Zeta Winners (March’s draw from last week) – drawn by the fickle finger of fate random.org — Suzanne M., Rappleyea, and Francesca!  (Francesca, congrats, have you ever won anything? Me neither.)  I’ll email you three.  If you didn’t win – Patty’s giving away four more on yesterday’s post.  Okay, here’s Tom.

by Tom

Commenting on my post on Tuesday about Christian Dior Leather Oud, Fernando wrote after being frustrated by Dior’s website and the clueless SA’s at the Boston Dior Boutique he was turning to the Montale.  I agree.  The earlier Montale has the same four notes (oud, tobacco, leather and woods) but the volume is turned up.

Smelled side-by-side with the Dior, Leather Oud seems wan and rather pinched, the cedar feeling more Faber than fabulous.  The Montale’s tobacco has the moist fattiness of the good stuff fresh from Dunhill, the leather full, rich and aniline dyed, the wood hand-polished and the oud is, well, oudier.  Writing that this is no way overpowering and in no way unfeminine.  Birkin bags are leather after all.

I do like the Dior mind you.  I like Montale’s earlier more full bodied take on the same four notes better.  Thanks Fernando for reminding me.

$150 for 50ML at the usual suspects, available easily online.  My sample is from my bottle.

photo: Lady Gaga with her scribbled-on Birkin Bag.  Oh, the Hermanity!  I think she raffled it off, or gave it to a fan or sent it to the moon or something….well, it’s hers to do with as she would but my heart is swimming in blood…

Hey, I’m back! Well, as back as I get. YTT is over, I’m a certified yoga teacher who only has interest in teaching  homeless people, battered women and their children staying in shelters, seniors (because they are too much fun!) and my kids. It was a long haul, but a richly rewarding one. Do you have those times when you think – hey, if I could design a class and draw up my fellow students and instructors to be exactly how I would want them to be for the best learning experience – calm, centered, not annoying, genuine people without pretense – you would have my teachers and co-students in YTT. I kept looking around, expecting someone to start jumping up and down on my last nerve or to have an epic meltdown, and it never happened. Truly one of those Lightning Strikes Just once things.

But! I have some time again! So let’s gab about a couple of summery scents since we are honing in on that time of year and exiting the heavy perfumes of winter.

Before I forget, there’s another Canadian Fragrance Folks gathering in Toronto this Satuday the 16th.  Follow the link to get the details.  If you are planning a Perfume Meet-up in your city and would like me to mention it here on the blog, I’m happy to do that. Just  click on the Contact Us over there on the left and let me know the details and a link, if you have one, where people can ask any questions or sign up.  I’d do a fragrance thing in Denver, but with the exception of DSH in Boulder, the perfume world here sucks majorly.

Hermes Un jardin Sur Le Toit is Jean-Claude Ellena’s next entry in the Jardin series. Based on the rooftop garden Hermes maintains on their building at 24 Rue du Faubourg in Paris, it has notes of apple, pear, magnolia, rose, grass, basil and compost. It fairly sparkles on the open, reminds me a bit of Rose Ikebana’s rhubarb note, but it’s not listed, but it has that effect – could be the compost/grass/apple combo? I like the pear note in it, but like the one in MDCI’s La Belle Helene so much more.  Toit is easy to wear, very summery, nothing in the world wrong with it, and it fits in with the other Jardin scents. It’s not my favorite of the four? five? But it’s something that I’d reach for on a summer day and be happy to wear.  Easy for the office, wedding, nonoffensive, and, alas, forgettable.  JCE is not, of course.

March already reviewed Andy Tauer’s new collectible (not sure if this means limited?  guess so.  Nope. Just means not all batches will smell the same since the ingredients will have some variability) Zeta.  Holy smoldering Linden Blossom!!!!  I have smelled Linden in bloom.   There was a large Linden tree outside of a house that I flipped, and it was one reason why I would have liked to have kept that house.  In bloom, it just radiated summer and sunshine and sweet vibrancy.  It was one of the most sweetly alive smells I’ve known.  Notes of lemon, bergamot, sweet orange, ylang, orange blossom absolute, neroli, linden blossom, rose, orris, sandalwood and vanilla.  The citrus notes don’t Pledge up your nose at all, they just fall out of the scent and add brightness, landing softly around the hear of it.  The Tauer-ade, as March mentioned, is very light.  I love Andy’s scents, but sometimes the base is too heavy for me to wear them often. Zets is an absolute exception.  I don’t know that it’s exactly Linden Blossom, but it feels like it, which is more important.  Sometimes a thing can be chemically accurate on the exact smell, but miss how a thing feels in nature.  Linden feels like sunshine and sweet green.  Bright, sparkling, sunny, but warmed completely by the sun to make it soft.

Zeta is a scent you can sink down into and watch fluffy clouds drift by in the summer sky.  And I know exactly what scent I’m adding to my list to take to Costa Rica next month!

