Today is our day for Andy Tauer’s Advent Calendar Giveaway!

Just make a comment on today’s post, and I’ll be randomly picking a winner tomorrow (Sunday 12/18/11).  Once we have the winner, I’ll send all your details to Andy, and he will send you – (drum roll)

A full bottle of  your choice – any of the fragrances he sells on tauerperfumes.com or a bottle of Miriam, the Tableau de Parfums scent or the Cologne du Maghreb.

I’m completely bowled over every year by his generosity. One of the true people who hold the Christmas Spirit. Thank you, Andy!

So since it’s the weekend, if Santa could leave you any bottle of perfume under the tree, regardless of cost or rarity, what would you make him leave?

Patty

Yesterday on Perfume Smellin’ Things I wrote part one of my impressions of Australia-based perfume House Fleurage.  Today I’ll finish up.

First, the Chypres:

Chypre is written of as being from a 14o year old recipe.  It doesn’t smell like something from that era, or perfumes were much better then (willing to take bets on that).  It opens with a lovely rosemary that’s almost immediately joined  by lavender and vanilla.  After a while, the whole Chypre thing really starts to swing into action, with the oakmoss and musk throwing off some sly but distinct sillage.  Yum..

Dandy Boheme adds bergamot to the lavender opening, then tuberose and a nutmeggy jasmine come in.  I would like it just for this stage.  What makes me love it is the drydown, which adds frankincense to the classic chypre base.  This one is written of as unisex, but I would not blame you if you don’t let your partner know.

Poeticus strikes a balance between Dandy and Chypre.  While those might be a bit challenging for the uninitiated, this one starts with lemongrass (one of my favorite notes) tinged with anise, it  features narcissus in the middle and the classic chypre drydown.

Passion is listed as a leather Fougere, but was included in the chypre bundle.  It has an interesting opening of clove and petitgrain, through rose and down to patchouli.  This one didn’t work on me; something on my skin made it loud.  I like it, but it’s not me.

The last in the group I was sent were Orientals.

Gypsy is, well, read the copy: “The Gypsy man – passionate, mischievous, flamboyant and completely comfortable with his masculinity.”  Well, yes he is.  He opens with pepper, cloves and a touch of anise, and he gets wilder and more sensual with spicy jasmine and a drydown of rosy sandalwood.  This is supposed to be a man’s scent, and I would wear it.  But it’s very rich, so much so that any woman could easily steal it, and should.

Vanilla Chai is vanilla chai- like and chai tea from the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.  The one aspect that’s left off, keeping it from being literal is the milky froth.  I’m very happy for that.  It’s sweet, spicy and very, very comforting.  I honestly hope (and this is in no way meant as an insult) that if Fleurage ever does sachets or room sprays that this is first on the list.  I can imagine some very sweet dreams coming from this..

Temple Flower is interesting.  It opens with lime and ginger before going to ylang ylang and jasmine.  It wasn’t my favorite; for me they almost cancel each other out.  It’s quietly pretty, which every line needs but I’m so enjoying some of the more flamboyant ones in this line it’s just not the one I’d lust after.

Yuletide is both aptly named yet the name is almost a disservice to the scent.  Yes, there the scent of oranges that remind me of satsumas in the stocking, the middle notes of spice that bring to mind mulled wines and a smoky drydown with frankincense, myrrh and a golden sandalwood remind me of the Magi.  Yet the whole is so much more.  The whole composition is so brilliantly handled that I would want to be wearing this a lot longer than just the holidays.  Is it wrong to lust after Wise Men?

Once again, I have to state that people like Emma Leah and Fleurage are really the future of perfume.  They’re brave enough to do what the big boys (no matter how talented the people they hire are) simply won’t: make perfume the way that great artists make art.  Not to a brief or to a focus group or to a committee, but a personal statement as to what perfume should be.  I respect all of these, like most and adore at least three..

Now for the good news: Emma wrote me that she indeed will ship to the USA, so all of these are available on her website.  I don’t know how much shipping is (or the exchange rate but I do know that the package she sent me was $17 just for the postage.  So I think we should still bug LuckyScent to carry at least part of this line.  Of course if you’re visiting Australia, I’d make a point to get to Melbourne and visit.

My samples were provided by Fleurage, the artwork is from their site.

Crap, sorry guys!  I got busy on another project this afternoon that kept going and going and going, I just looked up to see that it’s 11, and I got, well, really, nothing.  I have to say, working with graphics on a Mac can really suck you in.

