Scentzilla!

For more lists, please visit: Bois de Jasmin; Now Smell This; Perfume Posse; Perfume Smellin’ Things.

Since it’s Halloween, I thought I’d begin by handing out treats this year - a mix of music and horror readings which I hope are little off the beaten path. (Because no one needs to hear Monster Mash or Purple People Eater ever again.)

Scentzilla’s Halloween Mix (follow link to download)

Dior Hypnotic Poison - Sequel fragrances rarely hold much interest for the dedicated perfume fan. They tend to be less Evil Dead II and more Weekend at Bernie’s II - that is to say, a dull revival of a corpse that would’ve been better left for dead the first time ’round. (I’d nominate Britney Spears Curious In Control or Midnight Fantasy as perfectly Weekend at Bernie’s II fragrances, for example.) Hypnotic Poison, however, bucks this trend, perhaps because it is not a sequel to the original Poison’s composition. It is a sequel to the concept behind it. Poison reeked of death by tuberose - floral asphyxiation. Hypnotic Poison hides its murderous intent inside a bitter almond note, the smell of cyanide, giving the wearer a taste of death before realizing what Dior is up to. It’s a wickedly tricky perfume to wear. Hypnotic Poison’s musky-vanilla heart can wear as Play-Doh on some or as a somewhat post-modern oriental on others. Either way, it’s a fragrance that is worth the risk.

Molinard Habanita - A little powder, some lipstick, and tight leather pants. Habanita calls to mind Tura Satana in Russ Meyer’s awful/brilliant Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! She was gorgeous, curvy (well, it is a Russ Meyer flick) and deadly with the kung-fu. Asses will be kicked. Names will be taken. Lipstick will be left on someone’s collar. Habanita’s powdery rose note emerges from a leathery base that includes vanilla and vetiver. It’s a fragrance that suggests beauty is the beast. “I never try anything. I just do it. And I don’t beat clocks, just people! Wanna try me?”

CB I Hate Perfume CBMusk - If pumpkin pie had body odor, this is what that pie’s armpits would smell like. I can’t decide if that sounds inviting or appalling, so I’m just gonna leave that mental picture for you to ponder.

I Profumi di Firenze Zenzero - Fragrances don’t have to be complicated to be enjoyable. Zenzero is not a great perfume. It’s not even a very good one. But boy oh boy, does it easily pass the “does it smell good?” test. This mainly vanilla concoction is brightened by a nearly tangible note of crystallized ginger. A spritz or two makes skin smell candy coated. Some may decry the lack of sophistication and subtlety as childish. And you know what? That’s okay. Life is short, and childhood is even shorter. I think it serves us well to be childish from time to time.

CB I Hate Perfume Burning Leaves - I must list another Christopher Brosius creation. Brosius is like the Coldplay of perfumery - he captures ambiance and mood in a way that few can. With Burning Leaves he connotes the crunch of fallen leaves, smoke curling from chimneys no longer dormant, and warm caramel dip waiting for apples, but with a sense of austerity rather than sentimentality.

Guerlain L’Heure Bleue - If years of watching Tyra Banks on America’s Next Top Model have taught me anything, it’s that you can smile WITH YOUR EYES. Therefore, it’s not too far a stretch to suggest you can chew with your nose. L’Heure Bleue is kind of a gourmand for people who don’t like gourmands. Oh it’s a floral, all right. But it’s a sweet and somewhat vanillic floral, bearing an oddly chilled spiciness that makes the mouth water without any thought of food. A fully satisfying fragrance.

Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles - What haven’t I and countless others already said about this one? There’s nothing new to say, I suppose. It is the Big Mama Thorton of “oriental” perfumes: loud and a little blousy, without apology for depicting femininity as womanly strength. Bal a Versailles’ complex layering of florals, woods, amber and musk remain unequaled by any fragrance to have come out since. If your idea of feminine is dolled-up pixie princess, you will be better served wearing any number of fruit cup fragrances, many of them featuring the prosaic trend word “pink.” If not, Bal a Versailles was and remains one of the more profound feminine fragrances ever made.

Isabey Gardenia - Isabey’s Gardenia has been around a long while, with its current incarnation made by Panouge. The vintage Gardenia fell more on the woody and animalic side than the latest version does, but this doesn’t negate how pretty and charming the new one is. The creaminess of ylang ylang features prominently alongside a dewy green note in the heart, a rather watery jasmine, and sandalwood at the base. It feels sticky sweet in summer, but just right for fall. Like most gardenia fragrances, it’s less than honest towards the flower itself. However, Isabey’s Gardenia still many a perfume fan’s favorite, and one of mine, too.

Gres Cabaret - Madame Gres’ once legendary design house has been reduced to a paltry perfume brand, which was sold off in the eighties. Parfums Gres is now best known for making boring new fragrances or cheapened versions of old fragrances. One exception to this is Cabaret, a 2002 offering that I feel is still underappreciated and underrated. All the notes of Cabaret are filtered through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Not smokey though, just… hazy. Hazy rose, hazy vetiver, hazy iris, and hazy musk. It is quite something to insinuate cigarette smoke without also implying tobacco. And somehow Michel Almairac, the credited perfumer, pulled that trick off beautifully.

Paddywax Raw Honey candle - By the time us kids had worked our way through the various tiers of Halloween candy - the first rank of course being chocolate, the second being the good fruit stuff like Skittles and Starburst, etc - we’d wind up with a Custer’s Last Stand of leftover candy. They were the inept losers in the Halloween candy war. These were the ones that sat waiting to be eaten for so long that our Moms and Dads threatened us with a “eat it or we’re getting rid of it.” The Super Bubbles, the hard candies, those Tootsie Rolls that weren’t Tootsie Rolls but weird fruit flavors that old people liked to hand out, and Bit O’ Honey. Oh if I could go back now and rescue all those Bit O’ Honeys that met inglorious death in the garbage can. I have grown to love that sticky chewy mess as an adult. Luckily, I now have my own kids who reject it, so they don’t object to Mom pilfering their treat sacks to find it. Raw Honey consequently puts me in a fall and Halloween mood, and though the candle smells more like actual honey than Bit O’ Honey, that’s okay. I have a hunch Bit O’ Honey candle would never catch on anyhow.

