Author: Undina

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Perfumes of my Maui Vacation

In the Maui Vacation: Perfumes, Flora & Fauna, Food and Perfumes post (if you were wondering that double “perfume” in there wasn’t an oversight) I asked you to guess how many perfumes accompanied me on my vacation.

“… I don’t think you’d bring 13.” (Asali)

“… you were there for a week and wanted to have at least 2 choices per day” (Suzanne)

Had I been thinking about numbers I could have chosen 13 since I like the number. Or 14 – a reasonable idea of a couple of fragrances per day. But, believe it or not, I (!) wasn’t counting.

“I can’t imagine having more perfumes than 5 that would go well with a tropical vacation.” (Nemo)

I actually had to leave behind several perfumes that I thought might also be nice in tropical climate because, even without counting, it felt like I was going slightly overboard. But I didn’t fully realize that until I was trying to take a picture of everything I brought with me: I could hardly place them all in one shot. My final clue was the fact that not a single person’s guess surpassed the reality.

But the winner of the game Sigrun, who guessed 18, was very close (Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! All those fours and sevens were unnerving): for the eight-day trip I packed 21 (twenty one) perfumes. Twenty if not to count one that was my vSO’s. I don’t mean that it was the only one that he wore but Hermes Rocabar is just his, I never wear it myself; several others were shared perfumes so I cannot use it as an excuse.

If you’re curious, here’s the list: Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess; Atelier Cologne Cedrat Enivrant, Oolang Infini and Orange Sanguine; By Kilian Bamboo Harmony, Forbidden Games, Imperial Tea, In the City of Sin, Playing with the Devil, Sacred Wood and Water Calligraphy; Byredo Pulp; Diptyque Volutes; Hermes Rocabar and Voyage d’Hermes; L’Artisan Parfumeur Traversee du Bosphore; Neela Vermeire Creations Bombay Bling!; Ormonde Jayne Frangipani and Tiare; Parfums DelRae Bois de Paradis and Yosh Ginger Ciao.

Maui 2014 Parfumes

Even with two swims and two showers per day I didn’t get to wear all of these but I’m glad I had a choice because I couldn’t have predicted which ones would feel right. Names in blue above are perfumes I ended up wearing. I won’t write about all of them but will share several impressions.

Bronze Goddess from the fridge was the best perfume application experience ever!

Ginger Ciao worked great even in the heat of the day (if you are not familiar with this perfume please read Birgit’s (Olfactoria’s Travels) review: even though I discovered it first I wouldn’t have thought about it in the context of a tropical vacation if it wasn’t for her).

Tiare – a perfume that earned its place in my suitcase for all upcoming tropical vacations – was just beautiful at night. What else smelled wonderful in the warmth of Maui night was Eau Duelle by Diptyque on my friend. It was my birthday gift to her last year and I was pleased that she liked it. If I ever go to Hawaii without her I’ll bring this perfume with me.

Bombay Bling! was great but I confirmed my last year’s observation that in hot weather it’s too short-lived on my skin. Oh well, I’ll “have” to wear it at home.

I don’t think I can tolerate Pulp‘s rotten fruits anywhere but in Hawaii where it felt just right – so it was a good decision to buy just a decant after I enjoyed wearing it from a sample during the previous trip. And after this trip I contemplate adding one more perfume to my collection – Bois de Paradis. I used a small dab sample (thank you, Renee!) during the flight to and from Maui: I thought both the name and the scent were very fitting. Roth DelRae mentioned recently on Twitter that she was thinking about travel size bottle for her perfumes. Hopefully they’ll have them by my next vacation.

Speaking of the flights and new perfumes. I’ve received the perfume oil that I liked on a flight attendant on the way to Maui. I’ll test it for a while and decide if I want to tell you more about it. Meanwhile the second bottle of it will travel to a winner of the guessing game Sigrun in Sweden and a sample from my bottle will find its way to Vanessa in the U.K. (because she named the magical number that corresponded to the number of perfumes I actually wore).

And just to come full circle on the topic of perfumes for that vacation, I want to mention that a flight attendant on the way back smelled “meh” (she wore a very sweet and artificial vanilla scent that reminded me of Pink Sugar).

