SOTD: Jo Malone French Lime Blossom, and Liddle Kiddle Returns Again

I suspect that the good people at Jo Malone would be displeased to know that French Lime Blossom conjures up vivid memories of a thumb-sized plastic doll from sometime in the 1970s. Maybe they'd be consoled by the fact that I adored that doll? She was a Liddle Kiddle, a fat little pink fairy-like thing with a friendly face and a scent that claimed to be that of sweet peas. (You can see pictures of some of her non-pink siblings here on The Vintage Perfume Vault.) She's tied in with my fondness for both perfume and gardening, and she's one of the few childhood toys that I wish that I still owned.

I mentioned my Liddle Kiddle before, in this post about Tokyo Milk's Song In D Minor. But French Lime Blossom is a much more accurate rendition of the Kiddle combination of flowers and plastic. The plastic note has a strong New Barbie Doll vibe, too, but the flowers are wrong for Barbie, who in my imagination smells of a plasticked version of Shalimar. And in contrast to Barbie, Kiddle is the rare doll that looks as if she enjoys her food--I can see her spending a good deal of her garden leisure time eating honey.

Speaking of honey, I read in at least one of the Basenotes reviews that French Lime Blossom has a beeswax base. I've been searching for the perfect beeswax perfume (you may remember my long angsty love affair with Velvet Gardenia, and our chilly breakup), but, sadly, I don't actually get that note from this.

Jo Malone doesn't claim the beeswax--their notes list stops at lime blossom, bergamot, and tarragon. The Basenotes reviewers mention the beeswax, lime in addition to the lime blossom, iris, and "green". There's a soapy note, too, especially in the first hour or so; after that, it's submerged in florals and plastic. I'm curious to try the bath oil to see if the soap blooms as nicely for this fragrance as it does for White Jasmine & Mint.

So, where's the plastic coming from? The lime blossom? The beeswax? I can't translate it, and I don't see even one reviewer that mentions it--though several reviews do refer to lime-scented dishwashing liquid, so the synthetic vibe is obviously coming through for some.

Anyway, I like this one. I recommend sampling it, especially if you like the scent of toys.

Review Roundup: Fragrantica and MakeupAlley and Basenotes.

First Image: Wikimedia Commons.
Second Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey

Yum.

I thought that this would be a summer perfume -- that after buying it, I'd put it away and ignore it until warm weather. But it was exactly what I wanted.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint, and Laziness

This was a busy week, given that it was supposed to be a vacation. Unexpected house issues combined with normal pre-holiday cleaning and cooking. Busy busy.

But not today. Today, I got up at half past noon, took a bubble bath with Jo Malone bath oil until half past one, and have spent most of the remainder of the day in my den, on the Internet, doing nothing useful. There was also twenty minutes spent walking up to the coffee shop for hot chocolate. Later, Himself and I may move to the living room and continue to do nothing useful.

White Jasmine & Mint, usually the scent of hard useful work, was today the scent of idleness. I like the redefinition.

Now I'll write some words for NaNoWriMo. If I feel like it.

Image: By Miserlou. Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume Rambling: Delicious Blandness

I miss Szechuan Garden.

Szechuan Garden was a Chinese restaurant a ten-minute walk from our house. It had a lot of good food, but my very favorite dish was the sesame chicken. This wasn't the usual version of the dish, the kind with a thick batter dotted with an occasional sesame seed and dipped in sticky sauce. Instead, it was just thin, wide, planks of chicken breast coated in a thick layer of sesame seeds (presumably glued on with egg) and fried to golden brown, served crisp and dry, and begging for the eater to sprinkle on plenty of salt. I don't think that there was any dipping sauce, or if there was, I ignored it.

It was plain. Bland. Distinctly boring-looking. And to me, delicious. The subtle variation in flavor and texture between chicken that was a couple of millimeters thicker or thinner, or seeds that were fried a little more or less brown, was fascinating. I preferred thinner chicken and browner seeds, but much of the pleasure in that variation came from the contrast with the areas that were thicker and less brown. I want some right now, and I can't have any; Szechuan Garden is gone. I need to order some more bags of sesame seeds and continue my effort to duplicate the dish.

There are perfumes that have a similar delicious blandness, an apparently plain flavor that I can't quite put my finger on, but one that makes me want to gobble, chasing the taste.

