Don’t forget to visit  Olfactarama today for more interesting conversation with Brian Pera and Andy Tauer on their film/perfume collaboration!

It’s that weirdly wonderful downswing – again.  Fog in the mornings, bright sunny days…..rainy evenings.  In my City Life I noted the shift in seasons by fashion – the newest boot, the fabbo little jacket…  out here in the country you can gauge the shift to autumn by a slightly different set of parameters:  harvest is  real and present  here, bringing dust, flying beetles and massive allergies.  Then there’s the beauty -  watching the Big Dipper as it begins its winter slide away from us….hummingbirds by the dozens, fighting at the feeders as they bulk up for their long flight south….   and the melancholy: clearing the vegetable gardens for fall plantings and prepping for winter <sigh>, hearing the last of the crickets.. …canning and freezing the last of the tomatoes and peaches.  Thinking about apples and cinnamon……and a cute new boot.

Perfume is changing, too.   You know my love of the big, smoky flowers in high summer but as the temps drop and the light changes, all I can think of is Chypre.  This is the perfect weather for the perfection of  vintage Coty Chypre,  the bombaliciousness of current Femme (that sweaty, plummy goodness) and the vaunted Mitsouko, both vintage and contemporary (we’re talking pre-reformulation, here, though the current isn’t the worst thing in the world,)…..and there’s a Newish Gal in Town.

Centennial.   Liz Zorn.  I  think of Liz as the modern-day Queen of Chypre -  her nuanced approach to the chypre base runs the gamut from the heavy-plummy/peachy-jammy fabulousosity of Love Speaks Primeval to the quiet-cool Green Oakmoss, she weaves  her chypre base into her scents, beautifully.  And never more so than in Centennial.  This was the Historical Chypre that I confused with Historical Jasmine at the Scentsation (back in the Jurassic Era). Yah.  Because I was a newbie, didn’t know jasmine from peanut butter and figured this glorious thing had to be a ‘flower’.  I thought the Chypre was the one that smelled like buttery poop.

Hey, what did I know?

Historical Chypre is now called Centennial and is part of Liz Zorn’s Retro Collection.    Liz calls it a throwback to the classic early 20th Century floral chypre.  M. Coty would approve.  It’s a beautiful next generation of what  Coty started with his classic Chypre, updated to an almost-skin scent (especially perfect for those of us who don’t like modern, musky skin-scents.  This hints of sex without the skeevocity of  a perfume trying too hard.    I really like this in  its new edp form  – the lighter concentration makes it perfect daywear.  Centennial is not  ‘wow!  what are you wearing?’ .  Rather, it’s a ‘hmmm’ scent that entices the sniffer to get just a tad closer, without all the ‘hey!  over here!!!’ yelly stuff  – I found El O edging nearer, nose in the air like a pointer, with no clear idea how or why he’d draped himself around me  (I’m not that cute anymore, I’m in menopause and I’m a shrike.  He tends to keep his distance these days).  I’ve been wearing it a lot these past couple of days and wearing a lot of it!  Well, not marinating in it – but wearing enough to provide a nice little veil.  It doesn’t shift about a lot – it stays pretty true to itself from first warm, floral/peach spritz to the drydown, which is reminiscent of a ripe, fuzzy peach skin (that sounds vaguely crazy – and fruity-floral scary but it couldn’t be farther from that -  it’s gorgeous).

It’s like wrapping yourself in a lightweight cashmere stole.  Perfect for this time of year.

Notes (from lizzornperfumes.com ) are rose, jasmine and orange blossom, wrapped in a classic chypre veil.   I’m smelling those but also the fuzzy peach skin and oakmoss of a vintage Mitsouko, though a little bit warmer .

What notes call to you, as the days slide into the next season?  What are you shifting out of?

Source:  my bottle.    She’s having a sale, which makes it almost the New Free.  ( shut up

A Tale of Beginner’s Mind

by Musette

Every now and then I’ll meet someone who admits to lurking on the Posse but won’t comment, afraid that they don’t know enough, thinking I , The Great Musette, am so knowledgeable about perfume.  (wait.  the Earth just shifted off its axis from the Posse’s collective stop/drop/roll of hilarity). I know next to nothing – but I delight in having a Beginner’s Mind, always open to new information and experience.

