SOTD: Estee Lauder Jasmine White Moss

I thought that this was a summer scent, but I was wrong. In the summer, it's a little "big" - it's definitely a Lauder. Today, on a somewhat chilly day, it's a wonderful soft green, just aggressive enough to keep it from fading away, not so aggressive or chilly as to offend others. Himself didn't even notice, in a closed car, that I was wearing two sprays.

It's not also such a grand, distant green that it makes me feel that I must live up to it. Chanel No. 19, for example, does need living up to, especially in the parfum. I love that about it, but it does mean that I don't apply No. 19 to run out to the hardware store - or if I did, I'd feel that I should dig out a pressed white linen shirt and probably at least one piece of jewelry.

Jasmine White Moss, while perfectly comfortable at a nice restaurant, would also be perfectly comfortable at the hardware store.  Or an Easter egg hunt. Or a wedding. Or while driving car pool. There's no vamp about this fragrance; it's a Nice Girl.

The consensus in the Perfume Freak world seems to be that this scent is a very good sign of new trends. (Trends also represented by Issey Miyake's A Scent.) It's dry, it's green, it's (somewhat) mossy, and there isn't a peach, apple, strawberry, or pitcher of vanilla syrup anywhere in sight. It recognizes history - for that matter, it may be history, because it's reputed to be a formula started by Estee Lauder in the 1980s. (I pause here to be horrified that the 1980s were almost thirty years ago now.)

In part, I suspect that I bought a bottle to support the trend. But I'm not sorry.

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and Now Smell This and Perfume Shrine and Fragrantica and A Mom In Red High Heels and Sniffapalooza and The Scented Salamander and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Grain de Musc and I Smell Therefore I Am and Polish, Platforms, Perfume.

Photo by Kyknoord, Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.

Books: Miss Manners' Guide To Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, and others, by Judith Martin

Miss Manners is coming out with a new book!

It's about weddings.

I'm not getting married. Nobody I know is getting married.

I'm going to buy it anyway. I may very well pre-order.

Miss Manners, aka Judith Martin, is my authority on matters of etiquette. And I love reading her books. Given a choice between a new book from my favorite mystery author, and a new Miss Manners? I'll pick the Miss Manners without a moment's hesitation.

Miss Manners has opinions. She looks at the infinite complexity of etiquette, and pulls all the threads together into a structure that simply cannot be criticized. She acknowledges changes in the world, and necessary changes in behavior, and always makes the right call between the traditional and the new.

The old idea that the divorced should celebrate their second marriages quietly, as if ashamed? Feh; she rejects that. The new idea that wedding guests should provide a gift of a high enough value to "cover their plate"? Feh; she rejects that just as thoroughly. (And, no, she doesn't say 'feh'. That wouldn't be polite. Would it? Hmm.)

She rejects the idea that the rich have a corner on etiquette. And the idea that people of good hearts and good intentions have no need for etiquette. And the idea that American etiquette is in any way inferior to European etiquette. And the idea that etiquette ever requires one to be a doormat. And the idea that all people need to get along is better communication. (Hmmm. On this, I find myself wondering if she's read Douglas Adam's discussion of the babelfish, which agrees with her.) She has opinions, and I rarely disagree with them.

And she's just plain fun to read. The stories. The humor. The sarcasm. How often do you expect to laugh out loud while reading an etiquette book? You will.

I want that new book and I want it now.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

SOTD: Serge Lutens Serge Noire

I continue to be surprised at how much I love this one. When I first sprayed it on my arm, long ago at Barney's (visualize nostalgic Mists of Time... OK, it was just last year or so) I thought that it was somewhere between unimpressive and unpleasant.

I had something much sweeter and more inviting (Chergui?) on the other arm, so when we rushed away (Barney's usually needs to fit in after a show and before dinner) I was happily sniffing that, and occasionally checking in to see what the deal was with that weird, sour stuff on the Serge Noire arm.

Then the weird, sour stuff started to develop, and became not sour, but dry. And still weird, but a dark, wonderful sort of weird. When I smell it, I see an endless desert of jet-black powder-fine sand. Maybe with a volcano nearby, long cold, but you can still smell the fact that there was once fire there.

After an hour, I was sniffing the arms equally. After ninety minutes, it was the sweet arm that was only occasionally getting a sniff. After two hours, I'd forgotten the sweet arm entirely and was dividing my attention between my dinner (a very fine dinner) and the wonderful black dust.

I still delight in this transformation, every time I wear Serge Noire. I don't like the top notes much better than I ever did, but they make me happy, because I know what's coming.

Review Roundup: Love it or hate it, this one gets a lot of opinions! Perfume Posse and Fragrantica and Perfume Shrine and Grain de Musc and Pink Magenta and Nathan Branch and Now Smell This and WAFT and StyleCaster and BitterGrace Notes (one sentence review) and EauMG and Grain de Musc and Basenotes and Fragrantica and Perfume Shrine and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Fragrantica again and Pink Sith.

