Shalimar

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Shalimar Reflections

Hi Crew. We are in the summer heat here in Sydney. It’s gorgeous but there are days when I’d like to shirk my skin and lie around just bones under the fan. The heat itself is fine but the humidly tends to have me wilt just a little. So how does Shalimar fit into the heat? Well, I have a bottle of the extrait on my desk. It was a gift from one of my dearest friends. Whenever the world gets overwhelming I give myself a swipe on my forearm and suddenly everything seems less spectacularly oppressive. This year has had some significant bumps, mainly business related. Though I’ve run businesses for years I’m not actually very good at it. Fortunately my ideas have been good enough to push through my basic inability to function. Of course with every changing of the guard there are growing and dying pains. Study has also been a big part of the year and I’m poor at focus and time management, HA! That’s being generous. Seriously. Add to that the many plates spinning at any given time. Trivia, apartments, blogging perfume, cleaning house and laundry PLUS now studying and doing book reviews. One wheel gets shaky and my whole train collapses in a heap. I know, definitely the problems of the wealthy. I’m super grateful for everything we have. Also, fully acknowledged how fortunate we are in terms of home, work, love and friends. Jin recently moved up and across at his work and if I can get my bloody Celebrant Course done then there will be an extra cash stream to pick up the rising interest cost of the mortgage.

Sorry, I got sidetracked.

Shalimar Reflections

Shalimar and Reflections

There are dozens of note list but here’s a pretty good summation:
Bergamot, lemon, iris, jasmine, rose, patchouli, vetiver, opopanax, tonka bean, frankincense, sandalwood, musk, civet, ambergris, leather, vanilla

This evening the world got overwhelming. Just too much input and it left me breathless.

SWIPE

Seriously, the relief to just let myself revel in the inimitable beauty of Shalimar extrait. Suddenly my shoulders unclench, my back straightens and I can quietly go have a lie down under the fan for 15 minutes and get lost in the fragrance.

Shalimar is also chock full of happy memories of Mum and some of her girlfriends that wore it as daywear. Big fragrant hugs and them all laughing, planning, chattering, sniping over lunch or afternoon tea. Not always happy, there were meetings of solidarity for all of life’s aches and pains, home troubles, illness or financial woes. Still, though there were tears, the love held them all together.

It has since become one of my go-to event fragrances. The event might be a big gig, party, dinner or it may be to make a mundane event like groceries and cleaning into something wonderful.

So with Shalimar I get not only to drift off with the scent but also a plethora of memories.

Do you have a fragrance that gives you surcease but also is full of magical memories?
Portia xx

 

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Pickles and Vintage Shalimar

It has been a while since Pickles visited us with a story about her human, but she’s back to help us to see off this year. (Undina)

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Decades ago, when my Nana was in elementary school, her best friend’s mother, knowing of her love of perfume, gifted her a flask bottle of Guerlain Shalimar EDC. For a young girl with a modest perfume wardrobe of Avon and drugstore beauties, that was a prized possession. My Nana wore it to her heart’s content, but it was never replaced as there were always other shiny jewels in the world of perfume beckoning her. However, Shalimar always reminded her of her best friend’s mom, who sadly passed away much too young from breast cancer.

Guerlain Shalimar EdC

A few years ago, one of Nana’s pals from Australian Perfume Junkies surprised her for her birthday and mailed her the same flask as a birthday gift, knowing that my Nana had a strong scent memory attached to it. My Nana still loves how it smells and is secretly amused that she had the audacity to wear this bold and sexy fragrance out in public as a young girl. Her vintage formulation is from the 1960s and is certainly not as tame as the current one.

Pickles and ShalimarPersonally, I really love the bottle and enjoy posing with it. I think it’s aesthetically pleasing to the eye and smells pretty darn good on my Nana too.

 

What are your thoughts on Shalimar? Have you ever received a treasured perfume gift from a friend?

 

Until next time, furry kisses and hugs,

Pickles Bella

Shalimar EdT by Guerlain: Current
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Shalimar EdT by Guerlain: Current

Hi Crew, Shalimar seems to have been part of my life forever. That Guerlain released it nearly 100 years ago in 1925 and won the Paris World Fair design award for the bottle was a particularly auspicious start.

