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.
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.)
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’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.
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.
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.”
“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.
1.) Alan Cumming - Cumming
Sometimes I fear like I’m banging the drum for this fragrance as annoyingly as a Gunter Grass character. But I’m merely banging away for the fragrance version of a pleasurably rotten rainy day, which I hope is much less pedantic and insane. It’s muddy, it’s wet, it’s wonderful.
2.) Novaya Zarya - Barber of Siberia No. 3
This fragrance is an ode to a Russian film of the same name. It smells very much of a gin and tonic with lime, and though one can find similarly inspired gin and tonic fragrances, thus far this is the best one I’ve found. I think I even smell the quinine, though I’ll admit the possibility that this note may be imaginative conjuring.
3.) Czech & Speake - Dark Rose
Spiced rose on ice. ‘Nuff said.
4.) Hermes - Eau de Mervielles
I don’t regularly go for orangey fragrances, but I cannot fathom how anyone couldn’t submit to the beauty of Eau de Mervielles. It’s peppered wood heart belies its erstwhile sweetness in summer, lending it a more tawny beach-strewn driftwood feel.
5.) Versace - The Dreamer
The Dreamer should be regarded as a mess of a fragrance - and what a glorious mess it is. The tangled web of sweet shop and forest it spreads across the skin is all wrong in the best possible way. The Dreamer adopts a soapy tone in the high heat of the season, giving one a sanitary impression of what the candy cottage in the woods might look like to Hansel and Gretel if the old witch that lives there was a committed vegetarian.
6.) Penhaligon - English Fern
Listen, I’m not saying this is the most complex thing ever, but when the temperature hits triple digits Fahrenheit, the simple fougere just clicks with me.
7.) Carven - Ma Griffe
Vintage bottles of Ma Griffe can still be picked up for reasonable prices, thankfully enough. If you crave perfume complexity no matter what the weather, the spiced galbanum of Ma Griffe will satisfy without laying on the air like a wet wool blanket.
8.) Frank LA - Frank LA No. 1
Frank LA (now Frank LA No. 1, with the newish additions to the line) is another greeny fragrance, which entices me to the point of addiction. It’s got herbal salad tones that include the chopped green pepper of galbanum, it’s got incense, it’s got a smidge of nutmeg. Sound too heavy? Somehow it manages to slice a clear swath through the thick humidity and sleepy heat of even the hottest day. Rather than feeling oppressive, it invigorates, and wipes the smile that descending sweat melted off back onto your face.
9.) Guerlain - Sous Le Vent
For what seemed like ages, I had the worst time figuring out what I thought of Sous le Vent. Mostly because during the cooler weather the appearance of a note I sadly can only describe as asparagus pee-like popped up on my skin. But now with the rising mercury, that troublesome asparagus pee is no more! I’m left with a refreshing rush of green florals and herbs that overlap like waves greedily consuming one another on the incoming tide. It does play out as more animalic in summer than during winter, however, this is simply not a deal breaker for me. I find its indolic animal on sweaty summer human possesses the same negating effect as fighting fire with fire.
10.) Cote Bastide - Peche de Vigne
The peach orchards of Goldendale, Washington are not legendary, but they should be. During the peaches’ peak ripeness, they taste of honeyed blossoms as much as they do of fleshy fruit. Peche de Vigne grabs me with the same gravitational force as the wafting aroma from pallets loaded with Goldendale peaches.
To read some other great compilations of summer fragrance choices, please click on any or all of the links below:
Thanks to Marina for the graphic used at top!
Judith Muller’s Bat-Sheba (alternatively listed as “Batsheba” or “Bat Sheba,” and “Batsheva” or “Bat Sheva”) provides a great example of how easily excellent perfumes of the past can be forgotten, even amongst obsessive perfume and bottle collectors.
Her perfume house (listed in a 1968 business directory as Bat-Sheba Perfumes) was Israeli, based in Haifa, which makes my Bat-Sheba flacon a bit of a curiosity in a vintage collection filled mostly with French and American fragrances.
Bat-Sheba was released, I believe, in 1967. It was followed by “Shalom,” around 1970 (via POL and other sources), an eponymous fragrance simply titled “Judith Muller” in 1975 (via author Nigel Groom), and one called “King David” (year unknown)*.
I find later mentions of Muller releasing an “Esprit de Parfum” being distributed in 1992 by H. Stern jewelry outlets, a fragrance for the Budapest Opera Ball in 1990 (she hails from Hungary)*, and a special perfume titled “Jerusalem 3,000″ commemorating Israel’s 50th anniversary made in conjunction with the Israel Coins and Medals Corporation in 1997*. * Asterisked references via archived news releases.
