Meow meow mew meow meow mrrr aow aow meow mew meow meow aow meow mew meow aow mrrr!
Mrrrrrr meow,
Rusty *
* (loosely translated from feline)
Happy Valentine’s Day to all the kind Undina’s friends whose compliments to my fluffiness and good nature keep tasty treats coming my way!
With Love,
Rusty
This post is a final installment in the “birthday-perfume-blogger-bash” suggested by Asali and supported by Ines. For the last couple of weeks I couldn’t get rid of this song.
I love my birthdays and it has always been this way. Looking back I can’t remember a single year when I wasn’t looking forward to it or hadn’t enjoyed it.
When I was little my mother always managed to leave a present next to my bed while I was asleep so I would wake up to something wonderful. When I got older I remember getting from Grandma something great and hard to find (which at that time in the country was almost anything worth getting,) so from my friends I usually requested to bring just flowers which at winter were expensive enough to be a gift on their own. In my adult life I refuse to request birthday gifts: I can buy for myself everything that can be gifted to me by friends so I’d rather be surprised.
The first gift this year I got from my friend and a talented young designer Valerie who created images for our blogging project (see above). I’m going to use it as my logo.
Perfumes as gifts… My grandmother gifted me with my first bottle of my all-times favorite Lancome Climat. For many years it was the only perfume that I associated with everything fun – birthdays, dates or holidays.
Many years later my vSO gave me for my birthday Vera Wang perfume. Despite the first-time-wearing debacle for many years it was my go-to perfume for special occasions.
Three years ago I got another perfumed gift from my vSO – Antonia’s Flowers Tiempe Passate. This one hasn’t become my party scent but I considered it as a special day-wear fragrance.
I’m not superstitious. I do not believe much into cosmic connections, predetermination and other such things. I believe in coincidences.
February 12, 1947: A major event was held at 30, avenue Montaigne in Paris, where Christian Dior presented his first fashion show. With his flower women and bright colors, the Designer launched a fresh fashion trend. “It’s a New Look!” exclaimed Carmel Snow, Editor-in-Chief at Harper’s Bazaar, thus christening the Designer’s inimitable style.
From Dior’s website
Last year on my trip to Las Vegas, without reading that information above, I bought Dior New Look 1947 exactly on February 12, my birthday. It was my gift to myself in addition to my first Guerlain love that I found there – Cruel Gardenia. I absolutely adore Cruel Gardenia and admire New Look 1947. I wear the former when I dress up and feel pretty and the latter when I [want to] feel elegant and sophisticated.
I do not have a preferred way of celebrating my birthdays: I like everything from large loud parties with music, dancing and laughing to quiet evenings with my vSO on our birthday trips. This year I hope to have a little of everything. And definitely I’m gonna have some fun!
Oh, and I treated myself to one more perfume from Guerlain. Care to venture a guess which one?
Images: Aquarius mermaid – Valerie Rodriguez, all others – my own.
Imagine: magazines and newspapers without a single ad; public TV programs and sports events uninterrupted by commercials; downtowns and highways without any billboards in sight; no SALE, Everyday Value or CLEARANCE signs in stores.
All those aren’t scenes from a fiction [unti-]utopian book: that was my life until I was in my early twenties. In the country where I lived there was no advertising, no competing brands and, to think of it, not too many choices for any goods or services.
As a result products’ packaging was minimalistic, not too elaborate or appealing. It was mostly functional. That’s why many products had the same packaging for decades: matches, condensed milk, salt, dairy, etc.
After moving to the US the biggest shopping challenge for me (after figuring out what “Paper or plastic?” means) wasn’t even choosing the right product from a dozen of similar ones packaged differently by each brand but getting the same product every next time I needed to replenish something. I stopped registering any progress in razor blades after the number reached four. I came to peace with buying a new type of face cream from the same brand every couple of years: I can at least hope they fight my aging process better and better with every new jar (though I’m still angry with several major brands for switching from glass to plastic – at those prices plastic feels too cheap, I still remember how nice old heavy glass jars and bottles felt in hand). But a toothpaste? Sanitary napkins? Paper towels? Do they really improve those every two-three months?
