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Best of 2016 and Welcome 2017!

I have never done a traditional “best of” perfume post before. Mostly, because as a result of my “no reviews” blog moto I do not really try to judge any perfumes – be that old or new releases – objectively, weighing their strong and weak points, but rather satisfy my curiosity, figure out whether I like perfume or not and move on. And if there is no story in it for me, there is nothing to tell on my blog.

So why am I doing this post, has anything changed? Not really. But as I was checking out the list of 2016 releases (I’m going to post my regular year round-up statistics post early in January), it occurred to me that this year I could safely name my Top 10 perfumes of 2016 since there were exactly 10 perfumes that I actually liked. So even though any list would be subjective, in this case I wouldn’t have to justify for myself why I put one of the perfumes on the list while leaving others out.

Candles

Puredistance Sheiduna – warm, spicy and addictive, this perfume will most likely join my collection when I’m done with the travel spray graciously sent to me by the brand.

Jul et Mad Secrets du Paradis Rouge is cheerful, with a perfect combination of fruity and floral notes. I can see it as one of my evening tropical vacation perfumes.

Two perfumes from Jo Malone – Orris and Sandalwood and Orange Bitters – made it up for me for the disaster that their limited Garden Collection was. I’ll probably be fine without the iris one (I have enough great irises in my collection) but I’ll enjoy wearing Orrange Bitters while my decant (thank you, hajusuuri!) lasts.

Since mimosa is one of my favorite scents in nature, I’m constantly in the search for the perfect mimosa perfume (to which three takes in my Single Note Exploration series can attest). So it’s not a surprise that two mimosa scents made it to my top 10 list this year. Once I got over the fact that Atelier Cologne Mimosa Indigo has nothing to do with mimosa (instead, it’s a very delicate, if you can use that characteristic for the material, leather perfume), I fell in love with it and welcomed a small bottle into my collection. Prada Infusion de Mimosa is much more about mimosa but this variation still maintains the backbone of the Infusion line, which I happen to like. I got to try this perfume thanks to Lucas (Chemist in the Bottle) but it is not available in the U.S. yet, which might be partially a blessing: at this stage of my perfume hobby, I do not need 100 ml of any perfume (though, it might have been easier to buy a decant had Prada brought the perfume to the market here).

The next two perfumes were everybody’s favorites, so I’ll just mention that for the last couple of weeks I keep testing and liking Masque L’Attessa and Hiram Green Arbolé Arbolé. It’s too early to say if I’ll go for any of these two beyond testing but I’ve been enjoying the experience.

Amouage Myths Woman has restored my faith in my favorite brand. For a while none of the new releases really moved me, so I almost accepted that I’d have to stay with my classic favorites from the line. Myths is not just beautiful and happy perfume, but it’s also one of a few from Amouage that I want to wear not in cold weather (the other one is Dia). A decant of Myths I bought in a split should do for now, but I plan to stalk this beautiful purple bottle and get it eventually.

As to perfume #10… It’s getting late so I’ll tell its story (and run a small giveaway) in one of the January posts. Not that I think that you, my friends and readers, need any special incentive to come back next year.

Happy New Year 2016!

Happy New Year to all of you! Whether 2016 was good to you or not so, I wish the new one to be better. Please make a wish at 12 (or before you go to bed, if you do not plan to stay that late), and I wish it to come true for each of you who remembers to do that.

Images: my own

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Small Things that Brighten Life. Literally.

It is my favorite time of the year, and many things around me bring me joy. Recently we visited a local street that is known for its Christmas decorations. It’s funny that I lived close to it for more than a decade but have never heard about it until two co-workers from my previous job with whom I met to exchange holiday presents told me about it. We’ve worked together and been friends for years but until this year it just had never come up in our numerous holidays-related conversations.

Over years I saw many decorated houses in the area but I’ve never seen so many lights on private houses on one street before. I loved it! In the neighborhood where I live there are just 5 houses with some kind of outside decorations (including our house, even though Christmas isn’t our holiday). And now we’re thinking about getting more of holiday decorations for our house for the next year: not even close to the extremes we saw on that street but we hope that maybe our festivity will be contagious, and more neighbors decide to follow the suit.

Pictures do not properly reflect the atmosphere of the street but I want to share them with you anyway.