Here at right, Ms. Muller is pictured happily guiding a 2006 exhibit on her work in Budapest (taken by user EuropeLaura at webshots.com):
Rumor has it that Judith Muller herself was not the sole creator behind Bat-Sheba and Shalom, but rather that Sophia Grosjman was the perfumer. Ms. Grosjman had only just begun her career at IFF at that particular time. Whether the rumors are true, I cannot say with any certainty, but if accurate would indicate a perfuming legacy that began with extraordinarily immediate and dazzling skill.
Bat-Sheba opens on a spicy aldehyde pitch, but quickly grows in intensity into a softly powdery and juicy floral heart. The fragrance further expands as it dries, revealing an incense-laden leathery base that smells the way an immaculately styled woman looks. Notes include aldehydes, jasmine, rose, iris (orris), vetiver, incense, and leather, among others. (If this was indeed composed by Sophia Grosjman, it would make an interesting comparison for those who are more familiar with her comparatively minimal and much more feminine approach in more famous later projects.)
Strangely, Bat-Sheba and other Judith Muller fragrances are not as highly valued by bottle collectors as one might think. The flacons are exquisite, hand painted to resemble antique Phoenician and Roman glass – one might guess the sheer aesthetic quality would attract a fair amount of attention. The old Muller bottles are variously colored, including pink, green, blue, and pretty pale lavender shades. But fortunately for perfume collectors these fragrances, though rare, do not create the sort of frenzy that, say, a presentation of Jacques Griffe’s Griffonage might stir.
I picked up this flacon for only $0.99 (if I recall correctly… it’s been awhile) $2.00 (Criminy, my memory is terrible, I could have just read my own old post at POL if I weren’t so freaking lazy) at a vintage resale boutique, which is fancy talk for a kitschy junk shop. I can see on the auction sites that while this little personal shopping whim turned out to be a great deal, the price tag on Bat-Sheba is still relatively undervalued. A casual perfume collector could pick up a bottle in excellent condition without having to pinch pennies on the rest of their monthly budget.
Although I wouldn’t normally advocate collecting simply for the sake of collecting, I do feel comfortable in suggesting others might enjoy discovering this relatively small, older Israeli perfume house for the outright fun of it. With the way perfume collecting has grown as a popular hobby, the Judith Muller house remains one of the few bargains out there. Bat-Sheba would make an interesting addition to any perfume hound’s library of knowledge.
You may have read in the past few days about a little tempest of sorts regarding the existence of perfume blogger payola and swag. (Due to a family emergency which I prefer to keep private, I have been unable to spend much time reading on the computer, and was not aware there was any drama until late.) It’s been the subject of posts and vigorous commenting at Aromascope, Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, Perfume Posse, and Perfume-Smellin’ Things. It’s also been the subject of a lot of conjecture and debate on the perfume board at Makeupalley.
The initial blogger’s post that sparked what I’m going to go ahead and call a debate drew attention to a comment I had made 5 months ago on the Photo Matt blog. For those who don’t know, Photo Matt is the personal blog of the WordPress founding developer (the open source blogging platform Scentzilla uses) and a founder of Automattic (the company behind Wordpress.com and Askimet.) The post in question was very brief, and talked about click-through rates. My comment was actually a fairly emotional (on my part) response to something another commenter brought up, which wondered if people are mentally blocking out ads, then how long until they start blocking out the blogs themselves, too? With the rise of commerciality in blogging, this struck me, as a blogger who discusses consumer goods, as a very good question to ask.
To put my comment in a very personal context, I wrote it right in the midst of what felt like an onslaught of Christmas shopping PR agendas being delivered to my email inbox. There were offers for freebies of all sorts (not limited to perfume alone) sailing in, which was daunting enough… And then I was offered payment for reviews. These offers did not come directly through any perfume houses. They were extended by third parties. The first one I simply deleted immediately, as I figured they were nothing more than crackpots with a really bad idea. The second one I received (from a different source) wound up giving me the heebie-jeebies. I declined, and tried to offer up the unsolicited advice that this tactic was a questionable practice and not in their best interest to be making. I did so because I thought the party was misinformed about how blogs work. My advice brought back an apology, which was good, but it was bundled up inside the explanation that (and I’m paraphrasing) it wasn’t meant to offend, but that’s just how some other bloggers liked to do advertising.
Holy.
Crap.
WTF?!
I interpreted that as implicitly indicating that there were/are other bloggers accepting payment for positive reviews. My reaction was negative and visceral, so when reading the question brought up by the Photo Matt commenter, I wound up pouring out my concerns and worry what that sort of practice on such a limited blog topic meant for the whole of the blogosphere.
