Scentzilla!

Firstly, I have to share my excitement about the Valentine’s Day present I picked out for my husband. I wanted to get him something different, something new: a gift he’d never received before. He is in for the surprise of his life this year.

On February 14th, I’m going to give him The Clap!

However, if gonorrhea isn’t really your cup of tea but you’d still like to surprise that someone special in your life, nothing would bring a bigger smile to your Valentine’s face than discovering you shared a little syphilis with them. It’s so cuddly!

You give it with the confident knowledge that from now on, whenever they think of syphilis they’ll think of you…

… and Valentine’s Day. Or, as I like to call it,

V-D.

Moving along, then.

Snow, glorious snow. It’s both wonderful and disturbing in its quantity this year. The most recent rash of snowstorms dumped enough for us to really have some fun it it.

Not Fred, though. Oh no.

When he was younger, you couldn’t keep him out of the stuff. The last time we got great fluffy piles of it like this, he was only about 1 1/2 years old. He romped and frolicked in it with gleeful abandon. It took me, my parents, my sister and a neighbor kid to finally corral and contain him, and jerk him back indoors. (Yes, five of us. That’s one human to every 2 pounds of renegade dachshund.)

Now he’s old and cranky, and he was mightily pissed off at me for letting his yard become a crystalized wasteland. He did some of his, uh, business outside (and snorting indignantly about it the whole time) then ran mere inches back inside the door to piddle on the carpet. Bladder of RAGE!

It’s said* that Hell hath no furry like a wiener dog scorned.

He immedietly padded over to the cupboard for a cookie since he knew he deservered one. For his tribulations, you understand. A dog will forgive a great many things, but never, under any circumstance, should you be absolved of the sin for making him cold and wet. Chop off his balls, and he’ll gratefully curl into your lap on the way home from the vet. But cold plus wet? Forget about it. He’ll hate you until the spring thaw.
Onto actual perfume topics. Finally, right?

In this unusual cold, I’ve been wearing L’Instant Eau de Noel Iris Millesime for the past couple days.

The last time I tried L’Instant Noel was during more temperate temperatures, and it didn’t really work as well on me then. The base, specifically the vanillic element, encroached too deeply into the balance in the warmer weather. I liked it, just not enough to commit to a full bottle. Now that it’s this freaking cold, I can see why folks snapped it up like so many imaginary hotcakes.

The cool earthy tones of orris (iris) seem to reflect against the white winter chill well. Orbiting the featured orris are satellites of white floral notes that include jasmine, ylang, and magnolia. The base acts rather like a jewelry setting: It’s lovely and decorative, but ultimately shows off the sparkle of the showcase notes. Ambery wood and vanilla provide a steady static background for these notes to best shimmer and glow.

L’Instant smells of secret invisible winter blooms. The spring appears less distant; One only needs a spritz to figuratively coax hibernating iris bulbs to break through the frozen earth and remind oneself that the trees are only napping.

The staying power is ridiculously good on my skin. I share a single spritz between wrists and it lasts pretty much all day. However, most fragrances with a tangible vanilla note tend to stick like glue on me, so if anyone’s experience is otherwise, do share please.

(My other standby snow perfume, apparently, is Comme des Garcon Man 2, which positively sings more and more brilliantly the colder it gets. What an underrated, unusual gem it is on the “masculine” side of the fragrance counter.)

I have also been trying Jacques Fath’s Chasuble off and on for the past couple months. Or so. It took over six months to work up the nerve to crack open the still sealed bottle I found. Why would anyone have such goofy pangs of anxiety over than? Well, I’d been longing to try it for ages, and once I finally had it I was intimidated. What if I never find another bottle again? What if it was ruined? What if it was brilliant?

I’m both thrilled and sad to say that it is not ruined, and it is indeed brilliant.

I kept finding new little turns to it to appreciate, and can’t figure out what to say about it that will fully explain it. So, I’ll do what I always do, and empty out the cluttered junk drawer that is my brain. (There’s a lot of stuff in a junk drawer, but 99% of it isn’t really needed for anything in particular.)

