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

Travelogues really are somewhat annoying, yes? But not being annoying  isn’t something I do.

After the lovely day at Robertet and Mane, it was a tourist day as we headed off to Cannes, Antibes and St. Paul de Vence.  Cannes is kind of a mess, but we did get our pictures taken in front of the big theater on the red carpet.  And the yachts.  I mean, there’s just no beat-up fishing boats anywhere in that harbor. Something about that just makes me a little sad. Isn’t there a room for just a little bit of a laboring boat in all of that opulence?  Maybe not.  The main street in Cannes is just lined with all the high end shops – Gucci, Chanel, Hermes, Vuitton.  We didn’t stop in there, but we did find a little perfume shop that we descended on like a plague of perfume-crazed locusts.  And you know what was in there? The new one from Nasomatto, Nuda.  Skanky jasmine!!!!!!   Serious love.  Just enough indoles in it to keep it interesting, but it doesn’t keep getting interesting so much that you keep having the vague sense that maybe you weren’t careful when you went to the potty.  It softens out to a more honeysuckle’ish jasmine after the open – still beautiful, but it doesn’t stay at that level of overpowering, which, while lovely, is too much for me to wear around for several hours. I love it for about 1-1.5 hours, then I need it to wipe itself and stop making a scene.

Several of  us bought the Nuda.  All of us got some violet and/or rose ice cream from the shop across the street.  Ben  & Jerry’s would make a killing if they’d throw some violet in one of their ice creams.  Off on the tour again. Until we spotted the Micallef store across the street, and we promptly peeled off from the large group for some other shopping and told them we’d see them at the bus later.

Micallef is one of those perfume companies that I think make some gorgeous stuff, a little overpriced in the U.S. market, some of it a little the same, but it always makes me happy to wear it.  This store had some things that I hadn’t tried before or even known they made. They make a fig!  Which I bought. And I finally got to try that Shannan, a soft, gorgeous incense, which I also bought.  I didn’t buy the gardenia or the lily of the valley or some of the other florals, but they were all really pretty. What I didn’t know about Micallef is once you buy the bottle, apparently you can just buy the refills from them directly. I’m not sure exactly how this works, but it’s supposed to be a lot cheaper? If I get around to refilling a bottle, I’ll post the details.

After a lovely panini lunch in the harbor, it was back in the bus for a trip to the Picasso museum in Antibes.  Picasso?  Not so much for  me, but the view from the top of his museum over the harbor is amazing.

Then it was on for the too-short part of our day, the stop in St. Paul de Vence.  Picture right above. Seriously cute little town, much like all those walled cities in Italy, one big shopping street through the middle of town, and we had 45 minutes there..  Yes, this is the reason why I’m not crazy about doing anything in groups.  Serious shopping needed to be done here, and there was no time to do it.

Back to Grasse, and we had like 30 minutes to grab food, champagne and all the other stuff we had accumulated and head to the room we had decided we were going to have our “getting to know each other” soiree in.  We invited everyone on the Sniffa trip to have some light refreshments and champagne with peach liquer (this is way yum, btw) or whatever alcoholic thing they preferred.

You know, that night started off so innocently.  By the end of the night, there were men in the pool below us, we had about 15 women and one guy squished onto a small balcony (did I mention how hot and humid it is here?) telling stories, while we hooted and hollered at the one guy in the pool area that decided to drop trou.  It’s a good thing we had run out of champagne an hour or two before that happened.  It was a great time, and it always makes me so happy to realize how lovely it is when people get together around a shared interest.  Many are people you would have never met or thought you had much in common with, but when you start talking about the one thing you both love, that community grows as you get to know those other people beyond perfume.  That’s what I love the most about this Sniffa traveling trips – the people you get to meet are really wonderful and warm and interesting and funny.  It’s like the days we get to spend here with you guys on the blog, but in person.

Okay, I’ll stop.  It’s about 1 in the morning here, and I need to get this done and get to bed!  Today was all IFF and Firmenich. What you need to know about today is, well, Fabian.  Fabian is the naturals perfumer for IFF.  He works just on naturals, the product selection, working with the farmers and extraction to make sure he gets what they need, finding new facets of those naturals.  Now, he started off his presentation to this gaggle of women in that bored French way, presenting the tester strips of product for us to sniff. And we had questions, lots of them.  As he realized that he was talking to people who really loved this like he did, he got all animated, and his cute little face lit up – wait, did I mention the gorgeous men that work in the perfume plants in Grasse? – and he was joking and teasing us about what was next.  It’s an amazing thing to watch someone’s passion emerge as he realized he was with kindred spirits who loved hearing him talk about how the Vetiver dabbed on our wrist would turn into a grapefruit smell in an hour or how they’d found out that not using bamboo for extraction for some other thing had brought out a completely different smell.

So today concluded the factory/plant part of our trip. We have some time to spend at Molinard and Fragonard on Friday, but that’s it.  Tomorrow is Nice and Monte Carlo, but I’m skipping that in favor of sleeping in after that amazing meal we had tonight and a leisurely day of reading, lunching, shopping, drinking, pool laying-about, but not necessarily in that order.

Now, one last thing.  I get to make a perfume on Friday.  Give me 5 notes you would put in a perfume and what your idea behind it is.  I’m just so not creative on this stuff, but I’ll happily try and make one of you all’s ideas!

Patty

Over the past many years, we’ve all shared a lot of things on this blog – cooking, reading, hobbies.  I will get to a perfume review today, but first I wanted to talk about my new favorite toy, the thing I swore I would never, ever get.  Yes, it’s the Amazon Kindle 2, the improved version of their original Kindle.

Even though I spend most of the day reading my computer screen, I’ve never really liked reading that way.  I wish I could put all my computer things on paper.  But as I was surveying my house a couple of weeks ago, trying to figure out where I could put more bookcases, I thought about the Kindle and how nice it would be to put all my books on one little device I could carry around with me everywhere.  Then I would never again lug a suitcase to Europe full of six books because I can’t make up my mind on what books to take with or I overestimate the time I’ll have to read, only to find I didn’t even get through one of them, plus picked up two more books in the airport – each way.

Kindle 2 is amazingly perfect,  in size, in usability and in readability. About the size of a paperback, as thin as my iPhone (iPhone just came out with its Kindle 2 app!), the screen itself is a sort of gray with black type, which is surprisingly easy to read, at least as a book and far easier than a computer screen.  It’s not backlit, but it also has no glare, so you can read it outside, in the car, anywhere, though you do need a lamp or booklight to read it in the dark.  It saves your page wherever you exit, the battery lasts for days.  On each side is a next page button, so it’s easy to thumb through your book. You can also make notes or place bookmarks in any book that you can pull up later.  Amazon also lets you try out the first few pages of a book for free by downloading it, and if you think it blows, just delete it. If you want to read the rest of it, just click and it shall be yours.

You can also get newspapers, some magazines and blog subscriptions (they don’t have Perfume Posse!) delivered to your Kindle 2.  How does it get there?  Free wireless provided by Amazon called Whispernet. If you run out of something to read while you’re waiting on line or the book you currently have loaded is just a snooze, you can go cruising through the Amazon Kindle store right on your Kindle 2 and be reading your new book in a couple of minutes.  Talk about your instant gratification!

My favorite feature?  Adjustable type.  I can now get my type big enough that I don’t need my glasses to read.  Do I love my Kindle 2?  Oh, yes, indeedy.  Now, it’s pricey – $359 - but when I consider that I just saved the price of a bookcase or two, plus the Kindle books are usually a few bucks or a lot of bucks cheaper, I figure I’ll make up the price of it in a year, easy, not even counting the saved cost of new bookcases. 

Will I still read regular books? Of course. I love the feel of a book in my hand, and not all books are on Kindle yet, though I keep clicking on the Request button to get a lot of my favorites moved to it.  If you love to read, but get tired of not having the right book with you when you’re stuck somewhere, the Kindle 2 will make you a very happy boy or girl, so don’t hestitate, thinking you could never get used to reading on a machine. You sure can, and you’ll love it.

So what perfume is in the sample drawer today?  M. Micallef’s new one, Aoud Gourmet, now available at Luckyscent - $212 for 100 mls.  Notes of Sugar, marzipan, honey, spice, patchouli, cedar, cypriol, amber, sandalwood, cashmeran, musks.  This is very much a bitterish oud scent, but richly spiced with a not too enormous sweet aspect.  I find the honey to be the loudest of the sweet notes, so it’s not sticky bun sweet, just pungently oud rich with a little layer of sweetness to take the worst of the sting out.  There’s an interesting balance between the two, a little offputting on the bitter, but the sweet draws you in.  I’m never sure why the Micallefs don’t get more attention.  Everything they have done, I’ve found to be interesting and wearable, and I much prefer their oud to Montales (hey, don’t shoot me!).

So would you ever consider reading a book on a device?  is it just too weird?  BTW, for those who asked on days when I just can’t them time to get to comments, my fugue has lifted completely, and I’m restored to my very happy self again.

Patty

First, the ten winners of the Creed Love in Black samples are:

1. CC
2. annie
3. Matts
4. Jennifer O
5. Maura
6. RHM
7. Kim
8. Janet in California
9. susi
10. Anne

Just click on the Contact Us button over there and send me your address. Congrats!

So… vanilla. yeah. Love it or hate it, there are a couple of new’ish ones out there that people seem to be loving, so let’s see why!

Montale Vanille Extasy has notes of ylang-ylang from Comoro Islands, Egyptian jasmine, apricot, sandalwood, mahogany, bensoin, vanilla. This is very much a sweet floral vanilla, like a cross between Montale’s Soleil di Capri and Indult Tihota, landing closer to Soleil, without that much of a gourmand feel to it. I think that’s what makes me a little road-weary about Montales, the new one always seems to be another variation on a prior one. As a scent, it’s nicely done, fitting in with the others in the line. I like it, but it’s not me so much, a little too sweet and not enough vanilla, which is what I expected with the name it has.

Micallef Vanille Aoud has notes of bergamot, ylang-ylang, prune, oud, caramel, musk, vanilla, benzoin.  A similar set of notes, with some variation, to the Montale Vanille Extasy. This works much better from the start, with a healthy benzoin blast in the open, some nice gourmandy notes blending well with the oud and vanilla. The oud is not too bitter, but has enough bite to keep this from a frothy sugar mess. This is a much more interesting rendition, paying a great salute to the vanilla and other gourmand notes, but holding a great tension with the oud, musk and benzoin. Micallef is one of those lines that I’m always just subtly impressed by. They do nice, incredibly wearable scents with some interesting slants.

So if you had to pick one vanilla fragrance to wear all the time, which one would it be?

Patty