Feminine Things.

Hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks...

2013-05-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

A Review of Caron Tubéreuse Parfum

Apparently I was on a tuberose kick when I raided my scent stash last week for things to try, because the next thing I grabbed was Caron Tubéreuse parfum. I actually have quite a few of the Caron scents since I grabbed the house sampler last year from Luckyscent, but I haven't really reviewed many of them, have I? Today seems like a good day to rectify that.

Or....not.

Caron describes Tubéreuse as follows:

Caron's latest "fountain" creation, TUBEREUSE was conceived of in 2003 by in-house perfumer Richard FRAYSSE.

A hint of Fressia [sic] and jasmine accentuated by a touch of acidity lend Tubéreuse a rich and opulent fragrance, aimed in particular at CARON's glamour-seeking clientele.

Accords: Tuberose….

A little moldy open grave smell....

Caron Tubéreuse has it fans. Noses in the know have used words such as “bombshell,” “audaciously beautiful rich,” and “a hidden gem” to refer to the scent. Sadly reader, I am not going to be one of them. Nope. For when I put it on my skin, all I could think was: Oh Caron... Why did you do this to a tuberose?

The opening was a mix of vinegar and black tar, that fell straight down into an open grave filled with grape Kool-Aid and the bloated corpses of a hundred earth worms that overdosed from the flavored drink sugar high. Then even the interesting “Death comes a'knocking” aspects drifted off, leaving me with a powdery, dry scratch and sniff version of a white flower.

When it was weird, I was sort of distracted, disoriented, and even intrigued. Could I possibly wear this? Who would wear this? Did the perfumer take their inspiration from a terrible nineteenth century pickle factory fire where women and children were trapped in a terrific blaze that ultimately lead to some sort of Safer Work Conditions for Picklers Labor Reform Act?

But the dry powdery scent it settled into is somehow worse for the comparison. And for something I might describe as quiet and unassuming, good golly Miss Molly, the sillage! I had it on the back of my hands and felt like I had giant boxing gloves of scent around them, like sci-fi created orbs. I would be able to use this combat enhancement to knock people down without actually touching them for days!

While I am loathed to ever give such a bad review, I just have to. You know why, dear reader?

This was a scrubber.

...a little faux grape
flavoring...

Yeah, I'm not kidding. I couldn't take it! After an hour, which I had to force myself through, I had to get it off my skin, even if steel wool was required. And I felt kind of terrible about it, because lots of people with noses I really respect like Caron Tubéreuse.

I was somewhat comforted to find I am not alone in having Caron Tubéreuse go sideways on me. Abigail at I Smell Therefore I Am described her experience as smelling “like dill pickles.” Chantal-Hélène Wagner of The Scented Salamander more charitably describes it as taking "the dark side of Lady Caron's tuberose and plays Lady Macbeth to the first, minus the signs of madness as it seems on the contrary to have an exceptional measure of self-control.” Of course, she goes on to describe it as being “slightly putrid, like stale water and vase.”

Lady MacBeth, indeed. I really enjoy Lady Caron, so I'll try to get a review on that one in for comparison soon. For me, though, I have to say that if you're out to shop tuberoses, be careful with this one. Maybe you're get an overly devoted wife; maybe you'll get a crazy lady who can't stop seeing blood on her hands.

Luckyscent has Caron Tubéreuse for 7.5ml for $100. Yep, you read that right. One hundred smackers for a mere 7.5 milliliters. Given the above, I can only endorse you trying a sample, which is $5. Perhaps you will love it. If not, better to find that out with the very small dab of a wand.

“Muscle to muscle and toe to toe
The fear has gripped me but here I go
My heart sinks as I jump up
Your hand grips hand as my eyes shut...
Please don't go, I'll eat you whole
I love you so, I love you so, I love you so.”
~ “Breezeblocks,” Alt-J

Want a more positive spin on Caron Tubéreuse than I am able to muster? Try...
~ A review from Pink Manhattan
~ A review from Bois de Jasmin
~ A review from aperfumeblog
~ A review from The Black Narcissus
~ A review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ A review from Eiderdown Press

Photo of open grave: Some rights reserved by A QUIVERFUL OF FOTOS
Photo of grape soda: Some rights reserved by D Sharon Pruitt of Pink Sherbet Photography

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?

2013-05-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

Review of Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower

Wow, have I had a full weekend, my lovely readers! My best friend, Kate, was here for work this week, and we hung out this weekend when she wasn't trying to squeeze in visits to all the other people who love her like I, and it was great. Drinks and more drinks and fabulous company and food, oh my!

I also managed to make it out to the coast very briefly, which was so sunny and beautiful, and something I have been wanting to do for three weeks. It was a little crowded so I didn't stay long, but sometimes just long drives along winding tree-lined highways with lots of good music and room to think out loud can be deeply restorative.

The weather here has gone warm and the flowers are a'blooming. Oh, May flowers, your heady blooms are worthy of the stories told in your name. Speaking of flowers, you know what I recently discovered? Contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas, though apparently lots of people, including some state troopers, will tell you otherwise. Take that, you unknown state trooper who once made me cry when you yelled at my parents because I had picked some at a rest stop. Take your made up laws and...stuff them in a decorative vase.

Which brings me to a question: anyone know where I can get a bluebonnet perfume? After reading this piece on the smell of bluebonnets, and seeing it described as “[f]resh air, rain, dirt, and the country[, …] like when you pull towels out of the dryer and stick your face in them,” I now really want to try one. I couldn't find anything but oils online. Anyone have any ideas?

While I wait for your bluebonnet suggestions, let's talk about a floral perfume I did give some wear this week, Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower. One of the most widely reviewed and much lauded of your tuberose options, Carnal Flower is described as follows by the Frédéric Malle's site:

With tuberose, nature offers her own take on dramatic olfactive clashes. These pretty flowers exude a mixture of flower shop freshness and carnal opulence. This natural contradiction has fascinated generations of perfumers including Dominique Ropion. He started to compose his interpretation of the mysterious flower from the latest high-tech analysis of its evaporation. To remain as close to nature as possible, he decided to use a mix of the best natural extractions and high-tech ingredients. Finally, to generate a link between this flower’s scent and the wearer's skin he exaggerated some aspects already existing in the scent of natural tuberose, such as coconut and salycilates, and added a trace of musk. 18 months were necessary to find the perfect balance.

The base encompasses: tuberose absolute, orange blossom absolute, coconut and musk.