I peg Chasuble as a wonderfully rich incense fragrance. On the top is a brief aromatic balsamic flash of mentholic pine that only slowly dims as the heat of skin warms the composition. The incense at its very core displays as unlit resin turned liquid over the middle period of wear. A peachy thread also runs through the heart, though it doesn’t disturb the incense. Rather, it filters in a brightly colored light across it. The peachy allusions quietly stream down as it dries, until it’s transmogrified into a different fruit altogether, reminding me of a cedar-plank baked yellow apple. The fruity element here is delicately laced into the other notes. On the drydown, rich woody and ambery vanillic notes emerge, and the incense finally feels lit, taking a slightly smokey turn. Chasuble wears as if in deliberate and meaningful ceremony.

It is a heady, swoon-worthy oriental fragrance. And it is as close to a personal Holy Grail perfume as I’ve ever gotten thus far. Which seems fitting. A chasuble, of course, is the vestament a priest or holy man wears during religious services. Being a rather irreligious person myself, Chasuble strikes me as a perfume nut’s ideal substitution for sanctity, when worshipping at the alter of fragrant revelation.

*I said it. Just now. Therefore, it is said, right?

One of the things that rarely fail to crack me up is the constant message from beauty magazines that fragrances only have a shelf life of a couple years before they go bad.

I’m sure this advice has nothing to do with the constant marketing drive to get consumers to buy! buy more! and buy again!

I own any number of fragrances that are older than I am (30) which I frequently wear and enjoy. Just glancing at the shelves in my closet, one I spot right away is a cute little art deco style bottle of Coty’s L’Aimant that dates back approximately 70 years or so. It still smells fantastic, and in fact, much fuller and more complex than the newer (and reformulated) versions of it that are being sold. Why on earth would I ever buy a new bottle of L’Aimant when it’s not half as good as my old one? Thank god the previous owner never received such crazy advice to throw this lovely flacon out years before I was even born.

But there’s a partial truth to the message. Perfumes DO turn, depending on their ingredients, and how they’ve been stored.

Bottles kept in the bathroom are doomed to ruin relatively quickly compared to those stored elsewhere. Generally, it is the humid heat of the bathroom which is the hardest on any fragrance kept within. Those frequent and steamy temperature fluxes can be very trying to the juice inside the bottle.

If you’re a fan of keeping your collection on top of a bedroom vanity or a dresser, be aware that the sunlight that streams through transparent bottles can cause fragrance to prematurely age and break down. If you spot little “floaties” in a vintage bottle you’re considering buying, be cautious and sniff carefully before plunking down the cash. Floaties are the most visually noticable symptom of sun exposure or decay in my experience. Not all fragrances with floaties are ruined ones, however, so you don’t necessarily need to panic if you spot them in a bottle you own.

I do happen to keep some bottles out on the dresser, but nothing I truly adore. Keep the ones you like looking at that have little collectible value or are easily replaced on the dresser, but store those that are dear to you away from the light in a cool, dark location.

Check the color of the liquid, as well. Some fragrances are naturally very dark, especially many older ones, but not all. If you feel unsure what it’s “supposed” to look like, you can check it against any number of books for bottle collectors, or against any available online galleries from perfume museums (or old advertisements!) to see if the fragrance inside is approximatly the correct color. For instance, if evaporation has occured over time because air is getting into the bottle, what’s left behind will have slowly changed color as it condensed. (Condensed is not quite the right word, I think, but for lack of a better one…)

A sniff test is, of course, the best test. When aged, some fragrances do lose the intial first phase of aromatic bloom. Those first notes you smell are called top notes, and they are usually the most volatile molecules in the composition. Some vintage fragrances will retain a bit of the top, some will not. But the overall fragrance should still smell “right” to you, since the heart notes and base notes are generally not as volatile.

Many times this is a function of the composition, but I’ve noticed it also has a lot to do with the bottle’s storage history. If it had been kept in an attic in the middle of the Midwest, for example, it has been exposed to the extremes of sweltering summer heat and below-freezing winter cold; No matter how stable the notes are, those swinging extremes are more likely than not to cause unfortunate spoilages over fragrances’ lifetimes.

You CAN keep fragrances in your refrigerator if desired. It’s certainly not unheard of, and the cold helps preserve them while not reaching chilly enough temperatures that might destroy your stuff. I don’t go for that, but only because A.) My collection is large enough that I would never be able to keep food there, and B.) Something about reaching around the ketchup and leftover lasagne to get a quick spritz seems terribly un-beautiful. I also would not wear certain fragrances directly from the fridge. It’s like certain wines or beers - you miss some elements when they are not at room temperatue I feel. But this method of storage seems like an option worth mentioning. Don’t stick any of your fragrances in the freezer, however, because… well, duh. Vetiver Frozen, indeed!

