Disclaimer – I wrote this post first last night at about 11 p.m. because it had been One Of Those Days. I wanted to proofread it, really, but my little eyes were just closing after midnight, and I hit post and came in this morning and did some cleanup on typos, capitalization errors and nonsensical sentence fragments. My apologies to those of you that were in early this morning reading this and still commented on it and refrained from pointing out, um, some writing issues. 
It’s funny how you can go for years in your life with very little going on – every day is much the same. Minor drama and changes, but no big upheavals. Then, with no notice, you hit a three-day period where everything about your life that was predictable gets thrown up in the air. That’s my life the last couple of weeks.
Some people hate that, but I love it. I sit on the edge of the cliff that has become my life, waiting to see if the new ground I’m on will hold or if there is a bigger shift to come. I’m not comfortable with it, but living in discomfort is so much more invigorating for me than sliding down the long slow hill into sameness. Angle of Repose. I love that book. We are always climbing up. Some aim higher than others, but with every upward push, you will slide back down to some point on the hill and then start climbing up again. Until inevitably all people come to the Angle of Repose – the place on the downward slide where you stop and are at rest and either do not want to climb up again or find that it is just comfortable, and you aren’t going to slide down further.
I grew up in a large family, and dinnertime, despite living on a farm with an abundance of food, was fraught with peril. Going for the last chicken leg could mean a fork accidentally stabbing your hand. Well, accidental’ish.
Still – I have to continually tell myself that there will always be more, there will always be enough.
That is just prelude to hide the fact that I’m about to trash one of Musette’s favorite perfumes. I think I’m remembering it was her that almost stomped me when I said this before. So,shhhhh, let’s keep this quiet. She’ll think I’m talking about farming or something.
Have you ever felt bad about not liking a perfume? I do. I want to love Frederic Malle’s Parfum de Therese. I do. The story is so great. Edmond Roudnitska created it for his wife, wouldn’t release it to anyone else until after she died, Plus, he’s done a laundry list of some of my favorite perfume influences – Diorella, Miss Dior, Diorissimo.
But I can’t. I don’t just not like it, I really hate it. Really, really hate it. I admire it, I think its construction is interesting. I sprayed it on my arm tonight, and that’s the first time I’ve smelled it close to me or on my person in three years, and I remember clearly why I hate this mess – I’ve not changed, and I swear it’s gotten worse. It’s slightly rotting melons. The ones where you cut up the melon, left the rinds in the sink, fell asleep, forgot about them, got up the next morning in the summer heat and went – ew! Damn, that’s nasty. Other people get overripe fruit and spicy fruity trills. I get sweetly decayed flies-circling fruit that should have been thrown out last night before I invited in that Moroccan dance troupe that cooked spicy food all night and then had an orgy on my living room floor while I was sleeping it off.
Musette can threaten to take a bat to my head, but I won’t change my mind. It’s just horrible and fowl and sickening, except the last hour of a 72-hour unfolding, and that only because you are pretty sure it’s almost over. Talk about a half-life of melon plutonium. And why don’t I get jasmine? I could live with some rotting jasmine! I I loooooooves me some fecal jasmine that’s just the wrong side of dead. I just don’t like my rotting jasmine served up with rotting melon because in a game of “Rotting Jasmine, Melon, Spice”? Melon wins.
But I feel so bad and so guilty because he made it for his wife,and nobody else could wear it until after she died. That’s romantic.
It makes me hate it even more. There, I’ve gone all in, and the entire Perfume World disagrees with me. I know this, I clickety-clicked the reviews, hoping to find just one that even disliked it a teeny bit or didn’t go all swoony over it. I read the praise, sniffed it again and wonder how nutmeg, a smell I love, can be so foul covered in rotting melon. Didn’t March hate it? Did the Internets eat her review because it is just so wrong to not like it? Is there no one out there that agrees with me?
Okay, I’ll take my beating and ask for more. But what I like about it? I sniff it, and it shakes my approach to writing about perfume, my willingness to find something to like in a perfume. And I remember that it’s glorious to really hate something.
