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?)

Perfume: A basket of quick sniffs

I've been wearing perfume without reporting back. Shocking. I'll probably review these properly someday, but as I laze around on holiday vacation, I'm going to record my first impressions.

Sylvia Grojsman 100% Love didn't quite hit the right note for me. The vanilla and chocolate were lovely, but the roses and berries seemed to clash with them, rather like... like... OK, I don't know what like. To quote Buffy, "un-mixy things." I did enjoy the drydown, but I don't like having to wait for a clashing note to go away.

Parfumerie Generale Gardenia Grand Soir was just as lovely as it was the day I tried it in the shop--before I broke all rules and bought it the same day. But I didn't have any new thoughts about it.

I ordered a tiny 2ml decant of Mary Greenwell Plum because I remembered it being mentioned fondly more than once by Mals over at Muse in Wooden Shoes. The initial fruit note was exactly what I wanted--an idealized plum, or perhaps plum jam. Dark and intense but not sweet. But then the aldehydes came out, simultaneous with the thought, "Doesn't Mals refer to herself as an Aldeho?" and indeed she does, and Plum lost me for the next hour or so. The drydown turned likable again, but I think that this one is too grownup for me.

Montale Chocolate Greedy was a nice enough vanilla with just a dusting of chocolate. It brings to mind chocolate meringues or other chocolate creations that depend on cocoa rather than melted chocoalte for their flavor. Perfectly nice, but not what I had in mind. Is chocolate always either a fleeting note (Cacao and Guilt) or a dusty background presence (Greedy)?

Lady Stetson was pretty nice, and that's all I remember.

Sung by Alfred Sung was not what I expected. I expected green; I got only the faintest hint of galbanum trapped behind prickly thorny flowers, followed a good while later by knee-deep powder. Meh.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.