SOTD: Chanel Cuir de Russie

Yum.

Maybe I should buy the bottle after all?

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: By Playboyrob. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Chanel Cuir de Russie

Important wardrobe tip: When wearing a silk scarf and spraying a scent on the back of your neck, make sure that you do these things in the correct order. Luckily, the scarf is a solid color, so it should survive the laundering.

Meanwhile, Cuir de Russie remains lovely. Still not quite as lovely as it is in cold weather, but I'm still thinking longingly of that giant monster bottle.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: Mine. The newly leather-infused scarf is not present in the photo.

SOTD: Chanel Cuir de Russie

I put Cuir de Russie on to confirm, one more time, that I love it. And I do, though I'm realizing that I may not love it in the summer.

The weather is warmer and days are longer than the last time I wore it, and that produces a substantial change. The top  notes are sharper and higher-pitched, and the animalic notes are less delightful. (Bringing me back to the Vole Theory.) And it's strong - one spray is producing a substantial leather and iris cloud around me, making Chanel's monster bottle size even more problematic.

But I still want it. It's really only a matter of time.

(Who's that in the photo, you ask? Ernest Beaux, the original perfumer.)

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Chanel Cuir de Russie (Les Exclusifs, EDT)

After only two wearings, Chanel Cuir de Russie is well on its way to being one of Those Scents - the scents at the core of my wardrobe, the ones that make me smell like me. I want some. The only question is whether I'm eventually getting a decant or a bottle, and how soon I can budget it.

I'm surprised that I feel comfortable in this scent. The elegance, the presence, the self-assured mood - none of that seems as if it should fit my nervous and rumpled self. But if I stop thinking about it, it just slips on, a perfect fit.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: By Cszmurlo. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Chanel Cuir de Russie (Les Exclusifs, EDT)

I had high expectations of Cuir de Russie. It's fulfilled them. I want some and I want it now.

This one has been discussed and described so well in so many reviews - see the roundup down there? - that I have nothing new to offer. But that won't stop me.

To my nose, it's all about leather - elegant, fine leather. Soft gloves and well-used bags and well-aged leather upholstery. Upholstery in a luxurious and well-aged car, the kind that ambles along at a deceptively decorous pace until its owner suddenly decides to show off the engine, and then the car is quietly gone with barely a puff of smoke to mark where it was. That kind of leather.

Iris takes second billing. I didn't take to iris immediately, back when I started on this perfume freakery path. I disliked it, and then I tolerated it, and I'm finally learning to like it. I definitely like it here, even the nuts-and-pencil-erasers beginning.

And am I actually liking amber? There's a powdery sweetness late in the development that's lovely, mixed with vanilla. So, maybe I am.

There are other things in here. According to The Perfumed Court, the top notes are orange blossom, bergamot, mandarin, and clary sage, the middle notes are iris, jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, cedarwood, and vetiver, and the base notes are styrax, leather, amber, and vanilla. I'm not getting even one of the floral and fresh notes. But that's all the more reason to try this one again and again, until I do get them.

But all that is just about how it smells, not how it feels. It feels luxurious. Elegant. Self-assured; it's not the least bit eager to please. This isn't a woman that works and frets to be beautiful; it's a woman who's blessed with beauty and elegance without even trying, and accepts those blessings as her due. Not an altogether likable character, perhaps, but you still can't look away.

Review Roundup: Bois de Jasmin and Now Smell This and PereDePierre and 1000 Fragrances and One Thousand Scents and Grain de Musc and Perfume Shrine and Fragrantica and Basenotes and Suite101 and MakeupAlley and WAFT and Polish, Platforms, Perfume and hortus conclusus and ScentsOfSelf and Perfume Patter and Scent Of The Day.

Link Roundup: Les Tuileries and The Vintage Perfume Vault and hortus conclusus and parfumieren and The Perfume Chronicles.

(Edited to add to the Review Roundup.)


Photo: Wikimedia Commons

SOTD: Chanel No. 5 Parfum

Sound the alarm: Chanel No. 5 may be in danger of reformulation, due to IFRA regulations.

OK, many people have been sounding the alarm for months, so there's no need to push any buttons. Perfume wearers have expressed themselves vehemently at length, and are being ignored.

But this raises an important question that I've been trying to resolve for years: Do I like Chanel No. 5? Because if I do, or will, it's time to buy a bottle of the extrait. Preferably a bottle that's a year or two old, in case the reformulation has already happened.

To throw jargon around, Chanel No. 5 is the queen of abstract aldehydic florals. Not the matriarch - there were others before her - but definitely the long-time ruling queen.

I'm not so big on aldehydes. The people who like them say that they give fizz, or lift, or sparkle, to a fragrance. The people who don't like them tend to refer to them as "perfumey", with a Tone, and a wrinkled nose. There are times when I appreciate them - such as the opening of Ivoire - but that's an exception.

Abstract? Well, Chanel No. 19 is abstract - I can't point to a specific flower or other smelly thing and say "it smells like that" - and I love No. 19. So I guess abstract isn't a problem. Though in No. 19 I can get a grip on the galbanum as a stabilizer as I ride through the other notes; No. 5 doesn't have that same loved core note. It might be different if I adored jasmine the way that I do galbanum.

Floral? Meh. I tend to dislike sharp, "high pitched" florals, and No. 5 has its share.

And No. 5 is a classic, and smells like a classic. And, sadly, I haven't yet learned to love the classic pefumes. Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue, Vol de Nuit, Shalimar, Arpege - my scale is still at "appreciate", at best, for all of these.

I'm wearing a few good dabs today, from my ittybitty bottle of the extrait. It started out sharp and, yes, "perfumey", and with that odd dark note that's common to so many of these perfumes, and I don't know what it is, since No. 5 doesn't list oakmoss as a note. By now, it's softened, but I'm just not feeling the love. Maybe I need to be wearing pearls?

Review Roundup: The Non-Blonde and Now Smell This and 1000 Fragrances and 1000 Fragrances again and Bois de Jasmin and Blogdorf Goodman and For The Love Of Perfume and Nathan Branch and The Perfume Heretic and Pink Manhattan and ScentsOfSelf and Yesterday's Perfume.

Link Roundup: A post and a poem from Feminine Things, and a post from Muses in Wooden Shoes and a reminiscence from The Scentimentalist.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup.

Photo: Copyright BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons