I give up.  I was told that MDCI Promess de l’aube was reformulated, but I’m smelling the old version and the new one and can only pick up minor differences on the open and maybe a little less powderiness in the new version.  The new version seems to last longer and have more strength in the drydown. So that’s my take on it.  Anyone else compared the two yet?  If you’re a fan of the scent, you won’t be crying with the new version.

Jo Malone has a new scent, officially released in September, though bottles are showing up on eBay, so I’m guessing it is out there in Europe maybe.  Created by Christine Nagel, it features notes of bluebell, clove, lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, white amber and musk.

I’m not sure I’ve smelled bluebell before, so no idea whether it hits the mark.  If this is what bluebell smells like, I gotta say I like it!  It’s a very pretty fragrance, and I’ve been spritzing it on a lot this week because it is working great with the growing heat of the summer. The one thing I’ve always appreciated about Jo Malone, through their ownership changes, etc., they stay true to who they are.  This scent fits in their line and is enough different that it doesn’t feel like a retreat or minor variation or flanker.  It’s slightly sweet, a little musky so it has depth, has  nice green lily of the valley notes that keep it lilting in that “spring in your step” way that Jo Malone always seems to have.  It’s not as linear as some of their fragrances, there’s minor development in the drydown when you hit more of the amber and musk.

I’m digging it. Not in that swoony over-the-moon way, but it’s a solid entry in their line that I think will be well loved, worn a lot without annoying all your office mates/friends/family and sell well for them.  Have you seen the advertising for it?  It’s got an Alice in Wonderland theme, and I think I read somewhere that this is the first advertising where they will have a person in the photos instead of just the bottle of perfume.

Do you have a perfume that fits in that pretty mainstream category?  Do you like that you have one of those or do you feel a little embarrassed that you do?

I’d like to do a draw, and you can pick either the new Jo Malone sample or the comparison of the MDCI samples. Just drop a comment to be entered, and I’ll pick two winners.

Patty

By March

I rooted around in the collection of vials and decants sitting near my computer, I haven’t done a random candy samples review in forever!

Also:  I’m thinking we should do another Swapmania, in June, maybe?  I promise not to do it on a holiday weekend this time.  Would you funsters prefer June or July?  Or never again?  OK, on to the reviews…

Jo Malone Earl Grey & Cucumber cologne: one of the new JM tea scents.  If you can smell either tea or cucumber here, your nose is more discerning than mine.  Seriously, this could be anything summer-musky out of a splash bottle.  This could be Estee Lauder Pure Linen Paradise Eau Légère. Or possibly Marc Jacobs Biscotti Breeze.

Jo Malone Assam & Grapefruit cologne: another one of the tea scents.  Man, am I glad I didn’t buy this unsniffed.  Thanks, Anita, I owe you.  For the first seventeen seconds it smells great – not a ton of grapefruit, more citrus, and a lovely tea note.  Fortunately my internet connection’s kind of slow, so by the time I started surfing for bottles, maybe five minutes later, all the fun tea and citrus had disappeared and I was left with whatever they’re putting in the Earl Grey & Cuke bottle above, only more in the direction of D&G Light Blue.  Apologies to anyone who just had their breakfast spoiled.  Also, I wish they’d make a Light Blue Light (lite?) flanker.  See, I told you I had crap taste.

Roja Dove Diaghilev – I went off to read more about Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev but wound up reading about Nijinsky instead (they were lovers), then got distracted by details like: “Then Nijinsky went back to the Mariinsky Theatre, but was dismissed for appearing on-stage during a performance as Albrecht in Giselle wearing tights without the modesty trunks obligatory for male dancers in the company. The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna complained that his appearance was obscene…”

Eh, where were we?  Oh.  How’s the perfume?  Well… I agree with Anita that it’s kind of a hybrid of (new) Femme and Mitsouko, the scent Diaghilev is either supposed to have worn himself or sprayed on the curtains before performances, or maybe both.  I’m kind of a sucker for Roja Dove’s retro scents, and if I didn’t have Femme or Mitsouko I’d have ponied up for one of the thousand bottles of this limited edition.  It’s a lot like Mitsouko, only with a strong sweaty note, more peach, and less … fangs.  Sadly, Diaghilev is sold out on the Roja Dove website.  I already have Femme and Mitsouko, though, so I’m not crying myself to sleep.

