Pairs Hitch, Britt IA

By Anita

Summer. Summersummersummer.

You know what’s weird about summer?  It’s a horse of a totally different color, depending upon where you are and who you are (or used to be).  I spent the last 50o years of my life in an Urban environment and my summer fragrances reflected that.  When I think about Agraria Bitter Orange I think of this restaurant on Irving Place in NYC – I only went there in the summer and always sat outside for brunch …..and my beloved Cartier Brillante is definitely meant for hot pavement, a linen sheath and a cold vodka tonic.  I had no idea it would not translate to rolling cornfields and draft horses (who HATE that scent, btw – it makes them sneeze, the prima donnas)….so I  had to rethink summer to please my Percherons  (besides, March wouldn’t let me yark on about my regular faves anymore.  She is SO bossy!).  The more I thought about it, though, the more it makes sense – summer in the  Urbs is way different from summer in the country  – out here Summer isn’t something to be wrestled with – it just is.  And out here you’re not trying to squeeze your swollen feet into those Manolo sandals and I certainly cannot wear that crisp white linen sheath with steel-toe boots, corn dust and horse snot and…well, it’s just different.  Take  my displaced word for it.   Not better, not worse – just different.  So the two I’ve chosen reflect my new life amongst the cows and the corn.

Here are our two scents. What are yours?? (unlike us, you are not limited to 2 each – whale away!)

Based on the epic Country FAIL of Brillante and my regular standbys I caved to March’s demand that  I TRY SOMETHING NEW .

Here’s new.  And Weird.   Tribute Attar for the Hog Roast at the nursing home – beautiful app but I noticed it was seriously ‘ashy’ on the drydown – very offputting to the average smeller out here in the sticks, though I  was smitten – like dried rose petals thrown on a coal fire.   Anyway, I knew that wouldn’t work at the Hog Roast so I took a chance and layered it with

Rosine’s Poussiere de Rosine - since it’s got that dusty-musty smell itself, it worked beautifully.  Very oily/dusty/rosy, heady as a bottle of jammy Cabernet.

March, this would peel the skin off your nose.  Imagine ‘rose slurry’.    Bwahahahahaha!

Oddly, this was a hit with young and old alike.  The Rosine diluted Tribute’s scary elegance (and c’mon – do I really want ‘elegant’ at a Hog Roast?) And the ashy  dryness in both the Tribute and the PdR is a nice complement to the humidity.  My huge, fussy Percherons like it, too!  This might be a little ‘close’ in the City but it works really well in a slurry blender feed screw – the dusty rose and dusty corn, ya know?

But it was nothing compared to this next one:

There are perfumes that are born great….and then there are perfumes that have greatness thrust upon them.  Still adhering to March’s edict, I decided to try something I  originally dissed because I found it at a flea market for a dime:  Coty Sand and Sable (two bottles:  20 cents.  Booo-yah!)  It’s not my idea of fabulous – there isn’t an elegant note in the whole thing – but again, not everything has to be elegant – and this is  Summer in a bottle, glistening sun-baked skin, hot sand, station wagons, transistor radios – the whole shebang.  Summer 1961.  We all have a crush on the 8th grader down the street, we ride our bikes to the local pool and mom is in pedal-pushers,  puffin’ on a Chesterfield.   Spritz it and everyone within 2 blocks will be on you  like a duck on a junebug.   19 year old Breck Girl and the world is your oyster.      The musky base sort of ooked up my lunch but that’s okay.  I had Brian Wilson warbling  in my poitrine -  I could hardly be petty about that little musky bit, could I?   I’ll let you know what my big boys think.

March: Hee on the Sand & Sable, Anita!  Nope, nothing elegant in there at all, and you wouldn’t want to spill the bottle in your car, but to me it smells like my misspent youth of the late 1970s — summer at the beach, with notes of tropical oil, cotton candy, and climbing into the backseat of some boy’s Camaro, so we could … discuss Proust.

It’s been a gazillion degrees here for much of the summer — we’re in the middle of another 98-degree heatwave and I’m making gazpacho.   I’m still very much enjoying fiddling with all the Tigerflag attars, although the Majmua’s the one I’ve been wearing, with its moist notes of earth and flowers.  I realized, though, that I’ve been missing the beeswax-y smell of the beeswax base that Marla built it into before she sent it to me, and I haven’t gotten around to trying to make my own beeswax base, so I looked around on my shelves for something beeswaxy and came up with … Serge Lutens’ death-eater honey, Miel de Bois, which is something I also love wearing in this heat.   You can see where this is headed, right?  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?  So I mixed up a small vial containing mostly jojoba oil, a few drops of majmua, and a few drops of MdB, at which point the foundations of the house rumbled — oh, wait, that was only the earthquake.  Anyway, I dabbed it on (I’m talking a dab), went downstairs, and I was still fifteen feet down the hall from my daughter when she asked what perfume I was wearing.  Too much sillage?   She demanded a closer sniff and said, it smells like six things at the same time!  It keeps changing!  That’s so cool! She’s the kid who likes that uber-musky honey thing that MAC did, though, so YMMV.  I admit that just putting MdB on often feels like I’ve committed a crime, albeit a misdemeanor.  Layering it is probably a more serious offense.  Today I might throw in some Nuit de Tubereuse on top.  Do you think my nose will fall off?

Lee: Glad to see both March and Anita know how to wave their freak flags just the right amount to stay cool. My stay cool on the ladyboy side scent is – well, it’s either Nicolai’s Eau Exotique which is fruity and a little floral and elegantly simple, or Hermes Osmanthe Yunnan which gets more refreshing oolong and petals every time I wear it. Other times, the temps have dropped here a little so I no longer cling to salty for electrolytic rebalancing. Instead, it’s Timbuktu all the way. That sour flowerpower patchouli incense mashup is perfect right now. And anyways, no perfume can compete with the goddamn amazing regal lilies and heliotrope and jasmine in the garden as I type. I’m heading back out there.

Nava: Ok, since Anita’s busy “yarking” about horses and wearing attars in the height of summer and March insists on dragging out Miel de Bois in July (oy, a thousand times!), I’m sitting next to Lee and his Osmanthe Yunnan. Personally, I prefer Parfum d’ Empire’s Osmanthus Interdite, but Osmanthe Yunnan is always first runner-up in my book. I won’t repeat the three I mentioned on Friday, but the other I’d like to add is Givenchy’s new Eaudemoiselle. I tried like hell not to buy a bottle of it, but I succumbed. It’s a bit heavy right now, but inside with the a/c crankin’, it’s goooood.

Patty: I’m a little horrified at the Sand & Sables, except it is pretty great for something that people will hand to you in vats on the street.  A little like J. Lo’s Glow, perfect for summertime.  My summer faves are a couple of things I ran into while I was gone, like the Nasomatto Nuda - the perfect big-ass white floral skanky jasmine scent.  It opens as poopy jasmine (Nancy taught us this term while in Grasse), then slowly settles down into the more honeysuckle jasmine that you can wear for a much  longer period of time.  I could happily wear this the rest of summer.  I’d just intersperse it with the Micallef Shanaan – the perfect breathy incense – and Byredo Tulipe (yes, yes, I’m still ridiculously in love with it) and L’Artisan Nuit de Tuberose.  Wait, I’m over two, but those last three count as one!

For more Top Ten Summer posts, check out Now Smell This, Grain de Musc, Perfume-Smellin’ Things and Bois de Jasmin

I had a different post contemplated for today, but since Patty announced a drawing yesterday for samples of the new, hotly-anticipated L’Artisan Nuit de Tubereuse, I thought I’d revisit it.  As you may remember, I got to try a dab from a private pre-release sample – a couple of drops on the skin – in Paris in April.  We all liked it, and (paraphrasing here) Louise said and I agreed that it smelled like something that would be commercially successful.