My major new find that I’m playing with – yes, another new foundation.  Well, how many are too many?  The problem with foundations is you get them, they look good for a season or a while, then eventually something just doesn’t fit quite right anymore. Sorta like my relationships.  This newest one has some promise. Koh Gen Do Moisture Foundation in 023.  It’s a little tube of color, and when I put it on, it really does look like I’m photoshopping my face.

Now, what usually happens is the foundation goes on great, I’m loving it, thinking I’ve shaved a year or two off my 52-year-old face, and then one day I’m outside or in the car, glance in the rearview mirror, and I think my face looks like a mask.  My face has really tiny pores, which is a blessing, but it also means that foundation of any type can sit on the top of my face and turn into, yes, that’s right, a mask..

But this one shows some promise – three days and still no signs of mask-like behavior.  It gives this glowy tint to my face – my skin, but better.  Sephora has it, as does Barney’s and others.  I looked at the KGD website, and they seem to have little trial sets of their makeup for $20, which is awesome!!  Then you don’t have to spend a fortune to find out if it works for you or not.

Of course I still love many of my other foundations – the Metier one is always in heavy rotation, despite it having been chewed on by Vinnie the Bulldog after one of his cat accomplices knocked it off the bathroom counter.    This KGD thing just seems, I dunno, better coverage, but looks like less.  Digging it.  I like it well enough that I think I need to investigate some of their skin care, which gets pretty good raves with a quick clickety-clicking around the internets.

Fragrance?  Got ahold of that new Comme des Garcons thing.  Notes – aldehydes, hawthorn, lilac, flower oxides, industrial glue, brown scotch (packing) tape, musk and styrax. Freaky on the open with all that  sparkly glue and tape,  it smells like school, getting dangerously close to the mimeograph paper smell – no, not quite there, but I start yearning for it by sniffing this.  It’s funky and completely Industrial CdG,  never unwearable, which I think is a real gift, to be that freaky and weird and sorta hot.  Long into the drydown, there’s a real beauty to it that’s not very freakish.  It’s pretty great. I think I have about a sample I can squeeze out from the spray sample I have left. So drop a comment telling me about your foundation saga or how to cook a goose.  Yes, we’re going all Bob Crachett this year and doing goose for Christmas. I know the fat thing is a problem and requires some special care, but I love goose!  Help!

Patty

Salome, I always wondered how it must’ve felt to have someone (a king!) lust after you so hard that they would do anything you ask, if only you would dance the dance of The Seven Veils….and you, humiliated and vengeful and spurned, ask for the spurner’s head!  On a platter.  What jumble of conflicting emotions must’ve caused that choice?  Did you regret it, once you’d made the demand?  Or were you so full of fury and pent-up lust yourself that only the ultimate sacrifice could assuage your boiling blood and heaving bosom and the white-hot fury of a young woman scorned?  Musette would love to know.

Well, I don’t know how you felt.  But I now know how you smelled when you intoxicated the king.  Byredo Parfums Seven Veils is intensely animalistic, with a spicy oriental thread running through a rooty-floral heart (with a hint of dirt and sweat), like molten gold burnouts on a silken burnoose.   I smell jasmine, like little silver bells tinkling atop elegant hennaed feet, though there is no jasmine in the notes (perhaps that is the Tiger Orchid?). It’s not full-blown lush, Seven Veils.  Instead, it’s the promise of creamy lushness – the hint of hot, female sensuality…just before it explodes into blazing sexuality.  Perhaps that’s the orchid, as it opens, fully, slowly revealing its nether parts and the rich scent within.

I have had a hard time with Byredo – I keep wanting to love the line, if for no other reason than my beloved Andy reps the line at Barneys.  Hadn’t worked for me yet.  But Andy encouraged me to try Seven Veils because of the diaphanous shifts as it flits, then settles, then flits again across your skin (those are my descriptions, btw.  Andy wouldn’t be caught nekkid saying something that silly – he said “try it.  it changes.  a lot”).  Earlier up there I called it a spicy oriental but it’s not really – it just gives the impression of a spicy oriental, as seen through a shimmering golden veil.  It’s really a luminous, spicy skin scent with a little stabby edge (I’m thinking that’s the pimento berries).  I really can imagine Herod’s increasing intoxication, as Salome’s rising scent wafts towards him…and each of the Seven Veils drifts languorously across the marble floor.  It’s heady stuff, indeed. I think I’ve finally found the Byredo I can love.  Even if I can’t  love Salome.

