A young ladypal of El O’s cub , visiting  our bathroom, came out exclaiming “OMG!  YOU WEAR FRACAS!  My AUNT WEARS FRACAS!!!”  (caps all hers, I swear).  She shrieked on to tell me how much she liked it, etc….so my Inner  Nerd went on Red Alert….and I opened up the Perfume Armoire.

Stunned.  We’d just met so I’m sure she thought I was totally off the chain.  I forgot how it must look to a normal person.  I’m largely inured to it, of course, having seen pictures of collections way larger and more interesting than mine.  But guess what:  Normal people do not have entire armoires and closets dedicated to perfume.  Imagine that!  But! jazzed by her screeching I delved into the armoire, determined to introduce her to the genre of the Big White Flower. Hey, cub was in the shower – we had time.

It went thus:

Fracas.  Vintage v. contemporary.   You know, I have both (several flights, in fact) and I really can’t discern a huge  difference.  The vintage is a bit more nuanced because it probably has some  ingredient that will make your elbows fall off – but Fracas is such an ICBM of BWF that it’s kind of hard to differentiate.  After all, if an ICBM lands in your bathroom, does it really matter if it has 2kg or 3kg of plutonium?  Of course not.  Vaporized is vaporized.  I absolutely LOVE slathering myself in Fracas, from the shower gel/body creme/powder through to the vintage perfume.  Of course that only happens at bedtime when El O is out of town – even the dogs won’t come near me then, not even for a hamsammich.  For as Tom says: My Big White Flower Fight is one of my favorite, and sometime favorite to hate: Fracas.  In normal doses and at the right time it’s the most glorious, sexy thing imaginable.  In larger doses and at the wrong time it’s like being beaten to death by hot-buttered tuberose.  Note to the woman who sat somewhere behind me at “Sex and the City 2″ in Century City: marinating yourself in this  and plunking yourself in a crowded theater at 10am on a Sunday doesn’t make you Samantha.  It makes you sickening.  Sorry.

The cub-pal’s take:  “uh…wow.  I …”. and then sheer, panicked silence. .something tells me she’d only smelled it in passing on her aunt or maybe just knew that her aunt wore it.  I don’t think she’d ever actually smelled it.  Certainly not on herself.   Wearing Fracas is not for the faint of heart.  She seemed so poleaxed that I took pity on her and hit her with the #4 Toner.  Fracas is not a Big White Flower.  It is The GREAT White Flower, the Jaws of the genre.  And like Jaws, love or hate, you must approach with maximum respect.  20 years from now she may want to try it again.

Next up: Carnal Flower. I don’t know if you guys recall the conversation I had with M. Malle about CF v. Fracas, where he respectfully deemed Fracas a ‘perfume’  while considering Carnal Flower to be something not perfume (at least not compared to Fracas)  – and he’s right.  Carnal Flower, like Fracas, is an obvious composition of its time, having a more integrated feel to it.  I think Fracas sits ON the skin (as befits the era) where Carnal Flower gets a bit UNDER the skin, melding to it in a more contemporary way .   Contemporary or not, overapplied it can clear an elevator in 12 seconds flat (and no, F, NOT YOU!  The lady in the Barneys elevator. The one who prolly spritzed until she was floating in her shoes.)

Cub-pal take:  this was hysterical.  I watched this girl sniff.  Close her eyes.  Open her eyes.  Eyes rolled back in head.  .  She just looked at me, spellbound.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her she would have to work at Old Navy for an entire month to pay for a bottle.  Plus it’s a tad too old for her – but I suspect that she will ask to try it again.  And I will let her.  Youth should always have something to aspire to.

Diptyque Olene – well, as you might imagine, we did a whole-arm scrub, with Lava Soap, before trying the Olene.  Oh, c’mon.  Like Olene can compete with Carnal Flower.  Not.  It’s a lovely little scent and is a great bedtime jasmine (I wore it last night in solidarity for the Chinese people who now cannot buy, wear or speak of jasmine.  You can read about this insanity here).   It’s BWF Lite, which is not always a bad thing and actually is a great scent for a young woman just dipping a nose into Big White Flowerss.  The wisteria and narcissus greens up the jasmine enough to make it suitable for office work or a casual date, where Carnal Flower or Fracas would get you looked at funny.  I wish I were more egalitarian about scents but some really do require some age-heft to pull them off with aplomb. This one is not one of those.
C-pal take:  it’s interesting to watch someone try to be polite.  She thought it was ‘okay’ – just okay.  I think this young lady might have the making of a perfumista – NOT dissing Olene, btw.  I like it quite a bit.  And I think if I’d hit her with the Olene first she might’ve loved it.  But after Fracas, which terrorized her and Carnal Flower, which had its slithery-slickery way with her…..le sigh.  Poor Olene.