On Sunday, I got to try two (okay, three) generous squirts on the skin from an actual NdT bottle from an Unnamed Source.  I was so excited about the juice that I didn’t look carefully, but I think the bottle was etched.  Duh.  LMGTFY.  Here’s an image.  The bottle’s etched, it’s pretty in person (although I still like the old-style caps better, grrrr).  There wasn’t a ton of juice left but I think it’s a pale, clear pink — it looked pinker to me in person than what I’m seeing on my screen.

Based on the comments for the drawing yesterday, and since most people haven’t tried it yet – let me do a little refinement/management of expectations regarding this scent.  First off, for all the people wondering if it will equal their first love, Carnal Flower, or (INSERT FRACAS, BEYOND LOVE, OR ANY OTHER GIANT, PAINT-PEELING, NOSE-SEARING, SKIN-BLISTERING GODZILLA TUBEROSE HERE) – uh, no.  Nuit de Tubereuse is a completely different animal.  So if you’re going to love it, in my opinion, you’re going to need to be looking for something different.

It’s not a giant tuberose.  It doesn’t smell essentially/obviously tuberose – or even tuberdenia, since the two, tuberose and gardenia, are often faked up together in a fragrance, whatever they’re calling it.   It’s … well, it’s quirky.  To my nose, it bears not much relation to L’Artisan’s earlier/original tuberose fragrance, and much more of a resemblance to another recent Duchaufour creation, Penhaligon’s Amaranthine, which I think (if you’ve tried that) might give you some idea how you’re going to feel about the L’Artisan.

Notes for AMARANTHINE: green tea, freesia, banana leaf, coriander, cardamom, rose, carnation, clove, orange blossom, ylang ylang, Egyptian jasmine, musk, vanilla, sandalwood, condensed milk, tonka bean.

Notes for NUIT de TUBEREUSE: tuberose, cardamom, pepper, clove, citrus, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, rose, mango, angelica, gorse, sandalwood, palisander, musks, benzoin and styrax.

Thus far I haven’t managed to get Amaranthine and NdT on my skin simultaneously, but you can see they share some notes and, while they both have floral aspects, I wouldn’t characterize either as being particularly “about” a flower.  They’re florientals.  Nuit de Tubereuse is less weird than Amaranthigh, but it’s got a top note I didn’t catch the first time around and that a couple folks have already complained they find terribly bitter, while others have found it very sweet.   I didn’t get the sweetness of Juicy Fruit gum at the opening that Robin did – to me it is green and hazy, the rooty, slightly pissy/sulfurous smell of unripe mango, and while it’s not as aggressively peculiar as the green/metallic front end of Amaranthine, it’s still odd, somewhat like picking up a mango and sniffing it for the first time ever.  The mind grasps at the smell, trying to categorize it as pleasant or unpleasant – and it’s both.  If you acquire a taste for mango, and ripe mango contains an additional, slightly garbage-y overripe smell, the whole thing becomes delicious in the mind.  (Is there anything on the planet better than the perfect plate of mango and sticky rice?  No.)  But it’s not necessarily love at first sniff.

The two scents diverge further in style as they go along.  Amaranthine is the sweaty, dirty one – the cumin-y one, which I love, and many of you hate, and there’s none of that sweatiness (at least on me) in NdT.   Amaranthine becomes decidedly cuddly later on in the relationship – it’s milky and soft spices, without ever becoming edible in construct.   In contrast, Nuit de Tubereuse is one-half tuberose, one-half all that stuff in the base – woody and green and resiny.  Again, the amplitude you often expect from Giant Tuberose (hellooooo, Kilian Beyond Love!) just isn’t there – half the scent is base.

I’m now going to bloglift directly from Robin’s Now Smell This review: “The base is that particular blend of earthy and resinous notes that any fan of Bertrand Duchaufour will recognize as his signature, and that really ought to have a name by now. Duchaufourade, I suppose, is a little unwieldy? At any rate, it smells like dirt and soft wood and incense and hot skin, and I find it very sexy.”  I stole that because I wanted to comment on it.  While I totally get where Robin is going with this, and her description of the base is spot on, I have to disagree with the Duchaufourade part only because I dislike most of his famous, signature scents, including those for L’Artisan.  That earthy Duchaufour base he’s known for smells horrible to/on me, like musty old vase water.  I’m no aromachemist.  Whatever he’s doing now, and both Amaranthine and Nuit de Tubereuse are definitely earthy, smells fabulous on my skin, if I do say so myself.   Point being: if you’ve avoided his scents like the plague because of that Duchaufourade, you might like these.  But if you love Duchaufour for his signature base, I wonder, are these are going to seem different to you?