There are a lot of reviews of Carnal Flower in part, I think, because it was released at the moment perfume blogging hit its first big wave back around 2005. Another piece of its frequent online inclusion on “must try" lists is attributable to it's unique approach to tuberose. Carnal Flower is a terrific scent, so the quality of the juice combined with the timing makes it a big hit with modern fumies. I suppose I'll add my opinion to the general pro-CF din. Is it good? Yes. But the more interesting question, I think is how does it stand up among the other tuberose scents available, particularly give Carnal Flower's hefty price tag.

The opening of Carnal Flower is greener and more evocative of stem sap than the bright heady florals of Robert Piguet Fracas. There is little of the medicinal note often associated with Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle, and the vaguely hairspray aspects of musk and dryness you find with By Kilian Beyond Love are entirely absent. Instead, Carnal Flower has a barely there coconut undertone that moves the overall effect slightly, and simultaneously, toward both warm tropical beach and tropical foodie for me. I get next to no musk or orange blossom out of the experience, to the point that I would not have thought to include them in the note list.

I agree with Robin at Now Smell This!, who described Carnal Flower as quiet as tuberose scents go. In a wrist by wrist comparison, it is quieter than both Fracas and Beyond Love. That shouldn't take anything away from Carnal Flower. In fact, making a quiet tuberose is something of a feat in itself. It's nice to wear a tuberose that isn't going to knock someone down fifty feet away from me. Carnal Flower may be the tuberose that many people who don't usually go for big white flowers will truly love.

I think for me one of the stumbling blocks is the name. Flower? Yes. Carnal? Well...not in my mind, but hey—who am I to say what might turn you on? To me it's too quiet and pretty to be sexy. I find Fracas and Beyond Love more overtly sexual. This carnal reads more to me like the shock of a Victorian woman confronted by an uncovered piano leg! The horror!

Then there's the price. A 50ml spray of Carnal Flower is a whooping $240, so make sure to try before you buy. If this is your tuberose holy grail, more power to you. I'll sit here with my pure parfum Fracas, which I bought for considerably less, and watch the world go by.

Want more? Try...
~ a review from The Non-Blonde
~ a review from Perfume Shrine
~ a review from Bois de Jasmin
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Olfactoria's Travels
~ a review from Eiderdown Press
~ a review from Katie Puckrik Smells
~ a review from For the Love of Perfume
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes
~ a review from Sweet Diva
~ a review from The Scented Salamander
~ a review from Scentsate
~ a review from SmellyThoughts
~ a review from PereDePierre
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes

Will you still love me when I got nothing
but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will...
I know that you will.
~ “Young and Beautiful,” Lana Del Rey

Photo of bluebonnet - some rights reserved by longhorndave

'Cause she knows that it's demanding to defeat those evil machines...

2013-05-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Rape Culture, Advertising, Feminist Aesthetics, and Warrior Fatigue

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. ~ Virginia Woolf

I haven't blogged about advertising and feminist aesthetics in a long while. It happened for a handful of reasons: lack of time, lack of energy, distracted by shiny objects. But also? Sometimes, I get warrior fatigue. Sometimes I feel lost and alone, orphaned by my own movement, and generally defeated. It is hard to always be fighting.

Oh yes, this completely
nude woman totally makes
me want to buy Shalimar...
no wait: I meant puke.

I also sometimes wonder, dear reader, if you aren't a little tired of hearing it. I feel like I am writing to the choir. If you already know this stuff, what is one more post going to do?

“There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women's bodies by men. The woman's body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.” ~ Adrienne Rich

I was always a feminist. I don't know why. I think probably because being an abuse little kid raised by crazy people who kept insisting they were normal forced me to make a choice. Either they were right, and I was awful and deserved awfulness, or they were wrong, and the world was a weirdly biased and inherently unjust place.

I did what any child desperate to survive would do under those conditions.

I chose myself.

I chose not to accept that I was awful, not to let their poison change my mind. I made that decision one terrible day in a hospital, though I didn't know it at the time. But I do remember thinking, very clearly, that it wouldn't always be this way, and it wasn't worth my life. I stopped taking out the awfulness on myself that day, on my own body, and I started living, just out of spite. If I was going to die, it wouldn't be by my own hand. I would no longer be complicit in my own defeat.

Nearly twenty years later, I've seen enough of the ugliness in the world to wonder: how many women have had to make such a choice...

Dear Tom Ford, thanks for making it easy
to despise your entire product line.

All oppression creates a state of war. ~ Simone de Beauvoir

That my father had a position of public power that made normal channels of relief unavailable to us underscored the power of status and privilege. That I am naturally highly empathetic meant that when I got older, my sense of personal injustice seemed easy to extend to others when I came to see the world in all its horrible inequity.

These things made me, like fire tempers a blade.

Call it coincidence or the juxtaposition of fate and genetics, a little nature/nurture combo, but whatever it is, I am who I am: a feminist from first breath to last. But when I am tired and weary of a world where people genuinely seem to hate women, and especially hate those who attempt to fight against that hatred, even I have to take a break.

Sometimes I just can't do it anymore. When I see students protesting rape culture at a top tier college being told they deserve to be raped and at another university, a Take Back the Night week is protested by a crazy man who says the students marching for safety are sluts who should be raped, sometimes I just feel like nothing I do matters.

“Patriarchy has no gender.” ~ bell hooks

If we could see patriarchy,
I feel like it would look
a lot like this...

Patriarchy is so big; it is so everywhere and every time and every culture. It is like The Silence in Doctor Who. It's influence is always there, just outside your field of vision, pervasive and persistently changing the world for the better. And as soon as you look away, even for a moment—you forget. You can't remember where that sick feeling in your stomach came from because you're too busy just trying to live your life. You forget that the silence, and here I mean the silencing influence of patriarchy, is standing behind you, influencing your thoughts, your decisions, even your actions.

The most stunning, terrible, mind-melting eleven words I have ever read was a short line in Catharine A. MacKinnon's “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory.” They were these:

Feminism does not begin with the premise that it is unpremised.

The piece—a thick diatribe against our broken understanding of rape and our failed ability to properly prosecute it, as well as a whole lot more—drops this nugget of wisdom in two paragraphs out of maybe a hundred containing just as many ideas. And yet, it scrambled my brain all around. She goes on.

That is, the equality of women to men will not be scientifically provable until it is no longer necessary to do so. Women's situation offers no outside to stand on or gaze at, no inside to escape to, too much urgency to wait, no place else to go, and nothing to use but the twisted tools that have been shoved down our throats. If feminism is revolutionary, this is why.