And so it is thus with Parfum de Therese.  When I first was introduced to the Malle line, I began with weird scent beauty Fleur de Cassie.  I  then got seduced by Angeliques and Carnal Flower and somehow Parfum de Therese just floated on past my consciousness.  Recently, though, March and I had a conversation about Dior and in the way those conversations go, she mentioned PdTherese – “I would think you would really like that one, as you are such a fan of the vintage Diors”.  Huh?  Oh, yeah.  That Roudnitska feller.  Dior?  Oh, yeah.  That’s right:  only the creator of  two or three of my Holy Grails.  Yeah, that guy.

Sampled it once.  “Hmmmm….I see what she means…wonder why this smells  so ‘different’ from the other Malles (stop snickering – yeah, I knew the story, I know Edmond Roudnitska…I know, I know….I just didn’t ‘know’).   I sampled again – and the little dominoes that comprise my rattly mind slowly clicked into place.  Sampled a third time, this time at Barneys…and this shimmering veil of “Holy Cow! How did I miss this one??” descended over me, along with the  gobsmacking beauty of the perfume, of course.  The ever-patient Lydia.  le sigh.  How she keeps from just slapping me is a mystery.

This Is Perfume.   Old School Perfume.  Nicknamed ‘The Plum” by Roudnistka’s circle of perfume pros, it is comprised of many notes, including Mandarin orange, melon, jasmine, plum, cedar, vetiver, leather, rose, nutmeg  – and like all Roudnitska perfumes it smells to me like all of its notes and none of its notes.  It’s almost impossible to pick any one of the notes out, so seamlessly is this constructed – don’t let the plum fool you – this couldn’t be further from a fuity-floral if you put it on the moon.  There’s an obvious connection between this and vintage Diorella and Diorama, both Roudnitska masterpieces, but even more striking is, to my nose, the parallel between this and  the vaunted, vintage Femme ( an early Roudnitska), with its plush, plummy, sexual self.  Both are the Old School intimate perfume versions of ‘skin scents’ (plums smell like sex to me.  Not ‘having sex’ – just ..sex)  but with serious heft and structure.  One really needs to rise to the occasion with these  (I can’t imagine throwing on a pair of shorts and wearing either of these scents – then again, I can’t imagine throwing on a pair of shorts! The mind boggles)  Angela has a gorgeous review of vintage Femme here.  M. Roudnitska took the sexbombaliciouness of Femme and dialed it back a little, creating a bespoke scent for his lady wife that hints at womanly sensuality – but in a very private manner.

Parfum de Therese is a ladylike scent.  But not some rarified spun-sugar doll.  A real woman, who probably washed the dinner dishes every evening and then sat down to work through complex chemical formulas – or to help her son with his math homework or just enjoy a cognac with her husband – an effortlessly chic woman, comfortable in her own lovely skin (I see her making an incredible French Potato Salad, then sitting down to enjoy it, on the terrace, with a glass of Chablis).  Looking at pictures of Mme Roudnitska I suspect her husband, in creating Parfum de Therese, did not create an homage to her.  It is an homage of her.  I am thrilled to have the opportunity to wear this and will try to be worthy.  Thanks, March, for giving me a reason to stand up straight and do my hair!  I need no reason to drink the Chablis. Or the cognac.

image:  detail from Delisa Summer, all rights reserved

by the drooling Musette

I always wonder why the term ‘diva’ has gotten such a bad rap  – maybe it always has come with that faint tinge of Puritan disapproval and I just didn’t notice it (and it wouldn’t be the first time).  But I like the word diva.  Its Latin origin means ‘goddess’ and if you think about true divas (Jessye Norman, Joan Sutherland come to mind), what it conjures is a massive, almost mystical Presence to match their incredible vocal gifts…..

…which is why I am stunned! that Roja Dove chose to name his new fragrance Diaghilev and create it to mark the Victoria & Albert Ballets Russes exhibit.   This perfume which I fell into, courtesy of WAFT by Carol, is so incredibly, lushly velvet-chypre-y,creamy, swoony-swoopy,  (pant!pant!).….my darlings, I just don’t know how to describe it.  If divas = difficult this perfume might qualify.  But the difficulty will be yours.  I defy you to wear this without incurring a Repetitive Motion Injury.  My shoulder still hurts from the 243 times I lifted my wrist to my nose in one hour alone!

