Delight, depression, and disgust: three Diors

Well, I am writing this awaiting The Rain. In Southern California we say it like that, In Caps. The news, if we are expecting more than high humidity will be having dark intros to the weather forecast with graphics with lightning bolts and the heading “Storm Watch: 2023” in large, scary looking letters. Sometimes it is warranted- like with the hurricane that came ashore and beat the crap out of Palm Springs recently. When they are predicting ¼ inch of rain over a 72 hour period? Not. So. Much.

The other big piece of news here is the closure of the 10 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles. Apparently CalTrans was leasing the space under the elevated freeway to some company that A) didn’t pay it’s rent and 2) sublet it to someone who stored wooded pallets, old cars, and, apparently, napalm. So that part of the freeway is going to be shut down for a couple of months (EDIT- after 24/7 work it reopened Monday the 20th) until they can fix it. For any of you who know LA, you know that that is one of the worst possible places for it to go since its at the nexus of a group of interchanges that go all over. People are being asked to take public transportation, which is like asking Madeline Ashton to wash with soap and water.

In any case, onto the Diors.

I had previously written about many from this house, and I have been an aficionado since I rode my Raleigh to Steiger’s in the Hampshire Mall to use my allowance to purchase bottles of Eau Sauvage (yes, even then..). No less than Musette has waxed poetic about Diorling, so of course I had to trot over to StC and try that one. I like doing things is threes, so I added in Dioriviera since I liked the name and Dior Joy just because.

Diorling is of course the delight. The version StC has is the retro EDC which would make me weep to find that the new stuff is a shadow of the old. Dioring is old school: heels, hat and red lippy. Of course you could wear it with jeans, you could wear it with a diaper and a spangled tube top and it would somehow make that not only acceptable but the very quintessence of chic. This is the sort of perfume that one should experience, even once, just to smell what perfumes used to be. And unlike that waist-cinching New Look suit that you can neither walk nor breathe in, or those cripplingly gorgeous pumps, the only downside is that you may get a rash if you’re allergic to one of the banned ingredients that I am sure led to it’s demise, because even the new stuff seems to be off the interwebs for sale.

Really, there should be a museum of scents where you sign a waiver stating that you won’t sue if you get a rash or rabies or just the rational idea of running for the exit with armloads of bottles, threatening to lob the vintage Giorgio as cover for your exit.

Depression and disgust were covered by the other two.

Dioriviera (which is really the clue that it’s time to Dioretire that naming convention) is fig and roses. It’s $450 for 8.5 ounces. It’s fig and roses, which I never thought would go together.

They don’t.

Dior Joy was a disappointment to say the least. Not just because it was coming after the glory of Diorling, and not even because Dior chose to usurp the name of Jean Patou’s most famous and iconic fragrances (one that is up there with Chanel No. 5 in the pantheon of the true greats, the touchstones of modern perfumery) but they would slap that name on something so wan, so insipid, so not Dior that it took several spritzes to even discern it on my skin. It’s not horrible- you don’t shrink from it. It’s just not Joy. The emotion or the perfume. It’s not even Jennifer Love Hewitt as Audrey Hepburn- that took effort and a fair amount of guts. This isn’t Joy, it’s at best, complacence.

$130 for 1.7 ounce, if you care. I do not.

So this week will be Thanksgiving! I plan to clean and tidy up eat stuff, watch movies and drive around with the top down. Reeking of Diorling, while I can. You? Let us know in the comments.

Photos are mine, Pexels and Wikimedia Commons. I samples came from Surrender to Chance