I took a stumble through our local mega-mall recently, looking for something that didn’t bore me to tears, and buried in the dross were some gems. Join me.

First stop — Bloomingdale’s, where I was assisted by an SA who was informed but laughably unfriendly. Fortunately I keep in fighting shape by browsing at Neiman Marcus (where an SA recently shushed me!), so I was unfazed.

Emporio Armani Diamonds – the bottle is pretty but less striking and sparkly than it looks in the ads. What’s inside? The same crap in Remix, City Glam, etc. I just looked it up – lychee and raspberry. Next.

Marc Jacobs Daisy – it’s so cuuute! Those white flowers? They look like hard plastic in the pics, but the petals are soft and bendy, and they don’t show it in the ad but the bottle’s wearing a matching white belt with more flowers. What’s inside? Who cares?!?! It’s so cuuute! I’ll probably buy one for Diva for Christmas. (Okay: it’s an innocuous musky floral.)

Marc Jacobs Essence – it was sitting right there, so I tried it – this isn’t me, but it’s very nice. Less gardenia/greens than the original MJ, which never grew on me, Essence has a mother lode of jasmine, as well as gardenia and orris. The opening would give Fracas a run for its money in terms of bomb-throwing sillage. But it’s a clean jasmine, even though it’s heady; those of you who gag on the indoles but like the jasmine concept might want to check it out.

The New Badgley Mischka Fleurs de Nuit – look at that gorgeous bottle. The same shape as the original with silver embossing. Seriously, seriously stunning. What’s in it? Big White Flowers (magnolia, jasmine, orange blossom) in their amber/musky base. Not me, and not particularly innovative (plus the lasting power was just okay), but if you’re looking for a present for a white flower queen it would be hard to top the presentation.

Judith Leiber – You don’t smell something like this every day. Notes: bergamot, mandarin, osmanthus, rose, jasmine, mimosa, gardenia, cedar, amber, musk, patchouli, vanilla. Much is made in their advertising fluff of the osmanthus, and FYI, the woman behind the counter rolled her eyes and threw the piece of paper at me when I said I wanted to write those notes down. I think she’s ready for a job at NM! Anyway, the in-store blurbage evokes the uncompromising, meticulous individual who knows her own mind. This fragrance not just unsexy, it’s anti-sexy – in other words, to me it’s a perfect adjunct to Leiber’s fussy, absurdist, eponymous Swarovski-encrusted minaudieres. The first few seconds are a sour mishmash that is barely recognizable as fragrance. I was so fascinated I didn’t scrub, and I’m glad I didn’t scrub, because the osmanthus is lovely when it emerges from that miasma, and the drydown was a dark, dense tapestry of patchouli and florals. It lasts forever on my skin, and comes in an interesting lay-down jewel-shaped silver and glass container. I wouldn’t wear it if you gave it to me, but it’s different.

Then off to Nordstrom, where a much nicer team of SAs (they do generally train them well there) honored my request to ignore me while I sniffed around – and then insisted they make me sample vials to take of whatever I wanted.

Guerlain My Insolence. Directions: take Guerlain Insolence. Subtract everything Guerlain about it. Et voila. It’s citrus-y while being less interesting than either D&G Light Blue or Moschino’s I Love Love, and that’s saying something. Next.

SJP Covet – I tried it on, finally. The bloggers are right – it’s much better on. The top notes still smell like bug spray to me, but the base is a woody, slightly gourmand musk. That bottle, though. Cripes. It’s a poisonous green with a transparent brown plastic cap, and it is a truckload of ugly. I’m still not clear where she was going with this.

And, most exciting saved for last:

The new (old) Givenchy gang of four fragrances! I sniffed and my heart soared. Now here’s a selection that says: I Want To Be a Grown-up. Full disclosure – except for Le De (which I sniffed a vintage sample of awhile ago but can’t remember) I didn’t smell any of these back in the day. I have no doubt someone can/will write in that, like most everything, they used to be so much better. I’m assuming these are EDTs, since they’re $85 for a huge 3.3 ounces, but at that price you can bathe in them. I can only compare them to themselves and the sea of mediocrity around them – and they come out smelling pretty darn good. If you look on the Nordstrom website they admit to “reworking” L’Interdit (horrors!), and Eau sounds a lot different than what people describe on Basenotes. Also, Le De isn’t listed on the Nordstrom site, for some reason.

Eau de Givenchy (1980) – hesperidic floral – bergamot, grapefruit, honeysuckle, jasmine, sandalwood. A wonderfully low-sugar floral for women who like their fragrances tart and dry.

Le De (1957) – My personal favorite. An antidote and an open rebuke to every hackneyed, market-driven tweener fragrance out there: look, you can make a fragrance that smells joyous and transparent and still be worthy of an adult. Coriander, LOTV, jasmine, sandalwood, olibanum. If tender floral scents like En Passant or Ineke’s After My Own Heart give you the shivers (in a good way), try this one. Up close to the skin it goes a little bitter on me in the drydown the way Chanel’s Cristalle does, and I wish it wouldn’t.

L’Interdit (1957) – floral aldehyde – powdery, reminiscent of Piguet Baghari (new version). Notes: aldehydes, Bulgarian rose, jasmine, pink pepper, orris, tonka. If you like the genre, smell this one. More elegant than Le Labo 44, softer than Baghari, a welcome smell in a sea of fruity-florals.

Givenchy III (1970) – chypre floral – dry, green, green, green. Cigarettes, high heels and a cocktail dress in a bottle. Galbanum, hyacinth, rose, jasmine, oakmoss, patchouli. Lord. Again, this isn’t my sort of thing, precisely, but it’s lovely.

I confess that I detest Fall. I mean come on…the trees are turning beautiful hues of red (my favorite color) only because they are starving themselves in preparation for frigid Winter. Lovely. The chill in the air that so many of my neighbors praise is only a taste of what is really to come…bone-chilling temperatures and brown slush. Bitter, bitter cold and a desperate longing to be somewhere warm.

OK, I’m done bitc…complaining. I don’t even allow myself to moan about the ridiculously high temperatures Kansas City reaches in the Summer, simply because I do so much ranting and whining from about January through March.

That brings me (finally, I know) to my subject….scents that have a knack for pulling me out of my Autumn depression. I confess to a love of the Florientals. Fall and Winter are perfect seasons to get away with overspraying the heavy hitters….something I am completely guilty of (yes I’m ending with a preposition here).

Has everyone tried Belle en Rykiel? I’m infatuated with this beauty. I got my first fix last Spring while in Paris and opted not to bring home a bottle because I was sure there would be plenty here…well we finally got it stateside. Yes lavender and incense has been done (to perfection) by Serge. This is a different take though. A true floriental with a comfort factor. I think the bottle is cute too, and I’m so not a bottle person….usually….which brings me to Guerlain’s beauty Quand vient la pluie. I bought the eau de parfum unsniffed because I just can’t say no to a new Guerlain….I don’t know why, I just can’t. I love it, but now I have to have the parfum (going in on a split with that sucker). I get Apres L’ondee meets L’heure bleue (I think March was here too) and some more heliotrope. I am a sucker for powdery too and it is all over this one baby. This I’ll be keeping by my bed this winter in case I just can’t get out of it.

Nothing but nothing brings a smile to my face (scent-wise of course) like tuberose. I just had to mention my beloved because I find it missing in the new releases. By Kilian, which should be hitting Bergdorf’s soon, has one called Beyond Love which mentions tuberose and I will try desperately not to buy it unsniffed. I promise nothing.

Winters are always difficult. My depression seems to kick into overdrive around January…not a seasonal affect thing, just plain depression and a hatred for cold months. A wicked combination. For this reason (in addition to like ten thousand others) I adore perfume so much. A majestic hit of tuberose and I’m smiling through the mysterious pain. God bless the perfumer.

A few others on my recent rotation include Caron Acasiosa (a lovely skanky jasmine that smells simply dark); Caron Poivre which Patty has written plenty on, go girl and thanks for the heads up on this one; Nina Ricci Fille d’Eve (again, which Patty hooked me up with) which is the most beautiful fruity chypre EVER. If you haven’t sprayed this deceptively “fruity” scent it will knock your fig leaf off; Sarassins (gorgeous jasmine, ’nuff said).

Thanks for letting me chatter on. I’m off to to spritz a little of the N. 5 premiere on my sheets before bed…try it, it’s fantastic. On a side note, Dusan asked where my picture is…I promise I’ll post one next time…I have none…none..on this computer….my gifts do not live anywhere near the technical neighborhood.

I’ve been toying with Andy Tauer’s incense mods, Incense Extreme and Incense Rosé. I wrote him months ago, after Orris stole my heart, that I wished he’d do an incense fragrance. He said to me via email recently: “I remembered your earlier mail, about the frankincense, and basically you, together with the CO2 extract quality that I got my hands on, kick-started me on this. Now, I do not know whether you will like these two fragrances built around frankincense. But I will be delighted to send you a sample each. I will not touch the formula any more, I consider them finished.” He also gave me permission to blog on them.

Opening my international envelope of Incense Extreme and Incense Rosé, I caught a very Tauer-esque aroma – a ghost of his beloved limited run, Orris, which contained frankincense and orris. Andy’s fragrances tend to be strong – some stronger than others, but I can’t recall any particularly shrinking violets among them.

Anyway, the notes for Incense Extreme are coriander, orange leaves, orris, Texan cedarwood, frankincense, ambergris. Andy says: “I wanted to create an incense that is intense and clear. The result: a minimalist, copped interpretation of incense, a touch of spices, powdery orris, dry cedar wood and ambergris support the frankincense, that is rich, crisp, red and intense.” Savvy sniffers will note a slight resemblance to Orris (which had more orris and less frankincense, along with a much longer list of other notes). Lovers of Orris will be pleased to hear that Incense Extreme contains the same soaring, faintly sweet heart. The sweet-tart citrus of the orange leaves is prominent in the opening, and combined with the coriander it’s a dense, almost masculine scent. There’s a moment when the orange note fades and the coriander jumps forward. Then the frankincense opens up and begins to dominate. The cedar is quite mild to me, more of a general woodsy note, and I’m assuming the ambergris and coriander contribute to the faintly musky drydown. I’m going to quibble with Andy’s idea of “minimalist” – the list of notes is short, but the smell is quite complex. Yes, it’s clearly and absolutely about incense, but it doesn’t feel like an incense “soliflore” the way some other niche incense fragrances do. The orris, cedar and ambergris provide a strong, woods-metallic platform for the rest of the mechanics. The longevity (as with other Tauers) is excellent. Rich, crisp, red and intense – yeah, I’ll buy that. If Orris were the femme version, this somewhat related scent could be its masculine counterpart, although both of them are easily unisex, in my opinion.

I was less excited about sniffing and reviewing Incense Rosé, because as many of you know, I’m not a world-class rose fan. I’m nervous reviewing it, because … well … I like it so much I keep thinking there must be something wrong with it, frankly. The notes are clementine, bergamot, castor, Bulgarian rose absolute, orris, Texas cedarwood, frankincense, labdanum, myrrh, patchouli and ambergris. Andy says: “This rich and intense fragrance is at its base inspired by smoking frankincense, oriental woods and rich rose absolutes. I wanted to create a fragrance that breathes in the tradition of perfumery, and I wanted to capture the floral beauty that hides in frankincense.” Well, amen. Incense Rosé opens on a juicy clementine/bergamot, with the rest of the notes rushing in close behind, and the combination is a rich, macerated smell – you want to describe it with the same sort of adjectives you’d use for some smooth, aged cabernet. At this point it’s clear Andy hit the mark in his oenophile’s description — without smelling like wine, it has that liquid, nuanced depth, fragrance as palate-pleaser. The myrrh, patch and ambergris provide a medicinal, bitter counterpoint to the rose and orris, and it’s perfect – I keep coming back to the word smooth. Anyone looking for a soft rose soliflore, something sparkly and sunny, shouldn’t stop here (they’d be looking at the wrong perfumer, anyway.) This is an audacious, virile scent, practically striding through the woods in a brown velvet cloak. And yet … just about the time I applaud, I realize the scent’s changed into its red flamenco dress, a tart candied note lingering all around me. By the time I’d taken stock of that shift, we’d climbed back in the saddle and ridden off again. I love the duality — watching the masculine and feminine aspects of this fragrance tango together.

So, Andy – once again, I tip my hat to you. You are full of surprises. As much as I admire the Incense Extreme, I have to admit … to my amazement, I prefer the Rosé.

I thought that he wouldn’t be releasing these as part of his line, but I believe I’m wrong and they’re coming out in January. I’m sure their release will be all over the blogs, so keep your eyes peeled.

Also … Andy lost his mom recently. He asked for prayers rather than emails. I whisper mine to the bees in the garden; maybe you could send some his way, too. If you visit his blog, his godchild drew a picture of his mother and sent it to him. His mom is an angel. Of course.

image: hikejapan.com

Autumn approaches, and in celebration we’re inhaling two of the scents from the Serge Lutens oeuvre — Bois et Musc and Bois et Fruits, both scents from his Bois series, which also includes Orientale, Violette, Santal de Mysore, Chene and Sepia, all part of the Palais Royal non-export line. (March started to include Miel de Bois in the series but discovered it’s not. She now knows after consulting with Osmoz why it’s so funky — in addition to the odd boxwood note you can get in honey, the base has “animal notes” and hawthorn — the sort of footy smell that attracts flies in addition to bees, if you’ve ever stood next to a tree in bloom.)

When looking up the dates of these fragrances on Basenotes, it’s interesting to observe that the Lutens/Sheldrake team have been playing with variations on the theme for awhile. Feminite du Bois (for Shiseido) dates from 1992, as do Violette and Oriental, whereas Musc is as recent as 2005.

First up, Serge Lutens Bois et Musc:

Bryan: I find the whole collection absolutely gorgeous. I don’t know how else to describe the dare I say it “soft” approach to wood and (insert other note). Bois et Musc could have been a title given to ALL of the insipid men’s counter releases. In the Serge bottle, I get a perfect balance of warm woods and a dusting of animal (a beautiful beast at that). I adore this one, and just to show how truly, well, balanced this beauty is, this is Mom’s favorite from the line….I almost had a heart attack when she chose this at the shop in Paris….I still wear it though, odd as that is….leave it to Serge (and Chris).

Patty: This is probably my favorite of the boisees, next to Un Bois Sepia. The open is a little B.O’ish, but the musk in it settles in better on me with less fruity cedar and just a little bit ‘o the skank running around in it to keep it interesting.

March: As a recent convert to Feminite du Bois after several false starts, it’s fun for me to sniff the relationship between that and the Serge Lutens Bois scents. I think Bois et Musc would be a perfect alternative for anyone who really likes Feminite but finds it a bit too sweet on the skin. Bois et Musc starts off with a stronger cedary blast than Feminite, and for awhile I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out for me. But as it fades a musky sweetness emerges, rather than the almost macerated fruity sweetness of FdB. There’s nothing dirty about that musk base to my nose – sexy, but not dirty. I think they’re both gorgeous, and both are rich and woody enough to be unisex. A preference for one over the other would probably be driven by how you feel about your cedar and/or your spoonful of fruits. I’ll still take FdB.

Lee: Both this and Bois et Fruits were the only two Bois series scents I’d never got round to smelling, except in wax form. All hail Patty, the Great Enabler. Now, I probably love this series more than any other - holistically at least - in the Lutens oeuvre; from the candied-violet peekaboo in the forest of Bois de Violette, to the sweet curry and sandalwood voluptuousness of Santal de Mysore, to the soaring simplicity of Chene, they’re all masterpieces to my nose. Bois et Musc has the same waxy quality that’s in FdB and Bois Oriental, but for me those other two win out. The autumnal spice of BO works better for me than the vaguely animalic nods of BetM, at least in late September. In February, it might be a different story altogether. I’m also anosmic to some musks - go figure.

Next, Bois et Fruits:

Lee:These are dessicated rather than dried fruits, as though they’ve been exposed to air over years and their aroma is mixed in with dust and debris and the passing of time. There’s an austere, dark sepia quality to this one, perhaps a sense of something once charred in the past, a trace of burning still lingering. The Salons Shiseido calls this ‘candied cedar’. It isn’t, unless that slight burning sensation I get is reminiscent of caramel. I’d call it Burnt Umber Cedar; it’s a melancholy, odd scent that draws me to think of my past as an old photo and that boy staring back at me as an alien from another country.

March: You would think, in theory, that something called “and fruits” would be sweeter. Weirdly, you would be wrong. There’s something dry and dusty about this scent, a faint bitterness that is an interesting foil for the woody base. If FdB is a 6 on the sweetness scale, and Bois et Musc is a 3, then this fragrance is a 1. It’s a dark, inward scent rather than a luminous one – the sort of thing that might appeal if you like, say, Serge Lutens’ Rose de Nuit. For me? It’s the luminosity of Feminite I find so compelling, so naturally I’m not really spellbound by this one, but it’s a beautiful scent, and probably the most complex of the three.

Patty: This one always surprises me. I keep thinking I’ll get a fruity thing closer to Feminite than what Fruits serves up. It is dry and not sweet, more woods than anything else. Much more wearable than FdB has become (don’t hate me, March, just when you finally came around to it!)

Bryan: Of all of them, I expected to dislike this one the most. I was terribly wrong. March said it beautifully (duh) that this is not your sweet fruity wood scent. I thought this would be simply too much cedar and too much plum. This is more of that precious cedar which Serge exhalts like no other with a coloring of plum skin. Red is by far my favorite color and if I had to assign a color to this scent, I would go with crimson….if that makes any sense at all.

