I’ve just got a word from hajusuuri: we have a winner of the draw announced in her recent post: In the Search for the Perfect Shower Gel.
The winner is Juli. Please contact me with your shipping address.
And for the rest of my readers: do not go away too far – there will be one more giveaway in the next couple of days.
I always wanted to do a post about winter holidays gifts (for my family and close friends it’s more about the New Year gifts than those for Christmas). But usually I was doing my shopping in B&M stores, so whichever interesting items I would find there I usually couldn’t recommend to my readers. This year in general and November-December in particular were so hectic for me that most of my holiday shopping was and still is happening online. So I decided to share with you my scented gift ideas.
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post in any form and it doesn’t contain affiliate links.
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While choosing perfume for somebody else is a very tricky task, some brands make it easier for both the giver and the recipient. So I’ll start with the brand that had changed my attitude towards gifting people with perfumes.
Ineke offers two discovery sets – Scent Library and Deluxe Sample Collection – both are beautifully presented and, at the price of $25 including S&H and $15 coupon towards the full bottle purchase, are perfect stocking stuffers. And if you’ve previously bought one of these and are thinking about a bottle, now is great time to go for it to take advantage of the free shipping until December 25th.
Atelier Cologne, the brand that I really appreciate, offers a good variety of stocking stuffers and gifts, starting from $18 (I’m still contemplating trying one of their soaps) plus free US & Hong Kong delivery until December 25th and free personalization for travel sprays. And if you’re serious about giving somebody special a gift of perfume, I think that their latest offering – a gift card (minimum $70) that includes 12 samples – is a great idea.
Concluding the perfume-giving part of this post, I want to mention that Dame Perfumery‘s 5 ml trial size of Black Flower Mexican Vanilla for $10 including S&H is an absolute steal! Other perfumes are also available from that link.
For those who would still rather not venture into gifting perfumes, there are other options:
Perfumed Lace Garden bracelet or Alahine scented ceramic tile from Teo Cabanel. None of them will break the bank. And for those who’s looking for something more indulgent, there’s always By Killian with his scented jewelry collections (these are new ones) and Frederic Malle’s rubber incense.
I’ve recently discovered Beautyspin online store and I want to share it with you. You’ll have to overlook the percentage they promise you’re saving or the referenced “retail price” – those are pure fictional numbers. But their prices are very good (and sometimes you can find an additional discount code).
Check out these perfect stocking stuffers: Myrrhe Ardente, Encens Flamboyant and Musc Nomade shower gels ($3.35–$5.19) by Annick Goutal or Bottega Veneta Pour Homme shower gel ($29).
After Rusty showed to me what I should do with the beautiful Amouage Dia soap, I decided that it would be a great holiday gift and bought Memoir and Epic perfumed soaps from Beautyspin ($24 each). Now I’m trying to persuade myself that those are great holiday gifts for somebody else since I still haven’t opened my Dia soap.
The person for whom you’re shopping for gifts is not into perfume-y scents? How about a fresh cut pine or coffee smell? Try these firestarters ($10 each):
And finally, if you want to steer clear of imposing any scent choice on your giftees, you might consider Blue Q You Smell Delicious socks ($9.99).
Will you be giving any scented gifts this year?
Have you ever worn a perfume that was so good that you just want to bathe in it? Fortunately, for those of us who answered Yes, there ARE bath & body products to satisfy that desire. My obsession with scented shower gels began during my pre-perfumista days with the now sadly discontinued L’Occitane Thé Vert Green Tea. While I wisely bought a back-up of the eau de toilette, I used the last of the shower gel 2 years ago.
In this post, I have summarized my experience using shower gels of some of my favorite perfumes. These are all easily accessible although most are in the spendy category ($25++). I am not affiliated with any of these companies and my recommendations are based on my experience.
