SOTD: Kiehl's Original Musk Oil (And ghosts of laundry rooms past)

As my perfume freakery continues, my tolerance for once-problematic notes keeps increasing. I'm fully converted to tuberose. I like a lot of jasmines and most irises. My tolerance for prickly incense notes is growing by leaps and bounds.

Musk? Ergh. I'm reversing; I like it less and less. As a background touch for other notes, I can still deal with it, or even appreciate it. But I have less and less tolerance for musk-dominated fragrances.  Lorenzo Villoresi Musk is growing on me. I liked Le Labo Ambrette 9. But that's about it.

I suspect that it's the laundry detergent association. To me, most musks smell like a box of laundry soap powder. A dusty box, in my mother's dark basement laundry room, the one that floods in a heavy rain.

In memory, I grab the sticky-handled plastic scoop, scoop some out with my face screwed up to avoid breathing any of the disturbed powder, and dump it on the clothes. Some drifts to the mounting of the drum, where it has to be wiped off if I don't want it to stay and get sticky-dirty. And I always do breathe some in, and my sinuses punish me for a few hours afterward.

Not a great vision for a perfume. When the primary information coming from a perfume is, "Ack! You breathed some!", that's just not good.

All of which is to explain why it's not Kiehl's fault that I don't like their musk. It's a perfectly nice, well-behaved, soft, faintly animalic musk. It's not too laundry-room. I might use it for layering, if something else seems to need a musky touch. But I won't be wearing it.

Review Roundup: Basenotes and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Fragrantica and The Scented Salamander and Legerdenez and PereDePierre.

Photo: By Dysprosia. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Nothing

I'm giving my still-quietly-sulking head a day away from perfume. After all, I don't want it to forbid future sniffing expeditions.

But I still need a picture, right? Right! So out of my "pictures that I really want to show in the blog but haven't found an excuse for yet" folder, I present this glorious dragon. Imagine that he represents the headache. Or the creature assigned to find and kill the headache. Yeah, I like that better.

Photo: By Ville Miettinen. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Ow.

I went to a mall. A Neiman Marcus, L'Occitane, Bloomingdales, and Sephora-bearing mall.

All I really have to say is that wearing Shiseido Feminite du Bois and then sniffing, in rapid succession:

• L'Occitane Eau D'Iparie
• Tom Ford Tuscan Cypress
• Dior Miss Dior Cherie
• Dior Miss Dior Cherie L'Eau 
• Bvlgari Eau Parfumee au The Vert
• Bvlgari Eau Parfumee au The Blanc
• Bvlgari Jasmin Noir
• Bvlgari Voile de Jasmin
• and Guerlain Jicky

is not a good idea. Three caffeinated beverages later, and the headache is still popping up now and then to shout "GOTCHA!" Also, by the end, I couldn't really distinguish Jicky from my memory of Penhaligon's Extract Of Limes.

I believe that the lesson is to go unscented to the scent sampling zone. At least, that's what I usually do, and I usually come home headache-free.

I'd just like to conclude with: Ow.

(OK, one last note: While searching for that Coke picture, I found a picture of deep-fried Coke. I posted it on the other blog. Oh, my.)

Photo: By Summi. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Tommy Hilfiger Tommy Girl

Luca Turin presented Tommy Girl with five stars. Like much of the perfume world, I don't get it.

To my surprise, I like the fruity opening. It's pleasant and mellow and oddly childhood-familiar. I can imagine the opening notes as a perfume for little girls, sold in a wonderful toy store in a pink bottle with glass jewels. A faceted bottle. Green glass jewels.

This vision is getting very specific, isn't it? There was a toy store once that my mother rarely took us to - a place of surpassing grandeur in my childhood world. Among its attractions, it featured big glass cases rigged up as miniature rooms with grandly attired Barbie dolls lounging on Seventies-style Lucite furniture and fur rugs, like a very small and entirely respectable Playboy mansion. Tommy Girl reminds me of that store - perhaps there really was a little girl's perfume with that apple-citrus-currant-honeysuckle combination.

As long as I'm listing notes, I'll offer the full, alarmingly long list. According to Basenotes, the top notes are camellia flowers, apple blossoms, black currant, mandarin, and tangerine. Middle notes are grapefruit, citrus orchards, crisp green notes, honeysuckle, and butterfly violets. And the base notes are desert jasmine, Cherokee rose, magnolia petals, Dakota lilies, cedar, sandalwood, and wild heather. Whew.

