Scentzilla!

The year 2005 is coming to a close, and as such, it is time for an inevitable list. There were so many new fragrance releases this year, and while some technically were released very late last year, they weren’t really available for regular schmoes like me ’til ‘05.

Let’s start with the famous folks and move on from there:

Best celebrity scent: Cumming (Alan Cumming.) It’s also the weirdest one. I loved wearing it this summer.
Best celebrity scent for a night of dancing: Lovely (Sarah Jessica Parker)
Best celebrity scent for line dancing: Shania (Shania Twain) She’s a dude. And no, I don’t mean dude as a generic term for a man, or in the popularly used surfer/stoner ‘duuuude’ way. If you can claim to have seen a REAL cowboy or cowgirl who looks like Shania Twain, then I will know you were just eating peyote on your trip past the tourist-trap dude ranch.
Best celebrity scent for pole dancing: Just Me (Paris Hilton)
Also ran: Fantasy (Britney Spears.) But alas for Brit, you learn as you get older that some fantasies should remain just that, and ought not to be acted upon. Especially if, according to your commercial, your fantasy is to have an arrow chucked at you like at a mastodon in the days of yore.

Best scent to wear uptown, downtown and everywhere else too, morning, noon, and night: Chinatown Bond No. 9

Best choice if you’d like to remain a pale wallflower: Addict 2 Dior

Best way to smell like a fruity cocktail in a dirty Tiki bar: Escada Escada (new)

Best reason to have a French connection: Borneo 1834 Serge Lutens
But the best reason to travel to France is still, well, it’s frickin’ France. ‘Nuff said.

Best excuse to pick up a limited edition of a beloved scent: Amarige Harvest Collection Givenchy
Best excuse to completely disregard limited editions: Escada’s annual summer fruit-arrheas, this year’s being Rockin’ Rio.

Best product for the delusionally empowered: Goddess Baby Phat

Best kept secret that won’t be a much of a secret for very long: L’air du Desert Marocain Tauer Perfumes
Even better? The bestest: Le Maroc pour elle Tauer Perfumes, which is a MUST for rose-lovers especially. I’m not screwing around here. You can find more info and contact information by going to Andy Tauer’s blog. Seriously. Go. Now. Why are you still reading this? Go already!

Best reason to ignore the hype: Ellenisia Penhaligon
Best reason to ignore the hype, but then go try it anyhow: Very Irresistable for Men Givenchy
Best ignored, or in my case, completely forgotton until just now: Omnia Crystalline Bulgari

Best scent for dimming the lamps, lighting some candles, cuddling up to your sweetheart, and drinking some Gluehwein on a cold winter night: Nanadebary Bronze Nanadebary

Best scent if you’re Harrison Ford, you’re on the lam, and you don’t want to stand out from the crowd because Tommy Lee Jones is hunting you down: Jil Sander Sport for Men Jil Sander

Best use of a cigarette butt note: Velvet Rope Apothia (But you should try it anyhow. I know it’d smell awesome on someone, I just happen to not be that someone.)

Best homage to Thierry Mugler’s Angel: Flowerbomb Extreme Viktor and Rolf
Second best homage to Thierry Mugler’s Angel: Flowerbomb Viktor and Rolf
Also ran: Thierry Mugler’s Angel Garden of Stars trio.

Best imitation of a perfume scent strip: Tampax fresh Tampax

Best accessory for donning imitation vintage duds and acting adorable: Cynthia Rowley Cynthia Rowley

Best way to smell naughty without anyone forgetting you’re really nice after all: Narciso Rodriguez eau de parfum Narciso Rodriguez

Best looking paperweight: Silver Rain La Prairie

Best slapstick routine between fruit and amber: Euphoria Calvin Klein

Best gag gift: Gas for men Gas. Nope, I’m not kidding.

Want to read more? Check out these blogs for some other great lists:

• An Alabaster Brow
• Beauty Addict
• Blogdorf Goodman
• Bois de Jasmin
• Brain Trapped in Girl’s Body
• c’est chic
• Crazy Jay Blue
• The Great She Elephant
• Hrmph
• Koneko’s *Mostly* Beauty Diary
• Legerdenez
• Make a Mental Note
• Monkey Posh
• Mother Hen’s Place
• my life my words my mind
• no one knows why the wolf laughs
• Now Smell This
• ¡Ombligo!
• Peppermint Patty
• Perfume-Smellin’ Things
• Scentzilla!
• She’ll be feverish after so much thinking
• Slap of the Day
• Victoria’s Own

We will all be posting at different times, so if you don’t see a list there yet, check back in later please.

On the various perfume boards, whenever ladies request ideas for good men’s fragrances, a flurry of mainstream and niche creations are suggested. But when ladies ask other ladies for the SEXIEST fragrance for men… well, Pi usually wins the popularity contest handily. In the vaudeville variety show of perfume, other entrants are awarded with a polite showing on the applause-o-meter, but Pi tilts the needle over to the breaking point in an avalanche of clapping, hooting, hollering, and more than a few lusty whistles.

