1) Scentaholics are a curious breed. Seemingly feeling things more strongly than the mainstream, their faces show reactions to smells that for most would be hyperbole. For us, the curious few, those faces are normality.
2) Alongside this tendency to feel things strongly, many scent fans also express things in intense language. No shades of grey here - this is a world of love and hate, Italianate in style, full of flourish and visceral response. The squirting of an atomiser is a memento mori: Messe de Minuit makes me want to die; Santal de Mysore, to live forever.
3) The lemmings never end. You think you’ve turned the corner. You believe Serge Lutens is over, that there will be nothing new, that it’s time to retreat to the tried and tested favourites. However, you still keep hoping that only, if only, you could have one more hit like the first time you smelled X or Y (but never XY whatever by Hugo Boss), it would all be worthwhile. You claim you’re happy to stick with what you know, to stop increasing your bounty. For one fleeting moment, you’re tricked into feeling contentment. And then you hear of a new niche brand only available at First in Fragrance. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. It goes on your sample list immediately. This is because…
4) To the scentaholic, perfume is a drug. That first remarkable hit of that first remarkable scent is a level of ecstasy that can’t be repeated. But you have to keep trying to regain the moment of bliss. To live in hope through addiction - this is the scentaholic’s motto.
5) Scentaholics are obsessive by nature. They probably have at least one other aspect of their life that keeps them awake at night in delicious (and sometimes despairing) reverie. This could be anything - from cake recipes to composting to conducting. It could be all three. At the same time. Scentaholics are a talented bunch.
6) Scentaholics are some of the loveliest people you can know. I’ve never met Patty (you lucky Sniffa people will have that chance), but she never strikes me as anything less than kind, thoughtful, sharp-witted and generous to a fault. I bet she’s great company. I know that March is.
7) Though we take our perfume seriously, we remember that it’s a trivial luxury. In spite of our intensity about it, it’s never really a matter of life and death. That’s why the scentaholic is often able to be irreverent, daft, and comic about the addiction. We’re prepared for the stunned silence of the acquaintance who finds out about our raison d’etre hobby; this is the funniest thing of all.
8 ) Shopping with another scentaholic is a transformative experience. Truly one of the best ways to experience perfume. I’m not good with crowds, but one or two people - just awesome.
9) Perfume copy seems more and more divorced from the real. Robin’s reductio ad absurdum competition over at Nowsmellthis summed this up with devastating humour - the half-digested post-structuralist gobbledegook, the relativist juxtaposition of high minded aestheticism and low culture ‘cool’, the claims for an ever more rarefied exoticism, the painful attempts at capturing erotic ineffabilities in lumpen prose - all these things are regular features of the niche world.
10) But it’s the notes in designer perfumes that take this journey away from reality. Headspace technology has allowed marketeers to place an empty space where a head should be. So we have a chain of premodified nouns now, whose adjectives are more for suggestion than for clarification (crystalline pansy; bejewelled tonka; iridescent musk; tactile oceanic breeze, ending with a base of vacuous guff). But what they suggest is anyone’s guess. I’m with Chandler Burr - let’s just be honest about the chemicals and be done with it.

It’s been a real privilege writing every week for the lovely readers we have here at the posse. But I seem to have dried up for now - my perfume mojo is no longer working at full power, and I’ve had to hand in my scentaholic swipe card to the Holy Trinity (Chris Sheldrake, Jean-Claude Ellena, Olivia Giacobetti). I hope to get the card back as and when my interest returns, but because of my decline in perfume enthusiasm, this is my last post for a while. I’m taking a break. I’ll be around in the online perfume world now and then, and I wish you all well ’til we meet again. And I send my thanks and love to Patty and March for making me feel so welcome, and so at home, here. They’re wonderful women.

I’m having a busy week. We have very close friends staying with us, it’s seed planting time, and there’s work. So today I’m recycling on the blog. Climate change and all that.

In January, a journalist contacted perfumeposse wanting some copy for an article to be published in the Spring / Summer edition of GQStyle, on scents and masculinity. As butchness personified, I leapt at the chance. And so, apparently little ole me is quoted alongside perfume legends such as James Craven of Les Senteurs. What follows is the copy I sent to the journalist - I’ve yet to see how much made it into the final version.

“1) Do you think it’s scent/ingredients or preconceptions that makes a fragrance masculine?

I think it’s both. First of all, there are ingredients, generally in specific combinations, that work as markers of masculinity, because they have been pretty ubiquitously used that way. Vetiver and tobacco for instance, in Guerlain’s eponymous scent. Or at least they have been in a certain time period. Therefore we come to think of them as masculine. The classic ‘masculine’ scent is the fougere, a somewhat catch all category that generally includes notes like lavender, bergamot, oak moss and coumarin. They generally have a barbershoppy buzz, without too much bright citrus stuff going on. A great recent example is Narciso Rodriguez - archetypal man juice. But, but, but, what is typically male varies historically and geographically. So, sniff Dior’s Eau Sauvage or Hermes’ Equipage, and you’re getting a vision of bourgeois masculinity in the 60/70s; shift to the late 70s and early 80s and Drakkar Noir, Paco Rabanne, Quorum and Azarro seem like stereotypes of the time - all hair and medallions, or shoulder pads and kipper ties. In contrast, the 90s (remember ecru? Sheesh) was washed out minimalist new man - overdoses of calone in Aramis’ New West led to an explosion of aquatic scents, and the unfortunate rise of Hugo Boss as a power player in men’s fragrances with its bland blap. Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, men are wearing jasmine and rose, much as they always have done (and as they did here in the nineteenth century). And, at the same time as all this is going on, there are always perfumes worn by men that are resolutely idiosyncratic and buck the most obvious trends.

So, that’s a pretty roundabout way of saying that there’s a complex web of stuff going on in the construction of scents - there are trends that emerge through the creation or extraction of synthetics (calone, coumarin - and perhaps an iris synthetic in Dior Homme) that become markers of masculinity in certain time periods; there are accords that seem more solidly masculine for longer periods (such as in fougeres), and then there are scents which don’t easily fit in to the trends of the time. Like Dior’s Fahrenheit - creosote and honeysuckle - 1988. You know the real reason why I think so many men’s scents go with the flow and fit with the mainstream trend rather than doing a Fahrenheit? The teams who commission them don’t want to take risks, have tiny budgets for perfume development (most goes on the campaigns) meaning the perfumers can only go for cheap ingredients, choose the safest mods from the perfumers and water down any quirks or edges in those. So we end up sniffing the same thing, altered a little bit, time and again, in the men’s section. But hey, it’s what the consumer wants - they’ve used focus groups and everything!

There is some evidence of change occurring though, but that’s probably question 2.

2) In men’s perfumery, the 80s as you mentioned were characterised powerhouse scents, the nineties all those ozonic/water scents etc, and I’m wondering if you are noticing a new masculinity appearing with today’s men’s fragrances? If so, how would you sum it up and how does it differ from previously?

I think to some extent it’s more of the same. Though the extremes of the aquatic movement are disappearing, it’s still very much there. Acqua di Gio shows no sign of diminishing in popularity. Interestingly though, younger scent wearers seem drawn to sweeter, occasionally more gourmand fragrances, just as younger women are. It’s where the impact of Mugler’s ethyl maltol rich Angel meets the 90s citruses. And it’s the influence of JPG’s Le Male, a scent, that whilst not a favourite of mine, bucked the watery lemon mode of much of the 90s. So Paco Rabanne’s Black XS has a surprisingly fruity sweet accord, yet it’s marked out by the throaty rasp of some masculine aromachemicals - the only things really that indicate masculinity. Likewise with Clinique’s Happy, which could be entirely unisex if it weren’t for the same hint of growl.

More interestingly, there’s a fairly recent exploration of softer scents for men in mainstream releases (I’m not going to go on here about niche scents which are generally not targeted by gender, and have been doing all this stuff for a while longer) - so JPG’s Fleurs de Male and Dior’s Fahrenheit 32 are both milky orange blossom scents, although clearly screaming ‘I’m synthetic’ rather than ‘I’m a natural flower child, gender neutral’. For me, the most exciting is Dior Homme, though I think this might be a one-off rather than a trend (cf. Fahrenheit). It blends a bergamotty opening onto a wonderful synthetic iris and uses gourmand notes with subtlety and flair. Wonderful work by Oliver Polge. Where masculines go will very much depend on how much perfumers voices are heard, rather than those of designers - Hedi Slimane seems to have given a lot more creative freedom to Polge than most designers do. And that’s why we get something that breaks the mill the others continue to run on.

Get back to me on this one if I haven’t answered your question!

3) What are your favourite men’s fragrances? (You can be as personal or objective here as you like!)

Can I give you some favourites by time period?

Favourite early men’s scent - Jicky by Guerlain (1889). Named after Guerlain’s nephew, not an Englishwoman as Guerlain the company would lead you to believe. Go for the parfum de toilette if you can find it. Startlingly contemporary with a gasp-inducing use of animal notes which make this scent hover between the cleanliness of citrus and lavender and the dirtiness of your dark desires…
Chanel pour Monsieur 1955 (perfumerHenri Robert) - suited elegance, bottled.
Eau Sauvage by Dior 1956 (perfumer Edmond Roudnitska)- a wonderful citrus accord balanced against the use of hedione, a synthetic jasmine note. Classically male, yet pretty similar to his women’s Diorissimo.

Favourites from the 70s, 80s, 90s:
Jules by Dior (1980) - thrusting virility done right. It may smell a little dated, but this leathery rich beast is somehow mellow and understated rather than in-your-face. But don’t over-apply!
Fahrenheit (1988) - a unique scent that you’ll always remember once you’ve smelled it. Sublime.
Lolita Lempicka au Masculin 2000 perfumer Annick Menardo A chilly but sweet gourmand scent that moves from aniseed to more familiar woody territory as it dries down.
Terre d’Hermes 2006 perfumer Jean Claude Ellena - cedar, vetiver and grapefruit alongside some strange mineral accord - a contemporary classic. Perfumeposse writer Patty calls it crack in a bottle.
Dior Homme 2005 perfumer Oliver Polge - 21st century elegance. Some men say it smells like the inside of a handbag, but that might be why women love it on men…
Oh, and just one niche - Le Labo Patchouli 24 (available in Liberty) by perfumer Annick Menardo - smells like someones baking a vanilla cake in a car mechanic’s garage whilst a bonfire’s fumes are blowing in through the open window. Awesome stuff.”

Now, share with us your favourite men’s designer scents. Let’s have a range of options up for us all to choose from…

Okay, I’m dashing in today. Training teachers, writing curriculum material, implementing improvement plans - I have no room left for work folks! I’m all about the smells and the plants, people. Wish my bank would understand. So work it is, and hence the brief(ish) post today.

I’m a positive person. Us Brits don’t always do positive in quite the same way as our more upbeat American cousins do, but I’m pretty much at the ‘Rah! Rah! Yay!’ end of the spectrum really. And I normally have only good things to say about scents. So, for a little bit of variety, and seeing as I have next to nothing to say about new scents right now (secret - I haven’t been wearing much, as so busy with the gardening stuff - such a Brit stereotype), I thought I might slam into a few I truly hate.

I don’t hate many things in life really - I’m you’re live and let live sort. Whilst not exactly laissez-faire, I always try to see where something’s coming from and give it some room for manoeuvre. Hating’s a little too strong for me, most days. Hey, I might not like it, but someone surely does. And that’s good enough. And hate - it’s such bad karma, dude. I’d rather the positive than the negative hyperbole, any day.

However, there are a few things that even for placid ole me bring out the nasty side. And I’m not talking designer scents either - I can’t really think of any that I feel strongly enough about to hate… I’m talking my niche nasties, my leprous disasters of limited distribution, my … you get the picture. I’m not even talking those things you love to sniff because their repulsiveness fascinates you. I’m talking those things that make you shudder, scents that are abject horror, perfumes to make you puke, fragrances that are flagrant abuses of olfaction.

And here they are. Apologies if you love these; I don’t (secret - I don’t know how anyone can. Please explain). You can tell me your hates straight after. We can still be friends.

Lorenzo Villoresi Incensi. Quite simply vile. Bitter, cold, messy, an abhorrent cacophony of notes. I never knew an incense could be worse than Messe de Minuit, but here it is. I love cinnamon, I enjoy incense, but here this foul brew conjures up a Satanic anti-sacrament in which I’d rather be eviscerated than have to sniff it again. Knocks his Piper Nigrum - top notes might be great but wait for the murky sludge of the drydown - into the shade in terms of awfulness.

Montale Musk to Musk. Delightful commenter grizzlesnort sent me a decant of this, and I pray I won’t offend you too much, J, by saying ‘thank you for the reminder’. I mean thank you by the way - it’s good to have a baseline for what a terrible musk fragrance can smell like. I had a small sample of this a while back that I seemed to lose. This decant reminded me of how exceptionally powerful a scent-related shudder can be. Oh my. It’s aldehydic and white musky, with a dank fleshrottiness underneath all that ‘pwitty pwitty’. It’s putrescence purtied up. Like a well-rotted corpse in lipstick and rouge.

Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier Jardin du Nil. Basenotes is down right now so I can’t access the reviews. But they’re worth reading. The MPetG site says of this bejewelled bilgebroth, “Returning from a voyage to Egypt, after having discovered mint and geranium rosa crops in the Nile Delta, Maître Parfumeur et Gantier created Jardin du Nil. The refinement of geranium, rose and jasmine is added to a fresh top note of hesperides, on amber, patchouli and vetiver warm notes.’ Guys, you should’ve just stuck some flowers in old water for a few days and sniffed the results. Unwearable. Unless you’re decaying brown silt sitting on a pond liner.

Over to you!

Finger image from ezthemes.com.

In As You Like It (one of my favourites, just for the pure gender play frolics of Rosalind as Ganymede), Jacques famously talks of the seven ages of man, in his standard less-than-chirpy terms, the great big sulky drawers. 400 years ago, people’s lives were a lot shorter, and Jacques has men (and it’s avowedly men, folks - no women to be seen) leaping from adolescent love-mooning, to the passion of young adulthood, to a contented and girth expanding middle-age. In modern terms, I’m not sure where the ages fit, though I guess by now I’ve had between three and four of mine. That is, I’ve definitely been a child, an adolescent and a young man. I’m assuming I’m on the cusp of middle age, even though I’m pretty sure I’m right in it, in reality… A smell the coffee moment? Now, strangely, there are three scents which mark out the first three stages of my life, though my ‘fume promiscuity means that no marker exists from now on. So, I know you’re gagging to know. In fact, I hear some of you cry out, ‘So, what are they already?’ Okay, okay, hold your horses…

At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

First scent memory of any note is my grandfather’s Old Spice. My grandparents had a vanity unit in their bathroom; we didn’t. There wasn’t much in it - some cotton wool, a few prescription medicines, always a brown glass bottle of hydrogen peroxide, white label, old fashioned even in the seventies. I’d sniff it and get that funny hair salon sensation up my nose. But the prize for me was the Old Spice bottle. I would hold the cold bottle as though it was precious porcelain, reimagine the strains of Carmina Burana and the iconic surfer as I lifted the stopper and inhaled that sweetly spiced powdery goodness. My grandfather was a long way from a surfer dude (just as the model in the old ad was too, I now know) yet for the pre-teen me, there was something immeasurably, ineffably, hopelessly cool about this bottled magic. It’s a scent I still adore as much as any niche fancypants work of ‘art’. Good ole mass market genius. The best of the best. Just like my much loved, and much missed, grandpa.

Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

At university, I attempted nerd chic. I bought old suits, wore them rolled up on the legs, above thrift store desert boots. Collarless Edwardian dress shirts, though I never quite got the nerve for the little round collars themselves. My glasses were some new graphite carbonised something or the other. And I was reading several books a week, smoking lots, partying, and generally thinking that no-one as witty or as wonderful as me had existed, really, except for maybe a few of my friends. In moments of doubt, I’d wrap my large camel duffle coat around me (second hand was the done thing, of course) and spray on some more Fahrenheit, confidence restorer that it was. Fahrenheit. The ghost of myself, arrogant young man, a performer without the worries of his allotted time on the stage, an aesthete without an understanding of the cost of aesthetics, a ponce, a frightened child, socially clueless, surviving on guile and a modicum of charm. We all know that feeling… The smell brings these things all back, and yet somehow it’s still wonderful. At times, I don’t like the carapace I wore in my undergraduate folly. I like the man hiding within - he’s a good guy, y’know. He was just too shy to show himself back then. But the carapace that is the startling, and over-familiar, green gasoline and honeysuckle jolt of Fahrenheit, well, that I’ll always love.

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

My friend Sarah left for Paris as soon as she got her degree, and she’s lived there ever since, now works at the Sorbonne, and is raising two lovely kids with her Basque partner. I still make sporadic visits, but in my twenties, I seemed to be there a lot. She lived on the top floor of an old apartment block in the ‘less fashionable’ end of the Marais, on Rue Vieille du Temple. there were still old-fashioned shops around then - cobblers and keycutters, corner bakers. They’re mainly fancy boutiques now. Whenever Sarah came down her never-ending flights of stairs, the Portuguese housekeeper (oh, Parisian cliches!) would be out in flailings of floral dresses, tabards and dyed black hair, to remonstrate her for some misdemeanour or the other. Sometimes, where she’d stored her bike. Most often, playing music too loudly. We’d listen to rai, Natacha Atlas, and occasionally George Michael. We’d sit on the Ile St. Louis and watch the world and her lover go by. I’d miss Matt, who rarely accompanied me on such jaunts. I guess I’d sigh. Back at the apartment, I’d bathe, and use one of Sarah’s bath oils, scented markers of my times in Paris. My favourite was a Guerlain, but I didn’t really pay attention back then. One day, in my early thirties, I sniffed it once more. It was Eau de Guerlain, and of course I now have the perfume, though not the bath oil (it might have been bubble bath, but that sounds wrong for an epiphany, donchathink?). It’s a citrus begamot herbal eau de cologne, nothing more, nothing less, but the best of its kind. Like youth, it doesn’t last. But unlike youth, you can go back for more whenever you fancy. And that’s some comfort. If I need it. I rarely do.

So tell me. Three scents that are time markers for you in one way or another, fancy as you like or totally dime-to-the-dozen. We’re not proud here.

Georgian illustrations of Jacques’ speech come from http://artoftheprint.com

Summer time?

All the time?

Even more all the time?

Part-time?

Closing time?

Are you sure it isn’t closing time?

Trippy time?

Hammer time?

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme?

Just Rosemary and Thyme?

No, silly! It’s none of those. It’s time to announce the winners, that’s what time it is…

The most competitive draw was for Bois Farine - Sue won!

Voleur de Roses - well done Cheri.

Habit Rouge - congrats to perfumequeen.

Jo Malone Amber and Lavender - it’s yours, Sylvia.

Ungaro III is heading to its rightful owner, Erin K.

Jaipur pour Homme - quick out of the draw was perfume nut Mark David.

Arpege pour Homme is heading south to Matt S.

Rochas Lui is off to frolic in temperate climes with grizzlesnort.

No-one wanted Hugo Boss Soul…

I’ve managed to contact all winners except for Cheri, so if you’re reading this, please hit the contact us button. Commiserations to those who lucked out. I’m expecting some little return packages and am excited to see what’s what. I’ll be letting y’all know.

The other time reference in today’s post is of course to Serge Lutens’ latest release, Five O’Clock au Gingembre. However, I’m not sure I have that much to say about it, seeing as all I’ve been able to get through the post is a tester strip, still almost damp on arrival - they must’ve soaked and soaked before sealing.

It’s supposed to be very bergamotty in the opening, but seeing as this is a tester strip, I get little of that (and take the fact that I’ve not done a skin test as a proviso please). First off, it has that Serge and Sheldrake something that fans - and enemies! - of the line will instantaneously recognise. To me it’s the beeswax (not honey) and spice accord that seems a signature flourish in his orientals. Ostensibly, there’s nothing particularly new here. It is yet another variation on a theme. And, if you’re bored of Lutens’ exploration of the spice theme, and the postured blending of contemporary European sensibilities with nineteenth century Orientalism, you’re not going to be excited here.

My initial sniffs made me think of Bois Oriental and ginger, though on subsequent returns to my little plastic pouch those thoughts have changed. Whilst not especially sweet, some of the candied, or perhaps even stewed, quality of the ginger comes through - there’s none of the harsh astringency you get from the raw root, or the burn of the powder, either. Likewise, this is very low key on the citric elements you find in that freshly grated knobbly rhizome. Instead of the yellow associations I might have had with such descriptions, I’m taken into a world of burnt umbers, shadowed shades of browns and oranges. And there’s a masculine element at work here - the vetiver, patchouli and cistus combination perhaps, though none of those notes are as distinct as they are in other Lutens and Sheldrake creations. This one is all about the blend.

Whilst the ginger and pepper may give the scent its raspy buzz, its alert quality, the cocoa works as a baritone, lowering the frequency and harmonising the tune. Once you see the cocoa here, a gourmand quality does become far more obvious, though the scent itself never becomes foody. It’s definitely too abstract for that, in spite of its name that seems to be a bizarre re-imagining of the types of English tradition I’ve never known (I wish, in the words of Noel Coward, everything did stop for tea). There should be tea here, I suppose, and perhaps there is. I don’t pick it up in any obvious way, and though the scent has stylistic similarities to Giacobetti’s Tea for Two, it has none of the verisimilitude of that l’Artisan number.

Summary thoughts - it’s a quiet Lutens. Like Rousse, there are no oddities, startling juxtapositions or surprises here. To quote a truism of our times, it is what it is. I don’t get the fresh elements described elsewhere, but then I haven’t yet smelled the whole scent. I’m really only focused on the base here, and for me, Serge is the king of the bases. I will be buying it: I’ve been carrying the tester strip everywhere with me, and it’s pushing more and more of my buttons every hour (and I mean every hour) I’ve been sniffing it. I can only imagine the beauty of its trail.

I asked the SA - Lydie - at the Salons whether any other perfumes could be expected this year. Though I received the usual gnomic evasions, I did get the impression that there might be two more yet to be released, before 2008 passes into history. There seemed  no knowledge of last year’s rumour that the line has reached its end.

Painting is Alexandre Cabanel’s Cléopâtre testant ses poisons sur des condamné, French Orientalism at its most fantastical.

Three days until March - which in my book is officially spring. Yahooeeey! Now I know some of you poor folk are shrouded in snow and permafrost yet, but here daffodils are all opened up, leafbuds are swelling ready to burst, the sap is rising so fast it’s almost audible in the ache and creak of the earth. The purple acacia in my front garden is covered in its froth of yellow pompom blossom; the species tulips have poked their way through the gravel; the alliums have emerged - their slightly hairy spiralled green leaves, lime fresh, will die back before floral firework explosions open in April and May. Am I perky or what? We don’t get many frosts, and they’re rarely severe enough to set back the soft growth that’s already begun, ever earlier it seems. I’m itching to spend more and more time outdoors.

And, in honour of this time of year, I’m listing. I’m not generally your listing type, except I become so seasonally, or when ridiculously stressed, but that’s another story. I’m a long way from stressed these days. The listing: I have a colour-coded spreadsheet of my seedsowing schedule (103 types of vegetable and cut flower at last count) and, more relevant to this blog, I even list the perfumes I’m excited to try and/or buy. Unsurprisingly, there are a few Neil Morris numbers in there - winging their way across the Atlantic as I type, I imagine. Drooling over the idea of Midnight Tryst and Fetish. Then there are those of which I now need decants, because I’ve been craving them but they’re not me enough to justify a full bottle - if that makes any sense. Included here are Tom Ford Black Orchid (Update - bought a 30ml bottle from (h)e(ll)bay just now - a guy’s gotta snaffle a bargain, right?) and Miller Harris l’air de rien ( a bottle I bought and returned in December, realising that 100mls was just too much for me).

Other list items are things that have been released for some time, but that I’ve never got round to buying, even though I love them. Top of this list, and guaranteed an automatic purchase in April or May, is Hermessence Vetiver Tonka. I used the last of my large sample last night, and the hazelnutty richness with the green vetiver once again took my breath away. It’s all of 100 mls of this one for me. There are also plenty of scents that were released sometime ago that I’m still yet to try, and wonder why I haven’t, so they’re listed too - Vierges et Toreros for example. But these are strictly samples only.

Finally, there are those that I’m at risk of buying unsniffed. Three fall into this category right now. Though I’m a pretty unChanel kinda guy, Sycomore is calling me. However, his voice is a whisper in comparison to the clarion call of first Serge Lutens’ Five o’clock Au Gingembre, and now Hermes’ Un Jardin apres le Mousson. I’ve often been lucky enough to get advanced sniffage of new Serge releases, and though this time I am getting a mouillete / tester strip / spill of the perfume from Paris, that’s not enough of a taste really. I knew Louve wouldn’t be a fit, but this silly-named number has my (slightly silly) name all over it. Who doesn’t crave ginger at five o’clock? I have a not-often-shared addiction to ginger preserves, and my pumpkin pie served with ginger and cardamom cream is genius, even if I do say so myself. And I’m you’re regular spice slut, especially in the hands of Christopher Sheldrake. And seeing as sweet notes are absorbed by my skin, I’m not even worried by the candied. Must. Have. And. Soon. But even this rank acquisitiveness faded into obscurity when I read Robin’s announcement at nowsmellthis about the latest Hermes Jardin scent. Kerala? Post-monsoon? Ginger? Cardamom? A vetiver accord created by Ellena? Oh my oh my. Oh My. Oh! My! etc.

