There’s a fragrance review down there. But first, some housekeeping:

The winner of the bottle of Baiser du Dragon is … Jill! Please email me your address using “Contact Us.” I’m sorry I didn’t have a bottle to give to everyone who wanted it (well, not really – but you know what I mean).

Next: we’re tinkering with our blogging schedule; Patty’s now doing some regular posts on Fridays, so if you missed her excellent post this last Friday, do yourself a favor and go back and read it. Or you could subscribe to our blog, because sometimes she gets a wild hair from smelling too much product and decides to post on Saturday or Sunday.

Also: I know — our archives are a mess. The reviews sort of grew without us paying much attention or sorting them early on; the search feature is broken; there’s no list of fragrances we’ve reviewed; and when we moved to the current web address last summer, the older posts were badly garbled in punctuation. We’re working on a new format, and I keep going in and tediously cleaning up random old posts. Bear with us. (Sometimes I can’t find my old posts, either.) Okay, on to the fragrance:

What is it with Creed? You’d think for a line that’s been around since, what, the Battle of Hastings I’d have fallen in love with something by now. Part of the problem is the sheer number of fragrances lined up in formation on the counter (Bond No. 9 – heed my warning.) Part of the problem is I get distracted reading their cheat sheet, looking at which fragrances are/were worn by which celebrities (Marlene Dietrich, Princess Diana, Errol Flynn, Prince… okay, not Prince). Part of the problem is the Creed base in many of their fragrances — what I think is a combo of civet and ambergris – tends to smell very bitter on me. However, I took the challenge and decided I’d keep sniffing until I came up with five I’d wear cheerfully. With the exception of the first, I think they’re some of the line’s more obscure offerings.

Cuir de Russie – sandalwood, leather, ambergris, bergamot, amber. Released 1850. Wow. Which one of you said your skin just eats this thing up? A skank sandwich of such Plutonian proportions I felt a wee bit of shame walking around smelling like this. An earthy, fishy, post-coital leather. You people? Are perverts.

Cypres-Musc – bergamot, mint, ambergris, oakmoss, musk and cypress. Released 1948. Green and woody, with a resin-y quality further along in the plot. Gorgeous, long-lasting drydown.

Himalaya – bergamot, grapefruit, sandalwood, cedarwood, musk. Released 2002. This one I loved, although I concede it has a more distinctly modern smell than much of the line, and that’s maybe not a good thing for hardcore Creed fans. A unisexy citrus-bomb with a stiff wood chaser. Where have you been all my life?

Epicea – Russian Pine and spices. Released 1965. Colombina, have you smelled this? It made me think of you. Yes, pine and spices (pepper and cardamom, maybe?) A fragrance with zero development that also manages to be compelling.

Aubepine Acacia – bergamot, galbanum, mimosa, ambergris, hawthorne, acacia. Released 1965. Confession: I tried this in a fit of sheer pigheadedness, because I thought the notes sounded so horrible. Galbanum and hawthorne in the same fragrance? Please, kill me now. But it wasn’t the trip to Satan’s greenhouse I’d anticipated. It was sweetly green and honeyed with a touch of hay.

Okay, which Creeds do you like? What do you think of the ones I’ve chosen?

image: Cypress Trees, Vincent Van Gogh, allposters.com

My dad’s nickname for me used to be Pud, and my sister’s was Sud (her name is Shirley). I have no idea why, he took that with him to the grave. Our best guess is because it rhymed. Though he also called us Salt and Pepper too, which eventually got shortened to Sp when he wanted us both for something. My brothers had nicknames too — this is the infamous Tom, Dick and Harry — but their nicknames aren’t fit for a family fragrance blog or even a not-so-family blog.

Every time we were getting ready to go out for some frilly social obligation — being farm folks, playing Pitch at the neighbors would suffice — my mom would spritz on some scent or another, as would my sister and me. My dad’s comment, unfailingly, was, “Smells like a French Whorehouse in here!” Then he’d head out to the car or truck and start honking the horn to hurry us up.

When I first heard about the Etat Libre d’Orange line and the names of the scents and descriptions, all I could think of was my dad and his “french whorehouse.” When the perfumes came in yesterday, I quickly opened them, trying the ones I had heard good things about like Jasmin et Cigarette and Putains des Palace and Rien. I’ve found some that I really love in here and some that just baffle me. As my nose meandered from the Divin’Enfant to Bubblegum and Encens to Palace Slut, then I held Secretions Magnifique at an arm’s length and recoiled with the inappropriateness of that.. um, smell, then lit up a jasmine cigarette after on another wrist, followed by the mellow beauty of Rien… I thought… yeah, absolutely, French whorehouse. And I started to laugh as I sniffed the secretions, then covered it up with my sweatshirt because it was too raw, too real, too… it shouldn’t be there, not in the crook of my arm!

Many of these scents are sketches — a quick jot of notes that suggest the thing it is supposed to be or the thing it is supposed to express — some are complete portraits and beautiful, like Vraie Blond and Rien and the Palace Slut.

Now, it’s really late at night, and I’ve been decanting these little things most of the day, and I reek, but I’ve been snickering and guffawing for several hours over these little oddities of smell, and somewhere I can hear my dad chortling too. Pud Etat gets my vote as Most Amusing Line of Perfumes 2007.

And this post makes absolutely no sense, nor did my dad’s comment about whorehouses make sense, and I’m not sure the Pud Etats make sense either. Making sense is highly overrated.

UPDATE: MONDAY, NOON-ISH: Did everyone notice Patty’s post from Saturday with her MDCI winners and her Etat Libre Sample Special she’s running until tonight? Uh, me neither. I think she’s shy about pimping her decants on the blog … so let me do it for her. Have you been in there? Lock up your Visa, honey. Since the last time I looked (what, last week?) she’s got the Juozas, Shalini, Doblis (!)… anyway, on to the post, but take a peek into her store if you haven’t done so recently, up there in the upper right hand corner of the blog.

If Guerlain Mitsouko is sublimely elegant, and Apres L’Ondee is divinely tender, then L’Heure Bleue is profoundly evocative. Notes (via Osmoz) are: Bergamot, anise, carnation, orange blossoms, rose, tuberose, heliotrope, iris, vanilla, musk.

While L’Heure Bleue shares a number of notes with Apres L’Ondee (including anise, rose, violet, and iris), the driving force behind L’Heure Bleue is the cherry-almond smell of heliotrope. I’ve noticed how little love and/or attention L’Heure Bleue gets relative to Apres or Mitsouko (hence this post). I’m also surprised by the number of people who appreciate Apres and can’t stand LHB, and I’m guessing (extrapolating from the reviews on Basenotes and MUA) it’s the heliotrope that does them in. If POTL renders itself as entirely Play-Doh on some people, clearly L’Heure Bleue comes across as a too-sweet, powdery mess on others.

L’Heure Bleue has a rush of bergamot at the opening, and a little anise (prompting the mind’s association with Apres), but from the start it’s a much heavier, sweeter, denser scent than Apres. The rose and tuberose chime in (sweetness and light!) and then cue the violins, here’s the heliotrope and the iris together, and whether you find that spicy, almond-ish smell, swaying back and forth into cherry-vanilla, divine or horrible is impossible to know until you try it.

I’m lucky enough to have a sample (thanks, Co-Skank-mistress!) of the parfum, which, like every Guerlain parfum I’ve tried, takes the idea of the EDP, makes it richer, and smoothes all the edges off. In Guerlain, I don’t always consider that an improvement. L’Heure Bleue parfum does have the advantage of moderating the blast of heliotrope into a tighter fragrance, more concentrated on the other florals (particularly iris), rendering it both smoother and spicier than the EDP. It’s stunning. But it’s also expensive and hard to find (although NYC Bergdorf has it and most of the others in parfum) and, really, the EDP is well worth owning.

L’Heure Bleue translates as “the blue hour,” the time between daylight and darkness that can be transfixingly beautiful, if you put down what you’re doing and go outside to enjoy it. In the long, late summers of my childhood the Blue Hour seemed stolen, being well past our normal bedtime. The ripe smell of sultry Washington evenings, indoors and out, captivated me. I loved chasing the first fireflies in the early dark serenaded by the sound of crickets and the occasional cicada. My mother was an indifferent gardener, but we had several highly fragrant, spicy tea roses that are sadly long gone, and huge beds of nicotiana, pollinated by moths, a scented wonder in the dark. The powerful smell of those flowers at dusk, and the sight of them in the darkness – the blood-red roses blooming black, the nicotiana ghostly white – added to the mystery. Maybe I was just a weirdo, but all of it together in the gathering night, with the sound of bats chasing insects overhead, and the smells, and the changing colors in the deepening darkness, filled me with a pleasure so intense it felt illicit.