Cartier L’Heure Fougueuse – call me lazy, or crazy, but when you release a slew of fragrances and they’re all named “L’Heure (something or other),” I can’t remember which ones I liked.  I finally got around to trying Fougueuse, which came out later than the first batch, right?  This is “the spirited hour,” composed by Mathilde Laurent around a “horse-mane accord,” notes are bergamot, magnolia, horse-mane note, green notes, lavender, floral notes, Maté, Vetiver, musk, oakmoss, leather.

I throw up my hands, okay?   I agree this is totally worth smelling — because it’s phenomenally weird.  Does nobody else find it bizarre, as strange as Dzing! only maybe even more so?  Here’s my personal list of notes as Fougueuse unfolded, since I gave up trying to construct any sort of reasonable review:

I sure didn’t sniff it and think, meh, I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve smelled that.  It’s unisex, to the degree that eraser dust and horse can be defined thusly.  I’m not sure it’s right for me (I guess I’ll stick to smelling like damp earth or moldy crypt, thanks very much) but if you find the general crossroads of, say, Dzing, Bulgari Black and Fleur de Narcisse appealing…

March

It’s our last day in London, and we go home tomorrow, and I am sad and happy. At the end of every trip is the time when it is almost over and you think of all the things you have seen and done, but you also yearn for home. For me, it is right at the two-week mark when I’m just done, time to wrap it up and find a plane to take me back to my kids, my dogs, my cats, my family, my comfy bed.

Apologies in advance for typos and grammar corrections I should make, but we are about to head out for the touristy part of our London visit today, so this has to be done in a hurry since I was so tired last night, I couldn’t type a sentence.

I’m not sure where I left off – I think where I was weary of the group aspect of group travel.  On Friday in Grasse, we were invited to Molinard, and it was amazing.  They were the most gracious hosts I think I’ve ever experienced. They took us through their operation, let us shop, took us to the special room they set up with 50 essences at each table and let us make perfume.  We didn’t get the essences that are necessary for making the perfumes we like, such as civet, castoreum, labdanum — well, you know.  So I did the best I could and made a perfume with heliotrope, jasmine, gardenia mostly.  After we finished making zee perfume, we saw another room across the way they use for perfume-making courses.  That room.  Oh, yes, it was full of the stuff I really needed in my perfume, and we couldn’t stay in there, unfortunately, or I would have just moved my suitcase in and camped out on the floor.

After an incredible lunch, we got the factory tour of Fragonard as well.  Did I know how good some of these Fragonards were? there’s a Men’s fragrance called F that’s made for men but belongs on women too.  More about that next week.

Saturday we  arrived in London late, with enough time to run to Liberty and buy scarves and perfumes and other stuff.  I don’t know why this happens every time I’m in Liberty, but they have a beautiful scarf department, and there are always about 2-4 scarves that cry for me as I walk by. This year I gave in and gave two of them new homes..  I totally neglected to finalize plans with Lee for Sunday because we just weren’t sure what we were doing exactly and how tired we were, which on a scale of 1-10, my exhaustion is hitting a 9 right now, so I missed seeing him because he just had the one day.  Missed Sylvia and Nicola too because we’ve had very spotty internet, and I didn’t get their e-mail until late last night. Okay, my profuse apologies. I will plan better next time. And there will be a next time!

I love London. I hate the crowds at Harrod’s, and it is such a distasteful task to plunge into that mess to try and find the sales, and it just makes me cranky. That’s how we wound up spending all of Sunday, though we finally finished just in time to get to Fortnum & Mason to do tea, which is the one thing we promised to do almost every day – have formal’ish tea.  So far, we’ve done it!  Couple of things we found that we had no idea were coming out. Jo Malone has four new ones – Iris & White Musk, Amber & Patchouli, Oud & Bergamot and Rose Water & Vanilla. They are Cologne Intense – not sure what that means exactly, I guess a step up from cologne.  They are nice, very Jo Malone’ish. More on those next week.