 

Image: my own

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Entertaining Statistics: September 2014

September was warm and pleasant. We even had several light rains, a couple of which I missed while I was in Maui (if you haven’t done it yet, you still have time to play a guessing game I started in that post). Rains didn’t make a dent in our drought situation but still it was nice to sleep with the rain drumming on the roof.

For this month’s statistics in Make Way for hajusuuri – Perfume Shopping in Boston post I asked a question:

Which city in the World is your mecca for perfume shopping: not sniffing, testing or getting to know brands and their offerings but actually buying perfumes – based on your previous experience?

Twenty four (24) people answered the question (thank you, everybody!) and named 13 cities. I grouped all participants in three regions – U.S., Europe and Other. 67% of people (16) didn’t have to take a long pilgrimage to their perfume mecca: they named a city from the region where they live.

Stats September 2014

I don’t think it’ll surprise anybody that Paris got the most votes (7). New York got silver (4 votes), which was also expected. What I didn’t expect was San Francisco taking the third spot (3 votes) leaving behind Los Angeles (1.5 votes), London, Las Vegas, Cancun, Chicago, Dubai, Hamburg, Houston and Warsaw, each of which got just one vote and Bruchsal with a half vote.

Stats September 2014

I checked Perfume Shopping around the World page and discovered that less than half of the cities that made the list of the best perfume shopping for the respondents have a blog story written by a perfumista. Of course Your Perfume Guide online catalog referenced from that page has lists of stores and boutiques in most of those cities but it misses a personal touch of somebody who loves perfumes. So I urge you to write a shopping guide for your mecca, post it on your blog (or you’re welcome to do a guest post on mine if you do not have a blog) and send me a link to it.

And finally, we have a winner for the draw of the 3 ml decant of My Inner Island Vaniglia Sopraffina e Rhum AND 3 other vanilla-based perfumes from hajusuuri’s collection:

Shopping in Boston Draw Results

Nancysg, send your shipping address to hajusuuri at gmail. If a prize isn’t claimed until 11:59 PM on October 10, 2014, hajussuri reserves the right to randomly select another winner.

Images: kind of my own (I used as elements free pictures from http://www.clker.com and http://yoursourceisopen.com)

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Maui Vacation: Perfumes, Flora & Fauna, Food and Perfumes

“What perfume are you wearing? It smells great!” – I asked a flight attendant on my way to Maui. He seemed pleased by the question and told me that it was a custom blend made for him “by this great lady from Oakland.” He also told me that it was a very potent and tenacious perfume oil (“because it’s all-natural, you know“) that required only a tiny drop of it (he wore it on the neck below the collar line) to last for many hours – to that I can attest: I kept smelling it every time he would walk by. Later he brought me a note with the perfumer’s name and phone number. The scent was beautiful amber – completely wrong for Hawaii but perfect for the chilly flight.

We landed and the summery tropical atmosphere took my mind off ambers and fall on the calendar. As we were driving to the resort where we rented a condo, my vSO drew my attention to the words on a dashboard of our car and asked if I thought it was a sign.

Seek Cat

We followed the instructions but this time (unlike the previous Hawaiian vacation) our residence didn’t come with a ginger cat and the only feline we encountered during our vacation was scrawny black cat hunting a lizard.

 

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Choosing the right time to go to Hawaii is always a balancing game for me: I love swimming in warm ocean so if we go too late it might start cooling off (back to the temperature that most other people consider good for swimming) but if we go while water is still perfect by my standards, the weather is too hot for anything else but swimming in mornings and evenings. Last year I didn’t get to swim as much as I wanted to so this year we decided to err on the side of caution. We succeeded so to speak: we went a week earlier than we usually do; water was great but hot humidity kept us inside most of the time that we didn’t spend swimming or snorkeling. I still can’t complain: we’ve got to read, watch some shows from Netflix and just relax. And a view from our condo was very picturesque.

Maui 2014 Kaanapali Alii

Maui is my favorite island: its flora is more tropical than volcanic Big Island’s but at the same time it’s more developed than Kauai. The downside of the larger tourist population is a much poorer selection of tropical fruit at the local markets. But don’t worry: we didn’t go hungry. Or thirsty.

 

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Even though we didn’t move around the island much we got enough of the true Hawaiian flavor – tropical plants and fish, ocean sunsets, tropical penguins… Yeah, I also had to do a double take when I saw them first at Hyatt’s lobby pond. But they didn’t look psychotic so after some deliberation we decided not to look further for zebra, lion and hippo.