Who needs a woman
then they can have an
object and woman in one!

Even if we are revolutionary, even if what I do is a fight worth fighting, it is only because I continue to exist in the face of this vast awful thing that premises me. This is both a literal and philosophical truth in my case. The abuse of a developing child premises the adult they become; the oppression of women underlies my understanding of the world, the entire world's understanding of itself.

It affects men and women. It premises our understandings of ourselves and each other. Patriarchy is terrible for everyone, and we all cannot escape it. We literally cannot imagine a world without patriarchy. The driving animus of my life, feminism, exists because of patriarchy. Patriarchy and an inborn sense of wrongness, of injustice.

That realization, that moment when I see the horrible thing I always feel standing behind me, raising the hair along the back of my neck and I know it's real and true and awful, the moment just before I forget again, it is terrible and sad and it takes all the fight out of me.

“How else to make a dent in an object as immovable as patriarchy itself...?” ~ Dalma Heyn

Yes, my dear, sweet, lovely, and perhaps saddened reader, I get tired. I believe we all do, from time to time.

But then I see something like the video below, and I remember. I remember what it is like to feel the rage of first knowing, or of realizing the truly awful depth of the problem, and to think, “I can change it. Maybe only a little. Maybe only for one person. Maybe that person will just be me.” And with humor and angry and sadness and creativity, they begin to struggle against the wrongness without and the rage within.

And I think, that is why I write these. Because if one of you is new, or has just found this piece, or is reading any of these words and considering these ideas for the first time, let me say:

Yes, it is a terrible thing. Yes, it is okay to feel sad and frustrated and angry. But know this: you are not alone. And every single one of us, to the best we can, are fighting with you.

Until that unpremised day, viva la revolution.

Or, to put it another, particularly Whovian way:

Sooner or later, Silence will fall.

"...'Cause she knows that it'd be tragic
if those evil robots win.
I know she can beat them.

Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me,
but you won't let those robots defeat me."
~ Flaming Lips, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"

It’s not hard, not far to reach; we can hitch a ride to rockaway beach.

2013-04-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

A Review of Creed Virgin Island Water

Most of the time, my perfume collection is a blessing to me. I'm having a bad day, I feel lost or sad or angry or let down, and I spend a little time with my perfume and I feel a little better. But lately, I've been frustrated. Disappointed. I get up, I get dressed, I got to my perfume cabinet, and then I just....

….stand there.

And I stare.

And then I stare some more.

Everything seems wrong, somehow. Too floral. Too foodie. Too sweet, far too sweet, even my spicier scents. The one thing I keep wanting, Demeter Salt Air, which is basically nothing but a light aquatic, salt explosion, I can't find. This has never happened to me, dear reader, not in my almost six years of collecting. I want to write to you, and tell of you the wonderful scents out there, but in truth?

I have olfactory ennui.

I didn't even know such an unholy malediction was possible! I mean, of course I've seen other people blog about boredom or frustration or how everything seems to smell the same, but this seems...different, somehow. This is more of a spiritual scent emptiness, a vast chasm of faith momentarily lost that has shaken me.

My hope is that it will change soon. The weather is changing; that usually helps. It's getting hot here, almost oppressively hot. Too soon to be so hot. But I digress...

In honor of this hot weather, and my general state of perfume unhappy, I am taking the olfactory fast forward and jumping into the summer wardrobe with Creed Virgin Island Water.

According to the Creed website:

Virgin Island Water was awarded four out of five stars in a review by The New York Times.

Classification: Citrus / Fresh

Characteristics: Virgin Island Water captures the tropical splendor of scents carried in the trade winds of Sir Francis Drake Channel near Ginger Island in the Caribbean.

Top Note: Essence of copra (the white inner portion of the coconut); lime of the Antilles; white bergamot and mandarin orange from Sicily.
Middle Note: Hibiscus, ginger, ylang-ylang and Indian jasmine.
Bottom Note: Sugar cane and white rum of the Antilles, musk from Tonkin.

Virgin Island Water shows up on a lot of “best of” lists for summer scents and beachy scents. I can see why. On me the overall scent tilts toward the powdery flowers, Tonkin musk, and coconut milk. A little liquor sweetness and lime are in there for the few few minutes, but afterwards the fade into the background, as a hint of something that has past but might yet come round again. For something relatively floral and sweet, Virgin Island Water is very light on me. I can imagine keeping this one in a fridge to spray on before bed or after a cooling shower and feeling like I was scented without the scent wearing me. The sillage is moderate to low, and the staying power peters out around the four hour mark, which is on the short side. Normally I'd complain, but in the summer putting something on early in the day that disappears before the relentless heat descends can be a blessing.

Virgin Island Water is different from a lot of beach scents I've tried. It's less aggressively floral than Annick Goutal Songes. It's decidedly and delightfully more complex than Salt Air. It is less traditionally American beach fun than say, CB I Hate Perfume At the Beach 1966, or even Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess. The group of scents it mentally reminds me of most is the Un Jardin collection from Hermès. I can see it fitting right alongside Un Jardin Sur Le Nil and Un Jardin En Mediterranee. Delicate, sophisticate, and downright pretty, I highly recommend trying this one as you consider summer scent purchases.

The prices for Creed Virgin Island Water vary wildly; I saw 2.5oz for only $100. Retail is a bit higher, so shopping around on the internet for this one is worth the time if you want it. I got my sample from The Perfumed Court, but you should also check your local Nordstrom, as some stores are now carrying Creed.

Til next week, my lovelies!

Chewing out a rhythm on my bubble gum.
The sun is out and I want some.
It’s not hard, not far to reach.
We can hitch a ride
to rockaway beach.
~ "Rockaway Beach," The Ramones

A heaven, a gateway, a hope: A Review of Jo Malone's Sugar and Spice Collection

2013-04-20T19:20:00.001-07:00

Yes, dear reader, I know what you're thinking: where you been, fool?

The answer is everywhere and nowhere, dear reader. In my heart...in my head....I've been to world that only exist in my own dreams. In reality? Mostly in Oregon, but also in Washington for a few weekends.

Either way, I obviously have not been here enough. I hear you, reader. You love me, but you'd also love a little consistency in posting. This is a more than fair critique.

So, here's a promise from me to you. Starting now, my goal is to be here at least once a week, every week, for the rest of 2013. It's not as much as I'd like, but I wanted to keep my goals and commitments realistic. And that's my commitment to you and this space. Once a week. Be here or be square.

