SOTD: Love By Kilian

Nope.

A while ago I wrote a post, Delicious Blandness, about my enjoyment of certain bland flavors. It was mostly about the the chicken that I used to get at Szechuan Garden in Mountain View, pounded-flat chicken with no noticeable flavor other than that of a thick coating of seasame seeds, deep-fried very pale golden brown. Yum. Luckily, I seem to be able to duplicate it at home; it's that simple.

Some perfumes have a similar satisfying blandness. Douce Amere. Boss Woman, of all things. Lann-Ael. Feminite du Bois, when it's in a pencil mood, though not when it's in a spicy mood.

Love By Kilian ought to be one of those perfumes. Luca Turin compares it to meringues and gives it four stars. The Non-Blonde compares it to marshmallows.  People get nostalgia, innocence, deliciously resiny caramel, all sorts of delightful things from this.

I get fruity pink powder. Not deliciously bland, just bland.

Sigh.

Well, if I'm going to be unimpressed by a perfume, it's just as well that it's one of the expensive ones.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and MakeupAlley and The Non-Blonde and Olfactoria's Travels and Scent of the Day and The Scented Salamander.

Image: By Young. Wikimedia Commons

SOTD/Review: Byredo Pulp

Fruity.

I almost left the review at that one word, but then I started having thoughts. For example, Pulp is indeed fruity. It's a little abstract; it doesn't conjure up completely realistic three-dimensional fruit. But it makes me imagine warm, overripe, crushed pulp with bees just starting to investigate, rather than candy or sorbet or Torani syrup, as so many other fruity fragrances do.

It also announces "perfume" in the topnotes (Aldehydes? Something else?), as if to assure me, with a wink, that it has read its job description, and that it knows I'm a grownup. But that fades; within perhaps ten minutes it's just squashed fruit. And that's fine.

What fruit? The notes list has a lot of fruit and a few flowers. (Bergamot, cardamom, black currant, fig, red apple, tiare flower, cedar, praline, peach blossom.) But it all blends, so that it smells to me like a single unknown fruit, rather than an orchard or a salad. A stone fruit, I think, related to but very different from peaches or plums. Bigger and wetter and more brightly colored; the kind of fruit that you carry outside to eat over the grass, because it's going to drip that much.

But there's a gesture toward melon--it has a fair bit of that note that can make cataloupe smell just a little bit sickly. I'm guessing that's what makes some people smell decay in this, but it stops before it goes over the edge, and in fact I might like just a little more of it. It's this note that makes Pulp work for me on a winter day; it provides just enough sun and warmth without any risk of seasonal jetlag.

FTC Disclosure: I got the sample for free (bwahaha!) but in my role as a sniffsniffsniffing customer roaming the wilds of the Holt Renfrew perfume floor, not in my role as a blogger.

Review Roundup: MakeupAlley and Basenotes and Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Katie Puckrick Smells and Fragrance Bouquet and Perfume Posse and No Dissasemble Charlie No. 5 and WAFT.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

First Sniff: Slumberhouse Vikt

Vikt started out somewhere between medicinal and Cola-scented, leaning more toward the medicinal. And deep and dark. Not a lonely-wild-forest deep and dark, but citified and complex. My view at that point was that it was interesting, but that I was just going to enjoy it once as a novelty. Especially since I was getting a note that was just a little bit like cinnamon, and I don't like cinnamon.

Then it got sweeter and tangier (I keep using the word "tangy" lately; what's with that?), while remaining dark and resinous. People mention licorice and anise; I don't actually get those notes, but I get their mood. Now it's a comfort scent, while remaining deep and dark. I like it.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and Smellythoughts and Fragrantica and Memory of Scent and Confessions of a Perfume Nerd and Feminine Things.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Sniff vs. Sniff: Shalimar EDP and Shalimar Parfum Initial

Another classic. My impression is that Guerlain's Shalimar is treated with fractionally less contempt by its keepers than poor Miss Dior, though that may only be due to the large population of women who know, by God, what Shalimar is supposed to smell like. To my mind, it's second only to Chanel No. 5 in population nose recognition. Of course, that reflects the age and prejudices of my nose. The most recognized and best-loved fragrance is probably really Angel or Lovely or Coco Mademoiselle or something I've never heard of.

Anyway, I want to learn to like Shalimar. Correction: If I'm ever going to like Shalimar, I want to start soon, while the current parfum is somewhat well-regarded and eBay is still packed with vintage and semi-vintage bottles. So far, I've failed to bond with it. In fact I'm nursing a minor Shalimar trauma, the result of encountering a spray parfum tester at Saks. My brain, rather than sitting me down to explain, "Parfum. Parfum. Do you remember what that means?" instead said, "Oooh!" and I snatched the bottle and applied a full spray.

Urgh. I think I've mentioned that even an hour or three later, Himself threatened to boot me out of the car and make me take the bus home. If I do learn to love Shalimar, I will be dabbing the parfum, not spraying.