During the day I was a bookish, clumsy tagalong in a neighborhood teeming with mostly older kids, all of us shooed outside by our mothers to play. I had a sense of myself as a terrible actor in some play with a complex plot which perpetually escaped me. The Blue Hour was when I began to fit into my own skin, to see and hear things differently, to have an understanding that, out there in the gloaming, something magical was waiting for me. The dark was beautiful, and I felt more beautiful in its presence.

To some people, L’Heure Bleue is a melancholy smell, and I can see it. What is more symbolic than the quiet, inevitable approach of darkness? But to me the smell conjures the vague, sweet promise of mysteries to come.

Blue Hour, Mary Maginnis, 2003, www.antreasiangallery.com

A note on the concentrations, because I can’t stop myself. If you’re sniffing Guerlain for the first time, please, please do not smell the EDTs. With the exception of Jicky, the Guerlain EDTs are such pale, sad, bitter semi-dupes of the stronger concentrations I almost wish they’d do away with them, particularly since the EDPs can be found online relatively easily.

Hey, a post on Saturday!!

I forgot to put up the winner of the MDCI samples this week. And I decided to give away three sets of samples. The winners are: Amy K, Fragrant Funster and Nina. Just hit the Contact Us button on the left and send me your address to get your samples!

Etat Libres are at Bendel’s! Call Gerard at 212-247-1100 (main number, ask for him in Perfumes), and he can set you up with any bottles you like. They also have candles, and one of them translates to Boots and Whips, and as Gerard was reading me the descriptions for all three of them, I felt myself breathing hard and a small drop of sweat was running down my bosom…. Lord, it was like a bodice ripper, only more porny! Now, I know some of you have objections to these because of the ludicrous names, but the names just crack me up. In a world full of perfume releases, it is hard to get attention, and these guys certainly picked names that have started buzz, both good and bad. Does that matter? Any buzz is good buzz. Exhibit A is Tom Ford’s Black Orchid. I see people panning it over and over and over, but it is flying off the shelves from just the buzz, and part of the buzz is from the name, which sounds exotic and rich and a little, well, hot!

I’ve got the Etat Libres coming to my little sample/decant store, and I’m offering a limited time special for 1 ml ($27) or 2.5 ml ($55) set of each of the 11 scents at Fragrant Fripperies. It’s only good until Monday at 5 p.m., and I’ll be sending out those sample sets no later than 1/31/07. I’m not going to do too many more announcements on my decant/sample thing here just because I like to keep them separated, so if you want to know about special deals, just sign up for my newsletter (a link is on the Fragrant Fripperies site).

Nose scoop on the new Chanel Exclusifs — Some of you laugh at my “I know a guy” things, but… I know a guy (girl) who has tried the new Chanel Exlusifs, and her favorites were the Eau de Cologne at first, but she said the No. 18 and Coromandel, which she wasn’t sure she would like at first, had a drydown that kept her nose glued to the Sweet Perfume Spot all night.  18 more days…. 

One of the best things about perfume is that you get to change your mind. The scent you turned your nose up last year may be the one you absolutely cannot live without this week – and those you loved and spritzed with abandon last week can quickly be rejected as no longer worth your time or attention.  Your nose is very fickle.

Now… the only thing I ask is that March please not snigger when I recant — recanting on perfume is sober business, not to be chortled about. When we were at Tak in NY last August, March went on a squeeee about the Divine perfumes, and I sniffed them, curled up my nose and pronounced them horrible — not just one of them, but the whole line.  Recently the lovely Nas at The Perfume Shoppe sent me samples of two of the Divines — the standard issue Divine and Divine L’aime Soeur.  Divine has notes of peach, coriander, gardenia, Indian tuberose, May rose, oak moss, musk, vanilla and spice. These should be notes I love, and upon smelling them again, I do!!!  Why in the world was this perfume so distasteful a few short months ago and is perfect now? This opens with a sparkly fruit note and has a gorgeous floral-spice-musk drydown.

So, puzzled as I was, I went on to the next sample, L’aime Soeur, which I thought was even more horrible than all the others put together.  Notes of jasmine, otto bulgar rose, ylang and ambergris.  What’s not to love here?  There is one note that feels a little sharp on the open, but the sharpness disappears quickly, and this turns into a gorgeous, but still spunky jasmine-rose perfume.

Huh.

Shall we continue?  The largest single sin against perfume I have made was sniffing Jean Desprez’ Bal a Versailles, shrugging my shoulders and pitching the little bottle into my sample basket.  Maybe I just hadn’t explored my inner slut enough then or maybe the parfum is just much better. I recant, regardless, Bal a Versailles is something every woman should have in her wardrobe for when she’s feeling like too much of a mommy, a wife and not enough like Miss Thing on the left. 

So what brings about this change in how I feel about a perfume?  I’ve thought maybe just aging is the culprit, but these are turn-arounds that I’ve made in the last year.   Mostly, I think your nose becomes more, um, tolerant.  You see past that dirty socks and sweaty man note of MKK to the glorious drydown it has.  You overlook some of the more pungent tangy notes to see how beautifully crafted a perfume is, even if it’s not one you will wear much.  One thing I am certain of, I would not have appreciated the gorgeousness that is Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue parfum five years ago or maybe even a year ago.

What perfume have you done the biggest turn-around on?

Update on Caron splits. We are doing a 200 ml Alpona and 100 ml Narcisse Blanc split (Diane is doing the splitting) right now. If anyone is interested, let me know by hitting the Contact Us button over on the left and e-mail me.   We are also going to rerun the Tabac Blond and Poivre splits since they are the most popular ones we have done so far.  If you want in on those, do the same, click on the Contact Us Button on the left and let me know how many mls you want!

Once again, like a river heading to the fragrant ocean, this post won’t be a direct journey to perfume. We will get there though, I promise. Strap on your pith helmet, have a flashlight at the ready, and settle on down for the meandering ride.

As a kid, if I wasn’t digging holes in the garden/yard to the misery of ma, or reading novels, or setting light to newspaper in the old bomb shelter up the road, I could be found studying maps. Man, I loved them. My grandfather had given me a pre-war atlas where half the globe seemed coloured a colonial pink, and that bore little resemblance to the ongoing transformation of the world in the 1970s. I’d sit there in my florally embroidered denim flares (funny how feminine male wear was in that mad decade) and look at the names of far flung places and the contrast between the political maps and the natural tapestries of the physical ones. Like many young boys and girls, I longed to travel and see these deep purple mountain landscapes, lost lakes, and lands of ice. I felt by touching the maps, by saying the place names, I could somehow transport myself to the contours under my fingers. It was an aesthetic appreciation rather than a political one – I didn’t much care for the borders or the shapes of countries, or who apparently owned what. What most appealed was the feeling of place names in my mouth as I said them – Kamchatka, Tierra del Fuego, Ouagadougou; the patterns of blues and browns and greens against each other.

I didn’t really get to travel until my late teens. Before starting university I bought a two month European rail travel ticket and set off in late June. I had a choice to head east or west, and after much prevarication I decided a provisional route would be through France to the Alps, down the spine of Italy and then the Greek islands. I had a wonderful time, came back bronzed and apparently worldly (little did I know…), but in my heart of hearts knew I’d travelled in the wrong direction. Italy and Greece were after all the ROMANTIC destinations and were therefore the default settings for a young man whose head was full of fluff and longing. But in reality I longed for Spain. And Morocco, which was somehow magically included in Europe as far as interrailing was concerned.

Spain, for dreamy old me at least, wasn’t the land of the tacky costas but a world of unbridled passion and reinvention, kissing distance from Africa, the continent with the best names on the map. I had romanticised it completely in my head: all Moorish legacy, gypsies, beautiful people, danger and wild party spirit that kept going forever through an eternal summer. Surprisingly, when I finally made it to Seville much later on, I found I was right. Morocco, in contrast, was a shock.

