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