I’ve laid my shit bear – when is she going to make another record? – so fess up, what classic, beloved thing do you hate? Not just dislike, not one you won’t wear, but hate down to your core?
Oh! I turned off the mandatory registration to comment. You guys! But, fine, we don’t want you unhappy and commenting it up on some other blog and leaving us here in our commentless House of Dust, so I’ll live with a few permanent spammer correspondents to keep you around. I promise to work on a logo as soon as I get some other things in my life done that are time-critical.
Source of the sample – the far, far back of my closet in a drawer where I won’t accidentally sniff it. But I wonder? Why do I keep it?
Ahhh… Confession eases the soul. My dirty little perfume secret is that I don’t care for most Jean-Claude Ellena creations. Including the Hermessences. There, I said it and I feel better!
I really really do not like connecting with Facebook. My Facebook account has very little to do with my perfume interests.
Montale Chypre Vanille. It’s radioactive air freshener on me. And Feu d’Issey. Another hot mess.
I just can’t get along with any of the Ineke perfumes. Ordered the sample set and nope, not a one. Will be waiting for the next swapmania to find a loving home for it, just have to get my courage up to take the swapping plunge.
Found Jeux de Peau and Like This cloying the longer they were on me, even just little dabs.
Also, could not see what others saw in Carillon pour un Ange and Zeta. Une Rose Chypree was tolerable, but I am put off from trying any more Tauers as a result.
Tuberose and I sort of eye each other. I can do OK with tiny dabs, but if I make the mistake of spraying, especially more than once, I am nauseated until it wears off and no amount of scrubbing will work. Surprisingly, in dabs, Fracas works the best
Anything with Immortelle in it! To some, I’m sure it smells yummy and pancakey – to me it is like the body odour of someone who has been ill in bed with flu for a week.
If it’s forward mobility you want in your relationship with a pefumistarette of many years then you get your frangrance ass into gear and up to speed. So it is with me. A fragrance a day. Are there any videos out there? (seen the mad Axe movie?) Sift through the vast mediocrities. Find the nuanced chaos. What shoes go with which dab? Inspired and confused by a crazy, last minute visit to find Amouage Gold from a recalcitrant shopowner, last Xmas in DC (far, far away…we are Africans), I slid my nose up my arm today from Amouage Jubilation XXV to Ubar, to discover how XXV paled in the mystical allure of the latter. Google ‘Amouage Ubar’ and I reach Perfume Posse. Oh my god! The writing! I am hooked! From farm to fragrance, melon to melancholy. Do I dislike XXV? No, but it disappears after Ubar. What is a truly hateful scent like? This is my next holy grail!
I don’t hate it, but the one I just don’t like no matter how many times I’ve tried it is No. 5. Someone even sent me a very, very vintage sample to try. Still don’t like it. I supposed I’ll keep trying to like it as I feel so un-American as a woman for not liking it, and who knows, maybe one day I will. But it hasn’t happened in 30+ years of perfume wearing, so I doubt it.
Nope, if you hate it, you won’t ever love 5.
Its popularity confuses me more than anything. I think it’s difficult to wear and wear without blowing the nose hairs up on everyone withing a five-block radius. It shouldn’t be worn in close quarters without a window available. Aldehydes are really troublesome.
I think more people buy this than wear it. it gets bought as a present or people buy it because it’s so classic, it has to be good. But I think a lot of people just let it sit on their dresser and puzzle why it doesn’t smell that great to them. 🙂
Amen, Patty, amen! No. 5 and the much-beloved Shalimar fall into that camp for me. “Waahhh — they’re classics — why don’t they like me?” I’ve just accepted it and moved on. 🙂
I loved this review! Thank you for allowing me to come out of the shame closet of hating some well-known, quality perfumes that many people have raved about.
I have 3 horror shows that come immediately to mind, in no particular order.
Manoumalia (LesNez) was a disaster smelling of industrial chemicals and tragedy. I think March hated this one too, so I feel better.
