I’ve decided to steal one of March’s Maxims from earlier this week; she may be self-published, but was there any mention of a trademark or copyright? Seriously, I don’t think she’s going to mind.

I, too, have decided to focus on my existing collection, rather than always seeking out the new. There are a lot of neglected scents in my stash and they are deserving of some attention. As Jerry said to Elaine in the “Dinner Party” episode from season 5 of “Seinfeld”, “Look to the cookie.” I can’t remember the last time I had a black and white cookie, but the harmonious commingling of light and dark is certainly an axiom applicable to many things. Cookies, fragrance, life…what else is there?

I’m starting off with Donna Karan’s Cashmere Mist Eau de Parfum. Many of you know I am always at the ready to sing the praises of Chaos, even though it is a reformulation; I adore it utterly.  In fact, I enjoy all the scents from Donna Karan’s signature collection, especially this time of year, because they are warm, comforting and subtle. Unlike her DKNY collection of Delicious fruity-floral bombs, her eponymous scents are something altogether different.  I refuse to classify them as scents for the more mature, sophisticated woman, nor do I think they are akin to literally wrapping yourself in cashmere – I’m not a big fan of cashmere anything, except Cashmere Mist.  Instead, they are more like old friends: the fragrance equivalent of being comfortable in your own skin, by yourself and with others. You don’t feel the need to put up a façade or act in such a way that you become unrecognizable. Cashmere Mist doesn’t pull any punches; it’s all about warmth and comfort and closeness. Not the closeness you feel with another person, but the closeness of being at peace with yourself. Mind you, this isn’t a 24/7 Zen state I’m talking about. Rather, it is about being true and honest and not hiding behind all the b.s. we tend to get caught up in. OK, I’m getting carried away, but you do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Cashmere Mist’s notes are Lily of the Valley, suede notes, bergamot, ylang ylang, jasmine Maroc, sandalwood, orris, amber, vanilla, cedarwood, patchouli and musk.  Even with the inclusion of florals and patchouli, the sum of these parts is not overtly floral, or overly patchouli-ish. What they amount to is warmth, comfort, peace. If you’re looking to disturb the peace, Cashmere Mist won’t do it. If you’re craving quiet, Cashmere Mist is all about understatement. And sometimes, that can be a good thing.

The version of Cashmere Mist I chose to write about is the eau de parfum. This was released a few years ago, and has much better staying power than the eau de toilette.  How it came to reside in my collection was through Fragrancenet.com, not long after it became available. I don’t remember how much I paid for the bottles I have (yes, I have 2!), but it was not the current $70.00 for 50 ml. In addition, I have a 200ml bottle of Cashmere Mist eau de toilette, a limited edition at Nordstrom from a couple of years ago, during their anniversary sale. It is still swaddled in the original cellophane. I know – I should be arrested by the nasty porn police.

There is also a new “Luxe” edition for sale, celebrating the 15^th anniversary of the scent’s introduction. I have yet to smell it, but I’m in no rush. The contentment I feel when I wear my Cashmere Mist cannot be surpassed. Well, maybe it can, but right now, I’m not interested. I do, however, have a mad hankering for a black and white cookie.  “Look to the cookie.” Therein lay all the answers.

Thanks to March for the inspiration for this essay.  I’m looking forward to reading your musings on your collection, as much as I am looking forward to contemplating my own.

There are many garden smells I love. The evening scent of honeysuckle in June, pure, bright, overwhelming. The evening scent of angels’ trumpets in November (no frost here yet) – heady, intense, overpowering. The fresh loaminess of turned earth. The sweet floral crispness of stored cooking apples, their springlike zing always surprising me. The greenhouse smells of wood and geranium and salvias.

But of all the smells that halt me in my tracks, it’s the scent of cistus or labdanum that halts me most, and then haunts me. I can’t pin it down; it oscillates between categories too much – balsamic, leathery, animalic, resinous, green – for me to move on. Defying categorisation, it’s become one of my favourite perfume ingredients.

I’ve had all sorts of cistus shrubs over the years, most notably Cistus creticus with its shell pink flowers and its reputation as the best source of labdanum, and the variety ‘Sunset’ with brighter flowers, often described as rose pink but tending towards magenta in the best (or, if your tastes are less garish than mine, worst) examples. All of them have sticky leaves, from where the gummy resin is extracted (I’ll leave the details to better people than me – perfumeshrine has explored this with great eloquence). My current favourite cistus I grow is the hybrid x cyprius, whose leaves become lead grey in cold weather, as though metalwork rather than plant. And its aroma is everpresent – in rain, sun, or on still, dull days.

Cistus flowers don’t last, and they seem to be short day plants, at least with me, the flowers blooming best in spring and sometimes again in autumn. The flowers open in the early morning and if the day is hot, shatter by midday, their papery petals lost, their yellow stamens fading.

