Sorry about not having the ginger thing this week.  I’m traveling and forgot to grab all the great ideas for ginger scents and bring them with me.

But I grabbed Dior’s new Patchouli Imperial and Shalimar Initial parfum instead.

Dry patchouli lovers – rejoice!  Dior’s version is gorgeous, very chypre. Notes they list are sandalwood, coriander and patchouli. This presents a dilemma for me. I’m not a patchouli lover, though it works for me occasionally. The coriander in this renders it really beautiful for me, and though the patchouli is a slight annoyance, I’m getting past it because of the coriander.  The patchouli is cool and dry, and the coriander and sandalwood warms it up, leaving it this oddly balanced scent.  In the end, it leaves me mixed.  Objectively, it is beautifully  made and should have a lot of fans.  personally, it’s a hair too much patchouli.  But that shouldn’t scare you off because I’m a little sensitive to it and still find myself loving it even though my patchouli-colored annoyance.

Shalimar Parfum Initial, on the other hand – you know, Shalimar is a scent I think it so great, a masterpiece. It is completely unwearable on me, it turns into a powdery mess that no one wants to smell unless they are doing a baby bottom diaper changing line – and like that!  Now I have a Shalimar I can wear in Parfum Initial.  Do I not sound excited?  It isn’t exactly dumbed down, but it is reworked, all the powder seems to be back in the Johnson’s bottle.  It’s pretty, easy to wear, Shalimar for those skeered of Old Lady Perfumes.

Not being able to wear Shalimar does not equal that I want it changed like this. All of its personality is gone, and it’s another run of the mill nice modern scent out there.  Pity.

So samples of both of these to five commenters.  Yes on patchouli for you or no?  Which scents are your favorite patchouli.  Can you wear Shalimar or is it a mess on you like it is on me?

Patty

Don’t forget to visit  Olfactarama today for more interesting conversation with Brian Pera and Andy Tauer on their film/perfume collaboration!

It’s that weirdly wonderful downswing – again.  Fog in the mornings, bright sunny days…..rainy evenings.  In my City Life I noted the shift in seasons by fashion – the newest boot, the fabbo little jacket…  out here in the country you can gauge the shift to autumn by a slightly different set of parameters:  harvest is  real and present  here, bringing dust, flying beetles and massive allergies.  Then there’s the beauty -  watching the Big Dipper as it begins its winter slide away from us….hummingbirds by the dozens, fighting at the feeders as they bulk up for their long flight south….   and the melancholy: clearing the vegetable gardens for fall plantings and prepping for winter <sigh>, hearing the last of the crickets.. …canning and freezing the last of the tomatoes and peaches.  Thinking about apples and cinnamon……and a cute new boot.

Perfume is changing, too.   You know my love of the big, smoky flowers in high summer but as the temps drop and the light changes, all I can think of is Chypre.  This is the perfect weather for the perfection of  vintage Coty Chypre,  the bombaliciousness of current Femme (that sweaty, plummy goodness) and the vaunted Mitsouko, both vintage and contemporary (we’re talking pre-reformulation, here, though the current isn’t the worst thing in the world,)…..and there’s a Newish Gal in Town.

Centennial.   Liz Zorn.  I  think of Liz as the modern-day Queen of Chypre -  her nuanced approach to the chypre base runs the gamut from the heavy-plummy/peachy-jammy fabulousosity of Love Speaks Primeval to the quiet-cool Green Oakmoss, she weaves  her chypre base into her scents, beautifully.  And never more so than in Centennial.  This was the Historical Chypre that I confused with Historical Jasmine at the Scentsation (back in the Jurassic Era). Yah.  Because I was a newbie, didn’t know jasmine from peanut butter and figured this glorious thing had to be a ‘flower’.  I thought the Chypre was the one that smelled like buttery poop.

Hey, what did I know?

