SOTD: Tauer Carillon Pour un Ange, and relinquishing the meh

(And this was really the SOTD on Wednesday. Me pre-writing posts? What's with that?)

I bought it too fast.

I loved the sample. Falling-down, won't risk it going away, love. Bought it. Didn't like the first wearing. Went into denial and put it away. A year later, I'm trying it again.

Nope.

Wearing it gives me the same feeling as a glass of iced tea with too much lemon and not enough sugar. I'm not saying that there's any actual lemon--just that there's a sharpness that could be lovely and refreshing if there were enough sugar.

Maybe it's my skin chemistry.

I think that for the next attempt, I'll decant a little into a splash bottle. I tested it unsprayed, after all, so maybe...

I doubt it. The next solution is to give or swap it away, maybe with a few more just-accept-reality bottles. Swapping or selling is, of course thwarted by my Postal Regulation Phobia, so unless I coordinate with a perfume freak to meet in Portland on one of our lately-not-infrequent trips there, it's not all that workable.

I eye the collection for more of those accept-reality bottles. I'm always worried that someday I'll fall in love with something that I've given away. But there's no logic in that; it's a hoarderesque mindset. For one thing I use perfume so lightly that a 5ml decant would last me years, even in the regular rotation.

And, really, it's unlikely that I'll ever fall in love with a perfume for which my reaction is "meh." The ones worth keeping an eye on are the "Oh, my God, does it smell that way on purpose?" bottles.  Those are usually blind buys, which a light sprinkling of classics threatened by reformulation or discontinuation. (My Mitsouko, for example, and No. 5 before I started to appreciate it a little.) The blind buys were either rock-bottom-price discounter products, or things from indie houses that I respect. If I panic and buy something on the verge of discontinuation from an indie house, I figure that even if I don't like it, my money went to someone worthwhile.

Today's additions to the Out box:

Creed's Original Vetiver: Perfectly Nice. A gateway vetiver. Friendly. Nonthreatening. Cuddly. I'm past it. I might have an occasional craving, but I have four (four) (FOUR) ounces in one of those big Creed bottles from a discounter. I'll take a 5ml decant and give the rest away.

Alfred Sung's Sung: This is in the difficult "aldehydic meh" category. Someday I may learn to love aldehydes, and until that day, it's hard to predict which ones I might love. But there are a lot of likelier candidates--No. 5, Climat...OK, my mind blocks memory of aldehydes, but I know there are others. I'm going to let this one go.

Serge Lutens Bas de Soie: Pretty. Also, pretty. Perfectly Nice. And pretty. If Lutens has to produce the occasional Perfectly Pretty Pretty Nice fragrance in order to make enough money needed to bottle the weird, fine. But I'm going to let someone else appreciate it.

Lancome Mille et Une Roses: I have this because I bought that little set of classics, including the aforementioned Climat. I don't like this one, and I have never yet learned to love a rose fragrance that I didn't like at first sniff. It's odd, because I love roses, but maybe that's what makes it not-odd. It's like fried chicken; I'm so attached to the "right" fried chicken that I have no tolerance for the "wrong", the kind with too much pepper or other transgressions.

There will be more.

That is all.

(I didn't bother to link the above perfume names to the posts with the Review Roundup for the perfume. This strikes me as evidence that I am less and less a perfume blog. Is this wrong?)

SOTD: Creed Original Vetiver

I have a four (four) ounce bottle of Creed Original Vetiver.

I only wanted one ounce - or, really half an ounce - but several months ago the trustworthy seller offering both a coupon and a sale only had the big bottle, so I paid less for four ounces with box and cap than I would have paid for a small tester without either. So there it is, looming threateningly over the nice little bottle of Love In Black, sneering at me and holding more perfume than I will ever use.

It bothers me. It's that whole anti-hoarding thing. It feels like a slippery slope. I want the smallest possible bottle.

So today I'm wearing Original Vetiver, frankly in the hope that I'll find that I no longer like it, so I can give it away. That's going fairly well so far - it's pleasant and green, but I'm finding it too one-dimensional and too masculine, and wishing that I were wearing Vetiver Tonka instead. And my Vetiver Tonka is properly anti-hoarding - it's one of the tiny Discovery Set bottles.

So what to do? Give away three one-ounce decants and keep the original bottle? Keep a one-ounce decant and give away the bottle? Give the whole thing away and make Vetiver Tonka my chosen vetiver?

Decisions, decisions.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Julien Bertrand. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Creed Original Vetiver

Vetiver, Wikipedia tells me, is a grass closely related to other fragrant perennial grasses like lemongrass and citronella. Its fragrance is used frequently in perfume. In my experience, it's associated most often, though certainly not exclusively, with masculine fragrances.

I haven't yet mastered the "serious" vetivers, like Guerlain Vetiver or Guerlain Vetiver Extreme. I find them alarmingly aggressive - sour and bitter and earthy, in the way that only vetiver can be. I'm sure that they're a great fix for hardcore vetiver fans. That's not me.

Creed Original Vetiver is more my speed. It's bright, soft, and green, with enough wood to keep it from being transparent and enough aggression to keep it from abandoning vetiver altogether. I usually wear it in the summer, and I love it then.

I'm finding that I don't like it as much in winter - not, as one might expect, because it's too light and sunny for that season. It's actually the opposite - in the winter it seems to last much longer, perhaps because it's not being burned off with heat. This means that I get several hours of the final base notes, and I find that I don't like those notes very well. I suspect that what I'm getting is the vetiver itself, unhampered by the rest of the notes, and as I already admitted, serious vetiver is a little much for me.

Review Roundup: PereDePierre and Basenotes and Fragrantica and MakeupAlley.

Photo: By Naac Baal. Wikimedia Commons.