March 26, 2020 by Undina

Better than a New-Car Scent

Do you still remember those times when you could go to a department store, pick up a tester from a counter and spray it on a paper strip or on your skin? …

It was just a joke; I’m not practicing my March 2021 “A year in ‘shelter-in-place’” post. But when I started writing this post, I realized that I wasn’t sure what tense to use. Let’s pretend that life is (or very soon will be) what it used to.

In early days of getting acquainted with niche perfume world, as many of you probably did as well, on a single perfume shop trip I would use 4-5 spots on each arm to try multiple different perfumes after a quick sniff from a bottle or a test strip. But in the last 3-4 years I rarely test more than 2 perfumes at a time, and most days when I find myself at a store where I could try something, I am on my way to somewhere (a party, some theater or other performance or business trip) where I don’t want to reek of a cacophony of random perfumes.

So, what I normally do these days is: after sniffing from a nozzle (yeah, I know, extremely scientific approach), I identify perfumes that I want to try, spray those on paper, walk around, discard those that do not smell promising, try to get samples for a couple of those that I liked the most to test on skin at home and take away with me 5-6 paper strips with scents that I liked the most and want to check how they develop. If one day you happen to be around one of the “perfume centers” of San Francisco/Bay Area and see a woman walking the mall or adjacent streets with a fan of paper blotters in her hand who can care less how it must look like – there is a high chance it would be me. And then, when I get to my car, I use a vent grid to hold those strips separated until I get home.

That was exactly how it went last year when, on the spur of the moment, I went to Tigerlily Perfumery to try perfumes that are hard to get to test for free anywhere else around here. I went through, in my estimate, 40-50 bottles, bought several small samples (I love that they do that! I’d rather officially pay a small amount to take what I want to test at home than do all the dancing for maybe getting what I want) and left with 5 or 6 strips, mostly (but not all) of perfumes samples of which I bought.

At home I re-smelled the blotters and left them on the bathroom counter to re-visit the next day to see what remained from the scents. Samples went into the “to test” box but I wasn’t in a hurry to reach for them: I already smelled all of them in the store, I had them – so what is a month or two before I put them on skin?

But my car smelled wonderfully the next day. And the day after that. And probably for the next couple of weeks from time to time I kept catching a pleasant waft… It took me a while to realize that one of the paper strips fell into the vent and kept emitting an unknown aroma from the depth of my car. But which one was that? I hoped it was one of those that I bought a sample of, but I wasn’t sure. I went on testing, two at a time, waiting for that magnificent drydown.

I got lucky: it was one of the samples that I had. Naomi Goodsir Or du Serail, created in 2014 by Bertrand Duchaufour (BTW, have you noticed that he almost disappeared from the perfume scene last year? According to Fragrantica, there were just 7 perfumes he released for 4 brands – and I’ve never heard of 4 of them. In 2014 there were 15 and in later years there were even more). With Or du Serail it was one of those times when you know that you want that perfume. So, I bought it.

Or du Serail is rich and very warm perfume. It’s not timid – it’s loud and strong and present. And I love wearing it. If you want a fuller review, read Kevin’s (Now Smell This) impression. But if you haven’t tried it yet, I think it’s one of those perfumes that is worth trying whether you end up liking it or not.

Images: my own

March 21, 2020 by Undina

Saturday Question: How Are You Doing? What Are You Doing?

Following great tradition started by two wonderful bloggers, Birgit (Olfactoria’s Travels) and Portia (Australian Perfume Junkies), once a week I or one of the guest writers will keep the lights on in this virtual leaving room, but I hope that you, my friends and readers, will engage in conversation not only with me or the other host, but also with each other.

Last week I asked you to name 3 most favorite Serge Lutens perfumes. 33 perfumes got nominated, some of them more than once. Top 3 were Iris Silver Mist (10), Ambre Sultan (7) and De Profundis (6).

This week I want to do something slightly different. I want to try to “document” what’s happening in different parts of the World where you, my friends and readers live in these strange times.

Saturday Question #4:

How Are You Doing? What Are You Doing?

What is the situation where you live – city or country, be as generic or specific as you wish. Did you get any extra food and supplies?