Nuit de Tubereuse has decent lasting power, not extraordinary – remember, I’m the scent-clinger.  The sillage is lovely, to use a word I overuse regularly – but dammit, it is.  NdT is a wafter.  It wafted up beautifully from my arm all afternoon and evening, quietly slipping away before I awoke the next morning.

I have been enjoying reading the early reviews and comments, because folks are all over the place on Nuit de Tubereuse.  Here’s a sample from commenter ScentRed on the Posse a couple days ago:  It was not at all what I expected. I was thinking big honking tuberose layered with tuberose and a bit more tuberose. It was much more complex than that, with many players doing their part to create an intriguing overall effect. It´s unusual, but not crazy weird. And yet it is somehow simple and subtle at the same time. I do remember someone describing it as “approachable” or “amiable”, and I think that´s true – but not in a boring way.  I also was surprised at how green it was on me, despite the presence of the florals…

Robin called it “stunning” yet admitted she’d put off her review because she still hadn’t decided whether she liked it.  It’s a funny place to be in as a reviewer, to be confronted with something that seems to have all the right moving parts – that appears to be everything it could or should be, in a genre you typically like – and yet it leaves you kind of cold.   I’ll be interested if her feelings change.

This thing, though?  It does something for me.  It’s a tuberose that even folks who don’t especially care for tuberose might love, because it’s more muted.  So I’ll finish playing my game, just because.  If I were backed into a corner and forced, on pain of … something or other, to choose between Amaranthine or Nuit de Tubereuse (let’s make this easier and say they’re offering me a free bottle, which BTW they AREN’T), I’d take Amaranthine.  I’m fascinated by its journey of weird skankiness to post-coital spooning and then a browse of the Sunday Times.  But I don’t have anything like NdT either (for the record, my personal Holy Grail tuberose is Carnal Flower), and so, of course, I want both.

PS For anyone who missed my link last time, Grain de Musc has reviews of Amaranthine, NdT, and interviews with Duchaufour himself.

March

Today’s post is a bit of a grab-bag.

Angie bought The new Etat Libre d’Orange Tilda Swinton Like This in Paris and wore it beautifully, and Patty reviewed it last Thursday.  (Notes: mandarin, ginger, winter squash, jungle essence, everlasting flower, Moroccan neroli, Grasse rose, vetiver, heliotrope and musk.)  I thought I’d put my two cents in.  I experienced it after the first ten or fifteen minutes as very much a skin scent, which you wouldn’t necessarily expect given that list of notes, although a quiet skin scent seems so … Swinton to me.  You have to be pretty darn close to whoever’s wearing it to smell it, although as I believe Angela mentioned, it does come up to you in bits and wafts.  In my limited experience with it, compared to Tilda, Eau des Merveilles, for instance (which I find a bit similar in feel) is a sillage monster.   So don’t be ordering Tilda unsniffed if you aren’t willing to settle for something that wears as close as a favorite tee shirt.  It does have a little of that peculiar metallic/orange blossom vibe that S-Perfumes’ Sloth had, to reference a really obscure scent.

