By March

I ate all the pumpkin pie.  It’s time to get into the candy, isn’t it?

After reading Joe’s beguiling review of L’Occitane’s new Immortelle de Corse EDP, I took a trip to the mall to smell it.  Immortelle and honey are two of my fave fragrance notes.  And … well… okay, I got the honey, although it didn’t hang around too long.   I got no immortelle at all.   Sadface.  Instead it became an odd bread-like thing on my skin, sort of like L’Artisan Bois Farine only sweeter, and then vamoosed shortly thereafter.  I’ll stick with my wonderful imported-from-Europe bottle of Honey & Vanilla LE they did last year.  I still miss their Honey & Lemon.  And there’s always Miel de Bois.

While I was there I tried the L’Occitane Labdanum EDP (both this and the Immortelle are part of their Voyage en Mediterranee collection).  This got raves on their website.  Gah.  AMBER AMBER AMBER.  The online reviews say “spicy and not too sweet,” but, man, was it sweeeet on me.  Like any other potential scrubber, of course this one lasted for hours.  But I’m clearly in the minority on this one.  The men were loving it (for themselves.)

The Different Company de Bachmakov came out a million years ago (2009? 2010?) and I sniffed it then and thought it was kind of a snooze, and forgot all about it.  I’ve been playing with it recently; notes are cedar, bergamot, shiso leaves, coriander leaves, freesia, nutmeg and craie douce.  It’s kind of a cold tea fragrance.  It should be right up my alley but I hate the top – that coriander/herb combo reaches out and strangles, for about ten minutes it smells like peppered urine on me.  And I don’t mean in a good way, either.  Then it settles down into a really pretty scent – dry spicy tea.  I think of it at that point as somewhat in the same vein as Prada Infusion d’Iris – an office-appropriate background fragrance that doesn’t bore the crap out of me.  For something fairly subtle, it’s tenacious.  I got a full eight hours out of it.

The next two were in my package from Neil Morris, I have no idea what the notes are and I’m going to amuse myself by not finding out.

The Darkness of Trees reminded me of why it’s always good to give a NM scent time to set itself up on the skin.  I sprayed it expecting a fir forest, got something entirely different and strange, thought ugh, and waited.  Then I spent 45 minutes trying to place the smell.  I found it.  It is the exact smell of the inside of a summer cabin at sleep-away camp in the mid-1970s.  It’s mostly fresh-sawn lumber and forest (not pine forest, just the woods) with a hint of dirt and old cotton mattresses.  If I’d custom-ordered this from CB I Hate Perfumes, CB himself couldn’t have done it better, and it would be called Summer Cabin 1973.  I highly doubt this is what Neil was dreaming of, and it’s wonderful.

Finally, Tea House – hehehe, I know why you perfumistas are loving this one.  Tea, hay, and a hint of leathery barnyard, like the barnyard JAR scent or that vile Miller Harris Jane Birkin thing, dialed way down.  I have zero interest in smelling it on myself.  On a man, however, I would be on that like a duck on a junebug.

Neil Morris notes for those of you who can’t find these on his site – “Midnight Shadows is available now, even though it’s not yet on our site. If someone wants a sample all they have to do is go to our VAULT section and order ANY vault sample. Then in the comments section at checkout, write that you’d really want Midnight Shadows. The same for FB’s. Order any VAULT FB and tell us in the comments section you want MS instead. That’s it! We’ll hopefully be adding it soon but till then this works fairly easily.”

And for those of you who might have missed it in Thanksgiving travels, I posted on Neil’s Midnight Shadows last Weds.

Samples: the mall for L’Occitane, Neil Morris, and Anita for de Bachmakov.

March

By March

Neil Morris has a lot of fans in perfumista-ville.  He tends to make big-boned scents with good lasting power and a certain retro vibe to them, and I mean that as a compliment.  He also knows his way around a rose.  While I’ve enjoyed several of his fragrances (e.g., Dark Season), I hadn’t fallen sufficiently in love to want more than a small sample.

Then Louise met me for coffee, sporting one of the scents Neil Morris just released, I think at Sniffa:  Midnight Shadows.  I hoovered her décolleté with abandon, thinking want want want.  This new fragrance is an interesting direction, more spare and strange than what I’ve come to expect from the line.