Jo Malone's English Limited Edition Sugar and Spice Collection

Here's something I've enjoying lately -- the sugary sweet fruity food concoctions that make up this season's limited edition Jo Malone offerings, also known as the Sugar and Spice collection. Christine Nagel of Mane is responsible for these five British dessert inspired delights. She did the tea line from last season that I felt sort of meh about, but she also made Wild Bluebell and English Pear & Freesia, which I like, so I had hopes for the line. I love a well made gourmand, and have absolutely no objection to smelling like food. So when they called and invited me to the formal presentation of the collection at Nordstrom's here in Portland, I decided I would find a way to make it work with my ridiculously busy schedule.

I went to their fancy food and presentation 'do, complete with the presence of a delightful British man also known as a national trainer for Jo Malone. As he laid the thick and delicious patter of a man with a product to sell on us, all I wanted was to get to the juice. That said, there was something a little delightful about drinking carefully concocted theme drinks and getting to eat the dessert the scent is based on while smelling the scents simultaneously. And yes, they gave us delightful hand massages and a set of collection-inspired recipe cards, so it as an excellent afternoon of pampering. But let's not make the mistake here that they did there, shall we? Let's get to the perfume.

The Sugar and Spice Collection contains the following five scents:

Lemon Tart - The mouth-watering tang of lemon tart. Sparkling with citrus fruits and verbena, contrasted with swirls of meringue and lemon thyme. Refreshing.

Redcurrant & Cream - A summer pudding. Sharp-scarlet juices of redcurrants, lush strawberries and raspberries, rippling through creamy musk. Vivacious and enticing.

Elderflower & Gooseberry - A voluptuous gooseberry fool. Crushed, summer-green gooseberries, juicy with lychee, enfolded into the soft delicacy of elderflower. Tender and feminine.

Ginger Biscuit - Just-baked biscuit. Spiced with ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, melting into caramel. Butter-crumbly with roasted hazelnuts. Warmed by tonka bean and vanilla. Irresistible.

Bitter Orange & Chocolate - The bite of bitter orange, layered with dark chocolate. Orange peel counterpoised with warm, powdery cocoa, milky coconut and coumarin. Sumptuous and addictive.

Based solely on the descriptions, I went into the event thinking I was most likely to walk out with the Lemon Tart or the Elderflower & Gooseberry. I enjoy a good lemon tart, and I was hoping the sugary aspect of the line would keep it away from the astringent/cleaner end of the citrus scent market. As for the Elderflower & Gooseberry, I like drinking St. Germain as much as the next girl, so I thought there was promise to be held there.

Lemon Tart was foodie, but it was far too light for my taste. It felt like it was a barely there scent. I think part of the issue was that the focus of the scent seemed to be on the crust, and much like a tart with too much crust and not enough filling, it left something to be desired. Nice, but not for a lemon lover like me.

Elderflower & Gooseberry on the other hand was a strange synthetic mess on me! I was really sad about it, too. It opened with the olfactory equivalent of white noise, fruits mash of indeterminate origin, and something sharp, like alcohol. If you'd asked me before the event, I'd have told you this certain to be my favorite of the group. Worse still, lots of the attendants seemed to really like it so I have to believe this one was mostly bouncing off my body chemistry. Others found bliss, so you might, too. For me, though? Nope. A complete nonstarter.

Next up? Ginger Biscuit. Now we were getting somewhere. Ginger-in all its various forms-is the favored flavor and scent of El Hubs, so much so that I wore a relatively inexpensive and now defunct ginger scent, Origins Ginger with a Twist, on my wedding day because he liked it and back then I didn't know jack about perfume. So here is this sweet, foodie delight with a legitimately realistic ginger happening in the opening. David eats candied ginger by the pound, and this is like that first burst when one bites past the sugary outside and into the stinging tartness in the middle. After about twenty minutes, it slides into a delicious buttery cookie with crystallized ginger topping. The vanilla and tonka make up the cookie dough, anchoring all that ginger decidedly in the dessert world. This one was a win for me, and I knew it would be a win for David. Into the basket to purchase it went.

Redcurrant & Cream is a delightful berry in the opening, but that disappears quite quickly. Then it's all about musk and cream, smooth across the palette with a bitter edge, like the berries underneath are sharp and green and not quite ripe. Foodie? On me, it is decidedly less dessert-y than the rest of the collection. But it did feel like the buzz of stumble drunk bees buzzing in the open u-pick berry fields ones finds around Oregon and Washington in the warm, bright days of summer. I knew I would want to wear the Ginger Biscuit on those bright warm days, and this was a light, full, colorful berry blend that I could see myself reaching for when late June and July rolled around. After some lengthy internal debate, it went into the To Be Bought pile as well.

Last up, Bitter Orange & Chocolate. If I had been laying bets before I smelled the collection, I'd have told you this one was destined to be the great loser of the bunch. Good orange scents are surprisingly hard to find. Good chocolate scents? Even harder. To try to make a realistic blend of both that even remotely resembled one of my favorite holiday treats-the perennial chocolate orange-seemed a feat, frankly, beyond Jo Malone, and I say that as a fan of the line, generally speaking.

Boy, was I wrong. This smells just like the shiny foil wrapped chocolate orange of my holiday dreams! Orange dominates in the opening, and while not all that reminiscent of the smell or taste of a real orange, it is pitch perfect for the orange that I know from the classic dessert. The chocolate is dry and a little powdery, but terrific. In my opinion, this is the it of this collection. The trainer announced they had only four bottles of it left in Washington or Oregon, which tells me that my tastes must align with the 'fumies in my area, because I snatched a bottle up immediately.

There it is, my friends. In the end I bought three bottles, and not one of them was one of the two I expected when I walked in the door. Proof that try before you buy holds true for all noses. Am I sucker? For dessert scents, apparently I am. But I've been living with these bottles for about a month now and I don't regret it at all. I also got a ton of samples from the Cologne Intense collection I hadn't tried and a gift with purchase of 10ml of both Grapefruit, which I find useful for layering but not as a stand alone, and Orange Blossom, which is one of my favorites. Frankly? I feel like I made out like a bandit.

I checked online today, and the entire collection is still available online. All of the scents are available in the 50ml bottle for $60, but I advise you pop by your local Jo Malone counter and give them all a sniff before you commit.