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This Saturday we’ll celebrate the Christmas Eve (it’s not our holiday, but we live here – so why not to celebrate it?), the first day of Hanukkah (it’s not entirely our holiday but every year for this holiday I lit candles on that not the most conventional menorah on the picture below that I bought as a gift from my grandmother Rosa – it will be the first year without telling her about that) and Rusty’s Birthday (we don’t know his exact birthday, but when we got him, we decided that he would be our Christmas cat; he is turning 8 this year, and he doesn’t discriminate any of the holidays either: he equally battles Christmas ornaments on the tree and Hanukkah candles on menorah). I’m going to wear my all-time favorite perfume Climat by Lancôme to make the day even more special.

I invite you to virtually join me in any or all of these celebrations regardless of where you live or what your religion beliefs are. Enjoy this day if you are happy now, or find something to brighten it even if you’re not currently in the best place in your life.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Rusty’s Birthday to all of you, my friends and readers!

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah!

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What Are You Wearing?

What is your first association when you hear the phrase I used as the title? I don’t remember if I ever considered it sexy or flirty rather than cheesy, but even if I did, “What are you wearing, ‘Jake’ from the State Farm?” killed it for me forever (for those who isn’t familiar with the reference: 25 seconds you’ll spend watching the ad below will most likely make you smile).

 

 

So no, I didn’t mean it like that.

No matter how busy I get and how little time I have for both my blog, and the selected friends’ blogs, from time to time I still feel drawn to strange public places – such as SOTD posts on the NST blog or even one of the Perfume Groups on Facebook – to where most people come to declare what perfume they are wearing or plan to wear that day and then go away without engaging in the conversation with others. Of course, there are some exceptions, and the most active group of each of the venues interacts with each other, but in general those threads seem a little insane. Recently though I came across references to the studies that say that soliloquies might be rather useful and helpful (if you’re curious, read here and here). I don’t know what positive effect it has on those who posts comments but for me it proved helpful as a pseudo-random selector of perfume to wear the next day.

But SOTD selecting as well as the content of the comments in the above-mentioned outlets weren’t the main focus of this post as well.

What is the topic then, you might be wondering by that point? Reading comments on those threads made me wondering how exactly people in different stages of their perfume addic hobby are using perfumes in our possession.

For years in my youth I wore just one perfume – Climat by Lancôme. Since it was rare and special, I didn’t wear it every day but saved it for special occasions while going scentless most days (I can’t even imagine doing that now!).

Rusty and Lancome Climat

Later I had in my wardrobe 1-2 day-to-day perfumes, so I wore something almost every day still keeping my beloved Climat as a dress-up accessory (and I still do).

Miss Dior, Isa, Black Lace and Paris-Paris

Then my collection increased, and I wore mostly perfumes I owned: about 10 full bottles and some minis. I also wore rare samples that I managed to get from department stores for perfumes that I liked and considered buying (it wasn’t easy: SAs guarded those with their lives back then).

Next I got better at procuring samples: Nordstrom events and a friendly SA came in handy; and I started supplementing my perfume wardrobe wearing perfumes from samples just to have a variety. But on most days I would still be using perfumes from the bottles in my collection.

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And then the proverbial rabbit hole happened. I was in the constant search for new experiences buying lots of samples and testing as much as I could anywhere I could. I would be bringing 2-3 samples with me to the office and apply something to my wrists to test. And in the evening I would do more testing. There were so many brands to explore, so many perfumes to try!

My bottles collection started to grow, but so was the “backlog” of samples to test. And at some point I noticed that I kept neglecting those wonderful perfumes that I already had chasing the hope of even more beautiful scent from the next vial. Once I realized that, I made a resolution to wear perfumes that I already loved at least three times a week.

Several years later – and I wear only perfumes that I consciously added to my collection. Not all of them come in full bottles, I have travel bottles, minis and decants, but I got all of them for the purpose of wearing, not testing. I still do testing of both new perfumes and samples I’ve previously tested but haven’t made up my mind about, but the only time I wear perfumes from samples is if I consider buying that perfume and want to make sure that I like how it wears fully, not just as a speck on the wrist.

What are you wearing right this moment when you’re reading this post? (And please, do not say “Khakis”)

Lace

Jokes aside, what do you usually wear? Is there a difference in how you treat samples and full bottles in your possession?