Orris by Andy Tauer was just rank and nasty and smelled like some small furry animal died and decomposed on my arm. I totally blame myself for that; it smelled great in the sample before it was applied.
Vetiver Extraordinaire (Malle!) was a headache in a bottle. I actually considered taking Advil. It was like chewing on aluminum foil.
It’s always worse when it’s something well-respected around the community, right? Manoumalia, I don’t think I was a fan of it.
Orris was love for me to smell, but I don’t know that I’ve every worn it. It’s something to smell, not wear.
VE, that one I do love so much. But I prefer Vetiver Tonka.
Freeing!!!
In three years of intensive sniffing nothing has ever made me feel sick until…Serge Lutens Miel de Bois. OMG. A lovely Swapmania pal sent me a sample but, literally, it made me feel like throwing up. I didn’t wash it off right away, in the interest of science. I kept going back in for another sniff of the arm and every time, I felt like retching. It was interesting as a curiosity but I never want to smell it again.
You know, I used to feel the same way about that one! Revolting stuff,like sperm honey or something equally gross that didn’t go together.
Last time I smelled it, I was shocked that I didn’t hate it with the same loathing I used to.
Fracas is the acclaimed scent that I find totally unbearable. Tresor seems nice when I barely get a sniff but when I do, it just kills me. I can’t stand Ubar or Tribute Attar, either (TA is all tarry smoke, to me). I don’t think I like Poison, but I haven’t tried it since it came out.
Love PdT, though, as well as Diorella. It doesn’t exactly smell like melon to me – just this luscious, ripe feminine fruitiness. I do, however, find all the Malles – including the ones I like – a bit dense or hard. It’s as if even the more feminine ones are somehow masculine. I find them all interesting, but I don’t wear them very often.
And by the way, I’m so glad you relaxed the sign-in. I did sign up but I haven’t mustered the energy to change my password to something I can actually remember. I understand your rationale, and I really tried, but my brain will explode if I have to think up one more password.
Tresor always smells amazing on someone else, and I usually ask them what they are wearing, but it just isn’t that same wafty wonder on me. Most Lauders aren’t except Cinnabar, which isn’t wafty at all.
Malles are a little chewy, I think that’s a good way to think of them. Great when you fall in love with one, but horrifying when you don’t.
I know, I have the same password problem. :Cry:
Er…I don’t like PdT either. It was among my earliest samples when I was first doing this. I couldn’t figure out what was supposed to be so great about it, so decided it had to be my woefully under-educated nose. I smelled it again a few months ago. Better, but still not for me.
Heavy heliotrope in anything used to make me gag but that’s changing. I guess I should dig out my little sample of vintage LHB and see.
me too on the under/uneducated nose. I blamed a lack of refinement, that I just wasn’t getting it. It’s me, not you, PdT!
Nope, it’s PdT, it just blows.
I love heliotrope, but not in the powdered variety, which is all i get with the old-school Guerlains.
I hated PdT the first time I tried it. Melon City. Then last summer–6 years later–I got a hankering, who knows why, to try it again. And liked it. Used up my sample, bought the travel size. I don’t always want to wear it, but when I do, it hits the spot. I adore Cristalle (EDT only) and I find PdT to be Cristalle’s gentler sister. It’s the only melon scent I can stand.
As for hates…like so many others, I loathe tuberose scents. All of ’em. And Coco Mad is sickening on me–makes me smell like I covered myself in caramel and then didn’t bathe for weeks. During high summer.
I was fully expecting what you experienced! so I was quite enthused, believing my nose had matured, the clouds would part, and the sun would shine on me and the glory that was PdT.
Well, the sun shone on it all right, for about three days in a summer sun. Just yuck.
No tuberose at all? No Carnal Flower even? Wow. do you like it in the regular flower? Or is it all tuberose – in the for-reals and in the perfume?
I can’t wear tuberose at all either.