I think Pi gets some guff and occasional scorn for the view of masculinity it represents. It’s sweet and warm, which earns descriptions of Pi being “feminine” from some folks. I can see where they might be coming from, but can’t bring myself to agree. The best men I have ever known are all sweet and warm people. Why should there not be a perfume to exemplify these characteristics? What an awful state the world would be in if, like most men’s perfumes prescribe, half the world’s population were nothing but musky he-men or aquatic sea-creatures.

Pi is a rounded woody scent, decorated by florally herbs. However, the big appeal (or cause for criticism) lies in the way Pi’s vanillic layers are drawn across the subtlest of musks. The vanilla tumbles around, over and over, like fluffy pillows circling in the dryer. This is not the scent of a man who tries to seduce with easily bought flowers and by showing off in an expensive restaraunt. Pi is the smell of a man who will make you fall in love with him because he has the best conversation, and because he’s just an all-around good guy. And nothing is sexier than a man who at his core is decent and kind.

Of all of Alberto Morillas’ creations, this is the one that most makes me feel as if I personally owe him a thank you card of some sort. My husband, who had never liked perfume much for himself, found himself in this scent. Maddeningly, he refuses to wear anything else now, but that’s okay. He’s discovered his version of olfactory happiness, and I am happy he wears it with abandon.

Alberto Morillas’ “Lust” drops me into a daydream. But is it my own?

Once again I am struck by how very much some of these S-Perfumes are like listening to disembodied voices from another room. Wearing them feels almost like eavesdropping; I’m listening, ear pressed to the air, to a conversation already in congress.

To smell it on a paper strip reveals saffron, cedar trees, deckle edged musk, and an element that I might best liken to the taste of a Ricola lozenge.

Yet on my skin, the saffron comes alive. You know the feeling you get when a suppertable is set, and the food has just been placed on the table, still beautiful in its presentation? There’s this fleeting moment when you forget the growling hunger, and happily enjoy the anticipation of eating your supper. Lust wears as almost gourmand on me, but without smelling explicitly like a foody fragrance.

Were this fragrance limited to a saffron element, it would be easy to dismiss. However, it unfolds into a lovely waking dream.

To wear it is to float alongside a cream-cloud of saffron.

Then I am hovering over the Olympic forests, the woody aroma rising up to meet me through the sun-shifting mists.

I sense fire without heat, as if only knowing it exists somewhere in the distance.

The tangling begins: musky and ambery warmth loosely weave weft and warp, spice and wood.

I am lightly dressed by its sensual naughtiness. This naughtiness is refined to the point of subtlety on my skin. The animalic layer refrains from grossing me out, while skewing to fit the other, more prevalent, notes.

Whether Lust’s daydream is a product of my own imagination or Morillas’ engineering seems irrelevant. It’s a wonderful one to have either way.

(Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Lust reminds me in some ways of Andy Tauer’s L’Air du Desert Marocain. I perceive them to exist on different sides of the same family.)

Lust can be obtained as a sample currently, but can be ordered in a full size bottle (approximately in late January or early February) ONLY if one has tried it as a sample from S-Perfume first. You can access the sample menu by clicking here.

Images starting from top: saffron stamens from itrademarket.com; redwood burl from sveneers.com; solar surface from spacedaily.com.

To find a link about S-Perfume’s Seven Deadly Sins, including Lust, please see my post about Sloth

One of the vintage scents I’ve been most pleased with finding is a little curiosity named Debutante de Versailles, distributed by the Daggett & Ramsdell company. The picture is blurry, unfortunately, but it turned out difficult to get that shiny gold metallic spray canister to photograph at all.

The front bears the following text:

In the design, a little banner reading “DEBUTANTE” hangs over a crest that reads “NOBLESSE OBLIGE.”
Then it lists
“Debutante
de
Versailles
EAU DE TOILETTE
PERFUMIZER
JEAN DESPREZ“

The bottom has a wee little circle labeled with the company’s name, and the name of the scent, and the size of the cannister (one ounce.)

Daggett & Ramsdell first began operations in 1890, and seem to be a company that mostly focused on skin care products, especially their cold creams and powders. They began branding their Debutante products quite early in their operations, amongst them a perfumed face powder, and later a whole package of skin care items they called “The Debutante Kit” by 1930. Aditionally, they manufactured scented waters and colognes, including items such as Violette Rico, a headache cologne, Vivatone, Arabesque, and Ruffles.