Being annoyed by the necessity to solve a type/size/price riddle every time at a store, I remember complaining that I wasn’t a stupid consumer with short attention span who wouldn’t remember what she bought previously and needed to be constantly razzle-dazzled by “new”, “better” or “improved” qualifiers.
Thinking about perfumes and statistics this moth I started wondering whether perfume brands were really wrong producing 1,000+ new perfumes per year. Are at least we, perfume enthusiasts, immune to the marketing push strategy?
I took a closer look at my full bottles purchases – over the last two years (since I started this blog) and for 2012-YTD. Not to divulge the absolute number of the perfumes that joined my collection I’m operating with %% from the total perfumes bought during those two periods (but actual bottle numbers were big enough to be representative).
As you can see, I’ve bought a lot of recent releases: more than 50% of the perfumes added to my collection during the recent two years appeared on the market in the last five years. It skews even further towards new perfumes for the last year purchases – more than 60% are newer perfumes. And there are at least three perfumes from 2012 on my “to buy” list. Meanwhile some of the bottles from older days stay on that list without even moving up. So it seems that with me the perfume industry is hitting the target. What about you?
I do not expect that normal people keep all that information handy but let’s try something simpler:
What is the release year of your most recent full bottle perfume purchase?
Image: Soviet products – compilation from multiple sources; stats – my own.
Ten years ago I knew nothing about the existence of a niche world in perfumery. When I got a sample of Tiempe Passate by Antonia’s Flowers among other samples with a perfume purchase, it was just that – another sample.
At the time I was arrogant enough to think that I knew most of the modern perfumes and could find online any of those for less than available from department stores. So I was a little surprised that I didn’t know the brand and never heard about that perfume.
The scent was very different from everything I knew and liked then but unlike many other fragrances that left me indifferent or were resolutely classified “not for me” this one caught my attention and kept drawing me in.
By the time I’d used up my Tiempe Passate sample I knew that I wanted more. That was when I found out that it could not be bought not only from those mass-market online discount sites but also from B&M stores.
Several years later I finally found Antonia’s Flowers website and ordered a set of samples. I was curious to try other perfumes from the line but the main purpose was to see if I still liked Tiempe Passate because $140 for 60 ml seemed totally unapproachable.
The minute I put Tiempe Passate on I felt an awful disappointment: not because it didn’t smell the way I remembered – it just didn’t smell at all! All other samples were fine but this one had just a faint smell of alcohol. I wrote to the company asking if it was possible that the sample just was off. They were surprised but sent me another one. This time it smelled great.
Three years ago my vSO got me a bottle of Tiempe Passate for my birthday. And it was the first niche perfume in my collection.
Tiempe Passate by Antonia’s Flowers – created by Norbert Bijaoui in 1999, notes include (I’ll go with NTS’s list) bergamot, clementine, sage, mimosa, cyclamen, Montauk rose, white orris, cedar, vetiver and amber.
Tiempe Passate starts really strong and almost unpleasant for the first minute. All I can smell is alcohol and something plastic-y or rubber-y. And then it settles and smells… just wonderful. For hours Tiempe Passate is a very pleasant skin scent with unexpected bursts of projection. I’ve got multiple compliments while wearing it.
In my two years anniversary post I mentioned that there were some personal posts that haven’t got as many readers as I’d want. One of such posts – Elusive Perfume – in addition to (hopefully) being entertaining, will explain what happened with me and the first Tiempe Passate sample vial.
I didn’t figure it out until today: though the list doesn’t mention Iso E Super, it is there, I’m sure. I tested two of my favorite perfumes in parallel – Molecule 01 by Escentric Molecules and Tiempe Passate by Antonia’s Flowers and I have to concede that the latter is just a nicely embellished variation of the former. And Iso E Super is exactly what I was enjoying in both (on those occasions when I could smell it). And now I know why I was having a hard time trying to describe what Tiempe Passate smelled like. Well, at least I’m being consistent in my fragrant crushes.
Even though I’m slightly disappointed I still think Tiempe Passate is worth trying. Barney’s carries Antonia’s Flowers line. Or you can order samples from the brand’s website for a more than reasonable price.
There are not too many reviews for this perfume. I was surprised that Robin (NST) liked it (though it was many years ago).
Do you remember your first niche perfume?
Images: my own
This day two years ago I dared to publish my first story on this blog – a story of my first and still lasting perfume love. Actually, it was my first story written in English ever. Those who had a similar experience with giving a public speech or writing in a foreign language know exactly how nerve-wrecking it felt (and those who hadn’t can imagine). Has it got much easier now? Ask me again in two years.
Since the beginning I published 164 posts – more than I thought I would. My most read post is Coco Noir… Light by Chanel (I won’t even link to it!) written just a half-year ago. This is both very symptomatic and sad. Is there a post I wished had more readers? I would probably want those of the readers who are my friends to read some of the more personal posts I wrote, but I do not want to list them today. As to the outside world that comes to my blog from search engines (most popular search was “las vegas strip map” but it fades if you add numbers for all variations of “coco”, “chanel” and “noir” that brough people to my blog), I’d want them to read the post that started Perfume Shopping around the World page (it has been recently updated here and on all participating sites) and to use information from those posts on different blogs.
Why Undina? Why Looking Glass?
I’ve been asked that question more than once. So here’s how it went.
Are you familiar with FidoNet and BBSs? … Kidding, I’m not that old experienced. But long before forums, blogs and social networks, chat rooms were my online habitat. For the first chat room I frequented I chose a gender-neutral nickname and used to communicate in such a way that it was hard to tell if I was a man or a woman (which wasn’t easy with my native language specifics).
When one of my friends invited me to visit a new role-playing chat room that he found and liked, I got stuck on the registration page: I had no idea who I wanted to be. I was ready for a more feminine character but that was it. Ундина (transliterated into Roman alphabet Undina, in English – Undine) was my spur-of-the-moment choice. I don’t know why I decided to be a water nymph but it seemed a fitting choice for a community inhabited by vagabond knights, friendly ghosts and talking animals. The host of the chat was an incorporeal being Nechto (something/somebody unknown), so the chat room was called У Нечта (At Nechto’s).
I stayed in that chat room and became a regular. My character transformed into rather a mermaid than a nymph. If you’ve never belonged to a half-closed moderated chat room it’s hard to explain what people were doing there… We joked; we discussed books and philosophical dilemmas; we even staged improvised theatrical performances. We’d created our own mythology and even furnished the room. Of course everything was imaginary, so it lived in memory of participants and was re-iterated for newcomers gaining more details and becoming a little more real with every next tale.
One of the elements of the room was a magical looking glass on the wall. I (Undina) would swim into the room from it and dive into it to leave. I would conjure necessary things from there – a tea set or a box of chocolates for the imaginary tea party; I would threaten to get a paddle out of there and beat up whoever was misbehaving. It was a useful piece of the interior.
I enjoyed years spent in that community, and I have the fondest memories of that time. So when a decade later I was choosing an online identity for the Perfumeland I decided to go with Undina (though I had to add BA – stands for SF Bay Area where I live – since the exact one had been taken). And I resurrected my looking glass when I started this blog.
What’s coming?
For my birthday many years ago a friend gave me my own domain. It currently redirects traffic to this blog but since it’s done not through WordPress it’s done half-way. In a couple of days I plan to switch my blog from https://undinaba.wordpress.com/ to www.undina.com officially. It shouldn’t affect e-mail subscriptions or an RSS feed but if you do not hear from me in a week come back and check.
What stays the same?
Everything stated on my About page will stay true for Undina’s Looking Glass. Let’s keep building the better perfume community together.
And of course there still will be pictures of Rusty.
The week was very cold again but warm sunlight put some life back into my lemmings (though, as you can see below, some of them are rather grumpy).
Normally I do not publish on a schedule. Whenever something is published, you, my readers and my friends, come over during the next three-four days to read and sometimes comment. But since I know now that I will publish this Thursday, January 24 – please consider it an official invitation to stop by on that date (or three-four days later).
Lemmings
Judith (the unseen censer) makes Decennial Collection from Luckyscent sound so appealing that I almost want to buy those samples: I’m going to wear all four of the perfumes in the Decennial collection, and I particularly enjoy contemplating them together, because to me, together they are a string quartet of woods: sandalwood, cedar, green young wood like ash or vine, and mesquite. I like the scent of wood, from carved wooden bowls to antique rocking chairs, and I like how these talented perfumers have mixed those woods with everything from flowers to foods to make four beautiful perfumes. Almost but not quite: I know that Luckyscent is in this business for money but something bothers me with such a hefty mark-up on the samples for their own perfumes. I’ll wait for splits.
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Musette (Perfume Posse) reviews the upcoming release from one of my favorite brands Amouage Beloved Man. Even though I usually prefer their feminine (or at least unisex) offerings I look forward to trying this one.
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Vanessa (Bonkers about Perfume): Rima XI is a gauzy web of spices backlit by a soft, sheer glow. It is pale and interesting, with a warm hum from its amber and vanilla base. It should be worn by heroines of romantic novels draped languidly on chaises longues, though never in a dead faint.
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Jessica (Tinsel Creations) shares the picture of her new bracelet (and a link to the online store). It’s so not my style but I so want it…
Laughs
Neil (The Black Narcissus) made me laugh not once but twice this week: once on his own blog (I do not want to give away anything, just read the story and I hope you’ll smile) and once in his guest post on Olfactoria’s Travels (you just have to read at least the part with his review for 7 Billion Hearts if you haven’t read it yet!)
Loves
Kay (That Smell) reviews one of my most happy loves – Bronze Goddess by Estee Lauder: Bronze Goddess reminds me of clean, fresh linens, coconut, and a tropical holiday. It dries down with a more mellow coconut note and a classy white musk with sandalwood that keeps the fragrance away from “teenaged girl coconut” and more in the territory of “grown-ups coconut”… I didn’t review this perfume so I won’t suggest reading my story but (those of my readers who didn’t follow me in 2011) take a look at the picture of Bronze Goddess with Dragon< Fruit>s I took in Hawaii.
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Parfumista (Parfumistans blogg) reviews one of my new loves (though she likes it much less than I): In the City of Sin starts with a sparkling clean bergamot-cardamom dominated accord. Then some natural smelling fruity nots follows, there are no harsh chemical notes, instead the fruity notes are round, soft, fresh and perfectly ripe. The fruits reminds me of a tamer version of the fruity notes of Bombay Bling from Neela Vermeire creations.
Ross: All right, Monica categorizes her towels. How many categories are there?
Joey: Everyday use.
Chandler: Fancy.
Joey: Guest.
Chandler: Fancy guest.
Ross: Two seconds…
Joey: Uh, eleven!
Ross: Eleven. Unbelievable. Eleven is correct.
.
TV show Friends, Episode 4.12
I’m not sure from whom I got it – maybe it was my grandmother since mom has never been like that – but as long I remember myself I always put things into categories. For many years I had Work Clothes, Weekend Wear, Evening Attire and some smaller categories in between (e.g. Tropical Vacation Wardrobe).
Usually those categories didn’t intersect: to the office I would wear mostly suits (not because it was required but because I liked to); my party clothes were very dressy and my weekend-running-errands clothes were something comfortable and not demanding. As you can imagine, there wasn’t much ground for a crossover between categories.
Over years I noticed that the most willingly I would be buying clothes for going out. It was much easier to justify spending money on a beautiful cocktail dress or a dressy “dry clean only” blouse than on a sweater or a top I would wear while shopping or going for a walk in the city. The irony is that I don’t have that many occasions to wear my nice clothes. But when you have something hanging in your closet for years, even though you’ve worn it on counted occasions, you still feel it is old and want to buy something new.
My perfume collection follows the same trail: I have a group of perfumes that I never wear to work; I consider them my “special occasions wear,” and I feel more inclined to buy those. The problem is that my life doesn’t consist of those special occasions in the proportion to the number of perfumes designated for that purpose.