Happy Halloween!

It’s funny the way you can almost taste lilacs before you smell them. Some ghost thirst speeds ahead of your nose in similar shape and recognition to the real thing, then suddenly vanishes before you can name the sensation.

En Passant moves with the butterfly kiss of lilacs fluttering in the wind, brushing delicate across the tippy top of your nose in that split second when liquid cognition evaporates.

So what if the juice has all the half-life of paper in fire? En Passant stands for everything illuminating and ephemeral.

The shine off a stranger’s new shoes;
A slightly sweaty and urgent handhold of a couple just now in love;
The smile that bursts into an overheard joke.

These revenant moments hang brightly in the untranslatable space that floats between words and actions. They extend and shrink the world within a single but shared twinkling. Connect the dots and you will find a constellation of humanity shining back.

Time’s arrow occasionally forgets the curve of space, pinning fleeting experiences into something resembling what we like to call forever.

Eternity is not infinity, it is awaking to the realization of an instant.

Givenchy Originally uploaded by lincolnblues

The scent of Givenchy L’Interdit epitomizes the first sunny spring day still ruddy-cheeked from winter’s chill, be it from a cherished vintage bottle or the recent Les Mythiques release. Nature arrives at its vernal appointment, and soon you can smell the daffodils laughing at your mittens and damp woolen layers.

2007’s reissued version, while marginally paler, nevertheless represents an acceptably nice and IFRA-pleasing recreation of the original. (As opposed to the 2002 reformulation, which I won’t dwell upon, since it’s been forever since I had a whiff, and by all reports is a much sweeter thing having just a name in common with the 1957 creation.)

The original exhibits a little more depth (a depth partially due, I believe, to an indolic note I quickly become anosmic to, drat.) It also benefits from a spicy little dance number (I sense clove, which likely is its carnation note in hiding, and balsamic resin, so perhaps there’s labdanum?) that breaks out under the canopy of white florals and over the base. Included in those bottom notes are sandalwood and polycyclic musks. The vintage juice sports a fleeting strawberry note. This “strawberry” reminds me less of its namesake than it strikes me as simply being strawberry-like. You could call it a “lemonade stand in a patch of bloomin’ strawberries” note, if, you know, you’re not into the whole brevity thing.*

Both vintage and 2007 versions draw inspiration from the same bouquet of rose, lily of the valley, and jasmine to create the heart notes. That’s admittedly not a particularly novel mix of flowers; the charm of L’Interdit lies in the wonderfully diffusive aura of its particular arrangement. In addition to a shared heart, both versions show bergamot peppering the first phase of wear, and each intimate a peach-like (or, if you’re not it the whole brevity thing - “peach gummi candies dipped in milk and nail polish remover”) tone in the middle. Some changes have occured in the end ingredients, but I find the ease with which the base slips into view has remained the same. It’s still softly wooded and powdered by musk.

The complete olfactory texture of L’Interdit feels like satin bed sheets smoothed of any folds or wrinkles. You can practically slide your way down this scent.

Although aptly compared to Chanel No. 5 sometimes, the contrast between the two tends to stick out just as much as their similarities. The floral-fruity threads in L’lnstant’s formula remain tightly weaved, whereas with No. 5 you can’t help but to notice the raised weft made by those big mathemagical aldehydes. L’Instant hints at a sapling’s tender green sprigs; You suspect that within No. 5 lurks a treehouse filled with raccoons on the lam from Animal Control. Dolloping excess into every shimmering droplet fueled No. 5’s creation. Funneling that beautiful legacy into a child of Tuesday renders L’Interdit graceful, and much more restrained. So, the comparison to No. 5 works only as a filial one - mother to daughter - rather than one between peers. L’Interdit is no wild child.

This fragrance has been famously mythologized as Hubert de Givenchy’s ode to the young Audrey Hepburn. A gamine may be in ther own springtime, but sadly that spring happens only once. Behind this myth is the reality that an astute perfumer, Fabrice Fabron, condensed the somewhat elusive concept of her fey elegance into an anniversary of more earthly transitions. The “forbidden” quality impressed upon us in the fragrance’s name is a lie. Spring may be unavailable to us for three-quarters of the year but we are always asssured of it eventually.

*I finally rewatched The Big Lebowski after, like, ten years. It’s much funnier and more coherent than I remembered it being, but out of the Coen brother’s films, I still prefer their love letter to Buster Keaton, Raising Arizona. And The Hudsucker Proxy, too, if only for that idiotically fantastic moment when Tim Robbins’ character reveals a sketch of his invention.

For a while I’ve been mulling over the idea of compiling a list of fun fragrance choices for under $25. Then lost interest when it dawned on me what a huge list that might become. The theme of summer fragrances narrows that list down a bit. Doing a Top 10 for $10 narrows the focus even further, in addition to satisfying my OCD need for symmetry. So without further ado:

1. Novaya Zarya Carnation Eau de Cologne -  This inexpensive splash may be a rather reductive take on the iconic Soviet national flower, but if you can let go of the idea that a cologne named Carnation should smell of actual carnations you’ll be able to appreciate its charm. A clove and white floral note form a chord in the heart of the EdC, with a base of warm brown sugar vanilla acting as both a fixitive and a softening note for the first two.

