To catch up on the adventures of Nawt so far, if you’re new, you can go here.  This is the continuing adventures of Nawt Agin, rookie perfumer for Irrational Fruity Florals

When we last left Nawt, he was waking up from a very bad dream.  After a very sleepless night, Nawt was sitting in front of a big mug of coffee, inhaling deeply (smelling everything deeply was a habit) and reading the newspaper.  A story caught his eye.  Jean Claude Ellena was in town!  Could this be what he was looking for?  Could the perfect JCE help him?  And what truly did he want JCE to help him with? He knew he could make the Celebridrool that he had been assigned to do, it would be easy, could do it with his beakers tied behind his back, but maybe JCE could tell him how to turn it around into something really good, and it just wouldn’t hurt to meet The Man.

Nawt checked the article for JCE’s itinerary and picked up the phone and dialed.

Nawt:  (nasal, choked voice) Halooo?  Yes, dis is Dawt.  Dawt I said, N-a-w-t.  yes, Dawt.  Sick tuday, berry, won’t be in. With what?  Dose broke.  Dose, n-o-s-e.  Can’t sbell, sssssmmmmelllll.  Tanks.

He hung up the phone, headed into the shower and got dressed.  Two hours later, he was pulling up to the museum where JCE was due to receive an award.  He parked and waited.

Off in the distance he saw something odd walking down the street. It looked like a man, an impossibly good-looking and distinguished man — Nawt felt a little breathless just looking at him —  but around his feet was some kind of cloud.  He got out of the car to get a better look.

As the man got closer, he saw it was definitely a dust cloud of some sort around his feet, but there were things popping up out of it.  Really random things… like a… perfume bottle?  And was that a cunning Red Manolo heel in there?  Attached to a very shapely leg?

Nawt stood dumbfounded as the Man in Cloud approached.  From his chiseled cheekbones, graying hair at the temples to the luminous smile, this was the most perfect man Nawt had ever seen.  He could now make out what was in the cloud, it was women engaged in a catfight – two, maybe three or more — and perhaps some perfume? as The Man walked on, oblivious to what was happening under his feet.

And… it WAS Jean Claude Ellena.

Nawt:  Monsieur Ellena, Monsieur Ellena, I beg you, can I have a moment of your time!

JCE:  Slowing down, he stopped, and the cloud of women and perfume continued to swirl beneath his feet. He turned to Nawt and aimed his beatific smile at him and said:  Je ne parle pas l’anglais.

Nawt:  What?  You speak English, right?

JCE:  Looks perplexed, smiles radiantly, smelling divine, shrugs, starts to walk away.

Nawt:  No, no, wait. I’ll find someone to speak French. Just wait, don’t go anywhere!!

(Nawt looks around, starts stopping people and cars, asking them if they speak French, gets ignored, spat on or handed a quarter. He’s getting desperate and then he spies a familiar face….

Voracia:  Hey, Perfume Man, I know you!!!

To be continued…

Original artwork by Adam Smith

I love this fragrance blogging thing. It gives me welcome respite from filling out the twins’ preschool re-enrollment forms, which were 29 pages – one set for each kid — due today. I am hopeful their college admissions paperwork will be less burdensome. At least they should be able to do the forms themselves at that point, sparing me the job of coming up with insightful answers on questionnaires like the Family Home Life Survey. Sample question: what does your child especially like to do? Answer: “play in the mud” (Hecate) and “loves to play with his balls” (Buckethead). This second answer I had to go back and obliterate with Wite-Out once I realized what I’d written (I replaced the last word with “trucks”).

Yes, to my joy, the twins have been invited back to the Learning and Creative Play Correctional Institution for a second year! Hecate has, in fact, become embedded in their institutional memory, as they had to revise long-standing parts of their operating procedures in her honor. Guidelines regarding entry-door and side-door security were tightened, along with some adjustments in the nap protocol, restrictions on climbing structures, additional lessons establishing the maximum allowable playground perimeter, and minor changes to the footwear clause.

Anyway, I went to London to buy Micallef Gaiac and came home with Black Sea instead, and today’s post is both about the fragrance and the process, which interests me enough to blog on it. I’m hoping it’ll interest you, too.

I showed up at Fortnum & Mason 20 minutes before closing, having misread the closing time (FYI the building is undergoing substantial renovation, with two floors closed, including their famous tea room, and the fragrance floor just reopened.) I looked like hell. I’d arrived that morning in London in the same clothes I’d been wearing for two weeks. I had my game face on, though, which turned out to be irrelevant, because Frances, the SA, greeted me with the same polite, slightly reserved professionalism I think I’d have gotten in a Chanel suit. I told her I was a fragrance fan, I had cursory knowledge of the line, I’d only smelled Gaiac and something else which I couldn’t remember, and I was there for a quick sample and would be back on Saturday to buy – probably Gaiac, in the absence of something else that grabbed me even more. Also, I wanted to smell Pomelos, having a love affair with the (related) grapefruit. Also, I wanted to not smell the 20 or so fragrances lined up in front of her, because experience has taught me that I’d smell everything, have a ball, and go home with (potentially) nothing. I don’t know why, but it’s true. So could she please point me to a few things in our few minutes, and we’d have another go on Saturday?

Pomelos was off the list right away — on my skin it soured and had an odd bark-like note. She sprayed a card with the Watch, which is the sort of zaftig, baroque white floral (jasmine?) I associate with my mother-in-law, God bless her, and if she were still with us I’d have bought it for her on the spot. I’m hoping it’ll be all me in a decade or two, but I’m not quite there yet. I said, let’s move in the direction of the Gaiac and away from the Watch, because I’m interested in less sweet and more strange, even masculine, if you follow me. And she did follow me, handing me Winter, one of their four seasons, which was quite interesting but ultimately too abrasive – sandalwood? (and I’m guessing a pinch of cedar.) The Patchouli was too medicinal, with a mint-like note. We agreed to try one more thing, and I left wearing Autumn, which I thought might be The One.

By Saturday, though, I’d decided that Autumn had just enough cumin to remove it from the running. I’m long over my cumin-phobia, but it’s a note I tend to focus on when I’m wearing it, and I wanted my Micallef to be about something else. With Lee for company, I dove back in, pretty sure I’d be leaving with Gaiac.

Then she handed me a card sprayed with Black Sea. (Notes listed inside the box are: pink pepper, clove, cypress, saffron, gaiacwood, muguet, carnation, sandalwood, cedar, incense, ciste, vanilla.)

Micallef offers a custom-perfume service, for God knows how much money, and I’m having trouble imagining what notes they’d run together that would be more perfect for me than what I’ve just listed above. They might as well change the name to Eau de March. You start off with a dusting of spices and it’s a bit sweet-ish; I didn’t know the notes, and just as I was beginning to categorize it mentally (woody floral?) the saffron and gaiac appeared, and they’re what makes the Black Sea work so well. Because, yes, on its own, Gaiac is lovely (I’d place it somewhere between Donna Karan Wenge and oud), but framed by the other notes it’s part of a full orchestra rather than a single instrument. Maybe someday I’ll get bored with saffron, but it hasn’t happened yet, and its warmth is the perfect foil for the more somber gaiacwood. Smelling the fragrance over the first half an hour it just gets smoother and smoother, with the incense (gentle, luminous) and touch of vanilla ultimately giving you the softest of skin scents. The carnation and muguet, to the extent that they’re detectable at all, are only there on as a vague floral presence in the opening. Unless I misunderstood, this is part of the men’s line; after the first two minutes or so there’s nothing at all floral about it. I’d place it squarely in the unisex category. The bottle is lovely, hand-painted with stylized jewel-studded coral; if you read their printed blather it’s all about the artistry of the bottles (along with corkers like: “Influenced by the romance and passion shared by Martine Micallef and her husband, Geoffrey Newman…”) The fragrance, although smooth, is quite strong and much more suited for winter in my climate, and I’ll be tucking it away until then.