Today, I'm working with fresh samples from the Vancouver, BC downtown Holt Renfrew. (We travelled. We ate. I bought perfume. Did I mention this?) The current Eau de Parfum (Shalimar, in the discussion below) is on my left arm, and the Parfum Initial (Initial) on my right. The Shalimar sprayer is broken, so the left arm is the equivalent of a dabber, rather than a spray, test.

The notes for Shalimar, according to Basenotes, are bergamot, iris, jasmine, rose, vanilla, opoponax, and tonka bean. Initial's notes are bergamot, orange, jasmine, rose, patchouli, musk, tonka bean, and vanilla.

When I first tried the Shalimar sample a few days ago, I perceived the top notes that came after the initial citrus sparkle as aggressively synthetic. This time I'm not so sure--what I'm categorizing as "synthetic" is a pencil-eraser, new-Barbie-doll note, and I know from experience that when I envision pencil erasers I'm smelling iris. I'm not sure what morphs that into the Barbie doll (aka New Rubbery/Plastic Toy) note; the opoponax? I'm assuming that this is what others perceive as burnt rubber.

Anyway, Shalimar's (this Shalimar's) opening is interesting, with strong acquired-taste elements, and not overly eager to please. In fact, it manages to make vanilla, one of the eagerest-to-please notes I know, back off and snarl, "Ya wanna make something of it?" I like that in a fragrance. Yes, I'm a cat person.

The top notes of Initial, on the other hand, are desperate to please. They smell pink. Sweet-sour. Flowery. I see a girl who's been costumed in scratchy pink ruffles and ordered to "Smile!" She's smiling, even giggling, but through clenched teeth. Now, I could give this scent credit for not being syrup-soaked fruit punch, but... I can't. I just can't.

In the first half hour, both of them calm down. Shalimar's vanilla starts to relax, with an occasional rattling purr, though it's still far from sweet-tempered. Initial's shriller notes start to fade--a little--under a veil of vanilla. The girl in pink has released her smile, found a chair, and slipped her feet out of tight shoes. But she still doesn't want to be here. And there's a tangy and faintly bitter thread that I perceive as an appropriate seasoning for a sweet or animalic note, but there's nothing here for it to season. It's the wedge of lemon without the clams, the salt without the steak, the olive without the martini, the lime and salt without the tequila...OK, you get the idea.

In fact--to digress to a completely different perfume line--it gives me a clue as to the purpose of that chewy, slightly meaty base that puzzles but pleases me in some of the Jo Malone fragrances. The fruity, tangy, flowery notes that define the Jo Malones are seasoning notes; they need that chewy base to give them a reason for being, as if the clams exist for the benefit of the lemon rather than the other way around.

Initial improves as time goes on. Remember Firefly? Remember Kaylee at the ball, miserable and snubbed by the mean girls, then suddenly finding her confidence at the center of a cluster of men who want to listen to her talk engines? Two hours in, Initial's morale improves. Soft, tangy powdery flowers are still soft, tangy powdery flowers, but now they smell good. I think that the difference is balance; the bitter-sour is now balanced just right against the vanilla and powder. It's no longer a condiment in search of an entree.

At the same point, Shalimar is still an ill-tempered, shaggy cat--relaxed, comfortably snoring, occasionally allowing me to stroke her warm vanilla-scented coat. But she still doesn't like me. I like her, but so far, I'm not getting a bit of glamor or even femininity. This is not the Shalimar I've read about.

Several hours after that, Shalimar is warm vanilla and rubber; still not friendly, but I like it. Initial's grown thinner, again sour without anything for balance, feminine but sad and very young. She wants to go home and put on her bunny slippers.

Review Roundup for Shalimar Parfum Initial: Basenotes and MakeupAlley and Perfume Shrine and Bois de Jasmin and Now Smell This and Olfactoria's Travels and Katie Puckrick Smells and Muse In Wooden Shoes and Perfume-Smellin' Things and The Non-Blonde and 1000 Fragrances and The Perfume Critic  and Post Modern Perfume and cafleurebon and Adventures of Barbarella and Perfume Posse and The Scent Critic  and Perfume Decadent and The Candy Perfume Boy and peredepierre and This Blog Really Stinks and Persolaise.

Review Roundup for Shalimar: Basenotes and MakeupAlley and Perfume Shrine and Bois de Jasmin and Now Smell This and Olfactoria's Travels and Katie Puckrick Smells and Muse in Wooden Shoes and Perfume-Smellin' Things and The Non-Blonde and it's weird that it's harder to find reviews of Shalimar than of her flankers, though I suppose there's some logic in it; most everybody already has an opinion of the original, right?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Perfume Review: Miss Dior (Originale, but not original.)

Perfume classics.

Hmph.

I always think of a "classic" as being something stable and well-known. Something that barely needs any comment, because it's so well understood. Of course, this idea inspires (bitter) laughter when applied to perfume, because the classics won't sit still.

Today's classic is a perfume whose name, even, won't stand still: Miss Dior. There's Miss Dior, and Miss Dior Cherie. Miss Dior Cherie dropped her Cherie and poses as Miss Dior, and Miss Dior picked up an "Originale" and may or may not be recognizable as a variant of her original self. That's ignoring Miss Dior Le Parfum, and the two different major versions of Miss Dior Cherie, and the EDT versus EDP versions and the flankers.

No more of that - I'm going to point to this invaluable chronology post on Perfume Shrine before my head explodes.

What I have is a quite new bottle of "Miss Dior EAU DE TOILETTE ORIGINALE" from the Vancouver airport duty free. (I'm sorry, I just couldn't stop myself. All that perfume, and barely a bottle to want!) Textured bottle, yellow juice, white label, gold printing. Long ingredients list on the box. There's nothing vintage about this one. The ingredients list mentions oakmoss and treemoss; I'm choosing to be pleased about that.

Yesterday, I sprayed some on a tissue and dabbed it on my arm for a minimal barely-damp evening first taste. If I were coming to it with an open mind rather than a suspicious "What have you done to her?" attitude I would have said that it was very nice, just short of "lovely", the first word I typed before correcting. Floral and fairly sweet, but grounded with a good pseudo-vintage vibe that I'd guess is the oakmoss. No real vintage attitude, no tappity-tap-high-heels feminine power, but Really Very Nice. Of course, if I'd ever smelled the vintage, my attitude would probably be different.

Today I put on one full back-of-the-neck spray, and a wet dab on my hand. The first few moments had a dismaying, um, urinal vibe. I quite like animalic odors, but I don't think that this one was intended in quite the way that it manifested on my skin. But it passed almost imemdiately--I take points off the top-notes score, but I'm not going to reject a perfume for fifteen seconds of oddity.

Then there was a fairly modern synthetic chorus that I'm less quick to forgive, because it's less quick to go away. I was seeing the flowers through a veil not of oakmoss, or galbanum, which would be just dandy, but something more modern. I'm guessing that it's the part of the top notes that are supposed to be "green-aldehydic", but for me it's more "shampoo-aldehydic." (Ah; I see a mention in Perfume Shrine of "a peachiness that I have encountered in hair products". Maybe that's it.)

Then, just a few minutes later--less than half an hour after application--ahhh. The modern shampoo is gone and I'm getting a nice, very slightly leathery, gentle pseudo-vintage vibe. Flowers in the background. Not aggressively sweet. Not cloyingly pretty. No fruit. Admittedly, there's still no attitude, still not enough oakmoss or bitterness or animalic growl from any source. Miss Dior...

OK, analogy: We recently saw a performance of The Drowsy Chaperone at our local high school. No, we don't have kids, but we're seeing school plays; I was a little amused by that, but I was rewarded because it was an extraordinarily good school play--in fact, it was a quite good play, period. Clever sets, impressive and convincing costumes and, most importantly, very good performances. But it was on a high school stage, so you knew that it wasn't going to get too mean, too dirty, too sexy--it was going to maintain a certain level of decency.

Miss Dior wears the costume of a vintage perfume, and plays her little heart out, but she's going to stay decent. And in fact, Miss Dior is a good deal less edgy than the play; if she took as many risks as it did, I would like her better.

But if she keeps wearing this costume for a few more hours, the new Miss Dior Originale will have earned the price of her bottle. She hasn't bought me out of the sin of funneling that price to the corporation(s) responsible for vandalizing the Dior classics. But that's my shame, not hers.

The modern Miss Dior is feminine, elegant, well-behaved. She's not necessarily young, but to my nose she's not thinking about anything that would be unsuitable for the very young. My understanding is that the vintage has a distinctly different focus--elegant femininity, yes, but that Miss Dior had less high-flown thoughts.

The perfume is, of course, directly linked with Dior's New Look of 1947. I wandered back to Linda Grant's The Thoughtful Dresser (Read it. Really.) to recall the impression that she'd given me of that moment. Dior's audience was made up of women who had spent the war years struggling to scrabble fashion from the flimsy and the scarce, to look beautiful in a patriotically morale-building way in spite of clothing rations and streamlined and skimpy styles. Dior presented these women with a vision of "frivolity, pleasure, wastefulness." Ballerina-length skirts, yards and yards of expensive fabric--so shocking that, given that postwar rationing was still in place, the collection faced substantial disapproval from some. Grant tells us that British Vogue's editor was forbidden to so much as mention Dior.

To quote Grant again: "What was new about the New Look was not new in the sense of modern; it was new in the sense that it was reviving a sensation that had long been suppressed in wartime: Pleasure for the sake of it."

Pleasure. Not just femininity and elegance and beauty of line and form, but pleasure and freedom. That, presumably, is what the vintage Miss Dior is thinking about. I need to smell some.

Review (and Discussion and Gnashing of Teeth) Roundup: Fragrantica and MakeupAlley and Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin and Bois de Jasmin again and Perfume Fountain and Perfume-Smellin' Things and I Smell Therefore I Am and Perfume Shrine and Perfume Shrine again and Perfume Shrine again.

Also, I rambled about The Thoughtful Dresser here and here.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth images from Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Aftelier Cacao (First wearing)

Yum.

I bought a mini of this on kinda-sorta impulse last week, where "impulse" means that I only thought about it for two days. I finally wore it properly today.

