Winner Alert:  Cuir Fetich sample winner is……..Mrs Honey!!!  drop a line at ‘contact us’ with your deets (and please remind us what you won).  thanks!

Unless you live on Jupiter and only get intermittent internet signal, you know that I am still having some issues with living at the back of the back of beyond.  This is mitigated, somewhat, by my occasional Saturday forays back to Chicago.  Two weeks ago I leapt aboard the train and went to do a Mag Mile stroll with my darling Miss Francine.  Lots of stops, including Chanel  and over the next couple of posts I will tell you allllll about some new stuff I sampled and sniffed.

The Universe was on my side that Saturday.  Starting out frosty, it quickly warmed up to the mid-60s, which made strolling an absolute delight.  We met at Nordie’s, where I got to sample the Bottega Veneta everybody’s been raving about (more on that in another post, I have to take my time with that subtle one)…I also sampled Prada Candy and……..I still feel like the Nerd Girl at the Cool Party.  I can’t ‘get it’ because I CAN’T SMELL IT!  sur-prize!  I have yet to find a Prada I can get more than a faint ‘scent-over-alcohol’ smell from.

Prada Hates Me.  Who cares?  I Love Kilian. 

We went to SFA to yakk with Rosie – and smooch the Kilians.  Francine hadn’t spent a lot of time with them so it was fun to watch her reactions. I think she fell in love with Straight to Heaven , though knowing her perfume tastes I am thinking it might have been A Taste of Heaven. – it was one of the Heavens, that much I do remember (I’m OLD).   I always forget that Kilian has two gorgeous Ouds, confusing them with the Tom Fords which reside cheek by jowl against the Kilian display.  Saks’s perfume counter is abysmal, banished to the back of the section like a smelly old dog.    Anyway, I stumbled back upon Rose Oud.…I have no idea why I keep glossing over this scent.  It combines two of my favorite scent families, rose and a soft, dark oud accord – I don’t know if you remember my summer experiment where I combined Amouage Tribute Attar with Rosine Poussiere de Rosine for the Hog Roast at the nursing home….this is similar, but without the ashy accord (which I love to distraction, btw).  This is much lighter and just beautiful.  In a ‘pretty’ way.   I find myself embarrassed to describe it thus because somehow ‘pretty’ has become almost anathema in the lexicon of Serious Perfumery.  It’s okay to be ‘daring’ or ‘challenging’ or ‘intriguing’ – why not ‘pretty’?  Tribute is GORGEOUS but it can be challenging and, in some situations, requires some explanation.  Sometimes I just want to smell beautiful, in a pretty way.  Just like this.

Rose Oud is, by far, my personal win of the Kilians, with Incense Oud  in for the place.  Both of those gorgeous beauties are done by the ultra-fabulous Calice Becker.  I applaud that she didn’t crush the rose notes under a whole lotta lotta, y’know?  Rose gets short shrift sometimes, just like ‘pretty’ – for example, the Rosines are often dismissed because of their lack of darkness and complexity – but I am going to come right out and say that I LIKE a sunny rose now and again.  Yeah, they’re not over-nuanced but there’s a place for them.  Rose Oud isn’t ‘sunny’ by a long shot – rather, it’s a glowing, faceted opal of a scent, with the roses and spices weaving and winkling around each other, forming a shining veil, luminous sunlight through stained glass.   It is complex without trumpeting its complexity like a fedora on a 14 yr old boy.

I’m not in the market for a full bottle of Rose Oud because my lottery ticket has not been verified just yet but when I am I won’t be getting it in the justintimefortheholidays glamazon Swarovski crystal limited-edition bottle – as magpie as I am, I can’t love the embellished Kilian bottles.  They feel ‘bedazzled’ to me, like someone hung a Juicy Couture charm on a vintage bottle of No 5 perfume.     The standard Kilian black bottles are elegant, classic – and good enough for me.  You may feel otherwise and that’s okay – diff’rent strokes!
But I thought you might like to see it anyway.  That’s it up there.

Notes for Rose Oud are: Turkish rose, oud, saffron, cardamom

Photo courtesy shopstyle.com

SURPRISE!! If you slogged through all that, there is a halfway-decent reward.  This charming young man at the Killian counter gave me this charming little box with 5 charming Kilian samples, including Rose Oud.  I’m giving it away because I am Just That Kinda Gal.  To enter, just let me know which Kilian is your favorite  – or which one you have always wanted to try, or how you feel about the LE bottles v. the regular ones, or what you’re having for Thanksgiving dinner, because I am Just That Nosy.   Giveaway will be open until Friday, November 25.   Winner will be announced next Tuesday.

By March

Old bidness: These are the folks who won the Miriam giveaway, selected via random.org – send a message to “contact us” and congrats, Patty will send them to you:  Pam, Meg, Ms Christian, Samberg, Maureen, Gisela, Joanna, Nozknoz.

Okay, onward.  For some reason I – the original incense freak – am not really feeling the incense right now.  My bottles and decants of incense frags sit on my shelves, neglected.  Sadface.  But then… as usual… someone (let’s blame Louise) comes along with a taste of something new and different to love – Kilian Incense Oud.

