rose after my own heart: rose, clove, peppercorn and carnation. I’m not the biggest rose fan; but when it’s spiced up like this one is, I’m in. Each bottle is $70 Canadian for 50 ml. How could you not?

In the grand scheme of things, a couple of bottles of scent are never going to solve the world’s problems. But when someone comes along who wants to do their tiny part to try, you have to admire that. There are plans in the works for a scent that will utilize Vetiver grown in Haiti and other scents that will include ingredients from poverty stricken areas of the world, where people need ways to earn a living. I know this isn’t a new idea – the Body Shop, Lush, Ojon, and countless other beauty companies claim to have Fair Trade ingredients in their products, and are helping people all over the world. I’m all for it. I’m even more impressed when I get to witness the birth of something, and watch it grow. I only hope that Barb and her fragrances continue to help the impoverished people of Afghanistan. It’s inspiring, uplifting, and it doesn’t stink. It actually smells wonderful.

For more about Barb and The 7 Virtues, click here.

Disclosure: Both scents were sampled at The Bay.

The second big problem with writing a perfume review is that you grab something you haven’t worn in a while, put it on, fall back in love with it, sit down to write about it while obsessively sniffing at your scented hand, tossing superlatives around in your head, Googling for notes, and find the review you wrote over two years ago.  And I don’t care because I remember why I loved it, just wasn’t wearing it because, well, I didn’t have any!  How many parallels this runs into in my personal life kind of scares me.

It’s Le Labo Gaiac.  I don’t think I have anything new to say except it’s really the perfect cozy warm winter scent. It’s been snuggling up to my nose from my hand all day.  And the sun is out.  It fits in with my more contemplative frame of mind of balancing the dark with the light – preventing dark from beating the crap out of light and making sure light doesn’t burn so brightly and maybe a little too brightly in an effort to pretend dark doesn’t need to exist.

Y’all seemed to be most in favor of the Xerjoffs staying together or at least keeping the big pieces of it togther, so what I decided to do is keep the Discovery Set together in its cool little unseen kit as a prize for one commenter.  It is Discovery Set Part Two, and it has Dhofar, Modoc, Uden, Oroville, Nio and Kobe in it, each of them 15 mls. I’m not sure what any of those scents are like.  I’ve thought of a thousand different ways to do a contest for this, but in all of them, I’d wind up being the judge and probably make someone mad.   I thought about letting you guys vote, and then thought that could be an even bigger mess – I went so far as to write it all out, then contemplated all the ways it could go wrong and deleted the whole mess.  So random draw for this big prize.

Then I have a carded sample set of Elle, Irisss, XXY and Homme that I’ll give away as one set to another commenter.  I have two sets of these, and the samples are really generous. I wanted to keep some of the other set for myself to try and for reference, but don’t needa lot, so I’m going to decant out a sample set of the same scents for another commenter from my carded sample set.

I’ve also got a carded sample set of Oesel, Lua, Nio, Oroville and Ibitra.  I’ll do the same thing with this. I’ll decant out some  of this into a sample set for another commenter to win.

Then they sent me a large’ish sample/decant of Richwood.  It’s a gorgeous scent, and really rich. I’m still not sure what I think of it yet.  I should have at least 10 samples of this that I’ll give out to another 10 commenters.

So!  We will wind up with 11 winners,  I think that’s a good compromise and gives a nice big prize and several nice smaller prizes and spreads around the Xerjoff generosity.  When I draw the winners (On Tuesday, a day after Valentine’s Day), I’ll announce them in my blog post.

Comment away to be entered.  Tell me which one of these you’d most like to smell or bag on the new American Idol judges. I’m a skosh conflicted about them – I miss Simon, but Steven Tyler and J-Lo are really kind of likable.  If they’d just booted Randy, who seems to never offer anything to the discussion beyond DAWWWWG, and given us, well, anyone interesting, I could probably be happy enough. Even though I’ll absolutely hate myself in three weeks when I’m still watching it with all the bad contestants left in it that are boring as tadpoles because they are 15 and haven’t lived.

Patty

When I did my post on oddball vanillas recently, a reader in the UK informed me that there was a new scent at L’Occitane – Miel & Vanille (“honey and vanilla,”) not to be confused with their regularly stocked honey-lemon fragrance (Miel & Citron) with which I’m familiar.  A search locally and through the US, including their website, produced absolutely nothing about Miel & Vanille, so I’m assuming it was exclusive either to the UK specifically or to Europe.  Anyway, I managed to get my mitts on some, because I like L’Occitane, and Honey-Vanilla sounded pretty darn perfect to me right now.

The only notes I can find are via Fragrantica: “a sparkling and sweet fragrance that blends fresh and gourmet aromas. Top notes are Italian lemon and cinnamon. The heart of honey from Provence and delicious caramel is placed at the base of vanilla and patchouli. Available as EDT.”

How is it?  Yummy, and not anywhere as sweet as you might think, looking at those notes.  I definitely get the citrus at the top, making it smell for a minute or two sort of like the honey-lemon one; I wouldn’t have identified “cinnamon” but it’s got a nice spiciness to it that stays around through the whole scent and helps keep it from being too cloying.  The thought of caramel makes me queasy, and I’m happy to report that through repeated testings I can’t pick it out at all.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of vanilla, over a base that is spicy-woody (I assume that’s the patchouli.)  It’s clean-smelling but not “fresh” in the sense of some modern-aquatic note.  It has that L’Occitane vibe – not the most complex scent on the market, but really pleasant, and it doesn’t smell like something I’d get hit with by the ladies at Macy’s.  It has average lasting power, about what I’d expect from the notes.  It stays, musky and honeyed and spicy, on the sleeves of my sweater for about a day.  I’m not big on gender-lines in fragrance in the first place, but I think a man could totally get away with this.  It doesn’t smell like cake batter and the woodiness shines through.

So, where can you get it?  Well, as far as I can determine, you can’t.  It must have been available abroad for about two minutes, maybe over the holidays as an LE?, and I’ve been checking periodically and don’t even see it on eBay international.  Googling didn’t come up with anything.  If one of you has a hot source you feel like sharing in comments, feel free to do so.

PS  Real life (work and non-work) has been interfering with my perfumage; no doubt some of you have noticed I’m posting less.  Nothing dire, but for the time being my time online, including blogging, is pretty limited.

March