Can I get a collective “Hallelujah!!”?

Yep, it’s that time of year again: back to school.

Now those of you who don’t have kids may not

care, but for those who do, it’s a pretty big day.

As much as we love them, it will be nice to get a break

from the frequent refrain of “Mom, I’m bored” that the

end of summer often brings. And it will be good to see

them get back into a routine.

My son heads back today, even though it may seem awfully

early to you. (It does to me, too.) But that “first day” will be here

for everyone else before you know it.

Here’s a look at scents that might work for several

back-to-class scenarios:

For the mom or dad for whom summer has gone on justa little too long: By Kilian’s Sweet Redemption (sweet relief,

perhaps?) or even A Taste of Heaven (of course you miss them,but ahh, that peace and quiet is nice, isn’t it?).

For those with little ones heading off for the first time:

Divine’s L’Infante or By Kilian’s Love and Tears (they were

just in diapers yesterday – how can they be in kindergartenalready?).

Oh, no! In all the excitement, they’ve left their lunchbox,

backpack, etc. at home and you’re already late for work:

Sacrebleu!

For dealing with diehard sleepyheads on that first morning,

i.e., “Go away, Mom, I was having the most wonderful …”

thump – head hitting the pillow again: Montale’s Sweet Oriental

Dream

When your daughter finally does get up, who will youencounter at the breakfast table: Miss Charming or

Lady Vengeance?

Let’s think positive and assume it’ll be Miss Charming.

To go with her carefully chosen outfit: Dior’s New Look 1947.

Speaking of teens, what else might they be packing: Encens et

Bubblegum, or, heaven forbid, Jasmin et Cigarettes.

And with that, ahem, more mature crowd, there’s not likely

to be much goodbye affection for the parental

units: Take comfort in Kiss Me Tender or Love Comes From Within.

When they come home that afternoon and you ask, “What did you do

at school today?”:  Jacomo Silences will get you prepped for the

noncommittal shrug and mumbled, “Nothing,” that might beforthcoming.

Helping your college-age son or daughter move into a dorm or

apartment? Heeley’s Menthe Fraiche to keep your cool

during the move-in madness. When tempers flare and things

get ugly: Step back with Vol de Nuit’s Evasion.

And when it’s all over and you’re heading home: Jubilation 25

with a spot of Champagne, Gin Fizz or Elixir of your choice.

OK, enough silliness. What scents remind you of back to school

or have you thinking ahead to fall? 

by Musette

So we’re back in the high heat of summer here, after 10 days of sweater weather and rain.  My nerves are shot.  One minute I’m schvitzing under an umbrella, considering yet another bourbon-laced iced tea (to combat the heat, dears.  Everybody knows bourbon is an excellent heatstroke remedy!)…the next, I’m digging out a hoodie to ward off the chilly rain and considering a bourbon, neat.  Then 90s again, with 400billion mosquitoes.  Yeah, another bourbon.  Please.

So back to my nerves.  They were so shot that I just…I just couldn’t pick a fragrance to review!   So I turned the lights off, opened the armoire, stuck my hand in the decant drawer…and pulled out Nicolai pour Homme.   Huh?  Oh, yeah.  Now I remember:  I got this quite awhile back from an incredibly generous friend (thanks, E) but never tried it.  Hey, it was a ‘”Homme” scent.  I was a newbie.  What can I say? Imperiale was as far across the aisle as I’d gone. But I kept the decant – and I’m glad I did.