To give you an idea, my dress-up perfumes are Amouage Ubar, Gold and Memoir; Ormonde Jayne Ta’if, Guerlain Cruel Gardenia, Puredistance Antonia or Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady. And daily perfumes are Jo Malone (almost anything), Annick Goutal Petite Cherie, Prada Infusion d’Iris or Byredo La Tulipe.
Once I realized I had that attitude problem with my wardrobe, I started shifting the shopping emphasis from the for-when-the-Queen-comes-to-dinner to I-wouldn’t-mind-meeting-my-most-judgmental-girlfriend-now apparel. I’m just in the beginning of my transformation but I hope I’m heading there.
But while with evening gowns and my day-to-day life I have just one choice: not to buy … more than two of them for each occasion I actually get to wear them, with perfumes it’s slightly different. I can either persuade myself to wear my “dressy” perfumes more often, or I can start buying those perfumes I think are appropriate to wear without a Royal Presence.
Or I can wear Amour de Palazzo by Jul et Mad.
Amour de Palazzo by Jul et Mad – created in 2012 by Dorothée Piot and Maison Robertet, notes include pepper, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, absolute of violette, Atlas cedarwood, leather, Indonesian patchouli, labdanum, musk, oud, amber, papyrus and animal castoreum.
I discovered this perfume during my visit to MinNY last year (see my “New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!”). I mentioned in the post that I liked Amour de Palazzo but didn’t get a sample of it. Soon after that I got a very kind offer from Madalina Stoica, the brand’s co-owner, to send me a travel spray of this perfume. Not for the review, just because.
Amour de Palazzo is an amazing perfume. It is both very pronounced and discreet at the same time. It is rich but not loud. It is luxurious but not bling-y. I’m not a huge agarwood fan but in this perfume it’s just in the right dose for me. When I wear it I feel as if I’m wearing the most delicate silk lingerie and it doesn’t really matter if it’s under a sheath dress or jeans and a chunky sweater (but the latter of a very good quality, of course – my imaginary friend might be very judgmental).
My only complaint about Amour de Palazzo and the brand in general is that it’s only available in one size (50 ml beautiful bottle + 7 ml refillable travel atomizer that is also very nice). Most perfumistas (read – those who will know about the brand and are potential customers) do not need 50 ml of almost any perfume. We will be fine: we’ll do splits. But I think the brand might benefit from selling smaller sizes – even if those will be more expensive per ml than a bigger bottle.
Images: my own.
Update: Jul et Mad introduced two new sizes for their perfumes – 5 ml and 20 ml bottles. Both are extremely cute. Bravo!
It has been a while since I did my weekly round-up post. It wasn’t because there was a lack of great posts falling into one of the categories I cover: Lemmings – posts that make me want to try (or to buy) a perfume they describe; Laughs – posts that made me laugh (or at least smile); Loves – posts about perfumes I love and wear. But a holiday season combined with the year-end work running-around made my blogs reading irregular and I was usually catching up days later.
Now I’m back and here’s the first post in the series for this year. It’s unusually cold in our area (0C/32F at night – I know, all of you in places with real winters laugh at that but for us it’s really cold) so I decided to blame the weather for the absence of any lemmings: they must have frozen somewhere half way to me.
If you were to name one perfume that recently conjured lemmings for you what would it be?
Laughs
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Vanessa (Bonkers about Perfume): So today for a laugh, I decided to speak the names of some iconic perfumes into Siri and see what it made of them…
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Blacknall (aperfumeblog by Blacknall Allen): These Aliens are no slouches at procreating, it seems, and I remain the only one alienated – a stranger, it would seem, in a strange, smelly land.
Loves
Blacknall (aperfumeblog by Blacknall Allen) writes not about a single perfume but about the House that I like: Which will be the next great perfume house? The house that will define early 21st century tastes in scent?
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Wearing and testing perfumes every day and getting monthly statistics numbers create some general feeling about where you stand on your likes and dislikes but nothing puts it into prospective better than the complete year data. As I was contemplating this post I was both excited and scared: what would I discover about myself when I compile all the results?