Sergei D. might’ve worn it – by all accounts the impressario was an Imperious Presence – but I doubt any of his ballerinas would’ve.  Not even his prima ballerina.  It’s just a bit too hefty for a ballerina….

Oh!  Wait.    I’m an idiot.  Roja Dove is a genius.  And he’s right.  He created this in honor of an early 20^th Century ballet company. Think everything Diaghilev represented, iron will, outsized ego, Mitsouko-scented curtains.  Think Olga Spessivtseva, considered one of the greatest classical dancers of all time.  A prima ballerina.   Presence.   I see her, emerging from her bath, wrapped in a silk kimono…powdering her shoulders whilst her maid lays out her gown for dinner with a fabulously wealthy admirer….her dressing room filled to the brim with luscious deep pink roses and her chaise longue covered in a cashmere throw, vintage Bollinger on her dressing table, spraying this with abandon….. Sergei and Olga, mirror satellites of fabulousness, each needing the other to achieve the zeniths of their talents..

Shut up about the ballerinas already and get to the perfume! Sorry.  I got carried away with the Bolly and the chaise longue.  You all …..wow.  Okay. (deep breath here)…  You all know how much I adore vintage Mitsouko, right?  And you know I heart current Femme with its sexy sweat…..and Coty Chypre is one of my all-time vintage loves.  Well…imagine that those three are romping in a bed dressed in woven silk sheets and there is a LOT of 1990 Krug (with its  yeasty magnificence)…and a big silver bucket of chilled shrimp with Thousand Island dressing (I’m serious) and a flourless chocolate cake with a warm vanilla crème anglaise….and you have Diaghilev.   Carol and I agree that it is not a ‘modern’ scent at all – this is evocative of the great  50s-60s versions of Coty Chypre.  Like M. Dove I smell Mitsouko (Carol disagrees – for her more coherent review see here ) but the smoothness of vintage EDP, not the current (pre-reformulation) with its gasoline punch.  Roja Dove studied at Guerlain and you can smell the Guerlain influence in Diaghilev – the vanilla that defines Shalimar is evident in the springy roundness  of this scent, which stops just one sugar sprinkle short of crème brulee ( my favorite crèmes brulees incorporate 3 distinct things that flow together:  the bite of carmelized (nearly carbonized) sugar, the sweet followthrough of that sugar and the salty tang of the crème).  Everything about this perfume translates, for me, into ‘mouthfeel’.  Carol uses the term ‘mouthwatering’….and she’s absolutely right.  If I didn’t already adore her, I would hate her guts.   Her evocative review caused a lemming so intense it made my gums ache!  So I schemed and scrabbed and am now anxiously awaiting my leetle bit of it.  And I am willing to share a small sample with one incredibly lucky commenter. Drop a line here letting me know which perfume most conjures up ‘mouthfeel’ for you and I’ll get Pickle to pull a winner.  I doubt this rambling, screechifyin’ post has spawned any lemmings but just in case, you can purchase Diaghilev here . Two caveats:  it has one of those scary bulb atomizers and currently it only ships to the UK.  But everybody knows somebody (or knows somebody who knows somebody) who lives/works/visits London – if you are a chypre-lover this one is an absolute ‘must-try’ for you.

Notes (which I stole from Carol’s post – please do read it (way better than mine)  there’s also a link to a Roja Dove interview…he’s delightfully over the top and I think I am in love!  I carry my own blanket, too!)

top -bergamot, lemon and orange

heart – rose de mai , jasmine

base – oak moss, orris, patchouli, vanilla and vetiver

photo:  frenchchicandshabby.com some rights reserved

(Okay, peeps — for the next couple of weeks we may be messing with the usual posting order.   Today is Musette.)

I got a visit from the Life Police a little while ago.  They gave me a ticket!!! and told me to shut down my Pity Party, it was going on too long, it was too loud and the neighbors were starting to complain.  I was indignant!  I loved hosting that party!  But a warning ticket from the Life Police ain’t no joke so I decided to comply.  But where to start?

