Perfume: Communing With the Sample Hoard

I've been separated from my sample hoard recently. We are now reunited. Celebration (and stinkiness) will ensue.

I love my sample hoard.

It's a smallar hoard than it was this summer, because I've been inflicting samples on the unwary right and left, in the hope of creating new perfume freaks.

This makes the hoard more focused and easier to spread out on my desk without baggies and vials falling off the side (as often). So I love it all the more.

In my earlier Must Try Everything!!! phase of perfume freakery, samples could be a source of anxiety. Gotta try it, gotta try it again, gotta test it through the drydown, gotta decide!! Aaaaaack! Now, I accept that I will never try everything, and that perfumery is not becoming a lost art. So I'm just going to play.

So what's in the hoard? What I haven't tested sufficiently, what I'm keeping until I can spring for a bottle, and what I'm in denial about. I'm going to type as I play with the bags and vials, and inflict a very long post on you.

SOTD: Fendi Theorema (I get it! I get it!)

I've been wanting to like Fendi Theorema. First, simply because it's so well-regarded that I feel that I ought to. People love this stuff with a passionate loyalty, and discussions grieving its discontinuation seem to appear everywhere that perfume freaks congregate on the web. Second, because it's an orange perfume, and I want a winter orange perfume, as I've discussed before.

But not only did I find it Just Nice, I couldn't even smell the orange. I smelled a gingeriness that reminded me of Bois 1920 Sushi Imperiale, and anything that reminds me of Sushi Imperiale is a bonus, but it wasn't enough. Slightly spicy, slightly prickly, slightly sweet, slightly bitter. And? So? Sushi Imperiale is friendlier, Pacifica Tuscan Blood Orange is orangier, what's the big deal?

Then I smelled Bois de Copaiba. I didn't like it, but I could definitely smell the bitter orange note. It was nailed in my mental olfactory dictionary.

Then I learned to love Lorenzo Villoresi Musk and Parfumerie Generale Iris Oriental. I don't know why I  link these into the chain, but I do. I think it's the increased liking for prickly, bitter, un-soft notes.

And there was all that recent experience with Those Roses, with those bitter citron-like notes that I couldn't tolerate with roses, but unbeknownst to me I think that I was developing an increased tolerance for that particular type of bitterness.

And all the while I was staring at Theorema, discontinued but still available from discounters, putting it in my online shopping cart, taking it out, putting it in, like Eeyore. I didn't like it much, but I didn't want to lose the chance to own it if it's an acquired taste that I might, too late, acquire.

So today I sprayed on my sample, and suddenly, with much excitement, I got it. I could detect the orange note, like that in Bois de Copaiba but much quieter. Bitterness like Those Roses, but without the roses. (Actually, the notes list does list Eglantine rose, but I don't smell it, so that's OK.) Something incense like, but quieter than the perfumes that are focused on those notes. Gingery, like Sushi Imperiale, but, again, quieter. Quiet spices, making me think of nutmeg and just a tiny bit of cinnamon, but less gingerbready and cheerful than Tea for Two. Restraint all around.

I suspect that all of this restraint is part of what took me so long to assemble this one in my mind. Theorema reminds me of Ivoire in this way - not in the way that it smells, at all, but in its composition. They both assemble a complexity of notes, presenting each note with subtlety but also without rushing to rescue you from bitter or sour or melancholy aspects of the note.  And they both make me feel as if the perfumer (in this case, Christine Nagel) knew exactly where she was going at every stage of the fragrance's development, without a single missed step.

I'm liking it all the way through, from the beginning with stronger orange and a gingery buzz, now down to quieter wood, traces of spices, something faintly salty, and the barest trace of orange. It's lovely. I'm getting a bottle.

(Minor update: It wasn't done when I thought it was done. A few hours later, the orange has surfaced again. Yum.)

Review/Link Roundup: Now Smell This and The Non-Blonde and Scentzilla! and Perfume Posse and Perfume Posse again and Yesterday's Perfume.
Edited to add I Smell Therefore I Am.

