Perfume: The Under Twenty Project

I was bad. I bought stuff. I blame Black Friday and Cyber Monday and my current state of "meh."

As previously mentioned, I ordered a bottle of Aftelier Cepes & Tuberose. It came, and I still love it. And I love the bottle. And everybody who was there when I rudely opened the bottle at lunch in the restaurant claimed to like the scent as well, though they might have just been humoring a fanatic. ("Giles, don't make cave slayer unhappy.")

Last night I went online shopping, and I kept finding perfumes with positive reviews available at less than twenty dollars. When I reconsidered my cart, I realized that there were fewer than I thought, because two of the candidates were sample size, and that doesn't count, based on the rules that I made up. The rules are that the product must:

• Be a fragrance, rather than, say, a lotion or soap or spray deodorant or hair spray. (I swear, I saw at least one perfumed hair spray.) But any strength is OK.
• Contain at least half an ounce.
• Be available from a retailer, rather than an individual.
• Be an original manufacturer's bottle, not a decant.
• Cost less than twenty dollars. Achieving this price with a non-product-specific discount doesn't count.

I might make a series out of this. I'm not requiring myself to actually burn the price of the bottle; if it's available as a sample as well as an under-twenty bottle I'm allowed to buy just the sample, I decree. But I confess that bottles of Balenciaga Rumba and Madame Rochas are on their way. Unsniffed. 

I was bad.

Image: By Jorge Barrios. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: None, and Last Saturday, and The Mall

Himself and I have a custom known as Last Saturday.

The idea is that discretionary purchases - DVDs and movie posters and murder mysteries and soap dishes and big-screen televisions and scrunchies and, yes, perfume - must occur on the last Saturday of the month. If a proposed purchase isn't basic groceries or an otherwise immediate need (like, say, the rainy season just started and we've discovered that all appropriate shoes have become worn and leaky), it waits for Last Saturday.

There are two reasons. First, the requirement to put off these purchases for a few days or weeks increases the likelihood that we'll decide that we don't actually need whatever it is. Second, when a month's worth of discretionary purchases are all piled up in one day, purchasing them all looks like financial suicide, so we're likely to do some cutting.

Today is Last Saturday.

Bwahaha.

Actually, no, so far it's been a very small Last Saturday. I say "so far" because there's one hour left, and the whole wide Internet is out there. But I was surprised that even though we stopped by the mall, on Last Saturday, very little self-control was required. I think that this is a sad, sad commentary on the state of department store fragrances. Actually, on the whole mall - they don't even have a bookstore any longer! - but I'm talking fragrances right now.

I ended up coming home with only two small perfume-related purchases:

A mini roll-on of the new L'Occitane Paeonia Eau de Toilette. The Nice Salesperson offered me a test strip of this, and I liked the grapefruit in the top notes, so I bought the mini with unseemly haste rather than wait until the next Last Saturday.

Fragrantica says that the notes for this one are bergamot, grapefruit zest, peony, rose petals, sandalwood, and musk. I mostly get the bergamot and grapefruit, which is just fine with me, though I'd be happy if the sandalwood came forward. It's a friendly little perfume, low projection, not too sweet, not too aggressively "fresh". I'm pleased that I bought it, though I think a mini is just about the right portion for me.

Speaking of minis, I very much like L'Occitane's choice to offer mini sprays or roll-ons or tins of many of their scents - that decision is responsible for almost every L'Occitane purchase that I've made.

The second purchase was a mini roll-on of Kiehl's Pear scented essence oil. Yum. When I first sniffed this I thought that it was a little cartoonish, but as time goes on it smells increasingly like a real, slightly overripe, pear. It's a note more than a perfume, but it's a very nice note.

And that's all. I did do my usual check on Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia, and it was gone. My thrashing around about this has been endless; I've wondered if I'd be relieved or dismayed if this disappeared before I bought a bottle. Turns out that I'm relieved. Whew.

And I tried a spray of Guerlain Jicky parfum. I can never resist an unexpected pure parfum tester, and I wanted to try the civet classic. Sadly, I don't like this any better than the Shalimar parfum that I tried a while ago - though this time Himself didn't threaten to evict me from the car. There's a common element in both - Guerlinade? - that I don't like at all.

So that's Last Saturday. So far.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Stetson Lady Stetson

I can't decide. I just can't decide.

Lady Stetson is an extremely inexpensive drugstore perfume, but one that Luca Turin decorated with four stars. So I didn't know what to expect. And I still can't decide what I think.

Now, I have no doubts about the top notes - I fervantly disliked them. Sneezy aldehydes combined with a touch of artificial sweetener. Blurgh.

But as it dried and developed --

I'm going to pause here to note that it did develop. Lady Stetson is definitely not linear. There are at least three distinct phases.

-- as it dried and developed, I liked it better. There was a growing warmth and depth, a sort of glow behind the sneezy aldehyde prickles. And also a large dose of soapy white musk, but a musk thoroughly pureed with something woody, something sweet-gourmand and perhaps something the faintest bit animalic. The blend works - this is the rare perfume containing white musk that doesn't give me any basement washing machine vibe at all. That, alone, is a significant accomplishment.

But I'm puzzled as to what it actually smells like. It's officially an aldehydic floral. People smell peach in this, and rose. To me, it's not at all floral - at first I get aldehydes and Nutrasweet, then it turns to wood and soap with a little bit of sweet gourmand. The final drydown is much more gourmand than floral to my nose - the Basenotes reviewer who mentions eggnog is closest in my view.  Angela from Now Smell This mentions amber and ylang ylang, and I sense them as well, but they both blend into the gourmand mood.

I like the drydown very much. I hate the top notes with a fiery passion. I'm not quite sure about the middle. This is going to make it difficult to wear, because the drydown is very subtle - to have as much of it as I'd like at the end, I'll have to marinate myself in aldehydes and Aspartame at the beginning.

But I will be wearing it again.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and Now Smell This.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.