M.Micallef Le Parfum Couture

Images: all but the last two – my own; M.Micallef Le Parfum Couture from brand’s press release for the perfume

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In the Search for the Perfect Vanilla Draw Winner

Sixteen entries were a little too much for me to organize a draw by Rusty, so I went the proven route of engaging random.org, and got the winner:

MdO Vanille Draw Results

It shouldn’t surprise me: #1 is as good as any other numbers to be a randomly selected but every time (the second time on my blog, to be precise) I see it I feel a little surprised. The winner is:

smokeytoes

You have until 11:59 P.M. PST on December 18th, 2016 to send me your shipping address. If not claimed until then, it’ll go to the next person on the list above.

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In the Search for the Perfect Vanilla, Part 2

Topic of vanilla perfumes periodically circulates in the Perfumeland, and two-three years ago I could probably be observed commenting on those with the statement of not being a vanilla fan. I never seriously disliked the note, but for a long time I thought that vanilla-centric perfumes weren’t my cup of tea.

In some sense I was right: until recently the only two bottles of vanilla perfume in my perfume collection were Vanille Noire by Yves Rocher and Eau Duelle by Diptyque – a mini bottle and a travel bottle, correspondingly. But the “mystery” vanilla perfume that I came across on the last day of my Maui vacation (see the Part  1* post) has triggered my vanilla cravings. And while I was searching for that brand first and then waiting on the La Maison de la Vanille’s sample set arrival, I discovered that over the years I accumulated a wide variety of decants and samples of vanilla perfumes. So for the next month I wore and tested perfumes with the prominent vanilla note.

There are many great Guides to Vanilla Perfumes in the Blogosphere, so I won’t even attempt to write any serious comparison of the perfumes I tried. I’ll just share some personal numbers, observations and conclusions.

Diptyque Eau Duelle

During that month I sweetened the bitterness of the returning from my vacation with 22 vanilla perfumes. Only one of them – Eau Duelle doesn’t have one or the other variation of the word “vanilla” in the name. But Eau Duelle is unmistakably vanilla perfume, and I like it, especially in the heat of tropics (and that’s where I actually wore it on the onset of my vanilla kick).

Out of 22 perfumes in my experiment, I disliked 11 – so probably I wasn’t that wrong in thinking that I didn’t like vanilla perfumes. I won’t list them all, but mention just several where I have any additional comments. I confirmed to myself that Atelier Cologne’s Vanille Insensée does not work for me, which still surprises me since I find most of their perfumes pleasant even when I do not love them. I also suspect that my sample of Vanille Absolument from L’Artisan Parfumeur is off: though I don’t know how it’s supposed to smell, I don’t think it smells right (or I’ll be extremely surprised since I read many good reviews for it).

Five perfumes I neither liked nor disliked: Montale Chypre Vanille, Van Cleef & Arpels Orchidee Vanille, Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille, Jo Malone Vanila & Anise and M.Micallef Vanille Orient. They were quite nice but all of them were the type that I might wear, in principle, but having so many other great perfumes I would probably never finish even those decants/minis that I have now (Rusty didn’t care much for them either: I couldn’t persuade him to play with them for my camera).

Rusty and Vanilla Samples

That leaves us with 6 perfumes that I quite liked. None of them were new to me: they were my favorites from the previous encounters with them. In addition to the mentioned above Eau Duelle, I liked Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille. I have a decant of it but once it’s gone, I won’t pursue it. Unexpectedly I loved Tobacco Vanille by Tom Ford. “Unexpectedly” – because this is one of the perfumes that I love on my vSO but I’ve never considered it for myself. Now I think that once we finish his decant, I should go for a bottle – to share, of course. I also liked Ormonde Jayne’s Vanille d’Iris though I have some uneasy feelings about it since I think I smell Iso E Super** in it. Good news: I do not smell carrot in it any longer. So I might consider getting one of the 10 ml bottles from their travel set. Or not.