And in many perfumes, the aroma doesn’t last either. Take Donna Karan’s Labdanum from her Essence series. This is a perfect cistus scent for 20 minutes but fades to a creamy sweetness, that hints at everyday amber, way too quickly. I like it, but wish the wonder lasted. And Poivre 23 by le Labo has a wonderful journey through labdanum a few  minutes in. Here, I don’t mind its loss: the many facets of this scent are the reason to wear it.

Perhaps Andy Tauer’s l’air du desert marocain is the best example of a cistus note that lasts, held up and supported by other equally rugged aromas. This is a rough-hewn perfume, in all the right ways, and undoubtedly still Andy’s masterwork. ‘Learning to be satisfied with what I have’ has been my motto for this last year of the first decade of the 21st century (what an elaborate way to avoid using noughties, which makes my toes curl); perhaps I should stop with my cistus hunt and just accept I’ve found the best already.

What note haunts you, and why? And, cos I’m a contrarian type, if you think, ‘What a dolt! He hasn’t sniffed x or y for his labdanum fix? Man, that guy’s like a noob.’, please lemme have your recommendation toot sweet.

Before getting onto my shopping trip last Friday, I just want to share some travel advice with you. If you’re longing for oakmoss and miserable at its disappearance from our perfumed lives, look no further than a trip to south west Scotland, at least until the anti-scent brigade bomb the place. I’ve never been to a land so full of lichens. Every tree seemed to have a furry green trunk and greybluegreen branches (mostly due to oakmoss and its buddy, Old Man’s Beard). And given that a woodland was outside our holiday home, I got a heck of a lot of close-up time with oakmoss, even if the smell is – huh – hardly there in its unprocessed state. The bluebells and wild garlic compensated in the fragrance department though, I can assure you. What a wonderful juxtaposition of the intoxicatingly floral and the earthily acrid. Just perfect.
We stayed in the lodge below, sea one side, woodland on two, dairy pasture the other. We only ever saw cows and perhaps, on a busy day, a solitary walker heading from the small bay tucked deep in the woods, to the ruined castle, half a mile to the south of us. Bliss, I tell you.

Anyway, onto London. I don’t shop much, as I’m increasingly intolerant of crowds. I love people in ones, twos or threes, but any more than that and I start to get the jitters. It’s why I started in Nicolai, as the shop is so small, fitting any more than two people in there plus the SA is nigh-on impossible.

As much as I love the perfumes, I went to Nicolai for home fragrance lamp burner oil, the scents of which knock Lampe Berger into the shade (geddit?). I was after ‘summery’ and though their new Gardenia wowed me, and though I was tempted by the Mimosa, I ended up with three bottles that were far less femme. After all, my home is Georgian straight lines and it gets chintzy enough from the oh-too-many sweet peas that start appearing in the next few weeks. I ended up with Lavande Pays ( a staple – lavender, a touch of mint, and woody depths), Fleurs d’Agrumes (so much less shrill than the lemon, grapefruit and mandarin ascribed to it – essentially a woody scent with citrus topnotes) and Ocean (the lovely SA convinced me of this. I was expecting a calone / seaweed hellzone. I got eucalyptus, pine and open windows. Lovely, actually).

I also bought a bottle of Eau Turquoise as it seemed to be discontinued and 30 mls was going for the equivalent of $15; 100mls for $22. I supersized. It smells remarkably similar to the (also discontinued?) Eau Exotique, although softer in the drydown. They’re fruity scents for people who don’t enjoy fruity scents. Anyone fancy a large sample?

I also tried scents I hadn’t sniffed, or can’t remember sniffing. Cedrat and Cedrat Intense – both wondrous. But it was Odalisque that stole my heart. I didn’t know that green floral scents could be so seductive. If crowds smelled like Odalisque, I think I could be happy among them. The jasmine rounds off the high-pitched facets of the muguet (I didn’t want another ‘of’ in the sentence – my only reason for fanciness) It has none of the shrill screech that green florals seem to make (to my ‘ears’ at least). Instead, it’s the low thrum of a young Bacall whispering temptations. I think I might just need a small bottle.

Onto Harrods, which was hell, as usual: SAs wielding the latest blap as 21^st century weaponry, crowds moving like a febrile convulsion, and a noise level antithetical to perusal. I sniffed many things – enjoyed trying Donna Karan’s Fuel for Men at last (and it’s a maybe autumn purchase) and was sorely tempted by an Amouage Dia giftset, though I wasn’t quite ready to part with the $$$. I also finally tried Homage, and it bloomed and opened a new world in that hectic room – lush and beautiful. It sorely needed to be worn elsewhere.