What is the situation with your job (if you were working)?

If you’re staying at home more than usual, what do you do?

Have your perfume habits changed recently?

My Answer

All individuals living in the State of California have been ordered to stay home or at their place of residence, except as needed to maintain continuity of operation of the federal critical infrastructure sectors. This was announced on Thursday night following the last week’s “shelter-in-place” order in the county where I live. But my office sent everyone to work from home a week before then. So far, everyone I know personally is healthy (or at least not symptomatic).

After some initial panic last week, currently it’s calmer in our area. And while all the stores seem to be permanently out of toilet paper, cleaning supplies and some random items, in general, food is available. But of course, uncertainty breads fears, so, just in case, we stockpiled more food that I’ve probably ever had at one time in my house. My only excuse is that we bought almost nothing that we normally wouldn’t buy. So, I hope not to waste any food.

While I enjoy working from home once in a while (and last week it was quite convenient since I wasn’t feeling good – not virus/flu/etc.; getting better now), doing it every day is not fun: the boundaries between work and home life blur and not in a healthy way. And since both my vSO and I are doing a number of meetings and phone calls each day, one of us periodically has to leave the office not to interfere with the other’s activities. But we manage. Rusty, so far, seems to enjoy our company, though I suspect he’ll get tired of us soon.

My perfume habits followed the change in the work environment: I stopped wearing perfumes. If I were telling you this, I would have kept a longer pause. But I won’t do it here in writing and hurry to tell you that while I’m not wearing perfumes, I use this opportunity to test and re-test a lot of samples, trying to resolve some of the issues discussed a couple of weeks ago in the SQ#2. I tested more than 30 perfumes during last week and wore just one perfume – Amouage Dia for the grocery shopping today. But this weekend I plan to dress up for dinner (just for a change) and wear one of my favorite perfumes. But after that I’ll continue going through the piles of samples.

I want to share with you several links I collected during this week from different sources:

The Metropolitan Opera every day does HD streaming of famous operas. The one that was streamed the night before (7:30 PM EDT) is available for 20 hours. I’m not a huge opera buff but I figured out that it was a good opportunity to listen to/see some famous singers.

12 Famous Museums offer virtual tours. I haven’t tried them yet myself but plan to soon.

For the US readers: a grocery tracker that shows if grocers have made operational changes for your safety and theirs as well as whether or not employee benefits may be offered to those hard workers that help you get the items you need. This is a great way to choose where you shop during this craziness. There is detail on each grocer below the main list.

* * *

63 comments last week means that there was no draw. Let’s lower the bar this week and shoot for 75 comments. If we reach it, there will be a prize: a random draw for a $25 (or equivalent in pounds or euro) gift certificate to an indie brand of your choice (I suspect they’ll need our support).

How Are You Doing? What Are You Doing?

Disclaimer: this blog doesn’t use any affiliated links or benefit from any of the G-d awful ads that some of you might see inserted tastelessly by the WP engine inside the post and/or between comments. Encouraging readers to post more comments does not serve any purpose other then getting pleasure from communicating with people who share same interests.

March 18, 2020 by narthscent

Turkish Delight? Yes, Please!

Even though there were at least a couple of guest writers on Undina’s Looking Glass, over the last couple of years I was a sole contributor, so for a while I will be reminding my readers to look at the By line (Undina).

* * *

When I was a child, I loved to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and I read it multiple times a year. In it a rather unpleasant child is offered a box of Turkish delight by a beautiful woman. He likes it so much he trades everything for more and more Turkish delight, everything being his siblings, Jesus, summer time, kittens… everything! I had no idea what Turkish delight was, but it was obviously very delicious since it was worth betraying everyone you ever met. For my whole childhood I imagined it was rum truffles, something I had tasted only a few times. They were rich and decadent, and you were never allowed to have as many as you wanted, so that to me was Turkish delight.

Many years later, I discovered what Turkish delight really was, and I love it far more than rum truffles! I’m also aghast that Edmund managed to eat boxes and boxes of it. I’ve always loved any foods with a perfumed note and rose flavour is the queen. Rose pastilles, rose truffles, rose gelato… I remember them all because they are not easy to find. Turkish delight, however, is readily available, and I buy it a few times a year and cover myself in powdered sugar eating far too many delightful cubes of rosy joy. So when a perfume smells like Turkish delight I am absolutely in LOVE.

My beloved favourite Turkish delight perfume is the original Boucheron Jaipur for women. It’s a beautiful bracelet (and confusingly one of the flankers is named “Bracelet” but that is a different perfume), and it I adore it. Sticky, candied rose and fruits created in 1994 by Sophia Grojsman. There are plenty of sweet rose perfumes that are delicious, such as Lush‘s Rose Jam, but to evoke Turkish delight you need that perfumey note. It’s more a caricature of rose than rose itself. Boucheron Jaipur just plainly makes me happy.

Top Notes: Pineapple, Apricot, Freesia, Peach, Plum
Middle Notes: Carnation, Iris, Jasmine, Lily of the Valley, Orchid, Peony, Black locust, Rose
Base Notes: Amber, Vanilla, Benzoin, Heliotrope, Musk, Sandalwood, Styrax

Turkish delight, or lokum can be flavoured with a variety of things, but the rose flavour made with rose water, which is a distillate of rose petals, is the most popular. There are synthetic versions as well and who knows which ones I’ve eaten. I’ve bought it in markets from huge slabs, as well as chucking it in the trolley from the supermarket. I have loved them all!

Though I have no idea if Sophia Grojsman ever thought about Turkish delight when creating Boucheron Jaipur, it was the inspiration for my other sticky perfume treasure, L’Artisan’s Traversee du Bosphore (2010) by Betrand Duchaufour.

Top Notes: Apple, Pomegranate, Tulip
Middle Notes: Iris, Leather, Saffron, Rose, Pistachio
Base Notes: Vanilla, Musk

The heart of Traversee Bosphore is a plasticky, perfumey rose, without a doubt more cheap rosewater than the actual flower. This is what makes it a true Turkish delight scent, that the rose is all about confection. There’s a powdery iris that speaks of the powdered sugar very well without altering the perfumey rose heart. Violet would have created something quite different here. However fear not, this is still a grown-up scent. Saffron and leather are very sexy skin scents in this creation, and the brightness of the top notes keeps it surprisingly fresh.

Rose is a constant perfume love for me, but I have a special place in my heart for the ones that evoke Turkish delight. I’ve tried some that claim to do so but add an almond marzipan note, which moves the creation firmly away from the simple joy of lokom and into a fancy cake shop. I want an indulgent sticky mess!

Images: my own (Narth)

March 14, 2020 by Undina

Saturday Question: What Are Your Top 3 Serge Lutens Perfumes?

Last week’s question collected 68 comments (I start thinking that I might have scared some potential commenters away by offering a draw for more perfume samples), so, there was no draw. but I decided to extend the time for the first draw winner to contact me with the choice of a decanter/samples site for the gift certificate.

Saturday Question #3:

What Are Your Top 3 Serge Lutens Perfumes?

I was torn between the desire to talk about the elephant in the room and inclination to maintain the normality. I don’t know what the next week will bring to the World, but for now let’s talk about something positive.

My Answer

This question was one of many that I planned to run eventually. It surfaced now partially because of the current situation and partially because of the last week’s Saturday question: while working from home, I decided to go through some of the samples that I had for years. The bag that I’ve got out first had a dozen of Serge Lutens samples that I collected over the years. As I was going through them, I was amazed by how much I liked most of them. And these were my “outcasts” – perfumes that I tried before and decided not to go beyond the sample. Today, years later, after having tested hundreds of modern perfumes, I got a new respect for this brand that at some point was on every perfumista’s mind and blog but recently seem to have fallen from grace.

I like and enjoy wearing a number of Serge Lutens’ perfumes, but if I have to name just three, it’ll be Boxeuses, my armor of strength for difficult situations, De Profundis, my way of celebrating life and Fille en Aiguilles, an ultimate Christmas perfume.

Rusty and Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles

Now it’s your turn. If we get to 100 comments, there will be a prize: a random draw for a $25 (or equivalent in pounds or euro) gift certificate to a decanter service of your choice.