As a fragrance fiend, both these places are recalled by smell. Seville is a cliché of orange blossom of course, but it’s also reawakened in my head by wafts of Guerlain’s Vetiver, sniffs of smoked paprika and fresh fish frying in olive oil. Morocco, and Marrakech in particular (a must visit before it changes completely), is a little different and works more as a juxtaposition of the sublime with the downright malevolent – intense heady florals sit right next to a layered accord of intense heady piss (male of course) drying in the intense heady heat; delicate spices waft up as a fragrant counterpoint to the nasal wtf? of raw sewage and rot. Aaah, memories…

In his standard faux-poetic promo blurb, Serge Lutens, denizen of Marrakech, is described as a ‘traveller in time’. Well, it’s not time I’m after today even if we’ve ended up in the souk, it’s space, and my nomination for traveller in space, in a non-Neil Armstrong sense, would be another perfumer altogether, Bertrand Duchaufour. My hunch is that BD was also a childhood map studier, as his inventions are as site-specific as that sculpture you recently raised your eyebrows at outside your least favourite office block. You know the one.

Take Sequoia, that winy liniment heavy Comme des Garçons number which does for West Coast sap what Viagra did for other wood (aherm): you’re in a redwood forest, or at least a virtual version of one, with all its aromas, including the decay, with a few eucalypts just round the corner. Or Timbuktu, a place I’ve never been to, but which seems to be securely bottled by Duchaufour. It’s mayhem close up – shrill acidic shrieks, spices and flowers and heat and dirt – transformed into an exotic yet friendly incense in its sillage. The close up is the reality; the long shot is the romantic imagination at work. I never seem to like Timbuktu when I spray it, but no other perfume garners as many compliments when I wear it.

No surprise then that dear Bernie was asked to invent scents to capture the smells of Paris, Budapest and Helsinki in a 2003 olfactory exhibition. Or that the Eau d’Italie line of fragrances used him as the nose behind their four scents. And it’s these I’m going to talk about now.

Like I’ve already said, unlike many, Italy doesn’t hold a romantic footing in my imagination, and for some reason, Italy in French less so. However, lagging behind many other scent fiends, I finally got in touch with the delightful Sebastián (who’s Spanish – so that’s three countries covered…), one of the brains behind the line, via Eau d’Italie’s gorgeous website (www.eauditalie.it/english/products.html) and blagged some samples. Their eponymous first scent sets the scene for the other three – they’re naked and clean in design, transparent and minimalist fragrances with little clutter in top or base. This one begins with a refreshing blast without resorting to the cologne 101 of in your face lemon or bergamot or some other predictable hesperidic HELLO. It’s quiet, understated and for me the best bit of the scent. Their website says that the scent has a je ne sais quoi quality to it and that it melds with the wearer’s own skin chemistry. Unfortunately for me, I sais exactly quoi the scent does with my skin chemistry, and it’s plastic, melted slightly in a Bunsen burner. Oh dear. Seems like I’m unlikely to become that cosmopolitan European who stays at Hotel Le Sirenuse as a matter of course, if this scent’s response to me is anything to go by.

Paestum Rose in contrast is much more likeable, and perhaps more recognisably a Duchaufour fragrance. It has a little something in it to dirty up the rose, and is as much about resins as it is the flower itself. It’s dry, crisp, bright and fairly rapid in its journey from top to base notes. It has been blogged about in greater detail elsewhere and I can imagine it being the most popular in the line.

A theme seems to be emerging – I like the first few minutes of these scents much more than the scents overall. And this definitely applies to Sienne l’Hiver which is a delight at least in its top notes – crisp lychee (not listed but I’m sure of it) and violet – before it becomes a green scent very reminiscent of something else I’ve smelled recently (and wasn’t too keen on). It’s early spring rather than winter to me, and will appeal to green scent lovers quite readily.

My favourite of the line I’ve saved until last – Bois d’Ombrie. This has notes of cognac, leather, orris and vetiver, a deliciously rich combination. Here though, they retain that sheerness of the other scents, whilst being slightly more linear. It’s very much a reading by the fire sort of smell – in an old fashioned sepia world where everything is a shade of brown and the flames flicker caramel colours in the glass of brandy warming in your hand. In fact, this combination of notes smells most like rich pipe tobacco and for that reason alone this brings me comfort. My grandfather, who gave me my first book of maps, was a pipe smoker, and he’d always allow me to fill his pipe with the aromatic herbs before tamping it down and inhaling.

I’m there again now, lying on the floor in front of the fire, whispering place names to myself as the delicious smoke fill his lungs, and my nose. My grandfather nods off in his chair as I flick through pages, gaze up at the fire and speculate about my future. I’m already living more in my imagination than in the room in which I lie. Travelling in space; travelling in time.

The Eau d’Italie line of fragrances are available from www.lafcony.com or www.aedes.com in the States and Liberty in the UK. You can also pick them up in Positano.

How do I choose the fragrances I review? For every scent I stick in this blog, I probably sample 10 or 15 others. All this, as you have surely noticed by now, is subjective. Some things are fabulous yet fail to move me (I’m having this issue with a few Nina Riccis.) Or I feel like I’m trying a fragrance in the wrong season, like The Different Company garden series, which I’m giving up on until warmer weather. Sometimes the problem appears to be skin chemistry. I’ll sniff something two or three times, and unless it’s prompting a response, I file it away for a revisit. Some fragrances, like much of the Caron line, I don’t blog about because subjectively they’re just not a good fit for me – although the wall’s collapsing on my no-Caron belief system…

Caron Royal Bain de Caron and Eaux Fraiche – I really like both of these, but they don’t count, do they? No Caron base? Parfum Sacre EDP has potential, but the rest of the testers were EDT and they … they frighten me. I guess I have to go visit either NYC or Patty so I can re-sniff all the Carons in parfum. P — I know where you live, babe! Leave the lights on!

Annick Goutal Hadrian Absolu – just mentioning this for all you Hadrian nuts who complain about its lasting power, Saks has this, and to my nose it smells just like amped-up Hadrian. That’s dandy, but what I really want is Duel Absolu, or Sables Ultra-Light (non-menthol). Or both.

Escada Sunset Heat – quick – how many of the summer LEs can you name off the top of your head!?! No cheating! It’s like naming the seven dwarfs, only more depressing. Notes are: Papaya, Lemon, Mango Sherbet, Pineapple Mousse, Icy Watermelon, Peach, Lotus Flower, Hibiscus, Sandalwood, Amber Crystals, Spray-On Tan, Crystal Meth, Thong Bikinis, Tom Selleck’s Chest Hair, and Vulgar Jewelry. Kill me now. Can no one stop these things from reproducing? (No, those aren’t quite the right notes… can you guess where I improvised?)

Serge Lutens Rousse – everyone else loves this. On me it was a wan dupe of Gris Clair. Yes, I know – that makes no sense at all, when everyone else is getting Cinnamon Orgasm with Apple Pie for Later in Bed. No, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m still sulking.

Geoffrey Beene Perfume for Women – here, let me clip directly from Perfumeland: “A warm, rich, and sensual fragrance that combines irsis, Italian bergamot, water snowflake and Ylang-ylang, musk as its base notes.” I don’t know about you, but I’m having trouble reconciling “warm” with “water snowflake” and the irsis is frankly a little sharp. And this stuff is so cheap online they’re practically paying you to wear it. So, commenter dinazad, who sent me this sample — I’m blaming you, because the degree to which I like this thing is bothering me. Its aggressive, broad-shouldered greenness is oddly refreshing, given the current mass market fruity-floral trends. Are you toying with me, dinazad?

Okay, so now I realize I’m doing a post in which I dismiss the new Lutens and rave about the $11.99 Beene. Maybe I fell and hit my head? I feel shame. Oh, well … on to

Gobin Daude Seve Exquise – orris, poplar bud, liatrix, vetiver. One of those I hadn’t smelled, and wasn’t missing because Exquisite Sap didn’t really sound like “me.” You thought I was troubled by Beene? Weeping into my hankie now, because this is exquisite. I thought it would be weirder, but it’s not. It’s not ominous like JAR Bolt of Lightning, less earthy than CB Black March, and the orris lends a faint spice note I adore. Patty, you broke my heart with this one.

Aquolina Pink Sugar — my tweener daughter said it “smells like rotten sugar.” Out of the mouths of babes.