Sing, O goddess : A review of Esscentual Alchemy Hokkabaz

2013-03-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Hello reader:

You're probably wondering if I've died. I have not. I was, however, sick again. While I managed to soldier through work, a head cold prevented me from smelling anything for two whole weeks. Seriously. Of the ten weeks of 2013, I have been sick for four of them.

This is not a trend I enjoy, reader.

Birthday spot, unfiltered.
Seriously. It looks just like this...

And it isn't like I don't try to be healthy. I rarely eat red meat. I take a daily multivitamin and a ridiculous amount of vitamin D since I am pale and live in a land without sun. FN1. I....okay, I need to exercise more, but hey, I just bought a treadmill, so that's going to start happening. I blame my largely nonfunctional thyroid. My broken hormone levels pretty much mess up my whole body.

But enough about my complete lack of health, I can breath again! And while I couldn't breath, here's what I did: I saw Beautiful Creatures and liked it (though it was too short, it was true to the spirit of the books, which I appreciated). I read books and bought more books. I drank a lot of tea. I ate my fair share and then a little bit more of my annual allotment of Girl Scout cookies. I went out to the Gorge for a weekend with David. I had a deep emotional reaction to the announcement that I finally get a Veronica Mars movie. FN2.

I turned thirty-five.

Yeah. It's weird. I thought my life would be very different at thirty-five. One thing is for sure: my day-to-day is pretty much nothing like my parents or any other woman in the history of my family. I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I like the choices I've made to have an education and career. On the other hand, there are things that I expected to happen in my life (namely children) that have not happened and may never happen. And on the gripping hand, this whole “must create my own path because there are no familial role models and on early childhood ingrained ideas for whether or not my choices are good and/or sensible” thing is...challenging. It forces me to stumble across the uneven ground of the path less taken; it's tough, but I keep going.

Speaking of challenging, I have an interesting perfume challenge to review today. Esscentual Alchemy Hokkabaz. The scent is supposed to be a recreation of the long lost Guerlain scent Djedi, created by Jacques Guerlain in 1926. According to perfumer Amanda Feeley,

[Djedi] was created when the world was enchanted by all things Egyptian. Djedi, as the story goes, was a magician - a conjurer - who claimed he could raise people from the dead, even those who had been beheaded! Djedi means – “He who endures.”

Polished metal, well-worn leather, the coppery smell of blood – is it possible that Amanda was thinking Egypt, but reached a little further back and landed right in the middle of the Homer's The Iliad?

As two men, measuring-rods in hand, quarrel about their boundaries in a field that they own in common, and stickle for their rights though they be but in a mere strip, even so did the battlements now serve as a bone of contention, and they beat one another's round shields for their possession. Many a man's body was wounded with the pitiless bronze, as he turned round and bared his back to the foe, and many were struck clean through their shields; the wall and battlements were everywhere deluged with the blood alike of Trojans and of Achaeans...

They flew forth like the blasts of some fierce wind that strike earth in the van of a thunderstorm- they buffet the salt sea into an uproar; many and mighty are the great waves that come crashing in one after the other upon the shore with their arching heads all crested with foam- even so did rank behind rank of Trojans arrayed in gleaming armour follow their leaders onward...

With these words he led the way and the others followed after with a cry that rent the air, while the host shouted behind them. The Argives on their part raised a shout likewise, nor did they forget their prowess, but stood firm against the onslaught of the Trojan chieftains, and the cry from both the hosts rose up to heaven and to the brightness of Jove's presence...

It is weird that this is what I think of when I smell Hokkabaz? Dust and dirty, leather sandals, the clang of sword on shield, and the air perfumed with blood? And maybe, in the distance, flowers in bloom?

The notes say I'm right. “Rose, vetiver, oakmoss, leather accord, civet, patchouli, antique mysore sandalwood, clove, vanilla, orris, calamus, embalming spices accord.” How strange, isn't it? How we can find one historical moment in another?

Now that I've marveled a history and poetry, let's get on to the real question: Is it wearable? Yes. Very. I think it is strangely sexy, this warlike perfume. It feels visceral, inevitable, immutable, and enduring. With moderate tangy silage and good longevity on the skin, it walks a fine line between a metallic tang on the tongue and a spicy rose in the nose so it is neither sweet nor unsweetened, lightly floral but not at all flowery. Iconic. I feels, in a word, iconic.

For a perfume that is supposedly long gone, this modern rendition feels very old, indeed. Hokkabaz isn't a scent for everyone, but I like it better that way. You're going to need to embrace the idea that perfume doesn't smell like food or flowers for this one. But if you do, I think you might find something really impressive.
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FN1. Seriously. IRL, if you are deathly pale and live in the PNW, you don't sparkle. You glow with the deathly blue of your veins clearly visible through your translucent skin and become very vitamin D deficient; you don't sparkle.

FN2. This gif was pretty much my reaction to the Veronica Mars movie news in a nutshell.

In the interests of full disclosure, this sample was provided by the perfumer.

With Love from the Link(wo)man!

2013-02-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Valentine's, dear reader, and since I will be unavailable for most of the weekend due to out of town-ness, I bring you the following links of love and entertainment to keep you busy whilst I am away.

~ Any Valentine's Day perfume review round-up from around the netosphere would have to include this blog event from a group of lovely perfumers and bloggers who came together this week to offer the proverbial dozen roses for Valentine's Day by recommending rose-scented products to their readers. I could give you my list of roses, which would be long, but instead I'm going to give you my thoughts on their lists:

I really like this list from Gaia at The Non-Blonde. I like the way she broke her list up, and I enjoyed the inclusion of "Vintage and goners" if only because they remind me to appreciate the perfumes I have; they won't always be available. The list is really good, too! Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Vermeille, Le Labo Rose 31, DSH Perfumes Rose Vert, and Aftelier Perfumes Wild Rose--oh my! I'm adding Providence Perfume Company Rose Boheme to my "To Try" list.

Scent Hive has a great list, including one of my personal favorites, DSH Perfumes Dirty Rose.

Ayala Moriel's SmellyBlog contribution includes a few familiar lovely delights--Rochas Tocade, Agent Provocateur--and a few items I am adding to my "To Try" list, in particular Jo Malone Rosewater & Vanilla and Velvet & Sweet Pea’s Purrfumery Kashmir Rose Whipped Body Butter.

Perfume Shrine has the list that is probably the most similar to mine, and includes L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses, Juliette Has a Gun Lady Vengeance, and L'Artisan Parfumeur Drôle de Rose, which I have full bottles of, and Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée, which I really should buy since I reviewed it glowingly twice.