What Are Your Top 3 Serge Lutens Perfumes?

Disclaimer: this blog doesn’t use any affiliated links or benefit from any of the G-d awful ads that some of you might see inserted tastelessly by the WP engine inside the post and/or between comments. Encouraging readers to post more comments does not serve any purpose other then getting pleasure from communicating with people who share same interests.

March 7, 2020 by Undina

Saturday Question: What Do You Do With Samples?

Last week we had 135 comments, and the winner chosen by random.org is: rickyrebarco (it looks like it’s your lucky month – maybe you should consider a lottery ticket purchase?). Please contact me before the next SQ post with your e-mail and your choice of a decanter/samples site for the gift certificate.

Saturday Question #2:

What Do You Do With Samples?

It isn’t a question of getting, storing or categorizing samples. I’m curious about what you do once you got them and tested at least once. Do you only spot-test them, or do you give them a full wear? Do you finish samples? If not, how long do you keep them?

My Answer

In my pre-Perfumeland life, when I managed to get mainstream samples (usually with purchases or from store perfume events), I would either finish them using as my perfume (if I liked them) or share with friends and family.

When I started buying samples for niche perfumes, I kept wearing those perfumes that I liked until I would finish them or buy a bottle, but those that didn’t work for me would go into the “Library.”

Later, as my collection grew, I realized that I wanted to wear perfumes that I owned already instead of those that 9 out of 10 times I woudn’t want to add to my collection. So, after testing, I would wear and maybe even finish only those perfumes that I liked enough to consider a bottle purchase. Then there would be a handful of samples that I would mark as “Nice, will use what I have” – and then not really reach for them. But the majority of the samples banished to the “library” would stay there until many years later I’d discover that they either turned or evaporated (while being perfectly safe in those ammo boxes).

I still struggle with letting samples go, even when I know that I wouldn’t want to wear that perfume. To help myself, I’m getting the smallest possible samples to either finish them quickly or at least not to waste too much perfume. And if anything worth sending is left in my tiny samples, I’m trying to pass them on.

How about you? If we get to 100 comments, there will be a prize: 10 perfume samples of your choice from 20 that I’m ready to part with.

What Do You Do With Samples?

Disclaimer: this blog doesn’t use any affiliated links or benefit from any of the G-d awful ads that some of you might see inserted tastelessly by the WP engine inside the post and/or between comments. Encouraging readers to post more comments does not serve any purpose other then getting pleasure from communicating with people who share same interests.

March 4, 2020 by narthscent

Lush Dirty, a Very Minty Boy

Undina: Let me introduce to you Narth – the latest addition to this blog’s wonderful (though infrequent) guest writers’ team. Narth used to write for the Australian Perfume Junkies blog (now regretfully defunct), and now she plans to publish regularly her reviews, perfume and travel stories on Undina’s Looking Glass. What is noteworthy: in my estimate, our tastes in perfumes have just a small overlap (approximately 10%). So, it will introduce nice variety.

* * *

The main drag in my city of Melbourne, Australia is like most main drags, a bit of a mess. Buskers, rubbish, bargain shops, fast food… A few years back they closed it off for cars and only trams can travel this strip in the heart of the city. This improved nothing and the pushy chaos continues.

Walking up this street to my favourite dumplings place I can tell how far I have to go by the two smells that are so overpowering you can smell them a block away. One is Subway whose strangely artificial bread smell makes my children gag. The other, god bless them, is Lush. For many years a cult company relying on the addictive powers of cupcake flavoured bath bombs and towering soap piles that look like cool art works Lush has also quietly been creating perfume. I’m late to the Lush perfume game and part of that I blame on the eye watering impact of the smell of a Lush store. Since I’m usually planning a spray and a sniff somewhere when I’m in the city, I have no intention of abrading my nose with Lush’s cacophony of soapiness before I get to the good stuff. And so it’s only been in the last year that I have discovered the wonders of Lush perfumes whose price point is perfect for impulse purchase.

