SOTD: Rochas Tocade

I want to love Rochas Tocade. It's near-universally loved, it has Luca Turin credits, it's inexpensive, it's in that whacky bottle. It has everything that should make it a"See? Great perfume doesn't have to cost a fortune!" example.

But, no. I sprayed on plenty again today, and it's still no more than Perfectly Nice.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Rochas Tocade

I've never understood the appeal of Rochas Tocade. Luca Turin loves it. Everyone else seems to love it. And it's inexpensive, so I bought a bottle unsniffed, and was disappointed - in everything but the whacky bottle itself, which I love. Today, I sprayed lots on with the expectation that I would add Tocade to the giveaway list.

Maybe overspraying was the key to success. On previous wearings, I smelled this as uninviting synthetic rose, fading to nonspecific "Yeah, there's still some perfume there" basenotes. This time, the dubious rose was veiled by better things - I got more of the vanilla, and something else that might be the magnolia and lily of the valley. As the flowers faded to the background, the end was musky powder, something that I normally hate, but not this time. Maybe the overspray gave me enough patchouli and cedar to reconcile me to powder, just as the coconut and sandalwood in Cadjmere lead me to love the powder in that fragrance.

So I'm declaring it to be a powder-musk-wood fragrance, not a rose scent. Using that definition, I enjoyed the last few hours, and I can imagine that with a few more wearings, I could grow fond of this. So I'm keeping it. And I still love that bottle.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: By JM Suarez. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Le Labo Jasmin 17

After all my enthusing over A La Nuit, I thought I'd give one of my previous favorite jasmine fragrances a try. So, today I used up the last sprays of my sample of Le Labo Jasmin 17.

Both fragrances are undebatably jasmine-focused, but they're very different. A La Nuit is a deep pool of silk and honey; Jasmin 17 is powder and lace. Jasmin 17 is brighter and fresher and more frilly-flowery than A La Nuit, and in my days of lower jasmine tolerance, I preferred that.

But now I think I prefer drowning to frills. This scent is lovely for a few minutes, but I grow tired of it. Too much lace, too much powder, and I think too much neroli - I've never liked neroli for more than a few minutes.

Which leads me to the notes - according to Legerdenez, they're Jasmine, litsea cubeba, neroli, palma rose, bigarade, amber, musk, sandalwood, and vanilla.  A lovely sounding collection, and I once enjoyed the result very much, but now it's been bumped out of my list of favorites. For a full-strength dose of jasmine, I prefer A La Nuit; for a casual jeans-and-sneakers summery-day jasmine, I'll take Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint.

Review Roundup: Perfume-Smellin' Things and Perfume-Smellin' Things again and Aromascope and Legerdenez and Fragrantica and Basenotes.

Image: By Sie Bot. Wikimedia Commons. 

SOTD: Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist (The iris exploration continues.)

I've been reading about Iris Silver Mist since the beginning of my perfume obsession. I never tried it before now, because I only recently developed a tolerance for iris. But it's all but impossible to follow perfume and remain unaware of this fragrance - people love it, talk about it, compare other iris fragrances to it, scheme how to get their hands on it. My (unsupported by research) impression is that it's the grandmother of modern iris fragrances, unbeaten by any of its progeny.

None of this made me confident that I would like it. I tend to be a philistine when it comes to appreciating the grand and respected. I have yet to develop any fondness for Mitsouko, or Shalimar, or most of the older nobility of the perfume world. So why assume that I'd have any more appreciation for this more modern royal?

The notes list - iris pallida root, galbanum, cedar, sandalwood, clove, vetiver, musk, benzoin, incense, and white amber - didn't make me much more optimistic. While I love galbanum, sandalwood, and cedar, I didn't think that they'd be enough to make me love the more challenging iris, amber, musk, and clove.  And I wasn't a big fan of Rochas Tocade, another Maurice Roucel fragrance that's near-universally admired.

But I finally tried it anyway. And was well and thoroughly impressed.

At the start, it doesn't fit my usual impression of iris. Iris tends to be a dignified, civilized, excellent-posture sort of scent. And this starts out as a sort of rough scramble. I can smell the dirt that people mention, and the roots. Dirty, hairy, just-harvested, piled on the ground roots. Not carrots to my nose - not anything remotely edible. Something cold and alien and probably poisonous. It's powdery from the very beginning, but at this stage not a silky ladylike powder, it's more like spiced dirt, or something kicked up during the harvest that perhaps one should not be breathing.

