Today’s review is of the iconic Mugler Angel created in 1992 featuring notes of honey, vanilla, chocolate, caramel and patchouli (and some fruits/berries, depending on where you look up the notes.) Whether you love it or hate it, it was (and remains) an undeniable, unmistakeable, ground-breaking fragrance. We also review The Different Company Jasmin de Nuit, with notes of jasmine, star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, sandalwood and amber, for no other reason than we dithered and dallied in our decision-making regarding a man’s scent to review. But it’s undoubtedly worthy of a word or two.

Mugler Angel

• Patty: Whyyyyyy did I agree to this? Just stick razor blades in my coffee next time… I’d rather that than ever have Angel on my skin again. Years ago, I put on Angel, and was seized with a fit of snerfuffling (this is like when you spit out something really awful out of your mouth — think Tom Hanks in “Big” when he ate the caviar — but with your nose). And this is the weird thing about this scent. The actual notes don’t bother me, and if it were a room spray, candle, etc., I’d happily have it around, but having this gooey mess on my skin is just awful, and… it.won’t.come.off. Good thing I have a good set of choppers, I’m going to have to gnaw my arm off now.
• March: One of the joys of being a mother of four is that I have, with each child, experienced the magic moment when they throw up their Easter candy. Angel evokes for me – literally – the smell of chocolate vomit. It is the smell of 18 Cadbury eggs, a hollow milk chocolate Peter Rabbit and a few marshmallow peeps dropped on an otherwise empty stomach before breakfast, with natural consequences. I’m aware this is not the prevailing viewpoint regarding Angel, and I’m prepared for some trash talk (Apres L’Ondee smells like gerbil pee!), but I am sorry to report that’s what I get when I smell Angel. Given the endless popularity of this scent, clearly I am a bonehead. Please don’t flame the blog on my account.
• Lee: I didn’t put this on my skin. In fact I never have. I’ll tell you why. I spent a large number of my formative 20something years in London. I used to catch the tube everywhere. It’s always warm and damp down there and you can feel the fungi start to grow in your pits if you wait too long for a train. I used to entertain myself by watching the little dun coloured mice run along beside the tracks, imagining their funny little nocturnal lives. That’s if the platform wasn’t crowded, because then my nose would take over as my chief sensory domain. Body odour, burgers, stale hair grease (how does fresh smell?), perfume. And the dominant force, striding ahead of the pack in all her glory throughout the whole of the 90s was Angel. She could slay any other smell at 20 paces. If she wasn’t busy mating with them. Angel and burgers and fries = nice babies monsters from hell. And she was omnipresent, no matter the season. A dark underground tunnel where the exits are blocked by heaving bodies is not the place to have your bronchioles close up. I choose to avoid her nowadays. She’s Lucifer’s own juice.

The Different Company Jasmin de Nuit

• Lee: Now, if the London Underground smelled like this, that place would be transformed into a bower of bliss. Naiads and dryads and other ads would nimbly caper across the platform, laughing merrily and singing hey nonny nonny. It’s gorgeous. A very pretty scent that goes on a gentle journey from floral (rather than indolic) jasmine, with a touch of zing and pinch of powder, to a spicy ambery mix. It’s more spice than flower, at least from an hour in. Give me sinful nocturnal blossom over heavenly wings, any day or night.
• Patty: There is nothing not to love here. That is all.
• March: I appreciate TDC fragrances more in theory than in practice. Mostly I don’t like the way they smell on me, although Bergamote and Bois d’Iris smell gorgeous on normal people, and I’m particularly terrified of Sel de Vetiver. My favorite is probably Rose Poivree, confirming any doubts you might have that I am, indeed, a bonehead. Somehow I seem to have missed Jasmin, which (and I’ll be checking this tonight) I believe our local niche perfumer doesn’t stock. Now this one is working on me. Jasmine is a tough note. It’s such an ass-kicker; what are you going to put with it that can stand up to The Force? I have a particular loathing for “jaznilla” (does Scentzilla have a copyright on that word?), that unfortunate confluence of jasmine and vanilla that can produce a nauseatingly sweet result. This scent is a completely different way of looking at jasmine: it toys with jasmine’s indolic aspect (that slightly-rotten note of skank) by enrobing it in cardamom and cinnamon (the main spices I smell), although there might be a dab of pepper in there, and the anise is very subdued (a good thing, in my view.) The drydown is less sweet and more subtle than a typical jasmine soliflore — it makes me think of a milky, jasmine-scented dessert — with just a whisper of sandalwood. Wow, I do go on, don’t I?

Yeah, that’s right, we have been brainstorming, and there’s a cloud of smoke and fumes coming off of our collective brains that is just fierce.

It is time for some Perfume Posse gear and just good perfume slogan gear, so we have a double contest to get us there.

First part of the contest — what do we put the slogan on? We are thinking t-shirts are… out… too many sizes, just difficult to plan for without spending a small fortune. Maybe we’ll do that later once we become a worldwide perfume-reviewing conglomerate *heavy snark*. Well, yeah, the t-shirts are right out. So the potential choices are good-looking ball caps, the ones that fit closer to the head and aren’t “trucker” hats — which mystifies me why those ever came back in style. They are worn by farmers and truckers, usually covered in dirt, sweat and completely bent out of shape. No self-respecting farmer ever wore a brand new hat anywhere but out to the field to break it in. Sorry, off topic… again. So a hat, a USB jump drive, a mouse pad, a travel mug — insert your entry here. If you can come up with something else, that’s a part of the contest. Suggest your idea for “thing to put it on” in the comments, and the thing that we wind up using will be put up as a choice for you to vote for the winner.

Second part of the contest — logo. Maria and Elle already have entries, even though they don’t know it. I hope i wrote these down right, but Elle’s is “Life is short… perfumes are many.” Maria’s entry is “So many perfumes… only one skin.” Those are the first two entries, and we are looking for more! We’ll leave the comments open for a week to take entries. Once it is closed, we shall confer and vote and narrow it down to a manageable number, and please don’t be hurt if we don’t take yours — there are no hurt feelings in perfume. But as incentive to have you give it your best shot, I’ll have another drawing from those making an entry in either phase of this today, and be giving out their choice of two Serge Lutens samples.

We’ll then take the slogans and the “thing to put it on” in a vote for all of you to decide. The winner of the slogan contest and the winner of the “thing to put it on” contest will each get the first “thing” we put the slogan on, plus a couple of perfume sample goodies I’ll put together as a thank you for everyone’s entry that gets used in the vote.

Okay, you clever people and even unclever people, the comments are open for your submissions. And if you think you are unclever, give it a try anyway. I was so unclever as a child, my my daddy always used to tell me … even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then.

Our spam filter caught 1068 spams in a 20-day period recently, mostly pornographic, including the one that inspired the title of today’s post (I guess that’s in contrast to your prosaic, workaday shemale). Anyway, for those of you (pitbullfriend, etc.) who’ve been mistakenly caught by the filter – if it makes you feel any better, I am now routinely identified as a spammer on my own blog. The same thing just happened to me on Made By Blog. Is there a message here? Can the spam filter see into my soul? If your comment goes *poof* – you’ve just been filtered. Contact Us and we can undelete it. Next time it happens to me, I’m going to experiment with changing comment identities and see if that helps.