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Perfume 201

Welcome to Perfume 201 - the intermediate/advanced list of suggestions for fragrances to smell, with input from our panel of experts (aka our blog commenters). You can tackle the fragrances on this list if you’ve done your basic course of Perfume 101, where we covered some perfume basics and suggestions for where to start in your sniffage. There’s also a permanent link to that post in the left-hand column of this blog.

We went in there and did a little updating. Probably the main thing is the chumps at eBay kicked all the decanters off, so you can’t buy home-made samples on there any more (although you can still buy bottles). Fortunately, a number of eBay’s biggest decanters moved their business elsewhere online, including dragonfly, fleur-de-lisa, fishbone, fragrant fripperies at The Perfumed Court, and others are also still selling, which you can find by clicking decanter resources over on the left side of this blog.

You know you’re a bona fide fragrance freak if you have your own decanting supplies. Get in the habit of carrying around a baggie of empty vials with you — if you ask nicely, you can often get a baffled SA to let you make a sample of something “for later.” Don’t forget your labels and your waterproof pen! Those teeny Zip-Loc baggies are useful if you’re worried about a vial of something leaking, and the pipettes or bulb syringes are great for decanting things from flacons. It’s hard to find decanting supply places that sell in smaller quantities. March likes Pilotvials; Patty recommends Scentworks or Exotic Fragrances. Small (1ml) and larger (2.5ml) vials are useful, along with 5ml atomizers. Plastic atomizers tend to be cheaper, but if you’re going to store a decant for awhile, get the glass ones. You get what you pay for: very cheap plastic atomizers tend to leak. Super-fantastic decants of rare or uber-expensive stuff might be better off in one of those little glass screw-top bottles, just big enough to contain the juice. Remember: heat, light and excess air are the enemy of fragrance.

This Advanced Course List is for those of you who have a comfort level outside the department-store and mall fragrances most folks are familiar with. We have no doubt there are people out there – including some of you readers – who have a higher natural level of sophistication than we do regarding fragrances. Maybe you took your first sniff of some really leathery fragrance, or some civet-ripe vintage treasure, and thought you’d died and gone to heaven. If you are like us, however, you probably just thought you’d died. (Or you were smelling something that was dead.)

We each have our fragrance litmus test – the scents we smelled, and smelled again, and re-smelled until our feelings went from disgust to love. For Patty, those scents are Muscs Khoublai Khan, vintage scents, and indolic (means fecal-smelling) jasmine. For March, those scents are leatherfests like Bandit and S-Perfume Lust.

Anyway, if you think it’s time to broaden your horizons a little – if you can smell a little leather, or maybe some musk, and not toss your cookies in the nearest trash can, here’s a list of scents we think raise the bar in terms of challenge and interest. Just like the last list, it’s a nonscientific sample and undoubtedly reflects our biases. Dig in and enjoy. Just remember – like your first oyster, your first mouthful of, um… caviar or Stilton, and some of the other firsts in your adult life, you may not love it the first time. And that’s okay.

One additional note on the groupings — these are judgment calls, many of these scents can easily fall into more than one of our categories (e.g., weird AND leather). We stuck it where we thought they fit best, but it’s a coin toss on some, don’t sweat over the classifications. Just smell them. We’ll leave this one up with a permanent link so you can always refer back to it.

You Should Smell:

• Classics and reissues - Chanel No 5. You may hate it, you may despise the aldehydes, but you need to sniff it anyway, preferably in the parfum or the EDP. Christian Dior Diorling and/or Diorama, either the vintage or the reissue. Whether done by Roudnitska originally or the reissues by Roja Dove, these are classic, complicated scents. All of these are valuable to see how far a pefumer can go in creating something complex and beautiful, or in the case of Diorling, A High-Strung Drama Queen that you can’t help but love. Houbigant Apercu — you can still buy it, and it is still stunning. Also, you may not want to wear them, but resniff elevator-clearers like Piguet Fracas and Dior Poison, great fragrances that maybe shouldn’t be worn to work. In fact, the entire Piguet oeuvre, new and vintage, is worth a sniff (Bandit, Fracas, Visa, Baghari, and anything else we forgot.)
• Leather - There are a lot of great hard-core leathers. Parfum d’Empire Cuir Ottoman, Knize Ten, Caron Tabac Blond, Caron Yatagan, Tauer Perfume’s Lonestar Memories, Rochas Femme (vintage), and Kolnisch Juchten are all worth smelling.
• Incense - Any or all of the Comme des Garcons Incense series scents, Armani Prive Bois d’Encens, Donna Karan Black Cashmere (incense/woods), Norma Kamali Ceremony or Incense, Etro Messe di Minuit (incense or mildew?), Chanel No. 22, Josef Statkus, Serge Lutens Encens et Lavande, Diptyque L’Eau Trois.
• Green - Chanel No. 19, Carven Ma Griffe, Miller et Bertaux No. 3, Balmain Vent Vert (preferably vintage), Gres Cabochard (ditto), Tauer Perfumes Reverie au Jardin (green/lavender).
  
• Musk- You’re ready for the big girl panties and the big boy bed, so head right for the Big Daddy, MKK, Serge Lutens Muscs Koublai Khan. You did say you’re all grown, right? Over 21 for sure? Well, let’s just keep going. Don’t make that “ew, peas” face, this is an excellent education, and you may even love it - lots of people do - CB I hate Perfume Musk Reinvention. The most universally loved musk would be Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur. Kiehls Musk is the old-timer that has its fans.
• Woods - one of our favorite categories, the choices are endless. Some recommendations: any of the Serge Lutens Bois series (or their mother, Shiseido Feminite du Bois), CdG Palisander, 10 Corso Como, Diptyque Tam Dao, Guerlain Samsara.
• Tea - Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan or Comme des Garcons Series 1: Leaves (Tea), Parfumerie Generale Harmatan Noir (tea with a little mint, Patty’s favorite tea of all time); L’Artisan Tea for Two, Annick Goutal Duel (mate tea).
• Gourmand — There are two vanillas that are just exquisite, Indult Tihota and Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille. The only other sort of gourmand that we think is interesting, even if you hate it (sorry, March) is Serge Lutens Borneo 1834. There’s a chocolate note in there that allows us to stick it in with the gourmands, but it’s not a sweet chocolate, and it’s all covered up by cobwebs, dust and other yummy notes that make Borneo a singular oddity in the world… take that how you want. Luctor et Emergo’s People of the Labyrinths (aka POTL), love it or hate it, you need to make sure you’ve smelled it. Others recommended by our panel of experts: Bois 1920 Sushi Imperiale, Serge Lutens Rahat Loukoum, L’Artisan Vanilia or their Epices coffret, Parfumerie Generale Aomassai (also a love it or hate it), Rochas Femme, new version (cumin!)
• Skank, glorious Skank — You’re a nice girl or boy? Okay, sure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t embrace your inner sinner from time to time. To assist you in knowing what we are talking about, try some of all of these: Mona di Orio Nuit Noire, Bal a Versailles, Jicky parfum, Delrae Amoureuse, Miller Harris L’Air de Rien, Bella Bellissima Perfect Night.
• Iris - Another Serge fits here perfectly, Iris Silver Mist. Cold, metallic, strange, beautiful, with a charming little spicy drydown. It is an education on how rooty iris smells.
• Rose- MDCI Rose di Siwa, sweet, beautiful, haunting, the perfect rose; or Lancome Mille et Une Rose, another perfect rose. If your taste in roses runs more to the dark, complex and fit for searching for your next victim in the middle of the night, Frederic Malle’s Une Rose and Serge Lutens Rose de Nuit are required sniffing. Other recommended roses: The Different Company Rose Poivree, Le Labo Rose 31.
• Violet - Guerlain Attrape-Coeur and Caron N’aimez Que Moi parfum are the perfect violets, one light and one dark.
• Chypre- Bonus points if your budget will allow you to do Guerlain Djedi. Yes, it’s vintage, discontinued, rarer than slug’s teeth, but even if it’s just a small amount, the strange weirdness of it is worth sniffing. Coty Chypre, EDT or EDP, is the monster that started it all. Miss Dior, a complete classic. Smell Chanel’s 31 Rue Cambon for a “modern” chypre. Others: Paloma Picasso, Caron Alpona.
• White Florals- Let’s cover both ends of this. Money is No Object - that has to be Shalini and CB I Hate Perfume Cradle of Light, and Cradle of Light will do double duty by covering some of the skank area too. On the lower budget end, Parfums de Nicolai Number one, a gorgeous white floral without a lot of perfuminess often associated with white florals. There are millions in this category — Serge Lutens’ A La Nuit and Datura Noir are killah; we also like Caron Acaciosa and L’Artisan La Haie Fleurie du Hameau (white and dark). Other fan favorites: Malle Carnal Flower (tuberose and wintergreen) and Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle (tuberose and death uh, mothballs camphor) — someone’s going to get their writing Crayon taken away if they keep dissing the gorgeous Tubereuse Criminelle, Miss March.
• Oud - Montale Black Oud for the dark oud, and Montale Cuir d’Arabie for your “Get out The Whip, Sailor” Oud. Light oud? you’re reading the wrong blog, ouds should never be light.  Okay, one light’ish oud is Montale’s White Oud. Happy?
• Smoky - Annick Goutal Eau de Fier, CB Burning Leaves, Kolnisch Juchten, Le Labo Patchouli 44.
• Patchouli - Borneo (again), Montale Patchouli Leaves (most suggested), Mazzolari Patchouli, Jalaine Patchouli, Prada (March’s favorite, go figure.)
• Vetiver - Hermessence Vetiver Tonka, The Different Company Sel de Vetiver, Le Labo Vetiver (skanky!), Frederic Malle Vetiver Extraordinaire. This list could go on for days, there are so many great vetiver scents.
• Weird (aka Love It or Hate It). We dare you; live a little — Commes de Garcons original parfum; Kenzo Jungle Elephant; Bvlgari Black; Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia; Kolnisch Juchten (vintage - smell like a pickled half-smoke!), Serge Lutens Miel de Bois (honey? or funny) Annick Goutal Eau du Fier (blacktop! oil!), Cumming (seriously). Special award to L’Artisan Dzing! (”what … what is that smell?”), Annick Goutal Sables (”is someone wearing … syrup?”)
• Amber — Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan is the grandaddy of all great ambers, but by all means, if you’re adventurous, take a sniff of Parfum d’Empire Ambre Russe or Laura Tonatto Amir. Other winners: Montale Blue Amber, L’Artisan Ambre Extreme.
• Random Fruits – Fendi Theorema (oranges touched by an angel), L’Artisan Premier Figuier (fig, regular or Extreme, in this case Extreme being creamier and figgier)
• Virtual Reality - Keep working your way through CB I Hate Perfumes. We love Memory of Kindness, Wild Hunt and Greenbriar 1968 (pipe). Serge Lutens Chene is a wonderful woody scent.
• Smell Because We Say So - Any of the JAR parfums, don’t care which, just start somewhere and smell one. Then start working on the Carons. You can start at the more accessible Poivre and Tabac Blond, but anywhere is fine as long as you start. (March says: I don’t love Caron’s base, and even I think you’re a fool if you don’t smell the Carons. Just Do It).  Special mention of two lines to smell not only because the fragrances are beautiful, but because you get the idea of how a perfumer’s style works across their line: Ormonde Jayne, Tauer Perfumes (both lines have a huge following on this blog and elsewhere in perfumery fan circles.)
• What some call Men’s Scents, and we call ours because we’re greedy that way- Carons — L’Anarchiste, 3eme Homme, and loads of others plugged in elsewhere here under individual notes.
• If You Ever Get The Chance: (rarities that didn’t wind up listed above) any of the Gobin Daudes; IUNX Splash Forte; Donna Karan Chaos; Christian Dior Jules.
  

