Scentzilla!

The Sisters of Mercy were one of the million or so bands I favored during my teen years. Their song “Temple of Love” was a particular fave, especially on the dance floor.

This was during my “dark and interesting” phase, of which I succeeded at being neither. Like so many other laughably disaffected Portland teenagers of the era, I’d hang out with my friends in the cheap cafes, drink refillable coffees and smoke clove cigarettes. We were far too cool, too deep, to be understood by our peers. *groans in embarssment*

Now had I the money or sophistication, I would have eschewed my goofy striped leggings and black vintage jackets, instead wearing Poison, the one fragrance guaranteed to alienate nearly everybody around you. It is a sloppy hangover of a kiss to the 80s. When I got older it was the one fragrance my coworkers begged me not to wear. One explained, “Sweetie, I’m sorry, but that smells like nausea.”

No real discussion of 80s fragrances can happen without mention of this heady 1985 Dior creation by Jean Guichard.

Poison doesn’t gild the lily, it coats it in thick syrup. Everything here plays out as intrusively sweet - the viscous lily, tuberose, berry pulp, ambery woods, myrrh, vanilla, and even the smoke, too. But I’d never call it sugary, that’s for sure.

Some perfumes wear the person rather than vice versa. Not so with Poison. No, Poison climbs all up on you, then dry humps your leg while panting its wet breath onto your face.

And yet I love it. Without repentance. Sounds irrational, I suppose. When I dab it on, I choose it selfishly for myself, and to hell with what anyone else things. Because damn… it smells gooooood. What a beautiful dirty creature it is.

Poison taps into some hidden knurl of the brain that appreciates the dark and interesting, but nevertheless requires excess to fully gratify the ancient survival instinct within our animal selves. Poison is way too much, which smells like precisely the correct amount.

Whilst looking for the old Poison commercials, I found something just a smidge better on YouTube: an accordian fueled cover of Alice Cooper’s Poison. (To see a video of the original in all its 80s hair metal glory, click here.) It has nothing to do whatsoever with the perfume, but was too funny to let go unnoticed. However, I did find a wee ad for Dior Poison, if blistering accordian rock just isn’t your thing.

Image from parfumdepub.net, where you can view a variety of Parfums Dior ads.

Temple of Love was released in 1983 as a single, but the extened version that provides the clip here can found on their later Some Girls Wander by Mistake album. It is still available as a used CD at Djangos.

Dior Jules paints bold dark tones, using accents of rising green to highlight its umbra theme. Deeply woody down its very core, the fragrance features pepper and tobacco notes that smell almost dense. They’re not featured as playful spicy notes, instead they add a brown upon black feel to the composition. Black leather is the omnipresent undertone, and the leather is dry and uncompromising. You either like it, or you don’t: I doubt many folks have mixed feelings over Jules.

In fact, the poor dear does get some incredibly mixed reviews over at Basenotes. I think both the negative and the positive reviews are all correct. Jules DOES smell dated to me, though admittedly I would pin its character to something from the late 70s rather than describing it as a creature of the color scheme-challenged, shoulder-padded, no sock-wearing 80s, despite the fact that it was released in 1980. However, if one were to simply eschew everything that smells dated, there are many fine fragrances that would be unforgivably missed, including Jules. Jules may not smell modern (whatever that means, I suppose) yet its strict woody leather aroma gives me great pleasure.

Similarly, I can think of a number of songs that sound quite dated, yet my enjoyment of them is not diminshed. I thought I’d share this “dated” cover of a song that is even more dated. When we think of Macarther Park, we usually think *disco*, and call forth visions of Donna Summers wailing how she’ll never have that recipe again. Then we shudder. In horror. But what if it’s done in a two-tone style, such as that used by the “old” band The Specials? It’s awesome, you guys. This style also sounds slightly dated to me, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t bring a smile to my face.

The song was covered by Morgan Fisher in 1979, right near the same time Jules was released, under the guise of it being performed by an imaginary band called The Burtons. There’s a nice article about his Hybrid Kids V.1 album on the BBC’s site. The only place I found that still has the album available for order in the US is via Tower Records.

Alas, Jules is even harder to find than this record - insofar as I know it has been discontinued. However it does pop up on eBay now and again. EDIT: Hey! Look at that: While I was forced to look overseas for Jules, it now appears that Imagination Perfumery is selling it. I know it’s not much of a discount, but yeesh is it a tricky little bugger to find. Grab it while you can!