At the beginning, the orange struck me more than the chocolate--a good bitter orange that makes me resolve to look for orange notes in other Aftelier perfumes.  And there was chocolate, of course, but Cacao didn't read as a "foody" perfume to me. There was an animalic note that made it darker and more grown-up, and contrarily seemed both dangerous and comforting--fuzzy purring, but with claws in reserve.

As it developed, there was less orange and less growl; it turned sweeter and more floral. Then the vanilla at the base grew, though the whole package started to fade away before a really satisfying vanilla fog could develop. There's barely a trace on my arm now, about twelve hours after application. But that's fine. I've never quite seem the appeal of extreme longevity, so the limited life of all-natural perfumes is just fine with me.

I like it. I can't tell yet if I love it. That may come on the second wearing.

Review Roundup: The Non-Blonde and MakeupAlley and Fragrantica and Basenotes and This Blog Really Stinks and Eyeliner On A Cat and WAFT.

Image: By Ankara. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: People of the Labyrinths Luctor et Emergo

This was one of the first cult fragrances that I tried, when the perfume insanity started. I remember perceiving it as delightfully weird, but other than the Play Doh, I'd forgotten what I smelled in it. So I ordered a new vial a few weeks ago, and just dug it out on Thursday.

Play Doh, yep. And cherries--I remember the cherries, now that I smell them again. This time around, I could also detect the incense, while last time I probably only perceived that aspect of the fragrance as powder. I don't get any wood at all.

But did it always have that toy shop vibe? That's the feeling that I get from it, a big rambling shop with shiny-new toys and balloons and candy, as well as treasures in old dusty boxes. I'm sure that's not what the house was going for, not with that name, but that's what I get, and I like it.

Review Roundup: MakeupAlley and Now Smell This and My Perfume Life and Basenotes and PereDePierre and Fragrantica and Nathan Branch and Aromascope and Perfume-Smellin' Things.

Image: By Jurgen Ludwig. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Montale Patchouli Leaves

I love patchouli. Himself hates patchouli. This is occasionally a problem. It's a problem right now, because I really like Montale Patchouli Leaves. It's dark and spicy, rich and strong, but it doesn't get too specific about the patchouli--if I were dishonest, I might be able to persuade Himself that it's a tobacco fragrance. I almost respond to it as a gourmand, but it has enough non-edible notes to keep it from making me feel full, and enough elegance and attitude to keep it from just being a plate of sticky pastries.

But while I like it very much, I think that it has redundancies with too many things. It reminds me of Chergui, and of Fumerie Turque, and Serge Noire. (The last one shouldn't be surprising, but I keep forgetting that Serge Noire has patchouli.) And I already own two of those. So I suspect that I'll finish off the sample and leave it at that.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and The Scented Salamander and Basenotes and Fragrantica and Badger & Blade and Eiderdown Press and Basenotes and Nathan Branch and WAFT.

Image: By Takkk. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Hermes Hiris. And negotiating with iris.

I got Hermes Hiris for Christmas! (As stated before, woohoo!)

Iris and I have had a rocky journey. Early on, I found it cold and gritty and unfriendly, and only appreciated it when it smelled like pencil erasers, and that only because it made me laugh.

Later, I learned to appreciate it, but I rarely found it friendly. Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist? Cool and regal and otherworldly and quite possibly a little poisonous. (You know, in a good way.) Parfumerie Generale Cuir d'Iris? Iris and dragon leather--fascinating, but still not a personality that you'd invite over for tea. Parfumerie Generale Iris Taizo? Starts out stern and dusty-dry and a little grumpy, and only after a few hours does it turn gentle and sweet, like that strict English teacher when she unbends at the holiday party.

Now, iris can be a supporting player in warmer, more passionate scents. It's in Chanel No. 19 and Cuir de Russie, for example. They're both fully prepared to extend claws and teeth in a catfight and then, after decisively subduing the competition, settle in an instant back into smooth-furred gracefully posing elegance. But iris is responsible for the elegance, not the passion. Most of the time, iris is a good citizen, stern and with excellent posture. And that's all very well, but what's iris like when it's lounging, comfortably, at home?

Like Hermes Hiris, that's what. This is sunlit, relaxed iris, friendly and off guard. It reflects the best of Olivia Giacobetti's genius, managing to hand me a bouquet of notes that I normally don't like one bit, and make me love them. According to one notes list, it has orange blossom--I hate orange blossom, and I love it here. I'm usually dubious about rose; no problem here. And there's some powder, always a little iffy for me, but in Hiris it's barely there, quietly making the fragrance a little more feminine than it might be otherwise.

As Robin from Now Smell This observes, Hiris is "fresh" without resorting to ozonic air freshener notes. To my nose, I think it's the soap that does this, terribly expensive bar soap with a musky edge perhaps achieved with the ambrette seeds instead of that horrible white musk found in so many fragrances. The hay, too, no doubt adds to that persuasive fresh-air mood.

I can't tease out the the coriander, honey, vanilla, and woods, but I assume that they're draping all of these floral and fresh notes, grounding the fragrance and keeping it from exhausting my nose with too much high-pitched good cheer.

It's lovely. I'm wearing too much today, and I'm not sorry.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and MakeupAlley and Savvy Thinker and Basenotes and Fragrantica and Eiderdown Press and Bois de Jasmin.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

We Three Kings - Myrrh - Parfumerie Generale Querelle

So. Myrrh. Gold is happy and glittery. Frankincense is spiritual and serene. Myrrh?

Death. At least, that's my take on the major symbolism. Death and suffering. And what kind of third post is that, the day before Christmas? I'm not clear on whether myrrh was intended to comfort the sufferers, or just symbolized the suffering, like a smell that served the same purpose as a shroud or black funeral clothes.

I've been talking about my childhood self in these posts, though I can't claim that that was a plan. (I can't claim that I had a plan.) I remember the first death that I grieved, that of the retired policeman, infinitely tall and reassuringly wide, that supervised the crosswalk that I used to get to kindergarten--no doubt with Mom watching all the while, but I remember it as a daily journey on my own, my first foray out into the world.

He would talk to me and, amazingly, he got me to talk back, four-year-old me who was all but mute even with my kindergarten teacher. He died that year, and Mom quotes something that I said when I was told, probably something about Heaven, and definitely a protest against the idea that he wasn't coming back.

I don't remember the quote.  I do clearly remember the first day crossing the street with his replacement, a much younger man, perhaps a new recruit instead of an old retiree. He was bright and cheerful and efficient, putting the best face on a job that he no doubt hoped would be extremely temporary. He wasn't the least bit interested in pausing to wait for a tiny person to choke out something to say; I remember trying to get a verbal feeler out, trying to transform him into a substitute for "my" policemen, and him bustling brightly away before I'd even gotten started. I realized that no one was like my policeman, and that my policeman was indeed not coming back.

So that was death. To steal from that poem, I did not approve. I still miss him. I sometimes wish that I could send a decades-late reminiscing sympathy note to his family. He continued to populate my mind for a long time; I thought that Santa Claus must surely be like him, and perhaps one of the Three Kings, too, was a good man near the end of a life of responsibility, not just worshiping a King but reaching out to a child.

Now I've gone and made myself cry and, y'know, Querelle is good for that. Maybe myrrh was for comfort after all. The descriptive material on LuckyScent refers to this as "sensual", to use one of the milder adjectives, and apparently the namesake film is... well, I'm just not going there at all, because I get none of that from this scent. Querelle is a medicinal perfume to me, clean and sharp, with that protective feel that I get from Fou d'Absinthe, even though there's very little similarity otherwise. It is a bit inhuman, but in a sorrowful way, not a dangerous one. Comforting, and very peaceful.

And there ends my Three Kings week, on a sad note, but it's good to remember an old friend. For more of Three Kings week, please have a look at these lovely blogs:

• All I Am - A Redhead
• Bonkers About Perfume
• EauMG
• My Perfume Life
• Notes from Josephine
• Parfumieren
• The Perfume Chronicles.
• Redolent Of Spices
• Scent Of The Day

And thank you, Krista and JoanElaine, for inviting me! I've enjoyed this very much.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and Fragrantica and Perfume Posse and Perfume Posse again and Smellbound and Perfume Patter and Snobby & Grouchy.

Three Kings Image: Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch
Crosswalk Image: By Susan Lesch. Wikimedia Commons.

We Three Kings - Frankincense - Regina Harris Frankincense Myrrh Rose Maroc Perfume Oil

I didn't grow up associating incense with churches or religion. Neither the Unitarians on my mother's side of the family nor the Baptists on my father's favored that particular ritual. Both parents veered away from their family spiritual choices--Mom to the Methodist church, my father to the philosophy of Henry James--but that didn't get me any closer to smelling sweet religious smoke.

Incense, to me, was represented by those sticks that "hippies" bought in odd little stores. As a small child, I thought that they were actually illegal--which of course made them fascinating and romantic, but certainly nothing I'd ever buy, or even rummage through to read the names of the various scents. I was a painfully law-abiding child.

I remember having that same shocked respect for displays of beef jerky sticks. While they were no doubt legal--nothing sold in gas stations, the most unromantic places possible, could be otherwise--I always assumed that they would require dental equipment beyond that of a normal human, dental equipment that one acquired along with one's hunting license. Sometimes I wish that I could interview my childhood self to find out where she got this stuff.

My ignorance has been a handicap in learning to appreciate or understand incense-based perfumes. I'm sure that they have all sorts of cues for perfume lovers who can understand them--this one is classic church incense, that one is from India, this other one from Japan, and so on. Maybe combining cathedral incense with (for example) Japanese herbal notes would be a delightful surreal experiment in jarring contexts. Maybe olfactory incense jokes could even make a person laugh. I wouldn't know.

Now, if I'd thought of incense as being associated with fire, perhaps I would have crossed those boundaries, at least to the point of sniffing the sticks at the store. I love fire. I love smoke. I love the smell of a just-struck match. I always wished that I lived somewhere where it was legal to burn leaves in the fall. I'm delighted that Himself insisted on a fireplace when we remodeled the house.