Historical Chypre is now called Centennial and is part of Liz Zorn’s Retro Collection.    Liz calls it a throwback to the classic early 20th Century floral chypre.  M. Coty would approve.  It’s a beautiful next generation of what  Coty started with his classic Chypre, updated to an almost-skin scent (especially perfect for those of us who don’t like modern, musky skin-scents.  This hints of sex without the skeevocity of  a perfume trying too hard.    I really like this in  its new edp form  – the lighter concentration makes it perfect daywear.  Centennial is not  ‘wow!  what are you wearing?’ .  Rather, it’s a ‘hmmm’ scent that entices the sniffer to get just a tad closer, without all the ‘hey!  over here!!!’ yelly stuff  – I found El O edging nearer, nose in the air like a pointer, with no clear idea how or why he’d draped himself around me  (I’m not that cute anymore, I’m in menopause and I’m a shrike.  He tends to keep his distance these days).  I’ve been wearing it a lot these past couple of days and wearing a lot of it!  Well, not marinating in it – but wearing enough to provide a nice little veil.  It doesn’t shift about a lot – it stays pretty true to itself from first warm, floral/peach spritz to the drydown, which is reminiscent of a ripe, fuzzy peach skin (that sounds vaguely crazy – and fruity-floral scary but it couldn’t be farther from that -  it’s gorgeous).

It’s like wrapping yourself in a lightweight cashmere stole.  Perfect for this time of year.

Notes (from lizzornperfumes.com ) are rose, jasmine and orange blossom, wrapped in a classic chypre veil.   I’m smelling those but also the fuzzy peach skin and oakmoss of a vintage Mitsouko, though a little bit warmer .

What notes call to you, as the days slide into the next season?  What are you shifting out of?

Source:  my bottle.    She’s having a sale, which makes it almost the New Free.  ( shut up

First off, I can’t believe that it was the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 this week. I would love to visit the memorial at Ground Zero in New York; the pictures I saw of it were wonderful. It looks like a powerful reminder of the lives that were lost that day ten years ago.

I’m afraid that some of the other memorials out there aren’t as successful.

We had a dedication of our own 9/11 memorial that included a beam from the WTC. That beam is very moving: seeing solid steel twisted like taffy brings it home. Seeing lookouts on the (former) MCA Building across the street and sharpshooters on the roof of the library reminded me that it’s a post 9/11 world.

I lived in New York for a while and I could see the twin towers from my front windows. I remember that pretty much from any subway stop below 42nd street, I knew that I could find due South by looking for their mass. It’s still weird to go there and not see them.

I’ll talk more about them at my blog and not natter on here about them. If you’re interested, click through.

The weather: last week was beastly hot (and there’s going to be on more if history repeats itself) but we’ve tipped the scales and are into autumn. The days are getting shorter and the evenings cooler. I know, I know you’re all thinking “cry me a river, bub” since we’re rather lightly touched by winter. But I still find myself gravitating towards heavier scents. The Montales and the crazier Uncle Serges tend to come out. What are you reaching for these days?

Speaking of Uncle Serge, Octavian at 1000 Fragrances states that De Profundis is the swan song of the redoubtable Mssr. Lutens.

If that’s the truth, I don’t quite know what to do with that news. So many of his scents are ones that I never want to be without, yet I always thought that the treadmill of 4 new scents a year was crazy. While I don’t exactly mourn the idea that there will be no other Vitriol d’oeilett that fact there there might not be a new Serge Noire sucks..

(edit) a Facebook post by my scent twin, The Non-Blonde states that there will be a March release, as she was told by the manager of the Paris boutique. I’m glad that those two won’t be the coda..

And finally, my life is being controlled by a three dollar piece of plastic. If you have a Honda or Acura, yours might soon too. On Memorial Day Sunday I came home and parked the car and noticed that the brake lights were on. After much head-scratching I ended up pulling the fuse that controls those lights and hit the internets. Here’s how the brake lights work on Honda/Acura: when you’re driving the car the brake pedal compresses a small switch like a doorbell. When you press the brake pedal, the switch releases turning on the brake lights. For some reason only known to Honda, they decided that bare metal touching this switch is unacceptable.  They drilled it out, filling the hole with a plastic plug. One that fails. So I had to take time off from work and get the little plastic doohickey. After much swearing and straining, I managed to get it in.

But better yet, they also decided that they needed to have one on the clutch: basically the same idea in reverse.  when you depress the clutch the top of the pedal presses the doorbell switch that tells the car that it’s okay to to crank the starter.  The little annoying plastic bastage broke this weekend.  I found the corpse in the footwell and AAA had to push-start the car so I could get it home.  So it was another trip to Honda of Hollywood and now I’m going to have to figure out how to put it in without A) breaking fingers, B) entirely disassembling my dashboard or C) paying someone a few hundred bucks to disassemble my car to pop this G-D $3 piece of plastic in there.