Ines of All I Am A Red Head, one of the loveliest reviewers I know, comes in with a list I am less familiar with, which makes me want to try them. I do like Worth Courtesan, though. It was one of my earliest rose loves.

EauMG has an intriguing list that covers everything from perfume to tea to bubble bath to flavored syrup. I'll add yet another endorsement to Aftelier Perfumes Wild Roses which I can't believe I left out of my own Valentine's post, and Frédéric Malle Lipstick Rose.

Katie Puckrik Smells also has a list with a lot of variety, including Jurlique Rose Hand Cream, which I love. Love, love, love. I need to order some more, in fact.

Last but certainly not least, Roxana Villa of Roxana Illuminated Perfumes' contribution offers up a list one could only get from an all natural perfumer, and I love it:a list of her twelve favorite rose essences, as well as this curious link to a book entitled, How to Eat a Rose.

~ Also, because I myself have crashed my share of these organized events, I'm including The French Exit's list of rose scents for Valentine's Day. Thanks to Elisa for adding a few more "Must Trys" to my list!

~ In other perfume news, I f**king love this post from Angela at NST! about "Awful Perfume You Love." If you ever wanted to know my secret perfume shame, check the comments, dear reader. I confessed all.

In non-perfume related posting:

~ First up, I give you this hilarious (and yet somehow still creepy) video of Twin Peaks brought to you in the form of LEGOS! Yep. That's right, reader. Twin Peaks in Lego form. "Directed by Duplo Lynch and music by Angelo Brickalamenti." SPOILER ALERT if you have not seen the series.

~ In YA entertainment news, it appears Emma Roberts is set to play Lena in the Fox adaptation of Lauren Oliver's Delirium series.

I really like this series, both in concept and execution. I recall Emma Roberts was about as good in the Nancy Drew movie as she could have been given the material, so I'm hoping this pilot results in a pick-up for Fall.

~ Speaking of YA on the small screen, I saw that the CW's jettison pilot for Kiera Cass' The Selection is getting a reshoot. I haven't read the book yet (on my To Read list despite the epic GoodReads controversy/fiasco -- Google it if you're interested because I don't really want to link to/go into it), but I'm surprised it's getting a reshoot for a couple of reasons.

First, CW's ratings for Vampire Diaries have been taking a beating lately. (I feel like I'm a Hobson's choice when it comes to ratings, live viewing, and Community vs. TVD scheduled head-to-head.) FN1. With Gossip Girl retired, The Carrie Diaries premiered to disappointing ratings, and the ratings for 90210 have also been weak. We all watched The Secret Circle crash and burn last season, and Life Unexpected ate itself as well 2010-2011. I'm wondering how much time and money the CW is willing to give teen-oriented material considering the success/failure rate.

Second, Arrow has performed--for a CW show--better than expected and Beauty and the Beast is likely to be renewed based on its current ratings. Both of those shows tend to skew older than TVD and TCD. The backdoor pilot for TVD spin-off The Originals is already in the pike and I expect it to skew toward that same slightly older demo. If The Originals is a hit, I am doubly skeptical they'll be willing to sink money into a teen drama for Fall 2013.

Thirdly, Cynthia Hand's Unearthly series was in development with the CW, but that project has since fizzled, and it is a wildly different series from The Selection. I get the vibe that CW wants to find another YA-novel-series-to-TV hit. I think they can't figure out what they're looking for, and they are kind of hitting all over the grid. If the real commitment is to trying to hit the moving target of 'of the moment' taste, that doesn't make for a high probability The Selection will make it, because I don't know how committed the developers of the series or the network execs are to making it work.

Last, I also think the CW execs are critically underestimating that sometimes it isn't the source material that makes a show work; sometimes its the TV writing that makes the show work. (Cough! TVD! Cough, cough!) Just because Dystopian books are sohottrightnow doesn't mean making a dystopian-book-based series is going to work. It has to have good writing and a committed cast. You don't have to take my word for it; just look at the difference in performance between TVD in its target demo vs. Moonlight, both of which launched in the midst of Twilight-renewed vampire mania.

Wow. I did not know I had so many opinions about the CW programming at the moment. Moving on.

~Speaking of CW programming, my incredibly sweet friend Cara pointed me toward these virtual CW Valentine's cards featuring their male stars. And while I'm all for upgrading my relationship with Ian SuperSmolder to "It's complicated," I'm a little peeved they didn't have cards featuring their female stars, too. Lovers of ladies don't deserve V-Day images? Does CW think it's only objectification if women are involved? Because new flash: you can definitely objectify men, and doing so does not mean we've reached 'gender equality.' As a lover of women as well as men, I'd have appreciated a Claire Holt option...or a Candice Accola option...or a Willa Holland option....

~ Did anyone see how #TellAFeministThankYou trended for basically an entire day on Twitter this week? All trolling aside, it turned out pretty great.

~ In radio-oriented entertainment, I was introduced to the hilarious and hilariously named Irrational Public Radio. If you have any familiarity with NPR whatsoever, you are going to laugh so hard at this. They completely nailed both the tone as well as the voice acting.

~ In feminist things that delight me, let me direct your attention to The Hawkeye Initiative. What is THI? I'll let their explaination tell you all you need to know: "A blog with Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton being placed in the same provocative, female poses that are featured in superhero comics." Yeah. That is happening, and it is awesome.

~ Last, because it's Valentine's Day, I'll leave you with this animated short from Disney, Paperman. Paperman is a small romantic treat, like a satisfying piece of candy. Watch it and consider it my V-Day gift to you.

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FN1. As I wrote this, TVD, Arrow, and Supernatural all got renewed early. YAY for TVD fans everywhere. But seriously? Supernatural got another season? I, for one, am shocked. Not because of the ratings, but because I feel like they ran out of story about a season ago. I loved the early seasons, but at this point Sam and Dean's bickering over their trust issues feels like a character development fail. It would be nice to see them do something--anything--else.

Food for Thought: Flowers, Chocolates, and Super Sweet Scents for Valentine's Day

2013-02-10T16:14:00.001-08:00

Dear reader:

I should be in bed right now. I am so tired. My new job is good, but kind of exhausting. So why am I writing you? A lot of reasons I guess. Despite being bone tired, I'm feeling restless. I don't know what it is, exactly. Something under my skin. A weird kind of itching.

So while the wickedness within refuses to give me peace, let's talk about that cheesy commercial holiday bearing down on us. The men I work with are surprisingly on top of their game, Valentine's Day speaking. They have reservations. They have gifts. These guys got game.

