Scentzilla!

With a name like Halloween, I anticipated that it would smell like this:

I would have even accepted this:

But there’s no black magic here of any sort. I really had hoped for something bewitching, something witchy. Del Pozo’s Halloween opens with light florals, primarily freesia and lily of the valley on me. But per usual, freesia goes to die on my skin. It faded fast, as did the lily of the valley. There’s some note in this scent that smells a lot like ozonic steamed rice - and I can’t quite explain beyond that weird description, I’m afraid. I then get a sensation of rose, a wee touch of green something-or-another, woodiness, and cleanly musk. And soon enough its just the cleanly musk. It’s perfectly pleasant, but if I crave freesia and musk I’ll stick with Lulu Beauty’s Lulu Mae, and for a clean skin musk, I will take Helmut Lang parfum over this any day. Halloween in general wears as a sheer, slightly foofy scent. Hm, on second thought, it IS witchy:

Just like that famous line in The Wizard of Oz, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” is the question I should have been asking of it. Halloween is the equavalent of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Sure, she’s the pretty nice one, but really, who doesn’t find the Wicked Witch so much more interesting?

So my picks for pleasingly wicked scents today will be Escential Lotions and Oils of Portland’s Dragon’s Blood, Vicky Tiel Sirene, and Dior Poison.

I leave you with a link to a scanned copy of a favorite Halloween book - we’ve worn out so many copies of it by now that I’ve lost count. The Hallo-Wiener, which can be found easily through Powell’s Bookstore.

Monday: Halloween by Jesus del Pozo

Wednesday: Floret by Antonia’s Flowers (eau de parfum)

Friday: Antonia’s Flowers (eau de parfum)

Czech & Speake’s Frankincense and Myrrh cries out stentorian, “LAVENDER!” for the first several minutes of wear. It takes roughly twenty minutes after application for the lavender note to start using its “indoor” voice. As it quiets down, the utter dryness of this scent finally becomes apparent. Chamomile erodes deep grooves into what I perceive as a dehydrated orangey note, and these soon taper down into the namesake notes of the fragrance.

We in the western parts of the world tend to associate frankincense and myrrh with the Christmas story, and gravitate towards the idea of them smelling primarily of church services. However, this is not a cologne for those seeking a scent rendolent of smoking sticky-sweet incense, or gummy resins.

In this fragrance, frankincense and myrrh are presented as arid as the climate and region in which the trees they drip from grow. A parched sandalwood note further extends my impression of waterless resins baking in the sun. The overall impression is one of dry woodiness tingling with the same sensation, though utterly different smell, of the feel from a smear of Vicks VapoRub. I would also compare this tingle to that weird feeling you get when you bite into tin foil because you’re apparently not bright enough to figure out how to properly unwrap a stick of gum. *Ahem* Not me. It happened to a friend once. You buy that right?

I can’t decide if I like this scent or not. I’ve been playing with it off and on for a few months, and still can’t make up my mind one way or the other. But I do appreciate it. I found out this week that I do really dig it when I layer it with Creed’s Cuir de Russie, though I need to warn I think it’s a potent cocktail that requires a light hand.

Images all photographs by Minor White. From top: “Sand and Water,” 1950, Gitterman Gallery; “Christmas Ornament,” 1958, Swann Galleries; “Root and Frost,” 1958, Joseph Bellows Gallery.

Czech & Speake claim No. 88 is based upon an old Elizabethan recipe, and it certainly has that texture. The arrangement seems vaguely familiar, but the excellence of No. 88 resides in its elegant style. My enjoyment of it is akin to watching artfully made Hong Kong action films . Many of the wuxia-type movies I like best seem embedded in an old recipe, too. But nowadays what elevates a flick to a film has much to do with the way the stylistic choices are made, and the depth and resonance of those choices.

A bittersweet bergamot opens No. 88, brightening my skin with shafts of cold sunlight. A clean floral element amalgamates into this note as if it were a herbal tonic. As the scent warms, the light remains cold while the cologne’s colors intensify in tone.

A rose then actuates, moving through the golden liquid. Its path is defined by the sandalwood rooted in place. While this mix may read as ordinary, in No. 88 it is anything but.

Green elements lurk inside its heart. A barbered tang* of geranium somehow fills the fragrance with both stealth and stridency. When I’m not paying attention I don’t notice it at all for a while. And then BOO! its there.

Vetiver is often noticed in No. 88 by other perfume fans, but I think if this note is used in the base, it is to cast a stemmy shadow against the brighter shadings of the rosy sandalwood backdrop.

As a whole, the scent wears remote on me, as if it is distancing itself from my skin.

It’s like being close enough to stare at a warm glow, but too far removed to feel the heat. This may sound like a negative quality, and for some folks it will be, yet I find the effect strangely beautiful.

Starting from the top, with image source cited in parenthesis, the movie images above are: Fong Sai Yuk (cinemafareast.de), Hero (Yahoo! Movies), House of Flying Daggers (Yahoo! Movies), The Bride With White Hair (portlandstreet.com), and The Legend of Zu (hkcinemagic.com). I especially recommend Fong Sai Yuk, since it’s my favorite Jet Li movie. (He didn’t always make crummy Hollywood movies with second-rate pop stars.)

*Pun not intended, but there it is I guess.

Someone happily saw fit to stream video of the hilarious perfume commercial skit from last season’s Saturday Night Live, starring Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. You can find the site and “commercial” by clicking here.

On another note, this is flat out scary. And it also a total lie. Thank you Tania!

Czech & Speake is an English company that specializes in plumbing supplies. Except they call them “luxury” “fittings.” Okay, so they’re fancy plumbing supplies. They also just happen to sell fragrances and shaving toiletries.

Their Neroli strikes me as a bright, particularly focused scent, and wears as a linear (without a tiered development) cologne on me. It’s juicy, almost like that syrupy liqueur Triple Sec, and flowered with orange blossoms that float in the air. Buried deep inside is what seems to me like a wee dab of a very nice sandalwood. And that’s about it. I think if anything, this fragrance conveys to me a sense of simple folksy joy and bouncy energy.

It’s much like the same feeling I get from Johnny Cash’s Orange Blossom Special. (It’s an ode to riding the rails, not to orange trees, but it’s a nice coincidence of title, I think.) Click here to listen to Amazon.com’s sample clip of the song, or on the title hyperlink to hear clips from the whole album.

To my husband, who rarely offers up a perfume opinion unbidden, Czech & Speake Neroli “smells like something you’d plug into the wall.” And… GAH! I so wanted to deny him his truth, but, *looooooooong sigh*, I couldn’t. It does kind of smell like something you’d plug into the wall. Crud. Silly man went and ruined it for me.

Glade Plug-Ins notwithstanding, this is worth checking out if you are an ardent neroli/orange blossom fan. This scent does not warrant purchase of a full bottle for me, given the price for such a simple affair. But I am glad to have picked up a small decant from a reputable eBay vendor, and I would suggest to others that they may wish to start there before committing to a whole bottle.

The image used is entitled “Gettin’ Down,” by artist and Oregon resident Mary Bertoli. Her collages reflect her experiences in Mississippi, where she devoted a significant portion of her time and energy in education centers bringing art to students with extremely limited monetary resources. Each piece is created with tissue paper. They are all shaped by hand - scissors never touch a single piece. With each new image, she tries to capture the life and spirit of all the people she met and still knows in the Delta. I enjoy her work, but more importantly, I think she’s a really neat lady. It appears the best source for purchasing prints and cards of her work online is through this site.

Next week I will write about three scents by Czech & Speake: Neroli, No. 88, and Frankincense & Myrrh.

Also, I found out this week that my email filters for spam are acting a bit too aggressively. An email from my own mother was filtered into the spam bin, and I wouldn’t have even known had she not asked me if I had read it yet. (Note to self: add mom to address book, pronto.) So if you’ve written and I haven’t responded, it’s because I didn’t see the email! Eeeps! I’m so sorry about that. Please just put the word “scentzilla” in the subject line, and that should ensure the mail goes straight to my inbox.

L’air du Desert Marocain is a scent I am disinclined to pick apart and sort note by note. It’s a perfume that is best appreciated as a unified line, and I feel that if I break the whole into pieces I might break its spell. So instead, I would prefer to share some places and times it stirs loose from my memory.

This fragrance calls forth a coastal forest smell. Wind-shaped cedars and manzanitas jut out, but L’air is mathematically divided from the grey humidity and loam, leaving a remainder of the rarified clean air blowing in.

Moving south from the coastal rain forests, my mind flits to the Oregon Dunes, where the air is dry, the land is a sea of constantly swirling sand, and yet the trees and other plantlife surreally find their way inside.

And then I travel to a place in childhood. When I was around nine or ten, my brother’s godparents were running a summer camp resort in Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills. That year the Hills suffered a terrible drought, and even the blue spruce looked autumnal in the dryness. We kids would play our games up along the steeply sloped sides of the hills, clambering over forest floors strewn with wild flowers, dry needles, and branches. With every footfall, the aromas of the forest detritus would release as it crushed underneath our little sneakered feet.

I am then reminded of when I was eleven. My friend Laura, who is half Lakota, taught me to pick the juniper berries off a certain species of spruce that grew in Yankton ditches*. We’d suck and then spit them out - one mustn’t eat them. The scent of this endeavor would always cling to my fingers for hours afterwards. For the curious, juniper berries do not taste of gin, though gin tastes of them. They are sour, bitter, fruity, and herbaceously floral.

As is my habit, I used my sister as a guinea pig with L’air. Sisters really are the best. Who else but a sister would think an evening of perfume sampling, tea drinking, and watching Donald Trump’s cotillion of crazies on TV sounds like fine way to spend a Thursday night? What startled me was how overwhelmingly lavender-fielded this fragrance was on her. A touch of something seeming like an explicit bitter orange even appreared on her. The end drydown was quite similar to the way it wore on me, but it differed vastly overall. Funny thing - we both preferred the way it unfolded on our own skin, as opposed to each others’.

L’air du Desert Marocain is not gender specific. This seems to be achieved not by manipulation of “unisex” notes, but rather through what seems like an effort to evoke sensations of a real place that does not precisely exist. Sort of like an Avalon, I suppose, but L’air is not some mist-curtained island. It’s a forest tucked away gently behind the clarified sunlight of a mountain’s summit in summer, and the strange night chill that falls over a desert in winter.

My apologies to those who were looking for a play-by-play of the individual notes. (It seemed a dishonorable way to fully describe what this scent conjured up emotionally for me.)

*I dimly remember Laura telling me that her auntie used these berries when people had tummy aches. I think she also mentioned something about a juniper berry tea, but my memory goes foggy after that. I can’t vouch for the validity of this treatment, nor do I know if it is even a widely common thing to do amongst the Lakota. I definitely remember that my parents freaked out completely when they realized we were doing this and forbade me from ever doing it again, out of fear I might damage my liver or something.

First photo taken of a lumber truck in the Coastal Range in Oregon. Second photo of the Oregon Sand Dunes, near Florence, Oregon, is from www.ohwy.com. Third photo is of Spearfish Canyon from BlackHills.com. Fourth image is from Artavatar. It is by Ashok K. Dey, entitled “Camp 2,” and is an original piece that can be purchased directly through Artavatar. For more info on all the excellent reasons to support Artavatar, please go directly to the site by clicking here

Tauer Perfumes are creations from Andy Tauer, and thus far he has rolled out two scents for the public. The one I shall write about today is his Le Maroc Pour Elle.

I was a little nervous when he kindly offered to send me samples, out of fear that I might not like them for whatever reason. Ah, but I needn’t have worried at all.

As that first wide break of sunshine opens up the day, so Le Maroc Pour Elle begins on my skin. Gently roused from a slightly medicinal-herbal start, jasmine and rose awaken and stretch as the notes orient themselves upon my skin.

The scent begins to warm on me, and I notice an allusion of roses on a midsummer morning, coalescing with the smell of a particularly juicy orange’s peel left abandoned on a breakfast plate. Smoothly, a warm woodiness and dry amber rise up as well. The wood and amber never overpower the lighter notes, but rather, they inform the florals. This gives the perfume a sexy knowing feel. I seem to pick up on a trace of something that is sand-like, too, but I am scared that it may have been suggested to me by the name-place of the perfume rather than the perfume itself. Still, it seems noticable.

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. And this particular eau de toilette has staying power to show this trait off well.

The fullness of rose, paired with amber that alludes to incense, inspires me to think not of Morocco, but of La Virgen de Guadalupe and her legend of roses. (I suppose I might be more a child of the Americas than I had realized.) To an irreligious person like myself, the myth surrounding her is just that. A myth. Yet in the culture of Mexico and portions of the U.S., this myth possesses immeasurable importance. One cannot escape seeing her icons, nor the candles and incense offered up to honor her. It is certainly not unusual to see her power invoked in makeshift shrines during the holidays, or by the sides of roads after tragic accidents. My mental association with the Virgin of Guadalupe lends this perfume a slightly mysterious surreal air for me.

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. It’s nice to find a rose scent that matches up to the level of a full grown woman.

Tauer Perfumes can be found at www.lemaroc.ch

Top image is of Salvadore Dali’s “Meditative Rose.” Second image is of Rene Magritte’s “Le Tombeau des Luteurs.” Third is a fleur-de-me. Bottom photograph is entitled “Day of the Dead Altar,” used with permission of Patrice Wynne, San Miguel Designs. Visit the website at: www.sanmigueldesigns.com.

Monday: Likely nothing - I am desperately hoping to get new linoleum laid down in my kitchen, and if it does, I know it will end up being one of those days where everything that can go wrong does, and all tasks end up taking twice as long as you think they will.

Wednesday: Le Maroc Pour Elle, by Andy Tauer

Friday: L’air du Desert Marocain, by Andy Tauer