Rather than blathering on about the whole range, which has quite a few treasures, I want to talk to you about a beautiful minty masterpiece, Dirty. Spearmint, tarragon, thyme, lavender, sandalwood and oakmoss. So says the Lush website, not given to note pyramids. While refreshing in the heat, Dirty really blooms when it’s a misty cool day. The lavender and mintiness are more edible versions than you’d get in a classic barbershop scent, and the sandalwood is a quiet creamy constant under the sharper notes. And what’s that, an odd herbal accent? The tarragon is light but adds some important herbaceousness to the spearmint, you won’t for one minute be thinking this smells like gum. The drydown brings out a salty note, a fantastic fresh from the beach skin scent. I sprayed this on myself, walked out of the shop, turned around, went straight back in and bought the 100ml. No regrets. It’s been a very hot summer here, and I’ve been wearing this perfume in the intense heat and in the rains that follow. A relative of mine immediately bought a bottle for her partner who wants something fresh to wear at work. Mainstream freshies are more expensive and have annoying synthetic notes while not everyone wants to up their niche game in the freshie department. Lush’s Dirty is a stunner. If you have ever lamented a lack of mint in Perfumeland, I encourage you to brave the soap stacks and try Dirty. The sillage is good, and the lasting power (as it is with most Lush perfumes) is excellent.

Images: my own (Narth)

March 2, 2020 by Undina

Winner(s) of the Puredistance Gold Giveaway

All four blogs that ran this mini-joint-project have announced the winners:

Bonkers About Perfume: Hayley

Chemist in the Bottle: Alen

Australian Perfume Junkies: Narth

And finally I went to run a random number generator, but when I typed the search in the search line (I have no idea why: random.org isn’t that hard to remember, and it’s less typing than “random number generator”), Google just presented its own generator – and I decided to try it.

The winner is #11 – congratulations to rickyrebarco. Please, send me your shipping address.

February 29, 2020 by Undina

ULG Saturday Question: Shall We?

Since I came to blogging from forums preceded by chats, out of all possible types of blog content, weekly free-form discussions always seemed the most attractive to me. But when I started my blog, Birgit (Olfactoria’s Travels) was already doing Monday Question series, and since the circle of my readers was mostly a small sub-circle of hers, it would have been strange to start a similar feature here. Over the 5 years, Birgit ran it 222 times, collecting on average 66 comments per question (ranging from 4 on her very first one to 169 comments on the pick of her blogging venture).

Almost two years after the last Monday Question on Olfactoria’s Travels, Portia (Australian Perfume Junkies) picked up the idea and successfully ran Saturday Question series for another 2.5 years, which translates in 132 posts with 103 comments on average (min 26/max 241).

With the same idea behind the two series, Portia’s implementation – a live chat/dialog between participants, often not involving the host, had an even stronger appeal to me. But, again, why would I try to compete with a place that many of my virtual friends and readers and I myself frequent? But when Portia announced the closing of the hospitable virtual APJ saloon, I decided finally to give it a try.

So, the question in the title is not the one I’m going to ask as the first question of the Saturday Question series on Undina’s Looking Glass. I am trying it, and by your participating in it or not you’ll let me know how the water in that river on the third time is.

I know that whoever participates in these posts does that not for any tangible prizes, but to honor the tradition and celebrate the pilot episode of the series, if the post gets 50 comments (I’m being reasonable), there will be a prize: a random draw for a $25 (or equivalent in pounds or euro) gift certificate to a decanter service of your choice.

Saturday Question #1:

Do You Know How Big Your Collection is?

Forget decants, minis, samples and even travel bottles. We’re talking big. I mean, full bottles. Not asking you to divulge the actual number of those bottles (unless you want to, of course), the question is: are you aware of that number? Do you know how many bottles you have?

My Answer

Since, as many of you know, I track my perfumes in the database, at any moment I could tell you exactly how many bottles of any kind, decants or samples I have (though, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I can easily locate all of them). But knowing that most of my readers do not have a formal filing system, I tried to guess first and only then checked.

