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Beyond Mardi Gras – Perfume Shopping in New Orleans

For those who prefer quiet to over-the-top Mardi Gras celebrations, fall is the perfect time to visit New Orleans: the worst of the heat is over, restaurant reservations are fairly easy to get and the streets are passable, perhaps with the exception of Bourbon Street at night.

Mardi Gras Countdown

I recently spent 5 days in New Orleans. My home away from home was Hotel Mazarin, a lovely French Quarter boutique hotel on Bienville Street, half a block away from Bourbon Street. I highly recommend it for its central location, well-appointed and spacious rooms and common spaces, friendly staff and extensive breakfast spread.

As with most of my vacations since falling into the perfume rabbit hole, I keep my eyes and nose open for perfumes. Two perfumeries stand out as quintessential perfumeries and worth a visit (or two, or three…):

Hove Parfumeur  (434 Chatres St.)

In a Now Smell This Lazy Weekend Poll, I asked for New Orleans perfumery recommendations and someone mentioned Hove Parfumeur. The boutique is surprisingly boudoir-like despite the dark wood furnishings and stone floors. Hove carries its own line of fragrances; these are available in different formats and concentrations (perfume, cologne, solid) and can be added to lotion, shower gel and body oil. Some of the perfumes have a matching soap, candle and room spray. There are over 50 different fragrances split between the Standard Line and Luxury Line. This bifurcation did not make a difference to me other than the Luxury Line is a little bit more expensive than the Standard Line.

Hove Parfumeur

So how does one smell through 50 fragrances in one visit? On top of the counter, pre-dipped tester strips marked with the perfume names are laid out on top of a sheet of glass. As you cycle through the perfumes, push forward the strips you are interested in. The staff will then pull out the perfume bottles from the cabinets on the back wall and give you an opportunity to get up close and personal with the perfumes. Most of the perfumes had a classic feel and I had a difficult time narrowing them down but narrow down I did. I ended up with a shower gel fragranced with Corduroy, a travel atomizer of Mantrap, ½ dram each of Heliotrope, Spring Fiesta and Fascinator, plus a bunch of soaps (yes, I have a soap obsession).

Bourbon French Parfums (805 Royal St.)

Bourbon French Parfums was a serendipitous find. At the library, I came across Dollbaby (by Laura McNeal), a fictional coming-of-age book set in 1960s New Orleans. Normally, I would dive right into Chapter One but this time, I decided to read the Foreword. Lo and behold, the author mentioned that the perfumery in the book is based on a real perfumery that had since moved to Royal Street. You can just imagine my excitement when I found out that Bourbon French Parfums has a custom-blend perfume service!

Bourbon French Parfums is located on Royal Street, a 13-block stretch of fine jewelry stores, antique shops and boutiques, art galleries and restaurants. Upon walking into the nondescript storefront, there’s an eclectic mix of colorful perfume bottles and atomizers, counter tops and shelves full of perfume and perfumed body products. Similar to Hove, Bourbon French carries house perfumes (Parfums de Maison), soliflors and blends with names like Voodoo Love, Kus Kus and Quadroon.

Bourbon French Parfums

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to consult with custom-blend specialist Jasmine. The custom-blend perfume corner has several trays of dropper bottles, consisting of what looks like about 100 different essences. After asking me questions about my scent preferences, she smeared 3 essences on my forearm: spicy, sweet and powdery. We went through 4 mods over 40 minutes until I got my scent. Although the minimum size of a custom blend is 1 oz., I was able to get two ½ oz. bottles since the 4th mod is different due to the addition of fig to mod 3 to brighten it. My custom-blend included: white tea, lily-of-the-valley (those who know me are probably gasping right now), tuberose, vanilla, musk, black cherry, sandalwood, amber tobacco, patchouli and citrus.

I asked Jasmine for tips for others who may visit and utilize the custom-blend service. She strongly suggests making an appointment and don’t wear perfumed lotion the day of the appointment. The store closes daily at 5PM so make sure you allow time for your visit even if you are not going to get a custom-blend.

Custom Blend Perfume

Other stores I visited that sold perfumes:

Forever New Orleans (301 Royal St.) – Would you believe this store does not have a web-shop? In addition to New Orleans themed merchandise, the store also carries the Royal Apothic line of perfumes, hand creams and candles. I bought a travel spray of Royal Apothic Plains of Thistle in a beautiful green bottle and package. Do read Undina’s post on “minor brands” to see which Royal Apothic perfume she recently bought.