Well, insides are harder than outsides so I started with the outside.   OMG! 2 sizes bigger? when did THAT happen?!?   My haiiiiiir! !!!!  what’s with the nails – are you reroofing the Vatican with your bare hands?  2 SIZES BIGGER?  WTH?   WHY ARE YOU IN SWEATS?  YOU ARE NOT AT THE GYM! HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN SWEATS???

Okay You (well, ‘me’) -  First Thing:  get your lard-butt up and get to the gym, every day.  I live in the smallest town in the Universe.  We are blessed with a little gym 2 blocks from my house (everything is two blocks from my house).  Nobody’s there and they have HGTV and What Not to Wear.  No excuses!  Then my existential walk through our hilly cemetery every day (get healthy!/ why bother?)…  2 blocks from my house.  No excuses.

Man.  This is hard.  I’m so used to sitting on my lard-butt, eating a brownie and bemoaning my fate.  But I’m slogging through it.

…and slowwwwly…the poundages are slippering off.  And hey!  Nails?  They’re actually ‘done’.  And the hair – well, I’ve still got to go to a Big City for that (some things just …well, you know - it’s my hair!).

And while I’m in this improvement mode I’m noticing that my perfume choices have changed – are being assigned certain values.  Perhaps I’m every bit as insane as y’all think I am but I swear there are perfumes that make me smell fat! And some that sort of help on the thinnin’ side of things.  This came to me whilst reading Shelley’s blog post on comfort scents, where she broke things down by variations on comfort (snuggly/armored/etc) – so while I was working the elliptical I compiled my Thick/Thin lists.  This is in relation to myself alone – these scents do not conjure up any size imagery when worn by others so don’t get all bitey with me, okay? As they say, YMMV.

The List (for now)

I feel thinner already (at the gym):

Bel Respiro

No 19 edt, screaming at me to WORK IT!

Cemetery daytime

Mitsouko

Cemetery nighttime

I don’t think so.   that’s when the zombies come out!

I feel a cupcake coming on!

Fracas

Lys Mediteranee

Whoa!  my bra size is WHAT?

Femme

C-cup, bay-bee!  C-cup!

vintage Femme

3am. I’m fat! Panic attack.

Going for a walk, just me and the coyotes.  Take a stick and:

Jacomo Silences

L’eau Imperiale (Guerlain)

Y’know, I’m looking pretty good!:

Doblis

vintage Diorling

I give up – I’m a mess

Ines de la Fressange (leaf bottle)

L’eau d’Hiver

Oh, shut up.  I’m doing fine!

TdC Charmes et Feuilles

Size 10 = a trip to Paris

Cartier Brillante

it will be interesting to see where these fall, once I reach my size goal, but for now they are defining my highs and lows as I struggle through this.  Do you all have particular scents that represent certain aspects of your life struggles? (weight is not the criterion here)  Would love to hear about them.  I’ll holla back when I get home from the cemetery – gotta beat the zombies!

By Musette

Please welcome frequent commenter, motorcycle queen, Chicago Scent-sation goddess and today’s guest blogger — Musette!

Jane Russell.  Voluptuous, earthy beauty.  She was never the delicate princess, never the waif, never rescued by the prince.  Jane wasn´t flitting across the moors like a woodsprite, she was rolling around in the hay or punching a guy in the mouth.

I didn´t want to be Jane Russell.  I wanted to be Twiggy.  Never mind that I´m 5´9″, with a rack you could set a coffee cup on (and put a tea service on the back&acute and at the height of my powers could bench 200 lbs without breaking a sweat. 

I wanted to be Twiggy, dammit.  Or Jane Asher, Paul McCartney´s Beatle-love.  Or…well, you get the idea.  Winsome, heathery/feathery, all smudged eyeliner, flat chest and bony knees and windswept love on the moors…

… and so it was with perfume. As a young teen I saturated myself in Heaven Sent and Love´s Baby Soft.  As a young adult I had a thing for citrus – the more linear, the better (and the quest for citrus continues to this day).  Though they are delightful in the scorching heat of summer they tend to sit uncomfortably on my large, formal frame, like a wreath of rosebuds on a robust matron in a tweed suit and sensible shoes.

I kept trying, as my delicate, gauzy friends took to florals and citrus like little fairy-sprites, the b*tches.   And even as I honed my warrior prowess I still longed to be the waif, the delicate princess. 