The same rules apply as in Perfume 101 — like Barbies, There are No Rules in Perfume. You like what you like, don’t let anyone tell you that $6 perfume you’ve loved on since you were 16 isn’t beautiful, because if it’s beautiful to you, that’s all that matters. There is no “correct” taste to have here, scent is highly individual, and it should be fun. If you start taking this seriously, you need a new hobby.

Winners of the Barbara Bui Le Parfum samples, drawn by Enigma’s hand: Divalino, Kuri and Sweetlife! Email me your address under Contact Us. I’ll also throw some random leftovers in your package, having decanted part into vials. Note: I am going to switch to glass atomizers, but I already have a ton of the plastic ones, so that’s what you’ll be getting. If you hold onto your decants indefinitely, consider pouring them into glass vials or bottles.

For anyone else who wanted to try Barbara Bui – I heard from a regular commenter that she bought some online after my review from Perfumes from France (which is actually in Florida), and she was quite pleased with their customer service. They carry 30, 60 and 90 ml bottles at reasonable prices, representing a great alternative to fleaBay. I checked the site out and – squeeeeee! – promptly ordered some Barbara Bui Huile Blanche (white oil) – 100 ml of oil with the same notes as the fragrance for $18.95! It sounds like the perfect thing after the bath. I’ll let you know how it works out. By the way, last week I threw on Barbara Bui Le Parfum in slightly cooler weather and was thrilled to get a big ol’ hit of incense and less amber. It’s sort of a changeling.

Okay, on to today’s post.

Why am I crazy? It’s probably the fumes. Join me as my fingers do the walking through a random, daily dose of niche perfumery, this batch whipped up by Nancy of The Perfumed Court.

Gianni Campagne Vento Canale — Nancy stuck this into my sample set as a gift, saying “speaking of comfort scents…” since I’d been blogging on them. Notes are: rum, clary sage, carrot seeds, davana, cedar, lily, amber, tobacco, musk, honey, vanilla, cacao, and vetiver. And wow. Thanks, Nancy! There’s something Giacobetti-esque about it, and it’s up to you whether that’s good or bad. (To me: good.) An airy comfort scent par excellence – a woodsy, piquantly herbal cedar that dries down into a mildly boozy tobacco/vanilla that doesn’t try to strangle me with sweetness like Tom Ford’s Tabac Vanille (and, occasionally, Lutens’ Chergui, as much as I love it. Don’t shoot the messenger.) Not being beaten over the head with the kitchen-spice-box is a nice change. Definitely worth checking out.

Norma Kamali Incense – they wouldn’t let me try this on when we were playing at Nancy’s house; she sent me home with a sample. I can see why. You know I love incense. I like Norma Kamali Ceremony a lot, which is $80 on Beautyhabit and well worth it, IMHO. I smell incense, myrrh and woods in Ceremony. Norma Kamali Incense is $220, and … whoa. It smells to me like frankincense from the most expensive head shop on earth. NK Incense spends 60 interesting seconds after application wafting all sorts of odd smells – mushroom, sweet, resinous musk, bitter herb (sage?), dust — while it rearranges its skirts or something. After that it’s essentially like being whacked by a Flintstone-sized cudgel of incense. And I put on maybe 4 drops. Norma recommends layering it with her NK fragrance. I recommend not wearing it to work or in confined spaces, and double-bagging your sample vial. Potent stuff. I do like it, though.

Guerlain Iris Ganache — Go figure. I hadn’t even bothered smelling this one. I’ve sworn off my Guerlain-whoring ways until they work through that giant drum of heliotrope-benzoin they keep making into various things. Also, could we not name any more fragrances Quand Vient Beyonce Pour La Pluie or whatever? There is zero chance I will ever get that name right, even if I’m staring right at it. Oh, and something in the less than $200 range would be great, thanks, I can live without the Baccarat flacon. Anyhoo. I put it on as a half-joke, because … ew. Ganache? Notes are: iris, chocolate, cinnamon, patchouli, musk, cedar, vanilla, and Kill Me Now. But it smells heavenly! I think the reason it works for me is (joy of joys!) I immediately kill off most of the sweet stuff everyone’s been complaining about and get a metallic iris and a dusting of cinnamon, which is a delightful combo. It’s like L’Heure Bleue with less powder and more spice, and while I’m not sure I need both (I love LHB) this is way more attractive than I thought it would be. Easily my favorite of the L’Art et la Matiere line. The lasting power is excellent, which in this instance is a good thing.

Bois 1920 Sushi Imperiale — citrus, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, Madagascan vanilla. Dammit. I really wanted this to work. As you can see it’s not sushi-scented – it’s comfort-scented, and many people love it. I was actually heartened by a commenter’s complaint that it smelled like sweet gingerbread and cloves. Bring it on, baby! What I get, though, is the Grim Reaper of Vanilla. I can kill off random sweet notes like nobody’s business, but too much vanilla is Too Much Vanilla. Where is my comforting spice pudding? Sigh. It’s fine – it’s just mostly vanilla on me, a very nice, pretty vanilla, and no thanks.

Red Flower Hammam Cardamom Amber oil — Notes: cardamom, bergamot, rose, jasmine, litsea cubeba, ylang ylang, sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver, black pepper, sweet orange, and apricot. I am having huge success today. Is this wildly innovative? Um, nope. Lightly spiced amber with the merest hint of florals. Smelling it on the back of my hand made me grin, it’s like a hug in a bottle. It’s also an oil and so (hold onto your hat!) it’s … oily. Fall’s almost here. Turn the phone off, take a long bath, throw some of this on, climb into your terrycloth robe and read a good book.

Also in the box but not in this review: PG Haramens, PG Cuir d’Iris, Armando Martinez, possibly something else. My nose broke. Maybe next time.

fish candy (aren’t those great? I want some): mundtscandies.com

There comes a day (or more than one) in your life where you realize what a fickle bitch you are, and my day came this week. There was a time that I admired the house of Guerlain, but many of their scents just weren’t me.  Caron girl here through and through. Hey, don’t worry, I still am!!  But now I’ve become a Guerlain ‘Ho. From the skanky drydown of Jicky parfum that makes me feel like I’ve gone slightly feral to the difficult Mitsouko that reminds me of all the complexity and strangeness of humanity — repelling and attracting at once, I do love them all. I’ve even changed my mind on the L’Art et la Matiere line.  The old saying, if I recall it correctly, roughly goes “Caron for the Queen and Guerlain for the Courtesan.”  I thought I was a Caron Queen, only to find out I’m willing to be a Guerlain Courtesan. 