Starting from the worst…and ending with the best shower gel:
|
Perfume |
How’s the Shower Gel? |
Verdict |
| Prada Candy | o Sticky laundry musk chemical mess. | Failed |
| Philosophy Fresh Cream | o Gel had good consistency.
o Fragrance was too light and reminded me of dishwater with leftover milk. |
Failed |
| Hermes Voyage d’ Hermes | o Reminded me of the perfume.
o Product was too watery and not the right consistency for a shower gel. o Ended up being the most expensive per mL. |
Failed |
| Jo Malone Blackberry & Bay | o Product is labeled as body and hand wash.
o Great as a hand wash but meh for showers. |
Failed |
| Atelier Cologne Orange Sanguine | o Smelled just like the cologne!
o Gel was very thick and required patience to get product out. A squeeze tube may be a better container. |
Will buy again |
| Chanel No. 19 EDP | o Reminded me of a mix between the EDP and Poudre.
o Feels luxurious with packaging to match. |
Will buy again |
| Le Labo Iris 39 | o Smelled like a saltier version of the perfume.
o Fragranced the body lightly and the bathroom nicely. |
Will buy again |
| Lush Rose Jam | o Smelled like rose jam and filled the bathroom with a heady rose scent!
o Actually better than the perfume. |
Will buy again |
| Frederic Malle Carnal Flower | o Smelled true to the BWF aesthetic and felt super-luxurious.
o I kept huffing the empty sample container, need I say more? |
Will buy again |
Many of these also have matching body lotion but since I don’t use scented body lotions, I don’t have an opinion as to their quality. I understand that a similar scented body lotion effect can be achieved by adding a drop or two of perfume mixed in with unscented body lotion.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where I will report on making my own small batch shower gels, as soon as I find a source for fragrance-free shower gel. Given a choice, I would like to see the following in shower gel format: Atelier Cologne Sous le toit de Paris, Frederic Malle Iris Poudre, Le Labo Vanille 44 and Puredistance Opardu.
How about you? What scented shower gel do you enjoy using? What’s on your scented bath & body products wish list?
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From Undina:
I know that you all take part in the conversation because of the conversation. But a draw from hajusuuri is already a tradition. So everybody who answers her question(s) will be entered to win: 4 ml shower gel (choose between Carnal Flower, Iris 39 or Rose Jam) + 4 ml of unscented Diana Vreeland body cream + Perfume Sample Travel Kit (compact box, 2 atomizers, 2 dab vials and labels). No DNEMs, please! If you win and do not want the prize, hajusuuri will let you nominate another winner (she’s that kind).
This giveaway is open to everyone worldwide. The giveaway is open until 11:59PM PST on December 12, 2015. The winner will be chosen via random.org. Please note that neither Undina nor hajusuuri is responsible for replacing the samples and decants if they were to get lost or damaged.
Images: hajusuuri
Since most of my readers were there for the first post in this series, I won’t repeat the detailed explanation of the idea behind (if you missed it, you can quickly scant the first couple of paragraphs here). I just want to mention that today I fight the negativity bias with a non-perfume-related post.
Not far from where I live there is an artificial pond. Despite it being a man-made body of water, many wild birds made it into their habitat. There are stilts, mallards, Canada geese and today I even saw four pelicans. I don’t know what they all find to eat in that pond but it looks like they feel quite happy.
Six or seven months ago I noticed an unusual group of three ducks: a couple of mallards (male and female) and a white domestic duck. There are more mallards in the pond and they all keep more or less close. But this trio is almost always together. I didn’t know in which relationships these three were (Are they of the same age? Or was it a case of a mistaken egg identity?), so my vSO and I just came up with a story that this white duck ran away from a farm where he would be raised for meat and joined the free flock. He seems content with his choice.
Every day, as I drive by on my way to work, I try to spot them because seeing that white domestic duck “in the wild”, completely out-of-place but happy, feels strangely comforting: everybody might get a chance to find the right place for themselves, the right surroundings – no matter how incongruous it might seem for those looking from the passing car.
Image: my own
It took me a while to get results for the draw I offered in my 300th post. Not that I expected more people to respond (I rarely get any comments after 3-4 days) or didn’t have time to write this post (I am busy but not that busy). The challenge was to prepare everything for the draw itself: even though we’re now at the longest days in the year and I come home when it’s still daylight, the lighting in my house at that time isn’t good enough to take pictures of a quickly moving cat. And during a weekend something else came up and I couldn’t do it either.
But today I had a day off, so finally everything’s come together and Rusty and I did it:
And the winner is …
Abigail, please send me your shipping address and I’ll try my best in guessing 5 perfumes you haven’t tried yet.
