Month: May 2013

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Laughs, Lemmings, Loves – Episode 34

 

Either I was too busy to laugh this week or everybody on my reading list was extremely serious. But I still got some lemmings and several writers did a wonderful job reviewing my favorite perfumes.

Or maybe it’s because of the Memorial Day long weekend? My weekend was productive: I almost finished everything I planned to do; spent some money to support the economy and time with friends – just to have fun. Did you do anything interesting?

Lemmings No Laughs

Lemmings

It’s not a true lemming for me since I tried this perfume already but since after reading Suzanne’s (Eiderdown Press) story about memories conjured by April Aromatics Bohemian Spice I felt an urge to test it more I thought I’d share this one with you.

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This one is kind of lemming… By Kilian Musk Oud announced on NST. Two perfumes from the Arabian Nights collection that I tried on skin – Rose Oud and Amber Oud – I liked despite my general uneasy relationship with agarwood. So I want to try this new one – and I probably should finally get to try Insense Oud – though I almost hope not to like any of these two: it’s enough I’m thinking about buying Amber Oud, I don’t need another real lemming at that price point.

 

Loves

I keep repeating everywhere how much I love Neela Vermeire Creations‘ Bombay Bling! I know that most of you have tried it already and read many reviews of it. But you should still read Lanier’s (scents memory) take on it: it’s definitely more than just a review and I think you’ll enjoy the story even if you know the perfume really well.

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Steven (The Scented Hound) gives his highest approval (5 out of 5 possible bones) to a vintage Samsara by Guerlain. I’ve tried only modern version (see my post Déjà vu, Episode 3: powdery fruit vs. peony oriental vs. sandalwood jasmine) but I still like this perfume and wear it from time to time.

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There must be something in the air: two bloggers wrote about one of my favorite Le Labo perfumes – Rose 31. Kafka (Kafkaesque): The kingdom of Pepper was sometimes affectionately called by its old, Norse name: Pepper & Pink. It wasn’t a vast land, but every square inch seemed to be populated by various forms of pepper. From the biting burst of freshly ground Malabar nuggets to the cedar trees which swathed its flanks from North to South and the great lakes of ISO E Super which dotted the landscape. and Jordan (The Fragrant Man): In Iran, Iraq, The Middle East, Pakistan and India rose perfumes are an essential part of a man’s fragrance wardrobe. Rose petals used to be crushed and mixed with oil to obtain a strong perfume which was labour intensive and therefore not easily mass-produced. Harun al-Rashid …

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If you haven’t read it yet, take a look: Kafka wrote a beautiful-beautiful-beautiful review for my all-time favorite perfume Amouage Ubar. Have you ever seen an Arabian horse running? It’s an object of awe and grandeur, from its tiny, delicately chiseled head with those vividly intelligent eyes, to its hugely curved, muscular neck, its perfect, lithe body, and its perpetual grace that puts all prima ballerinas to shame.

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In the Search for the Perfect Lilac, Take 2

 

It has been a long time since I published the first episode in which I shared my impressions of Pur Desir de Lilas by Yves Rocher, Lilac by ElizabethW, French Lilac by Pacifica, Lilacs & Heliotrope by Soivohle, Highland Lilac of Rochester, After My Own Heart by Ineke and En Passant by Frederic Malle. Since then I bought French Lilac by Pacifica – as I planned, still haven’t got Highland Lilac and tried more lilac perfumes.

Rusty And Lilacs

Purple Lilac by DSH Perfumes and White Lilac by DSH Perfumes. They both smell quite realistically: I could clearly picture each of the flowers; purple lilac – slightly wilted, with some green; white – brighter and fresher. I like White Lilac more but both do not seem like a finished perfume.

Lilac by Demeter (2009). It’s perfect for the price I paid (~$5 for 30 ml). I don’t think it’s a perfume for adults but it makes a nice room spray: it smells good but doesn’t stay long enough to become overwhelming.