It took me awhile to come around to the Kilian line, partly because their fancy-cask branding annoys me irrationally, and partly because I hate many of the fragrance names, all of which sound something like Stairway to Heaven, so I can’t ever remember which scent is which.  The tuberose one is pretty freaking great (Straight to Heaven?  Taste of Heaven?), and if I were being gifted a bottle I’d want the delicious honey-tobacco of Back in Black, unless it’s Back to Black.  But as usual I digress.

What do I like about the Kilians?  They smell expensive.   Fancy bottles and marketing spew aside, their scents (even the ones I loathe, like that marshmallow one) don’t smell like a million other things, they don’t smell like laundry musk, and they don’t smell like the perfumer’s brief said: your budget is sixty cents a bottle for the juice.

Oud is the new pink pepper, apparently – how many ouds have we seen in the last year?  When Jo Malone’s doing an oud, we’ve reached saturation point.  Who’s next, Beyonce?  Anyhoodle, Kilian did a rose oud which I hear is great and I’ll take your word for it, because I’d rather stick a firecracker up my nose.  According to LuckyScent, notes for Incense Oud are Guatemala cardamom, pink pepper, Turkish rose, Egyptian geranium, grapefruit, Virginia cedarwood, Indonesian patchouli, Indian papyrus, Somalia incense (oil and absolute), sandalwood, Macedonian oakmoss, Spanish cistus labdanum, musks.

I’m guessing oud fans aren’t feeling the love, because that weird, raspy oud note in Incense Oud is undetectable.  The LuckyScent blurb points out that “the fragrance boasts no actual oud in its list of materials. If Incense Oud lives up to the second half of its name” it’s through the interplay of half the list of notes, blah blah blah, and … well, it kind of doesn’t.  So if you’re looking for oud, look somewhere else – like Montale – or you’re destined for disappointment.

If you love incense, though, this is definitely worth a sniff.  The first impression was oooh, Chaos! …. No, wait, something more like that Uncle Serge that smells like pine forest … no, wait …. one of those CDGs….

I love its kaleidoscopic nature.  Incense frags can be pretty static, but Incense Oud shifts constantly among the adjectives.  Sweet.  Smoky.  Spicy (hellooo, cardamom!)  Earthy.  Resiny.  Did you notice rose listed in the notes?  On my skin it registers as honeyed sweetness in the background, and since I’m almost as much a honey freak as I am an incense freak, I couldn’t be happier.  There’s something cozy about it – like the Bottega Veneta, it seems like it belongs in a room, along with the smell of furniture polish and old papers, indoors rather than outdoors, and not a bit churchy.  My only gripe is I found its lasting power kind of average, and given that I’m the scent-sponge, I wonder if longevity is an issue for normal people.  Incense is one of those smells that tends to cling in perfumery.  But it was very much worth the ride.

We could play the what’s-you-favorite-incense game, but that’s almost like picking your favorite kid.  I love ‘em all.  Feel free to name some of your favorites, though.

March

Have you ever been so looking forward to something that you can hardly stand the wait? And
then when it arrives, it’s not what you thought it would be. Perhaps it even turns out to be a huge
disappointment.
The same thing can happen with fragrance. We hear that something will be released in a few months,
we read the press release with all its hype, we read the list of notes, and we begin to salivate. Then
when we actually do get to smell it – big thud.
This happened to me recently with By Kilian’s (a favorite line for me) newest, Sweet Redemption. It was
billed as the last of the L’Oeuvre Noire series and sounded like a gloriously fitting finale. Why, with that
list of notes, how could it not? Orange blossom, vanilla, myrrh, opopanax, benzoin, incense.
With so many of my favorites all in one bottle, it smacked of Holy Grail material to me.
After I ordered a sample, I was at the mailbox every day like an excited child awaiting a birthday gift.
Where is it? Surely it should be here by now. It’s got to come tomorrow. Please don’t let this be the
package the post office loses.
When it finally did arrive, I excitedly tore open the envelope and spritzed.
I got a soft, powdery orange blossom mixed with vanillic sweetness, almost in baby-aspirin territory,
but not much else. OK, but there’s got to be more, I thought. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I re-
sniffed frequently, hoping for some fireworks or at least some kind of development, but it was not to be.
I’ve read that some people got something akin to mothballs midway through this, but on my skin it was
almost completely linear. Sigh.
As we all know, chemistry is everything.
I know for some of you this was love at first sniff. So if you’re one of those lucky ones, I’m green with
envy.
Please share if you’ve had a similar disappointment. Or, on the flip side, what have you sampled
nonchalantly, with no expectations, that blew you away?

Thanks for the good wishes for my little finger.  I wound up with a little divot taken out of it, but it’s better, though not overly fond of me banging on the keyboard yet.

I will post the recipe for the raw pizza crust for those of you that asked either this weekend or next week. I’m waiting to get it. I sorta know what goes in it, but we cook and make a lot of this up as we go along.

