Salome, I always wondered how it must’ve felt to have someone (a king!) lust after you so hard that they would do anything you ask, if only you would dance the dance of The Seven Veils….and you, humiliated and vengeful and spurned, ask for the spurner’s head!  On a platter.  What jumble of conflicting emotions must’ve caused that choice?  Did you regret it, once you’d made the demand?  Or were you so full of fury and pent-up lust yourself that only the ultimate sacrifice could assuage your boiling blood and heaving bosom and the white-hot fury of a young woman scorned?  Musette would love to know.

Well, I don’t know how you felt.  But I now know how you smelled when you intoxicated the king.  Byredo Parfums Seven Veils is intensely animalistic, with a spicy oriental thread running through a rooty-floral heart (with a hint of dirt and sweat), like molten gold burnouts on a silken burnoose.   I smell jasmine, like little silver bells tinkling atop elegant hennaed feet, though there is no jasmine in the notes (perhaps that is the Tiger Orchid?). It’s not full-blown lush, Seven Veils.  Instead, it’s the promise of creamy lushness – the hint of hot, female sensuality…just before it explodes into blazing sexuality.  Perhaps that’s the orchid, as it opens, fully, slowly revealing its nether parts and the rich scent within.

I have had a hard time with Byredo – I keep wanting to love the line, if for no other reason than my beloved Andy reps the line at Barneys.  Hadn’t worked for me yet.  But Andy encouraged me to try Seven Veils because of the diaphanous shifts as it flits, then settles, then flits again across your skin (those are my descriptions, btw.  Andy wouldn’t be caught nekkid saying something that silly – he said “try it.  it changes.  a lot”).  Earlier up there I called it a spicy oriental but it’s not really – it just gives the impression of a spicy oriental, as seen through a shimmering golden veil.  It’s really a luminous, spicy skin scent with a little stabby edge (I’m thinking that’s the pimento berries).  I really can imagine Herod’s increasing intoxication, as Salome’s rising scent wafts towards him…and each of the Seven Veils drifts languorously across the marble floor.  It’s heady stuff, indeed. I think I’ve finally found the Byredo I can love.  Even if I can’t  love Salome.

Notes, per the Byredo website:

Top: Carrot, Pimento Berries
Heart: Tahitian Vanilla Flower, Laurier Rose, Glycine, Tiger Orchid
Base: Sandalwood, Vanilla Bean

$220 for 100ml at Barneys, where I spritzed.

btw: Salome of popular legend differs quite a bit from the Salome described by scholars of ancient texts  but she’s no angel, no matter how you look at it.

photo:  Eartha Kitt as Salome  (shake it, shake it)

ps.  don’t fret!  March will be back soon.  She’s still jammin’ on personal business – and it’s all just drudgery, nothing Brutal.  But Right Now is challenging, timewise, so I’m pinch-hitting.  She’ll be back shortly.  She promised!

 Happy Halloween to all of our ghoulishly lovely Posse peeps! It’s that time of year where we conjure our favorite (or most frightening, as the case may be) scents of the season and share them with you. So here goes …

From Ann –

After the long, hot summer  we’ve had, I was really revving my broom in anticipation of cool-weather scents. So here’s what’s rattling my chain this season:

Its incense, juniper, pine and bergamot make Byredo’s Gypsy Water mysterious and intriguing, yet still easy to wear;  Le Labo’s Vanille 44 falls in the same vein, but with less mystery and more cozy comfort. And from my newly acquired fondness for  leather (not to worry, folks, no leather pants here),  I’ve got Bottega Veneta and Cuir de Lancome in as heavy a rotation as my samples will allow. P.S. Just got my sample of Serge Lutens’ Profundis — I’m kinda grooving on its earthy floral vibe with just a hint of  greeny-dark goodness. Maybe I’ll unearth this one for the trick-or-treating to come tonight …

From Anita/Musette –

I’m crawling out of my Grant Application Grave (bwaaahaha -oh, forget it)  just long enough to tell you what scents scare me…and what scents I use to scare others! bwaaahahahaha <ack!>

What Scares Me:

Angel.  Try as I might, I cannot get closer to Angel than 3′.  I was in SFA a few months ago and a woman came in, liberally marinated in the jus.  She wanted to chat and couldn’t understand why I kept backing away!  Finally I asked what she was wearing and she said ‘Angel.  My signature scent’.  All I can say is Voldemort, have I got a gal for youuu!

Opium.  Fear Factor 10.  On my way to the Malle Candle Thingy (yeah, that long ago and it’s STILL seared into my memory).  Got a teeny little dab on my fingertip.  Two trips to the bathroom and a trip to the Clinique counter for some Number 4 Toner Love….and that damn thing STILL clung to me, scattering the hoards right and left as I blazed a trail up Boul Mich to meet M. Frederic. The Opium preceded my entrance by a good 5 feet.   It’s a wonder he didn’t throw a bucket of Carnal Flower on me!