Guerlain’s recent additions in the last year or two have been hit and miss for me, though I’m always jacked when they pull something from their back catalog, like Candide Effluve that’s coming out in October.  ‘Tis a shame that it’s only coming in a Limited Edition bottle for over 3k.  Yeah, you read that right, $3,000 smackeroos.  My credit card is quivering in fear in my wallet right now (yes, of course I’m getting it, are you nuts?!?!  I may never get to sniff it otherwise).  But that’s still a month away, and there’s two new Guerlains to talk about!

Quand Vient la Pluie was introduced last month, with notes of heliotrope, violet, rosemary, sambac jasmine, and praline.  I have heard that the parfum has amber in the base, and the edp has not.  What strength I tested? I don’t know. The lovely Francoise put (Perfume) on the outside of the sample box, and I’m thinking for the French that is meaning the parfum, and I’m getting amber in the drydown… so, yeah, parfum?  Now, I’m going to triangulate between this release, the release of the Spirituese Double Vanille and Iris Ganache and Bois d’Armenie. That way those of you familiar with the IG and BdA will have a reference point here, or at least a nonreference point.

La Pluie starts off like candied sunshine, and I mean that in the best way.  It tips and dips around that praline note early on, which had me on edge, thinking this may not end well, even though it is very pretty, and then it went in the right direction, away from that sweetness, but retaining the beauty it added to the scent. It’s very different from Iris Ganache, I don’t find them alike at all, except that they each have that slightly sweet note popping up, though it’s not the same sweet note, it has a similar feel maybe?  Not sure how better to explain it.  It’s not got that melancholy iris that Apres L’Ondee has.  It is happier, with an elegant drydown that’s only slightly sweet or almondy, sort of a background thing. I don’t know that it’s going down as one of Guerlain’s masterpieces, but it is definitely Guerlainish and quite lovely.  I’ve read elsewhere that people had it vamoose on them quickly. I didn’t find that to be the case on me, but most Guerlains stick to me like glue, and I’m not sure if they were testing the edp or the parfum.  If you’re not a big fan of the sweeter aspects of Guerlains, like Iris Ganache and Mayotte, I’d be surprised if you will be a fan here.  There’s not a drop of smut in it that I can detect, so you skank lovers can move along now, nothing to see here.

Spirituese Double Vanille is the latest limited edition from Guerlain.  It goes on almost medicinal and then quickly melts into its incense base layered over the vanilla. Notes of vanilla, benzoin, frankincense, spices, cedar, pink pepper, bergamot, Bulgarian rose and ylang-ylang.  I get almost no ylang, and the rose is nestled so far in, I still wonder if it’s there.  It’s all incense, spice and vanilla and something slightly sharpish in there, but not unpleasant sharp, just prickly.  Not sweet, dry, and it reminds me of something else, maybe just more like real vanilla after it’s been baked in something?  I’ve been OD’ing on it.  When I first smelled it, I thought it was reminiscent of Bois d’Armenie, but then I smelled them again next to each other, and not even close. Armenie is smokier, woodish. I found the open of Double Vanilla be be closer to the open of Iris Ganache, though the drydown is not the same, they diverge fairly quickly after the initial medicinal blast — IG off into iris-ville and DV off into dry incense-ville.

Now, extrapolating all of this out into which ones work best?  Well, my opinion is you should put all four on together.  I stink gloriously to high heaven in the best possible way. I’m not kidding! I’m leaving a sillage wake that could kill someone, but I think I smell phenomenal and anyone keeling over after I pass by should be grateful to expire with such a lovely scent in their nostrils. I’m floating in a cloud of incense, armenie papers, vanilla, iris, heliotrope with just a hint of candies hovering nearby.  I need to make up a quad sprayer so I can wear this to bed. I want it in all of my clothes and my closet. The only thing that would make this better is… Yeah, le Labo Patchouli! 

I had so much of the Double Vanille on me yesterday when I went to the grocery store at 8 a.m., they could have slapped a label on me and called me an incense cake.  I’m used to it, and I never realilze how treacherous the scent level gets until I’m outside of my office and in a more, um, normalized atmosphere.

What’s in it for you?  You too should smell like me.  I know we’ve been doing a lot of giveaways, but I think we all like doing them, and I hope you guys like them too.  Just add a comment to this post, and I’ll enter you in the drawing for a sample of all four of these gorgeous things.   Double entries for those that give me the best tip on learning Latin because right now my Latin I class is actually making me study, which is a totally new phenomenon for me, and I’m not exactly sure of the best way to go about memorizing the damn conjugated verb endings, though in theory it sounds easy, but in practice, associating this with the root is causing me a lot more actual having to think time than I care for. There must be some easy mnemonic?

Whither the cult fragrances? You know what I’m talking about. No? Let me refresh your memory. Not so long ago – when the Earth’s crust was still cooling and before the fragrance-industrial complex started releasing something like 800 scents a year – a new fragrance like Luctor and Emergo’s People of the Labyrinths (a.k.a. POTL) would come out and perfume fanatics would talk about it forever. On the message board, in the blogs, folks would be singing their praises over and over and over about some interesting new release like Anne Pliska, or Fifi Chachnil, or Narciso, or what have you.

Robin at Now Smell This and I were just lamenting the flood of fragrances and flankers, and how folks don’t seem to rhapsodize over specific scents quite as long as they used to. I’m absurdly pleased to see Worth Courtesan appear semi-regularly on the Perfumed Court Top 10 list, which I like to consider my own contribution to cult adoration, since so far as I know I’m the first blogger to lug a bottle home from the U.K. and rave about it. (An aside to any of you who’ve tried it – um, how’s that going?) But I wonder how long it will be before everyone’s moved on.

I miss those perfume-cult days.

So I’ve joined up. Today I’m turning my back on my truckload of new samples to blog against the grain about a cult scent – one of the original cult scents – I’ve only recently and happily fallen in love with: Shisedo’s Feminite du Bois (notes via Osmoz: ginger, cinnamon, clove, plum, peach, orange flower, violet, cedarwood, sandalwood, vanilla, benzoin). It was created all the way back in 1992 by Christopher Sheldrake and Serge Lutens, the precursor to Lutens’ Bois series. I’d tried it several times, and each time I was assailed with an overwhelming note of B.O., courtesy of the cedar. I like skank as much (okay, more) than the next person, but there’s nothing sexy about that heavy B.O. note on me. It’s revolting. I would sigh and move on.

Then several months ago I was in an airport somewhere, waiting to board a plane, killing time in the duty-free shop, when I picked up a bottle of FdB and pondered again how brutally unfair it was that I couldn’t wear the fragrance in that gorgeous bottle. I sprayed some on, which was both masochistic and inconsiderate before getting on a plane, but my mind was addled – and lo! It was so beautiful. It was everything I could ever have wanted.

Some of the most rapturous reviews I’ve ever read of a scent focus on Feminite’s development, but on me it’s fairly linear. The cedarwood is strongest in the first ten to fifteen minutes, and if you’re going to get the stink that’s probably the worst of it. Separate from that, it is a perfectly weighted blend of sweet fruits, spices, woods and benzoin. It is every bit as voluptuous as that bottle, strong but not overpowering, feminine but not flirtatious. I have read it described as “dark,” but to me it is as luminous as the full moon on a midsummer night. A man could wear it if he had some tolerance for the fruit-confit aspect, and there’s plenty of sandalwood to offset it. I will note here that my original observations about the B.O. aspect aren’t entirely imaginary; Louise has two bottles, and one seems to us to be quite a bit more B.O.-laden than the other. She likes the B.O. bottle because overall the scent lasts longer on her. I, with no longevity issues, prefer the softer bottle.

I love all the bits of this scent. I love it when I put it on. I love it nine hours later. I love it when I put on a shirt I wore the day before and its scent is still present. Some people find it too sweet on their skin, but not me. I’ve been wearing it to bed, because that’s how comforting I find it, and that’s a huge departure for me. I generally don’t wear scents to bed other than something really tame like Berdoues’ Violettes de Toulouse (or, more accurately, I just wear whatever six scents I have on, unless I’m so disgusted I shower first and then put on the Toulouse to ward off niche fragrance nightmares).

Feminite is perfect on its own, of course. But it also layers nicely with jasmine (I like Montale’s Jasmin Full) and it would probably work with other florals and maybe even leather, given how creamy and sweet it is.

Finally, a tip for Feminite lovers: I discovered (accidentally, of course) that FdeB layers wonderfully with a particular hand lotion I think I blogged on once – The Naked Bee hand and body lotion. It smells like orange blossoms floating in a bowl of honey, it’s alcohol and phthalate-free and not animal tested and blah blah blah, and it works wonders on my extremely dry skin, in addition to smelling luscious. (Their travel-size shampoo/conditioner is pretty fabulous too). Wearing the lotion and Feminite du Bois to bed together is almost more luxury than I deserve. Almost.