They also distributed scents through, I swear to God, the Fuller Brush company, which came as a surprise to me. I knew that the Fuller Brush salesmen would offer all sorts of quirky items in addition to cleaners and brushes, but I wouldn’t have imagined perfume. Now that I think about it, that makes sense, given the era. Women at the time had a place, and that place was at home. The car would be gone with a husband at work, and they’d have had little ability to go anywhere, nor little of thier own money to spend. I bet it was a real treat for those ladies to order a bit of bottled luxury for themselves from the Fuller Brush man, rather than hoping and waiting on their husbands or fathers to give them a present of perfume. I’m guessing Debutante Magic Moment was at least one of the Daggett & Ramsdell made fragrances for Fuller Brush.

I don’t know anything about the how or why Jean Desprez came to lend his talents or name to Daggett & Ramsdell. I don’t even know what year this scent was created. It’s a mystery. Did it presage his Bal a Versailles? Did it follow up on it after Bal, with this company trying to cash in on his name? I don’t know. The package doesn’t offer too many hints, and the clues offered by the smell of the scent could be used to construct a case for either side of that point in time.

Debutante de Versailles’ liquid sprays out as a dark ambery brown color. I instantly notice it’s soft powdered rose. It’s reminiscent in a way of Habanita’s powdered rose (minus leather). Some days I seem to notice a bit of fruitiness in the scent, and then it smells almost like there’s Tresor as its top. But it’s a Rorschach fruit: It’s peachy; No wait, it’s berried; Oh, maybe it’s pear; Nope, never mind, it’s berries and peach; GAH, I don’t know, it’s just juicy; I’m not going to be graded on this test am I? Aldehydes of some sort likely were used, I just can’t define exactly what I think they smell like. At the base of Debutante de Versailles are elements also found in Bal a Versailles. Warm woods, a teensy weensy bit of amber, and musk. I find there’s even a light vanillic note softening the whole dry down. It truly is lovely, though nothing that I find as astonishing as Bal.

I’m pleased when I do wear it, but I catch myself being awfully precious about using it. I have this strange feeling like everytime I spray (slowly emptying the bottle) that little by little I’m unwriting some piece of history. And yet, it’s going to be a meaningless piece of art unless I interact with it and experience it. It’s a conundrum, but one I am glad to have.

Our windstorm blew in snow (fun) and then freezing rain (not so fun.) The electricity repeatedly flickered and shut down, and each time popped on again within minutes, luckily enough. So we were able to run around outside playing in the snow knowing that we could always retreat to the comfort of a warm electrically heated house. We so rarely get snow here in the Portland area that it was a real treat.

I’m going to put off talking about S-Perfume Lust until later, because this windy weekend I have been almost exclusively wearing Jean Desprez’s Bal a Versailles. It’s the subject of a post made a little while back at Perfume-Smellin’ Things, and that post reminded me just how much I love wearing it. It may not have the cool cache that some of the more modern fragrances seem to carry, but Bal a Versailles will forever be chic.

Desprez is said to have used more than 300 ingredients to construct this scent, which sounds like a “hey, let’s just throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks” apporach to perfumery, but the result is a steady, smooth masterpiece. The construct is formal, but never stiff or unfriendly. It gilds the senses in its golden glow, and indulges the nose with a refined vision of earthly delights.

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.

So many of the newer oriental fragrances seem to be playing in an AM station monotone.Yet here is old Bal a Versailles, an oldie from 1962, playing in Dolby Digital surround sound. But it never overwhelms, and never blasts too loud. This scent endures as a classic, yet it is timeless. I don’t feel like I’m wearing an antique when I don my eau de toilette. In fact, I feel hipper and certainly more sensual wearing Bal a Versailles than I did when I was testing out, say, the newer Calvin Klein Euphoria. Catching lucky stray whiffs of my own sillage every now and then only adds to the sensation of glamor.

Bal a Versailles is available in many concentrations, and you can’t go wrong choosing it in any form, depending on preference and budget.

Top image of Bal a Versailles by Janine Wesselmann, from dcrpublishing.com. Second image of Lulu by Richard Ely.

EDIT: The power here keeps flicking off because of a wind storm, so if I’m not “here” Monday, it’s because I’m without electricity.

Saw a commercial Ben Affleck stars in for the Argentinian advertising market for Axe Click spray: to view click here. It’s actually a slightly better* commercial than we get for that brand here in the US. Link via Defamer.

* By “slightly better,” I mean not as idiotic, and not quite so offensive.

I have a complicated relationship with Nocturnes. It took me a while to figure out that while I admire it, I can’t particularly carry it off. According to Basenotes, it was created by Gerard Lefort for Caron in 1981.

Nocturnes smells as if the notes were blended together in a giant lacquered box before finding a home in a bottle. Its quality of being hidden away in a dark place, only lit by the stray reflections bouncing of the lacquer, gives the fragrance a somber feel. Rose and orange notes glance off the shades of Nocturnes’ cold wood and warm musk.