Jil Sander Style — They were just setting up the display at Saks with the testers when I was there, didn’t have the bottles for sale yet. The notes according to the friendly SA are: freesia, cardamom, pink pepper, magnolia, iris, jasmine, amber and musk. This is a comfort scent somewhat along the line of Sensations, but sweeter. I’ll argue that this smells better than most of the new fruity-florals; it’s certainly less cloying, and this is the perfect time of year for the release of a cheerful, sweet fragrance. The base is also funky enough to be interesting — there’s a note of milky overripeness that’s appealing — but I wish the first half an hour were less sweet.

Today’s free giveaway: Curse of the Dragon! Through no fault of my own, I have yet again wound up with a 3.3 bottle of Cartier Baiser du Dragon EDP (seriously, is there some weird crack in the time-space continuum that these things keep slipping through? Why can’t Guerlain fall through the crack instead?), no box, slightly less than full – an amount I consider a supply for several lifetimes. If you’d like the bottle, please say so in the comments below and one of the girls will Pick a Winner.

dragon image, M.C. Escher woodcut, 1925: fantasyarts.net

This Post is from Diane of Dragonfly Scent Me. She has an amazing collection of vintage perfumes, many of which she sells samples of on eBay, as well a lot of other great fragrances, and she has graciously agreed to share her knowledge about vintage and how to spot a factice with us all, plus a bonus tip at the end!

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Many of us have been there……you see an amazing vintage bottle of perfume you have been waiting months to show up on that wonderful place of bargains and hard to find items ~ Ebay ~ only to receive the bottle & find out the juice is water or alcohol & you have a factice or simply an empty beautiful bottle. Your heart sinks and knots form in your stomach. You feel angry….ripped off…duped…by these sellers that count on the fact that the buyers don’t know any better. But more often then not, sellers aren’t educated on what a factice or Dummy bottle is. Now, factices can be very collectible and very valuable, but to the perfume junkie looking for that next fix of pure parfum heaven….a factice is a huge letdown. So having learned the hard way and having been on the receiving end of factices both due to blatant deceit or oversight on the seller’s part, I’d like to take a moment and write up a guide on to how to spot a factice and what to ask sellers to find out if the bottle you’re drooling over is indeed a factice.

First off, all factices should be listed in the collectible bottles section as they are not perfume. However……perfume may be listed in the collectible bottles category as the seller may be focusing on the value of the bottle which happens to have its original contents. Most honest sellers who are selling an Empty bottle or factice will often fill the bottle with colored liquid to show off the beauty of the bottles…facets, etching, etc….and most of these sellers do 2 things that help you know right away they are selling an EMPTY — bright colored water that looks nothing like perfume (purple, blue, green and red) and they openly state the bottle is empty and is filled with colored water for display purposes only. OK, of course this is easy…..you have a good seller who knows not to dupe people. But what about the seller who adds a perfect amber color liquid the exact same shade as that of the perfume and never says its NOT perfume, or never says it is filled with water, alcohol and not the original contents of the bottle? Here are some guides to actual factual perfume.

First of all, look for discoloration around the stopper and neck of bottle. If the bottle looks pristine and incredibly clean, it is most likely a factice. Vintage perfumes, due to the oils, often discolor the inside neck of the bottle and stopper and leaves residue even if its still sealed!! If the stopper and neck are perfectly clear clean glass, this might be a hint it’s a factice.

I can not stress enough ~ Ask questions, ask questions and ask more questions about the item you’re interested in. The seller should be happy to answer any and all questions openly and honestly. If not, you’ve got trouble on your hands. The first question to ask each and every time, if the bottle is not sealed IS: “Is this the original contents of the bottle, or did you put in colored water or alcohol in the bottle to showcase it?” This question is especially helpful if the perfume is listed in the collectible bottles category as opposed to the perfume category. This question will help you avoid the con artists out there. This happened to me. The seller NEVER said it WAS perfume but also never revealed the bottle was filled with colored water added to about 1 ml of perfume left in the bottle, and it was the exact color of the perfume. This was a pure case of deception, and I got my money back through Paypal, but it took a great deal of effort. Of course, if someone is out to scam you and they don’t answer honestly you can still be duped but hopefully the rest of the clues and questions will help avoid buying a factice or an empty.

If the bottle listed is sealed with the original contents the next question to ask is: “Is the word factice or dummy labeled, etched, or scratched into the bottle?” A Dummy or factice will always be labeled as such — usually in a manner that’s impossible to remove. Many bottles havee etched or scratched into the glass the word DUMMY or the word FACTICE. The most common places are the back of the bottle, side of the bottle or the bottom of the bottle. However (here’s one that threw me), vintage Guerlain & Balenciaga bottles are often marked dummy on the back of the label that is on the front of the bottle. The only way to see the word dummy is by looking through the back of the bottle and seeing the back of the label on the front of the bottle. This would be easy for anyone, seller or otherwise, to overlook. If the pictures on the auction aren’t clear or are not close up, ask the seller, “What does the stopper look like where it goes in the bottle? Is there any discoloration or residue there or is it pristine & clean?” Water and alcohol will not leave residue or discolor the bottle in any way as it is free of oils.

I once received a sealed factice Guerlain Baccarat bottle — Yep an honest to goodness Baccarat Stamped bottle — that was also a dummy and said so only on the back of the label glued to the front of the bottle. The seller had no idea the bottle was a dummy and neither did I until i got the bottle, which, by the way, prompted me to write this article — hoping you won’t have to make the same mistakes I have. So ask the seller if the word dummy or factice can be seen through the back of the bottle on the back of the label.

Now, I once received a Guerlain factice sealed with a Baccarat stamp on the bottom of the bottle. Probably worth a heck of a lot of money but I wanted the PERFUME….WAH!!! It was the original contents and the seller had no idea this was a factice, and neither did I, until i got the bottle and happened to see throught the perfume looking at the back of the bottle there was dummy on the label facing the back of the bottle. Had I asked more questions of the seller I might have realized this was a factice and could have saved the seller and myself time. They truly had no idea the bottle was a factice and happily took the bottle back. I will buy from this seller any day of the week!! The seller was Justeclecta2. All sellers should be as accommodating & honest as they are!

Another clue to vintage scents is perfume color and the issue of “floaters.” If there seems to be floaters in the bottle, it is a good sign. In vintage parfum bottles, floaters are excellent evidence the contents are actually perfume, not water or alcohol. The oils often thicken due to age and evaporation. The fragrance congeals a bit leaving small oil balls in the juice. This doesn’t always happen though, so a lack of floaters does not mean the juice isn’t parfum. Also, very old parfums almost always darken in color sometimes to a black pitch. This is a whole other vintage issue to explore, but if it’s a really old scent that has been discontinued for a long time, often the juice will not be the original color but slightly darker. If it looks likes its new it may be a factice since the colored juice will not change shade. Again….ask if dummy or factice is anywhere on the bottle and seen by looking at the back of the label. Ask the seller, “Please shake the bottle a bit….is there any residue or dark floaters in the bottle?” Don’t worry if there isn’t, but it does happen sometimes. So if there is, you know its not water. If there isn’t floaters you need to ask more questions.

Another important question to ask the seller, “is there any scent?” Of course YOU CAN’T smell the bottle but the seller can. Even if a bottle is sealed and never been opened, there will be the perfume’s scent at the stopper of the bottle. A factice has no scent of course. I have many sealed parfum bottles, and they all smell of the parfum. Even my Givenchy Le De, which is a very mild light parfum and\not very old, has a scent at the stopper. A factice will smell like nothing at all. Nothing, nada! The only time there may not be scent emanating around the stopper is if it has a wax or paper seal……which brings me to my last point. I have yet to see a factice with the stopper sealed with wax or paper. Why wax seal a bottle that has no valuable contents? Right!

So in summary:

1. Ask the seller outright if the contents are original….if so….ask where they got the bottle…..Ask if they put water or alcohol in the bottle
2. Ask if it’s marked dummy anywhere on the bottle, including on the secret spot ~ the back of the label seen through the back of the bottle
3. Look for a paper or wax seal…..a cord isn’t good enough. often factices will have been sealed to look like a new unopened bottle but not sealed with paper or wax which protects from leakage & air getting in the bottle
4. If the bottle is not sealed with wax paper or wax ask if it has a scent around the stopper
5. Look for discoloration around the neck & stopper of the bottle….if none it may be a factice
6. Look for darkened juice and possibly floaters.
7. Hope these tips will help make your vintage searches more successful

Added tip for how to get a stuck stopper out — Run the neck of the bottle where the stopper goes in with the hottest water you can…be careful not to wet the label, you wouldn’t want to damage it. Next, hold the bottle UPRIGHT with a towel & using a hair dryer as close to the glass as it will get — it can even touch the glass — blow dry the neck of the bottle. You want to make sure you blow dry the the whole neck but each spot should be maintained for a while, up to 30 seconds, and then turn the bottle a bit & continue. Using a towel or cloth, gently try to turn the stopper as you also pull up a bit. Remember…..stopper is frickin hot….so don’t burn your hands. If the stopper is not loose, use a bit of rubbing alcohol around the stopper. You can use a pipette to get alcohol all around the stopper. Blow dry again. I have yet to have a bottle that defied the blow dryer….