Either intuitively or from reading articles on the topic, we all know that negative emotions are stronger than positive ones and stay with us for longer.
I decided to fight the negativity bias in my life by highlighting from time to time small things that make my life better regardless of the negative things that might be present. “Small Things that Brighten Life” is planned as a series of occasional posts: I’ll write them as I find anything worth writing. I will not limit this series by the topic of perfumes but it just happens to be a theme of the series’ pilot. It seems very appropriate.
*
Two months ago I unexpectedly won an anniversary blog draw at All I am – a Redhead. I say “unexpectedly” because when I left my congratulations I meant to say the traditional “DNEM” but just forgot. The main reason I planned to skip the draw was because I thought something along the line: “We all are testing more or less the same perfumes, why to make Ines to try looking for something that I haven’t tried?” But when I won I couldn’t refuse my luck – especially since there was chocolate involved.
I got busy and didn’t write to Ines, she didn’t write to me either and I figured she was busy as well and we would exchange letters at some point. Last week our office assistant (the same guy who sent me a link to Mermaids Past Their Prime a couple of years ago) got a call from a receptionist from the office building in which our company had a lease before moving to the current location: there was a package with my name delivered there.
We moved from that building more than two years ago and though on a few occasions I picked up packages from there, I was surprised that somebody still remembered me. But I was glad they did and I promptly retrieved the package.
When I got home and opened the package, I was delighted and very pleasantly surprised: not only it contained a box of chocolates but also there were six perfume samples, five of which I’ve never tried (or even heard of) before. Think of it: how improbable would it be for you to send a fellow-perfumista five perfumes new to her/him without any prearrangement?
Let’s see! I’ll ask Rusty to choose one of those who comments on this post and will try to guess and send five samples that the winner hadn’t try on skin before (I’m not ambitious enough to go for the “never heard of” part). And some chocolates.
Thank you, Ines, for that wonderful double-improbable package! It did brighten my life.
Image: my own
P.S. After hitting “Publish” I discovered that this was my 300th post. I take it as one more positive token. The negativity bias, here I come!
Several years ago I read a post on Olfactarama blog about bottles collectors*. The following paragraph made me thinking:
Even as a young girl I hoped to someday have a vanity, on which there would be a mirrored tray, full of fine perfumes in their beautiful bottles. The bottles atop my cabinet now — Agent Provacateur comes to mind, in its pink ceramic egg crowned by a plain metal spray nozzle — aren’t the most appealing ones. Those are stashed safely in the dark interior.
As I was reading that passage, I realized that from an early age my idea of storing perfumes was somewhere in the dark – a cupboard, a dresser or a cabinet. A mirrored tray hadn’t been a part of our culture: usually there was not enough space in the bedroom to have that tray and nothing to put on it. Since perfumes were rare and expensive women tended to store them in the original packaging. Opening a box, getting a bottle out and sparingly applying a perfume – all these were parts of a ritual.
After moving to the U.S., for years, while coming across perfume bottles in my friends’ bathrooms and on their dressers, I would wince. I never offered any unsolicited advice but it felt like a sacrilege to leave unprotected perfume out in the open. But over time I came up with a rationale why it was an acceptable MO: with those 2-3 bottles that my friends owned they were much more likely to run out of perfume than have perfume running out on them (through evaporation or turning bad).
While I think it is fine for “civilians” to store and use their perfumes as they pleased – be it even on a windowsill or in a glove compartment – I still get distressed every time somebody demonstrates pictures of their poorly protected collections in perfume-related FB groups. I do not comment but I feel bad about those bottles. And I do not buy partial bottles without a box any more.
The picture above shows how my collection is stored. In the walk-in closet, away from direct light, covered by a curtain from a blackout fabric (the cat-Christmas-themed towel on top is for decorative purposes only) and in their original boxes. And, as I recently commented on Vanessa’s post on a similar topic (Through the keyhole…a peek at some of my friends’ perfume collections…), in summer for those couple of days when it gets especially hot I turn AC on during the day to keep my perfumes safe. It’s interesting because Rusty doesn’t mind hot weather and it’s much cooler in the room where he spends most of his time while we’re away working.
After this substantial preamble I want to admit that for a while now I’ve been thinking how unfair it was that I get to see those beautiful bottles that I have in my collection so rarely and how great it would be to have some of them out on my dresser. After all, many of the bottles are beautiful and unusual – unlike most boxes, I must say.
As much as I would love to see my collection more often, there is no way I could put perfumes I love “in the harm’s way.” First I decided I would buy several perfumes just to use bottles. I didn’t want to spend too much on this project but I thought of a couple of brands that were perfect candidates: I liked the bottles and didn’t like those perfumes. First I bought Van Cleef & Arpels‘ Feerie EdT. Feerie EdP (a beautiful dark-blue bottle) was next on my list and I even found it for an extremely good price… It was too good to be true: the seller was confused and sent me the second bottle of EdT, which I returned. Then I was too busy to keep looking for it. The second brand I wanted to use for the purpose of displaying was Salvador Dali. But even though many of their perfumes are sold at discounters online, I don’t remember when I saw any of the bottles last so I was afraid that by now they might look really cheap. So I kept postponing the purchase hoping to come across them one day somewhere. And I had the same problem with a mirrored tray: while there were many online offerings, I just couldn’t buy any of them without actually looking at them: there are so many cheap-looking objects produced nowadays.
In the end I decided – at least for now – to use what I already have:
I like my arrangement. It looks nice on my dresser and I think for now I scratched that itch. But those Dali bottles and Feeri EdP…
Do you buy unboxed bottles? Do you have any bottles on display?
Images: my own
* I cannot give you a link to that post because there’s something funky going on with that blog, it has some strange redirect happening and I suspect malware.
After telling you the story of my fascination with orchids and unrequited love to them, I kept thinking that there were many aspects that I haven’t touched but which would have added more proofs to how I feel about these flowers. Not that it would matter to them. In human interactions that would definitely have the opposite effect and could even be classified as stalking but I don’t expect a restraining order from these majestic flowers so let me share with you how I deal with my orchid fixation.
Before I went down the proverbial rabbit hole and started stocking up on bottles, decants and samples on a SABLE scale (Stash Above and Beyond Life Expectancy ©Vanessa’s SIL), for a while I was into a costume jewelry. I liked and wore different pendants, necklaces and rings before that period and do it now, but for several years I was in the phase of the initial accumulation of costume jewelry to match things in my wardrobe.
There are some one-off, rare, vintage as well as “cheap thrills” pieces in my jewelry collection, but the same way as it often happens with perfume collections, when you end up with multiple bottles from the brand you like, my jewelry box (both real and proverbial) accumulated multiple creations by artists or brands that I like. But even that cannot explain why I own not two or even three but four (!) necklaces depicting orchids. I didn’t realize it until I was writing that first orchid post. Let me show you my orchids. And, unlike their living prototypes, they never wilt on me!
When I fell in love with Michael Michaud‘s botanical jewelry, it was mostly available from art galleries, boutiques and just a couple of online retailers. Now search returns pages and pages of sites where you can buy these beautiful creations.
This white orchid necklace made from patinaed bronze with a pearl was one of the first pieces by the artist I bought. I can’t say that I liked it the most of what was available then (he constantly changes the range introducing new items and retiring older ones) but it was a good price… So was the second orchid necklace (bronze with hand-applied patina and enamel) that I bought last year: I saw it on eBay right before my Hawaiian vacation and just couldn’t pass.
Chico’s clothing has never been my thing but for a while I was fascinated with the jewelry selection in the local store. Since then I found several Chico’s necklaces I liked and bought. They are not extremely elegant or subtle but I like them and they get me more compliments than my more sophisticated pieces (didn’t we all had similar experiences with mainstream perfumes in our collections?). One of these necklaces just happened to be another orchid (metal with enamel). And it seems Rusty likes it as well.
My most favorite of all orchid necklaces is the one by Franz Collection (I’ve previously features another necklace from the same brand – an iris one – in my In the Search for the Perfect Iris post). It’s made of porcelain and it looks exactly like it does on the picture below (I took a picture myself but then decided to use an official one because mine wasn’t doing the necklace justice).
Finally, I’d like to play my own “LUST – MUST” game (I hope you’re familiar with the concept).
There’s a new Orchid jewelry line from my favorite designer Michael Aram. I don’t think I’ll be buying any of these but I enjoy looking at them.