So I’m going through my hits and misses of things I sniffed this week. Some of them I just don’t have much to say about, whether I like them or not, and some other people have reviewed much better, and some I’ve barely had a chance to sniff, enough to get my attention and not enough time yet to go into detail.

Lubin Black Jade – mostly a hit, except the bottle, which is pretty, but they don’t put the name on it except in small print on the bottom. I can’t SEE that, damnit!  Smells pretty much how you would guess, big spicy incensey rose, and it has cardamon so you really didn’t think I was gonna hate it, did you? I don’t know about all the Marie Antoinette backstory that comes with it, it just feels a little heavy for summer, but should be a good one for fall.

Watermelon Gazpacho – OMG I amdying this is so gooooooooood.  Watermelon, cucumber, tomatoes, green or red pepper, olive oil, sherry wine, salt, something else maybe, no recipe right in front of me.  I could drink this and probably will, probably with vodka.  I am veering off into a raw foodist for the summer, which is easy to do when everything is yummy.  Tomorrow I’m making a raw cherry pie. Pie crust is whirred up almonds with Medjool dates and salt for the pie crust, pressed into a tart pan. Then mix the cherries and maybe apricots together with some agave for the filling.

Creed White Flowers – I would have put this squarely in the middle to close to hi, and it will probably stay there. Don’t absolutely love it, don’t hate it, and it probably would have stood up better, except what I smelled after. It’s a nice white floral. It’s got a pretty violet top and nice depth.  I probably shouldn’t have smelled it with this batch of things because I feel like I’m giving it short shrift.  I’d happily wear this, but I’m not swooning like I am over –

By Kilian Sweet Redemption.  This is right there with the the Watermelon Gazpacho.  Orange blossom and vanilla, sweet, bitter, warmth, incense,  sunshine (orange blossom feeeeels like sunshine for me). It is floral and it is candied warmth.  And it smells exactly like the sticky mess warmed by the sun that is the path we all trudge to redemption.  Complete hit for me, I neeeeeeeeds a bottle for my personal stock, I just have my teensy sample.  Anyone wants to split a bottle, let me know. I only want to split it it with one or two other people so I get enough!

The summer sun.  Miss, miss, miss.  Feels like last week I was whining about the rain and cool. Oh, wait, it was!  From freaky thunderstorms and rain every day to 100 plus. My tomatoes and peppers are loving it, and they need it, but I’m thinking about my electricity bill that I’ll have to pay for the next two months and lining up banks to rob.

Andy Tauer’s Pentachords.  Haven’t smelled them in any in-depth yet, except to sneak a little sniff.  But It’s Andy, and it’s five notes only in each.  For example, Verdant is leaves, leather, tobacco, earth, amber. White is violet, orris, bourbon vanilla, ambergris and warm wood.  Auburn is citrus, cinnamon, tobacco, amber, sandalwood.  Having these sitting on my desk is like being in the Ferrari showroom.  You don’t have to get IN the car and drive it to know it’s gonna be fun, but you greatly anticipate the moment when you do.  So it’s just a hit unsniffed because it’s too much fun.

BTW, Anita and I, I think, will be talking about these later, when she gets hers.

Now for the good news, two people will get small samples of all of these after I draw two names out of the commenters on this post. Except the Watermelon Gazpacho, but only because I can’t figure out how to get that in the mail in this blazing summer heat.  So drop a comment, tell me your misses and hits this summer – could be a book, a scent, a recipe, a place, and you’ll be entered!

Patty

By Killian Sweet Redemption

by Tom

Completely due to jealousy, I am inclined to despise Killian Hennessey.  He is too beautiful, too young, too rich and too talented.  He is by all accounts a perfectly charming man as well, which makes me even more wretched.

I’ve liked his fragrances, but haven’t really loved any.

Until now.

Sweet Redemption is perfectly lovely.  I’ll quote the press release:

“Inspired on one hand by Baudelaire’s homage to sweet and deep fragrances, yet on the other hand by the dark and mysterious poetry of Jim Morrison as he seemingly forebode his own demise. ‘Sweet redemption, the end’ is a final bow to these cursed poets, a final commentary on the irresistible charm of the forbidden fruit that tempts us throughout the ‘L’Oeuvre Noire’.This redemption, this liberation, becomes even more desired when we learn of its intensity… the innocence of orange blossom… the roughness of the sour orange leaf absolute… the sweetness of the vanilla absolute. The dry down is composed with a strong balsamic ? almost religious ? accord built around myrrh,incense and benzoin.”

Well. okay.  I get a really lovely orange blossomed touched with vanilla.  It skates back and forth between being really true to the orange blossom to having an almost chewing-gum aspect to it that sounds dreadful but it’s totally captivating in a very happy, youthful way.  The balsamic aspects in the drydown aren’t to me churchy at all, or for that matter that strong.  They just add depth to the opening, making for a scent that I can only write of as serene- I think my blood pressure dropped 10 points at first whiff.  It’s probably the best use of orange blossom in a scent in years.

It’s $225 for 50ML at the usual suspects, which would bug me, but then how much is Prozac these days?  Plus, there aren’t any side effects to this, except perhaps anorexia of the wallet.  My sample was from LuckyScent.