Speaking of skin scents, on this trip I also gained a new appreciation for the other scents of Olivia Giacobetti at IUNX, which – even if you aren’t fans of her work – is a fun store to visit, in a little room off the entrance of the Hotel Costes.  Each scent is set up with a cone affixed to the wall which you sniff from, and there’s a little fan that goes on automatically when you lean in – it’s a neat way to sample and gives you a good impression of the scents.  I never got to try the original IUNX waters before she closed down the first time, but I still have my original decant of L’Ether, and it is great stuff, probably my favorite from the line.  I put it on while I was writing this to remind myself how much I like it.  It’s stronger than the others (notes are myrrh, benzoin, rosewood, saffron, maplewood, sandalwood), a woody, slightly sweet saffron-incense that feels like a kissing cousin of Passage d’Enfer.   If you’re a fan of her ethereal scents it’s well worth a sniff.  (UPDATE: a commenter below says you can buy the small 10ml bottle of this separately at the store;  I misunderstood that it came with the big bottle.)  Splash Forte is sort of the world’s best cinnamon mouthwash in a scent, but if you’ve got Lutens’ Rousse I’m not sure you need it.  Also, I wish they didn’t sell the IUNXen in those ginormous 200 ml(?) bottles.  Since my nose wasn’t fatigued and the shop is clean and spare and not overwhelmed with other scents, I could appreciate the laundry/steam-iron-esque (sound familiar?) L’Eau Blanche (linen, white iris, teak wood), which I found more appealing than the new Serge Eau, and L´Eau Sento, (“a tree stands near peaceful waters in Japan.  Its moisure-filled blond wood is smooth and warm.  Close your eyes and feel the heat of wood-infused steam…” seriously, that’s all I can find), Denyse described it in an email to me as “green and incense-y, like a luxury spa,” and I think that’s an excellent description.  She said she’d like her apartment to smell like that, and I have to agree.  They also sell the Hotel Costes scents in there, the original and the new Costes 2.  Costes the first is too rose-y for me, lovely though it is (it’s also done by Giacobetti, notes are lavender, bay-tree, coriander, white pepper, rose, incense, woods and light musk.)   Costes 2 is benzoin, Ceylon cinnamon essence, Turkish rose, Tunisian orange blossom and gaiac wood … come on, you know you want it.  Look at those notes. You want it, don’t you?  I waffled for awhile about this one while still in Paris; did I need it?  (Although you can get it here at Lucky.)   It’s another wallpaper scent, a skin scent of the most excellent, whisper-of-spice, breath-of-wood sort that makes all us OG fangirls squee.  But here’s the thing: after the spiciness at the top has settled and we’re well into the drydown, I swear on my skin it smells kind of like Barbara Bui. Which is not a criticism, I mean, I love love love Barbara Bui, but I haven’t decided whether this is sufficiently different.  Possibly.  I think I need a decant for further consideration.

I’ll wrap this up by talking for a minute about the new, much-anticipated L’Artisan Nuit de Tubéreuse done by Bertrand Duchaufour.   Angie, Louise and I were lucky enough to be able to try it in Paris, thanks to Denyse.  It’s in production now, and apparently they were passing around testers at Sniffa in NYC a couple of weeks ago, so I know some of you have already had a chance to try it.   I still have the Paris scent strip (on which I wrote “secret”) sitting here.   Historically, I’ve had more admiration for Duchaufour’s scents than a desire to wear them – I find signature BD compositions like Timbuktu and Eau d’Italie Sienne l’Hiver murky and sour, like old vase water, and (for me) mostly unwearable.  All I can offer on that front is a shoulder shrug – we like what we like, you know?

IMPORTANT UPDATE #2: commenter below says it’s at Barneys NYC, which surprises me, as my Secret Perfume Insider Decoder Ring insists that it’s in production and I should “try again later…” oh, wait, that’s my magic 8-Ball.  I’ll try calling Barneys this morning or wait for Carter to report back! There is A TESTER at Barneys (and other places, for all I know … didn’t you all smell it at Bendel for Sniffa?)  But Barneys will not have the actual BOTTLES in for “several weeks.”  Price will be $95 for a 1.7 and $135 for a 3.4  This info courtesy of Atique (“ahTEEK”)  at Barneys, and wth here’s his direct line since he was nice and helpful: 212-833-2002.

So, that’s all great, March; how is that Nuit de Tubéreuse already?  Well, I can’t add anything to the review Denyse did; what else is there to say?  Except this.  I took a deep whiff of Tubereuse, first on the scent strip and then (after shameless begging) on my skin, and then I said something really elegant and March-esque.  Something along the lines of: damn, they are going to sell the sh!t out of this thing.