We never had a fireplace when I was a child, so Mom sometimes allowed me to make tiny fires in baking pans or structures of aluminum foil, sitting at the kitchen table burning matches and toothpicks and melting Green Army Men. This sort of risk was utterly incompatible with Mom's normally safety-first philosophy. I suspect that she observed my love of fire and feared that if she didn't give it some condoned and supervised outlet, my awed respect for the rules would break down and I'd go playing with matches on my own.

I suddenly realize that there's a trend here. If you add Fourth of July sparklers, glorious things with a fuzzy legal status in the states where we lived, then to my childhood self fire and smoke was all about crime, romance and danger. No wonder I don't "get" the soaring serenity of Avignon.

And what about Regina Harris Frankincense Myrrh Rose Maroc Perfume Oil? Well, it's not what I expected. I thought that it would be a shadowy confusing tangle of scents; I imagined getting lost in it, chasing down the notes. But as it turns out, it's so thoroughly blended that I can't find individual notes. There's certainly some dark richness and smokiness in there, but the overall effect is almost comforting, rather than adventurous.

It's medicinal, but it's a "good for you" kind of medicine, not the kind that you take when you're actually sick. I can't tease out the rose, but I can sense it there, sweetening the bitter notes. And there's not that much bitter, really--maybe it's the oil form of this fragrance that's blunting all the sharp edges. I usually fervantly dislike myrrh and mildly dislike frankincense, but in this fragrance I like them both just fine.

And that's all I have for you in the way of a review; my incense vocabulary is simply not equipped to speak to this fragrance. All I can say is that I like it, even though I don't understand it.

And don't forget! Amble over to these blogs for more of Three Kings week:

• All I Am - A Redhead
• Bonkers About Perfume
• EauMG
• My Perfume Life
• Notes from Josephine
• Parfumieren
• The Perfume Chronicles.
• Redolent Of Spices
• Scent Of The Day

Review Roundup: Fragrantica and Basenotes and Nathan Branch and Perfume-Smellin' Things.

Three Kings Image: Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch
Incense Image: Wikimedia Commons.

We Three Kings: Gold: Comme des Garcons 8 88

I grew up hearing the Nativity story at Christmas. I heard it in Midwestern Methodist churches, in books, and in Linus's voice in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Linus's rendition had the greatest impact on me, by far--should this worry me? It still affects me, even in my agnostic adulthood. I can conjure up his voice right now.

Linus never got around to discussing the wise men or the gifts, as far as I can recall. If he had, maybe those gifts would have made sense to me, but as it was, my response was "frankinwhat?" I remember thinking that frankincense and myrrh were something stinky and oily, and I was surprised to discover, later, that I wasn't too far from the truth. But while a little oily scenting is all very nice for a baby already living in a warm dry house, it seemed rather beside the point for the whole hay-and-stable situation.

Gold, on the other hand, gold made some sense. Not all that much sense; I wanted to hear, instead, that the kings had thought to spend some of that gold to provide some immediate practical gifts, maybe hot food and silk-and-feather comforters like those that Ram Dass left for Sara Crewe in A Little Princess. And, yes, the fact that I combined the Bible and children's chapter books as two elements of one big tapestry suggests that I didn't absorb that whole religion thing in quite the way that the church hoped.


But I conceded that a king facing a being that was heralded by a whole new star would feel the need to make an appropriate gesture, and pressing gold and sacred oily things on that being might seem just right. Even if a fire, tea, and hot buttered toast for Mary would be more useful.

(I suspect that a Sunday school teacher from my past is feeling a sudden pang of failure right about now, but doesn't know exactly why.)

Toast aside, gold is something to catch the imagination. It's wealth. It's royalty and pirates. It glitters. It doesn't decay, it doesn't dissolve. But it's also soft, a near-indestructible material that's nevertheless amenable to changing form based on a craftsman's imagination, so it seems more ours than hard, brittle jewels. You admire jewels; you fondle gold.

This was supposed to be a perfume review, wasn't it? All right, then: What should gold smell like? Do I agree with Comme des Garcons that 8 88 is a successful olfactory portrait of the stuff?

Only for a moment. Somehow, I expected Comme des Garcons to take a high-tech view of gold, cold and minimalist. I was wrong. 8 88 starts out girly, all mellow buttery flowers and a hint of fruit, with just a bit of an edge that, yes, seems a bit metallic. I think it's the saffron. The butter and fruit faded in less than a minute, leaving a nonspecific impression of brightness and warmth blended with the metallic saffron. That phase, lasting two or three minutes, was a pretty good impression of gold, though it lacked the sparkle that would make the mood complete.

After that, the last of the friendly warmth was gone and 8 88 developed into a cool, dry saffron perfume, no longer the least bit girly, with a woody note that grew as the hours passed. I like it; it might beat Washington Tremlett Black Tie, my previous favorite for the note, in a saffron faceoff. But saffron is not gold; gold must glitter, and 8 88 does not.

For more of We Three Kings week, please head for these fine blogs!

• All I Am - A Redhead
• Bonkers About Perfume
• EauMG
• My Perfume Life
• Notes from Josephine
• Parfumieren
• The Perfume Chronicles.
• Redolent Of Spices
• Scent Of The Day

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and  Perfume Posse again and Perfume Posse yet again and Fragrantica and Basenotes and Now Smell This and MakeupAlley.