Sadly, the mellow fruity opening gives way to a high-pitched floral blend that doesn't interest me nearly as much, at least right now - in the winter, it's just shrill, and it stays shrill as time goes on, only reducing its volume with time. Even the honeysuckle, usually a note that I find delightful, fails to save it. So today, I'm unimpressed with Tommy Girl.

But in the summer, that sour floral blend might have some of the appeal of the lemon sorbet from the corner ice cream shop that delightfully blows my eyebrows off. I'll be trying it again on some hot summer Saturday when we're headed for the park - under those circumstances, I might fall seriously in love. Maybe even enough to agree with Mr. Turin.

Review Roundup: Perfume Posse and Sweet Diva and Perfume Shrine and Scent Signals and Perfume Posse again and Basenotes and Fragrantica and MakeupAlley and Scentsate.

Photo: By Andrew Dunn. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Coty Sand & Sable (The drugstore experiment begins!)

Important safety tip: The word "cologne" on the bottle should not, under any circumstances, be taken to mean that you should spray Sand & Sable lavishly. If this is the cologne, I can imagine that one drop of a theoretical parfum version would drive all of the oxygen out of a room.

But that's not to say that I don't like it. I do - I like it very much. It's big, and friendly, and sweet. The word that comes to mind is "affable". The image that comes to mind is a big, fluffy, friendly, but perhaps not-too-bright cat.

The official notes are tuberose, gardenia, jasmine, rose, green notes, and peach. It doesn't have any of the aldehydic or shrill aspects that I expected from that list - instead, it's mellow and buttery, very comfortable. There's just enough sour to balance the ample sweetness, like doctoring your iced tea with far too much sugar and then getting the lemon just right - you know that it's all too much, practically syrup, but it tastes so good.

I can see why this is so well-loved, and why it brings up so many happy nostalgic memories for so many women. To them, it seems to be about teenage sunburned beach afternoons. I don't have that association, so I read it as, well, furry, rather than beachy. Mink stoles or feather boas or, again, that cat.

It's linear, or essentially linear.  It does shift a bit in the first twenty minutes or so as it dries, but that beginning doesn't feel like planned top notes so much as an inevitable phase that you have to wait to, to get to the "real" fragrance. Then it's all sweet, thick, flowery buttercream.

Review Roundup: Scentzilla! and Perfume Posse and Perfume-Smellin' Things (very brief mention) and Scentzilla! again and Now Smell This (brief mention) and Perfume Posse (brief mention) and Perfume-Smellin' Things (one line) and Fragrantica and Basenotes and MakeupAlley.

Photo: By Halved Sandwich. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Ellen Tracy Linda Allard Limited Edition

Meh.

Of the previously-mentioned three samples that came with my BeautyEncounter order, I had the highest expectations for Ellen Tracy Linda Allard. The packaging, even just the sample card, was attractive. The notes list sounded great - carnation, sandalwood, tonka bean, cinnamon, freesia, peach, jasmine, cedar, and rose. I like most of those. I even like peach, even if I am a fruity-fragrance hater.

The result? Meh.

The best thing that I can say about it is that it taught me what causes that celery seed note in Dzongkha - I think it's the cedar. There's a note in this one that smells midway between cedar and celery seed.

The second best thing that I can say is that the drydown has a moderately pleasant powdery note with a hint of sandalwood prickle that I sort of enjoyed.

The third best thing that I can say is that when I ask the "would I prefer to wear this or go unscented?" question, I would prefer to wear this.

That's about it.

It starts out with wet cedar with a touch of celery, nervous high-pitched flowers, and vegetables. It progresses into dry celery/cedar, that fairly pleasant powder, and even more nervous mid-pitched flowers fleeing into the distance. It ends with the powder.

I suppose that I can also give it credit for not throwing in a lot of things designed to please the masses. It's not sugary or fruity. There's no resemblance to a cookie. The notes that are there could be interesting. But it has the feel of a fragrance where someone found each and every quirk or interesting element, and carefully sanded them off to ensure that no one would scratch themselves. The nice powder/sandalwood aspect reminds me of a Calvin Trillin article in which he referred to some otherwise bland food as having picked up some flavor from the onions "without permission".

My theory is that it was once interesting and was destroyed by a committee. I feel bad for it. But I'm still not buying it.

Review Roundup: Fragrantica, and that's all I can find.

