It’s been just ridiculous here, with straight-line winds and tornadoes and torrential downpours just appearing out of nowhere…more widespread flooding …the ground so wet you can hear it squelch as you walk across the lawn…ick. I mean, I’m all about a green, wet Spring..but c’mon! I have about 320 frogs and toads in my garden, which is kinda fun, actually. I always wonder where they go in the winter. Come mid-Spring, they just show up, frogging up the place.
This has nothing to do with today’s post, btw. I just thought you might like to hear about the frogs. What I wanted to ask you all is this: which scents work best at first blast…and which scents work best towards the end…maybe even after the end…like maybe the next day? My recent experience with that was Chanel 1932 and No 18. Both have the staying power of a meringue – but that’s okay. they’re colognes and as such I don’t expect them to hang around for a long while. In fact, the fun of those scents is the ongoing spritzing, though at 2billion dollars a bottle, it gets a little pricey.
Carnal Flower. Can you believe it? This Big, Bad Girl is like an eau de cologne on me! That first blast of mentholated BWF is stunning. Then it …..goes away. Seriously. I may be the only person on the planet who can’t hold on to Carnal Flower. I hope I’m not anosmic to it…I tend to drench myself in it!
Cartier’s Fougeuse is the persack opposite. I thought I was sooo in love with it but lately it’s gone on cloyingly and is persistently persistent for a long time. And I get really bored with the whole thing. But about 3 hrs into it, this blooms into something spectacular. If you wear it in the late afternoon/evening, hang onto it – by 7a, it is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever smelled! I wish there were a way to spritz it halfway through (yeah – another insane Musetteism. You figure it out. that one made my head hurt!)
psst! don’t tell anyone – but my beloved Mitsouko? Right now I’m reduced to loving it ON CLOTHES ONLY. Oh, the humanity! But it’s another stunner, when captured on fabric a few hours after application.
So….I dunno. Am I crazy? Is it weird to have stuff that only works at first spritz…or hours after the application? Do you have any of those? Do tell!
Oh, I love frogs! They’re adorable and they eat bugs–one of nature’s perfect animals. Have to settle for lizards here, which are also cute. The best way to get rid of snails seems to be to have a skunk move into your yard. They leave the shells in neat little piles. (There are obvious disadvantages to this method, though.)
I was so excited to get my sample of Grand Cuir in the recent giveaway, since it is outside my normal comfort zone in perfume. Unfortunately it had zero lasting power on me. I couldn’t even get a good read on what was in it because it passed so quickly. SAD FACE.
Oh, that IS sad. It’s such an interesting scent, too! I join you in SAD FACE 🙁 xoxoA
Love the drydown on Pear + Olive but that opening sweet blast of pear candy is…whoa, way too much. Also really like Bvlgari The Rouge but the opening is downright gross. I really don’t like roiboos anyway and the opening smells exactly like it (which, I know, is the point) but after a few seconds it becomes this nice tea/woods/fig that is really office appropriate and pleasant.
the idea of pear candy gives me a bit of the heaves! You’re a Very Brave Woman! 😉
xoxoxoA
Much as I adore CF, my experience is similar, if not quite as short-lived as yours…lasts 2-3 hrs tops, and I don’t have perfume-eating skin. Got a backup bottle on ebay so I can keep the mentholated goodness going. DSH’s Vert pour Madame is one where I somewhat have to endure the 1st hr in order to appreciate the heavenly late drydown.
Oh, I’m So glad to know I’m not the only one! Though I wish it weren’t so for either of us. My Madame Endure is Jolie Madame. First spritz nearly gives me a headache. 30 minutes into it and I am gobsmacked by its beauty!
xoxoA
I love the drydown of Jardins d’Écrivains George (as in George Sand), which I’m wearing today, in fact—soft polished wood with a wonderful coffee note. But something about the powdery citrus in the opening reminds me of Tang. It takes a couple of hours to get to the really good stage.
See, that’s what I mean! Wouldn’t it be great to …ooh, I know! It would be great to carry around an extra skin – you could spray the George on the second skin, then slip into that skin once the George had settled down!
xoxoA
Usually a have a lot of tree frogs after a lot of rain, but I don’t have a lot this year. It’s the mosquitoes that are driving me insane. Right now, I’m having a hell of a time getting any perfume to stick around on skin and something happened to Chanel no 19. Last year, I was enamored with it, now, once I get past the wonderful opening; I can’t stand it.
Yikes! on the 19. Don’t you just hate when that happens? I have a couple of those. And others, whom I liked a whole lot but didn’t lurrrve…..but now I crave!
Skeeters are just starting to come out in force. We have about eleventybillion flies right now. Ick.
xoxoA
I like the beginning of Fat Electrician by ELdO but LOVE the way it smells after 2 hours. Mona di Orio’s Vanille is another one that is infinitely better towards the end but I like the opening too. Gucci Guilty has an excellent opening 10 minutes goes yawn for an hour then flattens out fabulously into a rich creamy dry down. There are more I can’t think of too.
I love frogs too. In India on my third last day monsoon started and the frogs came out and were bouncing EVERYWHERE.
Portia xx
Next India trip? It’s you and me, baby. You. And. Me! xoxoxoA
I like your froggy description! If it keeps raining like this, I’ll find fish in the basement. I’m the opposite of GvilleCreative; I love the open of Philosykos but it’s pretty much gone after that. I’m draining my decant. Montale Black Aoud has that bandaid accord but then it just gets more gorgeous as time goes on (and on, that sucker lasts forever.) Got out the bottle of DKNY for Women the other day- I only like it in the summer – and that screechy tomato note just blasts out at first. It’s really pretty later. Don’t float away! Bet the mosquitoes are going to be a Force to be reckoned with once this rain stops.
I’m hoping the bats take care of the skeeters – praying, actually, since I am in total agreement on the Force. We are getting hammered with rain – you know those kiddie pools you get at the Dollar Store? We have one and it was propped up against the garage, bone-dry. 9p? wind knocked it down. 6a? Filled to overflowing! Now it’s sunny and 89F. sigh.
Oh, I couldn’t agree more about Chanel 1932. Beautiful for a few moments and then dull the rest of the way through. But for those first few moments, I really like it.
I looooooooove the drydown of Amouage Beloved. Love. Such a beauty. So complex.
Strangely, I could do without the opening of Philosykos, but later in the day it smells like cedar and iris on me. It’s my favorite cedar frag. Strange, since no one else mentions it, and I don’t even think iris is listed in the notes. Also strange because I love fig, but I just don’t love the fig opening in this one.
Beloved is a perfect example of gorgeous complexity. That drydown is stunning!!!
xoxoA
The toads are out in full force here in Florida, too. I consider frogs and toads to be a good sign- amphibians are much more sensitive to environmental toxins than we are.
As to perfume, SL Santal Blanc is all cumin when I first put it on and for the first few hours. Three of four hours later, it turns beautiful. I am not sure it is worth that opening, though. I have the same problem with modern Femme, but it does not take so long for the cumin to subside and it is beautiful.
Very few things disappear on me. That said, even the heavy hitters can last 6 hours instead of the usual 12 if I am exposed to too much heat/humidity. This can happen if I am going from one air-conditioned store to another but walking through hot parking lots between stops.
I agree! Each year they emerge is a year to rejoice. Along with the annual Bruno Bites a Toad. He always picks up a toad on the street – and, of course, in a nanosecond, he spits it out. Annual Event. I don’t think they’re really dangerous to him – IL is not known for supertoxic amphibians – but they certainly are spit-outable! LOL! xoxoA
Coup de Foudre (DelRae) has an absolutely gorgeous natural rose opening, and I was sure this was THE ROSE for me; however, after about 20 minutes it dried something very meh. Such a surprise after such a gorgeous open! I’ve had several others from that house do the same–open gorgeous but then peter out–but none so dramatically as CdF.
Heavy hitters like Absolue pour le Soir, Portrait of a Lady, etc have dry downs are better than the sometimes scary openings. Lubin Black Jade also has a gorgeous dry down, following a “meh” opening. Oh,, and Loree Rodkin Gothic III….I thought I hated it but it dries down (in the far drydown mind you) to the most beautiful soft musk I’ve ever smelled and transforms itself into something hard to recognize from the first spray.
Hope you are getting back on your feet and say hi to the froggies for me!! xo
those far drydowns ….when they work, they are incredible, aren’t they? xooxA
MItsouko extrait! Mitsouko goes on with all the strength of a woolly mammoth bull (and some of the stench, too, at least according to my sniffing partner – I rather liked it, myself). Thirty seconds later it’s extinct and exiled to a glacier in Siberia. Not the slightest trace of it left. Some Lutens scents (MKK and Chergui, for instance) come roaring out of the bottle like the Mongol hordes, then promptly flop on their backs to have their bellies scritched and make cute noises, rather like cuddly little hamsters….
And frankly, the much-loved L’Artisan Mure et Musc never even makes it to my skin. I haven’t the remotest idea what it smells like, since by the time I raise my freshly spritzed wrist to my nose it’s already somewhere else…..
D’ya think your frogs would get along with my snails? I have so many in the balcony garden that I’m thinking of herding them…. Or opening a snail-shell business.
Such a great description of MKK & Chergui, dinazad! 🙂
I had snails! Whenever it rained, they would show up on the siding. I thought about poaching a bit of white wine, some herbs, butter…….
Hi Musette, SL’s Cedre has gorgeous top notes with nothing after them that I’m very interested in. One perfume blogger, Ginza over at Black Narcissus, wrote about spraying half a bottle all over his home in one evening, just to enjoy the top notes. Bulgari Black, on the other hand, is something I have to spray at least 40 minutes before I leave the house, so that the screeching tires are out of the way before I inflict it on others.
‘screeching tires’ made me laugh out loud!!!