An opportunity to demonstrate my ignorance: I believe the fragrance Donna Karan Wenge is meant to evoke the dark, mottled beauty of the (endangered) African wenge wood used for flooring and other things, but actual “wenge wood” doesn’t have a resinous smell; in other words, DK Wenge doesn’t smell like wenge. I also think (possibly wrongly) that agarwood, aloeswood and oud are the same thing, although maybe in different formats (with oud being a resin?) The fact that they are sourced from various countries doesn’t help clarify matters. Research on guiac/gaiac has further muddied the waters; I believe it’s a resin as well, but nothing I found talks about its particular smell (it’s used in homeopathy and also in laboratory tests). If you can shed light on any of these substances, please do so.

Availability: In addition to Fortnum (they ship), some of the Micallefs are at first-in-fragrance, and one (Winter) is at luckyscent. I believe a commenter last week said they’re also at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris.

PS: Winners from last week’s post (samps of Black Sea, Courtesan and Fig-Tea): pitbullfriend, AngelaS and gail!

I’m not writing about robots in disguise, honest. Too old for all that. And probably too gay (though I have to admit that I did, as a small boy, have Star Wars figurines. Han and Luke had a lot of fun together when Chewbacca was looking the other way).

Instead, this brief post is inspired by what I was doing last night when I should have been writing it. I was scrabbling around in the house, and in our old outbuilding (the original Georgian kitchen) looking for material with which to cover my tender plantlings. A frost was forecast. A frost, in late May. Unheard of. So much for global warming. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the pattern of global warming is much more, at least here, a pattern of increasing extremes: increasingly mild winters, unpredictable dry patches, rain, rain, rain - and I know what you guys think about Britain, but I live in one of the driest spots in not only Britain but also Europe, apparently.

So, poor March got the raw end of this unpredictability when she arrived at the beginning of May. We’d had a glorious April - sunshine, warmth through to late evening, not even a glimpse of rain. On her arrival, all this changed and in May it seemed to rain a little or a lottle every single damn day. Ending up with a frost last night (which, if the soft growth on all my shrubs - too large to cover - is anything to go by, failed to materialise). I’m buying a ski outfit for July.

Now here’s my unconvincing and tenuous segueway. There are perfumes that are as unpredictable as the British weather - not because they depend on skin chemistry, perception, whatever - but because they transform so profoundly from top notes to drydown. Here’s my off-the-cuff top 5 of ultimately non-linear scents. What are yours?

At 5: I can’t pin it down, as it always seems so different every time I sniff it. It’s that shape-changing, shifting mélange of old school European élan with a new world name, Patricia de Nicolai’s New York.

At 4: Sticking with the old school, some people think of vomit or poop when this first kicks in, and it’s certainly a Dirty Gerty in its initial blasts. But wait: soon it’s nothing more than a flirty caress of vanilla and lavender, like the softest touch of the softest skin against skin: Guerlain’s Jicky eau de parfum.

At 3: It’s a man’s scent, but starts with a shrill screech of orange blossom that’s almost too much for me. I have to get the right headset on - this is conjuring up Mediterranean grooming in the heat, and the neroli is a refreshing stimulant, rather than a headache-inducing nightmare gas. Give it 30 minutes though, and the scent becomes Gucci pour Homme’s woody, incensy older brother. Rochas Lui.

At 2: It starts in the bright lights of lemon sherbet, almost too sweet, but so acid yellow you can forgive it, even if the roof of your mouth is made raw and your eyes dazzled. It dries down to a warm, velvety cuddle in the back pew of a rural church (wholly inappropriate I imagine, but all the better for it). Mona di Orio’s Lux.

At 1: It’s been there for a while, and it’s a predictable winner. A camphor rub in a car mechanic’s workshop. Bryan walks in with a bunch of his favourite blooms. Of course it’s Lutens’s Tubereuse Criminelle.

Let’s do something completely different today — well, maybe not completely, but a little.

We’re out in Kansas, and I brought something for my sister Shirley and my friend Kelly to sniff.  Today we get their impressions on a few things.

Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia - Shirley says she loves it about 30 minutes after it goes on, turns into sexy man — she loves it utterly, completely, passionately and without reservation.  Kelly says something smells like chapstick or carnuba wax?!?!?!  Kelly’s arm turns into dirty machinery, but she smells it on Shirley in the drydown and understands why she’s all drooly.

Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist - Kelly says lettuce and dirt and roots.  Shirley says dirt with worm shit at the open and it’s just weird.  Okay, I need to fire these two, how can they dis my beloved ISM?!?

Le Labo Patchouli 24 - Shirley says, “smells like whiskey, like I could just drink it.  Winter wood smoke, little spice, like you were burning a clove tree.  Kelly’s nose is broke, she says betadine and creosote, but the drydown is much better.

Christian Dior Diorissimo parfum -  Kelly says “Tinkerbell perfume she wore when she was 7, then it turns into Tinkerbell’s grinding up on her pole a little too much and then passed out.”  Shirley says, “fresh, clean flower, pure, petal-packed, full of smell flower — no stem, no shit, no bee shit, just pure flower.” (can you tell I’ve been shoving a love of dirt perfumes under her nose for a while?)

Miller Harris Fleurs de Sel - Shirley says earthy, dirty, a flower that should smell pretty, but go in and smell it and it smells like plant instead.  Kelly says B.O covered by sweaty flowers; i.e. sweaty French Whore, and then the hooker eventually disappears to leave a very nice floral.  Why did I agree to let these two do this?

CB I Hate Perfume Tea Rose - Kelly says perfect, all about the tea, almost nothing about the rose, “makes her want to drop and writhe.”  Shirley says this should be a rose with a glass of tea, but it’s all about the rose and nothing about the tea.  I mediated and found only rose on Shirley and only tea on Kelly. I put it on and get both. Mom was all tea with just a skosh of rose, but she adores it (she hates perfume!).  When it warmed up on them, they each got more of the other.  All of us love it.

Shirley wound up with Nostalgia, Patchouli 24 and CB Tea Rose on one arm… she calls that arm the “Highway of Love.”

So, what three perfumes on one arm would make up YOUR Highway of Love?

I’m postponing my Adventures of Nawt for a week because I’ve found an incredibly talented cartoonist, a reader’s husband, and he’s working on a drawing for the next episode, and I just can’t do it without that drawing — it’s my inspiration!!  Wait until you see it, it’s hysterical.  I’m going to put his art up on a t-shirt, etc., because it’s that good - I want it on everything in my house because it makes me laugh as it demonstrates our common obsession — you’ll see!  BTW, I did make a little Cafe Press shop where you can get the Let Us Spray… things on clocks, mousepads, hot pads, t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. I did order some myself, I couldn’t resist — the link is over on the left, if anyone is interested.  Now, I do have other coffee mugs on order from a place that does a great job with them, but it’s going to be another couple of weeks before I get them.  But back to the cartoon, I love it when a plan unexpectedly comes together.

We are off to spend some time in Kansas with my mom and family – we do the grave crawl, which the only thing that can be worn for that is Cradle of Light with a little Black March – and mom has a little procedure to be done on her foot next week, so I’m staying, after sending the family back, to take her to her doc’s appointment and then bringing her back home with me for a few days.  Do I think you guys care about that?  You don’t? 

So while I’m waiting on some interesting stuff to get here, like the Spendy Sacred Tears, what are you guys wearing right now, old or new, that’s tripping your trigger, floating your boat, melting your shake?   I’m sorta in a Diorissimo rut these days, we are having a mad, passionate spring fling, though I occasionally cheat with Diorling parfum (when I’m feeling moody and all difficult). When I’m not hitting that, it’s violet and narcissus and dirt.  Has anyone tried those Brunos? And? Come on, I’m dying for info. I ordered a couple unsniffed, the Sballo because someone said “mostly hay,” and I had an out of body experience, and I don’t remember a thing until I came to staring at a Luckyscent ”Thank you for your Order!” screen.

We’ll be off Monday enjoying the holiday.  We always do the grave crawl in Kansas every Memorial Day. It has become one of those traditions that it hurts to miss.  It is that moment to pause and to remember all those before me, in a line from the gate to the fence, and those that will come after me. To borrow from Chesterton, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”  That’s how I always feel in the cemetery on Memorial Day, part of something bigger, in the company of all my fellow human beings, whether living or dead. 

All our love!

Patty, March, Lee and Bryan

(March’s note: I’m home, but I wrote this while still in London, and I’m doing work catch-up now, so I’m not picking through this to fix typos and update the perspective, please muddle through!)