Image: 'Still Life With Oranges, Jars, and Boxes of Sweets', by Luis Melendez. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Nothing

They need to have a "perfumed section" in theaters and other close places where perfume can Annoy. But since they don't, no perfume for me today.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Pro-scent and anti-scent (Or, Scent grumpiness)

We just bought a new hand-dishwashing soap. It's very strongly scented, first of grapefruit and then of... something else, maybe just standard soapy white musk. This annoys me immensely.

So does my scented laundry detergent. And dusting sheets. And shampoo. I'm a perfume freak, and I also vehemently oppose scented products.

I consider these two positions perfectly consistent. I want to smell what I want to smell. And I'm OK with smelling what other people want to smell - another person's chosen perfume or other scent doesn't bother me. But when I have to smell an unchosen smell in a purely utilitarian product, that annoys me no end. And it annoys me that I have to pay extra to find products that aren't scented. I don't need hypoallergenic products, I just want to be able to smell my scent, undiluted with other scents.

So maybe the perfume freak and the anti-scent activist have more in common than they think ?

Grumpy Kitty photo by Keven Law. Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Parfumerie Generale Aomassai

Someone reminded me that Aomassai has a wenge wood note, and I sprayed some on today in the hope that I could figure out what wenge smells like. I have two more data points  - Donna Karan Black Cashmere and L'Eau d'Italie Paestum Rose are in the sample hoard, and both are said to have wenge notes.

I've held that with three data points I should be able to pick out a note - a sort of olfactory triangulation. I'm wrong. Black Cashmere is salty and dark, Paestum Rose is incense and bitter-citron-rose, and Aomassai is burnt sugar and pastry. There's a powdery incensey mood in all three, but not enough similarity to help me nail down the elusive wenge.

I formed the triangulation theory when it took three different fragrances to allow me to pick out vetiver - aggressive Guerlain Vetiver, green and friendly Creed Original Vetiver, and elegant but chilly Hermessence Vetiver Tonka. The theory should have been disproved when sniffing twice that number of iris fragrances wasn't enough to make me confident of recognizing iris root, but I suspect that I may never master iris root. On the other hand, I "got" galbanum on my first sniff of Chanel No. 19. Love at first sniff, and all that.

Scent is a puzzlement. Not much of a conclusion, but there it is. I'm sending off for a decant of Donna Karan Wenge. More data points.

However, Aomassai remains wonderful. My original rambling, and Review Roundup, can be found here.

Link: LA Times story on niche perfume

An interesting news story about niche perfumes, pointed to by Pink Manhattan.

According to this story and other sources that I've read lately, sales of niche perfumes are going up, even as conventional perfume sales and the rest of the economy struggle.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Demeter Dirt

Demeter is a fragrance company originally founded by Christopher Brosius, who now runs the fascinating CB I Hate Perfume. The Demeter Fragrance Library is an enormous collection of scents. Banana Flambee, Play Doh, Funeral Home, Holy Smoke and Holy Water - they've got everything. And, of course, they've got Dirt.

I like Dirt. I like the CB I Hate Perfume dirt note, the one I've smelled in Black March, even better. But I like Demeter Dirt just fine. It smells like... dirt. Nice, healthy, slightly dampened but not muddy, freshly dug dirt. I imagine some decaying leaves from last year's herb garden in a newly turned garden bed - there's something herbal, but not enough to make me question the name.

Dirt has had its fifteen minutes of fame - celebrities from Clint Eastwood to Kate Moss were (are?) reputed to wear it. I generally don't care who's also using my fragrance, but it is rather entertaining to be able to buy a "celebrity perfume" for less than ten dollars an ounce.

And, of course, you can also try Funeral Home and Waffle Cone and Cinnamon Toast and Clean Windows and Junior Mints and This Is Not A Pipe and Laundromat and Paperback and... well, you get the idea.

Review Roundup: MakeupAlley and Basenotes and Notes from Josephine.

Illustration: Wikimedia Commons.