Dollz & Dames (216 Decatur St.) – This is a women’s wear and accessories boutique. It carries two lines of perfume: Juliette Has a Gun and Alice & Peter. Not many stores carry these brands so this is an opportunity to spritz and test instead of buying samples.

Dollz & Dames

Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo (739 Bourbon St.) – While searching for Day of the Dead rubber duckies (don’t ask), I walked into this shop and the counter-top had perfumes for sale – Magnolia, Sandalwood, Musk, Vanilla, Patchouli and Jasmine. The shop was really crowded and I was very uncomfortable inside and left without buying anything.

Day of the Dead Duck

My New Orleans Food Experience

As someone who cannot stand hot & spicy foods, I was concerned about not being able to enjoy the New Orleans Cajun and Creole foodie scene. And boy, was I wrong! Cajun is country-style food, a combination of French and Southern cuisines, with the most common dishes being jambalaya and crawfish etouffee, both served over rice. Creole food is a refined combination of European and African cuisines with rich sauces, herbs and more extensive use of seafood. While I ultimately stayed away from Cajun food, I had my share of Creole food, including lots of gumbo. There is no shortage of restaurants in the French Quarter. I particularly enjoyed dinner at Red Fish Grill (115 Bourbon St.) and Olivier’s (204 Decatur St.).

On the sweeter side, a visit to New Orleans is not complete without a visit to Café du Monde (800 Decatur St.) and enjoying a plate of powdered-sugar coated beignets while sipping aromatic chicory café au lait.

Tip: Don’t wait to be seated. Look for an open table, sit down, and the server assigned to your section will stop by to get your order. Also, if you are planning to visit Café du Monde’s store, it is across the street from the Café and it closes at 5.

Pastry

I hope you enjoyed reading about my perfume shopping, with a side helping of eating in New Orleans. I went to many more places worth visiting – the Louisiana State Museum at The Cabildo and at The Presbytere, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the World War II Museum, among others. I also had a chance to tour the Lower 9th Ward, the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Almost 10 years later, the area is still a ghost town with empty lots, perhaps every 10th house raised or rebuilt, but there are still no businesses (grocery stores, banks, gasoline stations) in the vicinity.

Tennessee Williams once wrote:

America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.

Everywhere else is Cleveland.

He may be right.

It’s an infamous Black Friday in a couple of days. For Undina’s monthly statistics post please tell: 1) in which country do you live? and 2) have you ever done any Black Friday or Cyber Monday perfume shopping (with Internet there are no borders for a good deal, are there)? You will be entered into the draw for 2 ml of hajusuuri’s custom blend perfume and a block of Pumpkin Spice soap. The draw is open until 11:59 PM PST on (Cyber) Monday, December 1st. The randomly selected winner will be announced in the next statistics post.

Images: all by hajusuuri

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Niche Perfumery System: Minor Brands

As it often happens with attempts to classify anything, while some elements easily fit the chosen methodology, there are always those that stick out of any category one tries to assign them to. A perfect example of it is “niche perfume brand.” People have different opinion on whether By Kilian can be considered niche brand or it is a high-end mainstream. Is Tauer Perfumes niche or indie brand? Where does Caron stand?

Still intuitively each of us has a general definition of niche perfumery for ourselves and for the purpose of this discussion it should be enough: we won’t be voting any plutos off the niche island.

Major Perfume Brands

If niche perfumery were the solar system, such brands as Serge Lutens, Frederic Malle (at least until now), Amouage, L’Artisan Parfumeur, Ormonde Jayne and many others would clearly be considered major planets: all perfumistas know these brands’ perfumes; new releases are widely discussed and reviewed; those bottles are coveted and having them in one’s collection seems to be prestigious. All of that is never openly declared and there are always exceptions to that “rule” but it’s a feeling I got from participating in many online communities – on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. At the same time there are many brands that seem to be not as prestigious. Many of them are recognized, people like and wear some of the perfumes but those are treated with less admiration. Minor planets.