I’m going to drop in the list of notes further down, but I emailed Neil and here’s what he wrote:

“I was heading home after visiting with a friend one summer evening and decided to walk 20 minutes instead of taking a cab. Boston is a wonderfully walkable city! So my walk took me through one of our beautiful parks called The Esplanade and I remember it was around midnight. It was quite warm and humid but there was a breeze and a full moon. The shadows from the trees were dancing across my path and I remember picking up a sweet scent in the air that I couldn’t identify. It was floral but more than that. I wanted to capture my magical midnight stroll with its damp earthiness, sweet floralcy and midnight shadows…”

I’ve never been in Boston late on a summer evening, and I’m afraid the thought of downtown Washington on a humid night doesn’t inspire a fragrance I’d want to wear, ever.  But I’m glad Neil was inspired, because what he’s come up with is (at its essence) a smoky incense with a hint of oud and a faint, delicate sweetness that femmes it up a little.

I’m a huge fan of incense frags, and/but it’s possible to reach a point where you think: well, this scent here is sorta like Avignon but with less x, or this kind of reminds me of YSL Nu only more woody.  The cool thing about Midnight Shadows, and I think Louise agreed, is that it doesn’t immediately bring to mind any other incense I’ve smelled.  It’s not churchy.  It’s wonderfully smoky, but for those who fear the smoke because it’s got that edge reminiscent of grilling meat, this is different – more like the sweet maple-leaf of CB I Hate Perfumes’ Burning Leaves and less like a leathery birchtar bratwurst.

Notes (directly from Neil) are cade, caramel, oud, labdanum, Arabian frankincense, tuberose, civet, musk.  Now you see why I dropped them in a little later.  Caramel isn’t something I long for in my perfumes, although the rest of that list sounds pretty swell.  And I never in a million years would have identified tuberose – or any floral, really.  It’s more resiny than floral to my nose, and easily unisex.

A note on cade: I’ve never smelled the essential oil, which is used medicinally in various ways and for aromatherapy.  It’s distilled from juniper shrubs and descriptors include smoky, green, woody, and dry, and it’s often found in incense.  Some favorite perfumes (Cuir de Russie, BNTB Exhale, and SSS Fireside and Winter Woods) contain cade; the last two also have birch tar, which makes them smokier.  My guess is birch tar, which is in a lot of leather scents, is the roasted-meat culprit.

Midnight Shadows needs about five minutes to set up properly on the skin, it definitely warms up and opens up sillage-wise, and thus I’m warning you – a little bit goes a very long way.  Louise made my roll-on decant from a spray bottle, and I can’t imagine spraying this thing on.  Three or four sprays might clear a building, but two discreet dabs (on the wrist, on the chest) is perfect.

Feel free to name your favorite Neil Morris fragrance(s) in comments, and what you like about it/them.

image: Midnight Shadows, Chez VH, studeo.blogspot.com

March

by the Sizzling Musette

Yeah, we’re back to that whole ‘I love Summer’ thing – I am possibly insane (or maybe I was a snake in an earlier life) but I love the idea of a 90F afternoon, spent under an umbrella, drinking ice water and waving a fan.  A little trickling fountain nearby.   But let’s not conjure up any visions of some Ice Princess – there’s a fine sheen of sweat on every inch of my corpus and moving Is Not An Option.  I am not wearing any cooling cologne, either.  Nope, these are the days for heavy scents, stuff that can take a punch from a solar blast furnace.  Big-ass flowers.  Hot, tanned leather.  Smoky vetivers (helps keep the bugs away).   As I write this, at 8pm, it is 92F.  That’s right.  Ninety. Two. Degrees.  I’m wearing Neil Morris’s Leather Garden, a gift from my darling Perfume Fairy.    This stuff is gorgeous!  I’m going to get the notes (from his website) out of the way right now because I want to tell you how this unfolded during this absurdly hot day.

Top: blackberry, basil blossom

Middle: narcissus, hyacinth, peony, rose, lily of the valley

Base:  vetiver, redwood, agarwood, leather

I spritzed this early (around 9a) after a cooling shower – it was 74F.  The blackberry wasn’t very noticeable but I did get a hint of the basil.  There is a coolness running through the initial spritz that reminds me of that eucalyptus trail in Carnal Flower – not that they smell anything alike – more the idea of that cool, medicinal thread weaving through.    But those resiny woods (maybe that’s what I’m smelling?) are never far from the surface – not ‘woods’ as in forest, rather ‘woods’ as in several kinds of cut wood, with that piney-sap thing going (see?  it was just a matter of time before I got it! y’all are so good to me .  Overlaid is this lush rose, like stepping on rugosa rose petals while you’re some really sexy guy is chopping wood  in the forest (why should you get all sweaty?).   Or maybe you’re rolling around in a bed newly built of rough-hewn logs, strewn with rose petals.  Take your pick.  Or create your own  wood/rose fantasy.  But the rose is only one of the flower notes – it’s not all ROSE, knowmean?  I think even the rose-averse could enjoy this scent.