By the end of this Single Note Exploration episode I got down to two contenders for the perfect vanilla title – Le Labo Vanille 44 and Mona di Orio Vanille. Thank you, hajusuuri and Suzanne (Suzanne’s Perfume Journal): if it weren’t for your generosity, with me not being a big fan of vanilla perfumes (and absolutely not a fan of Mona di Orio’s creations), I might have never actually tried these two. But I did, found both to be wonderful perfumes and decided to add one of them to my collection. Why not both? Even not talking about the price, these two fit exactly the same niche for me, and I just do not see how I would be deciding every time, which of the two to wear. So after many evenings of the parallel test runs on both wrists, as well as a couple of days of actually wearing each of them, I declared the winner: Vanille by Mona di Orio is my Perfect Vanilla.

Rusty and Mona di Orio Vanille

Now I want to “pay it forward”: I have one 5 ml decant of Mona di Orio Vanille to share. To be entered into the giveaway, let me know in your comment whether you’ve tried and liked it, or want to try it (I assume, if you didn’t like it, you won’t need more of it, but I do not mind your entering into the draw even if that’s the case). There are no other requirements. Open until 11:59 P.M. PST, December 11, 2016.

Question to everybody (not related to the giveaway): Can you name just one vanilla perfume that is hands down your favorite?

 

*I doubt anyone would have noticed, but I wanted to explain that usually, when I re-visit the same note in my One Note Exploration series, I name the consequent episodes “Take 2, 3, etc.” But in this case both episodes were the parts of the same tasting spree – hence Part 1 & 2.

** Recently I finally formulated how I feel about this aroma chemical: while I like it on its own (and have a bottle of Molecular 01 to prove it), and I do not mind it in perfumes, I prefer not to be able to pinpoint this ingredient in my perfumes.

 

Images: my own

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Scented Gift Ideas 2016

Last year I enjoyed writing a Gift Ideas post so much that this year I decided to do it again and early enough for you to have time before holidays to shop. By now (I mean time in your life, not of the year) you’ve probably identified people in your surroundings who might appreciate perfume-related gifts and, unless you’re extremely lucky, your list of such recipients isn’t much longer than mine. But if you like any of the things I found, maybe you could get them – just in case you later think of somebody who you want to give that as a gift? And, worse comes worst, you’ll have to toughen up and use it yourself. I chose $35 as an arbitrary upper limit for the gift ideas I shared below.

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post in any form; and it doesn’t contain affiliate links.

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Atelier Cologne keeps coming up with great ideas for popularizing their perfumes: in addition to the last year’s great way of presenting a gift card in a company of 12 samples (it’s still available with the minimum GC amount $70), this year they offer a $35 Discovery Set that includes 32 colognes (their full range) with 32 postcards + $35 gift voucher towards any $70 future purchase. But if you already know most of their perfumes, and do not plan any full bottle purchases from the brand, you might want to check out their new hand creams in Orange Sanguine, Pomélo Paradis, Bergamote Soleil and Rose Anonyme scents. $25 is probably too expensive for a daily hand cream but it’s a nice gift to somebody else or small indulgence for yourself if you like one of the four perfumes.

Atelier Cologne Postcards

I spent about five minutes at the spa shop debating if it was an acceptable gift for somebody outside of the close family circle. I’m not sure yet – so I left without buying any – but I still might go back, even if to get one of these cute and pleasantly smelling shower sponges by Caren for myself. As it says on the brand’s website, “sponges have been infused with our luxurious body cleanser enriched with aloe vera, olive oil, lemon grass, sea kelp extracts, and abundance of creamy that insures the ultimate in pampering.”  Each one has different fragrance. I liked the Snowflake Limited Edition Blue Linen the most.

These last for 15+ washes, so at $12.50 a piece they are more expensive “per wash” than many luxury soaps, but it’s something different, and with the seasonal packaging those might be nice stocking stuffers.

Caren Shower Sponges

Modern artificial Christmas trees can be surprisingly natural-looking. Last year our friends didn’t realize we had one of those until I mentioned it to them. What those man-made wonders cannot replicate yet is a wonderful scent of the drying pine needles and resins from the cut branches. But fear not – Scented Christmas Ornaments to the rescue! (There are many brands available in the price range from $7 to $25 for a pack of 6 to 18 ornaments)

Scented Ornaments

If your Christmas tree is as natural as they come but you still want to add festivity to the ambience, many brands offer special candles for these holidays – but hurry: the small ones go fast. Take a look at Holiday Ornament Scented Candle or Birchwood Pine Scented Candle from NEST ($16 each), Le Roi Sapin (The festive fir tree), Épices et Délices (Delicious Spices) and Un Encens Etoilé (Sparkling incense) from Diptyque ($35 each) or “Maison Holiday” Travel Tin Candles (Set of 4) from Voluspa ($32; mini-candle also available separately for $9 each).