Purple Lilac (Lilas Mauve) by Yves Rocher (Annick Menardo, 2012). Last year I jumped through some hoops to get it from the U.K. since it wasn’t available yet from the U.S. website. It smells of lilacs if you smell it alone but in comparison to other lilac scents it seems too artificial. I was so disappointed that I haven’t even compared it to the other Yves Rocher’s lilac I own – Pur Desir de Lilas.

After all the testing I realized that even though I still miss lilacs and still enjoy the smell of flowers (and my ideal lilacs bouquet has only lilacs in it) I do not want to wear it as a soliflore. I like the note in perfumes but I want it to be well-mixed with other flowers. I think at least partially it’s because now I know that there is no natural lilac, this note is either created artificially or recreated using other floral notes so a single-dimensional scent seems too simple. If I ever want just it Pacific’s perfume is more than enough (I urge you to try a roll-on if you haven’t tried it yet).

Rusty And Lilacs

I was really looking forward to trying Opardu by Puredistance (Annie Buzantian, 2012): if anybody, this brand could pull off this note in a beautiful composition… I can’t say I disliked Opardu: it was very pleasant and it did start with a burst of beautiful lilacs but it didn’t wow me. After the first disappointment wore off I tested Opardu again, this time with a better response – that’s how it usually happens to me. Now I plan to try it sprayed since I suspect it might wear differently this way.

Rue des Lilas by Phaedon (Pierre Guillaume, 2011) just happened upon me. I heard something about it and spontaneously decided to buy a small decant from a split. I was pleasantly surprised by the perfume: it’s an interesting composition of wood and my two favorite nonexistent (for the perfumery purposes) flowers – lilac and lily-of-the-valley. Unlike Demeter’s or Yves Rocher’s lilac perfumes Rue des Lilas is a lilac perfume for grown-ups. My problem with this perfume is that I dislike the bottle: it reminds me of functional products. So if I decide to get more after I use up my decant I might go for the next decant.

White Lilac & Rhubarb by Jo Malone (Christine Nagel, 2012) was a strong like from the first sniff. Since it was a limited edition I had to decide quickly… I enjoy wearing it in hot weather. It’s more than just a lilac perfume: rhubarb and heliotrope add complexity and sweetness to the bouquet. I know that there is supposed to be rose in it but I can’t smell it at all (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing since Jo Malone’s Red Roses turns awfully soapy on my skin). With White Lilac & Rhubarb I had one of those moments when you keep turning your head trying to figure out from where that great scent comes only to realize that it’s coming from you. I like this perfume but still can’t imagine that anbody in her right mind would pay the price currently asked for it! And it’s not even a question of how good the perfume is: it was out there for such a short period of time that I don’t know how anybody could have developed such a deep connection to it to spend $300-$500 on a 100 ml bottle. 

Rusty and Jo Malone White Lilac & Rhubarb

Do you have a favorite lilac perfume?

 

Images: my own

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From Zero to Forty (ml) in less than 15… years: Bvlgari Black

 

Soon after Bvlgari Black had been released I picked up a bottle from a perfume counter thinking: “It looks like a hockey puck!” I sprayed a paper strip, sniffed: “It smells like it too!” And that was it. I haven’t approached Black for the next ten years.

Rusty And Bvlgari Black

Growing up I lived in a large multi-unit building in the downtown of a big city. After school children would play in the yard formed by the building. I wasn’t a tomboy or too sporty but there were almost no girls of my age in our building at the time so I didn’t have much choice but to play with boys. They weren’t super thrilled by my company (we’re talking about the age between eight and twelve) but when they needed an extra body for a two-team game mine would do (and on rare occasions I wasn’t even the last one chosen!).

Once in winter, I think I was ten, I was a goalie for an improvised hockey team that was one player short. I didn’t have a goaltender mask (none of us did, we were very poorly equipped in general) but I still was happy to be invited… You can guess where I’m heading with the story, right?

I was lucky: I ended up with a black eye that went through the usual rainbow of colors before getting better and a scar on my eyebrow that I carry through my life. No wonder I wasn’t too enthusiastic about something reminding me of a puck and smelling like burning rubber.