I’d like to start off today’s Candy with a review of Le Labo Aldehyde 44 – a fragrance so exclusive that it’s sold only at Barneys in Dallas, so you can’t have any unless you live in Dallas. Because it’s exclusive – it excludes you. Okay, maybe you can have some if you live near Dallas and can drive there. Or if you fly through Dallas on business – or, if you have friend in or near Dallas, or know someone who flies there on business. Or, if you sign on for a bottle split (thanks Amy!), which is how I got my sample. Or, if you live anywhere in the United States, you can buy a sample on eBay, because it’s just that exclusive.

I had my makeup done at a Clinique counter in Dallas years ago, going for something typically Clinique (youthful and subtle), and emerged into the daylight looking like one of those exotic shemales in a Robert Palmer video from the 80s. In my hometown of Washington, D.C., it would be just the opposite: you could go to the fly girls at M.A.C., or sidle up to the goth SAs selling a new Dior makeup line called Midnight Strumpet, and ask for Full Face, and you’d still emerge looking fresh and ready for a game of tennis at the club .… where was I? The truth is, I love Aldehyde 44, which breaks new ground by being all about the aldehydes and not much else. It doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t do anything, it just sits there and shimmers like a bottomless glass of champagne, and what is not to love about that? It’s …. aldehydes. Okay, trying again with something less stupid-sounding: it’s not perfume-y. It’s not an aldehydic opening grafted onto anything, like the wonderful opening of Piguet Baghari, which then goes on to become a different fragrance – a fragrance with strong references to a vintage classic. 44 has a more contemporary feel, but it manages not to veer in the other, too-powdery direction either. It’s a study on a single smell, although it is not in any way simple – in fact, I think the “44” refers to the ingredients list, and it feels quite complex. There are some sort of white florals in there (jasmine?), and maybe that’s part of what makes the aldehydes feel so beautifully balanced.

KISS Her: from the ULTA website, “features top notes of apple-tini, wet fig leaves, racy bull accord and red peppercorns followed by middle notes of red poppy, black orchid, sueded frangipani petals and calla lily. Base notes of amber crystals, musky bare skin accord, patent leather and mahogany give the scent a sensual finish.” Yeah, whatever. I am old enough to remember this goofball band (pictured at the top in their KISS stage makeup), and I really wanted to love this – come on, wet fig leaves and racy bull accord? They could get away with something pretty weird, right? My first draft looked something like this: “a sour-fruit, fresh accord that dries down into an extremely familiar musky skin scent that’s not very interesting.” Then I spent several days sniffing things to identify which skin scent this is a blatant ripoff of. Guess what? I can’t find it; in fact, the more I sniffed, the better I liked KISS Her. It’s not “me:” put another way, it’s not a bitter, jaded 40-something with a not-so-secret soft side. It’s fresh, fairly subtle, and does, indeed, smell of warm skin. It’s like a white cotton camisole on a lovely 22-year-old girl. Maybe it’s the hormones talking, but KISS Her’s almost anti-glam charm won me over completely.

KISS Him: again from Ulta: “top notes of bergamot, white pepper, anise and black cumin over mid notes of lavender, cypress, dark rum and fir balsam. The scent closes on masculine base notes of sandalwood, tonka, moss and honeyed amber crystals.” Now this was totally weird, and I wish some more guys would try it and report back on Basenotes, but maybe it’s just too déclassé for your averages Basenotes guy? I mean, would you men die of shame if someone saw this on your sink? Oh, look! Three guys have tried it on Basenotes, and as one of them said, “I saw this in Dillards and laughed… until I smelled it.” A peppery stankfest of cumin, cypress and sandalwood, this smells like sweat, but clean sweat. Like a hot young guy in a tee shirt. Like Harry Potter in Equus. Okay, thinking about something else now. Guys: maybe you could hide the bottle in your underwear drawer? Women: if you liked Kingdom, or Femme (reorchestrated), but want something a little more butch, this is for you.

Annick Goutal Chene Imperiale – I can’t find out anything at all about this. I assume it’s a home fragrance. It’s smoke and earth, with a faint breath of florals. On the campfire scale it’s somewhere between the new Kolnisch Juchten and Diptyque John Galliano. Stunning.

Heeley Cardinal — notes via Luckyscent are: incense, cistus, grey amber, patchouli, vetiver. Every time I put this on I think, maybe you can have too many incense scents. This one makes me think: so what? I need another incense frag like I need a third eye (or another kid; a third arm would be helpful, because then I’d have somewhere else to try scents.) Then I make my little squinchy-face and get back to my regularly scheduled life. Maybe four or six hours later I get a whiff of myself and think, wow, what is that great fragrance? And I realize it’s Cardinal, which almost fits into the CdG incense series, standing closer to Kyoto’s slightly sweet dryness than Avignon’s heavy cathedral. Hmmmm. Maybe you can’t have too many incense scents after all.

images: KISS band photo, gamasutra.com; Kiss Him and Her from Ulta.com; Robert Palmer “Addicted to Love” still, sterago.com; Daniel Radcliffe: fantasymundo.com heh heh. For a side of Hairy Potter you’ve never seen, click here or here. If you’re reading this at work … WTH, aren’t you supposed to be working?!?! Anyway, don’t visit those images unless your cube-farm spot is private.

Sniffapalooza has a new magazine! You must go visit it, their first issue is up and is chock full of interviews and reviews and links. Raphaella Brescia, and I’m really looking forward to what she’s going to be doing with this — it’s off to a great start!

Brit’s shaved head…. WTF? Brit, babe, rehab, stay more than a day, chain yourself to the toilet if you have to this time. It won’t be fun at first, but surely… surely it will be worth not losing custody of your boys. I’ve gone through a divorce, and I know it’s a killer feeling that you failed at something you had so much hope for, but you need grow up, lose the selfish crap, quit wallowing in pity and pull yourself together. Easier said than done when you seem to be losing your damn mind in such a public way. But trust me, we are all out here pulling for you and want to see you back healthy and happy.

American Idol — who watches, and do you have a favorite? I’m going for the bank teller that belts out a song like Etta James. She may not win, but I’d buy her albums.

Anyone watch About a Boy? That movie with Hugh Grant and the goofy looking kid? You can see him in the inset photo on the right to nudge your memory. That bigger picture is what he looks like now. Yeah, exactly. It was a great movie, one of my favorites, despite having Hugh Grant in it.

So those mornings you wake up, look in the mirror and think…. ugh…makeup may make a difference, but I just don’t want to even make the attempt on this fug (extra points for any who knows the origin of this word, which is different by about 10 years from the place I first heard it). Because, sometimes, trying to make it better makes it look a lot worse. I used to do stained glass, and I’d sometimes (often?) make a boo-boo with my soldering gun or with the foil, and then I’d try to fix it. The longer I tried to fix it, the worse it looked. This rule applies to tired faces too, and the older you get, the more it applies. Sorry, Pam, you just do no makeup so well.