Notes, per the Byredo website:

Top: Carrot, Pimento Berries
Heart: Tahitian Vanilla Flower, Laurier Rose, Glycine, Tiger Orchid
Base: Sandalwood, Vanilla Bean

$220 for 100ml at Barneys, where I spritzed.

btw: Salome of popular legend differs quite a bit from the Salome described by scholars of ancient texts  but she’s no angel, no matter how you look at it.

photo:  Eartha Kitt as Salome  (shake it, shake it)

ps.  don’t fret!  March will be back soon.  She’s still jammin’ on personal business – and it’s all just drudgery, nothing Brutal.  But Right Now is challenging, timewise, so I’m pinch-hitting.  She’ll be back shortly.  She promised!

  by Musette the Embarrassed

American Midwest, circa 1962:  we had Hershey’s Chocolate Bars.  Life was good.  Then came M&M Wafer Bars (the precursor to Kit Kat)…and for a brief period of time, Hostess Fingers (I swear that’s the name of them but this was in the Jurassic Era – the cupcakes were 12cents and came on the little paper slab with the cellophane wrapping.  The fingers were cooler – the same cupcake/filling/icing combo, but elongated and narrow – 4 to a package.  I think they were 24cents.

I was in chocolate heaven.

Brussels, circa 1980.  My first pot du creme. Chocolate,  of course.  I nearly fainted right then and there.  This was chocolate, unlike anything I’d ever tasted.  Next up, hot chocolate made with pastilles instead of milk and Hershey’s syrup!  Who knew?

I went dark,darker,darkest….and it was good (except for the ‘darkest’ which got a little gnashy for me – I’m happy as a chocolate clam around 65%)….fell in love with Recchiuti and learned the joys of sea salt and Bourbon vanilla…and bourbon…and smoky caramels….but still stayed within ‘safe’ and ‘accepted’ zones….no odd pairings – and I have never cottoned to the idea of fruit and chocolate (yah, I know.  I’m a weirdo)… the occaisonal orange or raspberry-infused something is o-kaaay..but my heart is never really in it.

So last year, I got this box from a pal in Switzerland, during the craziness of Swapmania. In addition to the incredible decants of incredibly fabulous perfumes, there was a package of chocolate bars!  Some really smooth stuff in there….Bourbon Vanilla, milk and creme – wonderful, comfortable, expected tastes and I dove in!  There was an orange one, which I sort of looked at, then put aside to share give to a friend.

And then, at the bottom of the hefty stack……a dark chocolate LEMON PEPPER bar.

WTH?

I stood there, stunned, trying to figure out who on earth would even begin to contemplate a concoction like that.  Lemon and Pepper belong on Fish.  On Chicken.  On fresh, new asparagus and spinach.  Chocolate?  Oh, you freaks.  Oh, HELLZ naw! I put the bar back in the box and shuddering, went back to munching on the safe, acceptable (and fabulous) Bourbon Vanille…..

…and slowly grew ashamed.

See, I pride myself on my gustatory adventurousness, even though I know I am not really that adventurous.  But I have worked in so many commercial kitchens, sous-ed (albeit as intern) under so many interesting chefs…. heck Charlie Trotter taught me how to correctly dice an onion!  So I’m supposed to be adventurous, the ethnic, female version of Anthony Bourdain, because I am Just That Cool, right?  Surely I am capable of trying a lemon pepper chocolate bar!  Well, I’m embarrassed to say it took me nearly 4 days to work up the nerve to pop that wrapper.  But when I did!  OMG!

Now there are those in the Posse family who are, doubtless, doubled over in laughter at the thought of the MightyMightyMusette quailing before a chocolate bar, big fat sissy that she is.  But it was just such a weird thing to contemplate.  Who knew this could be such a sublime combination!  The little fleck of lemon zest and the zing of the pepper augment the sweet smoothness of the Frey dark chocolate, which is not too dark – I am not a  deep dark varietal chocolate lover and prefer a lot of smoothness and a decent amount of sweetness in my dark – this is a classic, eatable mainstream dark chocolate – full of flavor without tipping over into saccharine.

And the lemon!  The pepper!

And wouldn’t you know it?  After a short stint at Target it seems as if you now cannot get those damn things in the US for love nor money.  And forget about the Frey website.  Some hamster got ahold of a Flash program and ….well, if you can navigate it you are a better web-er than me!  So I’m stuck begging for scrabs of bars and hoping I can trade ridiculous things, come Swapmania.  But I just wanted to put that little taste-worm out there for y’all!  The whole Frey line, apparently available in groceries all over the EU, are just lovely – and none moreso than this absurd pairing!

What is the world coming to?  What’s next?  Chocolate and Strawberry? Oh, the humanity!

What are your favorite chocolate pairings?  What is the weirdest pairing you’ve experienced?  Is there something you simply cannot imagine pairing? (mine would be squid and chocolate). And how in the blasted blazes do I get Frey to distribute in the US again? 

photo: cleverbastards.co.nz

photo: chocolatefrey