Interestingly, melon is my least favorite part of another Roudnitska, Diorella. I don’t like Diorella. At all. I find it dusty, overripe, and matronly (I will NOT invoke “old lady”). Even the lemon seems flat, prim, and mannered rather than sparkling and life-affirming, the way lemon should be. It’s a complete fail on me, rather like most chypres. (Don’t get me started on chypres, or I may get my perfumista card ripped in half and stepped on. And then dipped in oakmoss absolute and lit on fire.)
Another classic that I find basically unwearable is Opium. It’s a fascinating, gorgeous, earth-shaking whallop of a perfume that I respect immensely and cannot bear to have on my skin. It starts off as olfactory nirvana and ends up musty, acrid, and depressing. (See above re: oakmoss. My skin curdles it.)
Oh, chypres. I’m never entirely sure how I feel. Sometimes I love them, but wear them too much, and I’m just over in the hatah place.
Opium in edt is awful. I love it in parfum, but it’s like Angel, one teeeesy drop in winter, and that’s it. Then it’s perfect one day out of every 45.
Apart from Dune (which I think I wore when I was about 13!) all the classic Diors I’ve tried have been vile on me. They make me feel like an old lady who’s gone a bit crazy in the duty free shop.
Old diors are, well, a bit crabby. I go back and forth with them – sometimes it’s love and sometimes it’s, well, we need a break for a while.
Fracas, Joy, Chanel N.19, Bandit…I quietly dislike thee. Angel & Poison I get twitchy and irritable just thinking about.
These are all good choices to hate, seriously. I’m not sure I hate all of them, but I’m in fairly intense dislike discussions with all of them, except Fracas, which I don’t care about.
Angel, during the winter, one drop of some extraity part of it I can do, but it has to be teeny. Maybe once every six weeks. Once March arrives, it is so over!
Well, if we’re going to trash on the classics, then: Habanita – oh, how I loathe thee. Induces the sensation of being physically harmed, like some sort of slow acting skin poison……
I have some Habanita. Why don’t I really think about it? it’s such a big deal in some way, and I’ve smelled it, but didn’t have a reaction at all.
This is my more common HBDC response (honeybadgerdon’tcare)
D&G Light Blue and Coco Mad in all forms. Not because I smell them everywhere, but because they are truly awful and no one seems to be able to admit it. I don’t like Chance or Coco, either. Or most of the Les Exclusifs, for that matter.
Yet another Jicky hater here, too. I should love it, seeing as Shalimar was one of my first true loves, but it’s lavender and herbs followed by mothballs. I’ve tried the EDT (sour mothballs) EDP (sweet mothballs) and perfume gods help me, even the parfum (heavy sweet mothballs). I keep going back, trying it again, seeing if the gates to Jicky will open for me. Maybe I should just admit it isn’t to be?
Wow. see what happens when you open the door to perfume hate? It’s awesome!!!!! :Overjoy:
Feels good too, doesn’t it?
My Get-me-OUTTA-here ! smell that brings up my gorge is WINTERGREEN! EEKKK! It brings back having the flu and getting dosed with Pepto .(I hate Pepto pink too )I think I may possibly have an allergy to it though cause I cannot keep antacids down that have that flavor/scent more than a half hour.
You guys are a crack-up. Some scents just have a thing, don’t they?
I still love the smell of Ben-Gay. I know it’s bizarre, but it’s the smell of mom nursing me at night when I had a cold, complete with a great hot toddy and bundling me off to bed with my chest rubbed down with Ben-Gay and about four hot towels layered on top.
mom-love-smell is some powerful mojo
Iris Silver Mist! There are so many glowing reviews of this. LT sang its praises in P:TG, and Robin at NST says it is one of her very favorites. I had liked several scents that were supposed to have iris in them, so I ordered a generous-size sample and eagerly sprayed some on my wrist when it arrived. I nearly vomited, it was so repulsive. It smelled like dirt–the foulest, nastiest, most disease-ridden dirt imaginable. I am a gardener, and I love the smell of healthy garden soil or compost. Often I have scooped up a handful of it and inhaled. ISM, however, was disgusting. Of course, true to form, it had astonishing longevity on my skin. I washed, scrubbed, and rinsed to no avail. Soap, Tide, alcohol, lotion, Comet cleanser–nothing would take the vile stench from my skin. Reluctant to simply throw away a sample that had cost real money I double-bagged it and stuck in in the back of a drawer where I wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally smelling it. I finally managed to send it along to another perfumista, who I sincerely hope has been able to like it better than me.