Saturday was the big day — the reason I’ve been living on Cornish pasties and fruit pilfered from the front desks of hotels for two weeks. Saturday was Perfume Day with Lee.

You know what I want to bring home from London? Lee. He is every bit as charming and adorable and British and self-effacing and silly and funny (and handsome) as I expected, and he was wonderful. He traveled a long time to show me around and I am insanely grateful. I am sitting here in a dodgy (hah!) internet joint with signs everywhere warning about theft, with several hundred smackers worth of juice wedged between my feet. So let’s get on with it. As the Brits say, I am knackered (tired) so forgive any lapses. Also please pardon any gaffes in perfume house spelling, I’m not going to have time to write this AND look everything up, and you know how lousy my French (and my handwriting) can be.

All right. We started off at Les Senteurs (did I spell that right?) where the estimable James Craven was holding court. I filled in some gaps in my scent knowledge there, and the shop is lovely; it also turned out to be a seven-minute walk from my hotel (neener neener!), so I’m hoping to get back there. The one thing I’ve regretted not buying in Vienna was Knize Sec, which starts out a bit wine-y on me but settles into a lovely churchy incense, but they were out, so no joy there. I did enjoy smelling others of the Parfums d’Empire and various other confections. Lee and I took a crack at the new Malle, French Lover, which is pleasantly hairy-chested and reminded us both very much of something, but we couldn’t think what. A bit of Musc Rav, for sure. (Update — came home and picked through my various manly male scents, looking for the reference. What does this smell like? Not Yatagan … this is driving me nuts. I can’t find my MKK … is that it?)

Then we strolled to Patricia de Nicolai, a line I have to say I’ve neglected, both because there’s nowhere to sample them and because the couple I’ve tried, while nice, are a bit light stylistically and I felt I’d given them short shrift. We were there quite some time, during which my ignorant eyes were opened. I’ll add an aside here that one thing I learned from Vienna was that if I really liked something, go ahead and buy it, because I can’t count on seeing it again. I was particularly fond of Eau Exotique, which (horrors!) is a fruity-floral, but there you are. You tobacco nuts all need to do yourselves a favor and get ahold of the quite reasonably priced Havane, which is a room spray but can easily be worn. A Coin du Feu is a spicy incense meets John Galliano, very smoky with a spicy edge, also lovely, and I think they may be discontinuing it. I came thisclose to buying either Balkis or the brand-new spice-fest Maharanai (sorry, didn’t write the name down properly) but ultimately fell in love with and bought their deservedly popular Fig-Tea, which will be perfect for summer, along with Eclipse, which is being removed from their shelves because some ingredient in it has now been banned by the Fragrance Police. I thought it smelled like Patty, so I bought her a surprise bottle (ssshhhhhh, don’t tell!) The lovely lady’s name there is Barbra Lindell and they ship.

We wandered into Santa Maria Novella up the street to admire both the fancy bottles and the markup. Lee and I both fell hard for Aqua de Cuba, which the SA said was tobacco, we said was honey — rich and sweet and heady, quite enticing. We spritzed and went to sit in a park for a lovely French takeout lunch while we pondered whether we needed a spendy bottle. During that time, fortunately/unfortunately, it turned into a perfect rendition of mildew — or, as Lee put it, a wet wash-cloth that’s been sitting around. It was interesting how similar it was on our skin. Oh, well. We dodged a bullet with that one.

On to (are you ready?!?!) Harrods and the Roja Dove boutique. It is everything I ever wanted and more. The excellently trained Marcel will spend as much or as little time as you want assisting you. We smelled the divine Les Larmes Sacre de Thebes (the sacred tears of Thebes) which is only £950 for a smidgeon in a baccarat flacon, althugh you can buy the ugly little refill for only £200 ($400+ish at the current exchange rate) but only if you lie and say you already own the flacon. It’s … well, if I had the $2000 I don’t know that I’d buy it, but mostly because the flacon’s very modern-looking, an extremely flattened purple pyramid, and doesn’t do much for me. The tears refer to ambergris and they don’t give you any listed notes, but we get ambergris and very expensive incense. It’s the sort of smell you’d use to anoint kings. Or the baby Jesus. Hours later I can smell the tiny dab on my arm. I picked up Patty’s Diors (Diorling and Diorama — last bottle, they can’t keep it in –) and smelled some things I’ve not seen elsewhere, including the Xerjoff from Italy (the men’s is lovely), Lalique’s Encre Noir, which I can live without (black squid ink? but interesting, sure), and a set of Pradas we’d not seen before. No. 1 is Iris and it is just gorgeous, somewhere between orris and the flower, although it goes on with a salve smell, as does No. 2, Oeillet, which is a lovely carnation but I’m not sure is covering ground outside Malmaison and Garofano, although it’s a bit more streamlined and greener. No. 3 is Cuir Ambre, which smells like Cuir Ottoman with more amber, and No. 4, Fleur d’Oranger, which smelled a lot like the new Fleur du Male Gaultier one. These are £103 for 30ml. If someone gave me one, I’d take … two, Iris and Oeillet. Okay, fine, plus the Sacred Tears. Thanks very much. I also bought a bottle of Worth Courtesan while I was there, because that I can’t live without, and compared to the rest it’s a bargain, isn’t it?

Finally, off to Fortnum & Mason, where I concentrated my attention on the Micallefs, which those of you with long memories will recall have been irritating/eluding me ever since I emailed their company and they told me I could smell them in Dubai and Cannes next time I was there. Anyway. The saleswoman, Frances, was a total professional and (confession, I’d made two visits) helped me determine based on my likes and dislikes which I might like to sniff, although I swear she was going to wash us off in the powder room because we had so much stuff on at that point. I’d gone there to get Gaiac. Seriously. That’s what I was getting, and they have nice small 30ml bottles. But … Autumn with its cumin-armpit splendor was calling to me, so I had to wear that home as well. Anyway, during this visit I was seduced by Black Sea, which has some notes of Gaiac, plus an almost creamy, woody base — more complex — and a stunning bottle, and I decided that was The One. Their counter book doesn’t list the notes, although Frances will tell you. Black Sea reminds me, on the Compelling Scale and in some vague feeling, of Donna Karan Chaos. It’ll be interesting to compare the two when I get home.

So those are my sweet remembrances of London, a town whose charms I can totally perceive. I hope you’ve enjoyed this London tour, and I look forward to my return to the blog next week! Hugs to you all. In the meantime, I’m offering this week’s giveaway: Smells Like London, a set of samples of the things I bought for myself on this trip (Fig-Tea, Courtesan and Black Sea). If you’d like to be included in the drawing, please say so below.

**Airport Update: I spent 30 minutes in the Heathrow Duty-Free, smelling various summer-version whatevers. Two comments: they have the new Matthew Williamson gang of four scents, and the Incense is not the same as the original MW Incense, for those of you who’ve been wondering. It’s quite pleasant, summer-weight, a very faint fruit note, the closest smell comparison I can make is the Encens Mystic from the Crazylibellule perfume-stick folks. It lasted maybe 3 hours. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice, and if you have to own every incense frag on the planet, you knock yourself out. But I didn’t snap it up at $60ish. There is also Warm Sand, a fruity (ugh) musk that goes sour on me, and Jasmine Sambac, and Lotus, and I didn’t try either of the latter two. Instead, for a laugh I dumped on some Shiseido Feminite du Bois EDP, just to get that whole freaking cut-your-hand-off cedar trainwreck thing going on the plane. And guess what? It was stunning. I know, I know, news flash, right? I bet that was at least the 20th time I’ve tried it, and I wonder what’s changed, if anything. My skin? My perception? Whatever. I’m seeing a bottle in my future.

This week March is still gone….. but on her way home!!! We have picked two scents for this week, Frederic Malle’s French Lover, which is brand spanking new, and Christian Dior Diorella.

Is he butch or Metro?