And a giveway of course. I know March did one already, but I suspect you guys won’t mind another. I’ll give away four samples of Zeta along with Toit, so both.  Just drop a comment to be entered, tell me whatever you want – how good looking JCE is, what your favorite sunshine perfume is, or who you think I should teach yoga to (funny suggestions are always welcome).

Oh, yeah, we are going to get a bottle of that Petit Mort thingie Duchafour did for TPC – mostly because I have a sneaking suspicion more than just me is wildly curious to sniff it. If not, well, that’s 1k down the drain.  For those of you wondering what I”m talking about.  I know I should look the other way and pretend it doesn’t exist, but curiosity is killing me.

Patty

by March

It’s been awhile since I annoyed readers with a quote from Perfumes: The Guide, so here’s one for today, regarding Serge Lutens, taken (and condensed) from Luca Turin’s review of El Attarine:

I detect in many of the recent Lutens fragrances a growing impatience, a rising tone of voice, as if he felt hindered in getting his way, in reaching what has been all along his only goal: making us swoon.  Since 2005 his fragrances have gotten louder and heavier, and also in some ways more essential, more original.  He is taking greater chances… there is something admirable in his relentless Arab obsession…

Lutens’ scents are in general the sorts of things perfumistas either love or loathe, and, in general, I love them – or at least admire the ones I don’t love (yet.)  Because Lutens scents have a way of latching on to me months or years after their release, as is the case with Miel de Bois and (ohhh yessss) El Attarine.  The only one I’ve detested was last year’s L’Eau, because I don’t care how well-done it was, the last thing I want from Uncle Serge’s House o’ 1001 Arabian Nuits is a light ozonic musk “anti-perfume” that’s supposed to call to mind a freshly-ironed shirt.

Boxeuses is a beautiful, typical Lutens, if there is such a thing – a fruity, woody leathery scent with all the macerated richness a Serge fan would expect, a scent that’s right at home in his Palais Royal boutique.

Jeux de Peau is another kind of Lutens – the weird kind.  The name means (roughly) “skin games” and it was speculated about wildly before its release – a bread note?  Jam?  Milk?  Coffee?  Notes listed on Fragrantica are milk, coconut, licorice, osmanthus and apricot, but that doesn’t strike me as entirely correct (where’s the immortelle?  the dark, leathery, spicy bits?), nor does it do the scent justice in terms of evoking its complexity.

First impressions on the skin are both familiar (anisic) and strange: burnt toast and something sweet (jam?) and for about thirty seconds, it teeters along the edge of very interesting and no, thanks – burnt toast is an interesting smell, but I’m not sure I want to wear it around all day.  Then it softens and gets less burnt and more bread-like, still with a jam-floral note (wouldn’t osmanthus jam be spectacular?) and other notes that seem bakery-related but unidentifiable individually – the inside of a boulangerie that also serves coffee?  Maybe it’s raining outside and some of the cardboard boxes for packing the treats in are slightly damp?  So: still plenty weird, but less off-putting, and I’m charmed.

Along comes the immortelle, that smell of maple syrup or fenugreek, which everyone’s mentioned, although oddly on me that particular note stays very close to the skin – I have to lean in and sniff my wrist to catch it, and then it’s quite strong, but this is nothing like, say, Goutal’s Sables.  There’s a milky-woody aspect that made me think fairly quickly of Santal Blanc, although Jeux de Peau is sweeter and more peculiar.  The drydown is lighter and darker – fruity/woody/incense, still that hint of milk, the immortelle and a spiciness that seems both floral (rose?) and edible.

If I were lining up the bottles in the Palais Royal, I suppose I’d put Jeux de Peau between Santal Blanc and Chypre Rouge, which it also makes me think of – not even so much the smell as its intensity.  Denyse at Grain de Musc used the word gravitas, which resonated with me.  I’m not sure what Mr. Lutens is trying to tell us (who is ever sure of that?) but there’s a yearning in a language I don’t speak, both lovely and maybe a little sorrowful.   Bois de Jasmin’s review referenced the same two Lutens scents I did; both these reviews are insightful.

Do I like Jeux de Peau?  I don’t know.  I think I’d rather have a bottle of Boxeuses; I’d wear it more.  Or, for that matter, a bottle of El Attarine, even though it would last me a thousand years.  But I’m exceedingly grateful Jeux de Peau exists, and that I have a sample, even if I decide I don’t need any more of it.  I appreciate a scent that wears so uncompromisingly, one that smells entirely Lutensian, which is to say: one that hasn’t been focus-grouped into lumpen, mass-market submission.  I don’t know what Serge Lutens stitches his freak flag out of (the chirping of crickets, liquid velvet, the beating of angels’ wings, and a touch of Moroccan kif?) but I’m glad he’s still letting it fly.

sample source: private sample (decant)

March

by Tom

Christian Dior Leather Oud

Okay, Oud is clearly the new fruity floral.  I fully expect that there will be
soon a new Britney fragrance called “Infected” that will pair it with Ozone
berries, bubblegum accord and A-200 Pyrinate.

