The picture above is from our too short time in the Sahara.  I’d like to say I’m a good photographer, but there’s no way the sun rising over golden sand dunes can produce anything but a beautiful picture.

Okay, wow, deep breath.  First, let’s get the winner for last week’s post announced.  That person is – Tina Renee Barker.  You’ll get samples of the new Caron 119, the Carners, new Annick Goutal,  the Tammy Frazer Chapter 2 and some other stuff I’m not remembering right now!  Just click on the contact us over on the left, e-mail me your address, remind me which drawing you won. Once I hear from you, you’ll get a quick reply so you know the message didn’t get lost, and then I’ll get them shipped out.

After my three-week traveling, then another week of being sick, topped off by traveling for Thanksgiving to my mom’s,  finally three days of just recovering, I feel I’m sorta human again and not totally stressed out.

All my treasures from Morocco and Spain finally got home – the things we shipped in Barcelona because we were grossly over on baggage kilos on the plane.  We had weighed the bags the night before, carefully calculated, adjusted, moved things to our carry-on, paid the advance fee for the extra 8 kilos, then showed up at the airport only to be told we couldn’t have our purse and carry-on luggage, just one or the other. Huh????? My head hit the desk with a thunk, I almost cried, I think Lisa did cry. She weighed our carry-on bags, informed us it would be another 350 euros to check those. I told her I’d check my purse instead, I had a kilo left, it would cost less and she finally caved and threw the bags on the plane.

I’ve decided it would be cheaper for me to take my two sons with me in the future. They carry on like 2 shirts, a pair of pants, deodorant, toothbrush and underwear in a duffel, no checked bags.  Then I can have their 21 kilos apiece for the stuff I buy. That’s 63 kilos total, I would be golden!

Perfumes on the trip. That Caron L’Accord 119 has me completely smitten, as does the new Annick Goutal Mon Parfum Cherie.  They were a surprise and revelation and not what I expected at all.  The Caron is still only available in Paris.  NYC has told me it will be released in the U.S. in 2012, but they may get some for pre-sell, but don’t know when or how much or if at all.

It is everything a fruity floral should be. Fruit, check – tart, little sweet, full, lush.  Floral, check – it’s in there hiding under the fruit, softening it up on the open.  Then there’s billowing smoke coming out from under the fruity floral hood that just cracks me up. It’s like the fruity floral car broke down on the scented highway after blowing a tire, landed in a  farmer’s haystack in a field after a tumultuous few minutes of skidding all over the highway, and there is rubber and smoke and hay and ass everywhere.  That is what I call a perfume!!!  Okay, no rubber (seriously, I smell just a little, and it makes me delirously happy), but it is dark, dry velvet,  contrasted with that amazing blackberry/peach/pineapplely open.

Perfection.

The Annick Goutal I’ll cover later.  Also the Mandy Aftel The Secret Garden, which I’m also swooning over. Do you note a steady stream of swoonage on perfumes? It has been a great fall for scent!!

Tammy Frazer, a natural perfumer out of Cape Town, South Africa, had her Chapter scents at Colette in Paris. I smelled some of them and fell in love with the feral Chapter 1 at Roja Dove’s in London a couple of years ago.  I believe Chapter 2 is new, or at least new to me.  Ylang and narcisse.  Opens skanky – reeeeeally skanky – and just rolls indoles around into the air. Just when you think something is decaying on your wrist, the ylang softens, veers off from that amazing indolic open and turns into this beautiful, soft, mildly skanky (in the background – don’t worry, you can still smell it, you kinks, but you won’t have people checking for decomposing corpses when you wear it) mixed with pepper, lime, orange, woods and vetiver rounding the edges on the composition so it doesn’t run off the edge of your nose into something unpleasant, and it completely enchants me.  I get 15 minutes into this and just stick my nose there and keep it, sniffing all the smell out of it.

Yes, this line is expensive. She does sell from her website, if you contact her.  I think it’s 260 or 290 euros for 22 mls, but it comes in a bottle that is a work of art. The good news, once you buy a bottle, you can get refills for that gorgeous bottle for less.  She is a lovely person to chat with, her perfumes are all natural, organic, no animal testing, and I like what she does – it is an original take on scent.

I feel lucky I have this one. My cold was horrible in Paris, and I couldn’t smell at all for a couple of days and couldn’t smell anything at Colette, including any of the Frazers. The last day I was there, I had to run down to Michel Cluziel for ginger/lemon macaroons – oh, hey, BTW, that is the most amazing flavor for a macaroon in existence. Light as a feather, tangy, spicy. Who knew? I wish I had picked up a truck full and shipped them home.  If you’re in Paris, jump on down there, see if they are stocking it regularly and grab an even dozen just for yourself. You’ll see.

Oh, back to the Tammy Frazer. I couldn’t smell it the first day we were at Colette, but made it back my last day in Paris, and I swooned, even with my nose malfunctioning a little.