Among my personal minor planets there are such brands as, for example, Lush, Tokyo Milk and Royal Apothic. I’m not sure why I feel dismissive towards these brands I just know that I do not follow their releases, do not try to get those perfumes for testing and might even pass them by while at a store. A case of perfumista snobbery maybe?

Last May, while participating in Los Gatos Wine Walk (they organize it twice a year there and it’s a great way to spend a day: good food to snack on, wine from interesting small wineries to taste, small shops and boutiques to visit), I stopped at Antropologie. It was probably all that great wine and food but when I saw a beautiful dark blue bottle I couldn’t resist trying that perfume straight on skin… Half an hour later I was back to the store buying a travel bottle of Dogwood Blossom by Royal Apothic.

Royal Apothic Dogwood Blossom

Brand’s website describes Dogwood Blossom as “Night blooming dogwood flower is immersed in rich notes of ginger, coco, honey, and tonka bean. Top notes: tobacco flower, warm amber; middle notes: cocoa, ginger, honey; base notes: teakwood.” I’ve never smelled dogwood tree blossom so I have no idea if the perfume represents it in any way. What I smell is warm gingered amber, sweet and spicy. Dogwood Blossom attracts attention, it’s not just “nice” or “pleasant” but it has character. Is it my favorite amber? Probably not. But I enjoy wearing it and think it would have been my loss if I hadn’t decided to end that nice Wine Walk event with a perfume purchase.

Do “minor brands” exist in your universe? Have any of the perfumes from those brands landed in your collection or do they still orbiting it?

Images: my own.

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Entertaining Statistics: On Tweeting

“But if someone tweets and nobody reads it, did it even happen?”
From the article on Gothamist

For various reasons I skipped my regular Entertaining Statistics post this month but there is a topic I planned to discuss for a while with some elements of statistics. Let’s see how entertaining it is.

Undina's Hand & Jellyfish When I created my Twitter account almost four years ago I couldn’t understand why people would use that service at all: even with just a handful of accounts I followed it seemed just a cacophony of words, ideas and strange labels. #Jabberwocky

I tried to participate in some chats and movements (#perfumetalk, #FF, klout) but it always felt a little strange, as if while standing in the middle of a general admission floor I was trying to talk to people scattered all over the place: some of them were busy talking to others or themselves, some just couldn’t hear me over the music and some had already left quietly.

Today, four years later, I still do not see too much sense in tweeting but I still do it from time to time. I get some random news from there but mostly I use it as an announcement medium – for my new blog posts, other blogs’ giveaways and the like. The main reason I do it is the idea that I want those who actually read my posts to get a notification about them any way they prefer – by e-mail, through Facebook, Twitter, RSS, Bloglovin or Google+.

I don’t remember why but last year I decided to use one of the free services that do statistics for your account – TwitterConter. It’s a simple application: all it does is a report once a week on how many followers you currently have, how many have you gained since the last report and a prediction of the next week’s followers count.

After looking through reports for the last 63 weeks I should say that I’m officially amazed:

  1. The prediction proved to be correct only 4 (four) times; let’s throw in five more with the discrepancy +/- 1. That gives us 9 correct predictions out of 63 – or 14%.
  2. Only on 4 occasions the prediction was more aspirational then the reality (6.3%) and I gained less than they thought I would. In 53 cases (84%!!!) the prediction was too pessimistic as to my ability to attract new followers.

At the same time these reports constantly try to entice me to read their great recommendations as to how to improve my pitiful progress in obtaining more followers. Even if it had been my goal, I wouldn’t have trusted the source taking into the account the success rate of their forecasts (and I don’t like their defeatist attitude!).

October 2014 Stats

Do you have a Twitter account? Do you use it? How?

Images: my own

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A Postcard from Undina: Happy Halloween! (and more)

After complaining in the recent post about hardships of my office life I decided to offset it with something positive.

Every year we do something special for Halloween. This year we decorated the office using the chosen theme – Ghosts.

Halloween 2014 Office Decorations

For the Halloween day we are doing our traditional office potluck lunch and as a joke will have an improvised Ghosts Bowling.

Ghosts Bowling

Also we hold a Halloween Nails contest. The rules were as following:

For the Halloween Nails contest you should paint/decorate at least one finger nail (and up to 10; toe nail designs will be disqualified) with any Halloween motifs – colors, patterns or images. You should do it yourself – so no professional applications or industrially produced full-nail stickers, wraps, etc.