It's probably why they're all happily married.

I'm surprised by how happy they are about participating in V-day. I never dated anyone who embraced Valentine's Day. I was sort of under the impression most people tolerated Valentine's Day. I'm not used to it being whole-heartedly embraced.

So you know what, reader? Let us try to get a little into the hearts and sparkles spirit, shall we? After all, Beautiful Creatures comes out next week, and we all know that I have fangirlish feelings for Ethan and Lena and their trials and tribulations. Plus, I do get go see two of my closest friends next weekend. So let's embrace the love a little, shall we? After all, the Greeks had as many words for loves as there are kinds of love to be had. So let's talk love, romance, music, and—of course—perfume.

First up on my list of V-Day scent selections for 2013? By Kilian Good Girl Gone Bad. Released as part of the In the Garden of Good and Evil collection, Good Girl Gone Bad is described as follows on Luckyscent:

GOOD GIRL GONE BAD typifies a special sort of woman. A perfume that represents a kind of voluptuousness beloved by Kilian : sensual and unrestrained. A woman who is game for anything in the world of love, of desire, of naughtiness.

GOOD GIRL GONE BAD is a composition of fruits and flowers, a perfume as bewitching as bursts of laughter, a barrier moved beyond, a forgotten prohibition.

The perfume opens on the fresh innocence of the petals of Jasmin Sambac and the apricot sweetness of Chinese Osmanthus. But that feminine ideal does not continue to fool anyone for long. Letting go of their demure appearances, the flowers toss off their inhibitions and reveal the other, decadent side of themselves. The Rose of May gives off its honeyed heat. The Indian Tuberose nakedly exhibits its milky roundness, while the narcotic sensuality of Egyptian Narcissus surges forth, uncontrollable and deliciously haunting. Notes of Virginia Cedar and Amber open up and try to assert their dominant character In order to contain that outpouring of opulence, but they never succeed in taming it completely. The tension is palpable; the addiction exacerbated; the pleasure consummated.

GOOD GIRL GONE BAD, when the woman become a temptress, a sinner - when she dares and when she proves her audacity.

Notes: Jasmin Sambac, osmanthus, rose, tuberose, narcissus, violet accord, plum accord, cedar wood, amber, patchouli, vetiver, musk.

Okay -- overbearing ad copy aside, this is a pretty, well-made scent that would make a nice Valentine's Day choice.

Good Girl Gone Bad is feminine but with an edge. This scent starts out floral but quickly becomes a little dirtier thanks to the base notes. For me, though, Good Girl Gone Bad is less about dirty florals than it is about the sticky sweet floral. I don't get nearly as much patchouli as I get hefty sweetness. Good Girl Gone Bad is heavy on the amber note for me, as well as the sugar heavy edge of the florals ( the sweetest part of rose, narcissus, violet) mixed with the jammyest of plums. On the whole, I like it. It make my sweet tooth ache in the best way.

Any list of sweet scents that could be romantical would also have to include A Lab on Fire What We Do In Paris is Secret, particularly for the perfume lover with a wicked sweet tooth. Another super sweet favorite? By Kilian Love.

Not into super sweet? How about chocolate! First of all, Aftelier Perfumes Chocolate and Saffron Body Oil & Hair Elixir is described thusly:

This romantic and sensual body oil leaves your skin of smelling of chocolate and flowers. Featured on the blog, Brainy Beauty for Product Junkies: "I put this on my arm & now I want to eat my arm... it is such a delicious smell."

Chocolate and Saffron is sweet without being aggressively so. It leans toward the foodie side of chocolate, but the saffron balances it nicely so it isn't overly edible. Instead the chocolate is counterbalanced against the slightly floral spice of saffron so it just feels simultaneously fresh and light. Pretty, polite, and subtle, Chocolate and Saffron is sexy without being provocative, and at 105 ml for $50, the price point is perfect for a lovely holiday gift that will last a long time.

Other chocolaty scents I recommend? Try the spicy chocolate of Il Profumo Chocolat EDP or one of my absolutely favorites, the light and airy chocolate rose of S-Perfumes 100% Love.

You know who else makes a great chocolate and rose scent? Ayala Moriel Natural Perfumes! Roses et Chocolat, originally created as a Valentine's scent, is now available year round, which is lucky for all of us. That means any time of year you can have...

...three pleasures in one elegant flacon: a bouquet of red roses, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate truffles, and, of course - a perfume! The most sensual and sumptuous way to declaration of love. Kisses not included. Notes: Allspice (Pimento Berry), Amber, Benzoin Siamese Cocoa Absolute, Mace, Nutmeg Pink Pepper Absolute, Rose de Mai, Rose Maroc Rose Otto (Turkey)

If 100% Love is the barest brush of a feather, then is is chocolate and roses as a full-bodied seduction. Strong chocolate notes balance against a rose with a tangy bite like the taste of rose petals. It is a dark rose with a bit of...is that pepper? Talk about your spunky Valentine! Long lasting and elegant, like a heavy china plate with a 14 carat gold rim. You can have it as an EdP or a parfum extrait, or even as a real chocolate bar! How awesome is that? And if I had the money, I'd buy the whole Ayala Moriel Natural Perfumes Broken Hearts - Valentine Coffret 2013! A truly luxurious gift for the scent addict in your life.

And if you are going to talk about sweets and chocolates, we might as well talk about flowers, reader. Since I couldn't have the Broken Hearts Coffret, I will have to console myself with DSH Perfumes Les Rouges Collection Box.

PASSION, POWER, LUST, RAGE, ECSTASY… such are our associations with RED; our wildest emotions and greatest HEAT are bound to this primal color. Inspired by the radiance and intensity of RED, my Les Rouges Collection Box contains a miniature (5ml) bottle of all four of the exquisite members of this collection.

The Les Rouges Collection includes Fleurs d’Oranger (Orange Blossom); Oeillets Rouges (Red Carnations); Poivre; Piment et Chocolat – four lovely scents that cover a range of florals and a chocolate to boot! I feel pretty confident that I, for one, will be pleased by own Valentineal thoughtfulness.

So that's it for me this year. Some more traditional Valentine's recommendations this year. While I'm here, I'll also direct your attention to my Valentine's post from last year, where apparently I also talked about BC, and then wrote about a lot of really great perfumes that I still whole-heartedly endorse, including a list of less conventional recommendations.

Today you can call me Zelda, because I'm bringing all the Link-age.

2013-02-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

Hello dear reader!