 

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Usually when I travel I do not take any perfume bottles bigger than 10 ml. But I make an exception for my vacations in Hawaii: I always bring my 50 ml bottle of Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess. It has previously traveled with me to Big Island and Kauai and this year it came to Maui. I think I gave a hotel maid a good story about “those crazy tourists” by putting the bottle in the fridge (I noticed that the box was rotated after her visit so she was clearly surprised to see it there). It felt extremely pleasant and refreshing to spray it all over my body after taking a shower.

 

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I hope you didn’t think that I brought just one perfume for the whole week on Maui. It was a single full bottle. But in addition to that I packed some travel bottles, decants and samples. As I usually do for vacations, I didn’t bring any new scents for testing – just those that I previously wore or at least tested and thought they would be nice on a tropical island.

Do you want to know how many perfumes I had with me on Maui this year? Take a guess in your comment (without reading responses from others). As a prize for the closest guess without going over I offer a small bottle of the custom blended oil perfume, with the story of discovering which I started this post. After coming back from the trip I contacted the perfumer who makes it and we’re trying to work out the ordering process (it is a very small company). I don’t have it yet so I have no idea if I like it on my skin but I thought that the story itself and the joy of smelling it during the flight were worth ordering two bottles – one for me and one as a prize for this guessing game. If there is more than one right answer I’ll let Rusty to pick a winner. The game is on until I publish the revealing post.

Maui 2014: Perfumes

 

Images: my own; new header is created from a gift picture I got from Asali (The Sounds of Scent) right after my first swim in the ocean. If you haven’t done it yet, check out her blog for wonderful illustrations to her evocative perfume reviews.

 

A reminder: you still have until 11:59PM PST on September 29, 2014 to enter into the draw and/or participate in the poll for this month’s statistics in hajusuuri’s guest post Make Way for hajusuuri – Perfume Shopping in Boston

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How many perfumistas does it take to …

… persuade me to go for a perfume? At least four.

I remember reading somewhere the announcement of the upcoming release of Rajasthan by Etro and either the author or somebody in comments was extremely excited about the bottle and was almost prepared to go for a blind buy. I shrugged: not only I didn’t know the brand (I’m not into fashion much) but I couldn’t see the bottle attraction either. One.

Then I read a rather negative review from Kevin (Now Smell This) and promptly forgot about Rajasthan: since I didn’t expect anything from it in the first place I wasn’t even disappointed. Two.

Last year Natalie (Another Perfume Blog) and I went to Barneys where I saw Rajasthan bottle for the first time. Something in the bottle spoke to me, I thought it was beautiful. I tried the perfume on skin and liked it. Natalie politely agreed that it was nice. I asked for a sample and got about a ml – everything that was left in the tester. I even tried to get them to sell me an empty bottle. I knew it wouldn’t happen: from what I’d heard, all perfume departments have strict policies about empty bottles. But it was a fun conversation with an offer to meet with the SA at dumpsters after hours. Three.

The sample lasted me for a couple of tests that confirmed that I liked Rujasthan. But it wasn’t enough to make a decision – so I waited.

Several months ago during Suzanne’s (Eiderdown Press) visit I tried Rujasthan at Barneys again. I still liked it. Suzanne politely agreed that it was nice. By that time I already loved the bottle but not enough to pay full price for the perfume. Four.

Three weeks later a perfect test bottle of Rajasthan was mine for half the price (eBay is very useful sometimes). Usually I do not buy testers: if I get a bottle, I want it to come with a box to store it in. But in this case it didn’t matter since the bottle isn’t transparent.

Etro Rajasthan

Etro has created a very pleasant day-wear perfume that represents neither scents of India nor even westerners’ stereotypes for them. Notes (via Fragrantica) include: lemon, pink pepper, portulaca, mimosa, rose, black currant leaves, black locust, amber, labdanum and white musk.

I’m not too good with dissecting perfumes so there are many notes, not detecting which wouldn’t surprise me much. But lemon is such a ubiquitous scent – how can it be that I don’t recognize it when I smell this perfume? Etro’s site in a poetic description of Rajasthan qualifies this note further – “winter lemon.” As I tried to find any explanation of what was that mysterious variety of lemon and how it was different from a regular lemon (I failed), I came across earlier announcements of the upcoming Rajasthan release and they all, as well as some reviews from that time, mentioned “winter lemon flower” note. I assume it was either a part of the official press release or something found in translation. It would explain the absence of the recognizable citrus smell – but then why did Etro remove it? And if lemon is not there, how could others detect it in the composition? My nose must be off.