Because it’s just that awesome.  It’s commercial in the best possible way — interesting but totally wearable – and if you like tuberose, I can’t imagine your hand wouldn’t drift down to your credit card as if you were in a trance as soon as you sniff it.  It doesn’t go the Fracas route (powdery Sex Bomb) or the chilly intellectual route (Serge TC or my beloved Carnal Flower.)    Cribbing from Denyse again – she uses the words rooty and resinous, and there’s something … there’s something in BD’s tuberose, spicy and wet and green and milky and poisonous all at the same time, that made me feel like I was in the presence of something dangerous, which tuberose is and should be, and that it was so stunningly beautiful and not weird, so it has to sell despite its white-flower handicap.   After all, my understanding is that the white-flower-bomb La Chasse is one of the biggest L’Artisan sellers in the US, if not the biggest, and that thing’s a sillage monster.  If Kim Kardashian can do a big ol’ white flower bouquet as her recent signature, God love her, then maybe white flower sillage monsters are the new pink pepper.  A girl can dream.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to the rollout of this one in the summer, I think.

Notes for Nuit de Tubéreuse, consolidated by me from their website: cardamom, clove absolute, pink pepper, citrus fruits, white flowers (tuberose, orange blossom and ylang-ylang) rose essential oil and absolute, mango, tuberose root, angelica, gorse, sandalwood, palisander, musks, benzoin, styrax.

PS The imaging feature on here continues to be broken, and will likely stay that way until we nag Patty to move us to another host.  In the meantime,  I did finally upload a few pics to FaceBook, for those interested.  Photos of food, of course!  And the passage d’Enfer, and some other things.

March

I hurt my finger and it’s hard to type (isn’t that pathetic?) so I’m going to just do this and not endlessly redraft obsess over typos.   Mea culpa.  Today is part perfume review and part nattering, please join in.

One part of my perfume relationship I’m a little ashamed of is: I admit, I can be a snob.  Example:  if I went to Macy’s and smelled Paris Hilton’s newest scent and it was called … I don’t know … SLUT BY PARIS, and I loved it, and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread (or CdG Avignon) the truth is:  I would have a REALLY REALLY hard time wearing it.  Or buying it.  Because that would mean that Paris spoke to me deep in my soul, right?  And I’d rather shove bamboo under my thumbnail, it would pain me less.

Conversely, I have this wishful image of myself as (in part) The Traveler, The Mysterious Stranger, The Lonely Wanderer … whatever you want to name the persona.  I want to be that mysterious girl you see on the train to Istanbul.  I want to be six feet tall, deeply tanned, with broad shoulders and a hawk nose and washboard abs and long dark hair that falls to my waist, wearing some kind of faded, uber-cool backpacker duds.  I am not holding my breath.

But.  Why can’t I at least live part of that dream through my perfumes?  I am a sucker for a certain kind of exotically named fragrance.   It started with L’Artisan Timbuktu.  I wanted to be That Mysterious Woman who Wears Timbuktu (since it doesn’t seem likely I’ll be visiting.)   Notes are mango, pink pepper, cardamom, incense, papyrus wood, spices, patchouli, myrrh, benzoin, vetiver.  It was done by Bertrand Duchaufour, as is most of the rest of their travel series, and for me it was the start of my unhappy relationship with Monsieur Duchaufour.  Don’t those notes sound yummy?   Timbuktu smells like ballsweat and litterbox on me, and not in a good way, either.

Next up: Dzongkha, also by L’Artisan.  And … really, Dzongkha?!?! I was lusting after that in the worst.way.possible.  Notes are peony, lychee, cardamom, tea, vetiver, incense, papyrus, cedar, leather and iris.  Come on, don’t you want to buy that unsniffed?  I finally ran across it in a cool little shop in Vienna, so it was extra special!!!  There I was, the World Traveler!   The Mysterious Stranger!   And now, I would wear a fragrance associated with Bhutan!  How great was that?!?!  I could already imagine myself purring, oh this?  Dzongkha … let me spell it for you. But sadly, Bertrand was punking me again.  Dzongkha smells like hamster cage and stale tea on my skin.  And so once again I bid Mr. Duchaufour adieu…