Holiday Candles

I’ve been eyeing this next item for a while: I love the idea but I do not have any practical application for Scented Inks by J Herbin ($21.95). The set contains the following colors (scents): red (rose), orange (orange), green (apple), purple (violet) and blue (lavender). If I were to use something like that, I might also consider Blue Supple Wax with Lavender Scent from the same brand ($24.40).

J Herbin Scented Ink Samples

And for those situations when you cannot wear your favorite perfume (“scent-sensitive” relatives, no-fragrance work environment or pesky insects) but still want to make a statement, take a look at these t-shirts: they come in four colors (olive, black, brown and cranberry) and two cuts (men and women) for $19.99. The text says:

1 frag-head
noun | frag•head | \’frag-hed\
: a fragrance obsessed person
(see: the one wearing this shirt)

frag-head T-shirt

If you do not plan on posting your own Gift Guide somewhere, please share any interesting “giftable” perfume-related items you came across recently.

 

Images: only the first one is my own; the rest are from the products’ sites, sometimes re-arranged a little (I thought it was a fair use since I linked to the products).

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Nature vs. …

The first thought I had while testing Puredistance Sheiduna was: it’s beautiful, I really like it! And the next one: Whatever I smell, it just cannot be natural…

Earlier this year Lucas (Chemist in the Bottle) reviewed a couple of perfumes by Nomenclature – a project by Aedes de Venustas‘ founder Karl Bradl and an interior designer Carlos Quintero. The project showcases some aroma chemicals. I’m not sure why they felt compelled to do it: not only has it been done before (as a concept) – all of Escentric Molecules‘ perfumes, Not a Perfume by Juliette has a Gun or Tauer‘s Pentachords – but also all of the above-mentioned perfumes had a much more appealing packaging. Nevertheless, they did it, and I’ve got to try four out of five perfumes from the line recently (thank you, hajusuuri). The verdict? I thought they were rather nice, but I had to agree with Steve’s (The Scented Hound) comment on that Lucas’ post:

I have no problem with synthetics and their use. Actually, the natural perfumes for the most part aren’t to my liking. That said, I have a hard time rallying around a conceptual perfume that is marketed to look like a chemistry set. Wrap it up in a pretty bottle with a pretty name and maybe I’ll come running.

Rusty and Nomenclature perfume samples

That was exactly what I was thinking. While I usually prefer everything natural in other areas of life (I recently touched it in the topic of the clothes’ fabric), when it comes to perfumes, I’m not so sure. No, actually strike that: I am sure that “all-natural” doesn’t work for me in perfume form. So far, I came across a single all-natural perfume that I really liked: Unter den Linden from April Aromatics (I did a mini-review of it in one of my Single Note Exploration posts). Absolutely all other all-natural perfumes that I’ve tried were “OK” at best…

But back to Sheiduna. I want to clarify that my thinking about it not being natural wasn’t a criticism – I was just stating the fact. The third though that was an organic continuation of those two, with which I started this post, was: I don’t really care about that fact.

I know bloggers who take offense at brands using aroma chemicals, especially when it’s done in excess, in their opinion. I’m a wrong person to judge: Molecule 01 – a pure Iso E Super – is still one of my favorite perfumes (and I fell in love with it without even knowing what I smelled). But my opinion is: if I like what I smell, I do not care about the origin of the scent I like – as long as it is… well, original.

Angel Perfumes

While I loved (and still do) Angel (I challenge anyone to tell me, which natural ingredients made it an icon – and while you’re at it, you might also try persuading me that Marilyn Monroe was a natural blonde), I never cared for all angel-wannabes that came after. The same goes for other ingredients: once they become ubiquitous, I lose my interest. But I do not hold it against those perfumes that used them first: before something has become a cliché, at some point it must have been original and … catchy.

Amber Xtreme or not, I enjoy Sheiduna and think that it’s more beautiful than hundreds of other perfumes I’ve tried – and I’m not talking only about natural perfumes. And Puredistance’s packaging is truly exceptional. I’ll happily wear Sheiduna this winter.