These are my favorite products for those days when you have to put on something, but you just can’t do a full face because you’ll be risking the “I have a Mask instead of a Face” look, which also serves well in the dog days of summer. Becca shimmering skin perfector in opal — makes you look like you have a glow when your face-bulb has gone dim or out. Beauty Addict pointed this amazing product out a couple of weeks ago, and it is perfection. It is even more amazing if you dust some Caron La Poudre in Radieuse over it. Caron’s powders are simply the best thing in the world –finely milled, they make your face ultra smooth and NOT powdery. The powder starts out light, but just melts into your skin and gives you a great glow and smooths out your complexion. I don’t even like face powders and wear none, and I adore this. Then I go directly to the Chanel Winter Nights quad, which is quite simply the best eyeshadow quad ever made, the colors are perfect and can go from subtle to smoky, and it’s a complete shame that they did this as an LE, it should be a staple in the line. You can do this as light or as heavy as you want. On the crap-face days, take a really light hand there, Astro. Finish it all off with the YSL gold tube mascara in the color green. I have lots and lots of mascaras that I love and use for different reasons, but I adore the YSL mascaras, and the colors they make them in are just perfect if you want to make sure to avoid raccoon eyes. Now you can head out the door without worry.

Drawing for this Friday — I have been remiss and not expressed my deep love, affection, admiration and lust for the House of Caron this month, so let me do it in a drawing. I have most of the Caron urn parfums. So (my most overused word, Lee) drop a comment that you would like in the drawing, and the TWO winners can choose two Caron samples each they would like sent to them.

What is/are the product(s) or fragrance you use on those days when any attempt to make you look better has a 75% failure rate?

When were you happiest?
This morning. Matt did something daft and silly and rude when I was momentarily out of the room. I returned to much merriment.

What is your greatest fear?
Losing my mental faculties and having moments of clarity where I’m fully aware it’s happening.

What is your earliest memory?
Falling onto a radiator edge and gashing open my head. But my mum tells me it wasn’t a radiator; it was a park bench. What does she know? I was one and a little bit.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Lots of people - those who get on quietly with their own apparently unremarkable lives, but who seem to touch others in exceptionally powerful ways. We all know simple human wonders like these.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Approval seeking.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Intellectual laziness (though deplore’s a bit harsh - see what I mean about approval seeking?).

Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever bought?
A car. I wanted to lie, but it’s often best to be prosaic.

What are your most treasured possessions?
My perfumes. And some rare plants in my garden.

Where would you like to live?
Some days Mendocino CA as it was a decade ago, some days the Costa de la Luz in southern Spain, but generally I’m content right here, right now.

What makes you depressed?
More things than there’s room to list here, if we mean a little bit grumpy. I’m easily begloomed. Properly depressed? I’ve never got to the bottom of it.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
In the past, as a child, my moles: once, on holiday, a small boy standing behind me in an ice cream queue asked his mum why I had brown dots all over me. He had revulsion in his voice (or so I thought). Nowadays the hard skin I battle with on my feet.

What is your most unappealing habit?
Finding farts immensely entertaining and using them as musical arrangements.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Matt - undoubtedly.

What does love feel like?
It’s ineffable. And never twee.

Who would play you in the film of your life?
I hope it could be William Shatner.

What is the worst thing anyone’s ever said to you?
People have always been very kind to my face.

What is your fancy-dress costume of choice?
Pyjamas.

Have you ever said ‘I love you’ without meaning it?
Of course - especially to a bottle of perfume.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
‘The key thing is…’

To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
Trevor Jones. I ruined his new felt tip pens when I was 10 - on purpose. And a boy called Robert - I’m too embarrassed to explain why. I was a bully.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
All the Perfumeposse team and the lovely commenters. Seriously. We’d also have eye-candy waiters. Why not?

What is the worst job you’ve ever done?
Drilling minute holes into the interior plastic frames of car doors so that their material coating wouldn’t bubble when it was applied. I broke a drill bit for every other hole I drilled. And there was a £1 000 000 machine that was supposed to do it anyway. Soul sucking servitude.

What has been your biggest disappointment?
Most perfume releases. However, one or two make up for it, and then some.

If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Nothing. I tend not to think like that - there lies madness. I’ve done some dodgy and risky stuff I’m not proud of though. I was lucky.

How often do you have sex?
Nobody’s interested in this question, surely.

What is the closest you’ve come to death?
Pneumonia and pleurisy, September 05. It was touch and go for a short while.

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
An energy injection every morning.

What song would you like played at your funeral?
“I’ve Never Been to Me” by Charlene (joke).

How would you like to be remembered?
As someone who smelled better alive than dead.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Nice guys and gals don’t often finish first but they jolly well ought to.

Where would you most like to be right now?
Guerlain, Champs-Élysées, Paris.

Tell us a joke.
What do you call a man with a rabbit up his bum? Warren (apologies to Patty’s DH).

(Shatner c/o http://kotaku.com)

I was a complete witch to The Big Cheese. We were driving to another city, and we were already behind schedule, which wasn’t his fault. But I was annoyed and wanted to get going already. Then he wanted to stop for coffee on the way out of town to perk himself up for the drive, and I whined — so he didn’t stop. I’d left the house fragrance-free because everything I own just seemed wrong that morning, which should give you an idea of my general mood. Something in the back of my mind kept chafing me – a fragrance I knew I’d overlooked, one I could smell the hazy outlines of but couldn’t quite remember. (I know that sounds nuts, but has that ever happened to you?) Then I realized what it was. Mandragore! That pluperfect pamplemousse that makes me think of the Annick Goutal boutique in Paris, which is where I bought it two years ago – in February! That was exactly what I needed to put on, and then the entire trip would be back on the right track!

So I said to my husband, who’d just been forced to forgo his latte by his sullen wife because we were in such a big fat hurry, that we needed to go back to the house. What I said was, “We need to go back to the house right now, I forgot my Mandragore.” You know what? He turned that car right around. Didn’t even ask me what a mandragore was. My guess is either he was scared it might be some sort of Terrifying Feminine Article; or, he was thinking: yeah, and don’t forget to grab your broomstick and your cauldron while you’re at it.

The next day I let a good, dear friend – who likes to sniff my samples on occasion, and would do anything for me – smell some Donna Karan Chaos, among other things. She hoovered up that Chaos off her wrist, beatific smile on her face, and she said, wow! Wow, that is amazing! Where can I get some more of that?!? And you know what I said to this woman, who would cleave to my children and raise them as her own if I were run down by a bus, although she’d probably draw the line at having sex with my husband? I said, I’m sorry. They don’t make that any more, and you can’t fall in love with it, because it’s mine.

Okay, now it’s your turn. Tell me: have you committed any fragrance sins? Lied to someone about what you were wearing? Drove by Saks on the way to a party just so you could put on some Armani Prive Cuir Amethyste when you realized your decant was empty? Gave someone you hated a fragrance you hated? Refused to share? Trust me, nobody’s reading the blog today! It will be our little secret.

mandragore: embruns.net

First – Winner of the Chanel Les Exclusifs samples from the drawing about ten days ago is…. Amarie. Just hit the Contact Us button over there on the left, let me know your mailing address, and I’ll get these sent off to you.

Are you sick of Chanel yet?

Some fragrances are a little shy, aloof, and you really just have to take them off on their own, ply them with a little vino, some chocolates, talk them into taking off their glasses so you can see their beautiful eyes… and she will tell you all of her secrets. That sentence is the reason why I’m not a boy, I would have been a total slutty cad. 31 Rue Cambon is one such sullen miss when you meet her. Once you start peeling back her layers and getting to know her, she is whip-smart, funny, sarcastic and a little pessimistic. First time I spritzed her on, I just had to put her to one side… later, I said. That’s just too complext to sort out. She is a little jarring at first, but given time to develop, 31 Rue Cambon sweetened on my skin and became rich and glorious. This is not a shrinking violet, and it can be a little off-putting at first, but give it time, and you will come to love her too. I’ve heard some comparisons to Guerlain’s Attrape Coeur, and I get that a little, but 31 Rue Cambon changes so much my skin after it goes on, it’s not even close to AC. I’m thinking that a lot of these are very reactive to skin and become very individual. (painting is Biondina c. 1879)

I really can’t say much about 28 La Pausa except, she spritzed, she was beautiful — for a minute — and she left. I’ve had no problem with longevity like some people have had, except with the Eau de Cologne (this is to be expected with that one!). My sister switched her love from Coromandel to 28 La Pausa, and I totally get it, if she would just hang around! So for those of you lucky ones she sticks with, I’m pea-green with envy and officially hate you.