That same day, I met up with the lovely Ms. Grain de Musc at our usual spot, chatted, caught up. She’s got so much going on – book out in the UK in March, and then – well, stuff I can’t talk about, but I smelled — well, I just can’t talk about it, damnit, but I wish I could.

So what shall we do today?  Let’s talk about which interest you most – the new Caron 119 or the new Annick Goutal? I think I can eek out a sample or two more from the Caron 119, and I have a sample or two of that new rose thing they have to do a giveaway on. So I’ll pick two winners from comments.

Patty

By March

I ate all the pumpkin pie.  It’s time to get into the candy, isn’t it?

After reading Joe’s beguiling review of L’Occitane’s new Immortelle de Corse EDP, I took a trip to the mall to smell it.  Immortelle and honey are two of my fave fragrance notes.  And … well… okay, I got the honey, although it didn’t hang around too long.   I got no immortelle at all.   Sadface.  Instead it became an odd bread-like thing on my skin, sort of like L’Artisan Bois Farine only sweeter, and then vamoosed shortly thereafter.  I’ll stick with my wonderful imported-from-Europe bottle of Honey & Vanilla LE they did last year.  I still miss their Honey & Lemon.  And there’s always Miel de Bois.

While I was there I tried the L’Occitane Labdanum EDP (both this and the Immortelle are part of their Voyage en Mediterranee collection).  This got raves on their website.  Gah.  AMBER AMBER AMBER.  The online reviews say “spicy and not too sweet,” but, man, was it sweeeet on me.  Like any other potential scrubber, of course this one lasted for hours.  But I’m clearly in the minority on this one.  The men were loving it (for themselves.)

The Different Company de Bachmakov came out a million years ago (2009? 2010?) and I sniffed it then and thought it was kind of a snooze, and forgot all about it.  I’ve been playing with it recently; notes are cedar, bergamot, shiso leaves, coriander leaves, freesia, nutmeg and craie douce.  It’s kind of a cold tea fragrance.  It should be right up my alley but I hate the top – that coriander/herb combo reaches out and strangles, for about ten minutes it smells like peppered urine on me.  And I don’t mean in a good way, either.  Then it settles down into a really pretty scent – dry spicy tea.  I think of it at that point as somewhat in the same vein as Prada Infusion d’Iris – an office-appropriate background fragrance that doesn’t bore the crap out of me.  For something fairly subtle, it’s tenacious.  I got a full eight hours out of it.

The next two were in my package from Neil Morris, I have no idea what the notes are and I’m going to amuse myself by not finding out.

The Darkness of Trees reminded me of why it’s always good to give a NM scent time to set itself up on the skin.  I sprayed it expecting a fir forest, got something entirely different and strange, thought ugh, and waited.  Then I spent 45 minutes trying to place the smell.  I found it.  It is the exact smell of the inside of a summer cabin at sleep-away camp in the mid-1970s.  It’s mostly fresh-sawn lumber and forest (not pine forest, just the woods) with a hint of dirt and old cotton mattresses.  If I’d custom-ordered this from CB I Hate Perfumes, CB himself couldn’t have done it better, and it would be called Summer Cabin 1973.  I highly doubt this is what Neil was dreaming of, and it’s wonderful.

Finally, Tea House – hehehe, I know why you perfumistas are loving this one.  Tea, hay, and a hint of leathery barnyard, like the barnyard JAR scent or that vile Miller Harris Jane Birkin thing, dialed way down.  I have zero interest in smelling it on myself.  On a man, however, I would be on that like a duck on a junebug.

Neil Morris notes for those of you who can’t find these on his site – “Midnight Shadows is available now, even though it’s not yet on our site. If someone wants a sample all they have to do is go to our VAULT section and order ANY vault sample. Then in the comments section at checkout, write that you’d really want Midnight Shadows. The same for FB’s. Order any VAULT FB and tell us in the comments section you want MS instead. That’s it! We’ll hopefully be adding it soon but till then this works fairly easily.”

And for those of you who might have missed it in Thanksgiving travels, I posted on Neil’s Midnight Shadows last Weds.

Samples: the mall for L’Occitane, Neil Morris, and Anita for de Bachmakov.

March

by  Who Loves a Good Blade, Baby!

….I never liked the story of Madame Butterfly.  It’s a beautiful opera and I understand the elemental idea and emotion but, given what type of emotion usually grips me, while everyone else is sniffling I’m sitting there, ruining my dental work and rooting for Cio-Cio San to plunge that blade into Pinkerton’s guts.  Friends no longer offer to accompany me to that opera. “We’ll wait for a Wagner”, they say …”or Medea”.  “much more you”

So it’s fitting that I missed Every Single Aspect of the romance that is in Honour Woman.  I’d read the glorious copy on Luckyscent and was very excited to try it – the notes!  The Notes! Pepper, rhubarb, coriander, jasmine, tuberose, gardenia, lily of the valley, carnation, vetiver, frankincense, amber, opoponax, leather !!!

SO right for my nose, my skin, my very being….

so, so wrong.