But the issue of direct payola is not the primary issue faced by bloggers. I believe it is rare, though its existence shouldn’t be denied simply because it is not overly prevalent. Yet.
The much more common practice of indirect influence of payola via freebies, or swag, should also be of concern to both bloggers and blog readers. I wish I had spoken up more about that in my comment, but at the time I was upset, and choosing the best wording ever was not my main objective. I was attempting to explain that if even such a small interest such as perfume attracts that sort of PR/advertising/marketing intrusion, bloggers on all subjects ought to remain wary. This practice may negatively influence the whole medium of blogging – not just perfume.
In fact, it was after I wrote that comment that I strengthened up the language in my own PR guidelines in order to leave no doubt in the minds of PR reps and readers alike where Scentzilla stands. Yet despite this, one somewhat prominent niche perfumery’s PR rep attempted to astroturf (see Wikipedia explanation here) on my blog, either in defiance or willful ignorance of my stated policy on the subject. The lesson I took from that was that the question of ethics falls squarely on the shoulders of bloggers. If there’s money to be made, companies’ PR wings will try to stick their fingers into the pot however they can manage.
I was not and am not inclined to name names. I would prefer not to risk sticking myself in legal hot water. Moreover, that’s not really the point. It’s a blogosphere wide concern; it’s not limited to perfume blogging only or to specific people, groups, or businesses. The issue is a ripe discussion topic, and I find it a compelling discussion to have for the health of blogging in general.
I regret that the comment left seems to have been taken and used by some individuals as a kind of ad hominem attack on all my perfume blogging peers. I am horrified that anyone would glean the assumption that ALL bloggers are engaging in unethical behavior; I was clumsily trying to say that I was highly persuaded that SOME bloggers in the fashion/beauty arena are. I’m disturbed that some folks have decided we’ve landed on some perfumed grassy knoll, and have consequently become conspiracy-theorists, when there in fact is no conspiracy. I do, however, understand that it may well come as a shock to some blog readers that free stuff (products, samples, etc.) may be offered to and accepted by blog authors. But it’s not as if some great big truth has been revealed. There’s no perfumed grassy knoll to become obsessed with finding, nor is there some imaginary Warren commission to rally against or around. Frankly, I find it disingenuous of some folks to feign naïve shock that there’s commercial interest in blogging when it’s plain that advertisements run all over many fashion and beauty blogs. The issue is a blogosphere wide issue, not one that is singular to fragrance blogging alone.
The giving and receiving of freebies, as well as blogger relationships with various PR firms and sponsors, raises interesting and pertinent questions about the supposed independence of bloggers. This is a valid area of concern. Whether or not any one individual blogger engages in these relationships and practices is irrelevant to the larger issue: Payola and swag do exist. Advertisers and PR will try in any way they can to control information about their products, and there are those who will accede to their attentions. Thus, all fragrance bloggers should look critically at the effect this has on our own blogging community, and more importantly, the blogging community at large. How does commercial attention shape the public perception of blogs as independent and personally driven media? How are these relationships influencing the conversation about our own chosen topics, both in tone and subject material? What kind of direction is the commercial attention driving us towards? Is that direction good, bad, or neutral? I ask, because right now there are more questions than ready answers, and we should be prepared to question ourselves about such things whether using the medium as writers or readers.
These are weighty issues to consider. The creeping commercial attention to amateur online reviewing is something every site owner should watch for as they navigate their way towards finding a personal code of ethics. I struggle with navigating those choppy waters frequently. It can be tricky, and it has not gotten any less tricky in the 3 years I’ve been blogging. If anything, it’s become more difficult as the beauty and fashion blog community has grown in size and diversity. Some sites are highly commercial, while others are less so. Therefore, relying upon the practices of your virtual blog neighbors when forming your own site’s guidelines may not always be the best or easiest solution.
This issue is not one that can be resolved by any one blogger categorically stating that PR, advertising, and its attendant weight of influence does not unduly cloud their judgment. What we need is a collective transparency as a blogging community if we wish to continue to be taken seriously.
The influence cash payments for posts can make on a blog is unequivocally direct. However, the influence a relationship with PR firms and their freebies might have on a blogger can be a danger as well. People may feel beholden to positively mention the products they receive. Others may feel compelled to construct or maintain an insider persona by repeating those firms’ press releases verbatim, possibly without considering the repercussions such posts may have within the whole sphere of a blogging community’s discussions. There is also the risk that some people may refrain from writing anything that could be construed as negative, because certain products may be carried by site advertisers. Perhaps, less obviously, there also exists the fear that if one pans a product represented by a particular PR firm, that PR firm (which may represent many brands) will sever their relationship entirely, thus cutting themselves off from a particular outlet for new information… or even more freebies, to be perfectly cynical.