While Aram’s jewelry is outside of my purchasing comfort zone, his home collection is much more approachable. A couple of years ago my vSO gave me a diffuser from Aram’s Black Orchid collection as a New Year gift (I showed the picture of it in the post How Do You Take Your Amber?). And for the last New Year I got from him a candle from the same collection. I haven’t tried lighting it yet but unlit it smells nice.
Do you own any botanical jewelry?
Images: white orchid necklace, Chico’s necklace and black orchid candle are my own; the rest – official pictures.
Last year in December I told what I thought was the last part of the Orange Cats in My Life series. I haven’t opened a new chapter since then – it’s still just Rusty who is everything I’ve ever wanted from a cat (though I wish he’d stop eating plastic because it gets really tedious trying to keep plastic-free all spaces accessible to him). But recently I realized that there were more sides of my obsession with cats that I haven’t covered in either those posts about real cats (Found and Lost and Those that have just broken the flower vase…) or imaginary ones (A Grin without a Cat and Love from the First ‘Awww…’). Hence this interquel (it seems to be a real word; I found it while trying to figure out if there was a special term for a story that was a sequel and a prequel at the same time).
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For many years, while we couldn’t get a real cat, I was drawn to a cat theme in… everything. It doesn’t mean that anything with any cat depiction would do as some non-cat people seem to think (we all like perfumes but there are perfumes and there are perfumes – right?) but I had accumulated a number of cute Christmas ornaments, toys and jewelry featuring that object of my affection, which definitely exceeds any “civilian” person’s interest in felines.
Visual art isn’t something that is present in my day-to-day life. Two-three exhibitions per year at the local museums, three-four hours or until I get extremely bored (whichever comes first) at various museums during vacation trips and an occasional article in New Yorker magazine – that’s the extent of my interest in it. My house is decorated with a couple of enlarged photo prints, two paintings given to me by my father, who knows much more about art, and several ink drawings created by my friend many years ago. From time to time we would visit an art fair or, while on a vacation, walk into one of those galleries that seem to be so popular in all the touristy locations. But most of the objects offered there I cannot classify either as art or even suitable décor pieces – so mostly those visits had an alternate motive of warming up or cooling off (dependent on the weather at the location).
The gallery on the Big Island, in addition to a nice cool environment had also an extra attraction: a large selection of fine and costume jewelry. And while I was killing unswimmable scorching hours searching for a gem (figuratively speaking) among the offerings my vSO was browsing paintings. I do not remember if it was the only work of that author in the gallery, I don’t even know what exactly it was – an oil painting (most likely) or lithography, but it immediately captured our attention.
Nazran Govinder, The Shining Sinners. We spent some time dancing around this piece. We almost bought it. But none of us had ever heard of the author; we’d never bought any art before, so we had no point of reference to figure out if the price was even close to be right (around $800, I think). We didn’t have a smartphone or even Internet at the condo back then to do a research. So we arrogantly decided we would do it once we were back at home. Worst come worse, I could always call the gallery and buy it over the phone…
After we came back, I read more about the artist, realized that I previously saw some of his sculptures at other galleries, decided that I wanted to get that painting (and maybe one more), got distracted… By the time I started actively looking for The Shining Sinners the author had suddenly died at age of 44. You can probably imagine what it did to his work. I couldn’t believe that I, all by myself, without reading somebody else’s reviews or articles, discovered an artist, whose paintings I liked, and I missed the chance to buy the piece that I really liked.
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Once a friend of mine sent me a link to the perfect pair of boots. She said she thought those were made for me.
What happened next is hard to explain. They were on sale for $100. By Nordstrom. With free delivery & return. They had my size. But I didn’t know the brand (do you see the pattern?) and I thought that maybe I should look for them in a store… By the time I figured out none of the stores around carried Camper (the brand), the boots were gone. I knew everything about them by that time but it didn’t help. I searched all online stores – no luck. I set up the recurring search on eBay – nothing but a misrepresented pair in a bad shape that I bought and returned. I even wrote to Camper Customer Support recently to ask if they ever plan to re-introduce the model – they don’t. The only positive outcome from that experience is that now I and two of my friends who were following my fiasco remember it every time we are about to postpone a purchase that might not happen later. There’s a rule called “Julia’s boots”: buy first, have doubts later.