Embarrassing footnote: I think what I’m wearing is the Eau de Parfum, courtesy of Louise.  As usual, I could be wrong.  It has plenty of oomph, though.  Let’s see if Louise chimes in.

image: hermitage.msk.ru

One of my aims in life is to keep Patty happy with smell pleasures, and my samples up for review today will be winging their way across the Atlantic as you read this - if I can dare to part with them, that is. Because, for these past five days, I’ve been falling in love. Teased, caressed, confused and discombobulated, I need someone else to unpick these three fragrances for me, because I’ve been blinded by their beauty. Well, to be honest, I’ve only got eyes for one of them, though I’d hate you to let the other two know as they’re both great for flirting.

I am, of course, writing about the Parfum d’Empire trio, released sometime later this month: Osmanthus Interdite, Equistrius, Fougere Bengale. First, the background schtick - the line is the brainchild of Corsican Marc Antoine Corticchiato. He designs the bottles, does the historical research and creates the perfumes themselves. And all of that is done with impressive skill and artistic flair. He’s apparently an exacting nose when it comes to what he wants in a fragrance - the iris / rose / amber / sandalwood has to be EXACTLY right, or else… I’m not sure that his perfumes are recreations of scents of the past; to me they seem to be homages in a modern style to periods and people of historical richness. So far, we’ve had Napoleon and Josephine (Eau de Gloire, Eau Suave), Alexander (Iskander), the nineteenth century Russian court in all its heady opulence (Ambre Russe) and my favourite, the wealth and sophistication of the Ottoman Empire (Cuir Ottoman). While historians among us may question the wilful romanticism of these visions - where’s the blood, sweat and tears of culture here? - it’s much more difficult to doubt the beauty of at least one or two of these scents. There’s something for everyone here.

So, as I arrived at Les Senteurs last Friday, I did wonder where Corticchiato might go next. The lovely SAs at the best perfume store in Britain (FACT!) gave me free rein over the tiny sample bottles they’ve received as a pre-release, and they also made me the aforementioned vials to take away. Of course, I was distracted by the other glistening goodies instore, but kept returning to the newbies, because there was much to fascinate me there. I’d say, as a preamble, that the latest three are much more abstractions on a theme, rather than portraits. I might attempt to explain why, though it’s likelier I’ll be lazy and sloppy in my review. Never mind!
Osmanthus Interdite: L’osmanthus, fleur reine de la Chine, possède une saveur fine aux accents d’abricot. Osmanthus Interdite, dont le nom est un clin d’œil à la majestueuse Cité Interdite de Pékin, évoque aussi la Chine d’aujourd’hui et ses nouveaux Empereurs. Les ‘capitalistes rouges’ triomphent en Chine, conquerrant le XXIème siècle à coup de projets colossaux. Ils modernisent l’Empire millénaire et conduisent vers son prodigieux destin près du quart de l’humanité. Le parfum s’ouvre sur les notes fraîches d’un thé chinois aux accents verts et hespéridés. Autour de la rose et du jasmin, le cœur dévoile la saveur fruitée fleurie de l’osmanthus, qui évolue vers un sillage légèrement cuiré. Les muscs, cristallins, viennent clore la fragrance.

Helpful? Osmoz only has the details in French - I’ll leave it to you to babelfish or googletranslate it - I’m sure the mangling will be amusing. Though, it’s simple enough to get the gist of the message - an homage to China, represented by the Osmanthus, that refers to the past (the Forbidden City of Beijing) and the new capitalism of the 21st century, representing a quarter of the planet’s population. Not much to ask in a perfume, is it? So, what’s the juice like? I don’t get much in the way of red, personally. In fact, I’d be happy to swap the rich velvet red label on this one with the white one on the Equistrius bottle, partly because it does strike me as a delicate and ethereal fruity-floral, much like something in the Jean-Claude Ellena style. It starts with a finely subtle tea note that holds down the fruitier edges of osmanthus and plays up its more floral qualities. It’s supposed to be green tea, though that wasn’t necessarily clear to me. It was noticeably unfermented though - perhaps even a white tea note? As the fragrance develops, it gets both more floral (the support of the jasmine, the power of the rose - though I get no distinct high-pitched rose here) and fruitier, as the apricot aspects become prominent. And then the drydown - a definite leathery quality, like a light suede. It’s beautifully rendered and so not me, whereas Hermes’s Osmanthe Yunnan, perhaps this perfume’s most obvious point of reference, definitely is. What they share in common is the transparent quality they have - they are both silk like, built up of diaphanous layers so that you can see (pale) colours separately, as well as a blend. Whereas Osmanthe Yunnan seems to rely on hesperidic sparkle anchored by mossy basenotes, this scent, in its pale and innocent floral richness - hence the white - is too feminine for me. Conventional old me, eh?

Equistrius is the horsey one. Supposed to represent the might and majesty of the Roman equine worship, I was expecting something animalic and sweaty, more along the lines of Cuir Ottoman I guess. Instead, this opens up on a sparkling iris accord, supported by a twinkle of violets as far as Osmoz claims. It’s more like Lutens’s Iris Silver Mist, or The Different Company’s Bois d’Iris in its first few minutes - an iris that avoids powderiness completely and instead goes for the brilliance of the first shafts of sunlight on cold ground. I’ve tried to picture a horse, and all I imagine is a white stallion located somewhere in Ted Hughes’s eponymous poem.

Except for a few minutes of aftershaviness (funny how scents can do that - it’s all butch for a while and then snap! it vanishes as quickly as it arrived), this perfume is exactly ambiguous in its sexual identity. It slowly warms up, becoming more ambery, and woodier, but with the softness of high quality sandalwood, rather than the often coarser cedar (don’t tell Serge I said that!). I definitely get the chocolate, but this steers far clear of gourmand land and just adds to the enveloping warmth of the composition. Not a snort or bray to be found. So, as a scent its an interesting juxtaposition of chilly opening, clean as frost, and warm snuggle. Decant-worthy, at the very least.

Now onto love. Fougere Bengale is enigmatic. When I sprayed it on in the store, I was startled by its apparent similarity to Eau Noire or Sables. But that was smell memory tricking me - the spiciness pretended it was immortelle, but I’m now not sure there’s any of that weirdly spicey-sweet beautiful-ugliness in there. It’s nothing like those two perfumes. In fact, each time I test this scent (and no more spraying iunfortunately, which I imagine is exactly what this scent really needs), I get something different. Gingerbread and Christmas one moment; curry the next; bucolic rolls in the hay a little while later; then another time, beautiful tobacco - it’s doing the blond tobacco thing as I type, in fact. It’s a shapeshifter in extremis and five days of sniffing hasn’t been enough for me to pin it down. So, looking at the notes as listed on Osmoz, I can agree with all of them. Because, most curious of all, it is obviously a classic fougere. There’s a buzz, a thrum, in what a fougere does on the skin - when it works that is - as the perfume notes play off against each other. In something like Rive Gauche pour Homme, it gives the overall composition a salty quality, as Luca Turin wisely noted on his long defunct blog. There’s a salty-sweet thrum here too that, in spite of all the OTHER CRAZY STUFF going on, never lets you forget that you’re in weirdly mixed up classic territory. And in the base, if all that isn’t enough, there’s a funkily animalic party occurring too - the tiger of the story, no doubt.

This should be a mess. It isn’t. It’s wonderful - frequently restrained, at times refined, but on the verge of collapse at any moment, with claws out at the very end. It’s supposed to be the Victorian Empire in India - perhaps here, Corticchiato gets his history right. A bottle is mine as soon as it hits the shelves.

(Forbidden city image from brittanica.com, horse photo from http://www.billemory.com, Rousseau’s Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised) care of www.tate.org.uk)

Readers have the best ideas! Thanks to Anne, who suggested a Monthly Scent Club, we are going to start one, beginning in October.

Here’s how we hope to have it work. We will select 3-6 scents the month before and let you know what they are. If you have all of them, wonderful, you’re all set to play along. If you have some of them, you can just play along with us on the ones you do have, you can arrange some swaps, or you can get the individual samples at The Perfumed Court in the category called Perfume Posse Scent Club (use the code POSSE to get 30% off of those samples). If you don’t have any of the samples, again, you can either swap around or get the entire set of samples at The Perfumed Court, and, again, use the code POSSE to get 30% off on that sample set.  The discount code will be available for two weeks after we announce the scents for the next month.

Once the month begins, we’ll have a series of discussions of the scents we’ve chosen — like a book club. Some of the months we’ll have a theme discussion like “virtual reality” or “sexy scents;” other months the scents we’ve chosen (e.g., ambers) we’ll likely end up comparing to each other. All of you who have the scents can play along and offer your thoughts on those scents in the comments.