2. Coty Exclamation - The smell of Exclamation in the air may fill you with the nostalgic horror of the 80s - and I can’t say I would blame you. Its ridiculous popularity resulted in the same fragrant cultural overdose that kids who grew up in the 90s experienced with CKOne.

It’s a perfectly nice scent, however, even if it may seem a bit passe. Powdery scents just don’t get the love they used to.

Especially the powdery-musky scents which folks like to decry as “old lady smell.” (And why exactly are folks complaining? My great-grandma, admittedly a great old lady, smelled of boiled meat and mentholated cough drops. One of my grandmas mostly smelled like vitamins and pee. Powdery would have been preferable. Proustian rembrances of unpleasant odors can mess with your head while thinking back of loved ones.) If you can concentrate solely on the here and now smell of Exclamation in 2008, it will smell more like a sweet and oddly demure coquette than some “old lady.”

3. Revlon Jean Nate - Speaking of “old lady smells…” Everyone everywhere in the US had at least one older female relative who went a little nuts with the Jean Nate. I suspect this is partially due to the diminishing return on our sense of smell as we age, and partially due to the fact that those who wore it received their Jean Nate in the form of gift sets at Christmas. If they didn’t use those bottles up by the next round of Christmas gift sets, it was a sign they weren’t wearing enough.

I like Jean Nate. The floral musky elegance of the after bath splash and the dusting powder when used judiciously smells clean and bright without reeking of detergent like so many of the so-called fresh and/or clean fragrances that populate the top selling lists at the moment.

4. Elizabeth Arden Sunflowers* - Technically, this is still considered a midrange department store fragrance. But it’s not hard to find the eau or ancillary products lurking on discount shop shelves, or smaller bottles mixed in with the rest of the other drugstore options.

Sunflowers was released in, like what, ‘92 or ‘93? I associate that time with the indulgent overuse of “celestial” designs, and a shitload of cheap Van Gogh posters depicting a.) sunflowers, or b.) Starry Night that accumulated in all my friends’ bedrooms. And all my friends wore Sunflowers. I’ve overcome my revulsion for celestial themes and learned to see Van Gogh with unjaded eyes again, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before I’d circle back to Sunflowers.

It’s a moss flecked, lily of the valley aldyhyde fragrance at first, which gives the top a lovely sweet-and-sour feel. The fruity-marine heart brings on the sensation of a cool breeze on a bright sunshiney summer day. In fact, it kind of is the perfect summer fragrance. The base smells of rosy sandalwood, and is light enough not to overwhelm everyone around you in the heat.

5. Gal Perfumia Red Currant balm - As you’d suspect, this lip balm smells (and tastes) sweet. Unlike the other Gal Perfumia balms which apply clear, Red Currant leaves a sheer tint of red on the lips. On sweaty, no point in wearing cosmetics summer days, its light perfume and soft color can be a welcome effect for those who have to leave the house wearing something at least.

6. Yardley English Rose - Aside from their soaps, Yardley is getting tricky to find here in the US. The brand used to be a bigger staple of drug and dime store toiletry shelves, so I guess that must be one of those unfortunate out with the old/in with the new things.

If you were to go by name, you’d be forced to conclude that the English Rose fragrance is a failure. It is not a rose, English or otherwise. But what it is is just fine! It’s GERANIUM, often used as a rose note or substitute rose note for, like, ages. Perfumers have long been attracted to its lovely smell, its easy availability, and its relative cheapness. If you too enjoy its minty rose character, then why pay a lot for a geranim perfume? The mint facet has a cooling effect; the rose facet has warming one. It’s a nice balance.

(PS. Does anyone make a geranium toothpaste? For some reason I think that’d be enjoyable.)

7. Pre de Provence Linden - PdP Linden soap is one of my absolute favorites. While its particularly cheering in the dead grey of winter, it makes for a blessedly airy fragrance when trying to shower in the hot humidity of triple digit summer temperatures. The eau de toilette is no less pleasing, to both the nose and wallet.

8. Agustin Reyes Royal Violets - Somewhat of a Cuban grooming staple, this baby cologne is perfect for adults, too. The fragrance is expectedly soft, which makes it ideal for the heat. I might even suggest to keep a bottle in your fridge during summer, much like you would with 4711 or Guerlain Vetiver. As with most violet fragrances, what you find is the perfumer’s candy recipe for violets rather than actual violets. Royal Violets comes across as sweet, powdery, and I’d say in the base it bears a delicate touch of spiced woodiness, too. It’d make a nice change up when you tire of the non-stop citrus parade of fragraces usually trotted out during summer. In some areas it can be found on drugstore shelves, but a quick Googling reveals a number of online store specializing in Cuban goods also carry it.

9. Coty Sand and Sable - An inexpensively made fragrance can smell rich, and Sand and Sable stands as a fine example of that. This is not to say it’s a thick pyramid of carefully revealed notes. Sand and Sable is a mostly linear fragrance. Which is not a criticism. Horizontal compositions are finding fans again in the niche world, and I don’t see why this mass-market classic can’t be rehabilitated back into fashion.

Sand and Sable smells like a tame photograph of a pin-up icon (Old school pin-up that is, as opposed to those most confusingly named Suicide Girls.) She’s got a big “gardenia” pinned in her hair, a nice sandy spot picked out on the beach, and her Coppertone sun lotion applied. The fragrance is pretty, if a little flirty, and despite its retro glamor poses no risk to the wearer of being accused of being a kitsch lover.

10. Jovan Pink Musk - Light musky peony. Yeah, that’s about the gist of it. You could look for more depth than that, I guess. You shouldn’t, but you could.

Peony? Good.

Light musk? Good.

Together? Also good.

