Scentzilla!

Fruits & Passion Solstis is one of those scents I’d heard dismissed in the past as a fruity-floral composed in the key of bland. But curiosity got the better of me (per usual) and I decided to give it a whack anyhow, since one of the ancillary products appealed to me.

What a nice surprise! It’s fruity sure, its heart dominated by a melon note that seems “marine”-like to me. The melon itself would be utterly unappealing, were it not for the strong and strangely refreshing accents of fennel. This fennel note smells very much like catching the aroma of a basket of fresh fennel greens at the market. Something wonderfully palate-cleansing happens when I wear this, and indeed, Solstis bears traces of curly parsley. The herbal brightness of the scent I feel elevates it beyond many of the more expensive and widely available fruity scents floating about in department stores. At the base I find something that makes me think of light powdered vanilla. However, this is not at all a powdery scent. I’m suspecting this may make my list of top summer scents this year.

The real hit for me was the deodorant. I can’t believe I’m saying this about something I stick in my armpits, but this is really well done. The deodorant is clear, so you needn’t worry about staining your clothes. Soft and slick, the texture is as well done as my favorite deodorant, Tom’s of Maine unscented, and it’s just as gentle and non-irrritating to the skin as Tom’s. The way the fragrance is handled is *perfect*. It smells when applying, and for shortly after, yet it is not strong enough to interfere with whatever scent I choose for the day (and I’m sure that with me you can guess that changes pretty much daily.) Without delving too deeply into my pits, I will just say that it controls my B.O. just as well as my Tom’s, if not better. I’m going to switch over to this instead of Tom’s as long as they’re selling it. For me? That is saying A LOT. Now I’m wondering if there are other great scented deodorants out there that I’m missing out on, or at least those that aren’t found at the drugstore.

The Solstis lip balm came to me as a disappointment. It’s far too waxy in texture to moisturize my lips. Too waxy to even be pleasurable wearing - I’ve worn lip glosses that weren’t this waxy for cryin’ out loud. The flavor emphasizes the melon more than any other note, and I found it enjoyable. But it’s not enough for me. I actually held the most hope for this product, and it’s what compelled me to order the eau de toilette and deordorant since I was at it, because it’s hard to really screw up lip balm. And while this isn’t quite a screw up, it is fairly pointless to buy. I’m sticking with my shea butter and my Anna Sui moisturizing stick, thanks. This one goes into the trash bin.

(Has anyone tried the shower and bath products from this line? I’d love to hear what you think of them.)

Coming either Friday or Monday: Fresh Cannabis Santal. (Haven’t decided which yet, sorry!)

Also, in other beauty-related news, I need mention that Lipgloss and Laptops has released their inaugural podcast. This episode covers, naturally enough, lipgloss, including the history (hee!) of lipgloss, and a very funny little section on “meaty” lipglosses of the past.

L’ Aromarine Cola eau de toilette smells exactly like you think it ought to: like cola. The first time I sprayed it I could identify spice in the beginning - a little dab of ginger, possibly a pinch of cumin. There’s also orange in this fragrance as well. But after all of five minutes, even on that first try, it was like an RC Cola. Wait, no, it’s more like a frozen Coke. Or maybe this is just like those cola-flavored Bottlecaps I used to love when I was a kid. You know what? It’s all three. Despite the sweetness of the scent, it is not syrupy to my nose. I can’t even smell the spice or orange anymore, all I know now is that there’s gonna be cola the second it leaves the atomizer.

Perhaps it sounds like a juevenille fragrance to wear, and for that matter, perhaps it actually is one.

I don’t care.

I have a total schoolgirl crush on this scent. Cola makes me happy; it even makes me smile just thinking about it while I’m typing this. I’d have to say this is the most ridiculously fun scent I’ve tried in ages.

The staying power ain’t great. Worse yet, it’s one of those tricky little suckers that fool you into thinking it has evaporated after an hour or so, while everyone else still senses that you’re wearing it for a few hours.

I don’t care.

Because. it. smells. like. cola! No one’s going to ever proclaim this fragrance as an ineffable piece of art. However, it’s exactly right to my nose and I’m completely smitten. What else can I say? Cola!

In the US, Cola can be purchased online through smallflower.com (online site of Merz Apothecary in Chicago), and BohoBelle, with apparently free shipping for deliveries weighing under 2 kg.

Image from dpsu.com. Sorry about all the boring hyperlinks in that first paragraph. I am unsure sometimes about what is familiar to most people versus that which exists purely within American pop culture alone.