Tuberosa d’Autunno - this was a lavish gift from a fabulosa friend and my Italian stinks so it took me a minute to realize it was iProfumi di Firenze.   Is there a reason that is not on the label?  Or is it Italian for “if you want to know, you should learn to read Italian”.  Not a bad idea…

after some research I determined it’s the same one Robin reviewed – here’s what she had to say

i Profumi di Firenze Tuberosa d’ Autunno: By no means a duplicate of Tubereuse Criminelle, but it is in the same vein, albeit without the startling top notes. Lush but cold. If you wanted to like Tubéreuse Criminelle but couldn’t, do try this one.
Cub-pal take:  Okay.  I LOVE this girl. I watched her parse out the notes and when I mentioned the ‘sour’ note therein that makes this tuberosa so interesting she shouted ‘YES!” as her face lit up.  And here I thought I was gonna have a discourse on Soul Curve.  Instead, we  yarked on what that ‘sour’ note could be – if anybody knows, give ovah.  T d’A has a medicinal quality  that gives it an old-fashioned air, like it’s the 4711 of tuberoses.  Lots of comparisons online to Tubey Criminelle and no, I STILL haven’t smelled it.  Sorry.   FWIW, I do not get ‘cold’ from this but I could be misunderstanding what ‘cold’ might mean.  It smells a bit cinnamon-y to me..  If you get ‘cold’ from it, please enlighten me!
That’s as far as we got before she started turning green (danged shame).   I sent her to the scrubbery and when she got back I spritzed her with Guerlain Eau de Cologne Imperiale.   Apprehensive, she took a cautious sniff, breathed deep and said…”ohhh.  that’s NICE”, as all the bones in her face relaxed, like her fever just broke and her mom pulled fresh, clean sheets over her.

Hey, sniffing BWFs is Hard Work!

So  you BWF Lovers and Haters:  do you have contenders for the Great White Fight?  There are so many BWFs to consider – do you have any less daunting recommendations for her?  She’s still pretty young (20) and this was a toss into the deep end of the pool.   Should I back up to mainstream?  Your thoughts?

Some time ago, I became interested in vanilla – shortly after hell froze over.  I still tend to like my vanilla with a twist, and one of these days I’m going to pull myself together and do a post on oddball vanillas.  In the meantime, I got busy and sampled Diptyque Eau Duelle, which has gotten raves both on the blogs and from a number of friends.

Diptyque was stocked at our niche frag boutique, Art With Flowers, when I was first getting into sniffage, and some of their scents are very strange (Vinaigre, anyone?  Eau d’Elide?)  I mourn the disappearance of the brand from shelves all over, chased off (like Rigaud) by cooler, niche-ier things.  Notes for Duelle are bergamot, cardamom, pink pepper, elemi, juniper, saffron, calamus, frankincense, cypriol, black tea, vanilla, musk and amber.

Eau Duelle opens with a hearty blast of bergamot and a bizarrely sweet note that lasts about ten seconds and reminded me of Daphne Bugey’s obscure 7:15AM in Bali by Kenzo, and I should point out right here that nobody else has mentioned finding it especially sweet, so YMMV.  It becomes more vanillic and smokier right away, and much more peppery after a few minutes, passing from Earl Grey tea to lapsang and then on to CdG’s coriander-rich 8 88.  There’s a hint of tobacco, the vanilla moderates, and it never becomes anything like a gourmand scent.

As Victoria notes (yes, she’s back to blogging regularly!  Hold onto your wallets!) Eau Duelle bears a bit of a resemblance to both L’Instant and Shalimar, the original oddball vanilla —  there’s that combination of citrus/bergamot, that smoky facet, and vanilla, after the spices have faded.

I admit to being very much on the fence about this, and I am having trouble deciding why.  It isn’t really vanillic enough to satisfy someone wanting a “vanilla” fragrance, in my opinion.  But it doesn’t seem enough of anything else, either.  Diptyques can resemble rough sketches, nice ideas that aren’t the most polished things out there, and that can be part of their quirky charm.  But Eau Duelle feels unfinished to me, like they came up with half a perfume and abandoned the project.  But, again, that’s just me.  It’s gotten lots of love, so if any of these notes sound appealing, go for it.

source: private sample

March

In the survey last week, y’all wanted to hear about the new Monas since they were easier to get ahold of, so we’re going to cover those today, along with the new Diptyque, Eau Duelle. All of these are from Luckyscent, and you can get samples and full bottles there, so they are accessible, yeah!!!  But for those of you that wanted to hear about the Dorins and the Made in Italy, we’ll get to those on Thursday.