Monday we met up with Diane from London (she comments on here) for tea at the Berkeley.  The is the pret-a-porter tea, and it is tied to the latest season in fashion. We ate cookies shaped like Chanel shoes.  We ate a Anya Hindmarch handbag. It is really adorable, posh and lovely. If you ever pick one tea to do in London, do this one. It’s pricey, but I think so worth it.

We were supposed to just go to Harvey Nichols and then spend the afternoon after tea at the Victoria & Albert Museum, but instead we elected to go back to Harvey Nichols – a department store you can easily spend a day in, without the frenetic Harrod’s thing.  Another scarf had cried for me there as I walked by, a gorgeous Alexander McQueen. Yes, yes, I gave it a home!

And we are at today, the tourist part of our stay. The London Tower this morning, then the rest of the day for the Victoria & Albert Musuem, which has a Grace Kelly special exhibit. And tomorrow it is an early flight home. Thanks for letting me share my trip with you.  Oh, yes, as a thank you, I will do a draw for a couple of sample sets of those four new Jo Malones.  Just drop a comment to be entered.

Patty

Sorry this is late – I’m still getting the hang of things.

<sigh>  Lord, I love a fruit.  I do.    I have run through nearly every lemon, lemon/lime concoction out there  and  I was Jo´s  Grapefruit gal back when you could only get it in London and her husband would take orders over the phone. The whole reason I´m even on the Posse is a tortuous journey. a quest for my high school love, Bigarade by Nina Ricci ( I got it and, uh….well, okay – what was all that about?).  So I know my fruit.  And fruit is funny.  Lemon can so quickly turn to furniture polish and while I usually  luck out on that drama I can still get smacked in the head by too much sugar or the Evil Musk Drydown indigenous to so many Lemons.  Grapefruit can be beautiful (helloo, Pamplemousse Rose, you weasel) or scorch your nose hairs (sorry, Jo).

However nothing incites as much polarity in my fruit-lovin´ self as orange (my love for Agraria Bitter Orange is legendary).   But bitter orange can go so razory it makes your teeth hurt, like my one night stand, Bigarade Concentree.  I swear I loved you,BC.  I did.  But you sunk your fangs in the  pith and green rind and it was a  Sad, Sad Day in Orangeville.

So I was excited when I literally stumbled (as in, I tripped and sent the bottles flying) across the Atelier Cologne Orange Sanguine at Neiman Marcus.  Notes from the N-M site:

Cologne Absolue concentrated at 15%.
Top notes: blood orange, bitter orange
Heart notes: jasmine, geranium from South Africa
Base notes: amber woods, tonka beans, sandalwood

Well, alrighty then.  If there´s jasmine or tonka bean in there it has been stuffed in the back of Orange´s gym locker.  Orange isn´t goofing around here, trust me.  And she´s gonna be on the playground for awhile.   You would think orange´ + cologne´ would mean gone in 20 seconds.  Uh, no.  I was  surprised to find this bad girl with her claws still in nearly 3 hours after application.  Very exciting!

Too bad I can´t stand the stuff.

Turns out that for all my fruit lovin´, it seems  I love the idea´ of fruit better, at least with orange.  Most of the orange scents I adore whisper in the ear of an orange, while veiling themselves in other, complimentary, notes.  Orange Sanguine is like you just spilled orange juice all over the kitchen (and in your shoooes!), the ants are coming out of the woodwork, you´re late for a meeting (so you’re stuck with – and in- the shoes).  It´s sticky-schweeeet.  And very orange.    I´m thinking it might take the pith out of that Bigarade, if it doesn´t kill it outright. My money’s on the new girl.

