(My) Best Transitional Perfumes – and The Winners!

We are having the strangest weather here:  23F one day and 53F 2 days later!  Hard to know what to wear, so I’ve been hauling out transitional perfumes that will not send me screaming from one end of the spectrum to the other.  We’ll chat about those in a minute but before I forget:  I MISSED YOU ALL!  Confluences of events got me bumped for 2 weeks.  Yow!  I’ve been busy on other Posse stuff so it wasn’t like I wasn’t all Posse’d UP! but I missed yapping with YOU! So, hey!  Glad to be back!

And, lawks! but I am LATE on announcing a couple of winners.  I had a sample giveaway awhile back and the winner was GRACE!  Contact me via my gmail (evilauntieanita) with your deets and I’ll surely get the samples out far quicker than I announced the winner, I promise.

And the winner of the Ambre de Merveilles sample is Lynne Marie!  Ditto with the gmail.  And I’ll ditto with a prompt send out.

Okay – now:  Transitional Scents.  As I type this it’s 56F at 9a in Illinois.  It’s 60F in Santa Barbara.  That’s just weird.  My OCD-pyro neighbor is in his short-sleeved workshirt.  He’s got a giant mound of sawdust he’s going to set alight.  In about 20 minutes the whole neighborhood is gonna smoke something awful!  One of these days that canister is going to blow up on him.  But right now that’s not important, since he’s still intact.  What is important is…his skinny butt is in a short-sleeved shirt.  In December.  In IL.  It’s just weird out here, feeling more like an early SF morning than IL.  So.  What to wear?   It’s damp and weirdly warm, which eliminates my Usual Suspects autumn scents.  Vintage Ubar’s sandalwoodandjammyrose vibe is too cloying and Mitsouko is like an icepick in my left eye.   Carnal Flower is my nighttime lover and I am unfaithful in the cold light of day…so…what to do..what to do…

.well, there are some really interesting Right Scents for the Wrong Season and I have had plenty of opportunity to test them out in this wacky weather.  Here are a few:

 San Francisco in Illinois:  Amouage Opus III.   The opening notes of broom & mimosa are sparkly and almost a bit skritchy.  But give it a minute.  In about 4 minutes the mimosa starts to soften and the broom smooths out into a lovely hay note.  The dry down is what blows my feeble little mind – about an hour into this scent it completely shifts and becomes this warm, powdery jasmine, with just the faintest sparkle of golden broom.  Perfect for an odd, damp day such as today.  I confess to having given the Library Collection short shrift.  My bad. 

(oh, look!  PyrOCD is now throwing DAMP branches on the 3′ high pile of sawdust.  yay.)

I don’t need gloves.  But I want them:  Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady.  Patchouli is one of those notes I always approach with caution and when PoaL first came out I was Not Thrilled.  The raspberry and cassis distracted me from the rose and I kept waiting for some Giant Spice to show itself and redeem what I ‘thought’ this scent was going to smell like.  That’s what I get for thinking.  Dominic Ropion knows what’s best, baby.  The fruit backs off from the rose’s thorns and …all of a sudden it’s a cool, dark, spicy rose, which is unusual enough to keep me interested.  In sub-zero temps this would have me shivering but in this weird out-of-season weather it’s perfect.  I just hauled this out in 68F.  Chicago, December 4.  The Apocalypse is Nigh, folks.  But if I’m going down?  I’m going down smelling goooood!

YIKES!  Gotta Get the Tulips in!:  LeLabo Iris 39 and Xerjoff Irisss.  Patty’s Fault.  My first Iris was  Prada Infusion d’Iris and I was so anosmic I thought they’d maybe filled the tester with water.  Thus discouraged, it was no surprise to find that I couldn’t smell L’Artisan’s Iris Pallida (turned out the muscles in my neck and shoulders were all bunched-up but more on that anon)…..so I just wrote off the Iris.  Then Patty Came to Town, armed with Xerjoff Irisss…and …well!  I took one sniff of that, fell in massive transports of lust and it was Katy, bar the door!  A succession of Iris affairs soon followed:  Delrae Mythique, the Lutens one…(crap, what is that one called?  no….not Iris Silver Mist (I can’t smell that one)….Bas de Soie!  – hey, did you know if you google Serge Lutens and plug in every letter in the alphabet you will get a hit?  Neither did I)….anyhoo,  I slept around with all of those…but my heart belongs to Iriss and Iris 39.  Must be the ‘dirty carrot’ note.  I love that smell.  Funny that, because I hate the taste of carrots.  Love turnips, though.  Though I hate the smell of turnips.   Okay – this is getting too twisted even for me.  None of these works in extreme heat or cold and they just feel…wrong..on a sunny, ashy-blue autumn day.  They are perfect in April – and in this damp, warmery-coolery weather we’re having right now.  (and yes, I know this has nothing to do with tulips.  But I still have to get the tulip bulbs in).

Amouage Memoir. 

When/if the weather goes back into the low 30s, this will be boxed back up to await the Spring.  But right now it’s the perfect transitional scent.   I also find it one of the most structured, calming scents around.  A few days ago, during the Full Moon,  I stupidly took some cold meds – my chest was aching and my mind was gone.  I almost never take cold meds because the aftereffects are so awful – they make my wonky heart hammer for hours on end and they shot the living hell out of my nervous system.  Worst of all?  I usually take the meds at night so I forget about the aftereffects in the morning, so I’m convinced that I am having an anxiety attack/nervous breakdown etcetc….and it’s just ridiculous.   I showered with Memoir gel, followed up with the cream and a spritz of the perfume…and it calmed me right the hell down – and kept me there, in the calm, for the next few hours, until the cold med yick got out of my system.  And I smelled divine – the narcotic feel of the absinthe is underlaid with a bit of rose (I can pick the rose out of any Amouage except! (wait for it) Lyric.  Go figure).  Something about Memoir’s cool, shadowy/silvery darkness says “here.  sit down, have a cup of peppermint tea.  Take a breath.  No….shut the hell up and sit the hell down.  I’ll tell you when it’s okay to get up, okay?  Okay. I’ll be back in a few minutes.  Just relax”…. very calming, like when you were a kid and your flu fever finally broke.  Your mom put you in a tepid bath and when you came out, all clean and clear, your bed was changed and there were fresh pajamas laid out.  You got in, took a nap and woke up refreshed.  Interestingly, Angela got something totally different.  It’s so hysterically, shockin’ different that I urge you to read it here. 

So…the PyrOCD flames are out, it’s now just a dull, smoky roar…I’m going to go out and get those tulip bulbs in!  What am I wearing?  Parfums de Rosine Secrets de Rose.  Though I am an unabashed Rose Lover, sometimes the Rosines get a bit too ‘crinoline-y’ for my taste.  Secrets is a serious exception.   A dry, dusty rose, underlaid with leather and a touch of astringent.  I would walk to Paris to get some of the body creme but it’s a long, wet slog…so I’ll either have to go to Paris meself or beg the daylights out of the next somebody who is heading that way.  Problem?  I fear I will spend the next couple of months diving into that jar like Esther Williams!

so…..what’s going on in your neck of the woods, weatherwise?   And what are you wearing?