What I can smell is a sweet (but not too much – for my nose) and powdery light amber scent with enough spices to keep it from being perfectly polite. I cannot smell rose – or any other flower – though I can imagine that the sweetness I smell is coming from mimosa (or its rendition). Rajasthan loses projection within three hours mark but stays as a skin scent for over 10 hours (white musk, I assume). I do not love it but I enjoy wearing it from time to time. And did I mention how much I like the bottle? But only after it joined my collection I realized that I’ve liked that color scheme long before I saw Rajasthan bottle: look at the picture of one of my favorite necklaces I wore for the last five years.

Chico Necklace

Image: my own.

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In the Search for the Perfect Fig, Take 2

Three years ago I published the first Single Note Exploration post about fig note in perfumes and learned from comments that it wasn’t actually fig fruit that had a scent reproduced in perfumery but fig twigs and leaves. Since then I assaulted a couple of fig trees and can confirm: those twigs are very fragrant. Did you know the source of the scent?

Fig

Recently I learned another fascinating fact about figs. It started as a chat with a co-worker about fruits. I mentioned that I liked to eat figs. She looked at me with disbelief and asked with a faint trace of repulsion:

– You do know that those crunchy things inside are wasp eggs?
– ???
– You know, those seeds inside figs are not just seeds – they are eggs that wasps lay inside figs.

I’d never heard anything about that before so I didn’t believe her and went to consult a trusted source – Internet. What I found enthralled me. If you are familiar with the subject skip a couple of paragraphs – there will be a perfume-related bit in the end. For those who – same as I – somehow missed that and doesn’t want to do a full investigation, here’s a short* version.

A mature female wasp crawls through the opening into a fig where she deposits both her eggs and pollen she picked up from her original host fig. Since on her way in, having to force her way through a very tight opening, she loses her wings and antennae, after completing the mission the wasp dies. Eggs hatch, develop into larvae and then mature. Mature male wasp, which doesn’t have wings, mates with a female wasp and then digs a tunnel out of the fig through which the females escape. Once outside a fig a male wasp dies and a female flies to another tree, where she’ll pollinate another fig on her way in. The cycle repeats.

Fig

Now, when I know all that, will I stop eating figs? Nope. The only thing that bothers me in all that is that I’ve never heard about it before. Of course, figs weren’t widely available where I grew up but neither was salmon – and still we learned at school about them moving upstream to spawn and die. And we all heard about sexual cannibalism of mantises. But nothing about fig wasps.

Even though from the set of perfumes I tested for the first post I already had two favorite fig perfumes – Fig Tree by Sonoma Scent Studio and Wild Fig & Cassis by Jo Malone, since I like the note, I kept testing fig-centric perfumes and found several worth mentioning.

There are two nice budget choices for those who would like to wear a fig scent a couple of times in summer but doesn’t want to invest much into it: Mediterranean Fig by Pacifica (read Victoria’s (Bois de Jasmin) review here) and Fig Leaf & Sage by Kiehl’s (Ayala (Smelly Blog) reviews it in the post on sage note).

I’m on the fence about Premier Figuier Extrême by L’Artisan Parfumeur. It is a very nice, and said to be the very first, fig-centric perfume. But, like many other perfumes from the brand, it’s not tenacious enough to justify a full price purchase. Luckily, it’s not that hard to find a better deal for it (~$115/100 ml) online. And it’s one of those perfumes 100 ml of which might not be too much: even though it’s marked as eau de parfum concentration it wears as eau de toilette. Since I have a soft spot for interesting bottles, I couldn’t resist a fig-shaped Special Edition bottle. For reviews read: Victoria’s (Bois de Jasmin) post and Portia’s (Australian Perfume Junkies) guest post on Perfume Posse.

L'Artisan Premier Figuier

Finally, I did get to test a perfume, lemmings for which were created by a very persuasive review from Gaia (The Non-Blonde) – Figuier Eden by Armani Privé. I like-like-like it! But I’m not paying the price: not because Figuer Eden isn’t good enough but I don’t think there can be any fig perfume that can justify that price.