Now, No. 18 seemed to be doing the same thing as La Pausa at first — doing the *poof* act — but I think 18 can be overwhelmed if there are other perfumes butting in trying to get attention at the same time. There’s the “Pickle Accord” at the start that is just a little weird, but give it time and you won’t be disappointed. It slowly dries down to a really great, nutty scent. Do any of you remember the Tickle My Wickle Chestnut Vetiver scent several of us had a thing for a while back? This is that idea, but not the same combination of notes, all grown up. Nutty earth… there, that’s my best description, and it is awe-some (full Valley Girl accent). And it is the favorite of the Mister, too. He made some really scandalous suggestion after I let him sniff it *blush*.

I had a different post prepared for today, because I was going to buck the trend, show some restraint, savor my samples of Les Exclusifs that arrived on Saturday, and write something thoughtful and measured about them in a few weeks.

To hell with that. If no less a personage than uber-critic Luca Turin can go a little nuts over these, so can I.

First off, they smell very Chanel-y – that strange admixture of lush restraint that Coco Chanel created along with her iconic knit suit, a beautifully cut garment that achieved both chic and comfort. These scents dazzle not just because they’re wonderful, but they’re appropriate for the house of Chanel and the existing fragrance line.

I’ve spent two days in hard sniffage, and these are my thoughts:

No. 18 – this is the ambrette seed star, and since ambrette seed is used as a base for non-animal-derived musk, I was expecting something, well, muskier. This is the most challenging of the set; it starts off with an odd, sour smell, like something pickled (sort of like that pickle note in Guerlain Sous Le Vent). Luca Turin describes it as “an iris-rose that sits next to the defunct Iris Gris in heaven,” which I’ll have to take his word on, having never smelled Iris Gris, but he’s the genius and there is definitely something floral lurking in there, even if it takes an hour or two to arrive on me. A full 16 (!) hours later I got the iris-rose he referenced, close to the skin.

Bel Respiro – with a wallop of grass and galbanum at the opening, this one conjures up associations with scents as varied as Vent Vert, Ma Griffe and Vol de Nuit, only Bel Respiro is less aggressive than any of those. I liked this one the least at the outset, but wait for the drydown! The green subsides, leaving a honeyed hay-like smell that grew lovelier by the hour.

Coromandel – a friend who is not into perfume took one whiff of me coming in the door and said, you smell beautiful. Which just about sums it up, although as I recall the name “Beautiful” is already taken. Frankincense, spices, benzoin and amber over an extremely elegant patchouli, which turns out not to be an oxymoron. I don’t even want to say “patchouli” – I want to use some made-up word that means patchouli-elegance. “Sublime” is already taken too. How ‘bout Mon Dieu?

28, La Pausa – mostly iris, named after one of Chanel’s retreats which featured a lot of iris. Objectively, it’s lovely. To me it’s more woody and less powdery – closer to The Different Company’s Bois d’Iris than Malle’s Iris Poudre. It has the distinct metallic tang of orris, and I’d venture that fans of that note will be pleased. Any lack of enthusiasm you note is due to my failure to develop the same fanaticism for orris that I have for, say, leather or incense.

31, Rue Cambon – a blend of iris, jasmine, labdanum and sandalwood, it’s a chypre made without oakmoss – an ambitious achievement given that oakmoss is (depending on where I read) either banned outright or on a list of fragrance ingredients that are being phased out as potential allergens. A hot-button issue for me, given that some of my beloved Guerlains are (were?) made with oakmoss, and are allegedly being reformulated with less than stellar results. According to Luca Turin, Chanel “used a pepper-iris accord instead to achieve a classical (chypre) effect in a completely novel way.” The sandalwood feels harsh to me at the opening, a sensation that’s intensified by the pepper. However. The sillage (as opposed to sniffing my skin) is indeed a lovely chypre accord, so my hat’s off to Chanel. I need to keep my nose away from my wrist, though, or the sandalwood gives me a headache – and that’s worrisome enough that I’m not sure I want to try this sprayed in the usual places as opposed to a sample squidge at arm’s length.

Eau de Cologne – I admit it: I’m a cologne slut. What is not to love about the limoncello of the fragrance world, always ready to refresh? I love them all, from 4711 to the CdG Cologne series to Christian Dior Cologne Blanche. I’ll also admit that, unless I crammed for the test ahead of time, my nose probably isn’t discerning enough to tell them all apart. (Okay, 4711 I have worn so often, for so long, I should recognize it.) Chanel Eau de Cologne distinguishes itself by opening with an interesting, mild peppered-rose note that actually becomes more pronounced over time, rendering it more perfume-y and less cologne-y, with corresponding lasting power (i.e., longer than your standard eau de cologne.)

All of these are available from Bergdorf Goodman in NYC and the Chanel boutiques in ginormous 200ml bottles for, I think, $175 apiece. (Both my local boutiques snidely insist they’re not carrying Les Exclusifs, so my apologies.) If you want to sample them all, Miss Patty is selling decant sets of the six over there to the left on her Fragrant Fripperies website. They all have decent lasting power on me, some longer than others, but lasting power isn’t generally a problem for me, so I’m probably not the best judge. No. 18, Coromandel and Rue Cambon seemed to last the longest, but even the Cologne stuck around for the better part of the day. I’ve heard a rumor that some of the scents that already existed (Bois de Iles, No. 22, Cuir de Russie and Gardenia) may have been tweaked for their re-release as part of Les Exclusifs, but haven’t read any definitive opinions on the subject, so please comment if you’ve tried the new versions of those.

image: actress Romy Schneider at Coco Chanel’s Rue Cambon apartment ca. 1960, www.verdeau.com

As I mentioned yesterday, I find it very comforting that people are picking wildly different favorites from the Chanel Les Exclusifs, which is a great when there are a number of scents released at once — that means it has broad appeal and has the ability to hook into our personal scent kinks.

BTW, if you want to order a bottle, you can get them from Bergdorf Goodman in NYC or several Chanel boutiques. Jennifer at Chanel in NYC is awesome, and I highly recommend her. 212-355-5050 to get ahold of her, and tell her that I sent you so she knows I love her.

So let me snag a couple for today to do a little closer inspection on than I did yesterday with almost no sleep. First, other than the Eau de Cologne, so far I’m not finding any of these to be too short-lasting. I’ve gotten a good five hours out of at least two of them, and while fainter, they are still ticking.

Bel Respiro — green, green, green, but a beautifully soft green. This makes me think of a tamed Gobin-Daude Sous le Buis –which, let’s face it, beautiful as it is, Sous le Buis is difficult to wear. I see a lot of this in my future, it is just beautifully elegant, but enough different that I can’t think of something else I own that is like it.