None of this should be taken to say that I dislike the beginning. I like it very much, at least for as long as it lasts. It is, however, challenging enough that I might lose patience with it if it hung on for too much longer.

But it doesn't. It shifts, the dirty rootiness giving way to a smooth, powdery, dignified iris with, yes, excellent posture. And with the pencil eraser smell that I get from iris, adding a bit of an enjoyable joke for me - elegant, ethereal, glowing pencil erasers. It's much sweeter, though I can't quite place where the sweetness comes from - the wood? The amber?

Most people read this fragrance as cold, and the name certainly suggests that the chilliness was intended. To me, only the first stage is cold - those tumbled dirty roots were wrestled out of frozen ground. But as it grows sweeter, it also grows warmer, and now, a few hours in, it's no cooler than a shaded spot in late spring.

It's beautiful, I can say objectively. I would wear it often. It's certainly full bottle worthy. But I don't find myself desperately working through the problem of how to get my hands on it. (It's another Lutens non-export.) I can wait. Which means, I think, that I'm not in love.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin and Perfume-Smellin' Things and PereDePierre and Feminine Things and Fragrantica and MakeupAlley and Basenotes and PerfumeQueen and MossyLoomings and Pink Manhattan and ScentSate and fragrancefanatic.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Bond No. 9 New Haarlem

Memory is a strange thing.

This fragrance raises memories of urban coffee. Late night urban coffee. With all that clattering and steam-hissing. And patrons shouting at one another to hear themselves over the rest of the crowd.

Occasionally it shifts, and it's memories of coffee at home in the morning sunshine, with sweet pastries and the newspaper at hand, and no one expecting coherent conversation.

The thing is, I don't drink coffee, and never have. New Haarlem doesn't care - it hands me memories that don't belong to me.

I like that.

To actually discuss the fragrance: New Haarlem is one of the most satisfying of gourmands, with rich coffee, sweet vanilla, patchouli that seems edible, and cedar, lavender, and bergamot to calm it all down a bit. It was created by Maurice Roucel, a perfumer with a long, long resume of fragrances, almost none of which I've tried. I must correct that.

Calmed down or not, New Haarlem is, I should note, sweet. Not an edge of sweetness, not a little touch of sugar to counteract coffee bitterness, but syrupy sweet. I sprayed this lavishly today, on the theory that I usually underapply my fragrances, and I'm finding that it is possible to get too much of New Haarlem's vanilla-coffee syrup. It's better in occasional wafts than as a constant cloud.

But it's delicious. I hope I was clear about that? Yum.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin and The Non-Blonde and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Aromascope and Feminine Things.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

SOTD: Rochas Tocade

I bought this unsniffed. Bad me.

On the other hand, this one is very inexpensive. A decant would have been a large fraction of the cost of the bottle.

And it has good recommendations! Apparently Luca Turin liked it very much, and it went on to totally unanticipated success, thus giving Luca Turin a reputation for a sort of fragrance-business clairvoyance. At least, that's how I remember it - the story is in The Emperor Of Scent, by Chandler Burr, which I recommend but unfortunately don't have on hand. So it's, y'know, got history, as much as a new scent can, anyway.

Anyway, I got the bottle. Unsniffed. Bad me.

It's a wonderfully ridiculous bottle. I'm too much in fear of the Trademark Police to actually show you a picture in this post, but you can see it here. I love this thing.

When I first sprayed it on, I was disappointed - it was an average "perfumey" rose scent. Then the sharp perfumey notes burned off and it's a nice rose and vanilla. I can see why many people call it a comfort scent, though it's not really comforting me - my comfort scents usually involve tea.

I must confess that I'm not excited, but perfumes in the comfort scent category often have to grow on you, so I'll we'll see. It is improving as the minutes tick by.

Meanwhile, here's the review roundup: Perfume-Smellin' Things and Perfume-Smellin' Things again and Now Smell This and Basenotes and Muses in Wooden Shoes and ScentSate.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup.

Photo: Mine