Strange Invisible Perfumes Fire and Cream is the first fragrance that comes to mind. It doesn't offer obvious flavors - no obvious sweet, or bitter, or green, or "fresh". Instead, it's a mix of notes that disguise and change each other. I can't get a grip on the patchouli or tuberose; the lavender and sandalwood freshen them into unrecognizability. But I can't quite smell those; the barely-there orange sweetens them out of character. And the frankincense and orange blossom add an odd, dueling fog over the whole mix.

The same way that I used to crunch across a piece of sesame chicken, seeking out browner seeds or crunchier bits, I keep sniffing Fire and Cream, chasing after the orange, then the lavender, then the tuberose, and never quite catching any of them.

L'Artisan Navegar has a similar quiet complexity, mostly cedar, but it's a faint ghostly cedar mixed with hints of other notes - maybe cucumber, maybe spices, and something a little watery. The now-sweet, now-bitter powdery and milky scent of Serge Lutens Douce Amere is another entry in the category. And Hugo Boss Boss Woman, of all things, has some of the same appeal - it's terribly bland, but I keep sniffing at it.

I'm hungry now.

Image: Sanjay ach. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTDays: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint, and Serge Lutens Chergui

The weather is changing. It's getting cooler, wetter, and cloudier. Summer might be over - or it might just be another funny joke. It's been that kind of weather year.

But yesterday was lacking in summer, so I put on Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint, out of a longing for the sweet and leafy, and it was perfect. The rather dense base that can be too solid in sticky summer was just right in the cooler weather, and the sweet and leafy was amply supplied. It was perfect.

Today I went the other way, with an ample dose of Serge Lutens Chergui - a wintery tobacco smoke honey spice cookie scent. I've always been a bit doubtful about this. The spices generally skate a middle ground between comfy-sweet and overdone, and I rarely like middle grounds. But today it's just perfect, and I'm fairly confident that this isn't a quirk. I think that I've finally acquired the taste.

Review Roundup: For White Jasmine & Mint is here.
Review Roundup: For Chergui is here.

Image: By Muller. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint

Sparkly.

This one doesn't seem to be any less enjoyable in August than it was earlier in the summer.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: By Vassil. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint

It's interesting to see how quickly a scent can develop new associations. I'd been using ElizabethW Rose bath oil and "Cranky Baby" (really, California Baby Overtired & Cranky) bubble bath as my combined bath scent for a long time, so that combined scent developed an association of leisure and relaxation, over a period of at least two years. And I think that it took at least a few months for it to develop the initial association.

But when I ran out of the Rose, I decided that I'd better start going through some of my other bath potions. So for only five or ten baths, it's been Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint bath oil and Cranky Baby. And that combined scent has already developed a relaxation vibe that seems as strong as the one that Cranky Baby/ElizabethW spent so long earning. I'm guessing that the Cranky Baby half of the association was enough to give full credentials to the White Jasmine & Mint in such a short time.

And now the White Jasmine & Mint perfume, which is substantially different from the bath oil, also seems to have a new relaxation association.

Interesting. Anyway, I enjoyed it. And I wonder if there's any chance of California Baby coming out with a Cranky Baby perfume? I want all the comfort scents I can get.

Review Roundup: Is here.

Image: By Doug Coldwell. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint

I first wore this scent while moving a bazillion boxes on a hot, hot day, with Himself. I had a sample, and I kept re-spraying myself, to keep my morale up. I wore it again a few months later when we were doing a similar task - maybe cleaning out the garage? - on, again, a hot, hot day. As a result, I associate at it with doing things with Himself. (And with heat, boxes, and dust, but I'm ignoring that part.) So I put it on tonight, before we went to a concert by (woohoo!) Bare Naked Ladies.

Now, it's a little odd to own a scent essentially dedicated to a person who doesn't like perfume. But I like perfume, and I like Himself, and therefore I need a perfume to celebrate doing things together, so there it is.

And, by the way, it's a beautiful scent. It's a clean sparkly jasmine, very informal, and the mint adds to both the sparkle and the informality. There are other notes, about two dozen of them, but all I can tease out is the jasmine, the very low-key mint, and that Jo Malone almost-edible-but-not-quite base, grounding the other notes and keeping them from being pure carbonated froth. I've mentioned a strong but pleasant soapy aspect to the bath oil, but I don't get more than the faintest hint of that soap in the perfume.

