By March

It happened again last week.  There I was, idly perusing the bottles of men’s colognes on the counter in my local Bloomingdale’s, when the sales associate rushed at me with hands outstretched and a look of alarm on her face as she sang out, “You realize those are for men!?”

Uh … yeah, I guess.  Am I not allowed over here without adult male supervision?  The next time this happens I’m going to drop that big clunky glass bottle and let out a muffled shriek, like she just told me, Lady, that’s where they keep the live snakes!

I was just thinking about touching them, I swear. I hadn’t even sprayed anything on a strip yet, much less started moaning and grinding my hips against the counter the way I’m supposed to when I smell all that bottled virility.  My perfume snobbery aside, don’t lone women shop for men’s cologne all the time? Out there looking for the perfect gift for their dad/husband/nephew?  I have no statistics to back me up on this, but I’ve always assumed a significant portion of men’s colognes are bought by women for use by actual men.

If I take Terre d’Hermes home and put it on my own bad self, that’s nobody’s business, but why the at-the-counter freakout?   Am I somehow suspect because I don’t have my dad/boyfriend/nephew at the counter with me?  What kind of gift would that be?  If I’m buying a man a bottle of fragrance as a gift, I’m not taking him shopping for it.  He can like it or not, wear it or not, but unless he’s a friend who asked me to be his wing-man while he chooses, I’m going alone.

When I reverse the situation, it’s even funnier.  I have never once seen an SA rush at a man holding Arpege and scream, sir, that’s for the ladies!!! You Fracas-wearing dudes out there … do you pretend you’re buying something for your mom?  Or do you just spray on the white florals and let your freak flag fly right there at the counter?

Now, I’m not under any illusions that all the bottles on the counter in the men’s department are supposed to appeal to me – a middle-aged woman – as an appropriate gift for hubby.  I am pretty sure that Marc Jacobs Bang ad below where he’s all greased up and naked with his man-junk hiding behind a factice (Marc, how big is it?) is aimed toward gay men, although I could be a sub-audience, I suppose, of women who enjoy the scenery.  Gaultier Le Male (see image at left) with the tattoos, multiple arm-wrestling pretty boys, and the bathroom-cruise shots? Gaultier’s not targeting me, sailor, but a girl can dream … although I just watched the Le Male video, and was confused when our handsome lad climbs out of bed and the other party’s … a woman?   Maybe he dropped by to borrow her eyeliner and fell asleep.

It’s fun for me to try to take in the meanings or intent of the men’s-department bottles.  The ladies’ section bottles might say I’m thirteen! Or, conversely, I’m a skank (unfortunately, sometimes they say both.)  They often say I’m rich, or I’m rich and humorless, or I’m supposed to be rich but you’re laughing at me so I guess we’ll go with amusing.

The men’s stuff, I don’t know.  The “sporty” ones encased in rubber make me laugh.  Is that to protect the bottle if you drop it while hang-gliding, or during that last push to the top of K2?  (Hummer also makes me laugh, for multiple reasons.)   I’m a traditionalist.  Solid, staid bottles with large, heavy caps I like.  Dior Homme.   Ones that look like they ought to contain pimp-juice I’m not likely to pick up.  Some of them seem inexplicably downmarket and ugly.  The original Dolce & Gabbana for men bottle, those guys couldn’t do better than that?   A lot of the bottles look phallic, which I think is weird, do men really want that imagery in their morning spritz of cologne, even if they are gay?   Finally, if I need a third hand or a PhD in packaging to be able to spray it, it’s a stupid design.  You can have whimsy, though.  The Hermes Voyage one is pretty cool.

That Marc Jacobs Bang, by the way, opens with a big note of pepper. (Notes: black, white and pink pepper, masculine woody notes, elemi resin, benzoin, vetiver, white moss and patchouli.)  After that, the pepper dries down a little and then we get some pepper, joined by a hint of pepper, and then some vetiver.  The pepper fades and the base notes of pepper and pepper appear, and then after that it’s pepper straight on out.  It’s actually pretty subtle (black milled pepper?) and you could do way worse, but I prefer the CdG 88 8 myself for pepper.  At least it doesn’t have a giant hit of that nose-torpedo spiky wood stuff that says I AM A MAN!!!! in all caps, like the drunk at the office party who will not shut up already.

Okay, so inviting you all to crawl out of the woodwork.  If you’re a woman shopping for a cologne as a gift for a man, how much attention do you pay to the packaging?   Am I the only person who thinks the Cartier Roadster bottle looks goofy instead of expensive?   Men – what messages do you feel are being sent with the advertising and bottling, and how much does that affect your interest in a fragrance?   Are there bottles that make you cringe so much you wouldn’t buy it even if you loved the scent?

images: believe it or not the selected images involved a fair amount of restraint on my part.  The model at top is David Agbodji for Calvin Klein, and if you’d like to see the images I wanted to put up, just google him.  But don’t do it at work.   There are some quite nice photos of Robert Perovich (our saucy sailor) as well if you google gaultier le male.

March

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)

I was malled.

Marc Jacobs Daisy is a little nothing of a fragrance that I happen to like.  I don’t even think I need to go look at my original review to quote myself: it’s a fragrance entirely devoid of sex appeal.  In this case I mean that as a compliment; Daisy is the perfect gift for your eight-year-old niece, your aunt, or anyone whom you think might appreciate the whimsical bottle.  By the way I’m referring to the EDT; the EDP has just a hint of muskiness to it that barely registers on the skank scale, but the EDT smells entirely clean to me.  Anyway, I don’t want Daisy and I don’t wear it, but I get the point.  It’s got the generic, sexless appeal of D&G Light Blue without Light Blue’s astonishing sillage or tenacity.

Enter Marc Jacobs’ Lola, which is supposed to be Daisy’s slightly older, vampier sister (I’m laughing at the way spellcheck keeps correcting vampier to vampire.  What would a vampire wear?  I’m voting for Lutens A La Nuit or Datura Noir.)  Notes for Lola are pink peppercorn (is that trend not dead?  Someone drive a stake through its heart), pear, ruby red grapefruit, pink peony, rose, geranium, vanilla, tonka and musk.  Unlike Daisy, this perfume is a little nothing of a fragrance that I don’t like.  Its generic ubiquity is every bit as imaginative as the outfits of the last 150 teenage girls that strolled by me in the mall in their vaguely trashy camisole-and-bra-strap getups (and yes, one of them is my daughter.)  Lola starts off with some citrusy action, and by citrus I mean something one step up from the wet-wipes you get on the airplane, and then it’s all warm vanilla sensual-muskiness.  In terms of sex appeal, this is the 50-foot Woman constructed out of marshmallows.  My guess is it will sell like hotcakes.  Fairness dictates that both my (female) movie companion and another woman mentioned how very much they liked it, which also should give you an idea of the sillage.

While I at least understand Lola conceptually, I am totally baffled by Michael Kors’ newest fragrance, Very Hollywood, which is being marketed as a “sophisticated floral” for women.  The fragrance notes are mandarin, frozen bergamot, moist (!) jasmine, raspberry, ylang ylang, gardenia, iris root, creamy amber, white moss and vetiver.  Again, while I am not a huge fan of the original Michael by Michael Kors signature scent on me, I feel obligated to note that it tends to crop up regularly when I ask women around me what that pretty perfume is they’re wearing (the other one: J’Adore.  Clearly I enjoy these two, albeit at a distance.)

But this thing?  Please.  Michael.  “Sophisticated?”  This thing brings out the witch in me.  Look at that trashy bottle (okay, it’s trashier in person).  If this were presented on Project Runway, I’d make it cry by telling it to its face that it looked cheap and tawdry.  But that isn’t even the bad part.  I don’t care how much bergamot you froze to make this, it is toooooooooo sweeeeeeeet.  It makes Lola look like Vol de Nuit.  It has all the sophistication of a Whitman’s sampler, without its charms.  This thing is atrocious.  If it were a frozen blender drink it would involve something like crà¨me de menthe, curacao, Bailey’s and cotton candy.  Also, that moss/vetiver accord at the bottom is the pine-tree air-freshener version of “fresh” on me, and you know how much I love “fresh.”  Other than that, it’s perfect.

March