Meet the unholy love child of Carolina Herrera and Rodney Dangerfield: K de Krizia.

K de Krizia is as a basic as Carolina’s iconic use of the white dress shirt. Her designs seem intended to make the woman who wears them feel elegant and tasteful within her own body, despite the naysaying of others that are unable to appreciate most women who aren’t fashion models have real hips (hi, Tom Ford, you banal misogynist*, you.) In that spirit, K de Krizia is a chypre aimed at making one feel delighted in his or her own skin.

And yet. Rodney Dangerfield. K de Krizia “don’t get no respect. No respect.” It’s only rarely mentioned on the various perfume boards/forums for perfume enthusiasts, and amongst those who only wear but a few fragrances in their lifetimes, it’s considered their “mother’s” scent. Pity, that.

K de Krizia eau de parfum opens with a singing lilt of bergamot and oakmoss. As it enters its middle phase, I can see the hot panting of tuberose from a distance, and but** I feel the sweet hand-squeeze of innocent lily of the valley: Lust from a distance only. Narcissus forms the floral core of K. It is a note that always reminds me of laquered jewelry boxes when paired with oakmoss. The base of K de Krizia does reveal green moss, but it tucked neatly to fit inside what seems like an unmistakable sandalwood. Lurking within the base, vanilla is employed not as a direct note, but to underpin the more prominent notes. Yet all remains unobtrusive, nothing jars or pushes itself forward where unwanted. The never-out-of-fashion crisp white shirt of the chypre genre is our K.

I do not care for the eau de toilette version of K de Krizia. I know how much perfume fans hate hearing this, I know, but it smells practically musty, like an old lady someone at the nursing home forgot to dust off. (I’ve already got a one-way ticket to Hell, why not bump up from coach to business class?) In short, it is an inferior concentration, and I would skip the edt entirely, and splurge the few extra bucks to obtain the edp.

I wonder if the design of the bottle is not somehow responsible for straightjacketing K’s popularity? It seems a dated design, sprung forth from the forehead of Pierre Dinand for the year 1982 alone. Yet the juice in the bottle is decidedly foward-thinking, a clean scent without the connotations of detergent that many scents currently populating the best-seller lists possess. Dinand has what is sometimes referred to as “an embarassment of talent,” but this bottle seems less timeless than his better ones. Adding to the mountain of neglect is Krizia’s choice against advertising this fragrance anymore. Sigh. Again, pity that.

*Honestly, I wish the NY Times kept their online articles available for free much longer than they do. Tom Ford opined in an article that Ms. Herrera was unnaturally focused on the hip area in her designs, and to that I can only say: someone who choses to frequently enough (and ridiculously, too) base his predilections upon people/things being nude ought to consider that many of us ladies are curvy and we do happen to consider the shape of our hips when choosing CLOTHING. Remember that? Y’know… clothes, those things that designers, like say for instance Tom Ford, supposedly make. Because, really, we wear clothing for the majority of the day. And asshats who forget many women have the child-bearing hips just come off sounding pompous and disconected with everyday life. (For those readers to whom English is a second language, please let me explain the term asshat: where would your head be if you were wearing your ass for a hat?)

**David Foster Wallace connived to use “and” and “but” smack dab together, and ever since I have been looking for an excuse to do so myself. Finally! Well, to be honest, neither he nor I were very successful, but the plus on his side is that he’s David Foster fricking Wallace. On my plus side, we have the fact that this is but a blog. Which is not much at all. DFW always wins language-wise against, like, everyone, including my ignorant self.

Images: Caroline Herrera from catwalks.sagafurs.com, and Rodney Dangerfield from deejayphoto.com.

There’s a lot of vanilla perfumes out there. And many of the vanillas could be considered essentially indistinguishable from one to the next because they’re so, well, “vanilla.” However, there are some very good simple takes on vanilla out there, and one of my faves is Ecco Bella’s Bourbon Vanilla.

This eau de parfum is one of the least “foody” vanillas out there. A feather light note of vanilla with creamy intonations conveys the gist of the scent. However, what marks Bourbon Vanilla as different is the softest dusting of cocoa powder across the top of the scent. Underneath these notes, I smell giant antique oak barrels, like the kind you’d find in a winery waiting to be filled with that season’s harvest. The overall effect is very dry, and does not connote desserts. This is not a complex blend, but I consider it to be an elegantly unadorned vanilla.