Mum and a couple of her girlfriends were Shalimar wearers. It was the scent of daytime and coffee catch up hugs in my early years. Funnily, when I was working as a squirt bitch I made Mum start wearing Samsara so she’d stand out in her crowd. When I started properly down the fragrant rabbit hole it was a big surprise that Shalimar was such a revered scent. Going back and revisiting it was a revelation. It seems to hold the highest place in my heart, nose and brain. Seriously weird that I became such a collector when my favourite perfume has been with me all along.

In the years of collecting I have amassed a Shalimar specific collection. From EdC to extrait, a bunch of the flankers and many vintages. It became a bit of an obsession for a while because every version has its own personality. They have all aged, been cared for and kept differently. Each year, as much as they try for consistency, the batch is every so slightly different. The year specific naturals included react to each other. The regulation, reinterpretation, quality, weather and available synthetics have all given each year of Shalimar a “vintage” much like wine or whiskey. Sometimes the changes are imperceptible till the perfume is 10 or more years old.

Sometimes people ask me which I love more but it’s not really like that. I tend to wear a few of them more than others though for various reasons. I have a small set that remain out of boxes and at hand in a Guerlain box behind my desk. It holds a bunch of unboxed Guerlain beauties and gets quite a bit of action. Impossible to tell what they all are but I know you’ll have fun trying.

Shalimar EdT by Guerlain: Current

Portia Loves: Shalimar by Guerlain

Parfumo gives these featured accords:
Top: Blossoms, Bergamot
Heart: Iris, Jasmine, Rose
Base: Vanilla, Balsamic notes, Tonka bean

Above is my new bottle of Shalimar EdT. It’s a tester bottle bought for sweet nothing from FragranceNet. For favourites that I know will get used to their dregs I don’t need boxes or packaging, just the bottle and juice. This will stay out and get its share of use with my current other Shalimars; EdC and Sha-Lemur.

So I know that a new bottle will smell different. No oxygenation yet. It does seem though that there is a marked difference between this bottle and my last.

That opening swirl of lemon sorbet has been cut down to a rumble. Also the whole fragrance seems cleaner and less animalic. A floral reinvention, more sparkle and less depth. I’m not complaining. It still smells beautiful. It just isn’t as thick or rich. To be honest it smells like a fresh flanker or an Eau Fraiche for summer.

The longevity is still good but not as long lasting as the older formulations, or even the current EdC in the older bottle. Also, I feel this modern version leans more modern traditional feminine.

I think it’s the most day to day wearable of my Shalimar pillar scent collection. Less an event in itself and more a comfortable, longtime travelling buddy.

Have you tried the latest Shalimar EdT?
Portia xx

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Entertaining Statistics: August, 2012

 

August was nice: we had several hot days and the rest of the month was on the cooler side. But perfume wear/test-wise it was a strange month for me: as I was trying to figure out if perfumes contributed to my persistent cough (I think they didn’t) I took a break from any perfumes for a while; in addition to that, at least several perfumes I wore during the month had such staying power that testing anything else the same day was out of question. As a result, I both tested and wore fewer perfumes.

So I decided to entertain you with another type of statistics data.

Do you remember the fun question Birgit of Olfactoria’s Travels asked last year: Guerlain or Chanel? and the results we compiled? So when last Monday Birgit asked to choose ten “deserted island perfumes”, I got curious to see if answers to this question correlated to the previous results. But when I started I couldn’t stop just there.

Stats August 2012

Our deserted island will be populated by at least 45 perfumistas, though there was some dissension as to the climate choice: concerns were voiced that not all favorite perfumes were tropic-friendly.

Future settlers named 310 unique perfumes from 91 brands (when a concentration or vintage were mentioned I counted perfumes as unique). See the chart above for the total number of selected perfumes for top 15 brands.

Two most popular perfumes were Guerlain Shalimar and Frederic Malle Carnal Flower – 11 voices each; Chanel No 5 got 6 votes (including one for parfum); Amouage Lyric, Chanel Coromandel, Lancome Cuir de Lancome, Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan and Chanel No 19 (counting EdP, EdT, parfum and vintage) got 5 voices each. 79 perfumes were named by more than one perfumista. It means that we’ll have 231 unrepeated perfumes to enjoy ourselves or swap – not bad for a group of 45.

Only 4 out of 10 perfumes on my list were unique (Climat by Lancôme, Tiempe Passate by Antonia’s Flowers, Vert pour Madame by DSH Perfumes and Sweet Milk by Jo Malone). Only Chanel No 19 though was among the most popular selections. The other five were on two to three people’s lists.

Deserted Island Perfumes

I wonder how good my swapping chances would be.