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Wouldn’t it be appropriate to round-up the topic telling the story of a missed perfume opportunity? I can’t: not only there are no cat-themed perfumes that I let slip away (like those on the picture below that I borrowed from The Scented Hound’s 2014 Holiday Gift Guide) but I don’t have a single regret about any perfume. It’s not that there are no perfumed I wished I could get now that aren’t available – there are plenty of those. But none of them fits the bill of “could have but haven’t.” What about you? Were there any perfumes in your life that got away?
And since it’s almost a New Year Eve here, Happy New Year to all my friends and readers! Be happy, be healthy and let the missed opportunities in your life be only of the caliber of those in this post.
Happy New Year from me and from the most important orange cat in my life.
When asked: “What does winter mean to you?” (for example, recently on Puredistance’s FB page in the post for their Winter Photography Contest), people publish picturesque photos and mention travels, holidays and winter perfumes. I also published a scenic picture but my answer was: Winter is a beauty I prefer to experience for a couple of days per year on short trips from the warm (and hopefully rainy) Northern California.
The last two winters that I spent in my native country were awful. The combination of the bad weather and an energy crisis made living extremely hard. Central heating system managed to maintain radiators warm enough not to freeze and burst – but not much beyond that. It was constantly cold. Everywhere.
We would wake up in the cold apartment in the morning, dress up in the kitchen with a couple of gas stove burners on. 15-minutes’ walk in cold and wind to the bus stop, 15 minutes in a freezing bus, 30 minutes in a slightly warmer subway, then another 10-minutes’ walk to the office. We would sit each next to an oil heater, but the heat from all the computers, radiators and our bodies wasn’t a match to the concrete office building with large one pane windows. In the evening another hour something back. Those last 15 minutes against the wind were especially torturous: you could complain, swear or cry but you had to walk, there was nothing you could have done on that last stretch. And all that was to get to the cold apartment (lucky if it wasn’t our turn for the rotating power outage). The only place I felt warm was under the blankets.
By the second winter we bought an expensive but very useful space heater. It had two-in-one combination – a smaller fan heater and a bigger and more powerful oil radiator. That winter I’d got a nasty bronchitis and, I know it sounds melodramatic, but I felt that this heater saved me: I would close the door and heat the room in which I stayed in bed – and I’d got better. And then it was Spring and by Fall we moved to California, where I never have to experience that cold again. But I brought here with me my gratitude to DeLonghi – the company that made the heater.
For the last many years in winter I heat my bedroom with an oil radiator heater and a smaller space heater makes my morning showers more comfortable. The coffee grinder I bought more than ten years ago still is a part of my weekend Turkish coffee ritual. All these appliances are made by DeLonghi. And every time we’re looking for something for our house, we always check if our favorite brand makes that. Like the coffee maker we bought earlier this year.
While there is no perfume brand that I could claim saved my life, there is a brand to which I feel a strange loyalty. Amouage. As I’ve mentioned before in the post “My” brand and “not my” brand, seven of Amouage perfumes were in my very first order of samples and five of those became my favorites. Currently Amouage is the only brand, for testing perfumes from which I still pay.
My Perfume Portrait lists 10 Amouage perfumes. Only Jo Malone beats that number (but it was my entry niche brand and it’s much more accessible and affordable); all other big brands – Chanel, Dior, Guerlain and Serge Lutens – have a smaller presence in there.
Ubar is one of my all-time favorites. It’s a perfume I’d put in any of my Top N lists and take to a desert island. Memoir is the second Amouage bottle in my collection. The other eight are samples and decants but I see at least a couple of bottles in my future: Lyric, Gold and Dia are very close contenders for the next full bottle spot and it will be decided based on a coin toss which decant I use up first.
Whenever I read about new Amouage release, horde of invisible lemmings immediately haul my wallet to me. There were some recent releases that didn’t work for me (most of the Library Collection, Honour, Interlude and Journey just weren’t my perfumes). But every time I hope the new one will be even more amazing than everything else I’ve previously tried. Because Amouage is “my” brand and I feel loyal towards it (and it’s not that easy to resist when those lemmings start clanging tiny tin cups against the bars).
What brands do you feel loyal to – perfume makers or any other?
Images: all but the last one my own
Undina's Looking Glass 