By March

I had fun doing random candy samples the other day.  Here are some more, in order of personal dislike (worst to best), which I selected mostly by rummaging in my handbag, just for fun, to see what would turn up …

Jimmy Choo – my most common perfume change-of-heart is when something I dislike begins to grow on me over time.  Jimmy Choo has the interesting distinction of trending the opposite direction – each time I spray that bottle at Saks, I hate the fragrance a little more.  I put all my paper blotters in my purse, but this one I handed back to the SA and asked her politely to discard.  Is it the saccharine?  The patchouli?  The raspy woods?   The faint note of rotting fruit?  I am not sure.

Bond Madison Square Park – when niche perfume felt like a brave new world, and Bond only had eight or ten fragrances instead of the 90+ they have now (okay, okay, it just seems that way on the counter) they did some interesting scents, like Chinatown and New Haarlem.  The Warhol Silver Factory’s pretty great too, and I have a soft spot for the linden one (Noho?)  Madison Square Park is musky, fruital and extremely sweet.  It’s supposed to have a darker, vetiver/woods drydown, but not on my skin.

Hermes Un Jardin sur le Toit – of the series, Jardin sur le Nil is the bottle I own.  Méditerranée is too woody/herbal on me, but I have stopped more than one woman on the street to compliment her fragrance and been told that’s what it was.  Mousson?  The less said, the better.  Sur le Toit is a limpid, vitamin-water-strength fruit-tree scent that makes one think of Hermessences like Vanille Galante, sans  aquamelon.  It is apparently selling quite well in D.C.  As Robin said in her review on Now Smell This, “It’s young and spring-like and fresh, and very Jean-Claude Ellena, which will either please you or it won’t.”

Love, Chloe – insert screed here about how the original Chloe was so much better in its jasmine-tuberose-drenched 1970s heydey than the current 2008 version.  Add general sneering about the new-ish flanker(s?).  Thus, my expectations for Love, Chloe were, uh, minimal.  What a pleasant surprise this scent is. I’d add this to my list for a graduation present to a high school or college girl who’s maybe brand-conscious, an alternate to Coach and Chanel; they have a sweet gift set.  I wish it retained its initial iris/power structure, it’s very pretty then, but even after half an hour (and then all day long) it’s a soft powder/musk string-of-pearls-scent that manages to be polished and even work-friendly while retaining a little character, young without being insipid.

Maison Martin Margiela Untitled – Nobody’s showing this thing much love but me, right?  It’s deceptive at first, sharp and green and nutty, like Cristalle sprayed on a wet hemp basket, one of those worn-by-smokers galbanum fragrances (see: original Lauder Azuree, Jasmine White Moss).  Get past that, though, and the reward is the charming, quirky mix of cinnamon and wintergreen – it blows hot and cold at the same time, and would be a great alternative to a cologne in the summer heat.  Quite unisexy.  Smells much, much better on skin than on paper.  Also, the minimalist, Le Labo-ish bottle made my eyes roll when I first saw a photo, but it’s nice in the hand and, next to the various foofy, bloblular, and/or beribboned bottles on the counter at Saks, clean and appealing.

March

Housekeeping details – in the move to the new blog host on May 1-ish, we lost about 30 hours of blog posting, including Patty’s Winners post with all the great haircolor comments on there (which bums me out), and the tail end of the Dune comments and my responses.  I haven’t given up entirely, but my guess is we aren’t getting that stuff back, and I’m sorry. Patty’s trying to fix her inability to comment.  Finally, my comment notification in my inbox seems a bit spotty.  Okay, on to today’s post…

It’s a testament both to the avalanche of new releases and the amount of samples I get that I have things like Donna Karan Iris sitting around here somewhere, still unsniffed, two (?) months after receiving it.  It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of my half-assed, poorly-researched, utterly biased candy samples posts (unlike my scrupulously prepared, impartial regular posts.)  So here’s a review of everything on my desk today, with my stream-of-consciousness analysis.