Image via parisposters.com. Jules’ ads, like many of Dior’s iconic ads, were created by well-known artist Rene Gruau, who worked with many of the most famous design names we still know.

Update on another participant in the upcoming Mother’s Day Benevolent Blogging event:

The Scented Salamander is Helene’s perfume blog. Her very thoughtful reviews often muse on the stories of notes and names. She also writes posts covering intresting perfume news and tidbits that may well have otherwise been missed by readers if they only scan the headlines in their daily papers. I especially love how she digs up obscure perfume references in literature and pairs them with a carefully chosen art image. It’s a lovely, peaceful blog, so do please stop by and say “hello!” to Helene. On Mother’s Day she will be supporting Orphan Foundation of America, and will hold a drawing for one very lucky Mother’s Day commenter to win a bottle of Eau de Patou!

If you came for a perfume review today, I apologize. Wednesday and Friday will bring my impressions of Fath Iris Gris and Givenchy Amarige Harvest Collection. My friend Micki sometimes tries to prod me to open up and blog a little about myself, and well, I guess I think it’d be kind of boring to read, but she has other ideas. And her ideas are almost always good ones.

Yesterday I talked to someone who I haven’t really spoken with in nearly six years, which is the sort of thing that always puts me in an excessively nostagic mood. A walk down Nostalgia Street is one thing, but it inevitably leads me straight to the turnoff for Memory Lane. Ah me, what happened during those six years? And for the sake of this blog’s subject matter, what does my nostalgic sentimentality have to do with perfume?

My twins were born extremely premature (29 weeks) roughly that long ago, too. They were so very small, each weighing in at under three pounds. After birth, they were placed in a NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for nearly two months. In retrospect, I realize just how scary it all was, but I think at the time I must have been in a complete state of shock. In fact, the shock remained my permanent emotional state for a year after they came home even. They arrived home on oxygen tanks. They also wore fetal heart monitors 24 hours a day for roughly the first six months after returning home. I cannot properly explain the horror of seeing your son turn blue, and having to get him to breathe and help him get his heart started again. There are no words in the English language that express what that feels like. There probably aren’t ones in any language.

We were warned while they were still in infancy that they may well possess developmental problems. And they did. We found when they turned age two that we could no longer chalk up some of their diffuculties to the simple differences between how individual children blossom. Taking them into see a specialist at the hospital revealed they suffered from Autism Spectrum Disorder. The word “disorder” makes it sound as if they just need to be reorganized. I suppose in some very small ways that’s true, but not overall. My twins both had severe language delays. In addition, they had some physical problems and manifold tactile difficulties. The feel of many fabrics would make them uncomfortable to an untoward degree. Taking a simple bath was not a simple matter at all, because the wetness of the water would make one of them howl as if he was in pain. Strike that - not as if. He WAS in pain. Water, water caused him pain.

Their tactile sensitivities carried over to the sense of smell. I rarely wore perfume for the first few years of their lives. During therapy at the hospital, the boys were exposed to one technique that their physical therapist described as a scent therapy. Scent therapy consisted of little more than various objects, spices, and solutions in jars held up for them to smell one by one. The therapist then jotted down their reactions, and tried to get them to smell as many of these jars as she could during the session to “teach” them to tolerate their own sense of smell. We decided to discontinue this portion of their therapy after it became clear that it did more harm than good - it was just too overwhelming, and only served to frustrate them.

It was shortly after this time that I began breaking out the perfumes again on a regularish basis, despite their doctors’ warnings. I needed it. Really. It sounds completely selfish and trivial I suppose, but at the time I needed something nice to do that would be just for myself during those days, especially the hard days. When you’ve got twins with ASD, most days turn out to be harder than you wake up thinking they will be. The easy ritual of perfume certainly was one I’d always enjoyed. I missed it. Besides, they’d react to all sorts of things, yet lightly wearing perfume for my own enjoyment didn’t seem to cause too much distress for some unknown reason.