What I got was so far removed from any of those notes, save rhubarb (maybe) that for a minute I thought I’d maybe gotten a counterfeit sample.  On me, it smelled like a constipated frog burping up canteloupe.  Loving the Omani House as  I do, I was ….well, I’m not sure what I was.  Shocked, stunned?   Terrified?  Had I lost my True New Love?  Well, no.  After all, there is still Epic.  Tribute. Jubilation. Lyric.  Life can go on.

Turns out, Honour Just Isn’t Me.   But!  Read on…

After a last, desperate, failed attempt to get what the Luckyscent folks were jammering on about I took an opportunity to try it on two other people during one of my Saturdays Francine.  Mohammed, who introduced me to the Amouage line when it was at Nordstrom and  Miss Francine herself.

Well!  Finally!  It was lovely on Francine – I got hints of the jasmine and tuberose, with a slight undercurrent of the frankincense and a touch of the oppop.  It was lovely,.  A little melon-y on her, no frog.  But it was on Mohammed that Honour Woman lifted her rice-powdered face and belted out her beautiful aria.    The burping frog turned into a full-throated gardenia diva – and the slight blue cheese accord ( heavy-duty on me and, along with the rhubarb, is where I think I get the canteloupe-eating frog bits) well, it provides an interesting support for the lotv and the tuberose.   I still didn’t get the leather but I didn’t miss it – the frankincense is so beautiful in this (as it is in all Amouages) that it builds a sterling silver base for all those rich white flowers.  For all that, this isn’t a heavy scent at all – it is true to the more minimal aspects of Japanese-inspired perfumery – and there is an aquatic element in there as well – but on the right skin this is a shimmering, luminescent floral.   On others I could smell the romance.   Alas, for a woman like me who carries a jeweled stiletto in her evening bag, it’s not meant to be.

Honour Man is interesting.  I have not read Christopher Chong’s actual  brief  but the intriguing Luckyscent copy allows me to give my vengeful mien (and that dagger) free rein.    Yeah, like you didn’t know that was coming! .  Pink pepper, black pepper, geranium, elemi, nutmeg, patchouli, frankincense, cedarwood, vetiver, tonka bean, musk makes it a beefier, glammier Poive Samarcande.  I get traces of Epic, too, but  there’s a slicier/greenier edge to it (I think it’s the elemi, which is a turps-like resin – as if I lit a pine candle in my studio).  All in all, I see Honour Man as its own master – and I have high hopes for the son of Cio-Cio San…but which direction will his Honour take him?

Even though Honour is not for me, maybe it is for you!  Let’s see, shall we?   Drop a comment, tell me a story.  Do you cry with Poor Butterfly or do you give way to your Inner Ninja?  What are your hopes vis a vis the notes? Does M. Chong envision the son of Cio-Cio San returning to Japan in Zen fashion or does he go all Benihana in Bakersfield….the choices are endless.  Anyhoo, I will ask Pick to hit ‘enter’ on random.org once again and the winner will receive a carded sample each of Honour Woman and Honour Man.  Winner will be chosen on Friday am, announced next Tuesday.

xooxox Musette, who does NOT own that blade, alas.   It’s courtesy carters.com  oh, well…it’s a tad too big for evening anyway…

Amouage Honour samples courtesy Amouage

 No, that’s not some kind of official-speak, as in “Hey, Joe, what’s your ETA to the next delivery stop?”

It stands for Emergency Backup Perfume, and was coined by lovely Posse reader AnnieA on a post awhile back. I thought it a clever idea, and something  a lot of us probably do without thinking about it.    We spritz or dab a scent at home in the a.m., then put the spray, bottle or vial into to-go mode so we have it for touch-ups later in the day, and then head out the door. And after a busy day or week (or in my case, months), we often – at least I do – forget to take them back out again.

OK, I’ll go first. After dumping out my very cluttered purse, I have lurking: sample vials/sprays of Jo Malone Wild Bluebell, Kai, Dior’s Escale Portofino, and Calyx and White Gardenia Petals for a wrist-to-wrist comparison I was doing. As you might have guessed, all are left over from summer and our still-warm early autumn. Now that fall/winter’s here,  guess I need to replace them with more temperature-appropriate goodies, eh?

So let’s have some fun with this.  Have a peek into the bottom of your purses, backpacks, briefcases, etc., and share what scents you’ve got rolling around in there …

Hey, there are prizes to be picked up here, peeeepul!  Come on down~

I’m still waiting to hear from Lilly on the New Girls.  You have until 15 Dec, then I have to draw another name, darlin (winner originally announced 25 October)

Mrs Honey?  You won Cuir Fetiche!

The latest winner in the Musette giveaway juggernaut is mals86 who won the Killian samples.

contact me via gmail  – address is evilauntieanitaAT etc.  Give me your info and I will get those out to you.

I’ll be back on Tuesday   to review something else and do another giveaway – hey, the Universe has been berry,berry good. to. me.  So I’m passing it on.