This week is Yoga Journal conference in Estes Park.  Usually I’ve just gone for a day of this, but this week I signed up for the whole week, intermixed with work  – I’m not zen enough to do nothing but meditation and yoga for a week.  There’s really very little better than to spend a week doing yoga and meditation in the Rocky Mountain National Park, surrounded by beautiful scenery, lovely people and working out your life one breath and downward dog at a time. My only complaint is the food.  I’m not sure why they asked YMCA of the Rockies to do an all-vegetarian menu.  It’s just not their normal thing, and it shows.  Definitely should have a great vegetarian menu, but is it that offensive for me to be chomping down a fatburger in front of nonmeateaters?  Maybe, I don’t know about these things. I love great vegetarian, but doing great vegetarian is not a YMCA chef skillset.  I’m running away to the Stanley Hotel later in the week and snacking on some elk or buffalo or something equally red and full of blood.

When I brought up my sample of Diptyque’s new Eau Duelle, I hadn’t read much about it, but I vaguely remembered it was a vanilla.  Official notes are Cardamom, Asian cyprus, elemi, juniper, saffron, calamus, black tea, black African olibanum, amber, Firnat Vanilla, Bourbon Vanilla, white musk.  So the soft fall mountain rain was coming down outside my open window when I spritzed this on, and I had no idea what to expect.  You can make fun of me, if you like, but I really haven’t smelled many Diptyques. Not sure why. I love the fig one, great fig, and… well, I know I’ve smelled a few more, but the line has never captured my attention through no fault of theirs.  Eau Duelle is a great vanilla, which I just didn’t expect from them. Definitely vanilla, but not sweet at all, with an understated spice/tea punch that adds interest to what is a decidedly smokey vanilla.  Not as smoke-dominated as some of the other smokey vanillas,  like Guerlain’s Spiriteuese Double Vanille, but really well done.  And absolutely perfect for where I am and the weather.

Let’s go to the Monas.   I like Mona. I know Luca trashed all of her scents, but I’ve found most of them to be outside of the norms and interesting and never deserving of harsh criticism, whether you love them, hate them or just don’t care about them.  People may not like her style of perfumery, but she is no crowd-follower, and I admire someone who does what she wants.

The Les Nombres have three variations, Cuir, Ambre and Musc.  Needless to say, I am not expecting anything shy from her.

Ambre has notes of Cedarwood from Atlas, Ylang Ylang from Comores, Benzoin, Tolu, Absolu Vanilla Madagascar.  This is a softer amber than I expected, tempered with the Ylang and vanilla.  I keep sniffing it, not sure if I like it, don’t care or hate it.  It’s almost a little soapy at points. Is that better than Rasputin’s underdrawers?  I guess his freshly laundered underdrawers. That’s what I always think of when I sniff most amber-centric concoctions – not the freshly laundered part, the full-on, took them off before bed part.  Okay, soapiness went away, but this thing just isn’t sticking. How can that happen with amber?

Musc has notes of Neroli, Angelica, Rose, Heliotrope, Absolu Tonka Bean, Precious Musks. Okay, we’re clearly not going down a conventional path.  I don’t know about the musc in this, I don’t really care, I’m loving the angelica, tonka and heliotrope.  Wow, what a great combo this is, and completely unexpected. I thought I’d be hit over the head with a subway musk at 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but this is so far from that.  The musk is the underpinning for the heliotrope and tonka, and it feels like  Mona and Guerlain had a tryst after throwing back too much tequila on a rain-soaked night, and this is what was left in the morning. Lovely, ethereal, haunting with a wee bit of smut leftover.

Cuir now has me worried. Are we going to smother the leather in honey?  Or cotton candy?  Well, let’s go to the notes, which are  Cardamom, Absinth, Leather, Cade, Resinoid Opoponax, Castoreum.  Whew, this seems to be a great list of notes for leather, somewhat traditional.  And, yes, it surely is. Rich, luxurious leather, slightly roughed up, like how your Kelly bag would smell after a night in a seedy bar.  This is a leather to love for you leather lovers, you won’t be turning up your nose and going, “what the hell was she thinking?” when you sniff it.  The spice and absinth get some minor play, which is enough of a differentiation from all the other great leathers out there to make this one worth seeking out.

Okay, big yes on the Cuir and the Musc, and I slipped into the hate pile on the Ambre. I tried it again, it went to soap and then slid down the drain into nothing. Huh?  Two out of three, as Meatloaf says, ain’t bad.

And I have enough of all of these to give a sample set out to a commenter.  So let’s think, if we wanted Guerlain to fall into bed with any other perfume line so they could create little love children of interest, who would you have them smoosh with?

Patty

So on Monday I mentioned sandalwood, and I’ve got some other stuff on the back burner, but the great thing about being a perfume fiend with a large sample collection is that I had several things on hand, so fasten your seatbelt for a ramble, with more to follow eventually.

First off were my older samples of 10 Corso Como and Diptyque Tam Dao.  Both of these fragrances have apparently been reformulated, not due to IFRA regs but because of the shortage of Mysore sandalwood.  So in this case it’s not a safety issue.  Mysore sandalwood is perfectly safe, as are all other things that are natural and from the environment.  Like radon.  And arsenic.  Anyhow, I have no idea how closely my samps match what’s on the shelves right now.

10 Corso Como (rose, geranium, oud-wood resin, vetiver, sandalwood and musk) is Exhibit A in my battle with wearable sandalwood.  It’s rough and raspy and once I become mentally aware that the rose is there it’s too much, you know how I feel about rose, and the oud probably pushes it over the edge for me.  However, I also remembered that I had a bottle of 10CC lotion from my trip to LA – still wrapped in its cellophane (duh).  So I trotted that out, and … okay, that’s nice.   As is often the case with a fragrance you sort of like, but wish were toned down a little (hello, Black Cashmere!) the lotion provides a viable alternative to the fragrance.  The lotion is definitely more muted, and also extremely moisturizing.  The problem with body-product alternative if you wear it like a perfume (i.e., in small quantities and only occasionally) is that, at least in my experience, it tends to go off eventually – and there are few things more revolting to the nose than a body lotion that’s gone a bit rancid.  I had this same problem recently with my old tube of Black Cashmere, although I keep my lotions in the same cool space as my perfume.  Anyhoo, 10CC lotion is nice but not perfect.  For me.

Tam Dao, at least my sample, smells pretty much like pure sandalwood, with a resiny undertone, although in the recent review in The Guide, Tania Sanchez describes it as smelling more like new wood furniture than sandalwood, which is definitely a change (although she still gives it three stars and says it’s probably better as a room spray than a personal fragrance.)  My vintage-y sample of Tam Dao goes right up my nose and starts pounding on my sinuses in a headache-inducing fashion. (Notes: rosewood, cypress, ambergris, and sandalwood.) However, I speculated, and Robin at NST agreed, that Tam Dao layered with Diptyque Philosykos might be excellent.  And it was, which is how I buried it so it would stop hurting me.  For those of you who like fig in theory but find its creamy sweetness overwhelming, some sandalwood underneath adds a nice dry, woody heft.

So then I dug up my bottle of Serge Lutens Santal Blanc, which Robin also suggested, and that was fascinating. Because I always think of Santal Blanc as that weird Serge that smells like a big, freshly sharpened pencil – an ideal pencil, mind you, a pencil that had been blessed by Serge himself, absent the cumin and the dried fruits.  Smelling Santal Blanc after 10CC and Tam Dao allowed me to focus for the first time on its sandalwood – and again, I’ve had my bottle for several years, for all I know it’s been reformulated as well due to the sandalwood shortage.  Anyway, I know it’s early yet, but Santal Blanc may in fact be my perfect sandalwood.  Notes courtesy of NST are white sandalwood, cinnamon, fenugreek, pink pepper, rose, jasmine, orris root, musk, benzoin and copaiba balsam.  What I love about Santal Blanc, revisiting it with an eye toward sandalwood, is that the rest of the notes are muted and the ride is incredibly smooth.  It has almost no development on me, perhaps a hair sweeter at the top, but I can’t pick out the florals (including the rose, thank God), and can I just use the word smooth again?  It’s got enough of the extra ingredients that the sandalwood doesn’t start attacking my brain.  In The Guide, TS calls it “a more lighthearted study of sandalwood’s charms, with its bright, fresh floral charm and raisin sweetness.”  It’s not raisiny sweet on me – in fact it’s the driest Serge I own – but I agree with the lighthearted part.  Being Serge, it lasts forever on me, and, again, some Philosykos thrown on top is terrific as well.

To any newbies or lurkers:  personally, I find picking a note – like sandalwood, or incense, or rose, or jasmine – and exploring a bunch of perfumes that highlight that note, both fun and informative.  You get a sense of how different something like a rose can smell in a fragrance, and sometimes you’ll run across something you like so much that you then decide to explore everything else that particular line (or that perfumer) has to offer.

Finally, a public service announcement (because I can) to those in the D.C. area: this is the last couple of weeks for the National Gallery of Art’s The Darker Side of Light, a fascinating and creepy set of lithographs, drypoints and etchings from the latter half of the 19^th century.  If you’ve ever stood in front of yet another life-sized oil of, say, Louis XV and been guiltily bored out of your mind, here’s a whole new way to look at art — the sort that was kept private, for intense, detailed study.  Lots of dreamscapes and fantastical images, yours for the perusing, free.  I hear the guided tour is excellent.

March