Rusty And Bvlgari Black

When I started my journey in the Perfumeland I read many praises for Bvlgari Black. I got curious and even managed to find it once at a store but I was wearing another perfume so it was a paper strip again. And again I smelled some rubber and smoke but that time I liked what I smelled.

It’s not an expensive perfume so I’m not sure why I didn’t go for a bottle immediately. Probably because it seemed easily obtainable once I make a decision to buy so I didn’t want to do it without testing on skin. Too bad I couldn’t find it in stores any longer.

Finally a couple of weeks ago I got a small decant of Black from Judith (the unseen censer). I sprayed it on, smelled and… It was the fastest start from the first application to the Place Order button: the burning tires smell was still in the air.

Rusty And Bvlgari Black

Up-close it still looks like a hockey puck but it doesn’t bother me any longer: over the years I mastered the art of covering the scar.

 

Images: my own.

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Laughs, Lemmings, Loves – Episode 33

 

The hot weather we had in the beginning of May slightly cooled off, it is now a very pleasant period when very warm days turn into slightly chilly nights.

I’m extremely busy – both at work and in my everyday life but since I came across some posts that fell into one of the categories I try to cover I decided not to skip this week. So here are posts that made me want to try a new for me perfume, made me laugh or reviewed perfumes I love.

Lemmings, Laughs, Loves

Lemmings

If you were to read just one story from my weekly round-up read Christos’s (Memory of Scent) post on the story of the perfume about which I haven’t heard before but towards which I feel warm now after getting to know it through Christos’s words.

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I didn’t think of testing this new L’Artisan‘s perfume because I disapprove mass marketization trend of their advertising (a naked model for the Caligna ad) but Lanier (scents memory) told the story in such a way that it made me want to try the perfume: Caligna to my nose is light and soft on my skin and the notes blended into a pure tingling effervescent pop of spring. Lovely and bright, luminous in fact, Caligna is really the perfect uni-sex perfume for springtime or even in the cold months to recall the joys of May in bloom in the south of France.

 

Laughs

Do you want to know a secret of immortality and look at a peach from a different prospective? Read Judith’s (the unseen censer) The story of sex and a peach  (but I warn you: a peach might never look the same to you).

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Blacknall (aperfumeblog by Blacknall Allen): Interlude Woman was sleeker and smaller (thank heavens), but still overpowered, still with that insane acceleration rate. Driving it was a revelation in centrifically challenging accelerations, hair pin curves, and how fast the crew could get you back on track (thirty seconds). I came away with a vague memory of iced tea and burning rubber, and that is all that I remember about that test run.

 

Loves

Kafka (Kafkaesque) reviews one of my favorite Serge Lutens‘ perfumes: De Profundis opens on my skin with a fragile, haunting and delicate bouquet of flowers. There is chrysanthemum with violets, green notes, white lilies and sweet, wet earth. I will tell you my Profundis story soon. I hope.

 

If you read any interesting posts that, in your opinion, didn’t get enough attention – please share.

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Perfume Layering: Truth or Dare?

 

I have never had that urge to experiment mixing perfumes. I hadn’t come up with the idea of scents layering on my own but once I had been introduced to it I loved it. The idea.

In 2000 Calvin Klein released Truth. It is attributed to 3 (three!) well-known perfumers – Alberto Morillas, Jacques Cavallier and Thierry Wasser – if you ask me, any one of them would have been enough but whatever went on with this perfume creation, not knowing or caring about notes or noses behind perfumes back then, I liked  Truth and immediately bought a bottle and a set of five Truth Oil Essences. Each one represented a note in the perfume – bamboo, citrus, sapling, lilac and vanilla. They could be applied one at a time or in any combination with or without the perfume.

CK Truth Oil Essences

As I said, I liked the idea of combining notes, being my own perfumer, enhancing one aspect of the perfume or the other dependent on my mood… The unfortunate part was that oil-based components were so subtle that worn alone they gave almost no projection, I could barely smell them from my wrist pressed to my nose; and applied on top of the perfume they were completely lost (not sure if you remember but Truth wasn’t even the heaviest of this brand’s perfumes out there: CK Obsession or Contradiction it was not – and still…). Applying oils was more hassle than results so while I went through two bottles of Truth EdP my essences stayed hardly touched.