Oh, dear. I do love me some ISM, but that metallic rootiness could be a hate-inducing scent easily. Well, not for me!
Rule for Perfumistas – the thing you hate will linger into eternity.
Have you tried the CB dirt-based scents, like black march and to see a flower? do they make you feel the same? I wonder if it is the orris.
Iris is a tricky note for me. I do love (and I mean loooove) some scents that have iris as a note–Vol de Nuit and Chanel no. 5, for instance. Yes, I do love no. 5 and have since I was about 4 or 5 years old! I love Attrape-Coeur when I am in the right mood, and Iris Pallida I find quite nice, if not quite nice enough to pay the FB price. ISM is the only perfume that ever gave me that visceral reaction where I felt as if I were going to be physically ill. Perhaps it is because the iris is so totally “unsweetened” in ISM. I can’t drink coffee without sugar; perhaps I cannot abide iris without a little sweetening. Or else it may be some particular synthetic “iris” aromachemical that is the problem. LT wrote in P:TG that ISM uses every perfume material that has the iris descriptor attached to it, so perhaps it is one specific ingredient in ISM that is not found in the other perfumes I have mentioned. I have had orris root powder before, and did quite enjoy its violet-like scent. I don’t get any violet out of ISM, though, just horrible, nasty, vile filth.
Wow! Two Big Classics: Shalimar and Fracas. Getting beat to flinders here! But they’re the Honey Badgers of the Perfume World: They Don’t Care! 😉
xo >-)
i’m glad you’ve found honey badger.
oh, hey, look! Emoticons! Look below when you are filling in the comment, click on the Zaazu Emoticons + to the left of it, and be amazed.
yes, you love me, I know. March will be impossible to live with. emoticons, put them in the message, then always take one off. :I-m-in-love:
Oh and yes – my secret shame – I hate Shalimar with the burning fire of a thousand suns. It smells rancid on me – so nasty
I really think lots of people hate Shalimar. It is a difficult thing to wear, and it goes just nasty on me. It is not welcome in my personal space. But I don’t mind it wafting by on someone else that can wear it well.
it must be sustained contact beyond a second that is revolting.
Your post was laugh out loud funny – really good. People at the office had no idea what was happening. I disagree entirely, of course, but love that you feel so strongly – good stuff.
Me, too, even though she dissed my girl Therese! I was SO glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I read this post!
xo >-)
The longer I talked about perfume, in looking back, the more I realized I was trying to be too neutral. I didn’t want to trash something because it wasn’t to my personal taste.
But it’s what perfume is all about – personal taste. Doesn’t make it a bad perfume, just makes it one that churns my stomach. :Crazy-Tounge:
This reminds me of when I was seriously into wheat grass juice. They started selling shots at my local health food store and I went every day. Obsessive, yes. Then, my dear body trying to tell me I’d had enough (too much), made me nauseous every time I even went near the store. I started having to shop across town, any health food store without a wheat grass juice bar. Likewise, I can’t go near Shalimar. My body won’t let me.
You can join me across town from Shalimar :Tounge-Out:
Rubbing my hands together gleefully. . . If you don’t like PdT, that means there’s more for me. I love that stuff. I am not a hater when it comes to Perfume — I enjoy the exploring. My biggest disappointments have been the Lauders, Lady Stetson and Tommy Girl, so talked up in the Guide, so unworthy in real life. But I don’t hate on them, to each their own.
Oh, tommy girl, I just can’t even talk about that. :angry: it’s not that it’s horrible, though it is. It’s that it’s so generic. I know it changed perfume, but it wasn’t in any good way.