If you’re not a mad collector, you likely have a limited number of fragrances you own and rotate constant use between them. Should you be worried that you bought that bottle of say, Estée Lauder Beautiful, five years ago and are now wondering if you should throw it out and buy it again? To put it bluntly: not really. If it has really gone bad, YOU, whether you feel like an “expert nose” or not, will be able to tell. It will smell funny or off; Maybe it bears a fleeting trace of rancidness when you wear it; Or maybe it suddenly smells a little flat or dull to you after time. Try finding a tester at a fragrance counter. How does it smell compared to your old one? If you can’t smell a difference, then does it matter how long you’ve had your bottle? I’d say no.

We often choose fragrance for our own pleasure, much more than for the sake of others, and if you still find it enjoyable, there’s no need to waste your money. Fragrances can be expensive, and not everyone is as inclined as perfume addicts to shell out hundreds of dollars a year for such fripperies. If you’ve stored it safely, in the cool and dark, you’ve got much less to worry about than all those beauty magazines lead you to believe. And even if you haven’t… your nose will know better than some conveniently advertiser-friendly advice. If Cadbury chocolates from the Boer War can still be edible, I think a little “old” perfume is not such a big deal.

Note: Comments are still not displaying properly in IE7, and you have my sincere apologies for that. If you still have IE6 on your computer, they will appear correctly. However, all other browsers (Firefox, Safari, etc.) seem to work fine. Please drop me a note if this is not the case for you, with info on which browser version you are using.

Laurent’s reply to me about the review for the lastest round of fragrance mods has now been posted. You can read it by clicking here.

It rarely snows here in the general Portland-metro area, so when it does, it’s cause for celebration. It’s perfect Comme des Garcons 2 Man wearing weather, and I smell right fine while playing with the boys in the snow this evening. Hope the weather is kinder than they say it might be to our lovely neighboring Seattle-ites.

Back to playing with Zeke and Henry in the snowy dark!

Sephora.com has listed some items at sale price, though it’s kind of unoffficial since there’s no actual sale page yet. Most of the discounted fragrances are out of stock already, but they’ve still got Escada Pour Homme at a great price! $12! I bought two! (Hoarding, always hoarding. If only Chaucer had known a perfume addict: his tales might have been framed a little differently.)

Escada Pour Homme is a sweet woody fragrance, with a boozy aftertaste. It opens with a dry, slightly musky and woody aroma that feels rather boxy, or rigid, in construct. The brief flash of citrus at the top especially lends to this feeling. But the opening gives way to appealingly herbal lilts, with a warm masculine drydown that leaves the mouth watering and begging for a snifter raised to the lips. The heart and base notes also smell woody, even a tad spicy, while the cognac intonatations splash them into a cozy, cocktail sipping buzz.

I rarely suggest any fragrance should be worn exclusively by one gender, but I’m inclined to do so in this instance. The one time I wore it on myself in public, I kept looking around for the sexy guy wearing that delicious fragrance. Oh crap. The sexy guy was me every time. Eeeek.

At least I can definitively testify to its great sillage.

Escada Pour Homme would make a fun birthday gift for loved menfolk, though I specifically would recommend it to my male readers who think they’d enjoy wearing a little vanilla-laced aged cognac. And, sexy little Escada Pour Homme does pair up nicely with a Cognac Coupling cocktail in the evening if you decide you’re sick of only smelling tasty.

I believe Escada Pour Homme may have been discontinued? Although I’m not entirely sure about it, Pour Homme’s clearance price at Sephora seems to indicate that it may well be a goner, indeed.

UPDATE: Nobi has closed the contest… the earlier hyperlink to the page wih entry information now lists the answers, if you’re curious.

Shioya Nobi, who some of you may remember is the grand emcee behind the Made by Blog project I am participating in, has opened up a contest to ring in 2007 in style. A winner who correctly answers either A or B of this quiz style contest will win S-Perfume fragrances. A winner who correctly answers both questions will additionally receive the INEFFABLE Alberto Absolu. Alberto Absolu quite frankly, is a prize worthy of anyone’s attention, but especially my fellow perfume nuts. (In addition to my own review, you can also read Chandler Burr’s take on it.) The contest closes on January 7th, so don’t dilly-dally! Besides, your answers have got to be better than mine:

• Giorgio Armani (fashion designer, Italian)
• Chandler Burr (writer, American)
• Tom Ford (fashion designer, American)
• Francis Kurkdjian (perfumer, Armenian)
• Christophe Laudamiel (perfumer, French)
• Issey Miyake (fashion designer, Japanese)
• Alberto Morillas (perfumer, Spanish)
• Thierry Wasser (perfumer, Swiss)

Quiz:

(A) Besides having something to say about perfume, there is one thing all the above men are good at. What is it?