Edited to expand the Review Roundup.

Photo by Mila Zinkova. Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.

Books: Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, by Paco Underhill

This is another book that isn't the least bit useful to me, but is a good read - a very good read.

Paco Underhill uses anthropology to study shoppers. He could be seen as The Opposition, since his goal is to help merchants make more sales from customers like us, and he seems to be very good at it.

But that really doesn't worry me, and the book really is great deal of fun. It's another book full of stories, and bits of information that you didn't know, just the kind I like. Where's the best place to position dog treats to increase sales? Why shouldn't the soda cooler be in the back of the store in the mall? How long will a man look for a fitting room before he gives up? What can be done with the answers to increase sales?

It's a munchy trivia and story snack, entertainingly written. I recommend it.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.

Books: Nassau Street, and others, by Herman Herst, Jr.

It's been a long time since I collected stamps. And even when I did, I wasn't particularly serious about it. I had a kid's collection of ordinary stamps, and my interest waxed and waned, usually waned.

But I still love reading these books, because while they're technically about stamps, they're mostly about stories. About people, and quirks, and what triggers an enthusiasm, and what makes value, and business in a more casual age, and, well, stories. And Herman Herst was a leader in the stamp world, making them all that more interesting.

So I recommend them in the Good Read category. That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Books: The Essential Earthman (and others) by Henry Mitchell

Henry Mitchell was, among other things, the garden columnist for the Washington Post for many years. He is also, in my view, the best garden writer. Period. In writing, in knowledge, in entertainment value, in philosophy, and in attitude, he wins.

Henry Mitchell's books, I believe largely drawn from his columns, will teach you a great deal about gardening. Not in an indexed, carefully categorized, classroom sort of way - they are, instead, a very knowledgeable and also very entertaining gardener giving you his views on something that interests him.

But they're mainly about entertainment and the sheer joy of absorbing the thoughts of someone passionately garden-obsessed. They're not reference books, they're reading books

The full list of Henry Mitchell's garden books consists of The Essential Earthman, One Man's Garden, and On Gardening. It's certainly worth reading all three, and I believe that all are still in print.

Photo: By Rasbak, Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.

Rant: What happened to dessert?

Dessert used to be better.

I'm talking about purchased dessert. On a plate at a restaurant or in a box at the bakery. Dessert at home is whatever the cook at home makes, and it's usually still pretty good.

Purchased dessert used to have flavors. Butter, and chocolate, and cream, and nuts, and caramel, and burnt sugar, and like that. Now it just tastes like sugar.

Now, I'm not one of those people who says, "Oh, it's got sugar in it." Or "I never eat white sugar." I eat lots of white sugar. Yum.

But sugar can't stand alone. It needs something else, and it needs something else that's at least a little bit challenging. Strawberries should have some sour. Chocolate should have some bitter, or some of that dutch powderiness, or something. Butter should taste like butter, like you are indeed (gasp!) eating fat - and by the way, the chocolate should have fat, too. And so should cream.

I've lamented more than once the once-fabulous dessert at a restaurant that shall go un-named. It was a small flat slice of deadly-rich seriously-bitter chocolate cake, in a pool of wincingly sour raspberry sauce, topped with a soft plop of unsweetened whipped cream. Taken alone, the cake was too rich and too bitter. Taken alone, the sauce was too sour and screamed too loud of raspberries. Taken alone, the cream was too fatty-rich and too bland. Taken together, a carefully assembled bite, the combination was miraculous.

Then the restaurant added a bale of sugar to everything, and that was the end of that. That was about the time they stopped flattening and seasoning their chicken breasts, and made you pay extra for the fabulous fried bread and the miracle-of-simplicity butter lettuce salad. Then we stopped going. Then they closed.

It's all a lesson in attention to detail in food, but the dish that I grieve most is the dessert. And dessert in general, because most other restaurants made the same "add a bale of sugar" change even before that one. With rare (and much-appreciated) exceptions, dessert has become a waste of menu space.

That's why I tend to order rare tuna at the end of a meal. Yum.

SOTD: Bois 1920 Vetiver Ambrato, and amber.

Back to the sample box, and I love Bois 1920, so let's try Vetiver Ambrato. Just a couple of drops; I'm already getting miserly with my new hoard of mini-sprayers.

I'm used to vetiver being fairly transparent and green, or dark and muddy. This is neither. In the first couple of minutes, so far, this is nutty, and with that pencil eraser note - iris? Let's do the review roundup early and read the notes.

No, amber. Hence the name. Silly me. Well, that's unexpected. I don't like amber. Also embarrassing that I still haven't even remotely nailed down what iris smells like, but let's move on from that.

The pencil eraser and nuts have dried away, and, yep, that's amber. Soft, quiet, almost but not quite powdery. I don't love it but I don't hate it, so perhaps this one could be amber "training wheels" for me. Because I want to like amber - there are so many scents that would otherwise be delicious.