The vanilla bath and body products produced by Ecco Bella do NOT match the fragrance of the eau de parfum. They are much more gourmand scented, with that warm baked goods feel that foody vanillas take on. I see no reason why someone couldn’t layer them, but for me the appeal of this scent is that it doesn’t smell like a bakery.

Ecco Bella products are available in health food stores, such as Wild Oats and Whole Foods. However, I do recommend purchasing their eau de parfums online, since they seem to be significantly cheaper. At my Wild Oats for example, the Vanilla Bourbon is priced at twenty-one dollars, whereas I picked it up for ten dollars less on sale from an online site. Two sites I know of, and I’m sure there are more, selling the line include MotherNature.com and House of Nutrition Online.

L’Occitane’s spiel for Eau d’Iparie on the box qualifies as marginally dippy. “Imagine a place where myrrh and incense reign: Iparie (Upon looking up this word, all I can come up with is that it’s the name for a type of non-locking gas spring for vehicle parts). Its generous walls (that wall gave and gave - ’til it hurt!) contain a blend of precious resins. The air is filled with myrrh and incense, a blended scent which is like a limitless gift (like herpes?). Transported (moved along in a vehicle with iparie parts, naturally) along the ancient incense road to the eastern Mediterranean countries (which is weird, because the incense trade along that route moved to the west rather than to the east, but whatever, geography isn’t my strong point either), these rare ingredients are now combined to create the intense, sensual and mysterious wake of Eau d’ Iparie.” Okay, so this is not the worst “story” I’ve ever read (looking at you, La Prarie Silver Rain) but I did giggle a little.

The juice itself is quite nice, though the description might lead you to believe it’s thicker and richer than it really is. Eau d’Iparie seems like it will make an ideal spring/summer incense fragrance, as it wears with a airiness that never weighs down.

The opening blast is surprisingly citrus filled, with what seems like bergamot and a light touch of lemon. As the scent warms on my skin, a fruity but non-cloying myrrh takes over. The fruitiness comes across like the smell of a warmed up jar of apple and pear baby food. However, the dryness of a woody and lightly musky-amber base prop up a predominating and transparent resin. Any sweetness is carefully kept in check.

This isn’t a particularly original composition - however, I feel that the better standard to judge a scent by is if it’s well done for what it is. And Eau d’Iparie is well done. Like many L’Occitane scents, this is ridiculously easy to wear, and smells simple but lovely to others who may catch a whiff of your sillage. It should suit either gender, although I’d suggest men especially check it out.

ON A WHOLE ‘NOTHER SUBJECT: I was skimming through the Boing Boing headlines, and read that the New Orleans Public Library is asking for donations in a effort to restock their shelves since Hurricane Katrina did its worst to their collection. When I first saw the item I thought they were requesting books only, but Boing Boing has updated the details of that item to reveal a need for cash. (Thanks Robin, for pointing that out to me!)

Upon my casual perusal of the Cumming the Fragrance site to see if there might be a home fragrance spray or candle in the works yet, I saw that they’ve smartly chosen to make samples available of the fragrance. Honestly, this is a try before you buy sort of scent, so I’m glad to see they chose to do this. Please click here to obtain a free sample if you’ve wanted to try the scent but don’t have it available to you locally. There is a checkout process, but you will not be charged shipping or anything like that. (I am not sure if there will be a charge for a sample outside of the US, however. But if you’re interested it sure wouldn’t hurt to email and ask, I suppose.)

My impression of Cumming the Fragrance is located here, but for the short and quick of it: I like it. A lot.

Hmmm, in keeping with the sprit of the marketing for the scent, maybe I should have titled this announcement Cumming Free. Or I guess since it’s being sent to your mailbox, I could have gone with Cumming in your Box. Oh good lord, I’ll stop now.

From the cutesy bottle right down to the juice inside, Fifi Chachnil embraces retro-chic glamour. It is the smell of the way the we look nowadays upon WWII-era pinups, casting our modern-day eyes at them and seeing a degree of innocence in images intended to be provocative at the time.

Fifi is the flirty little sister of Molinard’s much older Habanita. But where Habanita is a proper lady cracking a whip, Fifi is a dirty girl whipping a smile.

The fragrance has strong top notations of lemon zest, which shifts down into subtle spice from corriander and the tobacco base. Sweetly powdered rose forms the heart of Fifi, and it is this quality that really lends it a flirty retro flavor. The aforementioned tobacco at the base, as well as a wee intonation of leather, temper the sweetness, cutting into it an element of dangerless danger. I perceive it as a flash of thigh, if you will, from a pretty but ostensibly otherwise chaste little lady. The most subtle of musks is buried way, way down in the base as well, but it is nearly invisible.