In 2012 I wore and tested more perfumes than in 2011: 414 vs. 376 perfumes from 119 vs. 110 brands. But since starting from December 2011 I was recording the type of use – wear1 vs. testing2 I’m able to get deeper into from where those numbers come.
Quick 2012 stats:
* Different perfumes worn1: 138 from 50 brands on 348 occasions;
* Different perfumes tested2: 356 from 114 brands on 572 occasions;
* Perfumes I tried for the first time: 245 (it was 303 in 2011);
I wear perfumes I like and own almost every day. Perfumes I reached for the most in 2012 (with times worn): Dior New Look 1947 (11), Chanel №19# EdT & parfum (10), Chanel Cuir de Russie (8), Guerlain Cruel Gardénia (8), Antonia’s Flowers Tiempe Passate (7), Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Vermeille# (7), Yosh Ginger Ciao (7), Hermès Voyage d’Hermès (6), Les Parfums de Rosine Rose d’Amour (6), Tom Ford Violet Blonde (6), Chanel Bois des Iles (5), Guerlain Encens Mythique d’Orient (5), Lancome Climat (5), Neela Vermeire Creations Bombay Bling! (5), Parfum d’Empire Ambre Russe (5), Tom Ford Amber Absolute (5).
Counting my Lemmings (don’t fall asleep!)
In the Weekly Roundup series this year I mentioned 46 perfumes I was looking forward to testing. I still haven’t tried 19 of those (5 haven’t been released yet). My most cherished lemmings are: Ann Gerard Perle de Mousse, Ramón Monegal Impossible Iris, Parfumerie Generale L’Ombre Fauve and Armaini Privé Cuir Noir. I’m still trying to avoid paying for samples so if you have any extras for those mentioned above – let’s swap!
Out of those 27 lemmings that I managed to try I liked 15 and thought that the rest were fine – so no big disappointments.
Seeing 2012 off
Speaking of disappointments, I was surprised to read on many blogs that 2012 wasn’t a good year perfume-wise for many perfumistas. My feeling was that there were many perfumes that I liked. I went through the list of perfumes from 2012 (only those that I’ve tried, not all 1,300+). I liked very much at least 25 perfumes released last year: Amouage Beloved and Opus VI; Annick Goutal Nuit Étoilée; By Kilian Amber Oud, Bamboo Harmony, Forbidden Games and In the City of Sin; Cognoscenti Scent No.16 – Tomato Leather and Scent No.19 – Warm Carrot; Dior Grand Bal; Diptyque Volutes; DSH Perfumes Euphorisme d’Opium, Ma Plus Belle Histoire d’Amour and The Beat Look; Guerlain Encens Mythique d’Orient and Myrrhe et Délires; Ineke Hothouse Flower; Jo Malone Blackberry & Bay and White Lilac & Rhubarb; Jul et Mad Amour de Palazzo; L’Artisan Parfumeur Seville a l’aube; Parfums MDCI Chypre Palatin; Serge Lutens Santal Majuscule; Six Scents Napa Noir and Tom Ford Ombre de Hyacinth. I have four full bottles and seven decants to show for these “likes” and I’m considering several more. Another 15 were not bad; I just didn’t love them.
I’ve done two full years of these monthly stats posts. I wonder if I can still find an interesting angle of analyzing data I collect. We’ll see.
1 For the testing I apply a perfume to one area on my arms easily available for the repetitive sniffing. But, most likely, I’m the only one who can smell it. I can test two, sometimes even more perfumes at the same time.
2 When I wear a perfume I apply it to at least three-four points and usually I plan to spend at least 4-8 hours with the same scent so I’m prepared to re-apply if the original application wears off.
# These were in the Top 10 of 2011 as well.
Images: my own
New Year is my most favorite holiday and I like it for itself – a festive celebration, good food and gifts that we exchange – and not as much for what it stands – the beginning of something new, hopes for the better next attempt, etc.
Happy New Year to all my friends and readers! I hope to see you next year.
Undina
Undina's Looking Glass 