This is really embarrassing for someone with a perfume blog, but I actually don’t like any Guerlains. Shhhhh. I either find them boring (Chamade, Mitsouko, Après l’Ondee) or dislike them. Jicky? Yuck. Shalimar I wanted to love, I wanted smoky and animalic, but every time I sniff it I think, “ew, lemons and vanilla” and put it back. I am still trying to find one I love.
Lemons? In Shalimar? I get a lot of things in Shalimar (and fwiw, it’s one of my least favorite Guerlains) – but I don’t think I’ve ever got a lemon note! Hmmm…
😕
xo >-)
I gotta agree on the Jicky ! I had a little “umbrulla bottle ” of extrait that my mom picked up at a local thrift store for $2 . Yes ,it’s well done ..Guerlainish …yada yada.On me …well Jicky reminded me of a visit to the zoo (deer,camel,giraffe,and elephant poo?) This might be occaisionally tolerable BUT! my male cat finds the civet to be offensive.
His protests against civet (YOU want civet ! Here ! I’ll give you CIVET! )take about three weeks to clean up.Carpet scrubbing on hands and knees not being a favorite activity -I have to say it’s NOT worth it for a so-so on me scent. I sent it to someone who loves it.
I do love some Apres L’ondee, but of the classics, I don’t love a lot. Mitsouko in the vintage pure parfum can work some of the time, but she is a temperamental bitch, so we feel each other out carefully before we have a go at it. 🙂
Now that you’ve put it out there, I’ll be brave and come forward, too. Yes, my friends, I do NOT like the classic Guerlains. Or more accurately, they don’t like me. I think Shalimar, for example, is absolutely lovely on other people. On me, it’s unadulterated cat urine. Seriously….eau de dirty litterbox. The other greats don’t fare much better on me, either. 🙁
So I enjoy them vicariously when other people wear them.
Don’t fear the bat – it’s just a Cranky Old Bat anyway! 😉 PdT is a toughie. I would think if you love Diorella you would love PdT but there is a heftier melon-push in PdT that might turn folks off. I’m not a melon lover meself – and the Dreaded Frog Accord…. 😮 that Swamp Thing that’s in the Mousson and the Toit or …..well, whichever of the Jardins…oh, the Nil. Yeah, that one!
On PdT – I actually prefer it in the cream. Same thing with Fleur de Cassie (oooh, can’t wait to hear what you have to say about THAT one! :)). PdT in straight up perfume amps that calone.
Mine own HATE ITs? Well, Angel – but that’s shooting fish in a barrel. My confession (and don’t all show up at the door with flaming cudgels, okay?)….the entire line of Nicolai. Yep. There are a couple I can wear – but it’s like wearing a pair of shoes that are a tad too tight – you can get away with it. But why would you want to? I always feel like a perfumista fraud when it comes to the Nicolais, like I should be rolling around in their glory – alas :-< xo >-)
I have to agree on the Nicolais. Not one of them has really worked for me, and I keep trying. And it’s funny that we agree, because I suspect we are Evil Scent Twins… Mitsy hates me, and I get along with most ambers just fine.
😮 Mitsy hates you? :(( I would faint clean away if that happened, though there are days when she comes out with a real ‘tude.
xo>-)
Hatin’ on the Angel?? I tell you, in tiny doses, it’s love. Pure Love. And the new dark chocolate Angel? Double Love.
La Temps D’une Fete? Mimosaque? Really?!@?!?!?!?!? Oh, wait. That’s okay, I totally understand, it’s not for everyone.
Odalisque?!?!? have you smelled them ALLLL!?!?!?!?!??! Dammit!!!! 🙂
where the hell is the little guide for our emoticons? Did we lose them again? Crap, let me try and find them.
Like This makes me feel sick. I really liked it at first, was even considering buying, and then, the second time I sprayed it on my hand, it had this something that makes me sick. I have no idea what it might be; maybe heliotropin combined with something else. I can feel this particular accord in L’eau d’hiver as well, but in Like This it feels as if it went wrong somehow.
Realy? I can see how that could go wrong in the nose if it just smacked you right, and once you saw it that way, there’s no going back to love.