I’m afraid Fifi is still just a hair too sweet for my taste. I have other powdered rose scents I prefer for myself, including Habanita. However, I feel this is one scent that should prove to be quite fun for folks to try. But do try before you buy.

Fifi was tricky to locate in the States for a while there, but luckily it’s now available for immediate purchase through Beautyhabit, and reservations are being taken for future shipment through Luckyscent and Luscious Cargo.

Oh golly, this fun little item is a conundrum to review. Let’s start with the bad, and then we’ll go to the good so you can understand why I’d probably buy this again.

The bad:

• I see nothing in the ingredient list that would make this “organic.” Or for that matter, there’s nothing ALL natural about it. Proof positive you must look beyond a label with anything bearing the highly nebulous term “organic.” I don’t feel like typing out the ingredient list, but if you’re curious, it appears drugstore.com has them listed on their site.
• The plastic packaging is a bit too easily prone to cracking, unfortunately.
• “Pomegranate Fig,” my ass. It smells mostly of tea, with just a touch of fruity sweetness.

The good:

• I LIKE the tea smell, even though I was expecting “Pomegranate Fig.”
• This produced a really excellent amount of bubbles, and they were surprisingly long-lasting ones. So many bubble baths dissolve before I’m done with the bath, but these bubbles linger ’til I’m ready to get out. AWESOME.
• A 3 ounce package goes a lot further than it sounds like it would, and it’s not terribly expensive (under ten dollars.) It’s an affordable treat in my opinion
• The method of bubble delivery, the petals, is beautiful and fun. Seriously, don’t these flowers look pretty to you??

So despite my misgivings about the wholly ridiculous use of the word organic, I gave into the sheer prettiness, and despite finding the scent not as advertised, I would still totally pick these up again. Although, I’m thinking what I might do is try one of their tea scents instead, seeing as I may as well have this time around.

As you may have guessed these are available through drugstore.com, but I also found the line at my Fred Meyer store, which a Kroger-owned subsidary, so you should probably be able to find it at any old drugstore or grocery.

Whether you are in a romantic relationship or not, Valentine’s Day is still an excellent excuse (if you need one) to remind the people in your life how much you care for them. I leave with you words from one of my favorite thinkers:

Image via cataumet.net

The first of the crocuses have begun to dot my front yard, hinting at the spring to come. But despite the urging of the crocuses, winter has still not abandoned its post. I woke to discover this morning that the grey world smelled damp, offering up the aromas of an earthy admixture of soil and a good rain. Alan Cumming’s eponymous fragrance, Cumming, is to me the bottled equivalent of that scent.

Now I know, there are tons of you who feel either too disgusted by the name, or who find it intellectually offensive and on the level of bathroom humor. Or both. I can’t change your minds, nor shall I try. But I must point out, you are missing out on some terrific juice. One confession: I find Alan Cumming completely adorable. He’s got senses for goofiness and insouciance in equal measure, a charming combination. I would totally pick him to be my gay boyfriend.

Christopher Brosius, the nose behind scents in the the infamous Demeter line, as well as the creator of his own CB I Hate Perfume line, concocted this fragrance for the actor. Its notes include:

Bergamot, Black Pepper, Scotch Pine, Whiskey, Cigar, Heather, Douglas Fir, Rubber, Leather, Highland Mud, Burnt Rubber, Peat Fire, White Truffle.

It reads like a weird fragrance, and it is, which I mean in the most complimentary of terms.

The cool grey skies and wet earth we have so frequently here in Oregon form the essential character of the fragrance. On the dry down I also sense a note that smells the way a sip of scotch feels as it slowly trickles down the throat. I don’t really sense any tobacco, and the mix of wood, heather, “rubber” and “burnt rubber” somehow come across as vetiver to me. The leather plays very lightly here, serving to add accent to the wet earthiness without drawing attention to itself. Brosius struck the most delicate of balances here, and his creation for Cumming has a uniqueness and intricacy that none of the other celebrity releases from last year even came close to achieving. Within it is a lovely melancholy spirit, the smell of hiding out from the winter rain in a cozy pub, and staring out the windows at watery streets and puddles drowned by their own excess into murky pavement lakes.

I love this scent madly. The longer I own it and wear it, the more I seem to appreciate it. Cumming was one of my top ten fragrances for summer last year, and it will be again this year.

I see that Beautyhabit is currently listing Cumming at a discount, but it’s also availabe at other online and retail stores on this list.