Scentzilla!

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.”

Lanvin introduced Vetyver in 1964, at a time when many other perfume houses at the time were also introducing vetiver fragrances.

With the original Vetyver, Lanvin spiked the grassy green fragrance with a tenacious lemon note, but differentiated theirs with a suprising and woody nutmeg undertone. To my modern sensibility, Vetyver seems as if it were inspired by lemon verbena, because the lemon aroma is so unextracably twisted into the grasses. It is a scent filled with the cheery possibilites of summer, with the spiciness adding a layer of dressy sophistication.

From the grass-stained knees of playing on suburban lawns, to wearing the “Sunday best” during an afternoon stroll in the park, Vetyver would fit anyone’s idea of the perfect sunshine day.

In 2003, Lanvin definitively abandoned this bright but spicy version with the introduction of a “more modern” version. Via Lanvin’s official site, perfumer Francois Robert is credited with the work on the new Vetyver. (Lanvin’s site is shockingly… helpful, especially the perfume history timeline. Informative even, compared to some corporate sites.) To a certain extent, it is less “modern” and more “trendy,” sporting an aquaceous character, albeit with softly sweet florals in the heart. Only a fleeting glimpse of the spiciness that made the original so intriguing occurs. However, the base in Vetyver ‘03 reveals an nice, noticable musky cedar flourish in the dry down that the vintage lacks.

I rather do like this newer version, too. It’s the scent of heading into the garden on a blue morning, still wet from a night rain, and plucking up ripe cucumbers from the damp plants and spongey earth. Like most vetiver scents, I find it cooling and relaxing. I’m willing to bet it can be picked up for a virtual song at the discount online sites or eBay, too.

The two Vetyvers are utterly dissimilar, but both are easy and enjoyable to wear. Either one should make refreshing summer perfumes for members of either gender, just ignore that both are pegged as “masculine” scents. The funny thing with the new Vetyver is that if someone simply waved a scent strip of it under my nose without telling me what it was, and demanded I label it, I would totally guess that it must be “feminine.” There’s a softness and complexity to it that one doesn’t always encounter with men’s perfumes.

It seems a pity Lanvin didn’t choose to continue with the vintage Vetyver, and then offer their “more modern” Vetyver as a seperate fragrance. *Sigh*

And apropos of NOTHING, I present to you… the Top 11 Ways To Avoid Hamster Attacks.

Top two images from metmuseum.org, and are both details from paintings by Childe Hassam (one of my personal favorite artists, actually.) The one at left top is from his Central Park, 1892, and the second on the right is from his In the Park, 1889. Third image of my dog exploring the dense garden forest, and emerging from the hanging rainforst vines of tomato plants. Well, when you’re only “half a dog tall” (Dav Pilkey), it at least SEEMS like a forest.