If not to count some “stray” bottles that joined my collection not by my choice (novelty-type gifts or relatives’ cast-offs I couldn’t refuse) or almost empty pre-rabbit-hole bottles that I never plan to finish but keep for sentimental reasons, my estimation was not that far off: I guessed my full bottle collection to be just 7% smaller than it actually is. But even if I were 100% correct, it still would have been a number that does not make any practical sense. And yet, I don’t think I’ll stop completely any time soon.

Do You Know How Big Your Collection Is?

February 23, 2020 by Undina

Rusty the Cat: On Food and Treats

I’m not sure if this post will become the first in the series. It may, since I like series, Rusty is a tireless provider of amusement in my life, and, in general, Internet runs on cats. But I won’t promise any regularity since these posts require pictures, which, in their turn, require good lighting, which is not easy to catch with my crazy work hours that do not promise to be much better this year, despite all my attempts. But we’ll see.

* * *

I’ve heard of the cats who can leave half-full bowl and come back to it later or refuse to eat something. Rusty isn’t one of those cats: any food stays in his bowl for two minutes or less. He inhales* whatever we put there and wants more. All his life he gets cat food, but I’m not sure he understands the difference. For him all food is food, but for some strange reason we refuse to share with him as much of our food as he’d like us to. So, he resorts to begging or … I can’t even say “stealing” since he doesn’t try to do it covertly – prying it from us.

Since we feed him canned food, mostly pâtés, I was worrying that he didn’t get to chew anything, and his teeth weren’t being cleaned. The only things that he normally chews on are tiny treats I give him as a bribe or a reward for taking pictures for my blog or as incentive to do a trick (he does those for treats). But those tiny things take him a second or two. I hear: “crunch-crunch” – and he’s done.

Friends recommended special dental treats that were supposed to be good for cats. I must say that those are quite expensive treats (approx. 50 c per treat). But what won’t we do for our feline friends, right? These treats are much larger than usual “one bite” cat treats: they are about a size of a wine bottle cork (see the picture below). But they are relatively soft and easy “bitable,” so one would expect a cat to spend some time biting smaller pieces off of it allowing enzymes in it to work on plaques to improve cat’s oral hygiene.

Rrright… When I gave it to Rusty for the first time, he was extremely excited: he got it from me, spent a couple of seconds re-arranging it in his mouth, after which, with a visible effort, he… just swallowed it whole. I was watching him in terror thinking what to do if he starts choking. Even though he was fine, I didn’t have the courage to repeat the experiment. But since I still wanted to get some health benefits for Rusty from the treats I bought, I started feeding them to him while holding them in my fist and allowing Rusty to take a smaller bites of it, preferably with his molars.

You should have seen the expression on my cat’s face when I started doing that! He couldn’t understand what I wanted from him, and why he couldn’t just gulp the thing, but “food is food,” so in a while he learned what I wanted him to do – even though he still clearly thought his human had some issues. The disadvantage of this method, though, was that in his enthusiasm Rusty could not always distinguish the treat from my fingers…

You can understand my excitement when last Christmas Lucas (Chemist in the Bottle), in addition to wonderful gifts for me (and not only of the perfumed kind), sent some treats for Rusty (picture above). Being much longer and denser, those looked like something that Rusty would definitely have to chew on. (sigh) Nope. I’ll give him that: he didn’t swallow it in one piece. But he quickly bit it in half – and then swallowed. I was petrified: the way he was swallowing it, I was sure it wouldn’t go through, and I’d have to rescue my cat from suffocating. To my relief and amazement, he was fine. But that was the last time I experimented with making him to bite something off: I cut or tear smaller pieces before giving it to him. He doesn’t mind.

* As I was writing this post, I got curious about different synonyms for “eating quickly” and in my search came across a discussion in the WordReference forum in 2007 where a number of people, especially from the U.K., claimed they’d never heard the verb “to inhale” to be used in that meaning, even jokingly. I was surprised because for me it was something given. I asked my vSO, and he reminded me from where it came into our lexicon:

Ross: I’m just saying, if you can’t eat by yourself, how do you expect to have a baby by yourself?
Rachel: I can too eat by myself!
Ross: When have you ever?
Rachel: When certain people leave the table and I am not finished!
Ross: Well, certain other people take 2 hours to eat a bowl of soup!
Rachel: Oh, please, you inhale your food!
Ross: I grew up with Monica. If you didn’t eat fast, you didn’t eat!