For me, this is a happy scent, suitable for jeans and sneakers or sundresses and bare feet. But I think that it would stand up just fine to a far more formal situation.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Basenotes and Perfume-Smellin' Things and The Scented Salamander and Perfume Posse and Fragrantica and Opalescent and Perfume-Smellin' Things.

SOTD: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint Bath Oil (And Vacation)

I'm on vacaaaaaation!

The idleness started today. Saturday was party prep. And Sunday was party. (Fried chicken was involved. Of course.) So today is the first day of serious idleness. Park. Books. Dinner. Cocktail. And now I blog, in a rambling manner perhaps slightly influenced by said cocktail. (Lemon drop. Mmmmmm.)

I spent the day largely unscented, except for the above-mentioned Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint Bath Oil. I'm tragically out of ElizabethW Rose, and I decided that I really ought to use up some of my backlog of bath potions before ordering any more.

It's an odd scent - as a perfume, it smells like, well, jasmine and mint, with maybe a faint trace of soapy sparkle. But in bath water, it smells like soap. Specifically, like really nice laundry detergent, the kind that you imagine when watching people blissfully bury their faces in snowy white towels in television commercials for detergents, rather than the dreadful white musk that the laundry detergent usually really smells like. I like it, but I'm puzzled about the drastic difference.

And now the laziness will resume.

Image: By Alpha du centaure. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint

I love this one. It deserves a proper discussion and review and Review Roundup, but the day is getting away from me. So all I will say is that it's lovely, it's happy, it's perfect for really hot weather, and now I've confirmed that it's also quite nice in vaguely warm weather like today.

Photo: By Kham Tran. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Jo Malone Sweet Lime & Cedar

Pulling on my sweater this morning, I got a lovely whiff of cedar from yesterday's Navegar. Rather than fighting it, I decided to continue the cedar theme with Jo Malone Sweet Lime & Cedar.

There's a note in Jo Malone fragrances that I can't identify, but find very satisfying. It's like the olfactory equivalent of being comfortably fed after waiting a little too long to have a meal. That note, whatever it is, gives these otherwise light and fluttery fragrances some weight, something that makes them worth sniffing after one might otherwise get bored with the lighter notes.

As for describing this fragrance, it describes itself pretty well. There's cedar, a somewhat sharper cedar than Navegar, without the slightest hint of floral in it. And a surprisingly long-lasting lime note, so much longer-lasting than your usual citrus note that I wonder if it's something other than lime. (I see from the reviews that it's kaffir lime leaves; maybe that explains it.) There's said to be coconut and other things, but my nose isn't educated enough to find them.

I read that this fragrance is inspired by the flavors of Thai food, and I see that the reviews tend to regard it as a summer cologne. None of that is true for me - I don't perceive it as at all foody or even food-garnishy, I use it as an autumn fragrance, and it's stronger and longer-lasting than a cologne. (In fact, it seems to be getting stronger, not weaker, as I go into the second hour; I'll have to spray on a little less next time.)

But none of that is a criticism; I like this one, and I should wear it more often.

Update: Six hours later, it's still growing! Don't overspray this one, no matter how vanishingly light it seems at the beginning. Really. Don't.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things and SmellyBlog.

Photo: Sarah Katzenell. Wikimedia Commons; click for details.

SOTD: Everything

So after perfuming Unpleasant Duties (like pretending I'm a grownup and actually keeping a doctor's appointment), I like to reward myself. The reward tends to be a rapid lunch-hour-sized sniff-fest at the mall.

So today I tried, briefly:

Thierry Mugler Angel: Never tried this before, which is rather like not having read The Da Vinci Code. It's nicer than I, in my perfume-snob persona, expected. I asked for a sample and will actually wear it soon. I might (gulp) buy it someday.

Digression: I got the sample at Sephora; I love everything about Sephora except their perfume selection.  Convenient, always-available testers, available but unpushy salespeople, and they'll always give you a sample. But they rarely have a perfume that I want, and even more rarely have one that I couldn't get cheaper at a discounter. So I make one guilt-based purchase a year (Angel next time, maybe?) to pay them back for the samples that I beg from them. And I restrain myself from urging them to stock Serge Lutens and Parfumerie Generale. But they should.

Robert Piguet Fracas: Another gap in my knowledge of long-popular perfumes. Tuberose and more tuberose, but toned down with enough other things to keep it from being smothering. If I liked tuberose the way that I like greens, I'd get a bottle. But I really only need one tuberose, and it's going to be Parfumerie Generale Tubereuse Couture.