I won a bottle, was sure I would love it, tried it and was pretty sure I did love it, then hated it after all. Dried flowers in pancake syrup with something that goes on forever — no, no, nuh-uh.
I’m not good with words, but your description of Parfum de Therese is exactly how I feel about it, but was never able to put into words. But I keep trying it, like Dee at Beauty on the Outside with Cuir de Russie. I think if I just try it in different weather, I’ll find a time I can wear it. Nope, not yet.
Another classic I hate, L’Heure Bleue.
😮
L’Heure Bleue??
Sisters on the skin, baby! I was in Nordie’s and dabbed a bit of the perfume (yes, this was back in the day when they had the lovely little Perfume Salon and had testers of the most amazing thing. :-< ..but I digress.. It was a powdery MESS! I stood there, like a stunned ox, trying to figure out how this could be! It's LHB!!! I'm supposed to LOVE IT! Yuck. Clinique Toner #4 got a good workout that time! xo >-)
L’heure Bleue is just vile. I know it’s good on some people, but bleah. Blue hour, yeah because my face is blue holding my breath so I don’t have to smell it.
Baby Diapers is all I can think about. Not the full ones, the ones you get all the baby powder all over, but without that clean baby skin smell to make it lovely.
I recently coined the term “diaper bag oriental” to describe L’Heure Bleue. You’re not alone.
Also, I’ve only tried Le Parfum de Therese once so far, had to scrub. Reminded me of some kind of weird seafood casserole. I saved the sample, but haven’t been brave enough to try it again, it’s been at least a year and a half.
Tuberose and I do not get along, which means that classic, much beloved scents like Joy, Fracas, Bandit, etc. cause me to recoil involuntarily. Classic case of “It’s not you, it’s me” but I can’t help it. Good to know there are others out there like me…sort of. (And thank you for turning off the registration thing since it wouldn’t let me register anyway!)
How do you feel about Carnal Flower? Tuberose is tough. I love to smell it in the flower, and Tubereuse Criminelle works for me every now and then, though people like smelling it on me more than I think I like wearing it.
Well, thought we’d try it, but I was thinking it would let you hold the password so you’d do it once and not have to think about it again until you got a new computer, but it was not working out like I hoped for you guys. I can sort spam, and I’d rather do that than lose y’all’s thoughts!!!
OHYAY! A real review by Patty!! (Um. Didn’t mean to sound ungrateful there. Sorry… but I’ve missed your voice.)
Classic/Beloved Stuff I Hate:
Cuir de Russie. Seriously, HATE. Smells just like our cattle working pens in 3D: animal hair, iodine, dust, manure, rawhide, and fear. Heck no.
Joy. Slutty beyond all sluttiness – oh, SURE, it’s high-class ho-dom, but the crotch factor just does me in. (It’s not the civet. It’s the jasmine. Or maybe it’s the jasmine+civet combo… either way, it’s hideous, at least on me.)
Laughing my ass off at ‘crotch factor’!
That’s funny! I know, I have been a lot distracted for a while. You’ll all know why soon. Nothing bad, just really, really distracting and busy-making.
I don’t get CdR either. I’m not a big leather fan in general, but I’d go big for Doblis for my elegant leather before CdR.
Joy does veer to the hideous. It’s an overripe quality that is – you know crotch factor is just the perfect way to put it, it has too much crotch in it. And we are amongst people that understand why crotch is necessary in perfumery!
thta’s an easy one: Chanel Nr 5
5 is hard. I understand its significance and its style, but it just isn’t a scent I wear at all. I’d wear old-style Miss Dior Cherie with that cute little caramel popcorn thing going on before I would touch 5.
Paris by YSL. Hate it. Don’t quite know why, since I like a lot of rose frags. Also, I’m with Rosarita on Fracas. I keep trying it, but it makes me sick.
Fracas doesn’t make me sick, but I’m just left unmoved by it,which I think is weird. For such a big old white flower classic, I have no reaction except disinterest.
I’m a neanderthal, clearly
I want to smell it so bad it hurts now. Just to see if I hate it.
Can’t think of anything that turns my stomach really, sorry. I do hate it when you shell out for perfume that lasts less than an hour on your skin. Is there any research going on into hungry skin?
Portia xx
But you might love it! Most people do. I’m the oddity here, but I’m just going to be okay with it.
You know, I got okay with short-lasting perfumes some time back because I would try so many in one day, one that stuck around too long was annoying. I needed it to fade so I could properly smell the other five things I’d dabbed around.
Mine is Fracas. Go ahead, hate on me. I concede that it is very well made and I’m sure smells great on the right person, but tuberose is just not my friend; I’ve tried many big white florals, just sure that the right one is out there, and omg no. Fracas is instant headache inducing madness to me, like wanting to roll around screaming get it off me! Violet’s another note that I think I should love, because I love violets the flowers, but that Violet de Parma thingy makes me physically ill and I shudder just thinking about it. Ah, Patty, it does feel good to confess!
I won’t hate on you but I am going to look at you all funny, okay?
:)) (I hope this is the giggling emoticon. if not, I’mo be mucho embarrassed! :”>
xo >-)
I confess! I hate nearly all tuberose fragrances! I hate Fracas! OK, I like tuberose distilled with vetiver. I like Vamp a NY. But Fracas, gack!!!
I’m totally with you – Fracas is the acclaimed fragrance that I truly hate. Gaaahhh!
Confession DOES feel good! I have a whole list of the classics I don’t really like. We may have to start going through them. Some I just hush up about because they were good for their time, in style, but why anyone would want to smell like that now just bafles me. On some people they can smell good, but most people should step away from some classics and not insist on wearing them because they more often will wear them instead.
It is so freeing to hate. I used to do more of it early on. I’ll probably never hate on a small niche perfume because I just can’t do it, but some bigger perfume company who could care less what I think and it will never impact their sales, why not?
Although I don’t hate Le Parfum de Thérèse quite as you do, I pretty much hate anything with melons in it. I find it suffocating. My samples of Un Jardin Après la Mousson had to find new homes pretty much. Yet I do like Diorella, so go figure. Anyway, I understand where you are coming from.
My own hatred of a beloved scent? When I got a bottle of Azzaro Pure Lavande, I smelled it, and walked it right down to the dumpster. I’m pretty sure Satan wears D&G The One For Men, which is kind of a relief, as I would know when he’s coming. Except, sinisterly, I can’t remember what it smells like. But beloved? I don’t think anyone really cares about either of these.
My hatred is reserved for Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan. It’s the only fragrance which has made me physically ill. As in projectile vomiting like in The Exorcist. I don’t know if it is the sweetness that done me in or what. I just know I am feeling all queasy thinking about it right now. (Okay, okay, yes, I was hung over.) I seem to be in the minority about this one. Recently, I bought something at Barneys and someone gave me a sample of it and I almost made her take it back. What an ingrate!
=)) at the notion of AS and the projectile! And Satan in D>O!! Stop!!!
I don’t like that Serge, either. Most ambers leave me a bit queasy.
SO glad to see you on here, sweetie! I was beginning to worry…:-?
xo >-)
So why do we think the melon smell in perfume is just so sickening? I love melons, I founder on them in the summertime. I almost turn orange and red by August I’ve eaten so many. But there’s not a natural melon smell that translates in a perfume.
wow, Ambre sultan? I mean, I don’t love it, but think it’s okay as your amber hard-core perfumes go. the serge I can’t even stomach is that Moroccan Soup Kitchen. I’ve been to Morocco, and I love the smells there, I just don’t want to smell like that outside of Marrakesh or Fez!
You are not alone! I can’t stand it either. Other frags I hate are anything with that calone, and I particularly used to dislike CK’s Escape.
I just don’t want to walk around smelling like a swamp monster.
Oh, thank goodness! I have felt so alone on this for so long.
Oh, let’s don’t even talk about any of the CK thingies, they are just revolting.
Ewww, Escape. Bleh.