The People of the Labyrinths (POTL) has finally come out with a new scent, A * Maze, which I think has now been officially nicknamed POTLAM on the blogosphere. Notes cribbed from the LuckyScent website: Henna, Saffron, Taif Rose from Saudi Arabia, Orange Blossom, Wardia Rose, Agarwood from Cambodia, Sandalwood, Musk, Civet.

First I should acknowledge that I am one of the sad sacks on whom the original POTL (aka Luctor et Emergo) is straight-up Play-Doh and nothing else, rather than the wonderful, comforting variants (incense! cashmere sweater! almond cherries!) its hardcore fans get, although even some of its fans (like Now Smell This) go through a Play-Doh stage. The notes on POTLAM sounded delicious. So I popped for a sample at LuckyScent, which I got in two days (love those people!)

What I get at the opening is rose, saffron and what I’m guessing is the henna – the smell is sharp, and somewhat medicinal, but it’s interesting rather than unpleasant. The top notes fade in less than five minutes, leaving me with a rose/orange blossom combination that would fit in nicely among the Rosines – something called Autumn Rose, maybe? – and if I still had all my samps of the line I could probably provide an even closer match. I’d lean in the direction of Flamenca, to the best of my recollection.

When the base shows up around 20 minutes in, the entire fragrance moves in the direction of Ormond Jayne Ta’if or Eau d’Italie Paestum Rose – while the rose is still a dominant player, the resiny pitch of oud and sandalwood, smells that to me are simultaneously velvety and sharp, add a welcome dimension. My favorite part if this fragrance occurs well over an hour in, when the rose suddenly fades away and I’m left with mostly sandalwood and a little bit of oud. I’ll take their word on the musk and civet.

A brief digression: if it’s true (as they state on the POTL website) that A * Maze “is just as the first one made of 100% natural ingredients only,” I’m wondering exactly how that squares with the listing of musk and civet as ingredients? I couldn’t care less whether my fragrance is “natural,” except when Guerlain takes my oakmoss away, but I’ve been blogmistress long enough to know that many people think “nice” or “expensive” perfumes are all-natural. This just isn’t true. Many of the boldest, most brilliant notes in modern perfumery (by modern I mean this side of 1880) depend on notes or accords that are entirely lab-created. I’ve discussed the musk/civet issue with a natural perfumer and read up a bit on the issue. There are conflicting reports about how civet is harvested from farm-raised cats, but even the kindest characterizations don’t sound that enjoyable. If the POTL “musk” is animal-based, that animal is dead, unless there’s some cruelty-free eco-friendly musk I’m unaware of (it could be plant-based, however). I’m not trying to pick a fight with POTL (although the perfumer I consulted is skeptical of the natural claims given some of the notes, and the price) but I want to raise this issue with anyone who reads “natural” and assumes they’re making a better choice morally or ecologically.

UPDATE: Per Elle’s email from POTL below, clarifying: “Just got this email from them: The component “Civet” (base) is a reconstruction comparable to nature. Hope to have you informed sufficient. With kind regards, The People of the Labyrinths B.V.” In other words … they’re lying. One way or the other. $20 says 1) the “natural” claim doesn’t disappear from their website; and 2) the original POTL isn’t natural, either, since there are a couple of notes in there that are almost certainly synthetic in origin.

While I am wildly grateful I’m not sniffing yet another entry in the fruity-floral group, frankly I would have expected something more interesting from POTL. This is a pretty tame follow-up to Luctor et Emergo, and it will be interesting to see how it goes over with the cult’s followers.

image: luckyscent.com

What Leo said. This goes on like a cinnamony blast furnace. Did you ever make those homemade cinnamon toothpicks? No, not the ones you buy in the package, those are for the weak. I’m talking about the ones where you took your toothpicks, stuck them in a bottle filled with cinnamon oil (which I don’t even think they will sell anymore), sealed them up and let them soak for three days. Then you took out the toothpicks, put them in a baggie and used them when you needed to either rise from the dead or set your mouth on fire just to have something to do. The only other thing close to that was those Fire Stix, but even that was a pale imitation of full-on cinnamon oil on the tongue.

Shortly after that fiery opening blast of Rousse, this turns into spicy goodness. It’s a country kitchen during apple harvest time when they are making the spiced applesauce. This is dry comfort and a wonderful hug. If you do not like cinnamon or the associated spices, you will hate this with a passion. I have a friend at work who got really sick on Cinnamon Schnapps once and can’t bear the smell of cinnamon. I won’t wear this to the office unless she, well … upsets me. I’m trying to think of the layering possibilities, and there are a lot. It would be great with Rahat, might even make the drydown of Rathat (spelling intentional) palatable more often than it is. Chergui maybe too — oh, and Fumerie Turque! Anyway, I predict this will be a great seller for them, especially in the fall and winter. I think it will be a little too heavy for the summer months. I’m lining up for my bottles now. Last word on release date is early February.

Update on the uber-expensive candles. Um…. I got the other three, Opium Den, Salem and Ex Libris. Don’t kill me, but all three of these candles should be made into perfumes along with a couple of the other three I already reviewd. The throw on Salem and Ex Libris isn’t as good as the other four, but I think that’s by design. As potent and smokey/leathery and dark as they are, a little goes a long way, and the scent could quickly become overpowering. Opium Den is slightly less throwy than the other three. Salem is maple, hickory, walnut and fire, so think blazing smoky wood and you’ll have it. It’s really marvelous. Ex Libris is leather and parchment, and it is dark, old leather. Again, the throw on this is less, but I think that’s perfect, more scent than what it puts out would be overwhelming, and this one DEFININITELY should be a perfume. I mean, damn! Opium Den — resins, opiates and tobacco fumes. I honestly don’t know what an opium den smells like, but this is exactly as I would think it would smell, rich and sweet, cut with smoke and tobacco. Another of these three that should be a perfume.

So I pronounce this entire Modern Alchemy line of six candles perfection. They are unique and different, have decent throw (again, I use them in a candle melter, I never put flame to my candles), and most of them should be perfumes. Can we get someone to do that for us? Anybody know a guy? Available at Candle Delirium.

Caron Tabac Blond extrait… hello! Where have you been all my life, soldier!? I had no idea tobacco/leather could be this great in a perfume. My last exposure to a tobacco perfume was that awful Lorenzo Villoresi Tobacco room spray that I know a lot of people love, but I think his perfumes are just a muddy mess (sorry!!!!). Tabac Blond parfum is just amazingly wonderful.

Right now I have Tabac Blond around my neck, Rousse on my right arm and Shalini on my left with the Salem candle perfuming my house. If I could just find a good spot for a shot of Doblis, I would have achieved fragrance nirvana.

(I’ve put up in my sample/decant store pre-orders for a decant set of the Chanel Les Exclusifs (available in February) at a special pre-order price. The link to the store is over in the upper right, the Fragrant Fripperies one. If you pay with Visa/MC or personal check and order it on its own, the shipping is free and your card won’t be charged or the check cashed until the decant coffrets ship.)

If I got a sample of a fragrance called Mimosa, I might make assumptions about the way it smelled. Those would probably be different assumptions than for a sample of something called, say, Satan’s Crotch. I might google “Mimosa EDP” and see if the notes said citrus and champagne – or maybe the flower itself. Any of that information might enter into how I feel about Mimosa the first time I smell it.

I remember the first time I smelled Apothia Velvet Rope, I was thrown off because it’s a sequence of nightclub smells, but I was expecting something literally rope-y – something that smelled like rope, woody and masculine. I was expecting something more like the smell of L’Artisan Fleur de Narcisse. Of course, if I hadn’t been pre-warned by others’ reviews, I would have been expecting Narcisse to smell like the odd, sweet smell of paperwhites in bloom – narcissus – and I might have been horrified, or at least temporarily put off, by the hay-ish, leathery smell that greeted me instead.

So when I received a sample of what I believe is the first Kenzo fragrance, King Kong, I wasn’t sure what to think. As you know, I’m neither a chemist nor a perfumer. I can’t smell King Kong and parse its ingredients. Nor can I find any notes about it online. So when I smelled this sample (a more accurate description is this: it is a sample re-created by its original creator) I had the name and my impressions, and that’s it. To whatever extent anyone else can produce some history, we can see how far off I am.

What do I smell? Oddly, and amusingly, it opens with a strong note of banana to me – which seemed completely bizarre until I thought – oh, yeah – King Kong! Bananas!! Of course!!! Next comes a rich, almost oily smell, like the inside of rubber boots, folded into a dank wet-pelt note (here comes the King himself!). At that point, the combination of sweet, slightly rank fruit, oily rubber and fur becomes almost unbearable. Sheer willpower kept me from washing it off the first time. My waiting was rewarded by a third phase — the rubber boots fade and are replaced by what smells like a clean, white floral resting on the fur, resembling a gardenia corsage on an old mink coat.

King Kong is one of the odder fragrances I’ve smelled. It’s aggressive; nothing is held back, but at the same time it’s weirdly tender. According to my benefactor, the fragrance was intended as a love story, from a man who loved the movie with Jessica Lange (released in 1976; the fragrance was released in ’78). Kenzo might also have been making a statement on several levels – about being Japanese, a rising star, a risk-taker, and a designer (Kenzo’s stores at the time were provocatively named Jungle Jap). And you know what? It is a love story; I find that absolutely believable. You can gaze at the eerie imagery of Kong battling from the top of the World Trade Center, at the giant ape with the beautiful woman he loves, and you can laugh at its ridiculousness — or be moved by its tragedy — or both at the same time. This thing is a paean to outsized desires – the Big Banana, the misunderstood hero, the wrong woman. You know it’s going to get messy, but that doesn’t stop you from enjoying the drama while it lasts.

bottle image: parfumini.free.fr

Back we go to the Mad Dogs. This time to review the final two scents in the line. You can see our review of the first three scents here, with some additional information and links to other reviews.

Pierre Bourdon’s scent, renamed by us Rich Banker Boy, is meant to be a men’s scent and has notes of bergamot, grapefruit, pineapple, melon, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg ginger, basil, thyme, lavender, oak moss, vetiver, sandalwood, rosewood, leather, Darjeeling tea, amber, musk, vanilla, jasmine and violet.

Patty: I smell some leather on the open down under all the sparkly citrusy notes, which then dry down into something a little softer. I wish I could smell the tea and leather more in this. It is perfectly wonderful and a great scent and beautifully blended, but like Marina, it’s just not moving me in any profound way, but I’d always be happy to smell this on a guy. Not gonna cross the aisle and put it on myself. will test it on DH and see what he thinks.

March: Those notes up there made me think I was going to get something almost fruity, but Patty’s right — Banker Boy would about cover it. It’s a lovely scent, expensive smelling, but a little too poker-up-the-ass for me. Very traditional cologne. The only part I’ll endorse is it’s got an interesting sweat note on me — like standing behind Banker Boy at the bank with my nose at armpit level, and he’s got one of those sweat rings on his bespoke shirt. Must be the vetiver? No, that’s not a criticism. I like it. If I could smell the tea, my feelings about this would have improved dramatically.

Stephanie Bakouche’s scent (Borneo Tamed) is also meant for men and has notes of grapefruit, bergamot, violet leaves, white thyme, cardamom, lavender, ginger, cedarwood, vanilla and musk

Patty: I got Borneo’s softer, gentler, less cobwebby side. That means it keeps the discordancy between notes, but does not make you smell like a chocolate covered old librarian. Wait, don’t misunderstand, I LOVE Borneo, but I accept that to love Borneo and wear it is to have people reject sitting next to me. This one has the same weirdness, but is very, very wearable. The drydown makes it even softer, and a lot of the weirdness goes away — I liked the weirdness at the beginning more than the slightly powdery feel it has in the end. I would cross the aisle and wear this definitely.

March: This one!! I want this one!! This one is my keeper. I’m still sulking about my total failure to fall for Rousse, but this takes some of the sting off. On me it’s more or less Annick Goutal Mandragore, crossed with a more manly, sophisticated, classic leather scent — Guerlain Derby, maybe. I am, uh, resolutely ignoring any comparison to Borneo that any other people might have made nearby. You know what I love about this one? Sometimes, when I wear “male” scents, like that nasty Prince Jardinier, or even occasionally L’Instant PH, their masculinity begins to annoy me. They just … start to grate, like listening to your beloved yammer on and on about some total waste of money like groceries when you’re trying to decide how many of the Dior colognes you should buy. Anyway, this somehow manages to hit that perfect gender-neutral sweet spot — a little fruity (but not too), masculine (but not so much), spicy but not obtrusive. The notes say cedarwood, and I believe I get a bit of cedar as Nature intended it, not the hellish note I generally produce. While (surprisingly) I loved the FK2 Rose one we reviewed last week, it’s the sort of thing I’d probably never end up reaching for if I owned it. This is the one that will stick in my mind, leaving me burrowing around for it among the decants when nothing else will do.

By the way, I can’t remember if we ever put anything up about it, but Parfums MDCI has a set of 10 ml samples of each of their five scents, which is a pretty darn generous size. The cost is 45 euros, including shipping.

So… for those of you hoping those Modern Alchemy candles I wrote about ordering last Friday weren’t worth it? Well, I’m not entirely sure they are worth $50 apiece, but they are varied and interesting and just what they say they should be. Candle nuts really should put at least one of these to their “to burn” list.

Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), with notes of marigolds and frankincense, notes for the living and the dead. Oh, dear, it really is beautiful, and it is just that, a contrast between a sunny, fresh, bright note of marigold and the more ominous frankincense. I wish someone would make a fragrance that smells like this candle, it is perfection.

Also arriving in my great big box is Tincture of Winchester, with notes of wood stock, 19th century lacquer and smoky gunpowder. Holy smoking Uzi, batman, I feel like I’m out in the country shooting at clay pigeons again! I had no idea that the smell of gunpowder could be this great in a candle, it is genius! Every time I go through the kitchen, I look up and then duck and cover!

The weirdest of the three I got so far (the other three are on their way). is Boston Tea Party, with notes of tea and cedar tangled in brackish seaweed absolute. Believe it! It really does smell just like that, and it’s weird in a funky fun way. The conventional tea and cedarish smell wafts up, completely wound up in a briny sorta thing — like a tea party in an old library with some old ghostie mariner wandering about the place with seaweed draping off of him. It seems out of place, but it’s just not!. This should not smell good, but it is perfect.

So for the coolest cominbation of smells that are completely interesting, I have to say I think they are worth it. But is any candle worth $50? That’s a lot harder to say, but maybe? Well, yeah, for me it is, but I wouldn’t say that’s true for most people. But if you’ll spend for The Burn candles, these should be gotten too.

Dolce & Gabbana The One — March was telling me a few of you were going on and on about this one, and I hadn’t heard of it before, so of course I ordered it pronto. Notes of mandarin, bergamot, litchi, peach, jasmine, plum, vetiver, amber, musk, available at Imagination Perfumery, for between $37.99 and 79.99. This goes on uber-fruity-ish, though not enough to start any cavities. Just about the time I am ready to chalk this up to another fruity floral, the base notes assert themselves and drag it back from the edge of celebsweet perfume stupidity into something that doesn’t really suck at all.. This one seems to have some of the same addictive qualities I find in Theorema, but love for Theorema makes perfect sense with the notes of cinnamon, pink pepper, amber, macassar, mysore, gaiac wood, etc. The One is not computing, but I still very much like it, and its drydown is more than the sum of its parts.

Louise bought a bottle of Tauer Orris unsniffed after reading my raves, then emailed me that it smelled nasty on her. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing, but we got together and she sprayed it on. It was … criminal. Her skin took all those glorious top notes that radiate from me like a force field of light and throttled them. Orris wasn’t inert on Louise; it curled up and died. Smelling a fragrance go wrong on someone else’s skin really drives home the whole “skin chemistry” concept – and provides a lot of incentive not to buy expensive things unsniffed. (Don’t worry, this story has a happy ending – I bought her bottle from her.) Below are several fragrances that make me profoundly grateful for my sense of smell, starting with …

Rochas Femme – new version with cumin. Notes besides the cumin are: peach, plum, sandalwood, rosewood, lemon, rose, jasmine, oakmoss, patchouli, musk, amber, civet, and leather. But you’ll mostly be noticing the CUMIN. (Can I make the font bigger here?) CUMIN CUMIN CUMIN. I laughed through the first half hour of this. It’s definitely not something I’d spray on and then sail out to church or board a plane. But even in the first four minutes, you can smell that whatever’s buried under the McCormick’s spice bottle is worth it. I’m going to agree with Angela’s guess – in the reformulation, cumin was added to try to recreate the shock value of the original for our jaded market. Whether you’d swoon or scrub would probably depend largely on your feelings about the cumin (which never goes away completely, at least on me.) It might also depend on how you feel about the original Femme, although to my nose they’re so different I find it difficult to compare them at all. Vintage Femme to me is more closely aligned with, say, Jolie Madame. Where new Femme is warm and luminous, its forerunner is cool and woody, a dark, leathery chypre with a plummy counterweight that smells … well, either a little dated or very much of its time, depending on your perspective. I’m happy with the new version, but the vintage Femme is unquestionably the more elegant fragrance, and a profoundly beautiful one. There’s really only one Femme; as Bois de Jasmin said in her eloquent review, the newer version is “not unlike attempting to clothe Michelangelo’s David.”

Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Winter Delice. Notes (via Perfumebay) are: Ginger, Norway Pine, labdanum, vanilla, gingerbread and incense. Ina described it as “Christmas in a bottle” and also referred to potpourri, which worried me. I am welcoming this one to my incense lineup with a yodel of love and open arms – like a deep breath of fresh, cold winter forest, with some ginger. It also had surprising lasting power on me. Here’s a tip — in this rare case, the online discounters seem to be cheaper than eBay. Do you like Christmas? Incense? Winter solstice? Bracing walks in the fresh outdoor air? You need to try Delice. I can imagine people hating Femme with a passion, but this one seems broadly appealing.

CK One Electric – it’s NEW!!! It says so right on the bottle. It’s the color of antifreeze – that day-glo green. No, seriously. I wonder if it glows in the dark. Anyway, it smells like the original CK One, reformulated with … antifreeze?

Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier Or Des Indes – notes via luckyscent are: bergamot, oppoponax, sandalwood, amber, vanilla, geranium, lavender. I give up on this one. I get this wonderful opening – the meat-juice of Kolnisch Juchten melding with the sparkling classic aldehydes of Piguet Baghari! Sounds interesting, right? Then 45 seconds later the entire thing collapses into … this murky essence of powdery nothing. My skin just eats it.

JAR Bolt of Lightning. Some of the other JARs are much prettier. But this is the one I told Patty I’d give my right tit for (she sent me a decant and told me keep my tit.) Bolt of Lightning starts off dark and green, like bamboo in a thunderstorm. It’s the smell of breaking tender stalks of plants in the summer, only you’re dreaming the entire thing in one of those ultra-vivid dreams that leave you feeling a little off the next day. After a good two hours, the sap moderates and is joined by a white floral – my best guess is lily, moving toward gardenia — and the combination has such surreal, disturbing beauty that I basically can’t put this on if I have to think about anything else.

Note: Imaginationperfumery appears to be selling the Apres l’Ondee EDT bee bottle online for $95. I thought Apres had disappeared from our shores completely…

lightning image: lightningsafety.com

So is this a cosmic joke? I get a note this morning that we were nominated for Best Blog on Basenotes, and now the entire Basenotes site is not responding, and I get a hacker alert and my entire computer shuts down as soon as I click on the link.

Anyway, if true, we’re jacked!!!! Not sure who else is nominated, but you can count on us for shameless vote hustling and bribery if there is still a voting period left to use for our purposes.

And thanks to everyone who nominated us!

Make sure to go visit aimtx from MUA’s new blog, Style Spy. She is a great writer with a great sense of style and will even hunt down Pucci wellies for you.

Forgot to mention that for a limited time, you can get “samples” from MDCI of all five perfumes for 35 Euro, plus shipping. Now, I put the word samples in quotes because these are not samples, they are incredibly generous bottles, over 5 mls and less than 10 mls. You can procure those big, honking samples by e-mailing the so very kind and charming Claude Marchal at parfumsmdciparis@free.fr

Winner of the drawing for a sample of Yosh Whiteflowers and Parfum des Merveilles is… Morgan! Just hit the Contact Us link over there on the left and send me your address, and I’ll send you the sample!

So where are my volunteers on those candles? BTW, did I note before that Candle Delirium (not affiliated or benefitting in any way) is about the best online retailer I know? Ordered a few things yesterday, get shipping notice before the day is over. Only Parfum1.com does as well.

MBT shoes, first shoes I ever got that had their own DVD in the box, but… well, they are really awesome. They have a weird sole so it sort of rocks, and keeps you unstable in the feet, which is good because your feet don’t get tired, and because they seem to float, you feel like you’re walking on air, and it works your legs and butt like it was their job. They have more normalish styles than the black and red number I got.

POTL parfum is one of those scents that I can never really figure out if I like or not. Some days yes, some days it’s just a Play-doh meets Cherry Horror Show. The one thing I do know, the POTL body cream is always just right — this is some amazing smelling cream.

Much to my horror, Hermes Doblis is really that good, but it took several samplings for it to really become a strong enough lust that I would spring the kind of money it took to procure Bottle 768 of 1000.

31 days until the new Chanel scents are available at selected Chanel boutiques. Mark your calendars for Feb 12.

There should be enough days for me to catch up on Rome before the new season starts on HBO. Do I really need to watch the Real Housewives of Orange County? I think I don’t, but someone convince me it is good enough trashy TV to be worth it.

Do you eBay? If you do, do you use a sniping program? Nothing is worse than watching people bid up an item four days before the auction ends. Um, the point of eBay is trying to either get a bargain or something that is hard to find. Best eBay tool ever is an auction sniping service. I use Auction Sniper. You put in the item number, the top price you are willing to pay, and 5 or 6 seconds before the auction ends, it places the bid for you. If you are too low, you don’t get the item. If you are the high bid, it goes the next increment over the next highest bid, so you never have to pay more than you wanted to. It is a good way to discipline yourself to set a price and stick with it instead of getting caught up in bidding against someone else with five days left in the auction.

Okay, one quick trashy poll. Who is worse, The Donald or Rosie or Babwah?

In the white weeping birch tree in our back yard is a noose, and the noose branch hangs into the alley. Why do we have a noose on that tree? Ask Harrison Mackenzie, my 16-year-old Guitar Rock God (GRG) son, he put it there. His friends came over a couple of weeks ago to work on a school project, which translates to… “we’re making a movie, Mom!” meaning they took the fog machine, my DVD movie camera, opened up the garage door and put a cloud of fog over just our block which the neighbors were not as amused by as I was.

While making the movie, his friend, Chris, spied the noose and thought it would be fun to “hang himself,” for film. He’s pretty small, and he jumped up on the wood fence next to the noose, stuck his head through and then…. slipped. Harry and his friends were not paying attention when he slipped, but he must have kicked one of them or gurgled, and he was able to get his footing and prevent a hangin’.

Queue up “One Man, hangin From a Tree, but that don’t bother me… at all. Mason Proffit, Come & Gone, 1974. Love that album, hadn’t thought about that in ten years.

Did I know about the noose incident at the time? Um, no. This whole story was just related to me recently. At least he didn’t wait as long as my brothers and sister and I did to tell our mom about taking a lit kerosene lantern into our straw bale tunnel up in the hayloft of the barn. I asked the GRG what he would have done if Chris had accidentally hanged himself and it was up to him to explain the accident to Chris’ parents. The response: “I would have just thrown the body into traffic and told his parents that’s how he got killed.” This must be payback for when I sent Alex into school in 5th grade with Dorothy Parker’s Resume for one of the poetry memorization days.

Understand teenagers? ….Might as well be walkin on the sun.

There’s a little black box on my desk, and inside of it are some very rare and hard to find samples — Hermes Doblis, both the original Djedi and the reissue, Chaos, vintage Rumeur, Parfum Sacre extrait, Jil Sander No. 4 parfum, Fendi Theorema extrait, Andy Tauer’s new lavender mod — mostly things I’ve gotten from kind friends. I cherish this box, it is my little idea of heaven, and I open it regularly and paw through its contents, sniffing some vials, and then guard it as The Precccciouuuussss it is. While comparing the two Djedis, sniffing Jolie Madame vintage, I just dream about finding that mislabled Caron Voeu de Noel on eBay for a song. Voeu de Neol is, quite simply, Nuit de Noel going Supernova. Caron really needs to consider doing this one again, even for a brief limited edition run.

Running the Jil Sander No. 4 parfum under my nose, it just transports me. If you think the EDP of this is great, you should smell the parfum. It is absolutely heart-stopping in its beauty and will render you speechless. In all the places that are trailing florals in the EDP, there is a depth and some naughty bits that are surprising and haunting.

This box is my magical world, full of the rare, the old, the exquiste, the amounts are teeny and impossible to get more of, which should really make me sad and melancholy, but it is quite the opposite — it makes me deliriously happy. Understand this obsession? …. Might as well be walking on the sun.

On a less obscure note, Candle Delirium (my favorite online candle spot) has the new Modern Alchemy candles from D.L & Co. Okay, get a load of a couple of these. Boston Tea Party, notes of English black tea, cedar and blackish seaweed absolute. Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead, hey, that’s coming up in a couple of months), with notes of marigolds, frankincense. Ex Libris, infused with scents of antiquated leather-bound volumes of handsome papers and parchment permeate (HUH?!?!?). Opium Den, smouldering raisins, opiates and tobacco. Salem, notes of New England maple (not some other inferior maple from some lesser states), hickory and walnut. Tincture and Winchester, notes of wood stock, 19th century lacquer and smoky gunpowder.

Okay, I list all of there here because at $50 per candle, I just CAN’T buy all of these myself, you guys have to help. I’ll get three, the Dia, Boston Tea party and the Tincture weirdo one. Iam a huge gun nut (farm upbringing, there was a pistol or rifle in every pickup), and something with gunpowder in it has me beyond curious into obsessed. Come on, Your Fragrance Blog NEEDS You! I wish I were clever like Katie and could come up with a graphic that would illustrate how much!

After reading Marina’s review and Ina’s review of MDCI perfumes, we were so dismayed when we thought these would be so exclusive and so expensive, only Paris Hilton could afford them. Then the elegantly charming Claude Marchal’s explanation that these perfumes will be accessible cheered us right up. Being the inquisitive and acquisitive rich mafioso’s moll wannabes that we are, we prevailed upon Mr. Marchal to send us some samples. Have we mentioned how charming he is and funny? Today we’re reviewing the first three scents in the MDCI line; these were done by Francis Kurkdjian (FK).

Now, before we begin, the names on these perfumes are just not conducive to writing a good review. Part of talking about a fragrance involves using its name. But saying FK1 and FK2 really blows the sexy name component every perfume must have. So we’ve taken the liberty of renaming them. You’ll be able to see fairly quickly why we aren’t going to get jobs in the fragrance industry naming perfumes. [March says: you invest all the time and effort in the juice, and those flacons, and you can’t come up with better names? Also, the FK nomenclature is alarmingly close to the FCUK scents, which is about as far at the other end of the class spectrum as you can get. I’m going to use the French phrases from your online catalog.]

Acey Deucy (FK1) has notes of mandarine, lemon, ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, tonka bean and vanilla.

Patty: As Marina noted, it does start off like Guerlain’s Attrape-Coeur. It doesn’t veer that far off of it for me, but something in it is easier for me to wear than AC. AC stays too stout or powdery or both, and this one seems to assert the tonka bean and vanilla in a different way that makes it pretty gorgeous. I prefer it to AC, which is saying a lot, because I think AC is pretty gorgeous to start with.

March: No. 1 — “pour le jour” — I love the opening, a pop of champagne fizz with some tart citrus on the side. I can definitely see the reference to Guerlain here. It’s the least sweet of the three — greener, with more of an emphasis on the sour fruits than the florals. Somehow I like this less than I think I should. Don’t get me wrong — it’s very nice. But the drydown goes a bit flat and sour; like Patty I find myself comparing this to Attrape-Coeur, only I think A-C is a richer, more pleasing fragrance, at least on me.

Pretty Princess (FK2) has notes of litchi, peony, hawthorn, moroccan and turkish roses, violet, cedar, musk and vetiver.

Patty: This one is supposed to be all pink or rose, sweet and soft, and Lord, it is. This is the softest of pink linens and velvet and satin with a blond-haired cherub sitting in the middle of it. If you say a bad word about this, you’ll make the Baby Jesus cry. It’s like soft, pink babies, you can’t stop sniffing it. At first, I didn’t think this would be for me, no matter how pretty it was, but I’ve changed my mind… this is the one I have to have. The sillage on it is just stunning. I waft through the world in the Ferrari Daddy bought me, trailing pink furs, pink pearls, and tinkly silvery-pink giggles. How can something so wrong for a grown-up woman of 47 turn out to be absolutely right?

March: No. 2 – “tout en rose” — I could smell the rose from the start, its sweetness cut perfectly by the slightly gamey, green smell of hawthorn and peony. I kept waiting for that moment when the rose smell makes my stomach lurch – but, shockingly, we never got there. I am having a really hard time describing this one, because I like it so much. There’s something dilute about the rose – watery in a good way – more like a rose under water? Gad, that sounds stupid. This is the smell of roses from a distance during the middle of a heavy summer shower, with you safe and dry under the gazebo. Watery, woody, green with a rose underlay. My clear favorite of the three, and I can’t believe I’m typing that. Patty, help me, I’ve been kidnapped by aliens!

Le Reste de L’histoire by Paul Harvey (FK3) has notes of bergamot, mandarin, ylang-ylang, jasmine sambac, tuberose, rose, wallflower, patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla and vetiver. (translation of The Rest of the Story provided by some free translation service, so it’s their fault if I butchered French — I don’t know enough French to be able to butcher it)

Patty: (pacing in front of credit card) No! You.may.not.buy.another.perfume. All I can say is: Hold Me, Betty, Or I’ll Buy Again! As much as I liked Isvarya from Indult, this one gives the complete story on that — it is like it takes that idea and finishes it. Must be the tuberose, which punches up from the bottom of it like a scalded cat about 20 minutes after application, and then it’s like Tuberose Criminelle dressed up in her best jasmine undies. Again with the sillage, I can smell me everywhere, but it is not annoying or intrusive, it is just right.

March: No. 3 – “parure por le soir” — I am not the first blogger to comment that there is something Guerlain-ish about this one as well, and you know from me that’s a compliment. It has the rich, baroque complexity of the sort of florientals I love – Apercu and Mitsouko spring to mind here – along with a bit of the soft powderiness that appeals in many Guerlain scents, like Plus Que Jamais and Attrape-Coeur. My overall impression is the well-orchestrated notes coming all at once, rather than sequentially. This isn’t a fragrance that’s going to turn your head with its wild innovation, but if you’re looking for an evening going-out fragrance that is as elegantly constructed as your dress (or dinner jacket – a man could wear this), without smelling instantly recognizable in the way that, say, Joy and Mitsouko often do, this would be an excellent choice.

Patty: The thing I am liking the best about the Mad Dogs (we have renamed the MDCI part of it too because we can’t remember it except to think of Mad Dog 20/20, the first two initials to get it started) is that they are not going to whack you over the head with a statement. At least these three (we’ll do the other two next Wednesday) develop slowly and beautifully, but I noted in trying all three of them that the sillage is really gorgemous. It is not linear, it catches you here and there as you walk through a room or move, and you just want to find that smell to try and get a little closer to it.

If you want to buy these, you can either get them in the stunning presentation for lots and lots of filthy lucre, or you can get them, for the time being, in the aluminum containers for 1.5 ounces for 130Euro or the 2.5 ounces for 150Euro (about 170 and 200 U.S.) by e-mailing the so very kind and charming Claude Marchal at parfumsmdciparis@free.fr.

Have we done a drawing this weeK? No? Well, let’s fix that. Drop a comment if you want in the drawing for a sample set of all five of the MDCI scents.

I was enjoying the group diss of Danielle Steel’s new fragrance on Scentzilla and Perfume-Smellin’ Things, when I got to thinking: are there any celebrity scents I really like? For the purposes of today’s post I’m not counting scents released as brand extensions by fashion houses like Juicy Couture or Betsey Johnson; I’m talking scents by people who have nothing other than their own name