SOTD: Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia

From the beginning, my sampling of Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia has been about the beeswax. I want a beeswax perfume. Not a honey perfume - that's different, and honey always goes urinous on me. Velvet Gardenia rarely, maddeningly rarely, produces an absolutely perfect beeswax note, so for months and months I debated buying a bottle.

Now it's been discontinued and the bottle option is gone (if you know of someone who still has bottles, don't tell me!), and I'm down to the large decant option. I'm wearing what's probably the third-to-last wearing from my small decant. And for the first time I'm asking myself, beeswax or no beeswax, do I like the gardenia part?

Yes. I do.

I see why others dislike it. It's cloyingly sweet, with a medicinal edge. And there's a bit of a ripe-dairy vibe - that's probably the note that people smell as blue cheese. This is not a fresh, dewy flower with a lovely drop of morning dew, it's an overheated flower that's starting to decay.

Yum.

Yes, I'm strange. I'm the one that considers "smells like mothballs" to be a reason to seek out a perfume, remember? In fact, I can see the mothball/rotting-meat perfume (Tubereuse Criminelle) and Velvet Gardenia as being cousins, capering in surreal but oddly beautiful costumes, surrounded by a crowd that's keeping their distance from the medicinal vapors, but still can't help but watch in fascination.

Decant time. Yep.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia. Again.

Another wearing of Velvet Gardenia, another data point. The goal is a minimum of floral and a maximum of butter and - highest priority - beeswax. Today, I got a fair bit of high-pitched floral at the beginning, and now a little butter but no beeswax.

This discontinued scent is, as you may recall, one of the perfumes that's throwing me into endless buy-or-not-buy thrashing-around. Today I feel all very nice and decided about it: Get an 8 milliliter decant and move on with life.

Tomorrow? Heh. We'll see.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: By Carey Tilden. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia (Quick sniff, and indecision)

This is not a gardenia fragrance.

Yes, I realize that for everyone else, this is of course a gardenia fragrance. For me, it's a beeswax fragrance.

And the quest for my beeswax fragrance has been a long one. At first, I thought it was a quest for honey, and I bravely braved the urinous notes that honey fragrances produce on my skin, waiting through the drydown before concluding for each candidate that, no, that's not honey, that's - well, you know.

I finally figured out that the goal was beeswax. And I found some adequate beeswax notes - one from L'Occitane, and some of the Possets honey fragrances. But most had that "cartoon" feel - you know what I mean? Fresh Lemon Sugar is cartoon lemon, for example. Actually, it's lemon verbena, and lemon verbena, the plant, is cartoon lemon. And CB I Hate Perfume Gathering Apples is cartoon apples. Sometimes I love this - I love the apples - but it's not what I wanted for my beeswax.

Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia has the right beeswax note. It may not be the best beeswax perfume that I'll ever encounter - it's certainly not the best one that's possible. I'd like my beeswax with more wood and less floral. I'd like the top notes lower-pitched. I'd like my beeswax perfume to reliably give me beeswax on every wearing instead of every other wearing. I'd like any number of things to be different.

But it's the best one I've found so far. And it's discontinued.  And it's horribly expensive. And right now, it's making me smell like melted butter flowers and beeswax.  Do I buy it?

Gardenia photo: By KENPEI. Wikimedia Commons.
Bee cartoon: By MielDeAbejas. Wikimedia Commons.
Honeycomb photo: By Merdal. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia

My previous experience of Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia was a quick sniff at the fragrance counter. As the fragrance developed, I smelled butter and beeswax, and I fell madly in love. But I managed to control myself, to the heroic (I think) extent of declining when Himself volunteered to take me to Neiman Marcus when I had something to celebrate.

I waited for the spray sample to come. I didn't even search for an online source. Much.

Sadly, it turns out that I was wise to wait, because this second wearing was different. The top notes were nice - much fresher than I remembered, without the thick sweetness that I expect from white flowers. Fresher, but not citrus and not green. Maybe this is what I see referred to as "balsamic" - that's a category of notes that I haven't nailed down yet.

But as the scent developed, I didn't get any of that butter and beeswax, and without it, this is just an adequate, not-too-cloying gardenia scent. It just got quieter, creamier, and less aggressive. A dozen hours after application, it's a shrug.

I'm not giving up, but at least two more wearings are called for. And they need to happen soon, because this one's going away.

Review Roundup: Bois de Jasmin and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Perfume Posse and PeredePierre and Perfume Posse again and The Non-Blonde and Perfume-Smellin' Things again and Basenotes. 

Link Roundup: A Tom Ford review in poem form on Perfume Posse and a post on Gardenias and Leather from What We Do Is Secret (almost nothing to do with Velvet Gardenia, but I liked it and I have no gardenia compilation).

Photo: By Waugsberg. Wikimedia Commons.

Grumble: Change Bad

So, I recently fell in love with Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia at Neiman Marcus. The normal sequence from here to purchase is:

• Go to Neiman Marcus and smell it again. A couple of times.
• Get a sample. Wear it until it's gone, probably two wearings.
• Get a decant. Wear it until it's gone, probably five to ten wearings.
• Look at the price of Velvet Gardenia. Stare at my credit card. Repeat every couple of months.
• Shuffle my list of I Really Want! fragrances.
• A year or two later, when Velvet Gardenia rises to the top of the list, or I'm hungry for lunch and staring at it on a pretty glass counter, finally buy it. Or I might have forgotten the whole thing by then.

This is my perfume buying process, for anything above the deeply discounted cheap thrills category. It's the way that I have managed to keep most of my shelves full of books instead of perfume. And avoided that whole perfume-induced bankruptcy thing.

I just read - and registered; I probably read it before - that Velvet Gardenia is being discontinued. If I want it, I have to accelerate the whole dance.

Not only is Velvet Gardenia being discontinued, but Robert Piguet Bandit is rumored to be in danger of reformulation. As is Chanel No. 5. Shiseido Feminite du Bois has already been reformulated but is still temporarily available in the old format.

Fendi Theorema, a legendary fragrance, has been discontinued but is still temporarily available from discounters. Cristalle, another legend, is rumored to be in reformulation, as is practically every oakmoss or jasmine perfume in existence, due to IFRA regulations.

Oh, and there are new regulations on percentage of citrus oils, so add every classic citrus perfume to that "probably about to be reformulated" list. And oakmoss - add the chypres.

Can't buy them all. Perfume-induced bankruptcy bad.

Grumble.

Photo: By Erin Silversmith. Wikimedia Commons