It would totally tee me off if this weren’t really lovely.  This Dior has just
the perfect touch of glove leather, oud, smoke and cedar, cut with what I smell
as a bit of citrus.  It stays close to the skin but has enough throw to invite
you in to sniff.  It’s apparently marketed as a masculine scent, but to be
honest I think it falls a bit more in the category of the clutch clutching camp.
Bandit would scare it in the locker room and there are several Montales that
would cause pearls to be clutched.

Would I buy it?  Maybe, if I could actually use the Dior website, which seems to
have been made about 1998 to find out where I can get it and how much it is.
Yes, I have an actual Dior boutique blocks from my hovel and could wander over
there to see what the price might be.  If it’s there.  But that’s not the point,
Not everyone does.

With all those other leather/ouds out there sampling and stating prices, what is
Dior bringing to the table other than a moderately serviceable Oud and an
exclusionary marketing plan?

I’d give you prices, but I don’t know them.  My sample came from a friend.

by Musette

When we were in our 20s (back in the Jefferson administration)  my galpals and I  fantasized about our married coworkers’ lives -a permanent partner for Chinese food and Friday Movies, sex every night, total validation on Valentine’s Day…and the cessation of the ignominy of the Blind Date.  One by one, we entered into couplehood, thinking our problems were all behind us, especially the Blind Date.

Then came an even scarier Event: Couples Blind Dating.   When you’re single, blind dating is weird enough – but usually it’s just between you and the date.   But once you are a couple, you end up occasionally dating other couples – folks you Might Not Know But Your Partner Does.   And the stakes are often higher.  Is this an old pal? A friend from work? A Business Connection?  What a pain.  Now try it when you’re older than dirt, you’ve worked all day and you are NOT in the mood.  What do you wear?  I struggled with this in the 20 minutes I had to throw on some lipstick and a heavier jacket  (it was a night to stay in with a hot cocoa and a good book, not go gallivanting off to dinner with strangers).  I toyed with the idea of my new love, Diaghilev but  if the night sucked CheezWhiz  I would be stuck with the association.  Mitsouko was out of the question – I’m working on softening my mien, not ramping up the terror quotient.   I needed a comfy scent that would remind me of me, in case I hated every aspect of them, but a perfume I could kick to the curb for awhile if the association was too tiresome.

I chose Bas de Soie. Just so ya know, this is NOT a review of Bas de Soie.   I think I’ve already reviewed it but in case I didn’t, here it is, in a nutshell:  I like it.  It’s got a facet that I find compelling/slightly irritating (which is the compelling part, I think)…but even though I really like it, I have no emotional attachment to it.  Vi-ola!   A perfect ‘sacrifice’ scent.  I threw it on, it was great – nobody sneezed or threw up and it kept me engaged through the whole evening, which turned out just fine, btw – they’re nice people and I liked them enough to hope they thought I was nice people, too.  But if it had icked out I could’ve shelved Bas de Soie for a few months with nary a tear.

On the way home  I started wondering ‘what scents would I be willing to sacrifice, should a particular occasion blow up in my face?’   Not throwaway scents; these sacrifices would be scents you like/love that you could rely upon to get you through a potentially challenging situation but if it turned ugly it wouldn’t kill you to retire that scent for a long time (this is of particular importance for those of you who have scent/memory issues ).   I thought about the following situations and here is a random list of what might/did/could work for me:

Cold Customer Meeting: Hermes Caleche. It’s confident and ladylike, with a coolness that gives pause…but its very aloofness means I could box it on the way-back shelf if that cold customer broke my day. Ask Caleche if it cares.  It doesn’t.

New Mother in Law: Fracas (I can’t believe I might throw Fracas under the bus; then again, I’ve had great luck with mothers in law – besides, NOBODY can keep Fracas down.  She would be back, like the Terminator)

Job Interview:  TDC Charmes and Leaves. It’s lovely.  I love it.  But it’s innocuous.  Innocuous has a way of being expendable for the time it takes to get my guts back.

Amicable divorce lawyer meeting : Calyx. It was his fave.  If it got nasty, oh well.  If not, it’s a nice memory of a nice ending.  I got lucky on that one, both with the ex and the perfume. I still wear it now and then, 20 yrs later.

Wedding of someone you adore who is Not Marrying You: Shalimar perfume/extrait. It can take the hit and Lord knows, if you put enough on and  wrangle even a quick hug, the wedding night will have ‘you’ all over it.  Grab a slow dance and your aura might stick around through the honeymoon.  Not that I would know anything about that kinda thing…

Lunch with an old rival: Cartier Brillante. It makes me feel thinner and slightly richer…but if it turns out that the shrike is still richer and thinner than you it can go back in its red leatherette box for a Season.  Next time you take it out maybe you will have laid off the chocolate cake!  And you’re in fundages again.  Birkin-level fundages!  It could happen!

What are your challenging occasions?  And what scents would you be willing to sacrifice if the  scent association gods demanded?

photo:  Morning Glory/flower sacrifice