Office voting is still going and the winner will get an official prize during the lunch event. But I decided to show you all the designs and ask to vote (you can click on each to see a bigger picture). My co-worker whose design collects the most of your votes before the end of Sunday will get a surprise prize from me on Monday.

Will you guess what design is mine?

As to perfumes (a perfume blog, I know), I want to participate in NST’s Friday community project “wear your quirkiest or weirdest or spookiest fragrance.” I’m sure when I read perfumes others had chosen for that day and their reasoning I’ll find at least a couple I could have worn but as I went through the perfumes I own I didn’t find any that felt “quirkiest or weirdest or spookiest” so I decided to follow our office’s theme and wear Escentric Molecules Molecule 01 – a ghost perfume from my parfumista horror story.

 

Happy Halloween!

UPD: Thank you everybody for voting! My co-worker whose nails design got the most votes (#10 – 5 votes) will get dark chocolate truffles as a prize.

Not a single person guessed my number but I won’t read too much into it. My design was #6:

HalloweenNails6b

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Serge Lutens Boxeuses: Round One – I won

A while ago I did a post on several perfumes’ performance under extreme temperatures. As posting a picture from my Bikram yoga studio was out of question, I used a shot of Kathleen Turner from Body Heat (and mentioned her in the post). Since then different combinations of “Kathleen Turner “, “hot” and “body” brought to my blog more than six hundred visitors – just twice less than my blog’s traffic from the word “perfume” among the search terms, which is ironic since it is a perfume blog. And, as I checked out, not a single visitor came to Undina’s Looking Glass by searching for “Serge Lutens” or “Boxeuses”, both of which were mentioned (and tagged!) in the same post with the hot actress named above.

It’s not my attempt to improve my search engine ratings or attract more visitors (I’m not sure if I got even a single returning reader from native search traffic) but rather a quest to improve the balance of these search terms out there that I influenced unintentionally.

Radio Pictures Chorus Girls

Have you ever tried explaining to somebody who has almost no understanding in something that you know well why it takes exactly the amount of time you say it will and can’t be done twice faster? I do not write much about my day job on my blog but to give you a better idea of how I felt I want to mention that it’s a technology-related job in a non-technological company.

Last twelve months were extremely busy and stressful for me: we were working on a big project. It started with a series of meetings during which I had to fight for the realistic schedule. Preparing to those meetings was nerve-wracking: I knew the project would be a much more complex than my audience could comprehend or was willing to acknowledge; I knew they would be pushing for a shorter cycle and expecting an enthusiastic “Yes, we can” but I just couldn’t promise them something that wasn’t achievable.

One morning while dressing up for the Big Meeting I tried to choose what perfume to wear. Normally I would wear something discreet (e.g. Chanel No 19 parfum) but I knew that meeting would be a fight. Boxeuses! I do not wear perfumes as mood enhancers, I consider them ornamental. But in this case the name itself made me smile: it fit just perfectly!

Serge Lutens Boxeuses

I’m not sure what it was – a combination of the birch tar smokiness and dark fruit sweetness, an extra smile I got from the perfume name or my brilliantly performed presentation but I won that round and my schedule was approved.

Since then Boxeuses by Serge Lutens became my perfume for tough meetings. With that complex project my technical group was right on schedule while the data group, the manager of which was one of those pushing for unrealistic deadlines, spent extra seven weeks after that finishing their part. It took me a small-decant-worth number of unpleasant meetings and a lot of efforts.

…

The year isn’t over yet and it looks like I’ll need to consider either changing my job or buying a bottle of Boxeuses…

 

For real reviews read Grain de Musc, Bois de Jasmin and Kafkaesque.

Images: Women boxing on a roof, 1938 – I’m not sure who is the author, but here I found the best information about it; perfume – hajussuri (from whom I also received the decant that got me through this year – thank you!)

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Know-How: Making Perfumes Last Longer

Most of us own enough perfumes to last us if not for the rest of our lives but at least for a decade or so. We have supplies to make ourselves any number of decants and purses to carry those decants for perfume touch-ups during the day. But still again and again a question of how to prolong life of those fleeting substances is raised in blogs, perfume forums and magazines. Every time I hear about making anything last longer, I think of this Garfield cartoon:

Garfield June 30 1998

On a more serious note, one of the constantly repeated advices is the same one that is usually given for a general well-being and skin care, namely hydration/moisturizing.