Coromandel – still my favorite of all of them just from the “well, that blows me away” standpoint. I do smell the patch in here, but it is softly done and has the hay feel (hay for me, I have no idea what the rest of you think of when you smell it!) that makes me think of the hayloft of the barn full of fresh straw, the place I spent so much of my life as a kid, reading and hiding and playing with the latest litter of kittens and imaginary friends. Do I detect some Borneo, as Luca mentioned? Well a little bit of the drydown Borneo, but clearly no chocolate, it just stays beautifull hay’ey and earthy. Remember, for me, Borneo is a GREAT thing! I really didn’t expect to like this one a lot because of the patch and amber –not a huge fan of either… Prada for women should be banned as a lethal substance. Anyway, it is TrueLove ®, and I see a long future ahead for me and Coromandel. (painting is Forbidden Fruit by Reid, 1899)

Eau de Cologne — definitely SNM Eva’esque, but not exactly the same, just the weight and feel of it, which is a great thing for me. Light, bright, sunny and crisp, this will be a summer staple when we are in the 90+ degree days and need something exactly like this. They are selling this in the 400ml bottles, as well, and I’m thinking bathing in this can’t be a bad thing. This is the one they need to make into soaps and lotions. This one is pretty short-lasting, maybe two-three hours per shot.

I will do the drawing for the Chanel drawing and post the results either Saturday or next Tuesday. Sorry I’m slow on that one!

For this week, the drawing will be for a little smidge of Caron Parfum Sacre extrait. This is almost impossible to find anyway, but so worth smelling. I wish I had more than the teeny bottle I have! Just drop a note in comments that you’d like to be in the draw!

Chanels on truck for delivery today, woot, i’m giddy!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Welcome to Menage a Trois, what we hope will be a regular feature every other Wednesday, where we three take on at least two scents for review, according to our usual High Standards of Perfume Professionalism.

Hermes Doblis – woods, musk, moss, leather, jasmine, rose, $$$$$$$

• Patty – When I first sniffed this from a wee sample a most generous perfume enabling friend sent, I thought… what’s the big whoop here? I don’t get it, $500 plus for a bottle of this stuff? It’s really nice, but …. I ignored it for a few days, but had to try again. This isn’t a scent that is going to hit you over the head with “Hey, Look how great I am!” but it does sneak up on you. Perfectly balanced between floral notes and leather, this perfume whispers money, elegance, and taste. So why do I wear it, you ask? Because it fits me too –it is down to earth and not pretentious, it slides on without effort and is like my favorite velvet bathrobe, it takes no work to love it. Worth that much money? Not for everyone, no. For me? Yup. And I’ll weep inconsolably when the bottles run out.
• March — Hey, Patty — Does the $$$$$$$ sign up there mean they stuffed a lot of dollars down into the bottle? It smells like they did. I smelled this among 47 other things in Chicago. At the time, it didn’t make much of an impression. I am now sitting here with my nose affixed to my left wrist, a position I have been in long enough to develop a cramp. Doblis demands the question: does this thing smell so unbelievably beautiful only because I know how impossible it is to get? When I smelled it in Chicago it seemed more masculine to me, with more leather. This time I am getting mostly rose on an oakmoss/leather base — the drydown smells almost Guerlinade-ish to me. Do I see the word bathrobe up there? Man, the word I’d use is cloak. Or possibly crown. An impossibly sumptuous fragrance that says, you cannot afford me. I am racking my brain, and I can’t think of another leather this luxurious.
• Leopoldo — Erm, I’m not that great at reviewing scents like this, so I’m glad those luscious ladies went first. I read a little about it in order to get my head round the smell. Redesigned by Jean Claude Ellena it seems, though this isn’t much like what you expect from his usual schtick - it’s not transparent, minimalist, gauzy, sheer and that usual adjectival ticklist of stuff we associate with Patty’s lover-to-be. I’m guessing he’s been remarkably faithful to the original. What is marking it as different for me is the moss and the musk - there’s a thick (though not heavy) richness to this scent that reverberates with echoes of time past. It smells vintage. It’s also soapy and powdery in that exceptionally high class, ‘Yes I do have a waiting room, dressing room and ladies’ chamber thank you very much’ kind of way. I can see why some people would fall in love with it - nostalgia, sophistication and its rarity all make it desirable. It’s quite quite lovely without ever shouting about it.

Juozas Statkevicius — incense, jasmine, patchouli, coriander, vanilla, benzoin, musk, amber, cashmere wood, all languishing in Lithuania and unable to reach our far shores.

• March – well, I dropped my vial on the floor and it broke, so I’m even a sadder sack than Patty or Lee. But I got a good, hard sniff over several days, and I’m going to cite Marina’s Cheesesteak Syndrome — i.e., you hear about how wonderful something is, build up your expectations, and are invariably disappointed in the reality. I got the Cheesesteak Syndrome with Juozas. I love incense — love, love, love. I can’t think of a single incense-dominated fragrance I can’t wrap myself around, even the dank Messe de Minuit. (Myrrh is another story.) So, sure — I liked Juozas. It’s not as dense as, say, CdG Avignon, nor as cold as the Armani Prive. I’m not sure there’s another fragrance I’d come up with a direct comparison to. But … but … there’s a note in there at the beginning, a sweetness (maybe a combination of the jasmine and vanilla?) that drifts in and out, and I don’t like it. It seems out of place in the fragrance, and its random emergence bugs me more than I’d think it would.
• Leopoldo — Erm, March… Sad sack? Whachoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis? Just try to prove it… Anyway, I always imagine I love incense scents, and I own a few. But I hardly ever wear them. There’s also one I detest (and sandwiched between these two hottie perfumistas, I think I’m alone on this one) - the Messe that is a foul Minuit. The very thought of it brings on nausea. This of course meant that when I heard Etro’s baleful fumes mentioned alongside this new and rare exotic beast, I thought I’d have to steer well clear. I was wrong really - I get none of that damp menace from You-Owes-Us (see how phonologically helpful I am? Lord alone knows whether I’m right though), but it doesn’t excite me either. Some very clever person (I’m looking at you, Solander, you wonder!) in a blog I can’t read (language issues, rather than shock) made a pictorial link between the advertising imagery from this scent - glam blonde in 30s androgynous gear - and Weimar era Marlene Dietrich. And there is perhaps a thread of decadent sophistication running through this one. But there’s something sour in the first hour or so that’s a little offputting for me at least (like someone has melted a Haribo accord into it), and then it is a somewhat straightforward mix of incense, amber and musk. I’m a long way from king of amber and musk, so its appeal is a little wasted on me. I can imagine on the right person (my head says woman, but that’s marketing for you) it’d smell damn sexy. However, I am now craving some Haribo sours, even if I claimed not to like the accord. Make of that what you will. Oh, and Patty: March and I have just about left enough room for you. Try to say something snappy, would you?
• Patty – I sorta get the hype on this, but it’s probably not so much me. I really don’t like the initial blast, it is way too barber shoppy and medicinal, but as it dries down and the incense takes over that rough beginning, I wind up liking this very much. Worth the time tracking it down and getting it here? Not for me, but if it ever gets more accessible, I’d certainly like having a bottle of it around. Lord, you two sure can rattle on.

Is this post about perfume? Not so much. I’m just killing time while waiting for the Chanels to get in so I can put up a post later today once I get a chance to sniff them. SQUEEE! Sorry, isn’t everyone just waiting to hear? So look for that hopefully by afternoon or early evening.