Bringing us to Wazamba by Parfum d’Empire.   Okay, so we’d dodged the Curse of Duchaufour, and … I don’t care what wazamba means, okay?  I don’t need to know.  I don’t even care that it sounds a little bit like shaZAM!    Wazamba was going to be perfect for me.  I could feel it in my bones.  I get along pretty well with the line.  Notes are Somalian incense, Kenyan myrrh, Ethiopian opoponax, Indian sandalwood, Moroccan cypress, labdanum, apple, fir balsam, and if that doesn’t have ME ME ME written all over it, I don’t know what does.  Except for the mildly suspect apple, those notes are perfect.

And … that’s pretty much where the love ends.  I am still puzzling over Wazamba.  It wasn’t terrible.  But it wasn’t great, either.  It was kind of null.  Honestly, I can’t think of the last time I smelled something that was…  basically okay? — that left me so utterly cold.  I mean, not even a resniff.  Not even, file that away for another time next week. It smells like incense, but not that much better or more complex than my $6 frankincense essential oil from the co-op, and it also smells a little bit like Pine-Sol.  There, I said it.  I want a bottle of Fille en Aiguilles instead.

So.  First off: if you love any/all of these scents, please take no offense — it’s not you, it’s me.  Second, YMMV.  Third: so, what about you?   Are there fragrances or fragrance concepts (e.g., femme fatale) that you try to make work for you, because you really want them to, and it’s just an epic FAIL?

March

This is a little bit of a meander through the new L’Artisan Havana Vanille as well as perfumedom´s vanilla fields (although not Vanilla Fields), so if vanilla scents don´t interest you, you might as well move on, nothing to see here today.  Can you tell I´m looking forward to fall?

I was an early, frequent opposer of all perfume things gourmand and particularly things vanilla.  I love to bake, and yet wearing anything that smelled like I´d dabbed on vanilla extract seemed bizarre to me.  Who wants to smell like a vanilla cupcake?  (Lots of people, apparently.)  Judging by the ever-changing shelves at Sephora, we seem to have move on past the worst of the Vanilla Heresies, when they had three different lines of vanilla crap, including Laurence Dumont, LaVanilia and something else… in addition to a lot of vanillic CSPs.  And the vanilla was often combined with some other note that made it just that much more terrifying, like citron, or maple.  Or raspberry.  Or mothball, or salmon.  (Okay, joking about those last two.)   Collectively, in concept and execution, they gave me the dry heaves.

Then I discovered Givenchy Organza Indecence, which was one of those scents people were always waxing poetic about.  It´s either been re-released or the distribution is increased, but when I was looking for it, it was darn difficult to find.  (I thought it had been d/c´d but have been told several times that´s incorrect.)  Whatever; I whined on here long enough that someone graciously hooked me up with a sample, at which point I started plotting immediately on how to get my hands on a bottle.   Because it was pretty clear I was going to wear the hell out of that stuff, and I have.

Organza Indecence is technically a more woody/spicy scent than a true vanilla, but its drydown is vanillic enough on me that I began to see the vanilla potential there.  This prompted further adventures in the land of high-end vanillas, where I was hoping to avoid the too-sweet vanillin Curse of Sephora (did you know artificial vanilla is made from wood pulp, a paper industry byproduct?  Yum, dig in.)

Results were varied.  Indult Tihota is lovely but I couldn´t see the point; too extract-y.  Lann-Ael I alternate between loving and loathing, but it´s the apple/cereal bit that grates, not vanilla.  The high mark (?) of vanilla perfume fetish-dom in my opinion is Guerlain´s Spiritueuse Double Vanille, a dark, smoky vanilla which I would own a bottle of except: a) the price is ridiculous, b) it would last me a thousand years and c) having discovered that what I really love about SDV is the smoke/vanilla combo, I can whip up my own by dabbing Bonfire or Burning Leaves on top of another vanilla scent, creating one of my favorite winter standbys.  PdN Vanille Tonka was an epic FAIL for reasons that still elude me, but I think is the tonka.  I still need to try the Micallef, I bet I´d like it.  And finally, the L´Artisan Vanilia I waffle between wanting a decant of and finding it gets on my nerves after a few hours.