Before you apply your perfume, make sure that your skin is super moisturized.

Fragrance lasts much longer on moisturized skin.

Applying fragrance-free moisturizer to your body is an excellent preparation for applying fragrance

If you have dry skin, moisturize it before applying your perfume (use a fragrance free moisturizer); it will help your scent last a lot longer.

Do these sound familiar? For many years for me it was a given, I never questioned the wisdom. Besides, I routinely apply body moisturizer after each shower so I never actually had a chance to check the supposition.

A couple of months ago in a post on Andrew Smells I read a passage that surprised me:

By applying moisturiser after applying your fragrance spray you significantly increase the longevity of the fragrance, in other words you smell good for longer.

I questioned the author if he just misspoke while describing an application order, but Andy replied: “No, that’s the order we were taught.” (and even gave me a link to an article with the same advice; you can look it up in his comment if you follow the link). “Maybe it doesn’t make much difference? Have you tried both orders?” he asked.

It got me curious and I conducted a series of experiments. Petite Cherie by Annick Goutal was a perfect candidate: I like it a lot but it doesn’t last on my skin for too long.

Annick Goutal Petite Cherie

I tried several different combinations (all after shower): 1) just perfume on bare skin; 2) an unscented body lotion and then perfume on top of it; 3) perfume directly on skin and then a layer of an unscented body lotion; 4) a matching body lotion and then perfume on top of it; 5) perfume directly on skin and then a layer of a matching body lotion. Out of these five runs I got just two distinct results:

Perfume placed (#1) directly on bare washed skin, (#2) on top of an unscented body lotion or (#3) under an unscented body lotion stayed on my skin its usual 2 hours and then became a pleasant skin veil noticeable only if to press my nose into my wrist.

Perfume applied either (#4) on top of or (#5) under a matching body lotion, even though loosing projection within the same 2 hours (maybe 2.5), stayed as a well-recognizable skin scent probably twice longer than from perfume not layered with a matching lotion.

But the most important result was that I didn’t notice any improvement in longevity due to added moisturizer – be it on top of or under perfume. Of course, mine is just anecdotal evidence. That’s why I’m asking you:

Have you personally experienced a prolonged perfume life on your skin after applying a moisturizer?

 

Images: Garfield from the official site; perfume – my own.

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A Postcard from Undina: Dawes at Gundlach Bundschu Winery

Dawes at Gundlach Bundschu Winery

And now it seems like the unraveling has started too soon,
Now I’m sleeping in hallways and I’m drinking perfume
And I’m speaking to mirrors and I’m howling at moons
While the worse and the worse that it gets.

The only reason I’ve chosen that song and this quote, as it shouldn’t be hard to guess, was it mentioning perfume. Neither I share this song’s sentiment in my day-to-day life, nor it felt like that in the warmth of the October night on the winery courtyard while we were dancing to the music of Dawes and drinking… no, not perfume but a very nice Gundlach Bundschu Pinot Noir. We even got a couple of rain drops, which I tried to pitch to my vSO as a promise of an upcoming less dry winter – just to make him feel [even] better. I don’t think he bought it. But we both enjoyed the show and it was he who brought that perfume line to my attention (live rock performance isn’t the best way to listen to a song for the first time).

I like this acoustic performance of the song When My Time Comes much more – it’s more comprehensible.

Perfume for the night – Jo Malone Saffron. For an outdoor concert I could easily get away with a bolder choice but I had to be mindful of a friend who thinks she has issues with perfumes. So I dabbed just a little of it on my wrist. It was pleasant and didn’t clash with anything (or anybody). But I would definitely prefer it sprayed. With abandon.

Image: my own

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Perfumes of my Maui Vacation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maui 2014 Parfumes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Image: my own

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Entertaining Statistics: September 2014

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

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

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

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

Stats September 2014

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

Stats September 2014

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

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

Shopping in Boston Draw Results

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

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

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

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

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

Seek Cat

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

 

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

Maui 2014 Kaanapali Alii

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

Maui 2014: Perfumes

 

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

 

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