All this means I need to make room in my scent wardrobe by evicting fragrances that I rarely use nowadays. I’m determined to maintain my count around the 70 mark, as I start to be overwhelmed by any more than this. I’m not a great decision maker, and too much choice is a nightmare for me! I know in theory there’s not really much difference between 70 bottles and100, but in practice for me it’s all the difference between knowing what to grab and being stymied and choosing wrongly. Samples and decants don’t count. They’re allowed to go forth and multiply effortlessly. I rarely wear them out - they’re more my bedtime testers.

So, in complete homage to total plagiarism of March’s post in November, I would like to give away 9 bottles, some partially used, some hardly used, some half empty, of scents which I no longer wear or, in one case, of which I have a duplicate. If you’d like to send me a little something in return, random or otherwise, that would be lovely, but you’re under no obligation. Just leave a comment below highlighting which scent you’d like, and I’ll draw the winners from a hat or similar vessel, announcing them next week, and emailing them for their address in the meantime. I’ll throw in a local product or two, too. Perhaps a tutu or two, too.

The scents are as follows:

l’Artisan Voleur de Roses 50 mls - about 60% full. Roses and I can love each other, but we never ever play nicely together.

l’Artisan Bois Farine 50mls - about 50% full. Duplicate bottle. How did that happen?

Boucheron Jaipur Homme 100ml tester bottle no box - 80% full. Too smooth for me.

Rochas Lui 50mls - about 70% full. Too much neroli for me.

Lanvin Arpege pour Homme 50mls - about 60% full. I loved you for a while…

Ungaro III (promised to Erin K, if she’d still like it) 50 mls, hardly used, no box. Roses, again.

Jo Malone Amber and Lavender 30ml - 60% full, no box.

Guerlain Habit Rouge edt 50mls hardly used.

And finally, the pièce de résistance (ha!) Hugo Boss Soul 50ml, no box, 75% full (must have appeared by magic… And please, if you fancy having this one, there is DEFINITELY no need to send something back my way. I’d just be happy to find it a home).

Hilarious spring image from mooseycountrygarden.com

It’s the fag end of winter, though the weather here is doing its usual end-of-season last gasp - sharp morning frost, freezing fog, but then glorious sunshine from midmorning onwards. I thought winter had bypassed us once more, but Jack Frost has been nipping at the windows and burning incipient buds, the naughty tyke, reminding me that the end of February is always the chilliest time of year.

This cold weather has coincided witha period of oh-so-busyness at work. Man, it’s all rush, rush, rush, engaging high challenge stuff. I’m loving it, and I’m not really stressed - love my new job and my colleagues!, but I need comfort. And time. Just a smidgeon more time. So here’s my brief post of scents that comfort me, warm me up and calm me down. Though they don’t yet find me a few extra hours in a day. A lot of them I’ve written about before, but hey, I’M IN A RUSH!

Christian Dior Bois d’Argent - iris honey and some myrrh. Pretty simple but a default ‘now that’s just the ticket to take me to Calmville’. And always right.

Annick Goutal Sables - I used to like it, but this winter it’s become love. The best Goutal for a ‘cashmere blanket under starry skies’ effect.

Divine l’homme de coeur - normally a summer staple, but recently a sniff of this gives me bliss, on call, whenever I need it. The bottled equivalent of clear warm air, it’s an alternative reality where clouds are scented and deer and hares gambol in the streets, only pausing in their frolics to wave hello as I pass, butterflies landing on their noses.

Hermessence Ambre Narguile - apple tobacco honey amber richness. A foody non-foody wonder. The Nazgul to some, to me it’s more hobbity harmony.

Gianni Campagna Vento Canale - Ambre Narguile through the looking glass. With a pipe.

Mona di Orio Carnation - perfect skin. A warm caress. A forearm touched. A smile. Flesh on flesh. You’re with me, aren’t you?

Serge Lutens Santal de Mysore - can I dare say this is my favourite scent, when all’s said and done? It is really, though sometimes I forget the fact when some other little minx steals my interest. It’s true love.

Neil Morris Burnt Amber - my latest comfort flame. Sweet smoke, a floral hint, amber genius. Neil and Ida - incredible work. But I told you this last week.

So, what is currently comforting you, old and new? And I’ve never had frost on my windows like that image. It’s never cold enough. I just thought it was pretty. At least in the abstract…

And I imagine my usual, lengthier posts may return next week.

I fell in love with Mona di Orio’s scents quite some time ago when a lovely internet friend in the Netherlands sent me some samples, including a large decant of Oiro, her richly brocaded jasmine and sunlight glitterball. I now own three - Lux, Carnation, Nuit Noire. Two I bought on a shopping trip with Louise, after we discovered that both Liberty and Les Senteurs had the London exclusive on her fragrances. Love how that works. Both the buying more than you should (naughty temptress Louise) and the non-exclusivity of exclusives.

All of di Orio’s scents, up until now, have struck me as startling - not necessarily difficult to wear, but tricky, opulent numbers which take you in unusual and unexpected directions. You either enjoy the nasal hairpin bends or feel nausea at the journey.

Lux for example revs up its engine in a Willy Wonka styled lemon grove where much of the acidity has been removed to leave a rich sweetness, apparently child-friendly, a parade of praise for a candied version of that brightest of yellow fruits. It’s almost too much sugar, too much dazzle, that sensation of losing the roof of your mouth, stripped by sherbet. But suddenly it darkens and instead you’re into the woods and, after an hour or so, swept up in a play of chiaroscuro between the brightness of the beginning and the musty murk of the dominating cistus in the drydown. I adore the drydown, even if sometimes the opening is too fruity-perky for me. It’s like moving from a technicolor musical to a Goya black painting. Is this artisanal clumsiness or great skill? I’m inclined to think of it as the latter, though I’m not sure most people would agree with me.

I could quite easily go on and on about her other three releases - the voluptuous fleshiness of Carnation that is automatically a Rubens, prone; Nuit Noire and its evocation of decay in the act of desire, a sensual still life where the first white flowering of mould blossoms on the shadowed edges of the orange - but I’m here to write about her latest release, and her fifth, Amyitis.

Here’s the usual schtick from Mona di Orio’s eponymous website:

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built to please the Queen Amyitis. The feeling of being in balance with yourself and nature, unburdened and peaceful, inspired Mona to create this fresh green fragrance. Like a walk in a magical garden where the colours and the perfumes are sublimated.

Topnotes: Caraway, savory, capsicum, green leaves
Heartnotes: Iris, Violet, Gaiac wood, Cedar of Virginia
Basenotes: Saffron, Opoponax, Moss, Amber

There’s a clear distinction here between this release and her four others, marked out in those two words, fresh and green. Indeed, its release in the last month of winter works like an early glimpse of Persephone before she’s final released by tricksy old Hades. Can I just praise the packaging of these perfumes before I talk about the scent? Boxes and bottles, both wonderful. Grey birchwood, champagney fancy stuff (dumbo here removed the muselet on his first bottle cos he though he needed to in order to open it…). The sprayer doesn’t quite match up in that it’s very delicate in delivery, but given the potency of the first four - and the price! - that’s probably no bad thing.

So, what’s Amyitis like? I’ve been spending the last four days in its company and unlike her others, it aims to seduce by whispering rather than glowing or exposing flesh. There is a signature element at play however: though this is in the direction of light layers, there’s still an element of weight here, as though the freshness is concealing something denser. Though quite what that denser something is, I’ve yet to define.

To some degree, the notes play out as described, including a violet peekaboo midway through. It’s one perfume you can sniff and either recognise the note list as truthful or convince yourself that it is. All stand out as if marked by their own individual highlighter pen. The opening is bright, clearly green, verging on almost fruity and, though in the territory of Eau de Campagne, it’s without the bucolic and agricultural airs of the Sisley scent. Instead, there’s a limpid aqueous feel to the composition, but no trace of calone as far as I can tell; it never moves towards metallic chilll. I read cucumber mentioned in a Dutch article, but this remains far, far in the background for me.