Rusty and Puredistance Sheiduna

Images: my own

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The Sillage of Rosa

My Grandma’s name was Rosa (“rose” in Russian). Today we would have celebrated her 96th birthday.

I had two months to come to terms with this loss, and this post is not a call for sympathy. Thinking about my grandmother and her role in my life, I realized that most of you who reads this post today would have never met me, had I not inherited my Grandma’s love for perfume and decades later decided to write a story about my first and everlasting fragrant love – Lancôme Climat, the first bottle of which was gifted to me by her. So I want you all to “meet” her and help me to celebrate her life.

Rosa

Image: I doubt any other pictures of my grandmother are out there, so I wanted to leave a digital sillage of Rosa in the Universe. I took a picture of one of my favorite photos of her and Climat bottle that she gave me all those years ago.

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In the Search for the Perfect Vanilla, Part 1

I realized how uneventful recently my day-to-day life has been when I started questioning myself whether I was going a little overboard with a number of posts based on a single week’s vacation… It made me thinking that, as much as I enjoy my work, I should probably at least try to do something about it taking up most of the resources in my life so that I would have inspirations without having to fly two thousand miles. Meanwhile, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth and proceed with the post.

The last day of our Maui trip we spontaneously decided to go to Makawao – an old Upcountry town. A Guide book (yes, I still use a paper book despite Internet, smartphones and all other modern ways of getting useful travel information) highly praised town’s famous bakery (it was closed that day but we knew about it beforehand thanks to my iPhone) and promised “unexpected shopping finds” (not the exact quote since my book currently is traveling again with a friend).

Makawao Restaurant

Going from one small shop to the other, we agreed with the Guide: there were many interesting small boutiques selling not the usual touristy rubbish you see in most other places everywhere in Hawaii. One of the stores (Designing Wahine Emporium) surprised me by an unusual choice of perfumes. Most often in Hawaii you can find some local offerings that play on the most common ingredients – plumeria, pikake, coconut – or exploit ambience theme – Kauai or Maui Rain, Hawaiian Night Mist and so on. None of those that I’ve ever tried was good enough to come back with me even as a souvenir from the pleasant vacation. But in that store I came across a large selection from the TokyoMilk line and several Kai perfumes.

Since I’m not a big fan of either brand and I haven’t even heard about the third one I saw on the counter, I was a little skeptical about three perfumes from that unknown brand. I inspected them carpingly: the bottles reminded me of Comptoir de Sud (one more brand that has never won me over), and they had “Made in France” label but the name of the brand did not sound familiar. I smelled all three from a nozzle: they all smelled of vanilla, which wasn’t surprising since each of them had that ingredient in the name. I even liked what I smelled but there were no paper strips to try them and I was an hour drive away from the place where we stayed, so testing unknown perfumes on skin was completely out of question.

It was almost time to head back, so we left the store but decided to make a quick stop at the local coffee shop – Sip Me. If you ever get there, try their wonderful drink “Simply Coconut” – a smoothie-like blend made just from fresh coconut. As we were drinking it with vanilla shortbread cookies, I kept thinking how wonderful the cookies smelled… until I realized that the smell was coming from my fingers.

It was too late to return to the store and try to figure out which of the three perfumes transferred to my fingers; so for the last sunset of my vacation I had to satisfy my hankering for vanilla with Diptyque ‘s Eau Duelle, which was great in the warmth of Maui evening.

Maui Sunset

On the return from the vacation I spent some time looking for that brand, the name of which I completely forgot. Somehow I managed to figure it out, went to their website – and a week later I had a full set of La Maison de la Vanille‘s samples.

La Maison de la Vanille is a relatively new niche brand from France: they started in 2006. Based on how they allude to exotic locations and “distant shores” citing those as inspiration, either their perfumes do not contain specific vanillas from those destinations, or their marketing department’s not doing a great job. My money’s on the former.

Even though 10 out of 11 perfumes in the set contain vanilla, only 6 of them are vanilla-centric, so I concentrated on testing those 6 – Vanille Givree de Antilles, Vanille Noire du Mexique, Vanille Fleurie de Tahiti, Vanille Divine des Tropiques, Vanille Sauvage de Madagascar and Absolu de Vanille. I can’t say that I disliked any of the six I’ve tested.