Notes of angelica, pimento, galbanum, iris, bay rum, clove, cardamom, juniper, cedar, oakmoss, frankincense, patchouli, vetiver

Lee: Can’t he be butch and metro? Truth or dare time: I’ve had a couple of French lovers in my dark and sleazy past, and you know what, I think I picked badly. They weren’t all that. Now, not wishing to slander (libel? I always get those two confused) a nation, I’ll put it down to wrong choices. But if they were representative of French Lovers, this scent’d be all talk and rather neurotic action. It isn’t, thankfully. I do get the similarity to Ellena’s Angelique in the top notes - it was like the candied angelica that used to decorate fairy cakes in my childhood which, in spite of all the sugar, still had a bitter, gin-like quality to them. And then it becomes hirsute, and reminiscent of butch fougere stuff from the 80s. Elle said it reminded her of CDG2 Man, and it does me a little (the incense / wood / spice thang) but it’s almost a bang-on smellalike to something else in my nasal memory that tantalises me but remains out of reach… Antaeus? No. Bel Ami? No. Portos? No. Someone help me out, s’il vous plait…

Patty: I got nothing still, except what I can smell before it goes on me and the alcohol note that’s probably some musk note (styrene maybe? sturgene, can’t remember what CB said) takes over is really great. I’d love to smell it on someone without the alcohol. I think it IS butch and metro, at least before he puts my feet up in the stirrups, gets out the rubbing alcohol and tells me to open wide.  Now all it reminds me of when I smell it is that I’m due for a physical.

Bryan: I fell for this elegant, virile stud so fast my head spun. I was on the fripperies sight purchasing a decant seconds after it dried on my skin. Let me say that this scent, in theory, is absolutely not me. Let me write that again, NOT me. I usually fear what traditionally “masculine” notes do to my psyche…father figures and all those terrible connotations. In fact, I have completely written off Cartier (unfairly, no doubt) because my father wore Pasha. This however is a truly unique “masculine”. I only use the term masculine here the way marketing execs intend….clearly I do not believe in gendered fragrances. The angelica and cardamon dominate on my skin and it is DELICIOUS. I would love to smell this on a woman. I’m layering this with my Carnal lover as soon as my French one arrives.

Not Barbarella — Diorella!

Notes of lemon, greens, basil, bergamot, melon, jasmine, rose, carnation, cyclamen, oakmoss, vetiver, musk, patchouli

Lee: Nyaaargh! I’m easily confused. So, on Saturday, I sniffed Diorling in the Harrods Roja Dove place, thinking we were writing about that one. And I had some salient comments to make - about how not all chypres scare me, about how refined and severe and austere Diorling is, but how beautiful and true. But of course, we’re not blinking well writing about Diorling… Must’ve got the darling/lover thing trapped in my head. And then I thought, oh yes, I DID smell Diorella after all. Only to realise a moment later, that no, the soft, feminine voluptuous apricotty number was in fact Diorama. So, racking my oh so reliable smell memory, isn’t Diorella the one that’s like a softer, slightly warmer Eau Sauvage? In that case, I like it. But if that’s Dioressence, or Diordillydally, or Diorukelele, or some other bleedin’ Dior (apologies to Marina at this point) don’t go whinging if I’ve got it wrong.

Patty: No, lee, not soft, at least on the open. Green gassy herbaceous monster, like scraping the blades of my lawn mower after I’ve mowed a football field.  It is fierce green, but under all of that, I now recognize the genius of Dior, you have to wait for it and look deeper than that first blast or green herb.  As I scrape down the blades, there, hidden up under the mower is this beautiful little floral bouquet that is all soft and beautiful, still sitting in all of that green.  Diorella is a wonder.  Lee, we can do Diorling next. Would love to do that, especially in the parfum.  That one still just takes my breath away.  Diorella just makes me thing I wish I was young and in love and rolling around on the football field with my date after prom with my corsage on my wrist.   But I still want her to sit across the room when she’s all smoothed out, girl’s got a little skank going on.

Bryan: Wow, two for two this time. I also have a decant of this hot, chic, green babe coming my way. I love this green voluptuous scent. This was supposedly Roudy’s favorite to compose…in 1972 (my birthyear, so I wanted to love it, I’m cheesey that way). I do love it. I love the green blast at the beginning, but here it isn’t overwhelming as vintage vent vert can be. Then, the magnificent bouquet begins to enthrown its wearer. I became intoxicated during this stage and I would have done some really bad things to own a bottle of Diorella at this point. I get the sexy skank too, which makes me love her all the more. I will be wearing this all summer, oh yeah, all summer.

For the second part of my interview with the Perfumed Bee, please CLICK here. 

What scares me is when you have a 17-year-old son who loves chemistry.  I’m not talking about just your garden variety, love to screw around with the chemistry set. I’m talking about clears off a table and starts to build engines out of paperclips and magnets and concocting things in all of your drinking glasses that may bubble, explode or otherwise scare the crap out of the cats.

Him loving chemistry does not scare me. He’s all set on going to the School of Mines, wants a degree in chemical engineering or something like that. I’m happy because that will keep him close by, even though he’ll be in the dorms, and Mines is a great school that will give him an education that will take him anywhere he wants to go.

What scares me is when he’s been ordering more chemistry supplies, asks me if I’m going to be home to sign for the package. I ask him…. why?  Do they want someone here to sign for something so the Secret Service knows who to arrest?  He laughs… oddly… and says no, mom, of course not. So the package gets here Monday, and I’m in the office taping for an employee campaign and other meetings and not here to sign for the package. I get home, see the note, and the return address is for…..

UNITED NUCLEAR

Read that again.  Yes, that’s right, he’s getting chemistry supplies from United Nuclear. The box should show up today, he claims it only has a glass set in it, I have to sign on the dotted line, but I won’t sign first without making sure it doesn’t originate in Pyongyang or Tehran.  Having a scary smart, creative, funny, love-a-practical joke kid is not for the faint of heart.

What else scares me?  Wearing fragrance in the heat of summer. It’s just around the corner, and this summer I’m going to be going to my same set of go-to heat fragrances as last year — Santa Maria Novella Eva, Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan, Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist, a couple of the really light L’artisans, like Tout Simplement.  This year I’m adding the new Jatamansi light scent from L’Artisan and the earthy scents and tea scents from CB I Hate Perfumes, which are absolutely perfect for the dog days of summer. But I keep thinking I’m missing something.

So when the days get smoldering hot, and you can almost not wear fragrance at all, but you want something refreshing, what do you put on? Drop a comment and be entered to win a set of my favorite dog day summer samples, including those listed above and a few surprises!

March is writing about our Saturday of scented escapades tomorrow, and I don’t wish to steal her thunder, but I thought I might post a few tidbits about our day. I have to - I had such a wonderful time and March was the perfect perfume companion in more ways than I can blog about. First, March is the meticulous one - she had a notebook, took down key points, expressed her take on the way too many scents we sniffed. I’m lackadaisical Lee. I just sniffed and allowed all the sensations to blur into one. Probably not the best way to go, but I’m not really known for my planning. Suffice to say, she’s got the details and I’m like one of those Turner paintings where you can’t really make out where the sea ends and the sky begins. Actually, a Turner painting is too high quality for the impressionist mess currently sitting in my brain.
So, here’s my top ten random muddlethinks from the day:

1. Skin chemistry is important, at least for the first few minutes. Virgin Island Water was all lime margarita on my skin; for March it’s all about the popcorn.
2. If you sniff too many vetiver scents, your nose begins to warp in weird and peculiar ways. I overdid it in Les Senteurs, and that earthy vet note in things like Vetiver Extraordinaire started to make my stomach turn. It got worse with Annick Goutal’s number.
3. One of my biggest perfume frustrations is that tip-of-the-tongue moment I get (from my lack of expertise, I imagine) where a new scent experience is intensely reminiscent of a prior one. I had this several times, most noticeably with French Lover (more about this one on Wednesday). I wish I had instant recall at such times.
4. Waiting is hard, but man, it saves you a lot of cash. We both fell heavily in love with something in Santa Maria Novella, only to be repulsed by it an hour later on (it was intially good enough to be worthy of skin space, which says something when you’re sniffing over 100 things in a day). Similarly, Micallef’s Gaïac started off beautifully, but fifteen minutes in became as close as dammit to Tea for Two, thereby saving me a whole wad of cash. To be fair to the beauty, the final moments of its drydown did something wonderful, but not enough to make it purchase-worthy for me. There was another wonder in Roja Dove, sold in hand-hewn quartz crystal bottles (March has the name I think), that started out as a deeply resinous miracle filled with perfume heft, but after half an hour was all about the birch tar. I like birch tar, but not at however many zillions that perfume was selling for.
5. I have a problem with orange blossom. I wish I didn’t.
6. I seize on one or two words per day, which I seem to overuse. Saturday’s words were ’shrill’ and ‘high-pitched’. This takes me back to orange blossom.
7. I have special ugly face reserved for the effect aldehydes (or certain types of aldehydes) have on me. Baghari in particular seems to tighten the top of my head and make everything about me wrinkle. It’s a learnt response, I imagine, but I find such notes unbearable. This, along with my struggle with some chypres (what was that monstrosity in Fortnum’s, March?) mark me down as a perfume lightweight.
8. Patricia de Nicolaï is remarkable for having not only a wonderful range of scents, but having them available in 30ml. £15 for a 30 ml bottle of New York: genius size, genius pricepoint.
9. I’m always drawn to something with a splash of naughty. Resniffing Mona di Orio’s Nuit Noire on our departure from Les Senteurs gave me back my vavavoom, and Bal a Versailles made me flirtatious with the sales assistant in Roja Dove (the female one; we’d spent most of our time with Marcel… March will probably say I’m ALWAYS flirtatious with SAs. Male or female. I think she’s probably right).
10. I’m drawn to March. Not just cuz she’s a little bit naughty (she tipped the Sacred Tears of Thebes onto her wrist - gasp! - instead of using the spills - ? - to dab out a dot; she laughed at my rude and inappropriate jokes; she loves cakes and lovely gooey pastry things), but because her sense of humour, sharpness, good looks, and perfume mania made me happy, nay delighted, to be in her company. You know you’re with a fellow addict when one of you loses track of your current conversation because either: a) a bottle has caught your eye; b) you suddenly need a resniff of one of your many tester strips; c) you’re currently spraying something; d) you’ve been transported to a scented place and sounds have become momentarily irrelevant.

Thanks March - we were normal together. Well, kinda…

Due to popular demand, the saga shall continue at least for a while longer.

We last left poor Nawt Agin with his head in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably. He left the office early, went home, cooked up some nice mac and cheese and a Klonopin and Padron cocktail and headed for bed, hoping the sunrise would somehow erase this day from his mind.

Meanwhile, across town, at the offices of Perfumes ‘R Us, DicK Nosmell has been called into a meeting with his boss, Daddy Perfumebucks.

Daddy: Sit down, DicK, and tell me, what’s in the hopper about to pop out and make us more money?

DicK:  *sucking up wildly* Yes, sir, happy to! We’ve just signed Voracia Tata, and that scent is in the pipeline.  Peeris Hyatt’s third scent, Overexposed, is due out next week, we’ve rolled out the big marketing blitz, which may be more complicated if she’s in jail, but we’re hoping we can somehow use that to give it a dangerous edge.  We think we’ll get a rap artists signed soon and one of those former girl banders.

Daddy:  Tell me about the perfumes, what do they smell like?

DicK:  *pauses, looks perplexed*  What? The scents — you mean what they smell like?

Daddy:  Why are you repeating what I said? Yes, smell like, as in scent, perfume, to smell, wafting aroma.

DicK:  Well, pretty much the same as every other perfume we’ve done for the last six years — we stay with the formula and the market research data. Something kind of hairy and studly for the boys and sweet vanilla or fruity floral for the girls.

Daddy:  I think we need a change of direction, we should put out something worthwhile, that smells unique and expresses the society we live in.

DicK:  *starts laughing* You got me, you sly dog!  Yeah, like we want to make some perfume called Post Coital Meth Hit …. *Dick continues laughing, looks up, sees Daddy Perfumebucks isn’t laughing at all, gulps hard*  You can’t be  serious.

Daddy:  *growls* Why, yes, I think I am. I think we should, first, ditch these thugs, coke whores and untalented Hollywood wannabes and start signing up serious people with a point of view or a philanthropic mission, like Santa Maria Angelina. We should make a perfume of substance, something that will be around 50 years from now, after we’re both dead and gone, and use a portion of the profits to help the victims in Darfur.  I’ve gone through most of my life already just making money on crap, and I’d like to leave something behind that means something…

(back across town, Nawt is tossing fitfully in his sleep, bolts upright, looks around)  Where’s Daddy and DicK? Where’s the Darfur perfume?!?!?  Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

*Dick breaks down into uncontrollable sobbing again, curled up in the fetal position*

I keep forgetting I had a drawing a while back that I hadn’t finished. So I picked two winners for their pick of the two Tom Ford samples of their choice: Mikael and cjj88.  Just hit the contact us button over there on the left and send me your address and which two you would like, and I’ll pop them in the mail.  Thanks to everyone who played!

Okay, best perfume dream you would hate to wake up from and find out it wasn’t true and/or worst perfume nightmare you would be glad to wake up from?

 We have a guest poster, Chris, while March is gone, who has done this great piece on Lavender.

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Lavender has become a mild obsession lately, so I picked a few full bottles and samples of lavender and lavender based things to smell and ponder. The NoCal weather has taken a turn for the ridiculously hot and the idea of lavender is cooling, even though the reality of the smell reminds me more of densely packed earth and arid xeriscapes.

Norma Kamali’s LAVANDE is something I have never seen mentioned anywhere. People love or hate her INCENSE and CEREMONY and this one (to me) is a sleeper. First, the bottle is minimalist, functional and big. A whopping 50 ml. A spritz is cooling, astringent, medicinal and head clearing in a way that reminds me of eucalyptus. The juice is like going out to my garden, picking a woody piece of plant, squigging it between my fingers and filling my head with that hot/cold, dry/oily odor I love so much. This has decent lasting power and does not change much from beginning to end.

Guerlain’s MOUCHOIR DE MONSIEUR eau de toilette is supposed to be the gentleman’s version of JICKY. I do love a nice gentleman and I detest Jicky. MdM is not pure lavender. It mixes bergamot, civet, vanilla and amber in a mannerly way and reminds me very much of cozying up to a well barbered man right after he has completed his morning ablutions and is about to step into the Bentley to chair a board or cause some heads roll. It takes the starkness of Lavande and injects it with a few generations of boarding school, bespoke suits and a more than a trace of haughtiness. It softens and gets powdery from the vanilla and amber as the day wears on. I usually find the combination of lavender and vanilla gag making, but this is so smoothly done that my gag reflex is sleepy and purring.

In the interest of science, I did prod the above mentioned gag reflex, somewhat accidentally, with Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s SWEET DREAMS. The result was not good. This one gives 3 or 4 seconds of a semi-dry lavender then whaps me across the bridge of my nose with 75 pounds of vanilla nougat. Remember the candy that was popular in the late 50s and early 60s-Turkish Taffy? This is that. If you wish to smell like vanilla cake batter-I’d say wedding cake-and want just the merest nodding acquaintance with the oily purple stuff, go for this. I can’t, I shan’t and I won’t.

The final and less fatal but so bitterly disappointing sniff was of Andy Tauer’s REVERIE AU JARDIN. It opens with (so says the description) high altitude mountain lavender. And so it does, like Dawn’s, for 2 seconds or less. Since I love getting gassed with galbanum even more than I love the note I’m exploring today, I felt I could forgive the wham bam of the lavender. Vanilla again reared it’s sappy, platinum blond head and looked at me with huge, long lashed saucer eyes of those chilling Keen kids paintings popular many years ago. I was sent reeling and wretched, wondering where the hell the high mountain lavender had gone.

The moral of the story? Vanilla is best in creme brulee, a little civet in the mix is a chivalrous thing and lavender is at its best when mucked with as little as possible.

*standard disclaimer you can insert here for most of my posts — I do have the scents I’m reviewing in my little sample/decant store, but since I sell hundreds of things, it doesn’t impact whether I love/like a scent, though I’m more prone to buy scents I like/love, oddly enough*

Every now and then you get lucky enough to have some great scents pass your desk on the same day, and you spend the rest of the day wondering whether you should shower, just so you can put them on again and make sure they have the same magic or should be worn just by themselves, but you can’t resist putting on the other one because it’s so darn great too!  I wish I had more days like this.  