Ego Facto Prends Garde a Toi – which is French for, I pee on your hand and then as if that weren’t nasty enough I morph into a green floral with a wallop of Patty’s patented Tampax-fresh accord, although they’re calling it “mineral.”  Green notes, jasmine, lily of the valley, lily, hyacinth, nettle, woody notes, warm sand accord and kill.me.now.  Oh, look — up there in the sky — it’s Mister Yuck!  Welcome back, my friend!

Lelong Pour Femme – why can’t every woman smell like this?  Why why why? Heck, everyone – every man, woman, dog.  When I opened up the mailer I thought, something wonderful’s in here.  This, my friends, is perfume!   A heady floriental, notes are mandarin, bergamot, magnolia, lilac, fig, jasmine rose, tuberose, ylang ylang, iris, orchids, sandalwood, vetiver, oakmoss, musk.  So – all your suspicions that I am a lover of heinous old-lady fragrances have been confirmed.  Here’s a link to Musette’s review. UPDATE:  And a link to Posse commenter Donna’s review, I’d forgotten about this!

ANOTHER UPDATE:  I’m not sure I’m being fair to Lelong by calling it “old lady,” it’s a zaftig, femme-retro thang (with a big rack sillage, warm and sexy.)  Here’s a perfect, direct crib from mals’ comment below:   “Wonder what I´m NOT getting out of LPF, that I don´t perceive it as “old lady”? I mean, I get a big retro vibe – it seems very much to me like an orchid satin prom dress, complete with wrist corsage and halter top and dyed-to-match shoes. Immediate spray-on Femininity. I know a number of people find it on the vampy side, too, but I don´t. I perceive it as a smooth, creamy floral, with an innocent sensuality rather than outright sexiness – a generous bosom supported (and guarded from roving hands, maybe) by a really sturdy 50s style bra.”

NOT Lelong Pour Femme? – Anita, honey, I think that’s the same juice.  IMO.  And thanks for sending me two of them, since I like it so much and I’m too cheap to buy a clock-bottle.

Ego Facto Poopoo Pidoo – eh.  Notes are citrus, orange blossom, rice powder, amber, woods, musk, and it’s done by Dominique Ropion.   I thought it would be more like KenzoAmour but it’s waaay powdery and a little sweet, sort of a cross between Kenzo Flower and Lostmarc’h Lann-Ael.  Kind of fun, but not for me.

Piguet Visa (vintage) –  I am on record as saying I like the new version, a fruity number done by Aurelien Guichard, although I know it’s a major disappointment to vintage perfumistas – sort of like if they reissued Bandit and it smelled like Kelly Caleche.  Now that I’ve smelled the vintage, I understand what they’re weeping over.  Honestly, though, can you even make something like this legally anymore?   That base!!!   I wonder how many animals are in there … damn. That’s giving my vintage Femme a run for its money, skank-wise.  So intensely out of fashion I can’t really blame Piguet.   I do remember a quote from them saying they were a perfume company and not a museum, and I still like their new versions.  Baghari is great.  Also this reminds me I need to get ahold of some of Futur, I loved it at Sniffa last fall and then … I never smelled it again.

Come on, where’s my Donna Karan Iris? I thought it was on the desk….  yeesh, Soulgasm?  Robin, you wench, you gave me this, didn’t you?   Didn’t you?!?!  Gah.  Along with those Durgas; why can’t I find those, eh?  Did you smell this Soulgasm thing?  Notes: succulent peach, Anjou pear, South African freesia, ripe black currant, wild, night-blooming jasmine, delicate Eurasian lily, multi-faceted woodberry, clean musk, warm amber, sweet French vanilla.  Room-clearing.  JM&J … I can’t believe I sprayed this on, what a dumbass I am.  Well, it was on my desk … extremely fruital.  It’s like … it’s like the clearance rack at Claire’s threw up on me.  Like liquid Lifesavers, only sweeter.  It’s like blowing Pixy Stix up my nose, and not in a good way.   Mr. Yuck, please, save me!

Chloe Eau de Fleurs Capucine –  They released these in a three-set of eaux a few months ago.  I tried Neroli at Saks and found it too herbal, and the lavender didn’t interest me.  Capucine, though … hmm.  Notes for Capucine are bergamot, lemon, neroli, galbanum, sage, juniper berry, rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, ambroxan and musk.  Wow. That’s actually pretty cool, did anyone try this?  It’s intensely green, almost bitter – like an herbal-green rather than a grassy one.   I swear to God it reminds me so much of some man-cologne from my youth – Brut, maybe?  No, something green, Mennen aftershave?   Something my dad would have worn?  No, wait!  Wait, I swear, it’s Claiborne for Men!   (Notes for Claiborne are bergamot, lavender, lemon, cyclamen, juniper, rose, carnation, cedar, patch, musk, leather, moss, amber.)  Is it even possible?  I wonder.  Anyhow, of the set, worth trying.

Roger & Gallet Amande Persane - let’s end on a high note.  While this (sadly) isn’t sitting on my desk, I wish it were.  I tried it in Paris, where it had just come out.  Notes are bergamot, mandarin orange, bitter almond, iris absolute, tonka, atlas cedar.  I am already something of a R&G fangirl; they are stocked at a funny old grocery/pharmacy near me, and I am particularly partial to Gingembre spray and the Extra-Vieille and Cedrat soaps.  Amande Persane was a warm, uncomplicated charmer, with the lightly citrusy topnotes giving way very quickly to the heart of the fragrance, an almondy musk in which the iris displays its softer, more powder/wood side, although I wouldn’t describe the fragrance as powdery.  It’s surprisingly unsweet and a bit woody in the drydown.   It’s more purely nutty than cherry-almond (Rahat, Hypnotic Poison) and it doesn’t go Play-Doh/super-powder either (Jour de Fete, POTL.)  Also, for something that is relatively light and simple, it lasted about fifteen hours on my skin.  I’m looking forward to it showing up in the US.

Samples sources: all, private collection from friends, except I’m sort of wondering about the motivations of the “friend” who sent me Soulgasm…. (insert winking emoticon here)

March

I’ve gotten several packages over the last week or two.   Some of them … honestly, you people.  Some of them put me to shame.   I’ll mention in particular the two Patricia de Nicolai decants from Anonymous, who has never looked anything other than wildly chic in her entire life, as far as I know.  So the atomizers are beautifully wrapped, and they themselves are lovely, and everything is professionally packed.

My outgoing sample packages?   Look like they were styled by the Unabomber, or a five-year-old with some lingering small-motor-skills issues.   First off, I recycle all the packaging.  Second, I … well, there’s no excuse, is there?  Hug a tree, right?  Hey, it’s FREE!   Patty has mocked me to my face about this, wondering whether it’s just my general cheap-ass tendencies, or some other flaw.

Among the incoming gifties was a sample of vintage, circa-1980 Chloé, mentioned and batted around in a recent post.  Generous Sender was worried about being busted by the USPS for Contraband Substances, so she’d wrapped it up super-carefully, nesting-doll-style.  And when I finally got to the middle and popped the lid off the little earring box … well, there it was.  Ghost of Chloé.

I meant to get to the mall this week to do a comparison with a new bottle of this still-available scent, and I’m afraid I forgot to do so.  But several commenters on the last post said that the version you can buy now just doesn’t smell right.  (And we’re talking about new bottles of “old” Chloé, not the “new Chloé ” with Chloé Sevigny as, I guess, muse – which in my opinion is perfect, as it tells me everything I needed to know about how awful it would be.  And if you’re in the mood for an argument, go ahead and stick up for her as a Style Icon.   I think in terms of style and taste levels, I’d place her on the spectrum somewhere between RuPaul and Lindsey Lohan, with maybe a sprinkling of Lady Gaga.)

Back to Original Chloé … notes are honeysuckle, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, hyacinth, lilac, coconut, bergamot, aldehydes, peach, jasmine, rose, narcissus, tuberose, carnation, orris, oakmoss, sandalwood, amber, musk, cedar and benzoin.  It had Karl Lagerfeld’s name behind it – he worked as the head designer for Chloé, the French fashion house, at the time.  To what degree, if any, Lagerfeld was actually involved in the scent’s development, I have no idea.  At least in the U.S., it was a runaway hit that had nothing whatsoever to do with the fashion brand of Chloé – that is, women didn’t wear it the way they might choose No. 5 or Cristalle in order to project the image of Chanel.   They wore it, in droves, or so it seemed to me, simply because they loved the smell.

Chloé smells very much of its time (1975) – it is a huge, easily-overpowering floral.  There is nothing “fruity” in the modern sense – it is not a Sour-Patch-Kids-candy-fruity-floral, or fruitchouli, nor is it remotely gourmand.  While I suppose it is “tuberose” more than anything else, it’s not tuberose in the manner of, say, Fracas, or something newer and nichier — it’s a much busier combination of florals.  My 30-year-old sample gives a sense of elements having been compressed – the top notes are off a hair (a bit of that “old-perfume” varnish vibe) and the aldehydes I recall are mostly missing.   From the vantage point of 2010, Chloé is intensely sweet and old-school, the sort of scent I immediately associate with Farrah-styled hair, Famolares and a Gunne Sax lace dress, perhaps on Prom night.  And wow, I wish I still had my prom dress, because it looks like I could make some dough on it now!

Chloé is not a gentle melody of individual notes.  The floral, vaguely tropical notes move at you like a Phil Spector-esque Wall of Smell – ylang, honeysuckle, coconut, jasmine and tuberose; the peach only adds to the sweetness.   This is not a fragrance that one should overapply.  As we move into the drydown, the intense sweetness fades, and the scent takes on a quietly smoky bitterness on the skin, reminiscent of papiers d’Armenies.  Unsurprisingly, it is quite tenacious.  I wonder what Karl would think of it now.

I’ve made no secret in the past of my personal feelings about scents, particularly vintage ones that I remember from back in the day.   Chloé, as many of you already know, is inextricably bound up in my mind with my late mother-in-law, the Big Cheese’s mother, who died in 2006, having drenched herself for at least two decades in Chloé each time she left the house.  (She had a very late, and mercifully brief, flirtation with Cartier Dragon’s Breath.)

The clothes I have of hers, some of which I wear regularly, some occasionally and some not at all, still carry the Ghost of Chloé, a smell that surely impregnated every surface of her bedroom and enormous dressing room — a spare bedroom in their apartment which she had converted into mostly mirrored closets housing her quite extensive clothing collection.   I still smell the Ghost of Chloé on her coats, on her furs, on her scarves.

And so I find myself in a situation I think many of you have experienced.  I happen to love that smell – I think Chloé ‘s beautiful – but I could no more wear it than I could jam my foot into her size 5.5 shoes.   It makes me feel both happy and sad, and I am tempted to dab a bit of my sample on the items I wear most that are now losing their Chloé smell.  But Chloé was hers, and apparently it always will be.

March

Let’s cruise some of the mainstream releases that I just haven’t gotten around to, since it seems like I’ve done mostly the niche releases recently.

Yves Saint Laurent Elle has notes of cedar, litchi, peony, rose, freesia, vetiver, patchouli and pepper.  I just have no words for the open except, well, yuck.  It’s like bad bathroom spray – maybe it will improve?  Nope, Rose Lysol still, and I think rose Lysol is better.  30 minutes in, no longer rose Lysol, it’s just, well… poof, gone.  Disappointing much?  Um, yeah.  Which leaves me thinking that it may be my skin it reacts badly too.  Is it me?

Chloe, the perfume that Chandler Burr hated.  Notes of  peony, lychée, freesia, rose, magnolia, lily of the valley, amber and cedar wood.  It’s certainly not as offensive on me as the Elle.  It’s tooth-achingly sweet, but I can see how a younger woman would like this quite a lot.  It’s young, predictable, but the lily of the valley seems to keep it in some green check that makes it pretty… and forgettable.  I think I remember Chandler’s big beef with this was not that it was a horrible scent, but that the creative team in charge should have made something so much better. I have to agree. The bottle is adorable, the perfumers talented, and this should have been a far more interesting perfume.

Which leaves us at the final scent in the mainline trio - Ralph Lauren Notorious with notes of chocolate, black currant, pink peppercorn, bergamot, white frost peonies, carnation, patchouli musk, vanilla, woods and iris.  Inspired by actresses like Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and Faye Dunaway, the offspring of the inspiration fell a little short of its mark. But if you take out that inspiration, you are left with a soft chocolate scent that opens just a little strong, but settles into a pretty nice little fruity floral gourmand, which makes it sound far worse than it is.  Of the three, this is my favorite, though it certainly is not a scent I’ll be hunting down to wear regularly, but I’d be happy smelling it on me and others. If you’re looking for a gourmand’ish scent that’s subtle and not overpowering, this one could very well work for you.

Hey, but you know what my darling Lee is picking up today?  That new Le Labo in London, the Poivre thing, wheeee!!!  I could kiss him and will when I see him next year.  I know, I know, I’m a snob.

Patty

Chandler Burr has trashed the new release Chloe in his reviews – in writing  and in person - so when it showed up as a sample in a Sak’s order, I thought… well, let’s give it a whirl and see if I agree or not. The little sniff I had before was on paper, and that tells me next to nothing.  Notes of peony, lychée, freesia, rose, magnolia, lily of the valley, amber and cedar wood.  Peony is a note I adore in everything, so I should be pre-disposed to liking this.  It goes on like a floral dud.  Seems big and then just bursts, scatters into nothing very interesting at all.  There’s almost the smell of bug spray in there.  Must be a synthetic note that’s just off in my nose.  But with that, and with the proviso that a note may be coloring the whole thing for me, this is awful.  It’s mushy with no definition, just a big ole floral soup.  Gah.

Now, why do we have the Vanity picture?  Well, I treated myself today to the first in a series of 3-5 IPL photofacials.  I used to be out in the sun a lot when I was a kid, either working on the farm or later just sunbathing trying to get as dark a tan as my very fair, English skin could manage.  Over the years, capillaries broke, there was a lot of underlying sun damage on my face, which is kinda cute when you’re young.  As I now am within spitting distance of that major age milestone, the ruddiness on my cheeks/nose was just bugging me.  I kept putting off doing the IPL (intense pulsed light) because it is costy and unnecessary, and it really doesn’t add anything to my life or my worth or well-being… except, well, I wanted to be able to once again run around without any foundation on my face and not feel/look like the ruddy washwoman fresh from the steamy suds. 

Listen, if you have rosacea or broken capillaries or acne scars or just a really uneven skin tone that makes you feel not as fresh-faced as you would like or that you always have to have your face on before you exit the house… go.now.do.IPL. Save your pennies, take out a second mortgage on your house, just do it.  With one treatment, even with the little pinkness the first day, my complexion looks clear as a bell, fresh, youthful.   I can’t even imagine what 2-4 more treatments will do, but I absolutely will be able to not even bother putting on foundation –  just throw on some eyeshadow and mascara and be done with it.  

What is the treatment like? It’s a little annoying.  You get all trussed up on your cot, they put on goggles, then she just pulses your skin with the laser.  It feels like a little bit of a rubber band snapping your skin.   The first few minutes are annoying, but then you get used to it.  When they are going over the more sensitive areas around your nose, cheeks, with the most damage, then it can get really annoying, but it doesn’t take long.  The forehead is the weirdest, because even with the goggles, you get the bright red light somewhere in your optical area – a strange sensation.  Takes about 60 minutes from start to finish.

Am I vain?  Not really.  And just a little.  Yes, those two opposites can live in perfect tension.  Nothing in me wants to be young again, I’m just not ready to be old.

How much vanity can a woman live with once she gets to a certain age, and how much aging does she have to put up with so she doesn’t become a cartoon character of herself?  This goes for men, too, because I know more and more men are doing cosmetic procedures.  How do we know when we’ve gone too far?

Patty