Color me annoyed..

My son often enjoys sniffing my fragrance du jour. Sometimes he’ll see me with a vial or spray and say, “Whatcha putting on today, Mom?” And occasionally he’s  asked for one in particular.

So that got me thinking. We choose soft, fresh, light fragrances as starter scents for girls, but what about boys?

I see a lot of you out there, shaking your heads, saying, “No, no, no, not those dreaded Axe body sprays!”

But what would make nice (read: not overpowering) intro scents for our not-quite grown-up guys? And at what age or grade is it considered acceptable for them to start wearing fragrance?

Now my son is only 11, which, of course, is too young, but I’d love to have suggestions for when (and if) he does grow into it.

FINALLY – Nava sits down and actually reviews a couple of fragrances; about bloody time, right?

For your olfactory pleasure, I have another talented Canadian natural perfumer I must introduce you all to: Jessica September Buchanan of 1000 Flowers.

Jessica is currently located in the “wilderness” of Western Canada, otherwise known as British Columbia, where lately, if you’re not careful, you might make the acquaintance of a bear while cruising through the drive-thru at Tim Hortons. Yes, bears; I’m not referring to Hugh “The Bear” from “Ice Road Truckers”.

Jessica’s background in essential oils and clinical aromatherapy lead her to France, where she studied at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery. After graduating and interning at two well-known perfume houses, Jessica set up her own shop and has introduced two very impressive scents, which I’ve had samples of since late July. I’ve been waiting for my nose to recover from my medication “mishap”, and now I can tell all of you that the schnoz is back in top form and rarin’ to go.

Réglisse Noir (Black Licorice): For many, licorice scents are a tough sell because I don’t think a lot of us want to spend our days smelling like a bag of Nibs. There are, however, some artful licorice scents out there: Hermessence Brin de Reglisse, an amalgamation of black licorice and lavender, and Eau de Reglisse by Caron. There was a scent by the cosmetics company Hard Candy available about 10 years ago that was heavy on the black licorice, but alas, it now resides on the island of discontinued scents.

Jessica’s Réglisse Noir is the most complex black licorice scent I’ve ever smelled; it is comprised of white pepper, ozone, mint, shiso leaf, star anise, ginger, licorice, cocoa, patchouli, vanilla, vetiver and musk. It is spicy, warm and slightly masculine; the patchouli and vetiver in the drydown keep it from becoming cloying, and the star anise and ginger in the middle give it a nice tang. This is not a foody scent, but one that you’ll want to snuggle into like a favorite blanket on a chilly night. I’m glad I held off on road-testing it until the weather cooled off a bit; this is definitely a cool-weather comfort scent if ever there was one.

Fleur N°1: OK, all my vintage Jezebels out there (you know who you are) – listen up: You HAVE to try this one. I’m no expert by any stretch, but this scent is proof that Jessica aced her classes at the Grasse Institute. This masterpiece screams ladylike; think Parisian ladies who lunch, Jackie O and Elizabeth Taylor artfully combined and dabbed on the pulse points. The notes are narcissus, orris root, white magnolia, hyacinth, moss, the forest in Spring, new baby leaves, wild violets in the sunshine, melting snow and cool wet earth. My skin pulls out a lot of moss, cool wet earth and the fruity-duskiness of orris and magnolia. I’ll admit that I feel a bit like a cross between Dame Edna and Queen Elizabeth in this one; I’m not one for ladylike floral, but it is breathtaking. To my nose, it is reminiscent of Creed Spring Flower; another scent I appreciate, but would never wear. If I go back far enough in my olfactory memory bank, I can almost smell the Emeraude coming out of my mother’s closet.

I have to say, the realm of social media has given me a greater appreciation of the talent of perfumers like Jessica. The materials they work with and the artful compositions they create are just a joy to behold. They ply their trade without the benefit of glossy ad campaigns and behemoth cosmetic companies investing millions in product development. These scents are a labor of love, and it shows. Just one sniff is all it takes to get hooked. I’ve willingly been dragged off…

Right now, you can snag 15 ml of Réglisse Noir on Jessica’s Web site for $23.00. It’s regularly $45. Fleur N°1 is also on sale for $41.25 for 15 ml. Yes, they are a bit more expensive than traditional fragrances; they are made with natural and organic materials. And well worth it, I might add.