You get a story while we wait together. When I was a little girl, I loved my Barbies. Being of the poor sort of Kansas dirt farmers, we didn’t have a lot of Barbies or Barbie clothes or clothes or entertainment or money. My dad was a TV Tyrant. We could only watch TV when he wanted to watch something, which led to my deep appreciation of Lawrence Welk and Hee-Haw. Listen, Buck and Roy’s “that’s good” “No, that’s bad” bit about how things kept getting worse was a true classic. Sissy and Bobby’s dancing? Yeah, they’ve got your Dancin’ with the Stars right there.

Bonanza and Lancer were also a part of the White Family’s evening viewing. Both were westerns, but of the two, I loved Lancer — not just the hunky actors (this text is sandwiching the really handsome actors — hmm, I think the old guy is the best looking now) — but the stories were better, the characters were a little darker. Bonanza thrived in family hourwhere Lancer only had a season or two and was gone.

There was Johnny (the dark-haired one — how dreamy is he!?) and Scott (the fair-haired) and their dad, Murdoch. Well, what does this have to do with Barbies? Well, my Barbies were huge Lancer fans, they enacted parts of the show a couple of times a week, but inserting themselves as the love interest of the Lancer boys. Yes, it was too the Barbies, not me!

My imagination was pretty active and wild when I was a kid — well, okay, it’s lasted most of my life, but it was pretty much off in the outer realms until I was about 15 or 16. My brothers and sister liked to torture me generally when I was young because I far preferred to go off and make up pretend stories in my head and with my Barbies than to play “touch” football with them. They always “said” it would be just touch football, but they knew when I was getting tired of playing, and then they tackled me, and I would huff off in a snit.

One day I was sick, and my mom let me sleep in her bed because… I have no idea why, but I grabbed all my Barbies and headed in to spread out the Barbies and weave a wild fantasy involving the Lancer boys. Now, somewhere along the line, my brother Harry hid in the closet and my sister Shirley crawled under the bed in my mom and dad’s rooom and listened in on my play-acting with the Barbies, which included a lot of “Oh, Scott, Scott, come back!” and “No, Johnny, don’t leave me, I love you both” sort of thing. Whaaat? I couldn’t make up my mind which one I liked more the Barbies liked both Johnny and Scott. At some suitable moment, like when they couldn’t contain their laughter anymore, they both came rolling out of their hiding places. To this day, I have not lived down the “Oh, Scott, come back” comment whenever they want to use some shorthand way of saying I was a loon as a kid.

Gratuitous fragrance reference: Apres L’ondee pure Parfum…I am a really big idiot, this is better than the EDT, though they both are excellent. Serge Lutens Chene? Mucking around in the deep forest while wearing MKK. Is this a good thing? Not sure yet, but I’m pretty sure Johnny Lancer would have worn it.

You could argue that I’m too much of a prissy, naive American to appreciate the truly liberated sophistication of the Etat Libre d’Orange fragrances. Another potential viewpoint might be that browsing their line is like watching my four-year-old son run around naked, waving his tiny pecker at me. It’s endearing while also being irritating and childish.

The line has 11 scents available right now with a couple more on the way (if they aren’t at Bendel already), and they range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Here’s a random sampling, with descriptions clipped directly from Patty’s decant store:

Sécrétions Magnifique (magnificent secretions): iris, cocoa, sandalwood, opoponax – given the traffic this has gotten, I was expecting something horrific. However, I didn’t get the Money Shot (aka what Patty called the Cum Accord). It was more of a Blood Accord. The blood smell, combined with a twist of sweet breast milk, is what makes it so intense – the metallic edge of the scent seems less like sperm to me than a mouthful of blood. The whole effect is a giant DANGER DANGER DANGER warning sign flashing on the side of some stretch of deserted highway late at night. The fragrance equivalent of a car wreck. Frankly, it wasn’t any more horrifying than…

Encens et Bubblegum (incense and bubblegum): peach, raspberry, vanilla, lily of the valley, orange blossom musk, incense — if bubblegum could crawl out of your darkest nightmare, blow itself up and smother you, you’d be getting close to this. One of the worst fragrance assaults I have ever endured. This would be a fine place to note that most of the Etats lasted 24 – 36 hours on me, easily, through daily hot baths. Consider yourself warned.

Nombril Immense (large belly button): patchouli, balsam of Peru, vetiver, black pepper, sweet myrrh, bergamot, carrot seed, ambrette seed. I picked this early on to try, because how can I resist that name? Melding balsam to an extremely condensed bergamot-rich classical cologne, it dries down to a very pretty, mildly peppery balsam with a touch of myrrh.

Putain Des Palaces (hotel whore): Rose absolute, violet, leather, lily of the valley, tangerine, ginger, rice powder, amber, animal notes. My notes say: “Rochas Femme (new version) over the wet spot on the bed.” I could rework that into six more sentences, but why?

Rien (nothing): incense, rose, leather, iris, rock rose, oakmoss, styrax pyrogene, patchouli, amber, cumin, black pepper, aldehydes. The top notes remind me vaguely of Cumming, by Alan Cumming – there’s a lot going on at once, and it has that same earthy darkness, but sharper – closer to Le Labo’s Cistus. It’s strong, with a note in there that registers as almost mentholated. Just about the time I was ready to move on, the drydown bloomed – a blend of spices and incense that floored me so much I went back the next day and reapplied, just to make sure I had the right sample, because I didn’t see it coming at me like a freight train from Heaven when I put it on. It reminds me a bit of CdG Palisander, only spicier and with amazing lasting power — sillage after 48 hours! My winner in the line, by a landslide.

Jasmin et Cigarette (jasmine and cigarette): jasmine absolute, tobacco, hay, apricot, tonka bean, turmeric, cedar, amber, musk. Really, it’s lovely, but all I get is jasmine absolute. I like jasmine absolute very much, but I already own three more-or-less soliflores, and I’m not interested in another.

Antihéros (anti-hero): lavender, musk, wood. A traditional men’s cologne, mostly lavender with a woody, musky base. Look — I can be brief.

Vraie Blonde (true blonde): aldehydes, Champagne, rose, white pepper, myrrh, patchouli, suede. This opens with a flurry of bubbles – aldehydes, champagne, and the nose-tickle of pepper – and for the first five minutes it vaulted to the top of my list of favorites. The rose and myrrh begin to emerge, the aldehydes fade a bit, and it becomes almost creamy. Then the damn thing collapses in on itself like a soufflé. I stood there and stared at the wreckage and tried to figure out what was wrong. In the space of 90 seconds it goes both dramatically flat and sweet. Vraie Blonde would be a textbook example of my inability, for better or worse, to separate my personal preferences from my reviews of fragrances. If you like creamy, rosy scents that don’t smell plastic, maybe you’d like this, and the blonde does smell expensive. But it is too syrupy sweet for me.

Je Suis un Homme (I am a man): bergamot, orange bigarade, lemon, myrtle, cinnamon, clove, cognac accord, leather, patchouli, animal notes. Sometimes when you mix all the colors of the rainbow you get: brown. A muddy, sullen mess of a fragrance.

Eloge du Traitre (praise of a traitor): pine, laurel, mugwort, clove, geranium, jasmine, patchouli, leather, musk. I admit it: I have a soft spot for aggressive herbal scents (Diptyque Elide and L’Eau Trois spring to mind here.) Do I think this scent is genius, or even that innovative? No. But if you like the dark, somewhat astringent smell when you stick your head into the bushes, or wandering the herb section of the plant nursery, you’d probably like this.