Again, this is not to say every blog you read is run by unethical individuals, nor is it to say that every blog you trust doesn’t have to deal with these issues on a daily basis. It can be hard to find a balance on how to manage a site in a transparent but unobtrusive manner. Mistakes can and will be made – by both the scrupulous and the unscrupulous. But the blurry line between independence and commerciality can be confusing to follow for any blogger whose subject matter happens to be consumer goods. My own worry is that if the majority of perfume bloggers are all acting as willing synchronized cogs in one big giant PR machine, how long until the public simply begins to generally regard reading blogs akin to watching infomercials? Already there are blogs about other subjects that currently beg this question.
I suppose it’s worthwhile to point out that some beauty & lifestyle magazines also stray deeply into infomercial territory. Unfortunately, I think some fashion, beauty, and perfume bloggers try to take their stylistic and editorial cues from those sorts of magazines. Perfume blogs are not exactly Consumer Reports, but should this mean by default that they should follow instead after Allure, O, Lucky, etc? I’m not sure perfume bloggers should adopt whatever code of ethics they presume the editorial staff at those magazines take towards PR freebies, because I am not convinced that the standard there is entirely germane. While glossy mags may indeed receive press releases, products, and samples for mention in their pages, the editors do allegedly bend the content of those pages to kowtow to their advertisers. This is done without any of the transparency that might benefit their readers. In other words, the relative ethical practices of even the fashion and beauty print media can and should be viewed with a healthy amount of skepticism by bloggers. The idea they are the role model to follow is sketchy and a questionable suggestion.
Readers of blogs need to question themselves about the reliability of a blogger’s source of information and what motives a blogger might have in sharing that information. In most cases it’s a fairly benign motive: creative expression, and a desire to participate directly in the conversation about their favorite subjects. Reader awareness is as warranted for perfume blogs as any other type of blog. Enjoy the perfume blogs as possible sources of information and entertainment, but chose carefully how you read them. Because as a blog writer, I’m counting that your own personal bullshit detector will keep the honest and well-written blogs afloat while the rest all drift off into oblivion in a sea of homogeny.
Wait. Did I just say well-written? Crap. I just shot myself in the foot. Well, it was nice having you all visit Scentzilla while it lasted. Thanks for reading. Heh.
Ambre Antique is one of the earliest fragrances sold by Francois Coty. Ambre Antique was first introduced in 1905, and sadly, production of the fragrance dried up long before many of us were even born.
A brief glimmer of hope for resurgence appeared during the 90s when Bergdorf Goodman sold limited edition versions of classic Coty fragrances, including Ambre Antique. But they came and went within the blink of an eye. One could guess that much of this is due to two things:
First, Coty was a little ahead of its time. If they’d only known how big the perfume addict culture was about to explode in just a scant few years, they might have held on and persisted; One could argue that the market for such a project finally exists now. I honestly believe that market was not available in 1995, at least not to the extent that would result in acceptable, albeit niche-level, sales.
Second, it’s reasonable to surmise that much of any diminished sales figures are due to a general consumer reluctance to pay more than low double digits for anything labeled Coty anymore. For better or worse, Coty is nowadays synonymous with inexpensive ingredients and drugstore budgets, and our culture’s capitalist short-term memory disallows any particular remembrance of a time when Coty was considered edgy, prestigious, or adjective-of-your-choice implying “chic.” Public perception of the house of Coty acting as a ground breaker has long ceased to exist, primarily because the brand Coty has ceased to innovate in any meaningful fashion. While I would love to see Coty try once again to relaunch versions of their historical masterpieces, I fear they face an uphill battle. I think much of the sentiment towards their perfumery can currently be summed up as, “when I can’t/couldn’t afford anything better.”
The vague consumer disdain for the house and brand of Coty was not always so.
Coty’s Ambre Antique has a much broader appeal to modern noses than the infamously challenging Chypre, but it’s nevertheless a classic. Perhaps it’s like picking one Vermeer over another. One may personally speak to you more perhaps, but c’mon… they’re all Vermeers: The light of brilliance shines in them all.
The name itself is a bit misleading. Vanilla dominates the composition of Ambre Antique: rich, creamy vanilla, almost like an ice cream scooped onto the skin. It’s an amber float!
The top notes have faded from this bottle for the most part, but I’m guessing that bergamot, and orange blossom are hiding in there. (I stress the word “guessing” because I want to say “orange-y,” and I am an olfactory idiot and always say orange-y when in fact it usually turns out to be orange blossom/neroli.)
