While I was doing last-minute research for the Cuir Fetiche post, I learned of the passing of Jean-Francois Laporte, the visionary behind Sisley, L’Artisan and Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier (MP&G) among others.   His contribution to the perfume world is extensive and he will be sorely missed.

I cannot do him justice here because it’s already been done, way more beautifully than I ever could.  Please take a minute to go over to Denyse’s tribute at Grain de Musc for a look at a truly remarkable man’s life.

By March

Okay – unfinished biz first:

1) Please check in on your swaps from Swapmania, okay?  Did you mail everything?  If you are expecting a package you haven’t gotten, or still need to go mail something, please follow up.  I did six (seven?) swaps plus some sample mailing and even I got confused.  Let’s avoid any hard feelings by using good communication.

Also, WE WILL BE DOING THE Swap follow-up post NEXT WED the 15th!  Your thoughts, impressions, thrills, etc. So get those things in the mail!

2) Today’s Patty’s birthday!  Go spam her on FaceBook.  She’s taking tomorrow off, stop by and see Tom.

3) Today’s post – a perfume two-fer.  First, my late-ish two cents on L’Artisan Coeur de Vétiver Sacré.  Blogger impressions seem to be pretty uniform on this one – it’s not that vetiver-ish.  The initial impression is one of hay, ginger, and citrus and a bit of sweet, I don’t get the vetiver until well into the drydown, where it is relatively clean and subtle.  It’s likely a disappointment if you’re looking for a great new vetiver.  But if you’re not a huge vetiver freak (and I personally am not), and if you are willing to re-frame this mentally as a tea scent, it’s very nice.  I’ll be digging it up next spring.  I’d peg this in the general neighborhood of Annick Goutal’s wonderful maté tea Duel, the vetiver gives it that earthy base so it’s not horrible, synthetic-smelling iced Lipton.

Next, after reading Angela’s review on Now Smell This of the new Vero Profumo Rubj EdP version, I knew I had to sniff it right away.  Cumin-haters: you can stop reading right here.

Vero Profumo fans are wild about the intense, brooding, funky-vetiver Onda.  The original Rubj extrait was much more my thing.  It smells mostly to me of ripe orange blossom and jasmine, and/but for whatever reason it failed to grab me enough that I felt I needed to own it.  The new Rubj EdP has a different, lengthier list of notes, cribbed from LuckyScent: bergamot, mandarin, neroli, passion fruit, cumin, orange flower absolute, tuberose, basil, cedar, oakmoss, musk.

LuckyScent articulates the change in the fragrance as a “narcotic white floral blend, but in this version, the indoles have been turned down and the civet removed,” and they go on to discuss the chypre structure.  That’s all true – this is much less indolic, because now the drama centers around cumin.  And when I say “centers around cumin,” I mean Rubj EdP showcases cumin the same way the dancing hippos in Fantasia tend to take up a little space on the stage.  The new Rubj is definitely for hardcore cumin freaks, and most likely hell for everyone else.  Think: cumin, juicy orange (not just blossom); and a slightly bitter-mossy base that keeps it more elegant and complex than either new Femme or Kingdom.

I’m not even going to pretend to be objective here; I love cumin. I love cumin so much that my only complaint about cuddly, cumin-y reformulated Femme is that I wish the cumin lasted longer; when that fades I dab Eau d’Hermes on top of the Femme base to restore the cuminy bits.  I end up doing the same thing to Lutens’ Fleurs d’Oranger (heresy!), and now I think Rubj EdP will be my new cuminy addition on top of FdO.  The other six (nine?) of you cumin freaks feel free to get on here and name your favorites.

Sample sources: private samples; image: Walt Disney’s Fantasia (that’s Rubj on the left and Vétiver Sacré on the right.)

March

I was sure – so very sure – that I would love Eau Duelle.  It had everything going for it, including Diptyque and the notes listed.  And yet I didn’t love it.  I wasn’t going to bother with L’Artisan Coeur de Vétiver Sacré because it’s … vetiver, right?  Then I found out it wasn’t really vetiver and my interest increased (while everyone else’s diminished.  I’m anticipating lots of bottles up for swap).

In the meantime I was going to punt L’Artisan Traversée du Bosphore entirely, because I was sure I’d loathe it.  Bertrand Duchaufour and I have a … murky relationship, as exemplified by Timbuktu and his Eau d’Italie oeuvre, although I loved Nuit de Tubéreuse.  But a fragrance embracing the gaggingly sweet confection of Turkish delight, as Bosphore is supposed to? That dampened my ardor right quick. Notes are apple, pomegranate, tulip, iris, leather, saffron, Turkish delight accord (rose, lemon, pistachio), vanilla, musks.

I threw it into the order cart anyway.  Then, one night, after I’d tried everything else … I glared at it awhile and then put some on.

Can we rewind for a second and shift our eyes up a few lines and look at that notes list again?  Apple, pomegranate, Turkish delight accord, vanilla?  Doesn’t that sound like instructions for a mulled alcoholic drink you’re going to be very sorry you consumed?  I kept imagining those notes floating on top of the Duchaufour old-vase-water miasma, and the thought was not encouraging.  But I like to suffer for my art, and now you are asking yourself, for the love of Pete, would you get to the point? Okay, I will.

The most striking thing initially is the transparency of the scent – anyone expecting a Serge-style riff on rahat loukoum is in for a surprise.  How you manage to add light, heat and lift to those top notes is beyond me, but I guess that’s why BD’s the man, right?  It’s sweet but not cloying, smooth but not dense, dry rather than powdery.  I sat there for five minutes, nose glued to my wrist (no doubt with a look of shock on my face).  The sweetness is joined to a slightly bitter leather note.  And there it stays, transparently sweet and faintly bitter, rose against saffron, fruit against leather, until it fades slowly away a few hours later.

I tried it on against Cuir de Lancome, really the only thing I could think of that it reminds me of.  Of course, side by side they seem far more different than similar.  Cuir’s definitely more powdery – it smells like the inside of a ladies’ leather handbag with some expensive cosmetics.  Bosphore’s a step in the gourmand direction without being “foody,” and fruit-ish without being fruit-y. Cuir is also one unified smell while Bosphore maintains two tracks – that bitter leather note versus the delicate sweetness of the apple-tobacco-loukoum.  And it is delicate – diaphanous, one of those scents that seems to radiate from the skin rather than sit on top of it.  Next to Bosphore, Cuir de Lancome is almost raucous.

I’ve already spoken with a few people who find it too tepid — too vague or doughy or evanescent.  Me?  I’m enchanted.

sample source: The Perfumed Court; image of Turkish delight: loukoummania.com

March

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