Divin’enfant(Divine Child): orange blossom, rose, amber, musk, leather and tobacco. Weird. I get none of the OB, which I’m counting as a blessing, because I think I’ve read some complaints about a sweet mess. The Big Cheese sniffed this and literally recoiled. I get a murky leather that is reminiscent of Miller Harris Rien with less hogpen.

What I know about constructing a fragrance could be written on the inside of a matchbook, and there would still be room for the bartender’s phone number, but several of the Etats smell so … random to me, like the perfumers grabbed the beakers blindfolded and threw them together. Second, I can’t help wondering whether I liked a few of these simply because some of the others were so off-putting. It’s an interesting marketing concept to ponder, isn’t it, releasing a line of scents with few stinkers so the others are a welcome relief? I’m not a perfumer, but I’m willing to wager that creating the Money Shot smell isn’t all that difficult, in comparison to capturing other smells. Bubblegum or Cum, I’m skeptical of this line’s intentions – a position that isn’t helped much by the name of their upcoming fragrance, Don’t Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don’t Swallow.

Regarding the ELO image (for you young’uns, that’s a 70s band): my decision was guided by the following quote about the band’s Greatest Hits CD, from concertlivewire.com:

“Despite covering all the bases, the … main flaw is the fact that it doesn’t hold up well over time. The material made its mark in yesteryear but fails to translate with the timelessness of other oldies acts, and on the particularly outdated selections, make for a pretty painful listens.” In 40 years, which of the niche brands we’re drooling over will have become timeless? Is Etat going to be the Beatles … or ELO? Is there a new-ish niche line out there that you think is early Beatles?

(PSA for Today — if you want an 8.4 oz Guerlain No. 68 for $168.79, call the Bellagio Guerlain boutique at 702-693-7923. This is the one that was Similar to Guet-Apens and Attrape-Coeur, pretty much the same one. They still had a few left last night)

Paco Rabanne Calandre used to be one of my favorite perfumes back in my 20s. I don’t remember why I stopped wearing it. I guess some bright, new shiny thing went flitting by. As I looked at the notes for it, I was horrified — it has Lily of the Valley in it! *making sign of cross*. What kind of youthful fragrance pecadillo was that? I hate Lily of the Vally… with a passion and then just a dollop of detestation. I mean, look at it… upside down flowers, isn’t that the sign of Satan? Was I so young I just didn’t know what I hated back then? Was I possessed? Well, yeah, that must be it, that’s the only explanation I have. Since I am going down scented memory lane of all the perfumes I have loved and worn in my life, I bought a bottle to try and see if it had the same magic I thought it had (despite this wretched LotV). When it goes on, there is that horrific LotV, but that seems to get on its broom and fly back to Hell quickly and becomes the same magical scent I loved back then. Then my memory is refreshed — I did NOT like the open on this back then either, but it was worth it to endure those short horror-filled moments to get to what is still a gorgeous perfume… green and woods and it feels a little musky, in a green way.

The scented memory lane will make stops at Coriandre, KL, K de Krizia, Cinnabar, Charlie and… Giorgio in the coming weeks! Yeah, I’ll bet y’all can’t wait for that.

People keep asking me which ones of the Pud Etat line I like. My favorites are Vraie Blond, Jasmin et Cigarette and Rien. I like Palace Whore just fine, though the other three are more to my personal taste. There are several other good ones in there, as well.

And it appears Mah Baby has been hiding from me all of my life. When Serge Lutens’ Cuir Mauresque showed up on my doorstep, I was prepared to hate it… hate it with the same passion I hated milking cows in the winter with their snow melting on their backs and plopping on my head while I was down putting on their chains and milkers. Wow! Love Me Do! This really is the loveliest bits of leather and softness. You guys could have told me about it earlier, you know. I thought we were friends.

What perfume from your youth do you most want to try again to see if you really loved it that much?

Lily Picture from The Loft Gallery

Fath de Fath parfum and EDP – notes via Osmoz are: Blackcurrant, Tangerine, Lemon, Pear, Lily of the valley, Heliotrope, Tuberose, Orange Blossom, Patchouli, Vanilla, Benzoin, Tonka. The EDP you can still buy online; I think the parfum is vintage (Patty?) I’ve read various definitions of what makes a fragrance a “classic” — in this case, it’s absolute smoothness. Nothing sticks out, nothing jars or snags. It’s a golden orb of sweetness, from the berried, faintly indolic orange blossom of the opening, hitting a high note of muguet, before descending in pitch to the rich, vanilla base. The parfum is creamier, but the EDP has monster sillage and is lovely in its own right. If you like the bombshell, naughty Patous — Sublime and/or Sira des Indes, and aren’t afraid of vanilla, this is right up your alley.

Anne Pliska – one of those fragrances I had somehow never managed to run across, until Victoria O sent me a decant (I believe it’s the EDP). Notes via Luscious are: vanilla, mandarin, geranium, jasmine, bergamot, patchouli, amber, and musk. I was a little reluctant to try this fragrance, as I have a mixed relationship with full-on amber. But this! No wonder Robin at Now Smell This nominated AP on her list of cult perfumes. There’s enough going on, from the fruity-green bergamot/mandarin opening, to keep it from developing that unhappy boozy note amber can develop on my skin. It also goes through an interesting cinnamon stage, and a hint (just a hint) of Play-Doh, but I’m not complaining. Ultimately it’s a surprisingly cozy comfort scent, with sillage that stays close to the skin but lasts a long time. Sign me up for the cult. I haven’t tried the parfum, but the bottle for that one is particularly fetching.

Annick Goutal Eau de Monsieur – I was wishing for a less intense Sables, because I love the smell of immortelle, but Sables can’t be applied lightly enough to work for me. Eau de Monsieur is the oldest AG on Basenotes, and the published notes from the AG website are citron tree, oakmoss, musk, sandalwood, amber. No immortelle, right? But I swear … I swear it’s in there. Once you get past the opening salvo — a guy-cologne smell so powerful and conventional it almost seems like a jokey parody – and move into the drydown a half-hour or so, something immortelle-like sticks its head up. Maybe it’s a combination of notes on my skin, but it’s got that sort-of-maple-syrup smell that thrills me to the marrow. I’d love to know if anyone else (besides Tom, who pointed it out) gets that smell in there.

Donna Karan Gold isn’t growing on me, now that I’m smelling it in the elevators and wafting through the mall on people who’ve sprayed it on enthusiastically. Can people not smell how strong that juice is? There I am, walking along minding my own business, and I get poleaxed by a big bunch of lilies. Maybe I’m being punished for my own fragrance sins?

Hermes Parfum des Merveilles: I understand the love people feel for this, particularly folks who couldn’t quite get enough traction with the original Eau, with its notes (via Imagination Perfumery) of Elemi, Bitter Orange, Italian lemon, Indonesian Pepper and Pink Pepper, Ambergris, Oak, Cedar, Vetiver, Balsam of Peru and Tears of Siam. While I love Parfum de Merveilles, I consider it an alternative to rather than a replacement for Eau (the Elixir smells like chocolate orange to me, and I’m not going to say anything further.) The Parfum is not a jacked-up Eau; it’s a much stronger, richer fragrance, with a strong note of patchouli and much more emphasis on the woods. While it retains that spectacular ambergris note of the original, it loses some of its former sparkle, what feels like an absence of the original citrus and pepper notes. PdM is a statement, and sometimes I feel a little like it’s wearing me. The Eau cleaves to me like a second skin, one of the few fragrances I actually wear like a normal person on a regular basis.