Finally, onto Liberty, for my bottle of Geranium pour Monsieur, and peace and quiet. I love Liberty for perfume – it’s had the same understated SAs for years and never draws the crowds of Harrods or – worse! – Selfridges. Diptyque’s Oyedo made me laugh, and I momentarily wondered if I’d be happy going round smelling like Haribo all day (it’s kind of like a cartoon version of Clinique’s Happy for Men, with all the dihydromyrcenol replaced by laughing gas).

I quite liked the rather ordinary Nuits de Cellophane but don’t really remember much of anything else I tried. I was suckered into splurging out on a Cire Trudon candle – Balmoral. Hell, grass makes me as allergic as a sneeze-machine on its highest setting – fake grass, not at all.

And so my shopping trip ended, with a small whimper of acquisitiveness, and some satisfaction.

So, what have you bought recently – to scent yourself, or to scent your home? And what would you buy if you had all the time and money in the world for a leisurely, chauffeur-driven tour around London’s perfume hotspots?

And how about the view from the holiday cottage living room, to end…?

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First off, thanks to everyone who recommended Marc Jacobs’ Daisy as a possible fragrance for my young niece.  I smelled it yesterday and found it entirely (indeed, almost humorously) devoid of sex appeal — if there is an iota of musk in there, I can’t smell it.  And while it is a generic sparkling fruity-floral, it’s neither syrupy nor crass.  I wouldn’t wear it, but it is a light fragrance perfect for a girl, with the bonus points of the adorable bottle and being mercifully free of any unpleasant celebrity-laden associations.  Right now various retailers like Sephora and Macy’s are selling elaborate Daisy gift sets with solid-perfume compacts, teeny cute mini-Daisy purse sprays, fun makeup bags, etc.

Second — UPDATE — I apparently managed AGAIN to paste some code in here rendering half the post invisible in Internet Explorer. I am sorry. I’ll make an effort to recheck the darn thing in IE before I take it live.

Okay, today’s topic. I’ve been putting this off, but here goes:  am I nuts, or does the re-released Donna Karan Chaos smell … different?

There.  I said it.  Flog me with some Yatagan or a plastic decanting pipette, but I can’t help it, it doesn’t smell quite right to me.  Something’s missing.

Granted, we’re talking about my comparisons to samples from old-formula Chaos bottles of various vintages, many of which are different enough they already smell like dupes of each other.  Some are spicier; some are darker; the top notes might have gone off a bit.  I think Chaos’ stunning bottle probably got left out on display more often than other, plainer bottles.

Prior to the re-release of Chaos, when things were looking desperate, I wrote a review of Anarchy, the Irma Shorell dupe, which is  — seriously — to my nose a credible effort.  It does not smell materially different than a couple of my samples of vintage Chaos from different sources.  It’s missing something at the top, and it’s not quite as darkly mysterious as my full bottle, but it’s less prickly as well.

So here’s the new one, and nobody could be happier than I was when they appeared.  And … well, I don’t know.  I wish I had Octavian from 1000 Fragrances here to help; he could sniff it and tell me they’d tinkered with the  dextromethampetamine or whatever.  He’s got a perfume chemist’s nose and knowledge, and I don’t.

The notes from Basenotes list (for the original Chaos): sandalwood, cardamom, cinnamon, padukwood, agarwood, saffron, clove, amber, musk, sage, lavender, chamomile, coriander.

The new Chaos is brighter.  It seems more focused on the top (the saffron is quite prominent) and less on the gigantic, raspy bottom — the gap to me between vintage and new Chaos is like the gap between Chaos and Black Cashmere, if that makes any sense.  Black Cashmere is a gorgeous scent and I adore it, and it will take the top of your head off if you look at it wrong — I’ve had to scrub that fierce, growling beast off more than once. Also, the new Chaos seems sweeter — more amber and clean musk, less spices.   Since my time machine’s broken, and acknowledging that I have no way of knowing precisely what the original Chaos smelled like in 1996, the new one, while quite nice, seems more muted and softer.  It’s a narrower bandwidth focused on the soft, creamy comfortable middle of the scent without quite reaching either the heights or the depths of the original.  In my opinion.  While I’m going out on a limb and sawing it off, does anyone else get this… this cola-syrup-deal that pops up in the new Chaos faintly every now and again?  It’s not unpleasant, just kind of odd.  (On the other hand, if I recall correctly, “cola” was a word that turned up occasionally in reader reviews of the original, so maybe the scents are closer than I thought.)

If I’d never smelled the original Chaos — or Anarchy, to be honest — I’d be raving over this new Chaos as the greatest thing since sliced bread.  I only have one sample of the new, which I dumped in an atomizer, and I will try to get some more samples and re-test it. But somehow the reissued Chaos does not fly out of the bottle, reach down my nose and rip my heart out of my chest the way the original did — that jaw-dropping smell that made me shrug and roll over to eBay going, I don’t care what it takes, I’ll pay it.  At the time it was the most expensive bottle I’d ever bought, and (unlike some others) I never regretted it.  I wondered at first whether I’ve just gotten jaded about Chaos, but a revisit of my older samples and my bottle — nail-varnish top notes and all — still grabs me in a way my new sample just doesn’t.  Your thoughts?