– Did you know that wasps lay eggs in figs – I asked my vSO when I got home the day of the conversation with my co-worker.
– ???

He didn’t believe me…

Images: my own

* The detailed picture is even more complex and covers fig trees/flowers’ gender, not pollinating wasps and much more. You can start from this Wiki page and then follow links.

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Entertaining Statistics: August 2014

Seeing off the last summer month, I want to say that I enjoyed the weather: it was slightly warmer than our last couple of cold summers but still not scorching hot – which was just perfect for our ongoing drought. What was unusual for this summer was an unexpected high humidity. It was a long-forgotten feeling of the sticky warm air right before the storm. With the only difference that storm had never come: we don’t get rains in summer. Though I’ve heard there was drizzle in some areas.

Despite (or maybe because of?) mild temperatures AC in the office was adamant to keep us cold and I was blaming the persistent cough I had for almost a month on that – until I re-read my statistics post from two years ago, in which I mentioned having persistent cough that August. Now I need to investigate what allergens might be responsible for that in our area. I don’t know how entertaining these posts are for you but they proved to be very useful for me.

For this month’s statistics post I asked my readers here and random participants on Facebook Fragrance Friends group a theoretical question – To Wear or Not to Wear?  The rules of engagement were: provided you could take on a three-month trip and use just one perfume from your collection that you once liked but do not wear any more, would you do that or rather not wear any perfume at all during that period?

The results were interesting: first of all, I got almost the same number of responses to the poll here (20, including my vote) and on FB post (21 votes – out of 5K members in that group). The next curious observation: votes split very differently in these two groups. While commenters in my blog divided almost evenly – 55% (11 votes) chose “Not to Wear” vs 45% (9 votes) voted “To Wear”; respondents in the FB group were more uncompromising – more than 90% (19 votes) chose not to wear anything rather than going for an old flame. I wonder what the roots of such discrepancy are.

August 2014 Stats

How did I vote? Every time when I have to create a list or answer one of these questions, I take it very seriously – as if somebody will hold me to the answer. So I went through my perfume database “trying on” each of the perfumes (I looked only at bottles). If not to take into account those that turned and stay in my collection for the bottle or sentimental reasons, there is not a single perfume that I dislike. Some of them wouldn’t be my first choice but still I would gladly wear any of them before I skip perfume altogether since it’s a vital part of my day-to-day life. Though, I must admit, as Sabina said in her comment, it would be difficult for me to wear just one perfume for three months even if I loved it. So I hope not to find myself in this type of situation. Ever.

 

Image: my own

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To Wear or Not to Wear?

It all started with me thinking on Joshua’s (The Smelly Vagabond) question: What perfumes would you bring along with you if you had to live abroad for a year? He limited himself with decants of 10 perfumes and articulated well his criteria for making that type of selection. Then in one of the perfume-related Facebook’s groups I read another question: Is there a fragrance that you couldn’t live without, in your younger day but will never wear today? These questions together shaped the direction of my thinking.

Rusty and Vials

This summer was emotionally difficult for me and for a while I didn’t pay too much attention to my perfumes choices: I would go with my usual ritual of looking through the cabinet to decide which perfume I haven’t worn in a while, think of how appropriate it would be for the occasion, weather and sometimes my outfit – and then put it on. But since I’m recording each of the applications in my perfume database, over time I realized that I seemed to enjoy my choices less than I used to in the past. For a while this realization kept me from using my most favorite perfumes out of fear to be disappointed. But life went on and I stopped limiting my choices by the “expendable” perfumes only.

What I noticed looking at the records later, I had no change of heart about perfumes that I loved but I changed my mind mostly about perfumes with which I had more intellectual relationships. I didn’t dislike any of them but I didn’t enjoy them the way I did before.

Choosing perfumes for a remote location I would have to follow my heart because any well-balanced and smartly put together list might go right out of the window with the first challenge – and then I would end up spending time with perfumes I respect but do not love. Would I still want to wear them? Would you?

Think of a perfume in your collection that you bought because you persuaded yourself that you should have it or the one that you used to like but somehow never come around wearing any more. Now imagine that you’re packing for a three-month trip where you will not have access to any perfumes. You have a choice: to go completely scent-free for the duration of the trip or to take that perfume you do not love any more but then you’ll have to use it following your regular pattern.