It seems to have a little bit of sticking power to it, or at least compared to other drugstore florals. Unless it’s a completely triple digit day you should get two or three hours out it before needing to refresh. I’m not a great proponent of the merely pleasant or any fragrance with the word pink in it, but Pink Musk’s peony note is fairly accurate, and a hint of grassy green gives it just enough feistiness to escape that dreaded “I suppose its nice enough” designation.

For more lists, please visit Bois de Jasmin ::Now Smell This :: Perfume Posse :: Perfume-Smellin’ Things

*I was complimented by a teenager a while back for wearing the above-mentioned Sunflowers to a barbeque. Not for its loveliness, no, but for the “irony.” I don’t know what that means. Apparently one can wear a perfume “ironically.” This is news to me. Very troubling and baffling news. The hostess had decorated her living room with large sunflower-filled vases, which I guess scores a rating of “ironic.” See, now if I’d have worn Dior Poison to a meeting of the International Assassins Union, THAT would be… no, that would be merely complimentary. Maybe wearing Poison while manning the phones at a Poison Control Center? Feh. I think I have officially become one of The Olds. The Youngs and their new-fangled ideas frighten and confuse me. Expect me to explore this area soon in a post demanding a Matlock perfume, the first celebrity fragrance featuring a hot dog note… a note which will only make sense to Olds like me who actually watch Matlock.

Hi there! I’m a bit late in my hellos, because the ensuing traffic spike crashed my site. (Sorry ’bout that.) Thanks for visiting, and hopefully I’ll have the site running on more that just bare bones shortly.

In no particular order, here are my top ten winter picks. More winter favorites can be found at the following sites -

Now Smell This :: Perfume Posse :: Perfume Smellin’ Things

1.) Lancome - Poeme

I’ve recently rediscovered this 1995 release by perfumer Jacques Cavallier (via Now Smell This) and it’s just as sumptuous as I’d remembered it. It’s not the most well loved of Lancome fragrances, and small wonder at that. For all the thick, cozy warmth, it’s nevertheless so strong that it hits some folks like a bitchslap in a mitten. Poeme’s composition is so chock full o’ notes that it reminds me of how Givenchy’s Amarige can be received: No two people will notice the exact same notes at any one time. On me, Poeme seems front-loaded with peach and tuberose, with a distinctly smokey undertone of woody amber and what I keep imagining is “violet leaf.” My nose lies to me, because I think my “violet leaf” is supposed to “vetiver.” I like my husband’s impression of Poeme best; When asked his opinion of it on my wrist, he shook his head ruefully and said, “That is what you wear to crush the competition in a room.” Ha! And maybe that’s why I like it. Screw the girl power of the 90s, give me some woman power.

2.) The Body Shop - Ananya

See, the Poeme I might be forgiven for under certain circumstances, but digging out Ananya means I am in serious nostalgic swing for the 90s. It wears as vaguely smokey on my skin, and on me, and only me, it smells a lot like a less trenchant Dior Poison. Weird, I know. Ananya smells like a nuclear fruit device, even moreso than Poeme, with notes of peach and melon. Yet I keep reaching for it. I am so embarrassed. It’s like an addiction to a drug that I never really liked in the first place. It’s not chasing the dragon - it’s too foofy and girly for that. It’s like… chasing the unicorn? Dunno. It’s sickly sweet, powerful, and I cannot help myself. Would anyone else like to start an Ananya support group?

3.) Fendi - Theorema

See? This so-called “winter” list is trying to become a “full-on hard-on for the 90s” list instead.

“Fendi’s Theorema… distills warm sun upon the skin with a simple spritz. It parlays the quiet pleasure of a satisfied cat napping in a window sunbeam into a fragrance. [...] This fragrance contains all the complexity we expect from heavier “orientals,” but it is lighter. Effortless, even.”

“Theorema is no longer being sold in the US anymore. It is worth hunting down.”

4.) John Varvatos - John Varvatos

The first offering from this designer escaped my notice until last year, and I kept meaning and then forgetting to mention it. It’s not a great leather scent, but it’s very wearable and I’d imagine quite striking on the right person. I am not the right person. However, I did force my regular guinea pig, my sister, to try it on, and a lovely (if a little dark) sueded floral tone bloomed on her during the drydown. I am of course jealous, but also eager to replicate the magic it had on her skin. So I keep persisting, and am holding out hope that others may wear it with such luck. We both got a subtle dried figgy note and soft woods through the middle, as well as vanilla toward the end of wear that stuck like super glue. (I personally like a dab of vanilla with leather, but as they say, “your mileage may vary.”)

5.) Tauer Perfumes - Le Maroc pour elle

“The roses here are deep, rich, and I found myself nodding in agreement when I read Luca Turin’s mention of Bal a Versailles in his recent post about Le Maroc. While they do not smell alike, both share a quality of circularity. A note suggests it will fade off into the distance only to reappear as it makes another lap around the track. In Le Maroc’s case, this is how I perceive rose occuring.”

“Le Maroc is classified ‘pour elle,’ and while it is indeed feminine, it’s certainly not weak. Sensual, vibrant, and composed of strength, it is not the smell of a little girl, or some flirty teenager. It is womanly. And I like that.”

6.) Agent Provacateur - Agent Provocateur

“Agent Provocateur fascinates me. I don’t know any other way to put it. It engages me in a very peculiar way, because while it is ostensibly intended as a sexy fragrance, I find myself trying to think it over and puzzle it out while I wear it. So I guess for me, strangely enough, Agent Provocateur develops as an intellectually stimulating fragrance. It makes me feel like reading long complicated books, like David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and just thinking.”