Then one day, something most wonderful and surprising happened. I had recently bought a bottle of Miss Dior, and was spritzing it on when one of the boys expressed curiosity over it. He signed the American Sign Language word for “more.” “Do you want to smell this?,” I said as held out the bottle for him to hold. He clutched at it and held it up to his face, inhaling with a smile. He tried with his little stubby hands to inexpertly spray it onto his chest, but failed. I peeled away his fingers to retrive the bottle from him, and soothed that Mommy would help. Onto his wrists I squirted out a weak half-spray. He recoiled at the sensation of liquid hitting him, but no tears. Nor did he emit any screeches of displeasure. The next morning? Same thing. “More.” So “more” I gave him, and his brother too, who indicated he wanted at a bottle of The Body Shop’s Dewberry sitting on the back of the dresser. Both again were repelled by the feel of the liquid, but a couple days later, they were lying in wait in the bedroom, waiting for the next perfume. CK One, and then Dazzling Gold. Dazzling Silver, Organza Indecence, Dragon’s Blood oil, Frangipani oil, Poison, Magie Noire, etc… I was running out of smells, and while they still reacted viscerally and slightly negatively to the perfumes, they kept coming back for “more.”

Their strong negativity towards strong scents seemed to evaporate over the course of months and years. And nowadays they happen to be the biggest six-going-on-seven-year-old perfume fiends I have ever known. I think they may have even adopted their own snobbish aesthete - they are quite particular now over what is “a good one” and what is not. I cannot fathom why exactly perfume gave them what a therapist and her empirical studies and techniques could not. But how grateful I am that something (read: anything) worked. For the curious, the six year old syndicate within our household has only but a very general rotation of favorites. One’s regulars include Caswell-Massey’s Lilac, Givenchy Pi, Galimard Sindora, Sephora L’eau Orange, Disney Pluto, and lately he wears Fruits and Passion Hot Dog a lot. The other still wears Miss Dior with some frequency, as well as Molinard Habanita, Weil Antilope, Lulu Beauty Gigi and Gres Cabaret. Not that they aren’t like their mother - the curiosity of what’s new to smell has become irresistable to them.

This also isn’t to say they don’t still have problems that need addressing - they’re still using special education assistance for things like language. Even an inconsequential incident like getting muddy while playing outside can wreak emotional havoc for the rest of the day sometimes. But their sense of smell has become a pleasure rather than a pain-inducing liability for them, and for that I am grateful. DEEPLY grateful.

I have decided I don’t at all care for your modern incarnation, but I must thank you, Miss Dior. Despite my distaste, I love that you’re still around.

If you wish to read an excellent (and neutral) review of Miss Dior in her modern form, please go to Now Smell This to read the lovely Robin’s impressions.

Image of Miss Dior with box from mydesignerperfume.com

Dior introduced Addict 2 this summer, and it is the third Addict in the line - the previous two being original Addict and the Addict Eau Fraîche. This newest one shares nearly nothing in common with Addict.

On a paper strip Addict 2 remains pretty and bright. But I am not made of paper; My skin interacts with it in a very disappointing manner.

Addict 2 sure starts out quite promisingly. The opening is deeply juicy, redolent of dripping oranges, tart grapefruit, and iced melon wedges. Yet the promise does not hold. Within 10 minutes, and I am being generous with this time line, it disappoints. Every note here becomes a bleached out version of itself. I would not be surprised if Dior told the perfumer, “make us perfume that is pastel.” As an intellectual experiment that is interesting. But on my skin, sadly the experiment fails. The composition after the initial 10 minutes reminds me strongly of the way quick watercolor sketches look. It gives general shape and lines, but the colors are waterstreaked and thin. The middle gives me a short glimpse at more fruits, white freesia, sandalwood, and something that smells like it might be lotus, yet they are such wan notes that I’m scared I am just imagining them. The whole fragrance smells so pale and slight on me. I also pick up on a note that seems rather rosy to me. Dior claims Addict 2 uses a “white musk” in the base, but it smells to me also like a bleached out version of the musk used in the first Addict. I quite like this sexy musky note, but alas, it does not redeem the whole fragrance for me. I don’t notice the musk at all until the very end, after the other notes have left. The staying power for the musk portion is decent, yet in general the fragrance lasts only an hour on me. Admittedly, fruits occasionally do go to die on my skin anyhow, but an hour of staying power is just ridiculous. I don’t know, maybe I just have weird skin. I tried this out on one of my young sons to try to get a different view of it – I find children wear fragrances in an interesting way that tends to cause the more angular and peculiar notes stick out. On him it was indeed juicier, but still rather unanimated.

I am hoping someone reading this will have had a completely different experience of Addict 2 than I. Please don’t be shy, share what you get from it that I am missing!

Above top right photo is taken of a vintage Schiaparelli silk scarf. The Addict 2 bottle is pictured below left, and the picture is a clickable link to its page at Sephora.com