March is already laughing up her sleeve – she knows I’mo love this because it has my signature Spring smoochies in it:  mint, jasmine and geranium.  Designed for men, with that whole ‘homme’ thing, it’s also a pretty, comfy-yet-sprightly feminine fragrance.  Very “manly, yes, but I like it, toooo”. Anyway, I would wear this on hot days when I wanted the refreshing scent of 4711 but didn’t want to have to spritz every 11 minutes.  It has decent sillage and hangs around a bit without buzzing in your ear.    I am surprised to like this so much because I have issues with  so much of Patricia de Nicolai’s work – there’s something in the base of the early ones that just hovers on the edge of My Very Last Nerve.   They’re beautiful and I can smell the skill and craftsmanship that goes into them but ….you know what they remind me of?  Sometimes I get overwhelmed with work and I’m over-multitasking and I’m going on and on and on about something interesting but I’m not communicating it well and I can hear myself and it’s not horrible but it is going to get really irritating in a just a minute and I need to shut the hell up and….. yeah, they are something like that.  This one, with that hint of bergamot (I know you’re in there), coupled with the mint and geranium, quiets it down and  makes that buzzy base work for me. Then the tobacco comes in and grounds it nicely, making me think of mint juleps on the porch.   I would wear this on a scorching-hot day, with a loose cotton shift.  And a mint julep. And at $40 for 30ml (on backorder at Luckyscent) it’s practically free!  Plug-ugly bottle, though, with that scary chemical beaker  on the logo, like a bad Science Fair project.

Notes are: galbanum, China mint, lavender, geranium, jasmine, moss, amber, spruce, cedar, tobacco, benzoin, labdanum

D0 you guys have a line (or a perfume) that irritates you because it’s Reeeeeally Close – But Not. Quite. There?

Also:  Gird your Virtual Loins:  Swapmania! Coming to a Posse Near You!  Wednesday!

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

1) For unknown reasons, the comment notifys that come to my email inbox when you comment are a little spotty, so apologies if I missed you.  While we’re on the subject, I’m slamming through a couple of work-related things right now.  If you’ve emailed me, and you don’t hear back, just email me again.  Even during the best of times I lose track of emails – ask any of my friends who’ve been annoyed by this.  I am excellent at some things, and email correspondence is just not one of them.   I admit my failing and ask only that you not take it personally.  Please.  Nag me.  I will answer.

2) Art With Flowers at Tysons II in VA is having a perfume shindig on Sunday, for those of you in the DC area who’ll be in town, looking for something to do.  It’s from 12 – 6, the guest is Keiko Mecheri, and I haven’t gotten my invite postcard yet but Bill who runs the store says there will be tons of samples, goodies, they’re getting in the new (export?) Serges MKK and Borneo, and I think he said the new L’Artisan Tubereuse, but don’t hold me to that one.  I’m probably going to be there mid-afternoon.  If you haven’t visited and you’re looking to try some niche product and meet some new people – well, here’s your opportunity.  They’re tucked away on the top floor of Tysons II (the fancy one with Neiman Marcus and Saks) down at the Macy’s end.  Their phone number is (703) 903-6837.

3) So, thanks everyone for your words of support and encouragement on Monday – it sounds like I’m not the only one feeling a little burnout and wanting to spend some more time with some of the beautiful scents I already own — hence the title of this post.  I’ve been playing over the past month with a cluster of scents with some overlapping characteristics, but that post hasn’t quite come together.  So today I’m heeding my own advice and blogging on just one of them, a quirky, gorgeous thing  – Parfums de Nicolai Maharanih.

My guess is for every dollar PdN spends on perfume production, 97 cents goes into the juice and three cents goes toward the packaging.  I am all for substance over style, don’t get me wrong; but their cheesy bottles and boxes make me laugh.  They look like cheap dupes, even though you’re buying it from their store.  I wish their line were carried somewhere – anywhere – so that more people could know and love it.  The only place I have ever seen the line in a store in the U.S. is at the wonderful Clyde Chemists on the Upper East Side (Madison and 74^th?) and I have no idea whether they’re still there.  Finally, I love that PdN makes 30 ml bottles (carried at LuckyScent and Beautyhabit) that are quite reasonably priced.

I have been trying and trying and trying (and failing) to fall in love with PdN’s Sacrebleu, which by any and all measures I should love.  It has the perfect notes (blackcurrant bud, mandarin, peach blossom, jasmine, carnation, cinnamon, clove, tuberose, vanilla, tonka bean, sandalwood, incense) and it’s a riff on/homage to Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue, which I love love love.  Furthermore, Patricia de Nicolai is the granddaughter of Pierre Guerlain and was trained by Jean-Paul Guerlain, so it’s destiny between me and the line, right?  So what is my problem with Sacrebleu?  I don’t know.  I love the first 90 seconds of huge green and fruits, and that amazing tonka/incense drydown after five hours, but the middle part is … flat?  Too flat on me.  I’m not giving up, though.

Maharanih, on the other hand, makes me smile every time I put it on.  It’s got that peculiar, tart-candied top note that I think of as very PdN – like the orange smell of St. Joseph baby aspirin, only this aspirin is being handed to you by angels in heaven while the harps play.  I mean, it’s so beautiful it’s ridiculous, but in this unabashed, cheerful way. Coming out of that funky little bottle with a label that looks like my 7-year-old glued it on?  Man, talk about hiding your light under a bushel basket.  The notes are sweet orange, bitter orange zest, rose oil, carnation, cinnamon, patchouli absolute, sandalwood, synthetic civet.

With the orange orange ORANGE (baby aspirin), which is perfect because it’s sweet but also sour, comes the rose and the spices, and that would all be too sweet and cloying except through some perfumer’s sleight of hand that I do not understand one bit it’s not – it dances up off my hand and over my head like a kite in the sky, pulling me along cheerfully behind it.   I’m careful with the atomizer because at least on me a little of this goes a very, very long way, and I’ve learned not to apply it right before I’m sharing an enclosed space (like a car) with someone who’s not wild about perfume.  It’s much rose-ier on my daughter’s skin, but I can smell the rose too, and this would be one of a tiny handful of fragrances with prominent rose that doesn’t trouble me, mostly because the rose is being kept firmly in check, perhaps even throttled, by that orange orange ORANGE.  Did I mention orange?  Oh.  Also I should probably mention the dirty knickers.  I always thought it was the indoles in the orange, maybe with the spice of the rose, but our friend the civet is lurking there in the orangerie, lending a hint of delightful reek that keeps this angelic fragrance grounded on terra firma.  This is girly, but not innocent.  It’s for big girls, pinup girls, saucy, naughty girls and – in my opinion – for those boys who are man enough to wear Fracas.

sample source: my own bottle

March

This isn’t the post I’d planned, but it’s the one you’re getting.

After Louise left Paris, Angie and I spent a fair amount of time on our long walks those last few days talking about what we were bringing home from the trip.  And by “bringing home,” we meant ideas, new points of view or reference – those sorts of intangibles that can extend the joy of a vacation forward (and onward) into the lives we lead regularly.  I talked, I think, mainly about my garden – which I’d pulled out right before the trip.  Don’t worry, ecstatic green-thumb neighbors came over at my listserv invitation and dug the shrubs and plants up and took them.  Now I’m left with mostly nothing out front and various ideas about how it might become more formal, more restrained.

I only bought one perfume as a token of the trip – from the Parfums de Nicolai store on the Rue Grenelle near the Bon Marche, and I recommend this as a must-do for anyone who wants to drink deep from the chalice of PdN.  I think Louise and Angela both made purchases, and the extremely knowledgeable and gracious sales associate (Rebecca? Deborah?) was a joy to spend an hour with.  Anyhow, I bought the last-ish bottle of their discontinued LE parfum d’ambience called Parfum de Fete, about which I know nothing except that it’s going to be reissued as part of their regular room spray collection, with a different name (perhaps to avoid being confused with Temps d’Une Fete).  On me – yes, of course I’m wearing it on my skin – it’s all warm pipe smoke and honey, drying down to honey honey honey, with a  spice-wood note like that of CdG Palisander bringing some good cheer along for the ride.   I also put on Odalisque in the shop as a joke; it seemed so very much not me with all of its muguet-soap top fading to a powdery floral, and kill.me.now (notes: LOTV, jasmine, iris).  Only fate laughs at me for the fool that I am, and I can’t stop thinking about the drydown, sweet candied jasmine with a hint of skank; it’s the only non-purchase I regret.  But that’s remedied easily enough online here in the U.S., and PdN makes those great small bottles.