Wilted Rose

Would you go commando perfume-wise rather than wearing perfume you do not like any longer for three months straight?

 

Image: my own

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A Fairy Tale Ending, Perfumista-style

When was the last time you cried because of perfume? I did two days ago. It wasn’t exactly because of perfume but closely related to it.

In the post Memories, Dreams, Reflections…  I told a story about one of my earliest perfume memories and how I never got to smell that perfume even though I remembered it for all these years.

Daisy (coolcookstyle) promptly found this item on eBay and sent me a link. I checked it out but being my usual spontaneous self (not!) I decided to think about it (“Who else would buy it until the end of the work day?” I thought). And by the time I went to look at it again it was gone. I was a little angry at myself: this perfume (well, its box) had such a meaning for me – why didn’t I snatch it when I could?! But I told myself that sooner or later another one will appear on eBay.

When I got a box from Daisy I was surprised: I couldn’t remember us discussing recently any swaps and I was positive it couldn’t have been her award-winning Mango-Lime-Tequila Sorbet  – even though I expressed the desire to be a Guinea pig if she ever needed one. The box contained another box and a card that read:

Surprise!
Much love + hugs
from
Daisy & Hajusuuri

The smaller box had a carefully packed and sent all the way from Ukraine a bottle of Zolushka in a double-walled box that mesmerized me when I was 5. I couldn’t help crying – so touched I was with that act of kindness and friendship from Daisy and Hajusuuri.

Rusty and Zolushka

Rusty tries out as Cinderella (Zolushka) in the picture

The box looks exactly how I remembered it – just smaller, which is understandable: I was little when I saw it last. Many things in childhood seemed larger than I see them now. If you look inside the mirror you can see the skirt of the dress but there are no legs so for all I know there still might be a mermaid tail somewhere in there. As to the scent – it smells like an old perfume from my childhood (not this specific one since I’d never tried it but a recognizable scent from that epoch). I won’t be wearing it but the box will join my collection on the shelf where I can see it every time I go for any other bottle.

I want to say “Thank you!” to Daisy and Hajusuuri, as well as to Vanessa, Natalie, Lucas, Kafka, Portia and my RL friends who supported me when I needed it. Thank you.

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In the Search for the Perfect Black Currant: P.S.

Do you read beauty blogs? I follow a couple of “mixed media” blogs (perfume + make-up) but compared to the amount of perfume-related sites I frequent you might say I don’t read them at all. Though maybe I should? Sometimes they prove to be very useful. But I’m running ahead of myself.

Last year while perfume shopping sniffing at Barney’s with Natalie (Another Perfume Blog), we stopped at a Lipstick Queen counter: I wanted to show her the Hello Sailor lipstick I featured in the In the Search for the Perfect Blackberry: P.S. post. I also secretly hoped to find Black Tie Optional gloss. Instead my attention was captured by their Chinatown glossy lip pencil in the shade Mystery.

Lipstick Queen Chinatown Mistery

My wallet was on its way out of the purse when Natalie stopped me and explained that for the money ($18 at the time) all I was getting was what you can see on the picture above. We spent some time trying to figure out if it had some hidden turning mechanism or something like that. Nope. It was a solid plastic tube with a relatively large but still not-enough-for-the-price gloss tip.

It was a reasonable thing to do so we left Barneys empty-handed though on the perfume side it was totally their fault: if I remember it correctly, they were out of either a size or a perfume Natalie wanted.

Months later, by mere chance, at Tinsel Creation I stumbled upon a review of another shade of that Chinatown lip pencil in which Jessica not only praised the quality of the gloss, but explained how good was the sharpener that came with the pencil.

The next time I happened to be at Barneys I re-confirmed with an SA that I could actually sharpen the pencil – and it went home with me.

Lipstick Queen Mistery, Hello Salor and Laura Mercier Black Orchid Swatches

With all other lipsticks I have in similar shades did I really need that lip gloss? You know the answer. Does it look like black currant? The tip of the pencil reminds a slightly unripe berry. On lips it’s a shimmering berry tint. But I enjoy how smoothly it glides, how easy it is to apply and how nice it looks on my lips. So I’m glad I read that post on a beauty blog.

Can you recommend any beauty blog that you follow and like?