“Agent Provocateur has a truly magnificent, and practically maniacal, throw. So the sillage may give many people pause before choosing this scent. I love any number of scents, and like many more, but this one instantly knocked my socks off. It’s certainly not for everyone. It has tremendous character, one that not everyone will take to. In fact, this could wear as vulgar on some folks.”

7.) Can we cheat a little? I am naming two sadly discontined Helmut Lang fragrances as my number seven.

The first is the eponymous Helmut Lang parfum. It is pure class and raunch at once. Transparant citrus surfaces stretch over a profoundly musky stank, suggesting wild beasts trapped safely behind the smooth civility of zoo glass. It wears just as well in summer as it does in winter, but my craving lately for it places it prominently on this list.

The second discontinued fragrance is Cuiron. I picked it for fall. It’s dandy in winter, too. “Helmut Lang’s Cuiron paints a portrait in monochrome. It is comprised of successive layers of leather. But not any old leather. Or rather, it IS old leather - the smell of an antique book pulled off the shelf, an old black jacket hanging off the back of a chair, a soft suede purse that’s only pulled out on special occasions, a well-worn chair that’s seen better days but is still the comfiest one in the house.”

Proctor & Gamble own the rights to the Helmut Lang fragrances, and they are breaking my heart. If these two were released again as some niche perfumery’s creations, I have no doubt they’d wind up with cult-like followings. In the wake of discontinuation, folks are now left to scavenge discount retailers and eBay to stock up on these before they completely evaporate into the ether of corporate sales margins.

8.) A love affair with Mrs. Meyer’s products continues unabated at Chez Scentzilla. At Christmastime, the company sells Gingerbread household products, and I couldn’t resist. There’s no use looking for them now, but if you spot the hand soap, cleaner, or room spray during next year’s holiday season, scoop them up and remember to thank me later. One word of advice - do not use any of them in the bathroom. I do my dirty business in there, yet emerge with a case of the munchies, filling me with much confusion and shame. Kitchen-use only, please.

9.) Serge Lutens - Santal Blanc

I SOOOOO love this fragrance. Simple and chic, its medicinal/mentholic top notes cut a very smart edge along a dry woody base. Despite my love, Santal Blanc betrays me. I have been told it makes me smell like a dog peed on me. Wear it with that warning in mind, and a thousand puppy kisses if you can carry it off successfully (i.e. without dog pee.)

10.) Comme des Garçons - 2 Man

“The opening blast always weirds me out just a little. Whatever notes are ascribed to it don’t matter to me. It smells like typewriter ribbons [...] 2 Man recalls the way Gres Cabaret seems filtered through a cloud of smoke without smelling smokey. Its woody notes are real but unidentifiable, like staring out a train window and watching the blurry trees fly past. Mutant spices that I know without recognition drift by until we land at nutmeg. The nutmeg of 2 Man’s dry down is warm and dry, mixed into the smeared streaky watercolors of an abstract forest.”

*Honorable Mention*

Elizabeth W - Vetiver candle

Elizabeth W’s Vetiver fragrance smells timid compared to many soliflors dedicated to that note. Their take on vetiver explodes with white florals more that it expresses the full pungence of the grass… which perversely makes the candle perfect for winter. It fills the house with bright cheer from fresh spring bouquets and a rather tender and sentimental vetiver base note, and never overpowers the space with the usual muddy dankness that both vetiver and rainy Pacific Northwest winters have in common. It’s nice to have flowers in the house when there are none left in the yard. This particular candle also is good at covering up burnt microwave popcorn smell, which is neither here nor there, but I may as well throw that in there. I can’t possibly be the only person who has a popcorn-specific inability to use the microwave properly, can I?

(Reader disclosure: I received this candle and a deck of carded samples from Elizabeth W last year.)

L’Occitane - Rhubarb Compote candle

There’s not much throw from this candle, which should be mentioned right off the bat. It is best suited for the kitchen or small rooms only. However, this candle does make honorable mention because L’Occitane really nailed a rhubarb note with surprising accuracy. The tartness and the sweetness inherent to this fruit smell perfectly balanced when lit. What a fun winter candle option for comfort fragrance addicts and foodies with a hankering for rhubarb. It’s a very nice treat without the sugary calories or trouble of baking.

Mrs. Meyer’s Geranium All Purpose Cleaner

Geranium has long been used in perfumery as an easy and cheap method to either boost or add a rose layer to a fragrance. I love that someone has returned to the concept and thought to use it in a household cleaner instead of the endless parade of lavenders, citruses, and pines. To the company’s credit, they didn’t even mess around with pretending it’s “rose”: They labeled its fragrance all proper. The minty rose of geranium emanating from the kitchen lends a homey, cozy feel to offset the visual sterility of scrubbed surfaces. If you’ve ever wondered why on earth you smell something “rosy” and “toothpastey” in a fragrance yet some reviewer insists on calling the combination “geranium,” then this single product may possibly reveal to you what they are specifying. I honestly think this may well be my favorite fragrance product of the year, since a minty rose kitchen is so much more pleasing to work in than a Formica-covered pine forest.

Rubis tweezers

Okay, okay, so this is the second year I’ve mentioned these, but this is also the second year my pair still needs no sharpening. And I take terrible care of them. They’re thrown loose into a tray with scissors and nail stuff and etc… without the rubber tip protectors because those were lost in the first five minutes of ownership. If I make it to year three with no need of sharpening or replacement, I’m going to call these the best beauty implement ever. These tweezers are precise, culling out those weird stray fine hairs in my eyebrows (that grow due to only sheer maliciousness as far as I can tell) as well as yanking out my three billy goat hairs gruff that sprout in a tight coarse cluster on my chin (I hate them. So. Much. I feel a weird surge of satisfaction when I extract them. This is all possibly TMI, isn’t it? Getting older sucks.)