So the Orange Sanguine was a sticky mess.  This did not bode well for the new Marc Jacobs splashes with all the fruit and cookies and everything.  I´ve never been a huge Marc Jacobs fan, beyond his handbags but he did an excellent Lemon and hey!  I was right there so…what the heck.  Nerves shot from the orange juice and the ants  I squinted at this year’s splashes from the corner of my eye  – he has Apple, Pomegranate and Biscotti (apparently the Biscotti is a reissue). Well, I don’t want to smell like a cookie so I passed Biscotti by and, liver aquiver, gingerly approached  the Apple.  “Oh, crap.  Apple?  This is gonna smell like a county fair, I just know it”

Waitaminit! This is what I´m talkin´ about! This is not about smelling like an apple.   This smells nothing like an apple.  It smells like the ideal of an apple – a crisp, juicy, tart Granny Smith, all freshness and springlike and full of zesty life.   I was stunned at how much I liked it.  According to Nordstrom´s site this year´s offerings are supposedly ” inspired by the decadent indulgences of a patisserie” .  Well, maybe if the patisserie just put a dewy, chilled bowl of Granny Smiths on a sidewalk table.  And that sounds just fine by me.   I don´t know how it will play in intense heat but it´s a perfect  late-May Saturday morning scent, maybe with that first sleeveless dress of the season?

Sources:  Atelier Cologne – Neiman-Marcus (all over the) counter ; Marc Jacobs Apple Splash – Nordstrom counter

(update:  Bigarade Concentree + Orange Sanguine = YUM! perhaps, like its juicy namesake, it’s the perfect mixer)

Anyone keeping an eye out for alarming signs indicating the coming of the End Times need look no further than my recent infatuation with some Jo Malone scents. I gave up on Jo Malone quite awhile ago, not too far into my fragrance addiction – somewhere after French Nectarine, Verbena & Lime. Or maybe it was Orange Blossom, Basil & Lavender. I forget. An “edgy” JM scent like Pomegranate Noir was notable to me solely for its stubborn refusal to leave my skin no matter how much I scrubbed.

Then I smelled the new Jo Malone Kohdo Wood Collection at the Sniffa. The Collection contains two fragrances: Dark Amber & Ginger Lily, and Lotus Blossom & Water Lily, and I was stunned to find myself falling for Dark Amber & Ginger Lily. It´s a heavy amber, a Jo Malone, an allegedly limited edition – three strikes against it. I meant to buy some, forgot, and last week I found myself wandering over to Bloomie´s for a new pair of yoga pants and another sniff, because I couldn´t put it out of my mind.

Dark Amber & Ginger Lily is the night-time “sensual” scent of the pair, and features cardamom, pink pepper (which is in everything now, did they pass some law requiring it? not that I’m complaining), ginger, night blooming jasmine, orchid, water lily, rose, black amber, white pepperwood, leather, patchouli, sandalwood and Kyara incense accord. The JM boutique Sales Associate was at lunch when I stopped by, and I was amused at the very nice Chanel SA´s insistence on the “nighttime-only” appropriateness of the Dark Amber – it was pretty clear she thought the circumstances under which you´d want to wear something like that were severely limited. I know some of you have already fallen in love with it. The time of year for its launch seems wrong (it strikes me as a fall scent) but it is a wonderfully smooth, seamless mélange of amber, intense dark florals and woods, creamy, and in my opinion quite a departure from what I have smelled from the line. The incense and spices are strongest at the opening — the incense is lovely in both scents, but I feel obligated to point out that if you’re interested solely because of the incense, this would probably disappoint. I’d describe it as amber/woody with an incense twist. I get more woody incense right at the tail end of the day, after the florals depart. There is a faint odd note like tanning oil or milky coconut that drifts in and out for the first hour before disappearing. I can´t pick out any of the notes listed, and it doesn´t go through a ton of development – it´s warm and rich, and I can´t think of anything else quite like it. If it were a color, it would be a deep red. Contrary to the Chanel SA’s opinion I can see wearing this a lot — it’s sultry by JM standards, I guess, but Poison or Fracas it is not. Having said that, it’s got some decent sillage and might not be the best choice for close quarters at work, particularly if your cube-mate’s idea of heaven is a light citrus cologne.