Coming soon: reviews of Chaos Pour Homme — okay, not really, but that’s the first thing I thought of when sniffing a new-to-me fragrance last week, and my feelings about DK Fuel, now that I’ve managed to retrieve it from behind my work station where it had slunk off to… occupational hazard.

image, Marc Jacobs in a tutu and Naomi Campbell from a funny photo spread in Bazaar last year

Unfinished business: I did five minutes of research on Tasha Tudor after yesterday’s post and came up with the family website, which is worth a look if the topic has piqued your interest at all. It’s got photos and text and illustrations and depending on your perspective is either charming or creepy — or (for me, anyway) a little of both. Here’s an excerpt from the family biography section: “Marjorie Tudor is Tasha Tudor’s daughter-in-law, having married Tasha’s elder son, Seth. She has four children who grew up at her feet as she carved wooden pieces for the marionettes and sewed frocks for the lady dolls.”  Also the family business seems to be Seth, Marjorie, and their various children/grandchildren — no mention in the company section of the other three children, I think another son and two daughters.

Okay, today’s post. After complaining for years about how awful the store-bought tomatoes are, I got busy this spring and planted some of my own, having been told by a gardening friend that all I need is sun, heat and a lot of water. I planted them in barrels in my driveway, far away from my magnificent but plant-killing black walnut trees. So far they’re looking pretty awesome — huge with lots of green fruit. I have a cherry tomato, an early ripener, and Brandywine, that purple heirloom one that’s so tasty. I thought brandywines were the ugliest thing I’d ever seen until I ate one. Also, now I understand the obsession you all have with the smell of tomato leaves, which is featured prominently in Christopher Brosius’ Memory of Kindness, and if you’re so inclined, go read his lovely story of the scent and his beloved aunt.

All of this crossed my mind when I ran across Donna Karan’s DKNY Women (in the long, prism-shaped bottle rather than the black and gold robo-duck). I smelled it a year or two ago in some duty-free, which is the only place I’ve ever seen it, and was immediately impressed by its … well, what the heck is that weird smell?

According to Basenotes, the 1999 fragrance “uses headspace technology to capture the scent of freshly laundered t-shirts and wet cobblestones. The bottle is designed to echo skyscrapers.” I’m sure there’s a great story out there from the DKNY marketing machine explaining Donna’s inspiration, etc., but I’m too lazy to look. Instead let’s gaze in wonder at the notes:

blood orange, chilled vodka, tomato leaf, waterlilies, green coral orchids, daffodils, freshly laundered t-shirt, wet cobblestones, white birch, tulip tree bark.

Okay, I know some of you are a little jaded about the lists of notes, what with all the molten rivers of wood and living black orchid and all the rest of that bs. But I can’t help it; I love that list. La Donna rocking the wet cobblestones back in ’99! Also, look at what it doesn’t contain: pink pepper, white/pink musk, and/or frozen litchi (and thank you, Jesus).

I cracked up reading the comments on Basenotes, because a number of folks were complaining (?), this fragrance is not sexy! Well, they’re right. If you want to bring a man to his knees, pick something else. However, I remain entranced by DKNY Women’s almost CdG-esque peculiarity. It’s also a great fragrance for summer – it’s weird, but it’s wearably, enjoyably weird, like CdG’s inky number 2.

I never know what I’m going to get first with DKNY Women – sometimes it’s all citrusy, and sometimes it opens with the laundry, but always with the tomato leaf, and the combined smell is so peculiarly compelling I can’t stop sniffing it. DK’s tee shirt is nothing like, say, Clean Laundry – this isn’t a soft, musky, girly Tide smell. It’s a tee shirt in the rain, left hanging on the branch of a tree with something sharp and herbal growing nearby. In any case, the detergent morphs pretty quickly into a bitter, bark-y floral. The whole thing is pungent and peculiar, and delightful in the heat. This scent contains so many familiar things (once you know what you’re looking for) but juxtaposes them so brilliantly I’m charmed. It’s like a scent tape you’d give to a Martian – here are some random all-American smells, my little green friend!

How much this would appeal to you would probably depend on your tolerance for quirky scents, and whether or not your nose is overwhelmed with a tidal wave of Tide (mine is not, and I hate laundry scents). I like its resolutely non-perfume-y smell, like I’d picked tomatoes and some herbs from my garden and was wearing all the evidence on my rainy-day walk in the woods, smiling to myself.

Brandywine tomatoes: ugly, but good eatin’ — tradewindsfruit.com