Three Kings Image: Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch
Gold Laurel Wreath Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Andy Tauer Carillon Pour Un Ange

I want to love an Andy Tauer scent. My fondness for Orange Star has reduced the urgency, but the quest continues. My issue with his big-gun scents--L'Air du Desert Marocain, for example--tends to be the dark incense notes, so a green floral seemed like just the candidate. And who could possibly have too many, or even enough, greens? Now, I do have issues with lily of the valley, but I sent off for Carillon Pour Un Ange all the same.

The top notes were intensely "perfumey", to the point that they made my eyes water and my sinuses rebel. This is not a wrist scent--for future wearings, I'll remember that I need the distance of a back of the neck application.

But there were some positive signs even as the top notes went on the attack. There's a grainy texture--I'd call it powdery, except that I don't much like powder, and I do like this. And rather than being cloyingly sweet, it was an intense mix of sweet and sour; I approve, though I do wish it were a little lower-pitched and a little less clean.

It took a couple of hours for the top notes to calm down and leave some room for the green. I don't get any of the calmer notes mentioned in reviews - no wood, no ambergris, not even leather. I just get very clean flowers, and a quite nice green. I can imagine getting addicted to this particular green, but I'll have to wear it a few more times before I feel that I've really got a handle on it.

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and Now Smell This and CaFleureBon and Basenotes and Muse In Wooden Shoes and Perfume-Smellin' Things and MakeupAlley and Fragrantica and Hortus Conclusus and DivineCaroline and The Non-Blonde.

Image: By Olivier. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Serge Lutens Cedre

Sweet. Sweet. Sweet. Oh, my God, sweet.

A while ago, I tried the two "one syllable C word" Serge Lutens fragrances, Cedre and Chene. I kept forgetting which was which, but since I didn't like either one of them, it didn't really matter.

But I recently fell madly in love with Chene, so it seemed like time to try Cedre again, in case I'd changed my mind about that one, too. But no. Flowers drowned in cinnamon and syrup. This is not going to work.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Perfume Posse and Bois de Jasmin and The Non-Blonde and Perfume-Smellin' Things again and Fragrantica and PereDePierre.

Image: By Eylem Basak Ekinci. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose

I sent off for a sample of Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose more than a year ago, as part of the kickoff of my perfume insanity. It was one of the weirder-sounding scents listed in the classic Now Smell This article 100 Scents Every Perfumista Must Try, and even then I was drawn by the weird. I also loved the idea of natural perfumery, though the prices did shock me, even more then than they do now.

When I sniffed it back then, I remember that I was fascinated, but I didn't even consider buying it to wear. Moving to the present, I wore it Sunday and I wore it today, and much to my surprise, I find it pretty. Not a bland ruffly-girl sort of pretty, but, yeah, pretty. Beautiful, too, but beautiful and weird is less of a surprise, to me, than pretty and weird. Cepes & Tuberose is all three.

When I fall in love with a perfume, I have trouble describing it. I have yet to satisfactorily describe Chanel No. 19. I may very well be having the same problem with this one. The tuberose is startlingly sweet. It starts out almost overpowering, and gradually calms down until, near the end, it's almost chilly, and a little candylike. The mushroom seems to walk in step, always perceptible behind the tuberose, but always subordinate to it so that I can never quite get a good sniff of it. It's dusty and a little brown-buttery.

That's the best I can do. But I want it.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Basenotes and MakeupAlley and IndiePerfumes and Perfume Posse and my own later Favorites post.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Hermessence Vetiver Tonka

I like this better and better every time I wear it. But I've never reviewed it. I suspect that that's because I can't quite put words to it. It's sharp, sometimes. And sweet sometimes and edible sometimes and medicinal sometimes. Sometimes it's weird and sometimes, for a moment, it's pretty, as in girly pretty. It's fresh, but not in the girly chiffon-flapping-over-a-crystal-blue-stream way that I can hear every time a perfume salesperson says "fresh".

But other people have words, so, here's the Review Roundup: Now Smell This and  Bois de Jasmin and  Basenotes and MakeupAlley and Perfume Shrine and Fragrantica and SmellyBlog and 1000Scents and MonkeyManMatts.

(The cat? Well, there's grass in the photo. Vetiver is a grass. See?
OK, yeah, he's just cute.)

Image: By Sage Ross. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Serge Lutens Bas de Soie

Serge Lutens Bas de Soie is a vintage black and white photograph of a scent. It's "retro", not in a funny-nostalgia way, but with that unruffled elegance that no one seems to possess any longer. Many of the reviews refer to it as cold, with the two major notes battling for control. I see it as warm and sunlit and soft, with the iris and hyacinth napping together like intertwined cats, so that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

I initially made a proper and sensible decision to spend a few days with a sample, and think about a possible, someday, eventual purchase. Then I caught a whiff of it from my arm and scurried back to the shop - where Himself bought it for me. He does a very fine job of keeping me smelling green.