Parfum d’Empire Ambre Russe – so, does anyone remember waaay back, when I hated this with the burning passion of a thousand suns? And thought it was too boozy and ripe and just too … much? Well, I was wrong. Notes via Luckyscent are: tea, incense, vodka, champagne, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, ambergris, vanilla, leather. Given those notes, it isn’t as overwhelming as it sounds. It’s got that vague feeling at the start of an ugly night of hard drinking, culminating in the Walk of Shame, but it’s pretending. I guess that’s what took me awhile to figure out. Really, I could wear this to church; it would be wrong, probably one of those minor sins (what are those called? amiable? menial?) and Patty would have to dig out that indulgence book she mentioned to me, but I could do it – the opening salvo of liquor and cumin and other spices settle down pretty quickly, leaving me with a smoky, leathery tea and amber. I wouldn’t smell any more vice-ridden than any of the other nice Episcopalians around me on Sunday morning.

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Cimabue – I’ve been on a saffron jag lately, and one thing led to another, and eventually I was smelling Cimabue. Notes from the DSH Website are: bergamot, bitter orange, cardamom, clementine, neroli, lemon, nutmeg, carnation, cinnamon bark, clove bud, rose geranium, jasmine, honey beeswax, Moroccan rose, Mysore sandalwood, saffron, tuberose, ciste, sandalwood, labdanum, opoponax, benzoin, vanilla. It starts off with a fairly strong burst of saffron, which makes me happy. But the really great news was a surprise. After 20 minutes or so it’s a dead ringer for a smell I have been aching for, to the point of blogging about it several months ago: the inside of the old Pier One Imports, before they repositioned themselves as a downmarket Pottery Barn. I mean that as high praise. Cimabue captures Eau du Pier One: cinnamon sticks, powdery herbal sachets, mysterious baskets of chai tea with faded labels, scented wax, wooden baskets, and dyed Indian cotton. Come on – think back. Remember that amazing smell? It was impossibly exotic to me, a white-bread girl from the suburbs; it hinted at travel to far-flung places, if only I could manage to pass trigonometry, get my braces off and graduate. Happiness comes in odd little packages, and Cimabue gave me an absurd thrill on a recent miserable, sleeting, gloomy February afternoon.

Image: lisafrickgallery.com

One of my very true best friends lives a long way away from me: she’s a hop, skip and a jump from Stanford University, whereas I’m in the rural heart of Suffolk, England (unfortunately now more known for its serial killer and bird flu than anything else). I see her much less often than I’d like and this sometimes gives me that melancholy longing for when we so much younger and she lived just round the corner. Those were the days when we’d just hang out, unthinking of the future that would place us an ocean and a continent apart…

One way we’re currently communicating is through smell - I sent J a collection of forty or so mini-atomisers just after Christmas, and she’s been wearing one a day since then. Just one a day. Seriously. Now, I’m not sure I need to point this out but I will do anyway: this marks a massive difference between our personality types. If I were her, I’d have torn open that package and every inch of exposed flesh would have been sprayed - a mélange of stinkitude would emanate from me and I’d no longer be able to tell where one ended and another begun. Even if one was Arabie and another Baby Phat DibDab. No doubt I’d expose some additional body parts just for good measure. I’d be in trouble both for indecent exposure and environmental pollution.

I don’t doubt that J’s strategy is more adept at helping her know the smells than my “spray them all and see what happens” technique. Well, technique is not really the right word… Each of her atomisers is receiving the time it deserves and being lived with rather than frenzy sniffed. I admire her for it, truly I do, cos it’s something I find next to impossible. I’m impressed by those people who are able to say, “I’ll try this one today,” as though the rest of the bottled buggers aren’t screaming loudly, “pick me! pick me!”. It’s so very rare for me to wear just one scent at any one time, even if I know and feel I should.

J, however, doesn’t stop there. My decants are stored in a number of shoddy and shabby containers (most noticeably old shoe boxes - you can see that I aim for style icon status), in a state of disarray and mumblejumblement. I occasionally attempt to stand them up to “make them look neat”, but they readily do that domino topple trick to tell me that I should end the pretending. J’s are placed in a beautiful wooden box, untested separated from tested. Not satisfied with that organisational feat, the tested scents are placed in rank order from most to least liked. My jaw hangs loose in wonder.

I’m never going to be like J on the organisational front; she’s never going to be like me. I don’t know whether you’ve ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test, either for work or fun, but if you have, you’ll know that J shows classic judging qualities, and I exhibit hard and fast perceiving ones. If you don’t know what I’m on about, you can track down a test online and find out. Really. I sometimes think it’s as accurate a match of who you are as a horoscope, but on the odd occasion it somehow seems uncannily right. And this is one example of that rightness in action. Or oddness in action. You decide.

Now, I doubt very much whether our scent tastes correspond with our personality types directly, and certainly not our Myers-Briggs profiles, but there are undoubtedly certain scents that I can admire, even love, but can’t wear because of who I am. Or perhaps more accurately, who I’m not. Rather like my wonder at J’s organisational powers, these fragrances fill me with slack jawed astonishment at their beauty - I can sneak them onto my skin in private moments but could never been seen in them in public. They’re just not me. Just as organisatonal prowess never will be.

Top of the list of JNMs is Un Lys. Now, it could be because it’s too feminine that I can’t wear this, but in my head I have it down as too pure, too precise for me to manage. I adore it, in spite of my terror of white florals, and would willingly scent the world in its sparkling beauty, but I might just as well dress in a frilly French maid outfit and crotchless knickers (please, don’t imagine) as get away with this on my skin.

Next up is Angelique Encens. You see how tough this JNM category is? I love love love AE from that honey powder candy opening, to its incense rich heart notes, yet I’m never dapper or louche enough to fit it. And I know this is subjective and that some readers will be screaming that I should just wear what I love, but the point is what I love is not always what I am.

Finally I thought I best throw in something a little more butch, for in spite of the previous two scents and the look of this blog, I’m damn manly, me (I mean - check out my pic)! Fahrenheit is one of my true loves from long ago (well, the 80s anyway), and a scent I wore out and wore out in my teens and twenties. It’s JNM now because it was exactly me back then, and I’ve changed. Attempting to recapture the past seems like a trap to me, and I’d rather enjoy the nostalgia than pretend I’m still the person I once was. So I’ll sniff it, experience the pleasant melancholia that comes with that peculiar personal engagement with the passing of time, but not try to be it ever again.

So, over to you. Tell me about your organisational derring-do, alongside any JNMs you might have.

Photo from the Sydney Morning Herald. Hat designed by Antonio Alvarado.

Hey, look what the fairies did overnight. Bitch-slapped the blog around. Which makes this the perfect post for today.

A couple of years ago, when I really started down the niche path hard core, one of the first samples I got from Aedes was Serge’s Daim Blond.

When I dabbed it on,  I remember thinking - really clearly - Wow, that’s really interesting… I don’t think I’m interesting enough to wear it.   Never ordered a bottle or sniffed it again until recently, when someone requested that I get it. This ti