Images: my own

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In the Search for the Perfect Berry: Black Currant

As a child I spent summers at my grandparents’ house. When I wasn’t playing with my summer friends* or hiding from the heat in the house, I would be reading in the garden’s summerhouse.

As many children do, every year I would re-read some of my favorite books. One of such books was a collection of Polish fairy tales. Fern Flower (Kwiat paproci) by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski was the first story in the book so I probably read it every time before I would get bored and start skipping stories.

Book Tam Gde Visla Reka

It’s a grim story about a young guy who got obsessed with finding a fern flower that, according to Slavic mythology, blooms once a year deep in the forest on the Kupala Night (around Summer solstice) and promises great wealth and granting any wishes to whoever finds it. He attempts it three times. Every year he goes into the forest next to the village where he lives. And every year he doesn’t recognize the forest that he knows well – it is darker and scarier than usually and plays tricks on him: trees are taller, bushes are thicker; he hears strange noises and sees things. Twice he almost gets the illusive flower but it disappeared at the first light of dawn. The third time he succeeds but here comes the fine print: he cannot share his luck with anybody. He abandons his family and leads a life of luxury but it doesn’t bring him joy. He’s torn between keeping his wealth and helping his family but by the time he decides to come back it’s too late: his parents and siblings are dead from the poverty, he wishes to die as well and disappears from the face of the Earth with the flower that all these years was rooted in his heart. Curtains down.

Mysterious forest with pine trees around which you go forever just to see that they are not that huge once you pass them and unexpected deep marshes that disappear once you get through – is what I always imagine when I think of enchanted forest. Nowhere in that mental picture can I find black currant: probably because that berry doesn’t grow in the forest – enchanted or otherwise. Wild strawberry, raspberry – yes, I can easily imagine those but not black currant.

And still Enchanted Forest by Vagabond Prince makes total sense to me: there were three black currant shrubs next to that summerhouse in which I read and re-read Fern Flower year after year. So the smell of black currant leaves (I always liked it) and berries (I wasn’t a big fan of those as a child) somehow weaves in my mind with that fairytale image of an enchanted forest, Kupala Night and magic.

Redwood

Enchanted Forest created by Bertrand Duchaufour for Vagabond Prince in 2012 includes notes of pink pepper, aldehydes, sweet orange (traces), flower cassis, blackcurrant leaf, hawthorn, effects of rum and wine, rosemary, davana, blackcurrant buds absolute (by LMR from Grasse), CO2 blackcurrant (by Floral Concept from Grasse), Russian coriander seed, honeysuckle, rose, carnation, vetiver, opoponax resinoid, Siam benzoin, amber, oakmoss, fir balsam absolute, Patchouli Purecoeur®, castoreum absolute, cedar notes, vanilla and musk. If you haven’t smelled it yet and want a real review, here Kafka does a great job describing the scent – even though she doesn’t really enjoy it on her skin. Me? I love this perfume! The tartness and juiciness of the black currant and fir opening, the warmth and smokiness of the amber and incense resinous development – I enjoy them immensely. The drydown reminds me of one of my winter rituals – drinking Peet‘s Black Currant black tea with honey. Add to this picture a Christmas tree or pour the tea into a thermos and go to a close-by redwood forest – and you’ll get a perfect gustatory illustration of Enchanted Forest.

Black Currant tea and Honey

I urge you to try both – the perfume and the tea+honey combination: I think they both are very interesting, unusual and, if it’s your cup of tea (take it figuratively or literally, as you wish), very enjoyable. But even though I like both, I can’t drink that tea all the time and I can’t imagine wearing Enchanted Forest daily.

I used up a couple of free samples I got. I swapped for another sample that I’m using now and I paid for a small decant. I would buy a 30 ml or maybe even a 50 ml bottle of Enchanted Forest in a heartbeat – I like it that much and the bottle itself is quite appealing. But there is no way I’ll buy 100 ml of this perfume. And I still can’t believe that founders of Fragrantica (out of all people!) thought it was a good idea to launch this perfume in a single size – 100 ml.

 

* I’ve never seen them during the school year since my grandparents lived 8-hours bus ride away from us.

 

Previous posts in the series In the Search for the Perfect Berry: Strawberries and Blackberry. Also see other posts in the Single Note Exploration category.

 

Images: book – found somewhere; the rest – my own.