This month’s series will be Gramma’s House, and it features CB Burning Leaves, Gathering Apples and Wild Hunt; Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia; Frederic Malle En Passant; and Serge Lutens Fumerie Turque. These are all great reality-type scents, very fall-like and homey — bread, smoke, grandpa, vintage cars, fall apples - like Grandmother’s House. We’ll talk about half of those on Tuesday, October 2, and the other half on Monday, October 15. We hope this will be a great way for us all to be playing with some of the same scents throughout the month — and (as Anne suggested) this way we can talk about them after you’ve had a chance to smell them, instead of before. My guess is we will learn a lot more from your thoughts than you’ll learn from us, but we’re happy to get the discussion going.

We also set up an a topic on our Message Board, which is a great place to have extended discussions beyond the comments in the posts we’ll do and to arrange swaps for samples ahead of time, if you don’t have them.

In the months ahead, we plan to do a Gourmand theme, Winter/Holidays, incense, ambers, You Sexy Thing, and more! We hope you’ll join us because we are so looking forward to this! Thanks again, Anne, for the suggestion!  If anyone has ideas on things you’d like us to cover in  the future, do let us know in comments or via e-mail.  This is new to us, too, so we’ll be looking for all of you for feedback on how to make it work and make it better.

Now for old business, the three winners of the Sarrasins samples from last drawing are:  Eliza, Rita and Musetta. Just hit the Contact Us button over there on the left and send me your address, and I’ll zip you out the sample. Thanks to everyone that entered!

Louise and I went sniffing at Nancy/Fishbone’s (from the Perfumed Court, and thanks again, Nancy!). It turns out she lives really close to me. Sniffing around a great collection with a couple of perfume pals is pretty much my idea of a perfect afternoon. Actually, having a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a migraine-inducing chocolate torte on hand might have been even more perfect, but I’d have paid the price later. As it was I had to wind the windows down in my car to overcome the perfume miasma when the three of us went out for a post-sniff coffee. By the way, anyone who has ever doubted the concept of skin chemistry needs to go sniffing with a friend or two.

Louise is more flexible than I am, so she was using her legs. Her ankle smelled great – some new leather thing Nancy’s discovered. I had a trail of heaven up and down my arms – from the delicious woods of Annayake Undo (pour homme) through Serge Lutens’ Chene (and am I insane or does the very late drydown smell a lot like Malle’s Noir Epices?), on up my arm past the French patchouli one (what was it called?), Lutens’ Bois Orientale, French Lover, Andree Putman’s Preparation Parfumee (which, okay, all too quickly goes from the watery lily coriander driftwood to a fresh scent, but what a nice one), and some other things I applied and, well, forgot.

So, here’s my story, and everyone this has happened to before – raise your hand!! Because at home throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening, I kept getting a whiff of something wonderful – creamy, warm, comforting, elegant. I kept trying to decide if it was two scents combining in my nose or layered on my skin (the new, coffee-musky Belle en Rykiel smells great layered with patchouli). Was it the Annayake? Something else?

Eventually I sorted out what the tantalizing scent was, gliding along in the background – the discontinued Barbara Bui Le Parfum (notes of spices, incense, jasmine, white musk, sandalwood, heliotrope, cedar and amber). The scent was only in production for a couple of years, d/c’d before I ever got around to it. If Nancy didn’t have an unfamiliar-looking, attractive square bottle sitting on her shelf I might never have tried it.

And what a shame that would be. Barbara Bui is one of those ideal, vaguely gourmand-but-not-foody comfort scents. There’s nothing austere or big-niche statement about it. It is a scent that is both comfortable and elegant – a mélange of creamy woods, soft, meditative incense, a hint of florals, sheer musk and a dusting of the sort of spices (cinnamon, cardamom and clove, maybe?) you’d find in some tasty dessert pudding. There is a clear, resinous amber note throughout, but you’re not being beaten over the head with it, as I feel about some ambers.

Part of my delay in figuring out which fragrance I’d fallen for is that the opening of Barbara Bui is its weakest moment: mostly amber and heliotrope, with a specter of Play-Doh lurking in the background, and while it’s not terrible I remember taking that first sniff, thinking meh — next, please, and promptly forgetting about it. It wasn’t until I tried it again that I remembered that opening fizzle, and all I can say is that if you’ll wait 20 minutes or so, the next several hours are well worth it. There’s some sort of perfect balance in those notes that creates a whole which is more appealing than its parts. There are bits that remind me of some other scents (Clinique Simply and Jil Sander’s Sensations spring to mind), but Barbara Bui is on a much higher plane of achievement.

It’s still available regularly on eBay, but given the short production span I wouldn’t bet the farm the supply will go on forever. Another example of a fragrance that deserved a much longer life – maybe that opening did it in, since so many consumers make their decision about a fragrance on those top notes. I decided I wanted to hoard some, because I’m pretty darn sure I’ll be working through Nancy’s generous gift of a partial bottle (thanks, Nancy!), so I bought a bottle on eBay. And … it’s been awhile since I’ve had a giveaway, hasn’t it? If you’d like to try some of this, say so in the comments below. If my bottle shows up I’ll send some out to the world.

amber image: cybermoonemporium.com

Parfumerie Generale L’Oiseau de Nuit (Night Bird) is one of those irritating little treasures Pierre cooks up in his basement because he’s bored one night or because some overly enriched Eurotrash wants their own perfume, then it either doesn’t release outside of Paris or hides under all those numbers in the private collection part of their website. This particular one is Private Creation No. 199 for 148 euros, and I know a couple of my compatriots at The Perfumed Court have samples available, as well — and I know this because, well, I cadged a sample from one of them because that name.. that name just slayed me. Why has no one named a perfume Night Bird before now? 

The blurb from PG on this one is:  “modern leather … dedicated to the precious essence of cistus labdanum. A swirling core of fruity and flowery notes set afire by benzoin and the liqueur of davana.”  Think Bois Blond meets leather, and that will be about where you should be in your perfume diagram in your head.

It goes on with an almost hay-like blast, very earthy and pungent, and then some of the sweet base that you find in most of the PGs bubbles up to take the edge off the rawness of the open.  Early on is where it reminds me most of Bois Blond. If you don’t like Bois Blond, you likely are not going to like this.  It’s a very rich, almost sweet leather early on, though it’s not as sweet as Bois de Copaiba. The longer it is on, the less sweet it is, and it smooths out into a very smooth, elegant leather.  I adore it, it is easy to wear and just lovely. Those of you who thought Bois Blond was too hay’ey and wanted it to skew to the leathery end, L’Oiseau de Nuit might suit you better. If none of the PGs have worked for you thus far, this isn’t going to change that for you, it’s got the PG stamp/base all over it.

Y’all did read this over on Now Smell This yesterday, didn’t you?  If you didn’t, go read, we’ll wait.  You back yet?  Great. Could you just….

SCREAM!!!!!!111!!!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!11!!

Annick Goutal is doing amber, myrrh and frankincense?!?!  As soon as I heard this, I phoned Tom at Bergdorf to see what he knew, and he’s trying to get more information on when it might arrive on our deprived shores. I read further in the cosmeticnews article, and it sounds like it is releasing in Paris in December (there will be an AG stop when we go and much begging to see if they have a drop to sniff or early bottles to sell - priming my charm now), with the edp going wordwide in 2008. It is a pricey little thing, with the 100 ml bottles individually going for over $200. That coffret of all three in 50 ml bottles for 1k is the parfum version, so for parfum, that’s really not that bad. Has Annick Goutal ever done a parfum? Maybe, but I’ve never sniffed one, nor can I recall another.  They had better be good, or someone will get a few choice, sharp words from me.  They can’t keep taking away the interesting stuff like Eau de Fier, finally give us back a great Three Gifts of the Magi set in time for Christmas and then have it suck.  I’m warning you, Annick Goutal, screw this up and we.are.so.over!!!  *shakes finger*

So I just add my anticipation on this one to the new Parfum d’Empire three being released in October, the Iris Pallida from L’artisan in November, that By Kilian thing that’s coming out in October or November, and several other things that are all neatly entered on my Excel spreadsheet. It’s exhausting worrying about all of these, but they are so much fun to anticipate! Which new release coming up has you the most frenetic with anticipation?

image from robertellisonimaging.com

My post last week on Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere got me meditating on Chanel’s Les Exclusifs, released earlier this year. I need to make a confession, because it’s something I do all the time with fragrances, and it drives me nuts. Remember when Les Exclusifs came out? And how Luca Turin raved about how great they were, and it was a bright new day for Chanel and perfumery etc. etc. etc., and we all blogged on them obsessively? You remember, right? That was February. At first sniff I was impressed by their fidelity to the Chanel brand (elegant, if a little more streamlined and modern-feeling); some of them I really liked.

And then … well, that was that. Haven’t touched them since. I’ve had generous decants of six of them sitting there in my closet getting dusty while I run around looking for my next fix. I do that all the time. I’ll sample some hot new fragrance or line; I’ll blog enthusiastically; and then I’ll pretty much forget it exists. It embarrasses me. Yes, there is an onslaught of new product, but why do I forsake something I already know is good for the thrill of the chase?