The leather, oddly enough, is a background player rather than Bam! In Yo’ FACE!   But it bridges the gap between the wood and the rose, pulling this slightly animalic suedealiciousness, with a hint of oil to keep the wood from dying out.   The rest of the notes are best left to more astute noses than mine.  All I know is, Neil has me on this one.  I could wear this for a long time and not get bored. And I did -  It’s got excellent lasting power – I wore it through the entire day today and only reapplied after my (third) shower.  And it’s still gorgeous!

Neil Morris is a great proponent of men wearing some jammy floral scents (he turned me on to the notion of a guy in Fracas – and I’ve never looked back.  My ultimate fantasy is me rubbing Carnal Flower Body Butter…oh, never mind…).  Anyway, I could totally see some buff Big Poppa,  dressed in a suit with a crisp white shirt, rockin’ the daylights out of this.  I’m gettin’ all schwetty just thinking about it!

btw – I know I can’t be the only heat-freak out there.  Are any of you rocking Big Scents in this triple digits weather? 

30ml/$70 at neilmorrisfragrances.com

photo:Mano Bello leather flower collection from papernstitch.com

(Today´s guest poster – Shelley!  Talking about our good times at the Chi-Cocoa Scentsation in September.)

Three Perfumistas walk into a bar…

Well, 30+, not 3.  The bar was part of a film production house.  And despite the fact that almost nobody knew anybody else at the start of what at that point was a very long day, no punches or punch lines ensued.

In the best demonstration of how conventional wisdom just isn´t always so wise, I fully enjoyed the time I spent with a big space full of people who, until that morning, I had never laid eyes on in my life.  Tall, short, outfitted in sheath dresses & full jewelry or jeans and a sweater, able to discuss the implications of “headspace technology” or still clarifying what a drydown means.

Of course, it doesn´t hurt to have piles of chocolate out on the table, good eats on the counter, and a little vino by the glass.  And we were all wiped, having spent the day putting our sniffers through quite the workout, with monsoon windsprints marking the space in between huffings.

But wait:  there was a piece de resistance to our pampering — not one but two set ups of samples from niche perfumers, one of which came with the perfumer herself.  In one anteroom:  a range of Neil Morris scents, including… Burnt Amber, Spectral Violet, le Parfum d’Ida, Izmir, Cathedral, Afire, Burnt Amber, Dark Earth, Gotham, Spectral Violet, Clear, Flowers for Men: Gardenia…and yes, the anxiously awaited Prowl.  In another anteroom: a set of Historical Fragrances, Soivohle´ blends, and LZ fragrance accords… along with La Liz (Liz Zorn, on left in photo) herself, answering every question that came her way.  

Aside:  I had been waiting nearly a year to try Spectral Violet.  Who knew that Burnt Amber would divert me?  (Well, maybe I should have; I do tend to like ambers.)  But it was Prowl that took the cake for me.  That´s now at the top of my “order these samps” queue…

Let´s see, was it a bit decadent to have a sort of personal perfume party? Yes.  Was it nearly overwhelming to have such an embarrassment of scent riches?  Yes.  Was it the best idea since niche perfumery/scents for layering/sliced bread/if we can send a man to the moon, why can´t we have a private perfume party?  Heck, yeah.

I mean, c´mon:  you could go to the perfumer´s display, sniff, have a nosh, go back and apply a sample (or two or three) to explore skin chemistry, and check out the drydown with a couple dozen new best scent friends, go back AGAIN and if it was Liz, ask questions about what was going on with the blend/drydown/philosophy of the scent, AND still leave the joint with vials of samples to further test drive at home.  Seriously.  Online swapping and begging samps from your favorite perfume rep is great and all, but wouldn´t you rather just have it waiting for you…with eats and a pleasant party down the hall?

While I had no idea at 8:00 that morning what was in store for me, I know that at 8:00 pm, with my shoes off, my feet up, surrounded by a bunch of folks I would happily invite to share a cuppa in my kitchen, booty from the day in my bag, fresh samps on my arms and in my hands…I was happy.  And that would have been true without the chocolate.

I don´t know who Riley is, really, but I´m pretty sure I was leading his life, at least for one night. 

(PS – from March – today’s photo of Liz Zorn showing her stuff courtesy of Musette, and don´t forget to check the other photos if you haven´t, they´re in the photoblog at left!)