SOTD: Chanel Coco (Parfum)

So in the list of Reasons To Wear A Perfume, "I haven't blogged about it yet" should rank pretty low. Actually, it shouldn't appear at all. Nevertheless, that's why I'm wearing Coco parfum today.

Well, also, Now Smell This just published a review of Coco that made it sound both interesting and lovely. And somebody on Basenotes, I believe it was, called Coco the best Oriental. I started wondering why I don't much like the stuff, and if perhaps I've changed my mind.

Have I? I can't decide.

The parfum is everything that I expect a Chanel parfum to be. It's well-blended, so that you can't pick out the individual notes. It's smooth, suave, elegant and graceful. And I can't decide if that's good or bad.

It's a texture thing. I remember the Eau de Parfum, last time I sampled it, as being much less smooth. It was pricklier, grainier, the spices more prominent and easier to pick out from the other notes. Rather like gingerbread, very gourmand-like.

The parfum is not at all gourmand; it's all scent and no food. The EDP is comforting and friendly and rather Hansel-and-Gretel. The parfum is a glamour girl. The EDP is tweed; the parfum is sable.

I suspect that I'm more Gretel-eating-gingerbread, than glamour-girl-in-sable. I'll give the EDP another try.

Review Roundup: Now Smell This and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Scentzilla and ScentsOfSelf and The Perfume Chronicles and Basenotes and MakeupAlley and My Perfume Life and Fragrantica.

Edited to add to the Review Roundup.

Photo: By pschemp. Wikimedia Commons.

Movie: Gigi

(Yes, we did spend a lot of time at Stanford Theatre this weekend.)

Long, long ago, in junior high, we did a drama exercise.

The class was divided into groups, each group to select a scene from a pile of classic plays to act out for the rest of the class. We selected a nice little scene about a teenage girl and table manners and marriage and jewelry.  I remember being puzzled by our teacher's uneasy face at the lines

"Marriage is not forbidden to us.
But instead of getting married at once...
...it sometimes happens we get married...
...at last."

(Or, well, the equivalent in the play - those exact lines are, admittedly, from the movie.)

I suspect that the copy of Gigi that we had chosen was stashed away before the next class. Discussion of the training of young courtesans was certainly not intended as part of the teaching points for the day.

When I see Gigi, I always find myself similarly startled that the Hollywood of the 1940's would film this particular theme. Young schoolgirl graduating to a life as a kept woman? Goodness gracious.

But it is, of course a lovely movie. Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold, Maurice Chevalier, wonderful music, glorious sets and costumes; what more could you want? Leslie Caron, particularly, is impossibly but convincingly charming.

The plot, while it could be seen as terribly predictable, is somehow very satisfying - the movie resists the temptation to labor over explanations or excuses, and instead turns on the emotional decisions of the characters. Musical or no musical, I'll be happy to see this next time it comes up in the Stanford Theatre rotation.

Photo of Leslie Caron (in Lili). Wikimedia Commons.

Movie: An American In Paris

I never saw this before.

Is that illegal?

I've seen many of the musical numbers, of course, on those television specials celebrating Hollywood. I suppose that those left me with the impression that I'd actually seen the movie. So when we got to Stanford Theatre and got into the first few minutes, I was startled to realize that I hadn't. And as the movie went on, I was more startled to realize, hey, this thing has a plot!

Yes, yes, I'm sure that all of you knew that. But I didn't. I tend to assume that musicals have no plot. And even as the contrary data points pile up (most recently, South Pacific), I continue to make that assumption.

But indeed, there is a plot. The artist. The pretty girl. The competition for the pretty girl's affections. The competition for the artist's affections. The misunderstandings.

It's all very nice, and I did of course root for the right romance, but I have something to confess: My favorite character is Adam Cook, the grumpy pianist, played by Oscar Levant, the grumpy (and very famous) pianist. When Oscar Levant was on the screen - he's in the center in that photo up there - he was the one I watched, no matter how sparkling everyone else's repartee or footwork.

So it's a big, grand, classic movie, but now I just want to see more of Oscar Levant.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.