The caraway does something interesting (and I think Luca Turin writes about this in his book) by heading towards mint, though not quite getting there, before returning to its almost anise and bitter dry spice aroma. A commenter at PoL pointed out a plastic quality that bloomed on her skin early on, and I see what she means. Somewhat like Eau d’Italie, this verges towards latex ten or so minutes in, the way in which some plant sap can smell more synthetic than natural. It doesn’t last, and perhaps signals the entrance of an unlisted note.

And then, to me, the rest of the perfume, until the final moments, is dominated by the unmentioned element - a vetiver, or something working as though it is vetiver. The same friend who originally sent me the di Orios pointed out a link to Lutens’ Vetiver Oriental, which I initially, and foolishly, dismissed. But it’s clearly there. Whereas the Palais Royal perfume flirts with gourmand notes to make vetiver strangely drinkable, like a coca cola of roots and greenery, Amyitis is more austere and cerebral, but the interplay between iris and the root gives it that same unusual and striking edge.

Eight hours in, I’m left with a mossy whisper on my hand, a reminder of the outside world where I spent all of the weekend before the weather turned to cold once more. This is a summer scent no doubt. I hope it’ll bloom slightly more with heat. Though green scents aren’t my thing, it’s exceptionally well executed. I’ll have to wait to see if it steals my heart. The others took it immediately; this one might burn slowly to find a way in. Roll on spring.

Apologies to all non-American and non-UK residents here, as this post assumes, stupidly, that you live in either place. I do actually know lots of you don’t. But I’m writing about American ‘fumes today.

I know we’re two nations divided by a common language, but sometimes I just don’t get why one scent, popular and ubiquitous over here, is only in a handful of stores out there, and vice versa. Is Dolce and Gabbana’s The One still hard to get hold of in the States? It seemed like the most overpromoted perfume on TV here during the Christmas spend. Though the spend itself appears to have shrunk a little as the wind of global recession blows down everyone’s now loose fitting trousers. What other women’s scents fall into this category? I know Light Blue doesn’t saturate the market here like it does Stateside.

In terms of menswear, a default setting scent across the pond appears to be John Varvatos. From what I’ve read at http://basenotes.net, wearing this is as natural a stage to go through as drinking too many kegs of beer, skinny-dipping and getting pleasure from farting in the bath. I’ve only seen it once over here - in Liberty of all places, amongst very exclusive niche numbers. Online, it’s overpriced compared to the nickel you can buy it for Stateside, though there does seem to be a grey market stash currently being auctioned on eBay. The ‘fell off the back of a lorry (aka truck)’ supply?

Well, I managed to get hold of some of this juice, so what’s a Brit man’s take on it? You know, it ain’t bad. But, to start with bad, I think the list of supposed ingredients is frankly hilarious (medjool, Mediterranean herbs, West Indian Tamarind tree leaves - Jamaican or Guyanan? It does make all the difference, ajowan, eaglewood etc.), especially if I’m meant to belief that medjool dates have been squeezed into the bottle. Hell, I love them, but I’m not sure that fruity accord is some special CO2 extraction of their innate essence. Equally hilarious is the bloke intoning over the fragrance concept section of the Varvatos website. I guess I should be thankful I’ve learned how I’m supposed to pronounce the name…

Onto the good. So, though this does the fruity top notes that linger and play before being joined by a woody oriental drydown (with a touch of leathery musk?), I get its appeal. It’s individual enough to stand out from the likes of Polo Black, yet without any quirky edges. Can I also say that the bottle design has feel appeal too, and I don’t often feel anything for bottles. It’s a very synthetic smelling scent, and I certainly don’t mean that in a bad way, and though its vanillic drydown is generic, there’s enough to hold your interest lightly without it being distracting. I just wish companies could be more honest about their juices, instead of claiming that they’re the first ever to use eaglewood, or extract of Ladakh prayer flag…

And it’s a bargain everywhere. I wouldn’t mind young, good looking men smelling of this. Or ugly ones either. I might even wear it once or twice myself, though I’m definitely outside its market sector… Anyone sniffed the Vintage? I’m guessing that’s aimed - ha! - at the 30something market. Not that I’m there for much longer either…

Onto stranger and more delectable shores, to perfumes that do distract and hold your attention and tease and tempt. The siren’s call, in fact. Someone tie me up to the mast, cos Neil Morris is making me want to take the plunge. Louise was sent some samples by the ever-generous, ever lovely Chaya, and being the love she is, she sent bits and pieces of them on to me. There was a lot to sniff, and Louise being Louise, she threw all sort of other goodies in there (vintage Mitsy extrait - hello!). The two that have grabbed me, shaken me up (Judy! - Dickensian humour - sorry) and left me reeling are Dark Earth and Burnt Amber, the collaboration between Neil and the aforementioned Chaya.

Dark Earth does exactly what it says on the tin. Wet patchouli gives it a soil like quality, some musk (I think) an animalic edge and there are saplike green notes in there to brighten the darkness a little. But this is a forest of mystery and perhaps terror, an adult location for Hansel and Gretel stories, like the once inhabited Harrikin of William Gay’s disturbing Twilight, though the rain has ceased and there might be a way out yet. Now, this sounds menacing, but it’s actually beautiful. I’ve missed out the floral facets, the light that breaks through the loam and gloaming, in spite of the tall trees that hide the way you came. A perfume of solitary comforts, where the earth is the earth is the earth, the place from whence we came and to where we shall return.

(footnote - four hours later, I resprayed Dark Earth. It was all soapy clean fresh green and not dark at all. I’m blaming my off-centre nose and hoping my first impression was the more accurate one.)

Though I liked Dark Earth, the miracle is Burnt Amber, as it does the remarkable and makes me love an amber dominant fragrance for the first time (Ambre Narguile doesn’t count - it’s honey, spices, tobacco and apple pie to me). Sticky and fruity and maybe medicinal to begin with, but in the best possible lick-me-all-over way, it gets smoky and tarry and dirty and murky. My oh my, I need a bottle. For some of you, it’ll be too close to Patchouli24 with additional tyres burning in the background, and only a lone marshmallow or two being overtoasted on the brush fire. For me - it makes me hungry. Hungry and lusty (tmi? Blame the sirensong). And though it doesn’t quite make me feel better, I sniff it and no longer care that I feel unwell. Neil and Chaya - when’ll this be up on Neil’s website? A delirious fan needs to know. Pray tell.

29 January 1992. Another dreary winter day struggled to dawn; he did too, for an early tutorial about his research project. By mid-afternoon, he was sitting in the English common room, pretending to read. Interests and concerns at this point in time: 1) Literary theory, particularly fancypants poststructuralist stuff with at least one set of parentheses and a colon in the title; 2) Acid jazz (don’t ask); 3) clubbing; 4) writing; 5) drinking; 6) fashionable indiekid clothes; 7) the self-important self-regard of a working class intellectual; 8 ) lust more than love; 9) a vague nagging nihilism that veered from feeling like a bout of indigestion to an aching despair; 10) random acts of extreme silliness and laughter. In short, an extroverted yet introspective depressive postgraduate with too much self-regard shielding a set of hopeless insecurities. Today, his life would change.

I met Matt on this day, and it marks our anniversary, seeing as we never got engaged or married. He waltzed in on the arm of a mutual friend, he was visiting from London. He was wearing a bizarre purple stripy shirt from which he’d removed the collar, and ill-matching trousers. A wiry rake, clown-like in his colour, decidedly anti-fashion, decidedly interesting. Bright light had emerged from the darkness, and the path I was taking changed, twisted and righted itself exactly as it should have been. Within weeks, I couldn’t imagine the other possible journeys. Those paths were now murky and uninteresting.

Sixteen years on, he makes me laugh like no-one else, knows me as though he is me, and has a look on his face that still melts me when I see it. He ain’t perfect, but that’s why he is. My light in the darkness.

I’m brightening the mood after last week’s gloom - my anniversary falls at the best place in the calendar to shake me out of my winter torpor, and as it does, my other passions awaken too. I’ve ordered plant seeds, onion sets and been making plans for the garden and allotment. I’m alive with writing ideas. And perfume - gimme the perfume already.

I’ve been craving three scents in particular, none of which I own, and all three of my decants have dried up. Needless to say, I’ve managed to get more of each… In some cases, much much more than I strictly speaking need.

The first is Annick Goutal’s Sables. I used to like this scent, appreciated its herbal opening and the startlingly strong softness of its development. Now I can’t get enough, as though it’s the elixir of life and nothing else’ll keep me going. So, it’s an immortelle scent and I should’ve had enough of these by now - with the old Eau Noire, the kooky Fougere Bengale and the ultra-pricey Luxe Patchouli. But no. On me, the immortelle in Sables is nonpareil. Its oddness escapes language, and yet, in spite of all those quirks, at the moment it’s fitting me like no other. Less maple syrup than maquis hillside in summer. Man, I love it.

The next - an overlooked gem from Lutens non-export line, Un Bois Sepia. It’s a little like Hermes‘ Rocabar for the first ten minutes or so (and for some makeupalley users, a little like Axe too, apparently), but from this point onwards it charts its own cedar-inflected course. Sweetened by opoponax perhaps, this is a slightly medicinal heavy-materialled Lutens with a familiar ‘is it fruity? Is it spicy?’ scent play that you either love or castigate for being a sugar syrup confection. I’m in the former camp, natch. It’s both fruity and spicy, but quite some distance from the very genetically similar Bois et Fruits, Bois et Musc and Bois Oriental (who all look a lot like their ma, Feminite…). It’s perhaps the most masculine of the bunch and is failing to be summarised prosaically. Tweed, the Lutens site claims. I’ll go with that. I can imagine wearing it whilst strolling around Stornoway, stopping to sup a fine malt in a local pub. And that, for a fantasy, will do me nicely enough.

The final of my cravings is Eau d’Italie’s Sienne l’Hiver. I own a bottle of their Bois d’Ombrie and it’s a potent, masculine tobacco leather incense blend, Bertrand Duchaoufour at his most shadowy and virile. Oooh la la. Sienne l’Hiver, though it dries down to something very similar to its sibling, though a little brighter, is a walk in the etched chill of a sunny winter’s day. Even if the ground is hard, life’s waiting to stir itself in its dank depths, and the drip of meltwater is the metronome counting the ice season’s end. A wet green incense with a very comforting violet and earth accord, this is beautiful.

So, commenters - tell me: 16 years ago - describe yourself. And - what are your current inexplicable scent cravings?

I tried to write about perfume, honest, but other things got in the way.

On Saturday, we went out to have a meal with a couple of friends, chew the cud, the usual stuff. I’d been perky all day but found myself getting quieter and quieter as evening progressed. I seemed sad. There wasn’t any clear reason for this - nothing dramatic had happened earlier; I felt well; I like my friends very much. Everyone had noticed however, and I was an absence in the conversation, in spite of physically being there. Matt worked it out before I did.

Earlier, we’d briefly seen the news. I don’t know why the TV was on - we only go down to the tv room for an hour or so a day, and always after 8. Maybe we wanted to check the weather forecast (floods galore in the UK right now), and decided to do it the old-fashioned way; I can’t recall. But anyway, there we were. The news was the usual litany of despair and, though it always affects me, I’ve grown that 21st century carapace that we all wear nowadays to cope with the eerie dissonance between our own lives and what we’re so readily shown from the lives of others. The big story was the arrest of fourteen men in Barcelona for apparent terrorist plots.

It was an incidental that Matt so astutely spotted as the source of my melancholy. As the news anchor intoned over footage about the arrests, the images cut to CCTV of the 2004 Madrid bombings. We watched, without mediation, hordes of people rushing towards a stairwell leading off a train platform and what looked like two detonations occurring behind them. The figures disappeared into the flash and the smoke; it wasn’t clear whether these were amongst the 179 dead, or survivors. It looked fatal enough - whatever I mean by that - to me. The grainy footage, its absence of colour, the half-made forms running in panic, the unswerving unblinking frame except for its judder with the first explosion, vision obliterated by the blast, and then the sudden cut back to the studio…

The shock was on two levels. First, that such footage can be shown, so soon after an event now, only marginally contextualised, as though already historical document and magically impersonal: objective reportage. The second, that real deaths were here shown to the nation as a throwaway set of images on national tv. That’s all it freaking mattered. Not at all. The death of many = something to eat your supper to…

The first shock diminished relatively quickly - I’ve seen dead bodies dragged from buildings on national news broadcasts elsewhere (Spanish TV seems particularly gratuitous to my softer Anglo sensibilities), without forewarning (there’s an endearing tradition in the UK of the broadcaster normally announcing ‘Some viewers may find the following images disturbing’ before harrowing items), I’m not mawkish or squeamish, and I’m fairly savvy to the structure of news bulletins and the tabloid nature of such bulletins on commercial tv here in the UK. But I do tend to get my news on the radio a lot. Sometimes, I remember why.

The second shock lingered, and is still living with me. And it’s this that caused the silent sadness of Saturday night. Once Matt named it, I knew exactly how right he was. Aside from the the sense of wonder that comes from having a partner who knows me better than I know myself, this didn’t lift the gloom, though I could temporarily contain it. I felt freakish - a few million people will have watched that ‘incidental’ footage - how many will have felt it invade their thoughts and feelings, as it damn well should? I’m not claiming some exceptional throne for myself - Prince Embarrassment of Empathy; I’m just sayin’. Terrible, isn’t it? It made me think of this:

War Photograher

by Carol Ann Duffy

In his darkroom he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between bath and pre-lunch beers.
From aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns a living and they do not care.

On the journey home, we listened to Johnny Cash, “American IV: The Man Comes Around”. It seemed fitting, especially the wonder of a song that is his delivery of ‘I Hung My Head’. Sometimes, an old man with a deep voice and so few words can capture the fragility, the pressing beauty of life, more than anything else can. Alongside the terrible pain of its loss. I’ll let Johnny do the talking, laconically at least, for me, from now on.

Why am I posting this here? I’m sorry for the downer folks, but I’m taking advantage of the fact that the warmth I get from this website means so much to me. We’re a community drawn together by the ostensibly frivolous, but what strikes me most about everyone I’ve talked to here is the sense of joy and pleasure you all find in life, and the extent to which you all feel and live and love. And my, there’s something wonderful and profound and lovely in that. That pain I’ve felt since Saturday is a tiny glimpse at a dark world; y’all make me feel like I’m living somewhere bright.

Perfume next week. It’s a promise.

I don’t frequent perfume forums (fora?) as much as I used to, but I know that, alongside the ‘What (never Which…) colognes do chicks really dig?’ style questions, another frequent one, sometimes in poll form, is ‘Who do you wear scents for?’

The question puzzles me, for its starting point seems slightly wonky. Perhaps it’s age, self-absorption, or some other fault of mine, but I can’t imagine wearing scent for anyone. I wear them purely for personal pleasure. I think it was commenter Elle who recently wrote about scents transporting her from the real to the unreal, or out of the quotidian and into the quixotic. And that’s what they are for me. A profoundly personal and often private ritual, a personal journey into a fantastic elsewhere. In fact, I’m easily embarrassed by people - acquaintances rather than friends - asking me what I’m wearing, as daft as that seems. I’d rather be thought of as nude, scentwise, than be asked by one of the uninitiated what my scent is, which makes me feel nude clotheswise (as nice as it also is to be complimented of course). As though my private place, my solace, has been invaded.

Oh, ain’t I being precious today? But this private pleasure, that I’m happy to share somewhat anonymously over the internet, is both trivial consumption and profound experience. Scents are the closest I often get to awe and wonder. Baby, they’re my religious experience - a world outside of words, a world of marvels.

In case you didn’t spot it, that’s my segueway into incense scents. Burnt material used to cover the stench of the huddled masses at worship, now transformed in the modern age to personal perfumes. Wondrous really, isn’t it? I have mixed feelings about them and until recently, thought I had gone off most of them completely. I was wrong.

Incense scents often appear have a narrow colour palette, and they’re easily seen as monotone and ascetic in nature. Two benchmarks at this end are Armani’s Bois d’Encens and Comme des Garcons’ Avignon.

Of the four incenses I’m reviewing, the Armani is probably the simplest. Cedar - tick. Frankincense - tick. Pepper - tick. Vetiver - tick. It’s fairly diffuse too and surrounds the wearer like an aura. However, it’s more an aura of chilly minimalism than high mass, though that peppery kick sometimes reminds me of similar masculine accords in scents like Gucci pour Homme and CDG 2 Man. If this is a church, it’s way too styled for the huddled masses. I think that have a strict door policy - only black outfits, perhaps a touch of grey here and there. Next!

I used to own Avignon but I shipped it to a dear friend who loves it more than me. It’s a remarkable fragrance - the closest it’s possible to get to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela without visiting. It’s not pure frankincense, but close enough to seem like it might be, and I’m sure I detect some cinnamon in there. But it is being in that cathedral, queuing up with the devout and the curious to touch the foot of the Trinity, the lingering aroma of the botafumeiro - a huge, swinging censer - and the damp of the stones from the humid Atlantic weather of north western Spain. I’ve been to the cathedral at Avignon, though I have no real memories associated with it. Santiago will have to suffice.

For the next two, ostensibly incense scents, my words’ll be limited. Because, though they dilute the purity of of smoke and faith, their beauty is essentially ineffable. The first, because it’s glamorous, sparkling, colourful incense and the best thing I bought in 2007. I’ve hinted here how much I love Amouage’s Jubilation XXV - and oh, I do, I do, I do. It has depth, richness, vibrancy and symphonic range in its harmonising of ingredients. It opens with a fruity, tart-sour accord, a signature motif in many of Bertrand Duchaufour’s compositions
(though not in Avignon or Kyoto, it has to be said). However, it doesn’t stay there for long, instead using a whole orchestra of colour around frankincense to brighten the familiar note. And yet it’s restrained, never brash, and makes you smell goooood, rather than feel like the perfume’s wearing you. In fact, it transforms me into the epitome of chic and debonair, and that’s some feat I tell you.

The last incense from me is one of my holy grail scents, Serge Lutens’s Encens et Lavande. I first smelled this early on in my journey into niche. Who’d've thunk that incense, lavender and a smidgeon of sage (or a whole heap of aromachemicals and naturals masquerading as a trinity) could smell so good? Though I would guess there’s a touch of immortelle there too - at least this perfume started my love affair with that accord. And maybe some amber? It’s the ultimate transporter for me. I can be stressed out of my nut, doolally, off my rocker, flying with the birds; a sniff of this will bring me both back into who I am and away from all the small stuff that we all, too often, sweat over unnecessarily. It’s calm captured, or the last thing to fly out of Pandora’s box bottled by that necromancer of molecules, Sheldrake. If you’ve never sniffed it, please remedy this serious fault (sin?) now. I said NOW.

Of these four (or three or two…), which is your favourite and why? And don’t forget to tune in tomorrow where March reviews two incenses I’ve failed to sniff, and one I hope to avoid sniffing for the rest of my mortal existence. I’ll sniff it enough afterwards…

Image of the Botafumeiro courtesy of wikimedia.

I’m not feeling brilliant but I need to write a review - I’ve been dithering with other stuff here for way too long. But, given my febrile state, there’ll be no preamble (other than this, erm, meta-preamble), no discussion of CDG’s quirks and funny spots, no anecdotal asides. Well, that’s what I’m saying now. We’ll see.

These two scents are are very different points on my perfume continuum. One I think I love, the other I almost hate. Let’s start with hate first.

Patty and March have already written about 888. They both quite liked it, though neither flipped their lids when they sniffed it. My lid closed down with a clank when I did and I pulled my ugly wrinkle nose face. There’s a category of scents that I. JUST. CAN’T. DO. and this, for some reason, falls in there, with those two Soir Sisleys that I conflate in my brain.

Here’s what marvellous March said: ‘Here’s what I got: 888 opens with a huge blast of pepper and coriander, but there’s also a strong, old-fashioned classic cologne note. The effect together is effervescent and really, really appealing. Right away the tone is set: okay, we’re going to have fun here. If anything, I’d have named this one Play. I don’t get much metal, for those of you avoiding 888 because of the m-word. “Curcuma” suggests either ginger or turmeric, and I’m going with the latter – along with the amber and saffron that begins to dominate as the cologne fades, there’s a mustard-like note.’

And here’s what perfectly perspicacious Patty said: ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever smelled gold. but this is why I think it should smell like in an ideal world — slightly fresh, a little metallic, with the geranium giving it that weird, funky, almost rubbery {!?!} vibe. I’ll be anxious for you Daddy Warbucks readers who have smelled gold to sniff it and tell me how close it is. As a scent, it works for me beautifully — it is fresh and appealing on the surface, but has some strange things going on underneath that surface. I think of it like one of those beautiful lakes from Lord of the Rings. All pretty and mirror-like on the top, and some funky fanged fish swimming around underneath that beauty.’

Well, that filled up some space, and I do feel rough.

The end.

Just kidding! Here’s what lunatic Lee said: ‘Yeuch , I need to remove it! Horrible horrible top notes. Yes, it is effervescent, but in that nasty old Baghari way and I’m a total lame-ass (still) with most aldehydes. It probably doesn’t even have aldehydes but I don’t care (aside - I can’t check my one and only wearing of this scent - sniffed thanks to Patty’s unstinting generosity - cos I’ve shipped it on to its next victim); it’s a super-perfumey perfume number that’s doing a ‘Oh I’m here, take notice’ dance up my nostrils. Blech. So it’s almost bad chypre to begin with (good chypre - Mitsy parfum; bad chypre - aforementioned Sisley stink) rather than cologne. And it’s big - a demon of diffusion. It’s wearing shoulder pads, it’s gold lamé and shoulder pads. Did I say shoulder pads? It’s synthetics gone serious. I see why they had that one called Play now - cos all the fun is done. Goodbye Tar and Garage and all you daft little scents. Hello brash new world of glitz and high-pitched noise.’

That’s hyperbole really. I know I’ve offended lots of lovely folks there, but I guess I like my perfume to smell odd rather than perfumey. And this is, well, perfumey. With a sprinkling of agent orange.

Luxe Patchouli seduced me in autumn when I first sniffed it in London’s Liberty. I didn’t pay much heed to it that day, other than declaring it ‘mmm… tasty!’, but thanks to Louise sorting out a split, I now have a lovely decant of it (and generous bonus stuff- L, you rock!). I don’t often go along with the top middle basenotes blather you get in perfume copy, because for one, it’s never normally clear where each begins and ends as a great perfume merges its notes rather than jumps from one stage to the next. But, at the risk of being contradictory, Patchouli has three distinct phases. The first is Borneo light. March is right - it is Borneo without the cobwebs. A refined patchouli dominates beautifully. The second stage took me into an East Asian grocery - star anise perhaps, but also that whole weird juxtaposition of smells that marks it out as ‘different’ to the western nose. I can’t quite pin it down, but that’s what it was for me - the smell of Chinatown (Bond, take note. You have a/n usurper). The final stage is the best of all. A beautiful, truly dreamy immortelle kick that lingers and lingers, never becoming too spicy or too syruppy, but hovering, like a spirit, somewhere between courses, between worlds. It makes my skin feel better, and feeling better is exactly what I want.

Now, commenters - your job. Pick a house, any house. Which two fragrances are opposite end of the spectrum for you in all their scents? And tell me which way round they are of course!

The photo of helichrysum is from whitelotusaromatics.com - lots of interesting reading there; Dynasty divas (March ‘n’ Patty? ;-P) care of the Times online; spandex hell from American Apparel.

My new year’s resolution? To sort out my damascones from my ethyls from my ionones. That’s right folks - better living through chemistry. And I’m intent on studying, at the molecular level.

What’s yours?

I’m still busy with the last of the holiday whirlwind, but I’ve just enough time to say hop on over to Perfumesmellinthings to read the words of delectable Ida / Chaya…

May 2008 be filled with health, happiness and sniffing pleasures. Much love to you and yours.

(Sung to the tune of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’)

Once at Patty’s Perfume Posse
arrived a silly chap named Lee,
where two women, wise and gifted
wrote on perfume, all for free:
Patty was the first of these,
March joined in, composed with ease.

He admired their words and writings,
grew to love their tastes and all.
‘Til one day, as if by magic,
he received their call, in thrall:
“Dearest boyo, will you write?
We do like you and hope you might.”

And, through all the following year,
he would honour and obey,
write, then read the welcome comments,
living scent the Posse way:
Everybody who loves perfume
Must enjoy the PP institution.

And the commenters all were special,
in their individual ways;
whether first-time, old hands, newbies,
regulars or chief mainstays.
Those responding, I do know,
we love you all, don’t ever go.

Whether Mitsouko, Shalimar or L’Heure Bleue
or a handful of Carons,
New releases, vintage extraits,
At the Posse, you can’t go wrong.
Cos those girls in all their choices,
Thrill me, fill me, with their voices.

Therefore Patty, and dear March:
I really have to be sincere,
Thanks to both for letting me join you
for nearly all of the past year.
For I’ve never felt less lonely,
Than with you all, my perfume homies.

Sincere apologies to Cecil Frances Alexander for my sacrilegious rendition. Here’s how it should be. I hope you all had (and are, if possible, continuing to have) a wonderful and perfectly scented holiday. Much love to you all.

First off, I forgot to tell you who the Menardo winner was from two weeks back. It was you, Joan. Expect an email asking for your address sometime soon. I’ll also throw a sample of Jubilation XXV in there too.

I want to write about Jubilation XXV, but I’m holding off until incense month, aka January. My bottle should be with me today - I’ve got through 4mls in a week, so this seems like love. It’s also cured me of my incense issues - seems it was monastically dry incense that I could no longer do. I’ve talked before about how my skin needs a little sweetness in a scent or I end up desiccated. But the purchase does relate to the post, which’ll be shorter than normal - it’s Christmas frenzy over here in Suffolk, England, UK, Europe, the World, The Universe…

Put your hand up if you ever struggle to choose a scent in the morning. I know I do - some people are ritualists about this, choosing one before they go to sleep. A lovely bloke on PoL seems to rotate through his scents, giving each one its moment in the limelight. Both of these are way too systematic for me - I have to select on the mood of the moment. (Aside: did restaurants Stateside ever opt for a period where a soup starter was called ‘Soup of the Moment’? I think this was to avoid the dreary sigh of boredom that meets ’soup of the day’, also known as ‘all our leftovers thrown into a pot with stock’. But isn’t soup of the moment truly awful? I must be getting old - I find myself constantly tut-tutting over appalling uses of language - all the time. And apologies to you if you use any of these - I even do myself because of their ubiquity - but top of my shudder list right now are ‘A big ask’ and ‘populate the document’. I know, I know, they’re effective, but the first is a dreadful grammatical shift to imply sophistication and insight through linguistic simplicity; the second a mathematical term that has broadened to mean ‘fill in’ or ‘complete’ everywhere and for everything, as though all such tasks bear the weight of genius. I’m all for linguistic play, diversity, change, and I don’t give two hoots about the dying art of the apostrophe, but the steady accretion of Businessspeak in the everyday makes my flesh creep. Though I do like those sss together like that. I might have to do a whole post on this sometime. The language thing. Not the sss.)

Where was I? Oh yes. Decisions. See my problem? So easily distracted by whatever floats through my head. I blame mono - my brain still doesn’t work like it used to, a year on. A butterfly has replaced it. Nice wings, but crap at action… So, some days I do a mental checklist of all I have and what I can wear. I have about 70 bottles. I’m trying to reduce it to 50, but finding that way too hard. There’s always new nosh in the goody bag. Then there are the hundreds of decants and samples that sometimes seem to march towards me in my dreams, a la The Sorceror’s Apprentice, demanding to be worn. They’re lucky to be used as air fresheners or linen scenters, the poor fools. All in all this means that I easily feel overwhelmed by variety, the superfluity of scent chez moi. Like when I first got digital, I constantly flicked through channels, never settling on one for longer than a few minutes. I watched the shopping channels as happily as a costume drama or the news - all merged into one. Sometimes, I fear my plethora of choice is destroying my sense of taste and refinement in what I love, though I know that isn’t true, at least in the long run. I’m back to the hour or two of TV a day, and only quality (or what I claim is quality, and don’t you dare challenge me on it). And it’s not as if I wear Vera Wang for Men (sorry to the two fans of this beast).

Right now, as I type these words, I’m scentless. Yes that’s right. Pass the smelling salts would you. A couple of our more neurasthenic readers are a little too overcome by my statement. Pass them back to me afterwards please. I never know when I might need them myself. In fact, whole days can pass unscented, due to a failure to decide. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I doin’t want to wear scent, it’s just that I need to CHOOSE THE RIGHT ONE. I tell you, it can get downright debilitating. As yet, I seem to have found no cure.

So, do you also suffer from this psychopathology? If so, how do you get round it or over it? Or alternatively, have you just learned to live with it? Answer me please…

The first image is Vincent Price as Roderick Usher. It seemed appropriate. The second is a scentaholic who’s just been told that her latest purchase will be held up for a week. You know you’ve been there.

She watched the snow fall, large gobbets of flakes clinging together in clumps, settling on the window ledge, only inches from her face. Her sighing breath formed a neat round oh on the glass, slowly shrunk and disappeared, only to be replaced by its successor. She sighed more heavily and the circle increased in size, and she wished she could be obliterated by the flakes, like the shrubs outside, just as she had temporarily obliterated her reflection in the cold pane.

Behind her, the tree lay on the floor where the children had pulled it down. They had become irritable after lunch, their sugar-addled minds bored by their toys, frustrated with being indoors. The snow was still rain at this point, and there was no hope of a turn around the gardens.The chaos she was studiously avoiding, by watching the snow, had started as a racing game. But it wasn’t long before her eldest son’s eyes were lit up with destructive fire. It never was. He pulled off the first decoration to hand, and flung it at his sister. She joined in, and soon the tree was rocking unsteadily in its container. Of course her sweetest and youngest child had little choice but to play his part, his adoration for his older brother making him an instant mimic. She’d attempted to intervene, but what her husband had told her before lunch made any action seem futile. There were bigger worries now. The destruction of the tree seemed almost comic: this day was well and truly awry already. Once the wrecking was wrought, they fled the room, fearful of their father who continued to consume too much port in the far reaches of the house, mumbling and shouting to himself. She heard occasional squeals and yelps from the children above her head, and was waiting for Timmy to come vaulting down the stairs, floods of tears, or a bump and bruise, or some small cut inflicted by his adored sadist of a brother the reason for his reappearance. He only sought out his mother, now he was five, when he needed nursing. The spontaneity of his love had dwindled, like the smile that used to play constantly on his features.

Shards of baubles surrounded the corpse of Christmas, their round forms now in sharper decorative patterns. The fairy lights had blinked twice during the topple, before going out for good. It was all such a mess. Much like the perfume she had unwittingly selected. She thought that ginger cake and pine and vanilla would be fitting and harmonious. But her wrist was a cacophony of clashing elements, the over-riding impression cold zinc or… No, not possible. Was that really blood? She drew her face away, lips curled.

If only she’d chosen her favourite, Theorema. Perhaps then the day would have fitted itself around that harmonious blend, rather than becoming the crash and clash of Winter Delice. She continued to gaze at the snowfall, and imagined the golden glow of the cinnamon and orange creaminess, rich and voluptuous and full. She’d have been in control in that, or else able to hide behind the cloud of seamless notes diffusing themselves around her. Enveloped by these, anything could have been possible. She certainly wouldn’t be here, moping and wishing her wrists were someone else’s. She’d be straightening that tree, straightening her dissolute sot of a husband, and making sure her children had all the right reasons to remember this Christmas. She was resolved to change her scent, and change the day. This is it, she thought, I know what to do. A quick scrub and a few sprays will restore me. Ready to move, she decided to spend a last few moments alone with the snow.

But she never got the chance. A shadow lurched into the room. She turned to see her husband, swaggering, glass in hand, untucked, splashes of port staining his cuffs and shirtfront. He swayed in front of her, smiled vacuously, eyes unfocused, and lifted one leg to the side. A brief pause of stillness, and then the fart was long, loud, percussive and followed by a hearty chuckle from him, a tired sneer from her. She knew he’d had too many sprouts and chestnuts at lunch. Post-Theorema, that would be another thing for her to take charge of. She immediately - and wisely - vacated the room. Down to business.

My title says it all, and it’s no secret cos I mentioned it a month ago. But I have love affairs with many perfumers, and most don’t last four weeks, or sustain that love over more than two perfumes. As a preamble, I’ll list one or two of them who have. First, Bertrand Duchaufour. He is a master at juxtaposing unusual notes or developing a sense of sourness that strangely works in a scent. And, even though I’m no longer incense’s best buddy, he is a crowned prince of that type of fragrance. Take the almost acrid wonder of Timbuktu, the softer Dzongkha, or the so-strong-my-bottle-will-last-several-millenia Bois d’Ombrie. I’ve posted before how he seems to capture moments in space and time with his scents, and every time I sniff something by him, I still get that sense of awe and wonder that borders on the religious. I’m desperate to try his new men’s scent for Amouage. Let me know if you have.

Yann Vasnier is up there too. Although I only know him for three fragrances really (I’ve tested others but not