Miller Harris Fleurs de Sel — Created by Lyn Harris to evoke her memories of the salt marsh at Batz sur Mer, it has notes of red thyme oil, rosemary, clary sage, wild flowers - iris nobilis, narcisse flowers and rose — ambrette seed, woods, vetiver grass and moss.  Okay, look at that list of notes and tell me how in the world this would ever be a miss for me.  Well, it’s not a miss, it’s a   –I fall at your feet, Lyn Harris, you are brilliant and perfect and made a scent that reflected those things. This shit rocks me to my core.  It is the perfect blend of salt, flowers, little spice and vetiver. If you love Sel de Vetiver or just a salty feel in your perfume, you will be over the moon about this one. I don’t think I’ve ever spent any time in a salt marsh in my life, but now I want to go to Batz sur Mer and smell this in person.  (photo from a Batz sur Mer tourist site).  Currently Saks in NYC only had a couple hundred bottles available as a pre-release. You can call Christina @ 212-940-2072 to see if any are left.  Otherwise, it should be in general release in July — the perfect summer and always scent.

Nasomatto Absinth — No notes are listed for this scent, we are just told that the perfumer, Alessandro, is a very experienced perfumer who “believes that our senses are the primary instruments which generate our instinctive reactions and drive our process of judging and choosing.”  *rolls eyes* No duh.  Absinth’s marketing blurb says, “The fragrance aims to evoke degrees of hysteria. It is the result of a quest to stimulate irresponsible behaviour.”  You guys have been reading me long enough to know that just the above claims were enough to send me into degrees of hysteria. But, WTH, I figure, let’s give the whole line a go and see what we think.  Of course the first one out of the box that I must put on is Absinth.  I’m old enough now, that stimulating irresponsible behavior can be a chore.

When I put Absinth on, I burst into laughter. Not because it stimulated irresponsibility, but because this scent is perfection, like Fleurs de Sel is perfection. Vetiver and some kind of nutty thing, probably a little absinth. They don’t list notes anywhere (boo, hiss!), so I’m on my own. It feels a little salty too.  Lord, I  adore this one with a passion.  I’ll talk about the others later, and I really liked a couple of them a lot, but this one is the clear Triple Crown winner for me. Earthy — check.  Rich — check.  Fun — check.  So help me, I did not want to really like these scents, I fully intended to have them only for my merriment in poking fun at them. This could be for either a man or a woman, there is nothing particularly masculine or feminine, y’all get the chance to fall in love with it.  This is currently only available from First in Fragrance, I believe.

There are times when only a Flannery O’Connor quote will do.  “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Damn that Nasomatto Absinth.

BTW, I won’t be reviewing French Lover. I really like it, but the occasional anosmia I have when I hit certain compounds is in effect in this one.  Starts out love, then I hit the anosmic brick wall and it goes to alcohol. This is a failing of mine, not the perfume, so you’ll have to rely on other people on this one, sorry! 

I can’t believe the Big Cheese’s mom left this world behind a year ago, the day after Mother’s Day. Whenever we drive past her fancy, crenellated old co-op on Connecticut Avenue, the twins say, there’s Grammy’s Castle! They’re still waiting for her to not be dead any more; we have long funny/sad talks about it.

I actually chat with her fairly regularly in my dreams. In the last one she threw a party, and all her girlfriends and family members were there. Later I found her resting on her daybed, exhausted but happy, surrounded by grandkids and watching the show going on around her. You could tell she was really ill. Everyone knew it. They came to the party to be with her and say goodbye. I sat down next to her in my dream and held her face in my hands, and I said: Thank you for being you. Thank you for all the wonderful things you’ve given me. Thank you for lending me your son. And then I woke up.

I have these dreams all the time; I’m not complaining. My mind manages to create a scene, or even an entire day, in which the tone of our relationship is pitch-perfect. Recent examples: I decide to buy a trendy, moderately expensive handbag. She urges me to take that money and buy a classic bag instead. Or: we’re at a grocery store, and we’re all done shopping, and I go get the car, at which point I realize, double-parked and tying up traffic, that she’s gone back in for an avocado or something. A big, fat argument ensues. The end is always the same: I wake up and realize, phew – I didn’t really have that argument with her! And I’ll never have another one. And when do I start missing her a little less?

My guess is I’m supposed to resolve this with some Western-style therapy. But I’m longing for something else, you know? I have this dim idea that in other cultures there’d be talk of restless spirits needing appeasement. God knows she was restless; why would it be any different in the afterlife? I’m only a few blocks from her burial niche at our church. Maybe I should be taking her offerings (vodka martinis, potato chips.) Maybe she’s mad that I failed to talk the Big Cheese into putting that liter bottle of Popov in the vault with her. She’s tucked in next to her husband, but I think strewing her ashes along the miracle mile in Chevy Chase between Saks and Neiman Marcus would have been a completely legitimate alternative. In fact, if the developers over there have any sense, they’ll get busy and build a columbarium next to Cartier instead of that stupid pocket-park.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want these dreams to go away. They’re very, very funny, and they give me that warm feeling of actually having a conversation with her. But I wonder if I’m screwing something up. So far my plans for appeasement have included wearing her clothes and jewelry out more, sometimes to the sorts of places they’re used to frequenting. I had a night out in her Chanel black lace cocktail dress, which I realized was a) amazingly constructed, with beautiful interior boning to hold the strapless bodice up under the matching lace jacket where it’s supposed to be, and b) basically see-through, if you look at it the right way. I laughed and teased the Big Cheese – did you realize your mother went out in public dressed like this?!

My father still lives in the house I grew up in, right next door to the cemetery where we buried my mother 20 years ago, not long after Mother’s Day, and where all her kin are buried. I drop by and visit my mother when I’m over there every week. I’m not so dim that I can’t see that losing my mother-in-law was like losing my mother in some ways, but I don’t tell my mom that. I don’t want to hurt her feelings; who wants to hear that from their kid? Sitting there on the damp grass gives me a way to focus, to talk to her. It comforts me. She missed being there in person for my major life events. I stopped by her grave the day I married the Big Cheese and left her the flowers I’d carried to the altar. I’ve taken her Easter lilies, and birthday bouquets, and garland at Christmas, and flowers from the church after my babies were baptized. We fought all the time when I was a teenager and I said hateful things; raising me must have hurt like hell. I hope my daughters don’t treat me that way, but on some level I’d deserve it. It’s always great seeing my mother-in-law in my dreams, but I wish my mom stopped by more often to visit too. I really miss her.

While you’re reading this I’m trooping around England somewhere; I miss the blog too, no joke. I’ll see you next week.

Setting:  Irrational Fruity Florals, prestige perfumers’ conference room.  Nawt Agin has been summoned to the regular Monday assignments meeting with the other perfumers.  There’s a lot of shuffling and gossiping around the table as they get ready to start. 

Head Perfumer Sniffee:  Quiet, quiet. 

*still more shuffling and whispering, as if Sniffee had not spoken*  

HP Sniffee:  Hey!  You!  Molecule Humps, quiiiiiiiiet!!!!!!!!!!!  We’ve got a couple of new perfumes to get assigned, and I’ve got another meeting with Tom (perfumers all gasp and start whispering) in five minutes! so we need to get out of here.  First up, Freddy wants to do something called Italian Mama, the companion perfume to French Lover, something meant to evoke meat sauces, bread and pasta….  Let’s see…..  Ivanda Nunose, that one is all yours.

*groans from other perfumers as Ivanda preens and gloats*

Sniffee: Next up is the latest celebutard perfume.  This, of course, will be a groundbreaking scent with notes of….. um, fruit…. and….. ready for it? (all pefumers are slumped down in their chairs trying to hide) floral.  The celebrity is the hugely talented coke whore, Voracia Tata. And the lucky perfumer to create the frooty floral masterpiece for Ms. Tatas is…. (he looks at each perfumer in the room, hesitates, looks at another, looks back, stretching out the agony) Nawt Again!  Congratulations!

Nawt Agin:  No, please, I beg — no, I’m pleading, I’ll be your lackey, I’ll make scents for your grandmother, your sister, your children and grandchildren and dog, if only you give this to someone else. Give it to the new guy!