Insofar as I understand it, Amber Antique was originally made with actual ambergris. However, sniffing from my own latterly made bottle (mid-century?) indicates that at some point substitutions were made in favor of synthetics. The amber notations take the form of ambery-woody and ambery-incensey aromas. A dose of incense (likely the ‘num duo of labdanum and olibanum?) additionally breathes a darker aromatic feel into the fragrance. Civet in particular plays a huge role in shaping Ambre Antique’s dry down. Whatever one’s personal ambivalence towards sticking something that came out of animal’s hindquarters onto the skin might be, there is no denying the resounding thump it can give a fragrance upon landing at the bottom. Civet provides the skank here, but it’s the skank of fresh hay on a barn floor. Repellant? Maybe. But it’s still oddly clean and enjoyable.
And those dollops of vanilla never do stop melting, dripping right through the amber and the animal urgency of civet. It’s the sort of fragrance that asks of the wearer and passers-by, “Am I hungry or horny?” It’s the TV character Joey from Friends, in that, the response could happily go either way.
Writing about Ambre Antique brings me to a recent release, Hilary Duff’s With Love… Hilary Duff. It does distinguish itself from many of the celebrity fragrances, for its oriental character contrasts wildly against a dull field of fruity-florals and/or musky-clean efforts. But all the appreciation for it mystifies me. I have tried, and retried it since it came out, never finding much in it besides generalities. It’s pleasant but harmless, much like Ms. Duff herself. There’s little to it that marks it as idiosyncratically interesting in the big picture of perfumery. It’s the difference between Dane Cook’s style of bland humor that cause him call to chicken sandwiches “sangwiches” as any toddler might, and Patton Oswalt’s bit on how KFC’s “Famous Bowls” are patronizing us into eating like toddlers. The latter tells a story, the former simply seeks approval for that (a cheap catch phrase) which has already been approved. The difference comes down to risk. There’s a subtle danger when crediting an audience with the intelligence to discern and appreciate a specific voice: Being singular risks losing some folks. Hilary Duff… With Love doesn’t really risk much. It’s a “sangwich.” It’s only made out to look like a risk, and the result smells like a blithe catch phrase.
With Love roughly smells like orange-banana-pineapple flavored rock candy (the fruity note is officially listed as “mangosteen,” so okey-dokey) with a helping of vanilla over amber and a woody, musky base. It’s a warm and easily wearable fragrance; however, it doesn’t significantly come across as distinct. I feel like I’ve smelled it before, but can’t place where exactly. Maybe I’m getting old, forgetful. Maybe I’ve just become too jaded. Or maybe I’m under whelmed by too many of the eleventy billion new releases that keep coming out. Eh, let’s say it’s all of that. And I’m being far too harsh here. Hilary Duff seems like a nice person; Hilary Duff’s With Love is a nice fragrance. I guess maybe that’s my beef. I hate nice. There’s the stink of adequacy on nice.
If you like With Love… you will likely enjoy Calvin Klein Euphoria. They share a note and/or combination of notes that weirdly smell like vanilla and dusty “silk” flowers to me.
Yet, I’d like to recommend some other selections you might wish to also try if With Love has caught your fancy:
And of course, if you want a piece of historical perspective,
(Sorry for the lack of updates as of late… I’m got too many balls in the air at the moment, but articles will be coming shortly, I swear!)
This is not a perfume or flavor related post, and I avoid being “political” here usually, but I think regardless of your own political or philosophical persuasion, you’ll find this disgusting:
“Suicidal Teens Welcome,” at Neatorama.
That is sick. The strange irony here is that the U.S. military’s nebulous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with regards to gay and lesbian service members still officially results in openly homosexual soldiers being dishonorably discharged; Meanwhile, gay teens are “2 to 3 times more likely to attempt suicide” than other teens. I lost a beautiful friend to suicide when I was in high school, and I have always felt like much of the reason behind that was the inner-torture he felt due to his bisexuality. But that is, of course, only a side issue here. To say the least, that is an egregiously predatory placard in the recruiting station window. The causes for suicide are complex, and not easily solved simply by joining up with the Army, especially in light of the fact that soldiers in combat zones themselves have elevated suicide rates.
It’s not just about the individuals themselves. It’s also about the overall safety of their fellow soldiers. I have a number of family members on both sides that are in the armed services, and it chills me to think that the guy/gal behind them fresh from training may be harboring suicidal thoughts. Such mental health issues can come up in stressful military situations, but recruiting those who definitely have them is another matter.
I hope this is just a photoshopped hoax, ala The Simpsons.
I’m sickened.