Hermes Caleche Soie de Parfum: I wanted to try the original classic; I see after getting back and Googling that this is a reformulation. It still smells like a classic; I could see it having ladies' lunch with Arpege and Chanel No. 5. Unfortunately, that's a group of classics that I haven't yet learned to like.

L'Occitane Bergamot Tea: L'Occitane seems to have a lot more minis. As a consequence, I may end up owning a lot more of their fragrances. Bergamot Tea is bright, liquid, cheerful bergamot. It made me happy as soon as I sniffed it, and I bought the mini - my only purchase of the day. They had a solid, too, that smells just like the spray - something for me to keep in mind for flying.

L'Occitane Verbena: I find lemon verbena leaves to be a startling, almost candy lemon. This is very true to the leaves. It didn't force me to buy it, but it's nice.

Creed Silver Mountain Water: Nice. Refreshing. Bright. While it doesn't smell at all the same, for me this pretty much fulfills the same craving as L'Occitane Bergamot Tea, at a much higher price.

Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia, Moss Breches, Tobacco Vanille, White Suede, and Who Knows What Else: I staggered away from the Tom Ford display in a fog of honey, white flowers, leather, and tobacco, and I couldn't begin to describe any individual scent. I'll exert more self control next time.

Van Cleef & Arpels Muguet Blanc: Yet Another Gorgeous White Floral. Beautiful. High quality. Sadly, gorgeous white florals leave me almost entirely unmoved. Next!

Van Cleef & Arpels Orchidee Vanillee: Vanilla. For about ten seconds it was beautiful and I was wondering, is this a replacement for Indult Tihota? But, no, it turned plasticky on me. Next!

Van Cleef & Arpels Gardenia Petale: See Muguet Blanc, above. Next!

Van Cleef & Arpels Lys Carmin: OK, there is something going on here that interests me. I may try to get a sample.

Van Cleef & Arpels Bois d'Iris: Really very nice; I may be warming up to iris. So subtle that I'm sure that I didn't get the nuances (the Tom Ford fog was still following me around), but I liked what I could smell. It ends up in a gentle woody powder that reminds me enough of Serge Lutens Douce Amere that I'm not seriously considering buying this, but I will hunt down a sample to give it a chance to change my mind.

Estee Lauder White Linen: While I was trying the classics, I thought I'd try this again, to see if I like it. I still don't like it, but there's progress! The head-blowing aldehydes didn't bother me a bit. Now I just need to get past the amber.

Estee Lauder Estee: It's the kind of "old lady" floral that transcends old lady and becomes "vintage".  It's not your mother's perfume, it's your cool great-aunt's perfume. Flowers, wood, no modern fruity-floral notes. (Mind you, I like my share of fruity floral. But I have more than my share of anti-trend snobbery, too.) This is worth trying again.

La Prairie Life Threads Silver: Tuberose. Next!

La Prairie Life Threads Gold: OK, I can't even remember it. I remember perking up when orange was mentioned, and being unable to find the orange note. But, remember, I've sniffed about thirty perfumes by now. One common per-day recommendation is.... two.

La Prairie Life Threads Platinum: Interesting in an indescribable way while wet. When it dried down ... say what? The perfume in this lucite and metal bottle smells like it belongs with those lunching ladies, Chanel No. 5 and Arpege and Caleche, earlier in the post. Is it the iris? The oakmoss? The galbanum? All of them? I'm boggled. It's like seeing Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing in full goth garb. With a crumpet. The Nice Man behind the counter gave me a sample, so I have the opportunity to be boggled again. Please note that none of this is a criticism. This stuff may be fabulous; it's certainly not bad. I'm just too busy recovering from being startled to make up my mind.

Marc Jacobs Daisy: Adorable bottle. I can't remember the fragrance, which can't be good.

Marc Jacobs Lola: Adorable bottle gone psychedelic. I can't remember this one either.

Kiehl's Original Musk: I can see why this is a staple. Unadorned musk, respectable but not too respectable. It seems more like something to layer with other perfumes than something I'd use on its own.

Jo Malone Dark Amber and Ginger Lily: I was so stunned to find an amber fragrance that I don't dislike that I couldn't gather my thoughts sufficiently to see if I like this one. But... it's nice. Sweet and warm and wintery, at least to my nose.

I came home after all that to a box containing Rochas Tocade on the front porch. I think I'll just leave that unsprayed until tomorrow.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons.