Rough Beauty – Iris 39

Okay – bear with me here. Apparently WordPress is Not My Friend. They CHANGED the format and y’all know I’m barely able to manage this tech as it is! Iris 39 had better have my back!

Well, okay. I’m goin’ in!

Let’s talk about ‘rough beauty’. That sounds a bit like faint praise but, in fact, it’s one of my favorite types of beauty. I’m not a fan of ‘chocolate box pretty’, preferring a more interesting look – but this isn’t ‘jolie laide’ – this is more traditional beauty – with a twist. Physical iterations are folks whose gorgeousness is made more alien, yet more accessible, because of some anomaly – like Jason Momoa. In his Baywatch days, Momoa was about as gorgeously perfect as you can get, with the perfect skin, shiny black hair and …well, yeah. Okay. Next!

Then came the bar fight, when his face got cut up by a broken beer bottle – and the eyebrow scar that now defines him. Also, add about 15 (?) 20 years, 2 kids and Life, some dreads and a wicked goatee that should be all the better for a decent trim……but somehow works even better in its scraggliness. His roughness makes him much more compelling than any perfect, chocolate box prettiness ever could (Pierce Brosnan is another – that little scar on his mouth? It elevates him to a whole ‘nother level of hawt, imo – as if he’s actually LIVED some of those fabbo Bond moments)

That’s Le Labo Iris 39 to me. It’s rough to wear – I can only do it in 45F-55F weather, and the more overcast and mizzling the day, the better. And the carroty/iris-y rootiness, underpinned by the dirty-fabulousness of violet and a faint screech of ginger shouldn’t work – but it works gloriously! It’s one of the few perfumes that is always in my olfactory memory – it’s never not readily accessible – I haven’t worn it in over a week but as I write this it rises, wraithlike, into my nose with perfect recall (I just grabbed the lotion (my favorite way to wear the fragrance) and yep! it’s persackly what I smelled in my mind). There are a lot of perfumes I adore that cannot do that – interestingly, it’s always the most difficult fragrances that have the best recall – for me. Ymmv. And all those ‘difficult’ fragrances have that ‘rough beauty’ in common. I think Mitsouko falls into that category, whereas my go-to, Chanel No5, does not. But as much as I adore No5 I cannot always bring it to my olfactory mind. Mitsouko? Bang on, every time.

If you haven’t tried Iris 39, you should, just so you can tell me if I’m bone-crazy! I prefer rooty irises to flowery ones (and that took awhile, btw – my first intro was Xerjoff’s Irisss – and Patty had to almost pour it over my head before I ‘got’ it – but once I did, I was hooked. Of the ‘rooties’ Iris 39 is my favorite because it is the roughest. But they are a bit challenging in all but the most perfect conditions – unlike Jason Momoa whom, I suspect, is nearly perfect in almost all conditions (of course, I ain’t his ladywife. For all I know, she is sick of him leaving his socks all over the house – but he doesn’t look like the type of guy to wear socks……..

Good grief, what a babble! C’mon, join in – what are your challenging scents for this transitional weather (which, btw, jumped up to 72F today!)