Review Roundup: The Scented Salamander and 1000 Fragrances and Grain de Musc and Bois de Jasmin and Fragrantica and Perfume Posse and Cafleurebon and Perfume Shrine and Perfume-Smellin' Things and MakeupAlley and Now Smell This and The Fragrant Foodie (scroll down) and I Smell Therefore I Am and The Non-Blonde.

Images: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: The Different Company Oriental Lounge

I acquired The Different Company Oriental Lounge recently, even though I officially don't like oriental scents. There are some exceptions to that rule, like Theorema and Chergui and Serge Noire and Bvlgari Black and Iris Taizo and Feminite du Bois and Cedre Sandaraque and... um. Well.

Fragrantica declares that all of the above are orientals (or the subcategories like "Oriental Spicy"), and I love them all. There goes my thesis.

Except, I'm picking my thesis up and dusting it off again, because with the possible exception of Chergui, I consider all of these to be orientals only by a "where else do we put them?" technicality. To me, an oriental scent is one that's full of amber and musk and lots of heavy smoky spicy sweetness, and most of those perfumes don't qualify. Also, orientals are a perfume category that I don't understand or have a vocabulary for, and I didn't have trouble talking about any of those fragrances. So I guess I'm saying, if it doesn't confuse me, it's not an oriental. And Oriental Lounge confuses me. But in a good way.

So what's in there? I get spicy powder riding on billows of vanilla, and amber that I don't hate (a rarity), and in general a lot of soft, squashy sweetness of a kind that I usually dislike, except that here I don't. From my reading, I suspect that the explanation is the curry leaf.

Various sources refer to the scent of curry leaf as green, woody, pungent, camphorous, fetid, spicy, metallic, warm - while there seems to be limited agreement on exactly what the curry leaf smells like, all of these descriptions sound like something that could cut through sweet gooey smoke like a knife. And that's how I'm experiencing Oriental Lounge - something is adding just enough transparency and sharpness to allow me to bask in the wintery warmth, rather than drown in it.

Yum.

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and Now Smell This and Fragrantica and 1000 Fragrances and I Smell Therefore I Am and Nathan Branch and Basenotes.

Link Roundup: Grain de Musc.

Image: By Amcaja. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: L'Artisan Parfumeur Mure et Musc Extreme (The decluttering continues.)

I love blackberry. And black currant. And black cherry. And black raspberry. All of those fruits and fruit flavors with that extra, dark, slightly winy edge that isn't sour, isn't bitter, but still balances syrupy sweetness as if it were. I often dump extra water into over-sweet lemonade and other fruit drinks; I never think that a good blackberry drink is too sweet. I suspect that I could sip the syrup straight.

So I had big hopes for Mure et Musc. So I, once again, didn't finish a decant before buying a bottle. And now I'm considering a declutter.

This is a relatively new bottle - perhaps two years old. It's adequate.  Today I sprayed it on lavishly by my standards - five or six sprays, well away from my nose to avoid temporary anosmia - and once in a while throughout the day I could get a faint hint of it. A little blackberry, a little fizz, a little of something vaguely fresh. It's like a blackberry Italian soda purchased from that alarmingly health-sensitive lunch place that's stingy with the syrup - mostly mineral freshness, barely any fruit. I once tried a sample of the non-Extreme version, and was even less impressed.

I'm told that the vintage Mure et Musc with the fruity musk is the real stuff, though I still have trouble using the word "vintage" for something produced in the seventies and eighties. Luca Turin refers to the original as having "tremendous radiance and transparency", and laments the later reformulation. So I feel vindicated in being unimpressed with the current versions.

I think that I'm going to give it away and give Annick Goutal Eau de Charlotte a try.

Review Roundup (I'm including reviews of all versions, not just the Extreme): Bois de Jasmin and Bois de Jasmin again (a brief mention about the musk) and Now Smell This and Sweet Diva and Grain de Musc and Aromascope (brief mention) and Aromascope again (another brief mention) and Perfume Posse and PeredePierre and Fragrantica and Basenotes and Pink Manhattan.

Image: By De-Okin. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Creed Love In Black

Apparently I'm doing Fall Cleaning, because yet again I wore a scent with the intention of confirming that I don't like it. And, yep, it's confirmed. I once liked Love In Black - I bought a bottle, and I didn't buy it unsniffed. But I did buy it without working my way through even a small decant, and therefore the regret is predictable.

I thought that my occasional halfhearted reaction post-purchase was due to the iris. Since I've learned to love iris in several forms since the last time I wore Love In Black, I was hoping for a turnaround on this fragrance. But the reverse happened - I learned to love iris in concert with incense and leather and galbanum and generally dark or threatening things. Violets? Nooooo. I could tolerate violets with the scent of pencil erasers - that was pleasantly amusing. Now that I know that those pencil erasers are iris, it's all over.

Yes, I realize that it's love in black, and therefore maybe it thinks it's dark, but I don't. It's bright and sweet and the fact that it's a little sad doesn't help. Reference decant, bottle leaving.

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and Fragrance Bouquet and MakeupAlley and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Basenotes and Sniffapalooza and The Scented Salamander and I Smell Therefore I Am and Fragrantica and PeredePierre and Scent of the Day.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.