by our Mixologist, Ann!

Most days, it’s challenging enough to wear one complicated scent,beautiful though it may be.
But there are other times, when wearing something fairly simple, I’ve thought,

“Hmmm … how can I jazz this up a bit?” Or “Wouldn’t a spritz of XXXX really make this sing?”

I’ve not experimented a whole lot, for reasons of economy (I own
very few full bottles with which to spray with abandon) and fear

(if it’s awful, will I scrub my skin raw trying to get rid of it?).

Now I doubt that anything will help me to cover up or camouflage my nemesis, cumin,

(apologies to all you fans out there), but if you know of something that tonesit down, please share.

In my limited experience, however, I’ve happened upon a fewthat really work for me.

My utility player, Guerlain’s Cologne du Parfumeur, quite nice on its own,
creates a great base for nearly any other scent.

And, at least on me, has proved to have a sort of soothing effect

on scents have gone a bit off-kilter on my skin. If you can’t scrub ‘em, dilute ’em, I say.

Then there’s Profumum’s Acqua Viva, sent to me by a sweet friend.

Its near-pucker-inducing tang is quite the wake-up call for quieter

scents. For instance, SL’s Fleurs de Citronnier is lovely alone but can

go a little too soft after a while. So when I want some real citrus fireworks, I light the SL

up with a tiny spritz of the Viva. The AV also pairs nicely with Kai, adding a new

dimension to one of my favorites.

I know that Bond No. 9 is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I find that a great

yin and yang vibe emerges from combining their Little Italy and New Haarlem

scents (each terrific on its own as well). It’s perfect for those in-between days when

one’s too light, the other too heavy — thus, they happily meet in the middle.

On paper, Bond’s Chinatown sounds like it should be perfect for me,

but alas, it lists something fierce on my skin. But in a happy accident,

I found that a spritz of Jo Malone’s Orange Blossom atop it rights the ship and makes the C-town go from nearly scrub-worthy to something approaching lovely.

Now I’m not much on fig, but in experimenting one day,

I tried Diptyque’s Philosykos under a spritz of their Do Son and it was unexpectedlynice.

The fig created an elegant base and toned down the brightness of the Do Son.

And I suspect it would be good paired with the line’s Eau Duelle too.

Because it seems to play so nicely with others, it might be the very thing to make a fig fan out of me.
Now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear what scent combinations (hits or misses) that you’ve created when playing mad scientist.

I was going though my diminished collection yesterday and noticed that I am almost to the point of draining a few of my bottles. I know I’ve previously regaled you with my “draining” exploits, but the act of finishing a bottle has taken on a whole new meaning since my psychotic aunt swiped the majority of my collection.

As it stands right now, I’ve got a precious few drops left of Hermessence Rose Ikebana, about a 1/4 of a bell jar full of Rahat Loukhoum, maybe 6 spritzes of Philosophy’s Unconditional Love,  Givenchy Ange ou Démon Le Secret and Antonia’s Flowers Sogni del Mare. These are all summer staples of mine that I am quickly sending to the graveyard of empty bottles. Will I replace them? I don’t know.

So, that leads me to my questions: Are there any fragrances in your collection that you are close to draining? Will you replace them? As usual, inquiring minds want to know. And, not to worry – I won’t attempt to hack your mobile!

Have a great weekend!

The winner is Jessica. Please hit the “Contact Us” button on the left to give your shipping info so we can pass it on to Roxana.

Honestly, I swear, I was going to write a post today, but I sliced my finger on my mandolin making raw pizza (so yum, seriously, the crust was nuts and spices and sun-dried tomatoes), and it bled like a stuck pig for an hour – soaked through two bandages and one paper towel. It’s all bandaged up now, but I had to do a spreadsheet for work that was on a deadline, and this poor little finger is over there screaming at me for pounding it against the keyboard.

I can’t make it suffer more, so I’m going to just give you the winners of the Creed samples from last week and then let you discuss amongst yourselves what you’re most excited about – the new Creeds, the new Serge, the new Tauer Pentachords, the new Kilian, and whatever else new that is coming out or even something that you find yourself wearing nonstop right now, old or new.  I’m drooling after that Kilian after reading Tom and Grain de Musc’s review. You?

Winners of the Creed Royal-Oud sample:  snowcrocus and Joanna. Just click on Contact Us on the left, send me your address and remind me what it is I’m sending you. You’ll get a quick “got it” response from me, then you’ll know you didn’t land in my spam filter, which happens more than I’d like.  Thanks for playing!!!

Patty

 by the Old Bat Musette

Most hard-core perfumistas bemoan the addition of flankers, especially when it’s a flanker of a True Classic.  I mean, c’mon – how on earth could you do a Mitsouko flanker?  What would you call it?  Mitsouko Mist?  How ’bout   L’Heure Aqua?  Jickette? Djediddy?

….can we stop with the collective grave-spinning, there,  Jacques  et al  – we’re just joking here…..or are we?

The House of Guerlain has been tinkering with the Shalimar ‘brand’ – again.   I usually ignore these ‘variations’ but Gaia over at the Non-Blonde had a practical,  laissez-faire point of view, regarding her niece,  here  which led me to Octavian’s elegantly enraged review here – two very interesting-but-different perspectives that piqued my curiosity. The newest, Initial, has been described as ShaLite,  My First Shalimar, Shalimar for People Who Hate Shalimar, etc….

So, .finally accepting that this trend is NOT GOING TO GO AWAY I decided to investigate.

Off to Neiman-Marcus to spritz.  Waaaaal….hum.  Huh.  Notes for Initial are citrus, green notes, bergamot, orange, rose, jasmine, vetiver, patchouli, vanilla, white musk, tonka bean.   But it doesn’t smell like any combination created by the venerable House of Guerlain.  Instead, it smells like a  concoction created by lovesick 14-yr old, mixing a bunch of scents in a plastic milk jug in the hot sun, listening to the same Justin Bieber song for the 356th time,  who lucked out because her mom had decent perfumes for her to play with.   Oddly enough, that is not as scathing an indictment of Initial as you would expect.  But let’s go back to the original Shalimar for a minute.   Love or hate it, nothing about the original Shalimar feels synthetic.  And generic is not a word ever associated with the Blue-topped Beast; if anything it sometimes feels too animalic, like an oily tiger ate an entire  bushel of vanilla beans or something equally terrifying.  I’m also not saying Shalimar smells natural – it has never aspired to that – but it smells like a perfume structured out of non-synthetic materials.  Shalimar Initial  has the barest of traces of Shalimar in its makeup  and it’s got a LOT of plastic- it’s designed for people who, most likely, got pulled into the display or the child-supermodel adverts.  They want to smell like their peers and Shalimar Initial will not disappoint .  There is no depth to this scent, no nuance – it’s a gourmandy floriental with about as much heft as one of those paper umbrellas you get in a fruity cocktail.   Very ‘youthful’, very innocuous – and for lovers of the real Shalimar, especially an Old Bat like me,  a real heartbreaker.  But I can totally understand how the House came to release such a thing; in my opinion, sad as it is, Shalimar’s reign is already over  – it and its contemporaries L’Heure Bleue, Jicky, Mitsouko, etc already languish behind the counter in so many upscale stores, upstaged bythe newbies and flankers for the larger, incoming mass market..

Ow!! Don’t bite me!  This is only  my heartbroken personal opinion, based on a bazillion years as a marketer.  It makes perfect marketing sense.   LVMH will never let the Shalimar name die – it is worth its weight in amber, even as interest in the original dwindles with each passing generation.  And I suspect they will always keep some semblance of the original  around for brand cred.   But with the LVMH focus  seemingly on mainstream marketing rather than creation of groundbreaking fragrances, it is a pretty sure bet  this is the wave of the future for the House of Guerlain.  And for a lot of perfumistas it’s a cryin’ shame – but …I mean, really – can you imagine the average 22 yr old wearing the original Shalimar?  Neither can I.

Have any of you sniffed this yet?  I’d love to hear from Shalimar haters as well as lovers as well as those in-between.  What are your thoughts about the direction Guerlain is headed?    Personally, I get it.  I don’t like it.  But I get it.