I don’t notice some of the other notes individually, such as neroli, ylang, tuberose, jasmine. They mix and swirl around one another without drawing attention to themselves. Despite all those white florals, Nocturnes doesn’t wear as light on me. It is not weighty or bogged down by its heavier elements, but the fragrance is most certainly characterized by moving shadows. Through the background of this fragrance I sense something rather amber-y glowing, lain within the wood like a strip of marquetry.

Nocturnes is a beautiful, smart scent, but as I mentioned, sadly isn’t one I believe I ought to be wearing since the fit isn’t quite right. I wonder if it is not a tricky scent to wear for many others, too.

Top image from jssgallery.org, of James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket. Second image is Childe Hassam’s Fifth Avenue Nocturnes. I was sooooo tempted to exclusively use Hassam’s city street pictures, but this was the only one that felt right. If you have a moment though, do check out Hassam’s Paris Nocturne, as well as Whistler’s (yes, he’s the one with the mother) elegiac Nocturnes series.

Even when he was a puppy, my dog loved to sun bathe. He especially loves it when we go to my parents’ house, where he can stretch out and cook himself on their noonday-facing wooden porch. I’ve never quite gotten the idea behind the phrase “lazy as a dog.” When dogs lie in the sun, they’re always so committed to their relaxation. It’s not some activity they idly wander into; the act of a nap itself is a destination. This is Theirry Wasser’s creation Sloth.

S-Perfume Sloth is but one of “Seven Deadly Sins” from Sacre Nobi’s olfactory installation, a project consisting of seven different perfumers’ visions of the various vices. (Information about the installation can be located online.)

Despite an expectation that all these “Deadly Sins” might potentially exhibit some fragrantly surreal Hieronymous Bosch-like end panel warning, this scent seems to be lapping up the languid pleasure of “slothfulness.” One could argue the fragrance views sloth with irreverency. But then, I’ve always been fond of irreverency, and as an irreligious person I’ve never had a strong emotional connection to the concept of sin, anyhow.

Upon first spray, I am met with what smells like a splash of citrusy cologne, which burns off rapidly. A suggestion of a board still heated after piping hot loafs of bread have been removed forms itself in my mind. And then a crazy quilt of other perfumes pops into my head: I smell remnant pieces from the sillage of Helmut Lang parfum, Weil Zibeline, and Czech and Speake No. 88, all which are seemingly cross-stitched together by minute strokes of an orange-y note. But the lasting impression is one of sun baked wood. The longer the fragrance dwells on my skin, the more it dries out, until I am nearly convinced a piece of hot beach driftwood, long washed ashore and moistureless, has been affixed to my skin.

I perceive all this, and yet somehow am left with the mental image of sleeping dogs. Just soaking up the sun, and absorbing the reflected warmth from the deck wood, they’re content to lie there without thoughts of doing anything else. Because after all, they’re already busy.

Nobi did not set out to release any of the Sins for distribution. However, he notes “when Chandler Burr came to smell my art scents last summer, he was outraged that all my art scents were not accessible after the exhibitions. His point was that the scents should be available not necessarily for wearing them but for experiencing them.”

Sloth’s staying power isn’t great, but then, it wasn’t really developed as a scent that needs to stick to the skin. I’d guesstimate that I get two, maybe three, hours out it.

Of the various S-Perfumes I’ve tried, Sloth ranks as one I consider to have the most broad appeal for wear. Well, at least amongst perfume enthusiasts like myself, that is. It is one of two Sins currently available now for sampling only: Click here. According to Nobi, “the 15ml bottles will be available online late January or early February to those who have ordered the samples (in other words one has to try a sample first to order the full size product).”

Top image of Fred when he was about a year old. Second image is a detail of Dog Painting 46 by David Hockney. You can find my thoughts, some positive and some not so positive, on other S-Perfumes by clicking here.

I know not this term “time management.” Okay, so I do, but with trying to juggle all sorts of stuff last week, we actually didn’t get our tree up and decorated until last night. Which is what I did instead of writing up a blog post. So no perfume review for this morning (I tend to write them the night before since I’m only technically awake in the morning.) But I figured I may as well share our tree with everyone:

Believe it or not, this was the best shot I got… I still haven’t quite figured out all the gizmos on the digital camera, and have exactly zero knowledge how to deal with the light coming off the strings of tiny bulbs when using a digicam. Most of my shots were all blurry, and if they weren’t blurry, then I of course ended up snapping with the camera while holding it at a crooked angle. Sigh. If anyone has tips on how to deal with the light from the tree, I would really appreciate it, since I’d like the eventual Christmas Eve and Day pics to come out looking decent. I usually only ever like taking pictures outside anyhow, but this is my first Christmas with the digital camera. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

And since this is Oregon, and I can’t even remember a time when we’ve had a White Christmas, we have an umbrella ornament, to symbolize our usually Grey and Wet Christmas.