Bringing us FINALLY to L´Artisan´s Havana Vanille.  It was done by Bertrand Duchaufour and is grouped in their travel series with Dzongkha, Bois Farine, Timbuktu and Fleur de Liane, of which Duchaufour did all but Farine.  Notes are rum, clove, dried fruits, narcissus, tonka bean, helichrysum, vanilla, smoked woods, moss and balsamic notes according to Robin at Now Smell This, who kindly sent me a sample thinking I´d like it, and I´m going to link right here to her great review.

And now I have to tell two stories on myself, both of which pertain to Havana Vanille.  First off: when I read Duchaufour did it, I was not overly enthused, because with a couple of exceptions most of his work for L´Artisan, including the travel series, are not my favorites, and we will leave it at that.  He has an earth/spicebox style exemplified by, for example, Timbuktu and his Eau d´Italie creations that I find both interesting and personally unwearable.

Second, my mind is a sieve and somehow when the sample arrived I had convinced myself that this was a new Hermessence scent (come on, how funny is that?), and that didn´t really delight me either.  Why?  Because I don´t love most of the Hermessences- the ones I like are too evanescent, and the powerful ones are pretty much scrubbers.   So although I´d changed the perfume house mentally I was still skeered; I sprayed it on meditatively and waited for some horrible melon note to emerge and smother me.

So, March … THAT IS ALL FASCINATING, HOW IS THE HAVANA VANILLE ALREADY?!?!?  Well, I am still thinking.   The first impression is: vanilla, but not a foody one, and yessssssss!!!!!  Then, and I can´t help wondering if this is my Hermessence mindset, we go through a brief five-minute phase where I smell something like bananamelon on top of the vanilla, and the scent comes dangerously close to reminding me of – yes!  my bananamelon nemesis, Hermessence Vanille Galante! – a scent which many perfumistas love and which you may recall made me want to hack my own arm off to get away from.  I didn´t hate it as much as Mousson, which I loathe so virulently I refused to file my sample so as to avoid ever making the mistake of smelling it again, but it was close.   Melon, banana or wet notes and vanilla is just … wrong.

Once we get past that, though, I am very happy.  Havana Vanille is a not-too-sweet vanilla with a decidedly smoky edge to it (my daughter took one sniff and called it “burnt”) and that it is: burnt in two, no, three ways – the sharp smell of singed sugared vanilla, like the top of a crà¨me brulee, the smell of tobacco, and the smell of smoke itself.

Havana Vanille also reminds me a bit of Guerlain SDV, only it´s less dense and less … formal?  (Also, scientists should study my skin; Havana lasts easily 36 hours on me.)  SDV I have to watch not to overdose myself, like eating that last piece of chocolate and then wishing you hadn´t.   The tobacco note is definitely there in Havana, along with the rum, but they´re both so integrated into the scent that I can pick them out looking for them, but I´m not thinking “man, this thing is boozy.”

French speakers: shouldn’t this be Havane Vanille?  Or Havana Vainilla?  Just curious.  I feel like we’re mixing languages.

In the final analysis, if anyone´s read this far:  vanilla fragrances only work for me if there´s something non-edible about them.  I want my vanillas woody, or spicy, or leathery, or smoky.  Like SDV and Organza Indecence, Havana Vanille showcases the soothing seductive smell of vanilla by adding something entirely different and non-foody to frame it.  I haven´t really felt the need to add another vanilla to the fix I generally get from Indecence, Demeter Egg Nog (seriously, a rocking vanilla/spice scent I can´t resist mentioning; try it with Bonfire if you want smoke) and occasional hits of SDV, but this is different enough I´m pretty sure I need at least a generous decant, and maybe a bottle.  People who´ve shied away from vanilla on the ugh-too-sweeeet theory (looking at you, Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille!) might want to check this out.

March