It's odd that the note that may sell amber to me is vetiver, not really one of my favorite notes. Then again, it's not at all odd that Bois 1920, one of my very favorite houses, might be the one to do the job.

We'll see how this goes.

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

Review Roundup: Sweet Diva and Nathan Branch.

Books: The Perfect Scent, by Chandler Burr

The Perfect Scent is an entertaining read, though perhaps only if you're a perfume freak. It follows the creation of the Jean-Claude Ellena scent Un Jardin Sur Le Nil, and the Sarah Jessica Parker scent Lovely - both well-known perfumes. (The perfumers for Sarah Jessica Parker's scent were Laurent Le Guernec and Clement Gavarry.) The two stories alternate chapters throughout the book.

In the process, the book tells us a great deal about the perfume industry - and two different ends of the industry, the loftier artistic side and the less-lofty mass market side. Though, really, the two sides don't end up looking that much different. Parker's perfume seems to involve a good deal more artistry than one might expect, and Ellena's perfume is certainly heavily driven by the commercial process.

The general consensus in the World Of Perfume Freaks is that Sarah Jessica Parker is the rare celebrity who's actually interested in perfume, and had some involvement in the creation of the perfume that has her name on it. The book bears that out, and it's enjoyable to read about Ms. Parker (can she really be that charming?) and to also to imagine the idea of world-class perfumers creating a scent to reflect the preferences and personality of a non-perfumer. Reality is unfortunately injected, since the scent that came out of this process was not the edgy, "dirty" scent that Ms. Parker had in mind. But it's fun all the same.

If the first story follows the perfume enthusiast (who happens to also be a multi-million-dollar earning acting star), the second follows the artist. I'm somehow embarrassed to say that this story interests me far less. I was fascinated by the story of SJP Lovely, and also by Chandler Burr's other book, The Emperor Of Scent, which I'll be posting about any day now, and which follows Luca Turin's efforts to create and publish his theory of scent.

I guess this reflects that I am an enthusiast, and a geek (though not a Nobel-prize-contender, quantum-physics-theorizing level of geek, so do I really have much in common with Luca Turin?), but not an artist. Ellena's travels to find inspiration in the landscape, his excitement at smelling a world-class... er... see, I don't even remember the scent material. His excitement at smelling a world-class something or other and his disappointment at realizing that it wasn't right for his perfume, all of those steps in the artistic process - they just don't grab me.

I think that I'm too much of an engineer to really get into the Ellena story, too much of a "very good is good enough" mindset. At best, I'm a craftsman; I'm never going to be an artist.

But the book is, again, a good read, and great material for a perfume freak.

Review roundup: Perfume Posse and Now Smell This.

Photo by Ayala Moriel, from Wikipedia Commons. Click for details.

SOTD: Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan

I can't make up my mind about the Hermes Hermessences.

On the one hand, they're very pretty. People seem to agree that Jean-Claude Ellena perfumes are pretty, but then they diverge on whether they're masterpieces of transparent simplicity, or just plain simple.

I would have been in the first camp, but putting this on on a fall day, it appears that I'm in that camp only in the summer. In the winter, I'm finding Osmanthe Yunnan, just... pretty. Nice tea, lovely osmanthus, pretty relaxing scent. I'm not sorry I have some, but I'm not doing the eyes-closed drinking-in-the-scent thing.

And then there's the exclusivity thing. You can only buy the Hermessences in a Hermes boutique. (Well, maybe you can also mailorder them from a Hermes boutique; I don't know because I haven't tried.) And while they're very generous with samples if you're standing in the boutique, they're not interested in mailing you a sample - I've tried. Now, to be fair, Hermes is wonderfully generous with samples of their regular line, more than most other houses.

And then, going on to the very superficial, there's the bottle. It strikes me as well, dull. The full size does include the leather cap; I suspect that the combination reflects the leathery, horsey Hermes vibe that I just don't get.

And the size. They had the foresight to produce them in 15ml bottles, but you have to buy a set of four. If you just want one fragrance, you have to buy the big bottle. Or get your hands on a 15ml bottle from someone who bought a set, which is how I got mine.  I guess it's not realistic to expect an expensive house like Hermes to offer a bottle of perfume of any size, in their exclusive line, for less than fifty dollars. But I can still want them to.

And the strength. You might need to buy the big bottle, because you have to spray a fair bit of these on to really smell them. I'm a one-spray person with most perfumes; with Osmanthe Yunnan I apply seven sprays without really thinking about it.

So no doubt I will return to the topic of Osmanthe Yunnan in the summer, and swoon all over the page. But right now... it's OK.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin and Perfume Posse and The Perfume Heretic and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Basenotes and MakeupAlley and Fragrantica and SmellyBog and WouldSmellAsSweet and Les Tuileries and Vetivresse and PereDePierre and The Perfume Bee and Olfactarama and Olfactoria's Travels.

(Updated to expand the Review Roundup.)

Photo from Wikimedia Commons, by Kurt Stueber. Click for Details.