But I won’t be buying Odalisque, not this week.  Because events collided oddly.  I wanted so much to hold on to that wonderful sense of peace and place I bring home from a vacation.  Time stepping out of my “normal” life is clearly part of maintaining my sanity.  But bit by bit it was slipping away, back into Angry Suburban Idiot Mom mode – plus there was Hecate with her intractable night-time cough; and my brief but nasty personal bout of what I think was food poisoning last weekend.  And the dog, our sub-standard poodle, Kai, who’s sick with something and the vet’s not sure and he’s 11 and … well, you never know.  I, who complain sometimes about that damn dog breathing my air, have been getting up every night with him, on my knees in front of him, holding a small bowl so he’ll drink some chicken broth.  I don’t know.  He seems a little better.  He kept some soup down today, but he’s weak.  Nobody’s getting enough sleep.  The Big Cheese is leaving for China on Thursday for an extended trip, and you know what?  I don’t have dog dies scheduled anywhere on my calendar, so he better not.  No freaking way.  No dying.

So then I pitched a fit – one of those crap-related fits about the creeping loads of crap that pile up all over the house, I hate disorder (yeah, which is why I had four kids, deep thinker that I am) – piles and drifts of clothes and plastic and toy parts and we did a purge and still.  It drifts in.  So I started this conversation on FaceBook and I’m bringing it on here and laying it down.  You don’t have to pick it up if you don’t want to, it’s my little experiment.  But if you want to play – starting today, Wednesday, for the next week you will limit your purchases to only the most basic necessities  – and no b.s.’ing yourself about what a “necessity” is. I’m talking simple food (no, you don’t need the $5 pint of kiwi-mango gelato), gas, stuff like that.  No mall runs, emergency lipstick, drunken eBay bids on Dioressence extrait at 1 a.m. – no Starbucks, people!   No movies!   You can go ahead and do things you’ve already bought tickets for, but no goodies at halftime (or intermission.)  No online shopping.  No no no. Ask yourself, when your eye/heart starts to drift: do I really need that?  And then back away.

Can I do this for a week?  Eh.  I’m not sure.  But I’m curious enough to try.  I need more possessions like I need a third eye.  So far I got through today with nothing more than taking Hecate (finally) to the pediatrician about the Nighttime Cough From Hell, which will abate eventually whether we do anything or not, our annual springtime allergy ritual.  Turned down therapeutic coffee at Sbux (sad face).  Stayed off eBay.  Worked.  Also I thought I’d up the ante by quitting drinking coffee altogether, I haven’t had any since the Saturday food poisoning episode.  I’ve had this massively irregular heartbeat recently, and I’m wondering if all the Sudafed/caffeine’s the culprit.  (Filed under: duh.) Let’s find out.  Sure, it’ll be miserable, but I’m like that – why not take away the coffee, decongestant, booze (yes, it’s true!) and retail therapy all at the same time? Maybe my head will cave in and life as I know it will be over, but I doubt it.

So.  Your turn at the microphone.  Are you going to join in, and check back with us next week on how your Week of Consumer Abstinence went?  Patty’s accepted my challenge, she’s playing as well, and we’ll blog on it!  Do you think I am an idiot?  A killjoy?  Do you have specific questions for us to debate (or possibly mock) regarding what constitutes a necessity in your world?   What’s your favorite Parfums de Nicolai scent, anyway?  Is Odalisque really All That?  What is wrong with me that after several attempts I have failed to fall in love properly with PdN Sacrebleu – some glitch in the planetary alignment?   Do you feel consumed by the desire to consume?  And PS – yeah, I know, I hardly invented this concept.  Oh!  I should mention that the straw that put the camel’s MasterCard on temporary lockdown was my sitting down last night, a quiet time-out in the living room post-snit, and reading an article in the Sunday NY Times about Annie Leonard and the (warning! anti-consumerist!) Story of Stuff.

March