Friends, Episode 8.03, 2001

Out of many synonyms suggested on that forum, I really liked the idiom “to wolf down” and thought that in our household it could be transformed into “to cat down,” as in “He catted down his lunch and hurried back to the office.”

What phrases or idioms do you use for “eat fast”?

Images: treats – my own; all pictures of Rusty – from our wonderful cat sitters

February 16, 2020 by Undina

Paying it Forward: (in) Puredistance Gold

This post is a part of a joint mini project, a.k.a. giveaway, held by Undina (Undina’s Looking Glass), Vanessa (Bonkers about Perfume), Lucas (Chemist in the Bottle) and Portia (Australian Perfume Junkies) – see details at the bottom of the post.

* * *

In this age of advertising in social networks and working through influencers, vloggers and instagrammers (ha! MS Word’s spell checker knows the former but objects to the latter while Firefox browser’s spell checker doesn’t think any of the three terms are grammatically correct), it is hard to justify spending marketing resources on a handful of “old school” bloggers with quirky blogging styles and limited outreach via followers or organic search.

Most brands stopped doing that silently. Some were quite vocal about it (I will not name names now, but will mention that even years later I still hold a grudge – not for the decision not to provide free samples itself but rather for the publicly provided “justification” for that decision, but I digress). And a very few keep doing that through the years for whatever reasons – be that gratitude for the role perfumistas in general or particular individuals played once in popularizing niche perfumery or the brand; or out of sentimental feelings towards the “dying art” of blogging; or even pragmatical calculation that people who spend hundreds, sometimes thousands dollars per year on their hobby and who “talk” to others with the same predisposition might be a better target audience for a “free sample” than an average perfume counter visitor. I don’t know the reasoning, but I know that those brands are still out there.

Puredistance is one of such brands that – as long as I remember, even before I started blogging – was extremely friendly and generous with bloggers, and not just with press release samples that would promote their newest perfume but with acknowledgement of bloggers contribution to spreading good word about the brand, their time in communications and some unexpected surprises for the brand’s milestones.

Late last year Puredistance sent me a travel spray of their newest perfume Puredistance Gold. As always, no strings attached.

I tied and I liked Puredistance Gold, which made me happy and thankful to the brand for bringing me joy that holiday season. And at the same time, I felt bad because there was no story or topic in my head that I could use for a post, and since I don’t do regular reviews, it meant I wouldn’t be able to make my tiniest input into promoting this perfume to the World.

And then I thought that even if I were to review this perfume, in my opinion, it wouldn’t be enough because while it is like that for many good perfumes, for Puredistance Gold it is particularly true: to fully appreciate it, one needs to wear it. Even if I were to tell you that it’s great, since the only place where you could test it would be a niche shop with dozens of other perfumes that compete for your attention, you’ll spray it on paper, sniff and, most likely, move to the next bottle.

And that’s how the idea of this joint mini project came to live. We, several bloggers who were lucky to get some preview samples from Puredistance, decided to share what we got – just to make sure it reaches more people who might otherwise never try it.

* * *

Puredistance Gold Sample(s) Giveaway

One ~ 1.5ml handmade sample of Puredistance Gold is offered in a giveaway on each blog for a reader from the specific geographical region:

Undina’s Looking Glass (this blog) – the US and Canada

Chemist in the Bottle – Europe (without the UK)

Bonkers about Perfume – the UK

Australian Perfume Junkies – Australia

While you’re invited and encouraged to comment on any/all of the participating blogs, to be entered into the draw you should leave comment on “your” region’s blog following the instructions given there.

If you are in the US or Canada and wish to enter the giveaway, all you need to do on this blog is to state in your comment “I live in [country].” That’s it. The draw on this blog will close on February 23^rd. You know all the disclaimers, etc.

Regardless of whether you participate in my draw or not, I would love to know: Have you tried any of Puredistance perfumes? Do you have favorite ones? Are there any you haven’t tried yet but want to?

Images: my own

Undina's Looking Glass

Perfumed Reflections of Life

Better than a New-Car Scent