So. In the spirit of changing my fickle scent ways, and having discovered (news flash!) how great No. 5 is, after the other, hmmm, 98% of you, and feeling new love for the brand, I went back and retried Les Exclusifs without peeking at my review from February, giving each one a more leisurely second time around than my frenzied sampling earlier this year.

28 La Pausa – a dry, warm, woody iris. It’s simply lovely, and if it were even 10% stronger I’d likely own it. After applying 12 sprays to my upper body, including my shirt (yes, I counted) I enjoyed 45 minutes of gentle sillage. My favorite part is 20 – 30 minutes in, when the slightly bitter, thin top note dissipates and the warmth of the orris really shines. At that point it’s a great skin scent, suitable for something discreet in the office. But anything that disappears in under an hour (and I’m the person who clings to fragrance like a limpet) isn’t worth it in my view.

Coromandel – huh. I liked this a lot the first time around, but now the raspy, sour sandalwood-spice of the first half-hour is kind of offputting; also, given where the fragrance starts off it’s surprising how sweet it is when it dries down. Exceptional lasting power, though.

No. 18 – I know the fans of ambrette seed are legion, but I am not one of them. I appreciate its pickled-musk smell in theory, but in practice … no. It’s not an offensive or unattractive smell by any means (and who am I to judge, given some of the nasty things I wear?) But I defer any further comment on No. 18 on the grounds that it’s not going to appeal to me no matter how well done it is.

31 Rue Cambon – um, why have I not been wearing this all year? This is amazing. Am I at the start of some weird Chanel obsession? Hmmm. This is troublesome. 31 Rue Cambon is the non-chypre chypre that was invented to replace the traditional oakmoss base. The weird thing that’s happened with this one in the summer is that it’s become less chypre to me in the heat, rather than more. You’d think it’d be sort of too much, but you’d be wrong. I get peppery goodness along with all the delicious sweet bits – but sweet a la Chanel – which is to say, like a good champagne, somewhat dry at the same time. I’m putting this into regular rotation for the fall.

Eau de Cologne – it’s a very nice cologne, from the mildly peppery opening through the drydown that smells lightly of vetiver to me. I like it because it tilts a little toward the masculine woods rather than the citrus/petitgrain. But if this is priced similarly to the others, I can’t see that it’s worth the money. If you’re the sort of person who wants a signature scent, and you want it to be a status version of traditional cologne, maybe to wear to work where you need something really subtle and inoffensive, then here’s your fragrance. But if you are that person, you’re probably not reading this blog. OTOH – for something that wears as lightly as this one, I can smell it on my skin even at the end of the day.

Bel Respiro – Sometimes those green sap/crushed leaf scents rub me the wrong way, and I never know until I try it whether it’s going to be love or a scrubber. The first 20 minutes of Bel Respiro is, for me, some rough road. After that it settles down, the bitterness recedes, and you’ve got some gentle florals laid over a light grass and crushed-herbs base. I like it a lot at that point, and it’s got surprising lasting power for something that doesn’t wear very heavily.

Refreshing my memory reading my original post, the changes in my feelings seem somewhat seasonal. Coromandel and Bel Respiro are more overbearing in the summer heat (and it’s still in the upper 80s/low 90s here). 28 La Pausa is even lovelier than it was in the winter – I think it blooms in the heat a bit. But like the new Prada Iris Infusion, whether the problem is longevity or anosmia on my part, it’s not quite strong enough for me. The major surprise was how awestruck I was by 31 Rue Cambon this time. It garnered lots of blog raves on its release, and while my first time around I thought the drydown was really nice, the opening seemed harsh. No longer. I’d now put it up there with Bois de Iles on my Chanel Lust List, and that’s saying something. Although, now that I think about it … is it my imagination, or is there more than a passing resemblance between the two? What do you think?

For any of you who dabbled in Les Exclusifs – for the purpose of scientific study, talk to me. Did you try them early on? What did you like then? Did you buy any full bottles? Are you still wearing any of them? Did your preference change over the last six months? How would you stack them next to the older Chanels?

image: The Secret Lives of Iris IV, Diane Wilson, www.firelily.com

In the spirit of, uh, obscene goofiness, we’re doing something a little different this week. Today’s featured fragrance is Bella Bellissima’s Perfect Night, which Lee and Louise discovered on their London sniffage. Here’s the blurb on the back of the fragrance box:

“Dancing in the moonlight under an endless sea of stars… whispers of promises that thrill the senses… touches that linger, gentle caresses, mystery, passion.

This intoxicating, seductively spicy parfum lingers on the skin creating a beautiful, sensual statement and an unforgettably captivating impression.

An opulent composition, unconventional and hypnotic, blending heady incense, ginger, oriental vetivert and precious amber with a surprising twist of grapefruit, subtly laced with delicate midnight flowers.

Elegant, sexy, dynamic and daring. Perfect Night.”

You’re laughing now, right? Aren’t you sure whatever’s in that box is crap? Here’s the thing: it wasn’t. It was great. We all gave it a sniff, and decided to write our review in the florid, bodice-ripping style of the folks who wrote that fragrance blurb.

It was a dark and stormy night. She hunched over her manuscript, deep in thought, a tousle of hair obscuring her features. The pulpy smell of grapefruit clung damply to her skin. Her nose embraced the heady incense, waiting for the bloom of the night flowers. There was a sound outside her turret windows that interrupted her fragrant reverie. She rose languidly to see what it was, and just then, lightning flashed, and she saw a figure down below, what looked like a man with chiseled features and broad shoulders. Her hand flew to her mouth in fear… but wait! She had seen this man before!

She listened as the door to the tower beneath her flew open, bringing with the sound the vibrant scent of manhood, wafting like amber on the sultry air. Before long he was there — standing in front of her. She gave him a long look, full of meaning. It was indeed the young groomsman from her stables, wearing riding breeches and high leather boots, the smell of horses still clinging to him like a shining miasma, his rumpled cotton shirt carelessly untucked and only partly buttoned, allowing her the briefest glimpse of his muscular abdomen.

“Madam, I have something to tell you,” he said.

“Yes?” Her eyebrows arched. What was his name? She couldn’t remember. But she remembered the way his young, muscular hands held her rein taut when she mounted her horse that morning. Her eyes slid speculatively along the damp trail of hair, barely visible in the room’s dim light, that ran straight south from his navel to the top of his low-slung breeches. She was seized with the uncontrollable desire to bury her face in his neck, damp with rain and sweat from the sultry evening air and some unnamed exertion. The candle flickered and her vision swam as he approached her. The lightning flashed again and the very walls around her seemed infused with the earthy, sensual smell of vetiver.

“The stud is gone from his stable,” he said hoarsely. “It is my belief that he has been…. stolen.”

“Why do you think that?” she asked, trying to calm her breathing.

“The smell of incense. But wait, it is easier to show you than to explain it. Would you please come with me to the stable?”

He lowered his eyes deferentially, and turned his head. She watched his lashes bow, and the sinews of his magnificent frame awoke in her an animal longing she could barely name. If only he’d turn again, and come to her! The thought lasted only a moment, but while it was there, she felt the heat of the day press once more against her, flushing her cheeks and elsewhere. And as it did so, all the trials and exasperations of luncheon and supper with Lord Curmudgeon evaporated. To be in this moment was all she needed.

“I’ll certainly come,” she exhaled, her parted lips moist with anticipation. As he left the room, she stood, and her diaphanous nightdress clung to her; testament to the humidity the storm was now, finally - at last! - breaking. It had been so exasperatingly hot. She heard the rain thunder against the window, and realised she would be drenched on the journey to the stables. No matter, she thought; the dampness would remove the last vestiges of the day, as though the rain itself called to her more primal self, a self rooted in the fecund odours of desire.

The groomsman was already descending the stairs, and she hastened to follow him, as though he was now her master. She had already tripped twice, distracted by the flexing and releasing of his buttocks as he leapt from step to step! In minutes, they had left the great hall, crossed the courtyard and reached the stable doors. Catching her breath, the potent waft of animal made her nostrils flare as the groomsman opened the entrance for her. She thanked him and walked in. As she did so, he shifted position and she brushed against him; he still held onto the door, firm hand on firm knob. She hesitated momentarily; that was all he needed. The sepia light of the stables irradiated his features, and the hair of his forearms glowed with a preternatural presence.

“Madam,” he stated, his bold voice contrasting with his face, which avoided hers - as was expected from his status - “I fear I have lured you here on false pretences. Forgive me.”

Was the incense nothing other than a benediction, a hope that some holy intercession would come between this wonderful man and his desires? She prayed it was not so.

“Dear magnificent man…” She smiled as she spoke, and lifted her hands to his face so that their eyes met, “…forgiveness is only required after sin. And we have yet to do that. I think it is time we started, don’t you?”

And with that, she pulled his mouth towards hers, and felt the heat of his burning loins warm her damp skin, as he lowered her onto the straw…

dirty book cover: www.mysteryandimagination.com