Soap Box Derby racing?

(B) One person in the above list is (utterly) different from the rest. Who is it?

All the above wear suits to work, except for Chandler Burr, who prefers the breezy, unfettered joy of a kilt?

I am sure you guys can come up with more accurate information. Good luck!

I am writing this now, in 2006, but scheduled it to post at midnight, so it will no longer be “now” by the time you read this. Hello there, 2007.

It’s interwebby TIME-TRAVEL!

Thus, I bring you greetings from the past… or would that be the future, since I’m scheduling this to post at a time which does not yet exist now?

I’ve just confused myself.

Likely there’s a logical way out of this riddle, but I DON’T CARE!! I’m off to drink glasses of good champagne!

Which will likely be followed by lots more of mostly cheap champagne!

Which will be followed by a rueful headache and my annual New Year’s Eve regret!

Happy New Year, everybody!

Good luck with the hangovers: I recommend an egg breakfast.

Here are a few of my favorite product discoveries of 2006. Some have been around for quite a while, and most are (shockingly! gasp!) not even perfumes. (I’ll get a seperate best of list up for this year’s releases later on, but I wanted to play with all the other cool kids for the “favorite things” posts.)

Rubis Tweezers have to be my top product find of the year. I was formerly a true-blue Tweezerman gal, but find these just a smidge better. They grasp those fine stray eyebrow hairs well, and… they also yank out this cluster of three dark hairs, which grow on my chin with alarming regularity. I call them my Three Billy Goat Hairs Gruff. I. hate. them. so. much. I know this sort of surprise facial hair attack happens to all ladies as they get older, but I refuse to go down without a fight. The Rubis gets them right as they’re “sprouting,” so that the only other person who realizes I have chin hairs is the doppelganger who lives in my mirror. Is this all too much information? Yes, it probably is. But that’s why it’s getting my thumbs up.

Armani Code body lotion smells fanatastic. I fell in love with the Le Couvant des Minimes Orange Blosssom Body Cream earlier this year, but that’s already disappeared from the Bath and Body Works shelves, so this is a great alternative. The Code body lotion fragrance also emphasizes a predominate orange blossom note, and has a nice medium weight texture that should be suitable for all but the very driest of skin types. The aroma of the lotion is more delicate than that of the Code eau de parfum, and should be tried seperately as its own product, rather than being lumped in as an ancillary to it.

This is not one of my finds, but rather one of my husband’s product discoveries this year: Korres body wash in Cedar. The Korres body washes aren’t oriented to either men or women as a line, but Cedar has a nice deep woody and musky scent that appeals to masculine noses. It is only $11 a bottle, which also appeals to my husbands desire to be a cheapskate without actually being a cheapskate. (His beloved Pi body wash is $20, so this seems like a compartive bargain. He’s not really good at being a cheapskate, obviously, or he’d be buying the two for a dollar bars at the Dollar Tree. But don’t tell him, he thinks he’s a total bargain hunter.)

Viktor & Rolf’s Antidote: Of all the new releases this year, Hermes’ Terre d’Hermes is the single most superior fragrance. But it’s Antidote that I seem to crave the most lately. Quite simply, it is delish.

Olivia Giacobetti’s IUNX Splash Forte is something I tried as part of a blind sample swap with March. What a wretched pity the IUNX line is no more. Gone! The way the Spash Forte uses spice is ballsy, reminding of the fearlessness of vintage fragrances like Coty’s old L’Aiment. Splash Forte wears on my skin like a shower storm covering me with spiced droplets. Beautiful, and oddly refreshing. Look for it on eBay, because there is nowhere else to find it.

Acca Kappa hair brushes are vegetarian friendly, and I’m quite pleased with mine. I’m glad to recommend them to other vegs, since it can be tricky to find good products that even non-vegs approve of. (I say this as someone who’s found more boners than winners, and thus as someone who instantly suspects a crap product now anytime I see a “vegetarian” label on beauty products. It’s not to say they’re all inferior quality, but there’s a ton of them that are.)

Fresh Pomegranate Conditioning Hair Rinse is the best smelling conditioner I’ve ever used. Its fragrance is a deep, woody pomegranate, but it’s not a heavy or cloying aroma. The conditioner is best suited for hair types that only have light conditioning or detangling needs, or for folks who use a seperate silicone serum styling product. I am ashamed to admit I’m addicted, because it’s awful spendy for something I wash down the drain. Frankly, I think Fresh loads it up with crack. So there it is: it smells too good to not use every day. And it gives my hair that lovely crack sheen.

Jimmy Belasco candles are quite possibly the cleanest burning candles I’ve ever used. I am sure of that because my dog freaks out that the house is burning down if I use candles that throw off even a smidge of soot. He has yet to try to evacuate us from our home in the event of a lit Belasco candle. Seriously, even the smell from the brief flicker of birthday cake candles is enough to set him into a panicked “save the people!” mode, so I’m impressed.

Inner beauty is nice, too. So another favorite beauty find of the year is Library Thing. It’s got “thing” right in its name! So it’s a thing, yeah? Library Thing is a site where you compile entries for the books sitting on your shelves to create reading lists, which you can then compare to other memebers who also have similar lists. It is a KICK-ASS way to find new reading ideas, and it’s really fun to see how many people share your hodgepodge library of reading material. I hope I have more time to fill in my list soon, because even at only 123 books, I’ve already found some books that look promising enough to stick onto my birthday wishlist.

Here are someother blogs and sites writing about their own favorite things they discovered during 2006:

1. Proposed fragrance: Lancome’s It’s a Christmas Miracle

Reason for rejection: Prohibitive sales opportunity. Christmas miracles only happen on 34th Street.

2. Proposed fragrance: Burberry’s Red-Nosed Reindeer

Reason for rejection: Proved popular with a focus group, but as it turns out, the resource for red-nose reindeer musk is extremely limited.

3. Proposed fragrance: Givenchy’s Mincemeat Pi

Reason for rejection: Everybody loves pi, but no one likes mincemeat, let alone 3.14159265358979323846… ounces of it.

4. Proposed fragrance: Balmain’s AdVent Vert

Reason for rejection: Counting down the days ’til one can finally wear perfume will only annoy people.

5. Proposed fragrance: Givenchy’s How the Grivenchy Stole Christmas

Reason for rejection: On Christmas Day, the heart notes expand three sizes. Smells great, but shatters the bottle.

6. Proposed fragrance: Patou’s Joy to the World

Reason for rejection: Just like every year, the world asked for a gift receipt so it could exchange Joy for something cooler, like “Power” or “Money.”

7. Proposed fragrance: Lancome’s Treesor

Reason for rejection: Unwieldly bottle shape requires a stand to display, and those stands seem to take forever to get working straight.

8. Proposed fragrance: Chanel No. 5 Golden Rings

Reason for rejection: Five golden rings, but Nicole Kidman holds the One Ring, which was thrown back into Mount Doom and destroyed, effectively thwarting her evildoing…. for now.

9. Proposed fragrance: The Cattle are L’eau-ing

Reason for rejection: Concerns over possible lactose intolerance issues.

10. Proposed fragrance: L’Artisan’s Dzingle Bells

Reason for rejection: Complaints of mysterious “batman smells”

Bonus proposed fragrance: Thierry Mugler’s Heavenly Host Christmas Coffret

Reason for rejection: An all Angel army? Too much of even a good thing is still way too much.

The sunlight broke brightly on Danielle’s pale golden body. She felt solid, durable, yet her very essence remained transparent to anyone who looked.

She was new on the scene. Convinced she could she prove she wasn’t too soft for the ruthless perfume game, she regarded her sweet nature as an asset. Danielle swiftly sought to work her subtle charms as she entered the business.

She knew she must inspire everyone she encountered to fall madly in love with her, or the whole effort would be a waste. She wasn’t in it for passion, she was getting ahead. One by one, Danielle’s lovers would allow themselves to be seperated from their money. She’d make sure of that.

But a single person could change it all.

An individual who, in those very moments she pondered her future, might pull her close and murmur in velvet tones,

“My dear, you are lovely, like a fart cloud of roses.”

Source picture of the fragrance line from the official Danielle Steele website.

In a funny case of serendipity, Marina has written a review of Danielle today, too: Danielle at Perfume Smellin’ Things.