Vanille Fleurie de Tahiti and Vanille Sauvage de Madagascar are too sweet for me to wear. Somebody who’s more tolerant to this type of sweetness might find more nuances in these two but most of the notes listed on Fragrantica are lost on me.

Vanille Noire du Mexique and Absolu de Vanille are less sweet than the previous two and have some additional facets that make them a little more interesting to wear but probably I won’t: they are just not distinct enough. But, again, your mileage…

I like Vanille Givree de Antilles: it reminds me a lot of Angel. But I already love, own and do not wear the original Angel and its Taste of Fragrance flanker, so I should probably skip this one (after I test the remaining juice in parallel with Angel – just to confirm my impression).

And Vanille Divine des Tropiques is a winner for me. I should admit: out of the promised amber, jasmine, hyacinth, tuberose, gardenia, heliotrope and vanilla I think I can smell amber, vanilla and some floral component though I fail to recognize. And if tuberose of any kind – be that the most natural or a Fracas-style one – is in there, it hides well from my tuberose-adverse nose. I’m thinking about getting the smallest bottle of Vanille Divine des Tropiques for the next time I crave vanilla or want a reminder of the great vacation I had this year.

La Maison de la Vanille Samples Set

If you like vanilla perfumes and haven’t tried this brand yet, at 10 euro for the set, including S&H, I do not see a good reason not to (if French isn’t your strong suit, I’d suggest using Chrome’s “Translate this page” functionality as I did).

Images: samples from the brand’s site; the rest – my own

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Black Lace in Tropics

If I were to name the best material for tropical clothing, I would be choosing between cotton, linen or silk, and I would be looking at it from the point of the comfort of wearing it in the heat and aesthetic. But, as I discovered, in the beginning of the last century there were serious debates in the Great Britain on that subject from the prospective of health and hygiene in tropical climates. People were writing serious articles in the Journal of Tropical Medicine arguing pros and cons of those fabrics that I mentioned above plus wool, about which I wouldn’t even think despite the existence of the term “tropical wool” (now I actually know what it means). The best color for tropical clothes was also widely discussed: wearing less heat-absorbing white/light colors was supported by one camp, while the other one advocated the idea of mimicking “black” skin (for the health reasons).

Also, it was interesting to learn that Burberry was producing and advertising clothes for working and traveling in the colonies, and that those weren’t cheap back then either.

Burberrys' Tropical Clothing Ad

From when I was a child, I knew that skin doesn’t “breathe” in clothes made from synthetic fiber (one of those wisdom that is passed from the older generation and usually isn’t questioned). A couple of years ago I had a chance to actually prove it to myself: as I was using a steamer on the clothes I had with me on a trip, I noticed how great it worked with my wool sweaters and my vSO’s cotton shirts but was completely useless for my blouse made of one of rayon’s variations.

It pains me to see that more and more summer clothes are produced from the synthetic or semi-synthetic materials. I understand that it’s cheaper than natural fabrics but how greedy are those companies that charge $100+ for a “summer” dress made of polyester?!

So why would I bring a black lace with me on my tropical vacation? I wouldn’t have if it hasn’t been … a lipstick.

Lipstick Queen Black Lace Rabbit

When I read about the upcoming release of Black Lace Rabbit, which was “playing on the idea of “going down a rabbit hole where nothing is what it seems” (a nod to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), I immediately felt drawn to it. And since I love Lipstick Queen‘s Hello Sailor (I’m finishing my second lipstick and plan to buy the third one), I ordered Black Lace Rabbit online without trying to find it in a store first.

In a tube Black Lace Rabbit looks solid black with golden flecks but on lips, unlike those cheap Halloween makeup lipsticks, Black Lace Rabbit is just a sheer and slightly shimmering tint – like a veil over the natural lip color. It seemed very appropriate for the tropical evening attire.

Lipstick Queen Black Lace Rabbit and Hello Sailor swatches

As I was taking pictures of Black Lace Rabbit, a perfectly color-coordinated with my photo session local cat visited our lanai. I think that with his third eye he perceived how much by that time in our vacation I was missing Rusty…

Maui Cat

Images: Burberrys’ ad – from the article referenced above; others – my own