Sniffee:  You are the new guy. You haven’t done a celebutard scent yet, it’s your turn, and you have ameeting with her, her agent and DicK Nosmell this afternoon.  Okay, that’s it for this week, go shake something good up, and see ya next week.

(Nawt scurries past the laughter of his colleagues, back to his office, head hung down, feet shuffling, sits down in his chair and sighs)  What am I going to do?  I’d sooner be back in detergent scenting than do this! Maybe I can talk them into something creative and unusual. Yeah, that’s it, I’ll use my charm and knowledge and sell them on a really great perfume!

*it is now 3 p.m., time for the meeting with DicK, Nawt, Fifteen and Voracia.  Nawt is already in the conference room, with several vials of interesting notes and combinations in front of him, when the secretary brings in DicK, Fifteen and Voracia.  After some preliminary greetings, including Voracia popping a Xanax and walking into a closet, they all sit down*

Nawt:  I’ve got some great ideas for your perfume, Voracia. It will be groundbreaking, something that’s never been done before. I intend to blend a salty musk with tuberose–

*Voracia looks confused and then closes her eyes*

DicK:  No, no, stop that, we do this every time, but let’s go through it again… slowly. Studies show that people like happy perfumes, not sweaty crap, except those perfume freaks on the internet.  We want something happy and bubbly.  Fruit is happy and bubbly, make sure it has fruit in it.

Voracia:  Yes, I like fruit, especially bananas!  Can it have bananas?

Nawt: Okay, something fruity, a lime-based perfume with some vetiver to give it depth, or horses are happy, how about a nice leather something that –

DicK:  No, not vetiver, not leather, not now, not ever. This should be very feminine, like the lovely Voracia, and sultry without being slutty, unlike the lovely Voracia.  Throw in some flowers.

Nawt:  Fruit?  and Florals?

DicK:  Now you’re diggin’ where there’s taters.

Fifteen:  So how much can we expect to make here, DicK?  I want something that flies off the shelf and puts green in Voracia and my’s pocket.

Nawt: Well, I have to caution you, there are a lot of frooty florals out there already, that market is saturated, so I really don’t think –

DicK: Who cares?!?!  it’s not about the perfume, it’s about the style, the  experience. We want to sell this to women who want to BE Voracia, out at Les Deux at night and The Ivy for lunch, mingling with stars, shopping on Robertson.  Nobody cares what it smells like. That’s like the 10th thing on a list of ten things that the consumer cares about when it comes to perfume.  Come on, Nawt, didn’t anyone ever teach you that? Why does Sniffee always give us the FNG?

Nawt:  But if you want to do something unique and special, I highly recommend that you stay away from the fruit and the floral put together.

Fifteen:  We want something that sells, sells, sells, I don’t care what it smells like as long as it sells.

Nawt:  If it’s about the style and not the juice, then let’s make something great, with complexity and –

DicK: No!  As soon as they pop that cap on the bottle, I want it to be nonoffensive and sweet and the girls to go, “oh, that smells goooood!”  That’s fruit and floral, that’s what I want you to make.  Okay, we’re done here.  Let’s go.  We have a bottle to design.

*with that, DicK, Voracia and Fifteen exit, leaving Nawt with his head in his hands crying*

To be continued….

So you get to pick the perfumer to make a scent for you. Who would make it, and what would the juice smell like?

Before I actually review a few things I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for my absence. Life happens as they say and an emergency never schedules an appointment. Having said that, thank you Patty, Lee and March for your unending kindness and patience. I must say I love Patty dearly and I feel like I let everyone down a bit. I can not apologize enough.

OK, on to the reviews.  I know the title of this post is a bit “Etat”ish, but I was called G-wood(last name Garwood) way too much during High School.  Childish I know.  What can I say?

There is a magical forrest somewhere, I just know it.  Perhaps it exists only in my dreams, my imagination, which is aided constantly by such Masters as Shakespeare and the infamous Romantics.  It manifests when I close my eyes.  Thanks to Serge Lutens (and Chris the Magnificent) I can smell it now too.

Chene.  Say it out loud.  It just oozes elegance.  Not the same in Germanic English, huh?  Oak.  Ok, I digress.   Notes are:  oak-bark tannin, cedarwood crystals, birch, immortelle flowers, wood saps, Tonka bean, rum absolute, black thyme, and beeswax.  No wonder it took me so long to fall in love with, or even find this beauty…tuberose is not listed.  OK, I admit it, I adore Tuberose in all its glory and a day without it is, well, one not worth smelling…for me…but I digress again.  (I do that, sorry).

I spray on Chene and imagine Ophelia (think Millais, Tate Britain) floating so morbidly yet beautifully next to a tall oak.  Perhaps her loss of identity hasn’t so much pushed her over the edge (pun intended) as the intoxicating scents surrounding her soon to be watery grave.  It’s a thought.  I never imagined how beautiful and complex a scent based on oak could be.  This is a scent built upon layers of rich accords, touched by melancholia.  I could fall in love with Chris Sheldrake thanks to this magnificent juice.

There’s chene, that’s for remembrance.

Santal de Mysore is another beautiful story.  Desdemona’s wedding sheets smell of this powdery, yes I’ll say it, sexy wood.  I know Othello could have worn this too, but I imagine the scent lingering on the bed, their marriage pre-Iago and blissful.  This is a woodsy scent for happy days, with a hint of darkness undercutting the romance.  Notes of Mysore Sandalwood, cumin, spices, styrax, balsam, caramelized Siamese benzoin.  The scent of sweaty skin is pronounced on me, which I believe is thanks to cumin, though it is understated enough here, in case you fear the reformulated Femme de Rochas.  As the scent lingers, the resins sweep in and begin to smother the santal, though not in a fit of jealous rage.

These two Lutens woods are beautiful on either a man or woman.  I chose to visualize two famous albeit fictitious women only because I love them as I do the scents.  Both of these are Paris exclusives worth seeking out.

I planned on reviewing Mayotte (a luscious Ylang/Tuberose from Guerlain).  I am running out of space (and probably your patience), so another time….it’s beautiful, I promise.  (The perfume more so than my review no doubt!).

First, we interrupt our fourplay post to bring you this PSA:  Bloggers!  Payola!  Ohmy!!!  

So all I want to know… if big, fat payoffs are getting coughed up for perfume reviews, where the hell are mine?!?!?  What am I, chopped liver?!?!?  I can be bought! Those of you tuning into Aromascope this week and the fragrance board at MUA might have seen that there is an allegation perfume companies have been offering or paying cash to bloggers to write positive reviews. 

Let me quote March on this, more or less…. “Hampton Court probably didn’t give me a free sample of this so I could piss all over it, but…” and then she proceeded to piss all over it…. a sample, not a full bottle, and definitely not thick envelopes that bled green.  If I/we ever got offered cash or more than a sample (which sometimes they offer a sample and send you a bottle of something you really don’t want in the least, which I promptly give away — why can nobody ever offer freebies of stuff I really, really want?  I selfishly digress), you guys will hear it first because we’ll come write about it because it’s a blog post that writes itself and would be monumentally entertaining.

But the bottom line on this – this is a private blog, written by private individuals who have very different ideas about what perfumes they like and don’t like. We don’t always agree, and we often question each other’s taste (not just on this blog, but looking over at our neighbor’s blog while they’re huffing that nasty Bleu Cheese perfume), but nobody I know is getting any payola or even the offer.  I mean, if that were the case, there would be about 7,000 perfume blogs up right now. Think about it.   What interests me more right now is who started this and why?  To tar perfume bloggers’ opinions?  Odd. Anyway, we may sometimes have crap opinions, but they are our honest, unpaid for crap opinions.

And I’ve got another bone to pick, Bond seems to send samples to most of the other bloggers, and we never get any samples from Bond or Creed or L’Artisan or any of those guys.  Do they hate us? Well, screeeeew you, we don’t need your stinkin’ samples!   I have a plane to catch.  *flounces off in a snit*

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Fourplay post 

This week March is gone…..  (tears and jealousy all mixed up into one psychotic bundle)…. but we shall endeavor to review our two scents. This week we have Guerlain Metalys, formerly known as Metallica until the band got its knickers in a twist and made them change their name.  We also have Annick Goutal Sables.