A year later, in 2001, Michael Kors launched a collection of three fragrances called Notes from Michael. The collection included three fragrances (40 ml each), which could be worn alone or combined with each other: Glenplaid, Houndstooth and Tattersall. The set was expensive (I think, $120). A bit too expensive for our budget. But I really liked the idea… My vSO got if for me as a gift for my birthday.

Michael Kors Notes from Michael

I tried playing the layering game. Tattersall was my favorite so I almost finished it. Glenplaid was fine (2/3 of the bottle found its place on my skin). Houndstooth didn’t attract me at all so the only time I used it was in the combination with one of the other two but since it wasn’t adding anything to the composition more often than not I started skipping that extra step. So the bottle went off almost full.

And then I discovered Jo Malone. I think I loved the brand before I finished sniffing through the complete line: the idea of fragrance combining itself was enough to sell it to me.

Jo Malone Perfumes

Over years I’ve added to my collection more perfumes from Jo Malone line than from any else. You can’t even imagine how many times I wore different Jo Malone’s perfumes layered! Do you want to guess? No? It’s ok, I’ll tell you: three times. I like those perfumes “as is” and do not want to mess with the original composition.

I still like the idea of layering but in reality I’m with Birgit: Who am I to tamper with well-thought out and finely balanced creations? I won’t dare.

For more adventurous perfumistas I recommend reading Victoria’s (Bois de Jasmin) Layering Fragrances : Perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena and French Elle and Elisa’s (The French Exit) On the Scent: Adventures in Perfume Layering.

 

Images: my own

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Entertaining Statistics: April, 2013

 

April wasn’t my best month: I managed to hurt first my back (many things contributed to that) and then my neck (that happened in a heartbeat – who would have thought that a simple morning stretch in bed might be that traumatic!).

I discovered that while effecting my perfume wearing1 routine these types of health problems did not impede much my perfume testing2: I could still entertain myself by sniffing perfumes even while it was difficult to move.

Since I wear most perfumes just once per month – not intentionally, it just happens this way – I realized that as soon as for whatever reason I repeat the same perfume two-three times the favorite notes calculation gets skewed towards notes from that perfume. I’m not sure if it makes that part of my findings less accurate (or more?) but this month I decided to skip that point.

At the same time I got curious how often with that pattern of a single wear I reach for those perfumes that I chose this month.

Stats April 2013

So I didn’t neglect most of my favorites: I wore 18 of them (75%) within the last six months. It was interesting to find out that I wore Diorissimo 364 days ago – for May Day 2012. It wasn’t a full year because I knew I would be working from home on that day so this year I wore Diorissimo on the last day in April. Two perfumes that I didn’t wear for the longest time were Dior Diorella and Giorgio Armani Eclat de Jasmin. The completely unexpected was the fact that I wore them 499 and 498 days correspondently before I wore them again this April.

 

Quick April stats:

* Different perfumes worn: 24 from 16 brands on 26 occasions;

* Different perfumes tested: 40 from 21 brands on 44 occasions;

* Perfumes I tried for the first time: 18 (I liked 5; disliked 5; and felt indifferent about 8);

* Perfume house I wore most often: Guerlain (yep!);

* Perfume house I tested the most: Jo Malone (I was testing Sugar & Spice collection before it’s gone to decide if I wanted to buy any of those. PUBLIC WARNING: Bitter Orange & Chocolate is almost sold out; jomalone.com is the only online retailer that still has it);

Do you think in your collection there are perfumes that you still like but for which you haven’t reached in a long while?

1 When I wear a perfume I apply it to at least three-four points and usually I plan to spend at least 4-8 hours with the same scent so I’m prepared to re-apply if the original application wears off.

2 For the testing I apply a perfume to one area on my arms easily available for the repetitive sniffing. But, most likely, I’m the only one who can smell it. I can test two, sometimes even more perfumes at the same time.

 

Image: my own