The Lotus Blossom & Water Lily is the “energizing daytime” scent and includes aquatic notes (horrors!), grapefruit, bergamot, mandarin, lotus blossom, freesia, honeysuckle, water lily, jasmine, incense, amber, sandalwood, musk, aloeswood and guaiac wood. I knew I was buying the Dark Amber but tried on the Lotus Blossom to confirm my lack of interest, and I realized … well, there might be more to the Lotus Blossom than I thought. I put it on the way I hear a normal person wears perfume (squirt on my cleavage, one on the wrists) and went off for my yoga pants and further consideration. Fifteen minutes later I decided I needed a bottle of the Lotus Blossom as well. The citrus comes on fairly strong in the first few minutes, more grapefruit than mandarin, but then it settles into a mildly sweet, watery floral, with a enough of the woods and incense to move it in a more unisex direction and keep it interesting to me. (The aquatic bit isn’t “fresh,” that ironically-named deal-killer that smells sour, like a basket of dirty laundry.) For a relatively light scent it is tenacious – I can smell it on my clothing the following day – and it has the interesting ability to disappear and then suddenly halo around me. I think this would make an excellent, inoffensive work scent. Having discovered its tenacity on fabric, I sprayed my sheets one evening and enjoyed that as well. At $95 for 100ml, it doesn’t fill me with guilt, but you can get 30ml for $50, and anything for $50 is, essentially, free and thus doesn’t count against my perfume budget.

I have many, many scents for cooler weather, but comparatively few I want to smell in a Washington summer. In general, most florals, by the time they reach an appropriate level of lightness for the D.C. heat and humidity, are no longer interesting to me. This leaves a plethora of citrus and tea scents, many of which by definition don´t have huge lasting power. Lotus Blossom is a nice change of pace. This is one of those scents I would love some additional feedback on – I find myself quite hopelessly in its thrall, while at the same time suspecting that it is the perfume equivalent of 7-Up. By the way, they smell delicious layered.

Since I´d clearly lost my mind, and the exceedingly well-trained Jo Malone SA showed back up, I decided to sample some others. Having politely turned down most of the citrus-y JM standards, I accepted a paper strip with White Jasmine & Mint on it – and was, again, smitten. The sharp, sparkling wetness of the mint against the intense, creamy sweetness of a clean jasmine was such a perfect combination I wondered how nobody had tried it before. In The Guide, Tania Sanchez gives it three stars and calls it “an optimistic but crude cologne” (an assessment I agree with, by the way; I have a lot of three-star scents I love) and says is has been done before – and better – in L´Artisan´s The Pour Une Ete. I don´t have a sample here to smell, but my recollection was that the L’Artisan was more about the tea, and less minty. Also, Tania says JM “tries to make everything last longer by throwing in a tenacious musk” which is “vigorous but unnecessary.” To which I respond, and that´s part of what I love about it – L´Artisan lasts about 20 minutes on me. White Jasmine & Mint eventually collapses in on itself and loses its mint after an hour, and then it´s kind of flat. You can´t keep reapplying or you´ll kill yourself eventually with the jasmine. Nonetheless, I see at least a decant in my future.

The Jo Malones are all about layering. I like to layer, but am (perversely) annoyed by a house that deliberately encourages me to do that – shouldn´t their fragrances be good enough to stand alone? They´re just trying to sell more product! This thinking makes no sense, I realize. Anyway, the SA talked about layering the lighter/sweeter scents with some of the scents on the darker end of the spectrum, and if you haven´t tried it already, let me heartily recommend their Wild Fig & Cassis layered with the Black Vetyver Café, which – what kind of idiot am I?!? How have I missed that one? I´ll need some of that this fall, although I’ll test drive it first — tons of complaints about lasting power on Black Vetyver. How’s it work for you? On the other hand, Robin says the Kohdo Wood ones don’t last that long on her either. I must have some sort of freaky, molecular-vacuum-lock skin; I may complain all the time, but it’s seldom about lasting power. All of these lasted a full day (on in the morning; still there at bedtime) on me, and I could still smell them if I sniffed for them in the a.m.

For another take on the scents, please see Robin’s review from yesterday on Now Smell This.

image: jomalone.com

March