Aromatics Elixir.  In my entire life I have only had two things run me out of my house.  One was a bug bomb I intentionally set off (you know, set it and run like hell, slamming the door behind you)…and the other is Aromatics Elixir, when I spilled it on a leather chair.  It’s not that it’s not gorgeous.  It is.  But so are cobras.  Three days on the porch, that chair.

My Own Skary Ones:

Contemporary (current) Mitsouko.  For sheer, wet-your-pants Terror, nothing says “I will bite your head clean off” like current Mitsouko, with that elegant gasoline punch to the nose.  I wear it when I have to advocate for my dad or remind a Neanderthal site crew that I Am Their Boss.  Something about it really tends to frighten people.  Or maybe it’s just me?

Bandit.  It’s got a mean streak that I just LOVE! but beautiful in its capacity to terrorize.  Like a vampire created by FX artist Rick Baker.  You know it can’t hurt you…..right?  You’re sure about that?

Jolie Madame.  Booooya (with the emphasis on ‘boo’!).  Another one of those to give you pause.  Dark night, dark street.  Gorgeous woman in a fur coat and stilettos slinking down the fog-shrouded sidewalk.  Uh, that is a fur coat…..isn’t it?

From March –

I could aim for the cheap seats with something like Etro Messe de Minuit, which I put on the other day and got an extra dose of crypt from (although it smells like incense-roses on a friend, go figure.)  But instead I think I’ll run with:

Aquolina Pink Sugar.  Parents around here go different routes with the whole Leftover Halloween Candy issue, including doling out two pieces a night for three months, or letting the Great Pumpkin take it all away after a three days.  Our approach has always been: have at it.  I’m pretty sure at least two of my four kids have gorged on their candy until they (literally) puked, and there’s no way I could come up with a better lesson about moderation than that.  Bringing me around to Pink Sugar, a fragrance sweet enough to conjure the evil spirits of five pounds of candy corn, and which nauseates me in pretty much the same way.

When I think about trick or treating as a kid, what is the strongest memory besides the candy?  It’s the smell of the evening, out there in the dark for what seemed like hours of bliss, tromping around with friends in our cheesy home-made costumes up and down sidewalks, and around (and through) endless raked piles of leaves.  The smell of fall is still defined for me by that indescribable leaf pile aroma, which is why I was so thrilled the first time I smelled CB I Hate Perfumes’ Burning Leaves and realized he’d gotten it perfectly.  I’m old enough to remember the excitement when we and all the neighbors used to burn those leaves curbside (something I assume folks outside the city still do).  As great as the fragrance is when you first put it on, my favorite part is the drydown — when the “burning” fades away and I’m left with the smell of fallen leaves and a hint of autumn chill.

From Tom –

Well, fall in Los Angeles can’t decide from one hour to the next whether it will be chilly with a marine layer or  having hot Santa Ana winds, so choosing a scent can be an adventure in itself.  That spritz of Fumerie Turque that seemed so appropriate at 8 a.m. when it was 57 degrees  can become a little, well, challenging when it starts to hit the mid-80s at noon.

So I am keeping the Sables, with its immortelle-bomb aspect until it stays cool. I’m enjoying the comfort of ELdO Like This and Le Labo Musk (which you can all sample this November if there’s a Le Labo near you).

For other lists, please visit:  Bois de Jasmin, Grain de Musc, Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin- Things.

Share your favorites for fall, what scent you’ll be wearing for tonight, or if you’ve got something special planned for Halloween.

pumpkin image: there are a ton of fun carved pumpkins, including plenty of NSFW images.  Since this pumpkin image appears on several sites, I don’t know which one to credit. — March

by Ann

As a perfume lover, I find I’m getting braver as time goes on.

As little as 2 years ago, I wouldn’t go near a leather scent, gave

lavender a wide berth, and avoided cumin like the plague (still do mostly).

But now I’m branching out and have discovered a few scents
I like containing those previously-shunned notes.
In fact, I’ve found I’m really enjoying experimenting and getting out of my
comfort zone. I’ve even tried several scents considered

to be controversial.

Fortunately, all through my sampling I’ve never actually experienced a scrubber.
Until now.

I have met my match and it came from a most unlikely source.
With all my years around ink, printing presses,
and the like, I would have thought Byredo’s M/Mink would be instant love,
or at least OK. (I’m a fan of several of their scents, BTW.)

But one spritz and something so sharp rose up from my wrist
that I could almost see a tiny dark cloud forming.

A harsh smell which I can only describe as alternating between burnt plastic

and metal quivered my liver, as Musette would say,

and nearly drove me to the sink.

Now I’m not one to give up easily, so in the interest of giving it a fair shot, I’m

holding out as long as I can. Right now, as I type this,
I’m holding my head as far away as humanly possible from
my right wrist.

Still feeling a bit green around the gills, I sniff it again a good 30 to 40 minutes in.

The almost-chemical, plasticky-metallic smell remains, just a touch

less intense. I don’t think any of my rescue scents can save it.

Come on, old girl, I tell myself, give it just a little longer.

It might yet have an unexpectedly happy ending.

And so I wait. Now well beyond the hour mark, more of the same.