But through all the absurd eyeliner, straightened hair and gauzy fantasies and the grapefruit scrubs… there was a dark, weird corner of my perfume psyche that never went away…  I didn´t know why I loved these perfumes.  I just knew I was never without them (even if I had to resort to petty theft of my mother´s dressing table):  Jicky.  Mitsouko.  Bal a Versailles (parfum).  Schiaparelli Shocking.

Can you say it with me?  SKANK.

As a little girl I used to sneak into my Tia Cornelia´s elegant dressing room and dab on a bit of Shocking.  It would surround me like a warm, flowery, slightly doughy cloud, like wrapping yourself in your mother´s dressing gown right after she disrobed to get into the bath, reveling in the smell of perfume, sweat, powder… the essence of her.    My own mother wore Shalimar and cigarettes, which I disliked, but one Christmas my father, who never paid attention to details, got her Mitsouko.  That was it for me…….I was in my mid-teens, too young to wear it, but I would pop in and just spray and sniff it, not understanding why I loved it so much.

But now we know:  SKANK.

Bal was a happy accident.  Remember when Joy was “the costliest perfume in the world?” I loved Joy (still do) but I wanted to be different, so I grabbed Bal, thinking it was 1000 (don´t ask).  I was 20, still too young, with no understanding, but somehow the love was mutual.    I have never been without Bal since and I´m thinking I would like to be pickled in a jar of it when I shuffle off my mortal coil.

Of course, it wasn´t until I fell in with the Posse that I could even put a name to this weird, dark corner of my perfume life.  I mean, it wasn´t lemons!  It wasn´t fresh and powdery and waiflike!  It wasn´t pretty and floral! It was old´ and funky and weird!  I always thought jasmine was merely a pretty, delicate, sweet-smelling flower!  Who knew???!  But these these mainstays stuck around, bringing me an almost visceral pleasure, even when I didn´t wear them.  To use an old-fashioned word, they suited´ me.

Still… something was missing – somewhere there was a scent that would tie it all together and Make Me Understand why these perfumes had such power over me.  Then La Belle Enabler March, taking pity on a po´ thang, sent me a little box.  And in that box was a sample of Rochas Femme EdP.

And in an instant my heart was yanked out of my chest and I understood.

SKANK.  Femme, like Bal, Mitsy and Jicky, contains an almost indecent indolic jasmine along with that faint sweaty-cumin note.  It´s the jasmine that truly captures my heart, though the cumin is necessary, in my opinion, to keep it slightly wet and grounded, keeping it from skittering off the planet.  But you gotta be in the right frame of mind for Femme.  When it´s right it´s like reveling in a sun-drenched, flower-filled bedroom, after a hot and heavy night – your lover has just left the bed and is in the shower, while you laze about, the bed-scents testament to the night´s passions.  When it´s wrong it´s like the same wakeup, except it´s 8:50am and you realize you have a 9:30 job interview and said lover is hogging the shower!

Mitsouko.  Perfection.  I liken it to silken body armor.  I wear Mitsouko when I want to take no prisoners.  And she gives me props, every time.

I once broke the arm of a man who was misbehaving.  I was wearing Jicky at the time. 

Now, La Belle Enabler is the Originator of the term “skank” on this blog (the Skankinator, if you will) where she states that indolic/animalic defines skank´ to her.  We definitely agree that the indolic jasmine (the poopy parts), along with civet, is most definitely skankalicious.  And all of these have that (Shocking doesn´t list jasmine or civet in the notes I have but I´m willing to go to the mat that they are in there).   I´m more in La Belle E´s camp, thinking the indolic outweighs the sweaty in skank.  Feel free to disagree – and tell me why.   But now my shameful secret is out; I´ll never be a gauzy princess and my heart soars at the poopy parts of a finicky flower and cat-butt juice.  Me and Jane strap em into our 18-Hours, there´s no rescuing prince, my jasmines smell like effluvia ….and if I´m on a moor nowadays I´m probably in sensible shoes and a warm jacket – and SKANK.

And that´s just fine by me.

What are your scents?  The ones that you return to time and again, through all the samples and decants and FB flirtations?  Floral/citrus/incense/dirt/whatever…what ties it all together for you?

ps.  Any skank recommendations?  I´d love to hear them!