Where we answer the question: would Metallica wear Metalys?

Notes of carnation, ylang-ylang, orange blossom, rose, iris, tonka bean, vanilla, amber

March: *crickets*

Patty:  This is probably one of my favorite Guerlains. Soft, but hot, a gorgeous blend with the ultra-beautiful ylang-ylang, spiced up with carnation.  As much as I pay attention to Guerlains, there are very few that I actually wear, but mostly admire. This one I can wear any time, anywhere, it’s just a stunner.

Lee: Come ‘ere, you sparkling floral fizzer with the sexy oriental drydown, and stop backcombing your hair. You know you’re more soul than metal. Get your groove on, baby, cuz we’ve got some sweet sweet love to make.

Sables, or can you really wear syrup as a perfume?

Notes of immortelle flowers, cinnamon, sandalwood, vanilla, pepper

Lee: Immortelle, I love the smell, but in a scent, it’s more death knell. You see, like a day in fast forward - eating maple syrup pancakes with your breakfast meeting handshakes, wolfing dopiaza curry in a ‘reflux-later’ hurry, burning unnecessary tyre rubber whilst you unendingly blubber over some obscure sad song that goes on perhaps too long, ending with disappointing hubba hubba like a Speedy Gonzalez bedroom lover - it’s too much, too quick. Call me idiosyncratic, but I’d rather give my mwah! to dear Dior’s Eau Noire. Sables may be formidable, but the Noire’s incomparable. Even though I just did compare it. Oh well, I needed to end this nonsense somewhere…

March: (Insert more crickets and a weird Haiku that mentions pancakes and armpits.)

Patty:  Syrup and tar, sprinkled with lots and lots of black pepper.  A total freak of a scent that somehow remains lovable.  How?  I don’t know, the tarry pepper keeps it from being too sweet until the sweet just leaves more cinnamon than syrup, and then it just makes my toes curl in revulsion and love. Cuddly, like a big old stinky dragon that lets you scritch it on the nose.  The next day it smells like maple donuts…. hmmmm….. doooooonuts.  I haven’t had a donut in like two years?  So odd, one day the boys just outgrew them (the donuts, not the Sables), quit asking for them, and I haven’t bought one since. Well, no need to now, I’ve got it on my hand – apparently permanently.

Some perfumes are big old honking Sillage Monsters. The ones you put on that you can smell almost all day, even when they seem to have faded, you move, and up wafts the most wonderful sillage.  Before I go on, what do you think Paris will wear when she goes into jail?  Before she gets her orange overalls?

My top two sillage monsters:

Clive Christian No. 1 Women – I know, this is a ridiculously priced perfume, though you can sometimes get deals on eBay, but nevertheless, no matter how not as extraordinary (read worth $$$$$) as it may seem when you first spritz, this is the one I come back to if I want big sillage that lasts and is beautiful. Notes of pineapple, plum, mirabelle, bergamot, lemon, cardamom, rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, orris, orchid, vanilla, tonka seeds, cedarwood, sandalwood, and musk amber.  This thing goes on with what seems like a very pretty, but mostly ordinary floriental, certainly nothing that would justify the price, but the drydown lets out some of the deeper notes that are just enchanting in their mix. Every time I move when I wear this, I get another waft. It’s like a diamond that keeps hitting the sun.  So way too many $$$ or no, this one loves my skin and just sparkles.. and it only costs me on spritz, so approximately $4… that’s a cheap thrill.

Le Labo Patchouli 24 –  There is nothing in this perfume that should say I would like it. Most of it says I should loathe it.  But this goes on, and I feel like I am enclosed in a cloud of creosote and wood smoke.  So scrap the patchouli, this is the best smoke scent in the world, and it lasts, and every time I move, I can smell it. Rich and pungent and perfect.

Today is IRS audit day…. eeeeeek!!!!!!  I’ll try and post from tax jail.

So what’s your favorite one or two sillage monsters — scents you love that just leave a smell train behind you as you waft through your life?

Hey, look who found an internet terminal!?!?  I know, I just can’t stay away.  Forgive me in advance, it’s now 2pm-ish my time on Friday (?) and I’ve been up more or less since Thursday morning, so I’m a bit out of it.  Anyway, here’s your chance to giggle at any of my perfumage notes following, since I don’t have the time or the energy to double-check my impressions.

 The Roja Dove boutique in Jenners here is a bit of a disappointment.  They don’t have some of the things I was looking forward to (Diorling, Diorama); I am assuming those will be at Harrods in London.  The other general Jenners issue is: they couldn’t be nicer, but nobody knows a thing about any of the fragrances they’re selling, notewise, in the entire dept.  The nice young Roja Dove girl didn’t know anything either.  There was an entire wall of unmarked flacons (except by number) and she said they were individual notes but wouldn’t let me play… insert sad face here .

Anyway: lots of Caron, Guerlain, some Serge, plus hard-to-find-in-stores classics like Ma Griffe, Miss Balmain, Antilope.  That was fun, but as all the concentrations are EDT (so far as I could see) they lack oomph.  I got to try Caron Nuit de Noel in extrait (and the tiny black bottle is gorgeous) and The Earth Moved.  It did. 

Browsing in the general fragrance area: they have things we don’t seem to have yet (like a wall of Armanis — ReMix and White? one each for men and women) which were perfectly pleasant but like the new City Glam I probably won’t be buying.  I smelled the new Summer LE for YSL Opium, this one’s called Orchidee de Chine and it is wretched — powdery sweet and overwhelming, unlike the last two, which i liked a lot. I got to fill in some fragrance gaps by smelling (finally!) McQueen’s Kingdom, which is not that outre compared to reorchestrated Femme, the Mother of all Cumin. Kingdom’s easier to take, IMHO, gorgeous rich scent, although too much for summer in D.C. That’s the EDP. The EDT I also really loved — like a summer version of Kingdom, without the cumin (although that’s sort of like saying chocolate cake without the chocolate, but indulge me.) I’m tempted to buy a bottle of that, it would be perfect in summer.

Vivienne Westwood Boudoir is fabulous– musky and funky and creamy (sorry, no notes here!) I thought her Anglomania was meh, and the new Boudoir Sin Garden has a great bottle but isn’t anywhere near as interesting — more a basic fruity-floral to me.

Also — you all remember DKNY Woman? Sure you do. It’s in a long, angular container like a three-sided ruler. I’m going to guess grapefruit, pepper, cucumber and lily, and those notes will be all wrong, but damn! It was gorgeous. If you’re a green and/or lily lover, you should dig one of those up online, I’ve seen them at the discounters. I may pick one up at the airport on the way home, the little ones are dirt cheap. Really interesting fragrance.

The scent that stole the show - Worth Courtesan!!! Have no idea if it’s new — and, no, they couldn’t tell me a thing. It’s … the name is perfect. It’s wanton. It’s not overly sweet, a little dirty (cedar/vetiver?) The brief probably said: give me a fragrance that makes me think of the morning after a night with my illicit lover. Sorry, that’s the best I can do. Strikes that perfect sweet spot between musky, sweaty and perfume.

Final note — I followed your instructions and soaked my whole darn hand in SL Rousse. Spray it on, you all said!!! Well … what? I still think it smells sort of like Mandarine Mandarin, only murkier. I am just not getting the cinnamon love. Sigh. Well, I guess it can’t all be perfect.

Oh, also — went by Penhaligons on George Street. I keep trying to fall in love with one because I love their bottles so much. Malabah I have and like a lot. Artemisia and Quercus have potential, but they’re gone in 30 minutes. And a couple (Bluebell?) are scarifying although I should note that the woman there knew her line and could not have been lovelier to me.

Okay, signing off. I’ll check back in when I can — I miss you all!

Postscript — five hours later. Okay, I get it about the Rousse!!! I totally get it now! But why, oh why do I have to wait so long? Not sure the first four hours of muddy spices are worth it, but then it’s just yummy cinnamon woods and something musky.

Every now and then I have these, um, ”scenarios” that run in my head. No, it’s not my imaginary friends again or the Lancer boys, but I just think through how a series of conversations must go, which gives me no end of amusement and hilarity most