Photo: By Thierry Caro. Wikimedia Commons.

Ramble: Drugstore Incoming!

So I was in a bad mood. A mean, grumpy, feelings-hurt mood. A mood where you don't just want to eat the hot fudge sundae, you want to crawl into a vat of the hot fudge for a nice warm nap. Or, well, at least I do.

I went out to walk it off. (A decision that I'll regret when I'm finishing my eight hour workday around midnight tonight.)  A pharmacy crossed my path. I had recently made a list, for a not-yet-published post, of drugstore fragrances that some perfume freaks regard highly or remember fondly. And I had my credit cards.

You know what's coming, right?

What's coming is that in the next few weeks you'll be seeing reviews of:

• Lady Stetson
• Coty Wild Musk
• Charlie
• Tommy Girl
• Sand & Sable
• Jovan Musk

I barely resisted the temptation to add Jovan Vanilla Fields and Jovan Black Musk ("three for the price of two!"), and if there'd been anybody nearby with the perfume case key, Tabu and Canoe would also be on the list.

The bad mood will pass. And I think I'm going to enjoy the reviews.

Photo: By John Vachon. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Elizabeth W Sweet Tea, and loyalties

Elizabeth W Sweet Tea was once my favorite fragrance. Black tea, honey, lemons, a hint of almond - what more could I want? It's Southern sweet tea. All it needs is the fried chicken and the picnic blanket.

Sweet Tea made me feel happy, feminine, pretty. Cool and well-hydrated in the summer. Nicely honey-nourished (like a comfy bear) in the winter. I actually used up a bottle (admittedly, a mini, but that's still almost un-heard-of) and the trauma of being briefly without it led me to buy two full-size bottles.

Then I encountered other teas. Harmatan Noir. L'Eau Rare Matale. Yerbamate. Moroccan Mint Tea. Comme des Garcons Tea. They crept in, one by one and beguiled me with their bitter or herbal or astringent or dry-cleaning-fluid charms. And as a result, I haven't worn Sweet Tea in a year or more.

I feel bad neglecting my old favorite. So that's why I'm reviewing it today - in the hope that you'll try some. Because it's still lovely. Feminine but not too girly. Sweet but not a tasteless sugar sweet. Again, lovely. And, I should add, really inexpensive.

It's just, well, not weird.  And you know me - I need the weird. So give this one a try - it just might become your best-loved tea.

Review Roundup: Blogdorf Goodman and Now Smell This and Basenotes and MakeupAlley and Feminine Things.

Photo: By Kanko. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Chanel Cuir de Russie

I put Cuir de Russie on to confirm, one more time, that I love it. And I do, though I'm realizing that I may not love it in the summer.

The weather is warmer and days are longer than the last time I wore it, and that produces a substantial change. The top  notes are sharper and higher-pitched, and the animalic notes are less delightful. (Bringing me back to the Vole Theory.) And it's strong - one spray is producing a substantial leather and iris cloud around me, making Chanel's monster bottle size even more problematic.

But I still want it. It's really only a matter of time.

(Who's that in the photo, you ask? Ernest Beaux, the original perfumer.)

Review Roundup: Is here.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: L'Artisan Parfumeur Dzongkha

This one is still weird. Thank goodness. I was afraid that my nose was translating everything into conventional.

On my skin, Dzongkha starts out strong on cardamom and incense. But it's also oddly wet, as if I'm sitting outside, in the rain and among wet leaves, with the incense smoke drifting out to me. I like the effect. But there's nothing blooming in those leaves - I don't get the floral or fruity notes that the notes list (lychee, cardamom, tea with milk, vetiver, cypriol, cedar, leather, peony, iris, and incense) would predict.

As it dries, it gets weirder. The rain and incense are joined by saffron and celery seed - a lot of celery seed. A couple of hours in, the celery vanishes and the mix starts to transform. It's dryer at this point, with the leather dominating. It's still light, but powdery - the iris, I suspect - rather than wet. Some reviews refer to the iris as cold, but to my nose, it's a warm, satisfying base.

I like it. It's on the List. And it's very nicely weird.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Aromascope and Perfume Posse and Victoria's Own and Basenotes and Sweet Diva and The Scented Salamander and Fragrantica and Polish, Platforms, Perfume and MakeupAlley and Feminine Things and NotesFromJosephine.

Photo: By Lourie Pieterse. Wikimedia Commons.