I’ve read other people who have gotten some great notes out of it.
Where’s the lovely, woody incense? The warm honey

and amber? The patchouli?  Arggh.

Alas, 2 hours later, I pack it in. I have done my duty

and now I must surrender. I cannot go to bed

with this on my wrist. My date with industrial-strength Tide awaits.

(My apologies to those of you who love this unusual scent;

I’m glad it works for you.)

So please share your horror stories. What scents have sent you

scrambling to the sink?

The Malle candles.  OhmyLord.  I’m still pretty blown away by the amount of scent in them.  I had the Sandalwood and Cardamom sitting by me last night unlit and had to move the candle because I was getting overloaded with scent.

Update on the Amy’s Country Candle gardenia candle. It is a definitely reasonably priced alternative to the Malle. Had I not smelled the Malle first, I’d probably very content with it. It’s got a nice throw, but the gardenia is a little plasticky.  It is nice, though, and if you want a good gardenia, you might want to try it in the tiny candle Amy has just for that purpose.

But we’re not talking candles today.  All you non-candle people will rejoice.  The nice salesperson at Byredo in Barney’s made me a sample of the M/Mink, their newest scent.  Perfume Jerome Epinette made it with notes of adoxal, incense, patchouli, honey and amber.  I looked up Adoxal from the link on Now Smell This.  Says it’s a waxy aldehyde. Kinda interesting!  Not that I understand all the chemical stuff on that page Robin linked to. There’s plenty of aldehydes on the open, which feels fairly cold, overlaid on some very warm notes of honey and amber. The concept was to have an inky smell, which they hit, though it’s not just inky. I’m thinking it’s a little like sitting bundled up in my fur  (if I had one) in a freezing cold room scratching off a note with a fountain pen whilst honey is dripping from my tongue. It has an animal elegance to it with some seriously twisted dark places.  Octavian has an in-depth review that’s a really interesting read.

I’m happy to see Byredo move this direction. I really haven’t been thrilled with much they’ve done in the last 4 outings or so.  They seem to give off the appearance of being on the bleeding edge of haute perfumerie, but not a lot that is very bloody, which is something that’s necessary to be considered “edgy.” I do love a couple of their scents because they have a comfort factor that’s amazing.  M/Mink isn’t really comforting in any conventional sense, but it does draw my nose back over and over as it reveals something else in it. As far as wearability, it works for me.  It’s not so smutty that you have to apologize to your seatmate on the subway, but it has great, sharp angles in it that provide interest, but not to the point of distraction.  Like Octavian, it reminds me of some other scents, though I never seem to have the ability to find which one in perfume catalogue that is my head.

And their ad campaign. These belong in March’s Hall of Smut perfume advertising posts.  But they’re visually interesting. Is the black just ink or feathered ink?  Furred ink?  I keep thinking there’s a Dexter episode in one of those pictures.

So I do have enough of the sampled they gave me to send on to a lucky commenter.  Smutty perfume advertising, smart or just dreadful?  Byredo, can they be edgy?   Or did Pulp and Blanche condemn them to “normal”?

Patty

I had smelled Byredo’s Bal d’Afrique briefly in L.A. back in April or so, but too much sniffage didn’t allow me to get more than a “mmmm, nice” thought formed about it.  In London, I got a longer turn with it.  Notes of Bergamot, Lemon, Neroli, African marigold, Bucchu, Violet, Jasmin petals, Cyclamen, Black Amber, Musk, Vetiver, and Moroccan cedarwood.

The open of bergamot, lemon and neroli is fairly briefl, just enough to perk you up and put you in a great mood, though it lingers as just a sparkly shadow through the drydown.  Marigolds and bucchu arrive to give a slightly bitter feel, slightly sensuous sweat smell.  A little like an “after-the-exertion” note.  You know, right?  The  florals sweeten it up, while the base notes lay in an earthy, sexy backdrop.  All together?  Sexy as hell and addictive as crack.

Byredo’s Gypsy Water has the same feel for me. Not the same notes, but that addictive, comforting  composition.  My dad always had a pillow on the couch, and he’d come in from the fields and lay down for a nap, and the little bit of sweat would just seep into the pillow.  When he wasn’t around, I would just bury my face in that pillow, and I felt like I was wrapped in a place where nothing could ever hurt me.  He had the sweetest sweat smell.   Bal d’Afrique and Gypsy Water is like that for me  – compulsive, addictive, sweet and bitter, earthy, sexy, and incredibly comforting.  It’s like burrowing my nose in my favorite sweater that I’ve worn for years.

It may be too earlly to call this, but I think Byredo has some staying power as a line and, along with Kilian, has been the best new line introduction of the last couple of years.  They’ve both done interesting things that are unconventional, while also making perfumes that are compulsively wearable.

Of course I’ll do a drawing for a couple of samples of this.  Liberty was super-nice when we were there and passed out 1 ounce bottles to all Sniffa attendees.

Winners of the Kilian Pure Oud sample:  Momlady and Eric. Just click on Contact Us and remind me what you’ve won and your address.

Patty