L’Occitane Eau des Baux

I asked my husband what his fave fragrance find of the year might be, just for giggles. He would prefer not to be a fragrance snob though alas! Turns out he’s not immune to osmosis from marriage to a perfume nut, after all. He unequivocally voiced his preference for L’Occitane’s Eau des Baux, and wished the company would make their men’s skin care line available in that scent beyond their regular Cade line (which he also likes.) It’s a woody-musky scent with a fruity, but not cloyingly sweet, and incense heart. Eau des Baux smells very nice on men, and I’d imagine it has more than a few female fans as well.

Givenchy Les Mythiques

Givenchy’s small reintroduction to ten older and newer classic fragrances has been one of those little things that makes one feel like not all hope has been drowned in an ever widening sea of mediocre debuts (which total industry wide into the hundreds, sigh.) Small wonder that the current economic situation is not going so well in the perfumery business. However, it is nice to see this particular LVMH-run house embrace their quite chic heritage despite a constant fashion trope that the only way to stay relevant is to always be new. And it sure beats leaving some very lovely Givenchy perfumes to gather dust as if the house’s history was comprised of nothing but a series of old marketing agendas. (They were of course, that, too, but not just that.) Those fragrances are still great; they deserve to see the light of day no matter what the current fads are.

Prada Infusion d’Iris

In what has turned out to be what I feel is a pretty lackluster year, Infusion d’Iris seems a conspicuous contender for the “perfume I’d most like to espy on others” in a crowded, and otherwise middling field of 2007 releases. I suspect if it’d been launched even a couple years ago it might have flown under the radar a bit, though who knows? I don’t personally have the chemistry needed carry this somewhat delicate fragrance off. However, of all the new launches this year, I think this is the one I’d be most delighted to discover became the surprise sleeper hit of the year. Because just how much sickeningly sweet vanillas and fruity-florals in the air can a person take from other folks’ sillage? Especially when standing in queue at the bank or when stuck on an elevator ride. God bless you wonderful iconoclasts who buck the “pink”ening trend in fragrance. You wear your greens and your flowers and your chypres without remorse, and for that I thank you. I suspect this year you were more likely to find happiness in a bottle of Infusion d’Iris than whatever the latest Eau de TMZ was.

Pacifica Mediterranean Fig

I don’t know if this is new this year or just new to me, but either way, what a fun little discovery. Its composition carries green elements, such as found in Creation Mathias’ discontinued L’eau de Figue, a sprinkling of esters to lend a flowery feel just as they do in L’Artisan’s Premier Figuier Extreme, and a creamy hint of the warm woods found in Diptyque’s Philosykos… Which added together makes for a charming and fun fragrance in its own right, even if it’s not quite the equal to any of the aforementioned “figs.” However, Mediterranean Fig comes as part of a range of bath and body products and not just as an EDT, so you can still enjoy the scent without necessarily abandoning use of your other favorite fig fragrances.

Old Navy “Blue Alert” commercial

The best perfume ad of the year was not a perfume ad. The first few times I saw Old Navy’s “Blue Alert” commercial, I was sure it just ought to be a fragrance ad, but no. It’s a lovely cover of a Leonard Cohen song accompanying a blue jeans pitch. Dear advertising people behind this: If this is your soft sell behind cheap denim, I’m longing to see you tackle perfume. No snark here, I decided I really liked it. It didn’t make me want to buy jeans, as I’ve been less than impressed by the quality of Old Navy clothes, but your ad did make me pay attention. Repeatedly. Not many ads can suck you in to watch them more than once, let alone multiple times. The ad can be viewed via this link to Adweek (LINK.)

Bored Games

For his Life in Hell comic, Matt Groening (The Simpsons) creates an annual list of “forbidden words” that were annoying or overused or both during the course of the year. (Comic not available online, but a list of some previous years’ entries is cataloged here and there on other sites.) I figured it might be fun to do the same with perfume ad copy and PR releases.

As I looked over my badly scribbled list of words I realized this might have the makings of either a drinking game or a bingo card… Hey! Why not do both?

Every time you spot one of these words as you leaf through magazines or are online shopping, mark your card, then DRINK!

And the first person to achieve bingo within a single ad wins… Oh crap. You win a hangover. But buck up. Because the rest of us scanning multiple ads for a bingo victory will only wind up winning alcohol poisoning.

A New Year’s Wish

So, smell ya later 2007, and happy 2008 to everyone. May this coming year see fewer fragrance releases, the abasement of celeb fragrances from celebs we’ve never heard of as well as those we have, and a return to a time when one could count on fruit to stay in the produce bins and clean to stay in the shower.

Please visit my oh so lovely online colleagues for much more substansive and interesting lists at Aromascope :: Bois de Jasmin :: Now Smell This :: Perfume Posse :: Perfume Smellin’ Things ::

Today I join with a few of my fellow fragrance bloggers to rhapsodize about our favorite picks to wear during the fall season. Mine are numbered, but in no particular order, really. And I realize with a little surprise that my faves have changed very little from year to year. Maybe it’s because there’s so much in the way of new releases nowadays that keeping track of anything but mostly the old favorites just seems silly. Or maybe it’s a dismal reflection upon the less than memorable quality of far too many of them. Or maybe I’m a sad little creature of habit: Given the obsessive-compulsive aspect of perfume collecting, that last excuse is the most likely of the three.

Please visit my blogging buddies over at Aromascope, Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, Perfume Posse, and Perfume Smellin’ Things for some great lists, too!

1.) Jean Desprez - Bal a Versailles

“My favorite aspect of Bal a Versailles is its circular quality. As the fragrance develops, notes seem to fade off, only to rise again. To experience it is to open a travel brochure of smells. Roses, orange, orange blossom, and jasmine fill my nostrils with the first spray. Then warm woods with soft balsalmic spices push forward into vanilla and patchouli . Broad notations of amber and incense, musk and more musk, unfold. And then we start all over again, surreally spiraling amongst the flowers and trees, riding waves of indoles and ketones. It is sexy, but not vulgar; Rich, but not gaudy.”

2.) Jacques Fath - Fath de Fath 1993

The Fath de Fath reformulated by Haarmann and Reimer and relaunched by a revitalized Fath house in 1993 only shares but the slightest connection to its earlier 1953 incarnation. Perhaps it’s not its equal, but it’s still very, very good. Fath de Fath ‘93 smells of grand entrances down gilded opera house staircases. Berry-stained citrus top notes color a thick array of pale though never timid floral heart notes, including jasmine, orange blossom, and tuberose. The fruity-floral notes curve gracefully around a heady mix of powdery musk, woody amber, patchouli and vanillic base notes, lending the impression that grace is not achieved by lightness of step but with a deft understanding of gravity.

3.) Lanvin - Arpege

Happily, the more popular a scent was in the past the more readily bottles of it can be unearthed. Even more happily, the popularity of fragrances from the past is not necessarily a negative indication of its quality; Popular does not always have to mean middlebrow. Arpege deserved and still deserves its success. I don’t even think you have to be “rose lover” to dig into its layers of meaning. A flash of aldehydes at the quick could certainly be off-putting to those who cringe at anything that tugs at notions of “old lady perfume,” but they subside into harmonies of rose into jasmine into tuberose, which draws you down further into the satisfyingly low thump of its leathery base.

4.) Lancome - Magie Noire

“The secret to this fragrance for me is how it mutates its not unusual notes. Lichen wears as spice. Rose and galbanum become gold. Wood presents as though it were curing itself on the skin. Patchouli leaves flutter loose from the folds, hinting at trunks of woven treasures from imaginary adventures. Magie Noire is sometimes referred to as an amber oriental. This is not a cold butter amber, nor an incense amber. It’s amber that echoes some distant animal shriek. The echo bounces across the floral, green, and wood notes - never landing, never stopping, just fading off as it repeats itself.”

5.) Givenchy - Organza Indecence

This is the fragrance that makes me careen flat over in a lovestruck Tex Avery-style thud. Luckily, its benzoin pillows make for a soft landing, blanketed with cinnamon, cedar and palisander notes that pull over my head as I drift deeper into a swoon. Love may be patient, and love may be kind, but above all these, love smells a lot like Organza Indecence.

6.) Helmut Lang - Cuiron

“Helmut Lang’s Cuiron paints a portrait in monochrome. It is comprised of successive layers of leather. But not any old leather. Or rather, it IS old leather - the smell of an antique book pulled off the shelf, an old black jacket hanging off the back of a chair, a soft suede purse that’s only pulled out on special occasions, a well-worn chair that’s seen better days but is still the comfiest one in the house.”

7.) Les Nez - Let Me Play the Lion

I’ve struggled with this one for months and months, and still do. It resonates so well with me that I can’t decide if its because it just happens to hit all the right notes with me personally, or if it really is a sneaky little charmer. A list of adjectives seems a subpar way to describe it, but “dry smokey woody deliciousness” sums this fragrance up so concisely that there’s no excuse for purpling up the reason to enjoy it.

8.) Esteban - Teck and Tonka candle

“Is it ridiculously spendy for a candle? Yes, yes it is. It is worth it? Yes, hell yes. [...] This is the sort of fragrance that a sophisiticate would describe as aphrodisiacal. I’m not sophisticated: It’s humpy. And it definitely sets a mood.”

9.) Guerlain - Mitsouko

“Mitsouko parfum is one the best things I have ever smelled. There’s just something about it that melds intrinsically to my skin, and it is hard to tell where I begin and Mitsouko’s sensual chypre ends [...] Mitsouko is in such good taste that it is a whenever the hell you feel like it choice. You can smell opera gloves and elegance. But you can also smell a picnic barbeque in it - the sunshine, the grill in action, and paper plates with hot dogs and potato chips. Mitsouko fits in everywhere.”

10.) Lola Cosmetics - Lola perfume oil

“There’s really no polite way to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it: Lola fragrance oil is sex. Some scents are flirty, some are sensual, some are sexy. This is S-E-X. In a bottle [...] This is the smell I would have if I happened to be a nymph who’d gone for a romp in the woods with Pan. Animal-like, earthy and sweetly piquant, it doesn’t smell directly of Pan himself, but rather more that I’d been unmistakably in his prescence, raunching it up gaily.”

Tom Ford’s advertising campaigns have moved in a slow slimy crawl from titillation to approximations of hate fucks. First he gave us a nude in his Yves Saint Laurent M7 ads, which conveyed little about the fragrance, but at least some remnant of sensuality clung like the last sip of evening wine to those images. Later, he carved out a Gucci-font G into a female model’s pubic hair. The faux shock of that image tried so very hard to communicate sexuality. I think it achieved that goal, but by focusing on a rhetorical exhibition of sex, the models failed to radiate any sort of enjoyment about Gucci products. At least it reinforced the brand logo.

The old marketing chestnut reminds us, like a hangover or an outdated political bumper sticker, that “sex sells.” Yet what he’s selling now isn’t sex, and I’m not sure it’s fragrance either. He’s hoping you’ll buy into the insecure hostility surrounding male sexuality that has seemingly become fashionable, rather than remain just a meatheaded side effect of adolescence. This photo has all the creative juice and subtlety of a Limp Bizkit song. The Tom Ford for Men ads effectively communicate… that it smells good? That it makes you feel good? No. It only coveys Tom Ford did it all for the nookie. And then he branded and bottled it.

With his slow escalation using sex to demonstrate dominance rather than pleasure, I fully expect and dread the next campaign: perfume bukkake.

I presume the ad campaign was devised to attract attention by looking provocative. But perfume is not about being provocative. Perfume, like effective advertising, is about seduction. Jean Baudrillard once said, “Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: ‘I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you.’ Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behavior, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: ‘Let me seduce you.’”

Has much thought been given to what the audience has been provoked to do beyond getting turned on? I’ve never heard a guy announce “I have a hard-on, let’s go fragrance shopping!” Perhaps Tom Ford has deep insight into a side of the male psyche which I can’t possibly hope to understand. With that in mind, I decided to seek an opinion on the ad from a man. He asked to remain anonymous, so we’ll call him Deep Scrote:

What is there to say about this? Is it supposed to capture the essence of cleavage? [Ed. Note: And we should be concerned about it smelling like cleavage. If it's anything like my great-grandma’s, who used to hug me into her bosom when I was little, then it’s gonna smell like boiled meat and mentholated cough drops.] Where will she place the bottle next? How does this stuff taste? She seems to want some . . . Did Tom Ford titty-fuck a blow up doll and put his jizz in a bottle? Will that smell good? Who exactly is the target audience here?

Ooh, look… a bottle getting squeezed between two breastseses. That looks exciting. Look at her mouth… expectant! Gosh, I wish that was me between those oily blobs of silicone. What is it about gay old Tom Ford that gets the ladies so hot? Maybe it’s his scent. If I smelled that greasy perhaps I could get a good titty-fuck, too. Maybe I should buy whatever is in that bottle and slather myself in it. Then none of the blow-up dolls could resist me.

This is an advertisement, isn’t it? ‘Cause an advertisement is supposed to sell something and I’m not sure that whatever niche audience this is targeted at is worth the trouble. If Tom Ford wants to sell this stuff he needs to rethink his strategy. Selling stuff to guys is easy: You take a guy or small group of guys and surround them with a bunch of hot women to fawn all over them. Axe Body Spray figured it out! Hell! The tobacco and alcohol industry have been doing it for years. Whether consciously or subconsciously men get the message and buy the product. People want to be sexy, not creepy . . . unless that IS the target audience. Tom Ford’s Perfume for Pervs. Buy it TODAY! Tom Ford is weird . . . I’m gonna go watch Zoolander now.

Images via WWD via Jezebel

“You know, Bijou, I would love you more if you did not bathe so often. I love the smell of your body, but it is faint. It vanishes with so much washing. […] I like the strong female smell. Please wash a little less.”

~ the Basque to his lover Bijou in the story The Basque and Bijou (from Anais Nin’s collection of stories, Delta of Venus.)

It’s a peculiar habit of modern life that we wash away all our natural smells only to slap on new ones. Weirder still is the popularity of “clean” scents aimed to further obfuscate the aroma of actual cleansed skin. The social bias against the unwashed masses has resulted in a cultural predilection to remove the stink of humanity from the human body.

We pluck and remove hair that nature put there. We obsessively freshen breath when our mouths exist in a golden age of dentistry that prescribes frequent brushing anyhow. We wash inside orifices which by design already evacuate themselves. We paint new faces on old ones - intending to merely enhance what we already like, but sometimes it looks more like trying to subvert what we were born with.

We were born to decay; decay has a stink; we are made to stink.¹

However, one can’t discredit the benefits of hygiene for humanity. Nor can one exist in a creative vacuum where, out of all the senses, smell alone remains artistically unexplored. Perhaps the best perfumes, like the best applications of makeup or fashion, serve to highlight what we like best about the natural through cunning use of utter artifice.

Caron’s Yatagan revels in the feral innocence of the Nature Child. Yatagan is not an attempt to imitate the smell of traipsing through the forest without access to indoor plumbing and hot showers, it is an impression of it. Just as in comedy, it is impression rather than imitation that startles and delights us. Impressions investigate minutiae, amplifying details that don’t ordinarily stand out. Imitations, on the other hand, leave us unsatisfied, appearing like wan ghosts of diluted reality with nothing novel to say.

Yatagan shows off dirty pine needles littering the forest floor in a sticky relief map of hidden smells. The spicy little voices of herbs (lavender, fennel, basil) and grass strain under the shade of bellicose trees, singing with a more delicate tenor than the woody baritone shadows they grow in. Its armpit funk from patchouli accompanies a dark whiff off Pan’s sun-leathered skin, and brings us back to the realization that we are all Nature’s Children wandering through the world, whether our forests are wooded or urban.

We cannot deny nature. We cannot invent it. We can, however, share impressions of it. The delight found in Yatagan’s impression lies in a rejection of the hypervigilant scrubbing away of nature, while paradoxically being a product of the basic hygiene ritual.

If you’re wearing perfume, you’re not feral. But you can remind yourself and the rest the world you could be.

As one version of a highly apocryphal story goes, Dr. Samuel Johnson had been traveling for weeks without access to a bath. As he waited on a rail platform for his train to arrive, a fellow passenger complained about his disheveled state with an admonishment that he smelled. The annoyed Dr. Johnson responded, “No, madam. You smell, I stink.”

¹Maybe this is why fragrances geared towards a youth demographic always smell so insipidly fresh and fruity, while heavier animalic ones are frequently derided as “old lady perfumes.” Perhaps fragrance characteristics represent an evolving comfort level (or lack thereof) with aging and our own organic rot, rather than being strictly a matter of taste. Or perhaps perfume as an artistic manifestation of the fear of dying is such an imaginative stretch that it’s just too silly an idea to entertain. Either way, it’s a tangent that’s too long for a little ol’ footnote to contain, so I’ll leave it there.