Today I'm going to offer you all this list of links of fun and interesting things, perfumey and non, that I have come across on the tubes during my long dark winter of plaguery. I recommend all the items on this list if you've got an hour to kill and want to do a little web exploring with me. This list is lovingly brought to you by me and my beloved elder cat, Terric.

~ First, let's talk about the perfume linkage:

While I was trying to defeat the plague, it appears everyone has released their winter 2013 lists, because there are a group of bloggers one could consider the Five Families of Perfume Blogging, and in case you haven't noticed, they tend to simulcast these things. Instead of rushing to give you mine, I'll give you a list of links to everyone else's and a few words of my own about each. Really nothing like critiquing the critique, is there? Yeah, I'm being lazy. Sorry.

Angela of Now Smell This! gives us her list of Top 10 Scents for Winter. I love this list, and would echo two of her choices: Annick Goutal Duel and Aftelier Wild Roses. If you've never read Angela's writing, she's terrific, and her regular posting day is Monday.

Grain de Musc also released its Winter Top 10. I can't really comment on this list because I haven't tried any of these scents, but the By Kilian's In the Garden of Good and Evil and Arabian Nights scents are already in my LuckyScent basket, so hopefully I'll get to those soon.

Here you will find Perfume Posse's Top 10 Winter Scent List written complied from six of PP's fabulous bloggers. Of this list I'd endorse Bvlgari BLV Pour Homme, CB I Hate Perfume Winter 1972, and Le Labo Vanille 44. I still need to try Prada Candy.

Bois de Jasmin's Favorite Fragrances for Winter Days includes a few personal favorites: Donna Karan Black Cashmere, DSH Perfumes Winter White (Holiday No. 4), and biehl parfumkunstwerke eo01.

And last but never least, there is a winter scents offering from Tom of Perfume-Smellin' Things. Since Tom is located in So Cal, he admits there hasn't been a lot of call for wintery scents, but the comments mentioned Bal a Versailles, which I think is nice for February for all sorts of reasons (smexy!), and I have to give a winter shout out to this sexy scent, as well as Guerlain Shalimar, which I love in cool weather.

So there you have it. A list of wintery scents I like that are also endorsed by the Dons of perfume blogging. Can't beat that now, can you?

~ And while I'm on excellent perfume pieces, allow me to also recommend the following:

In a Non-Top 10 Winter Scent list offering, this "Perfume Primer" piece of the "Much Maligned Fruity Floral" from Perfume Shrine is great. I myself have written two third of my own version championing those fruity florals I enjoy...and then left to malinger in the dusty corners of my hard drive. Until I can get my act together, this is a good read. It also includes a lot of history of the development of the fruity floral that I was not previously fully aware of, so give it a gander.

From Perfume Posse, there's a nice piece about the best perfumes not enough people know about. I myself haven't found the hidden greatness of Puredistance, but I agree with a few of the others on this list. In fact, maybe I'll make one of my own...

Perfume-in-Progress has a brief but interesting piece on the artisanal business model of perfumery, with a link to an interview with Mandy Aftel wherein she reflects on her life as a independent business owner/perfumer.

Also, I meant to share this super hilarious piece from Parfümieren months ago about the twelve step affirmation of perfume addiction. It is a truly great, and I am sorry I sat on it so long. (Ed. note: Sadly, this blog has gone private recently due to online harassment, so I've removed the link. It is too bad; it is a great site.)

And then there's the perfume SHOPPING! I offer the following:

The lovely and talented Amanda at Essentual Alchemy wrote in with the following note:

As some of you know, Kevin had a difficult battle with cancer. About a week ago, Kevin caught one of the strains of flu that was going around, in spite of his flu shot. Who knew! While he's recovering I need to put my business into high gear, and generate fast income.
So I'm here to offer a BOO FLU event - BOO FLU equals more good smells for you! For one week, starting Tuesday, Feb. 5 through Feb. 12.

Here's a couple of options to play with me:

~ Buy 4 EdP sprays, get 1 free!

~ I'll have a special coupon – Please use code: BOOFLU at checkout to receive 25% off your total.

Need Valentine's Day gifts? I love putting together custom perfume packages for people.

As a victim of this year's dreaded flu season, I feel Amanda's pain. Also, cancer seems to be touching a lot of people in my life right now, so I have a special place in my heart for Amanda, Kevin, and Kevin's post-cancer health struggles. Hitting the BOO FLU event isn't just shopping; it's a mitzvah, and you get nice perfume as a bonus.

I have reviewed a number of Essentual Alchemy scents, so don't forget to check the review list.

Also, from the lovely Dawn Spencer Hurwitz at DSH Perfumes:

Love is in the air at DSH! It's our Valentine's Day Sale.

In the midst of the winter chill, we're staying cozy and warm with the delicious kisses of our favorite softly spicy and gourmand scents-- so perfect to celebrate Valentine's Day. St. Valentine, Piment et Chocolat, Vanille Botanique and our fab Les Rouges Collection Box top our fave picks and to make things even sweeter we're giving 15% off site wide through 2.18.13.

Just use coupon code: sweetheart13 for you or your sweetheart this Valentine's Day & share the love!

I have reviewed a number of DSH Perfumes scents, so again don't forget to check the review list for suggestions.

In non-perfume related items, I found these interesting:

~ The Terror Of "Twin Peaks": His Name Is BOB presents a terrific piece on the mystery and terror that is Twin Peaks's accidental boogeyman. Massive spoiler for the initiated. Massive. Seriously. This will ruin the series for you if you haven't seen it all the way through to the bitter end. If you have, though, read away! Thanks to my friend and reader Anna F. for the link!

~ Dedicated Hunger Games fans found the Quarter Quell’s arena shooting location on Google Earth. How freaking dedicated do you have to be to search the globe for that kind of image!?! So awesome. My hats off to those District 12 sponsors. I should be so lucky to have such fans some day.

~ A group of friends has spent the past 23 years playing an elaborate game of 'tag.' My favorite part is that the lawyer of the group drafted the "Tag Participation Agreement" and they all signed. Now that's some lawyering I can get behind.

~ This list of bizarre twists on classic fairy tales is at least partly familiar to me (Cinder is on my 'too read' list and El Hubs has collected Fables since it began – we both love it) but there are several I wasn't familiar with. I'm most intrigued by the western Snow White for I love the western motif, and I am definitely going to find a copy of Anne Sexton's Transformations. Poetry + reinterpreted fairy tales? I'm already in love.

~ The lovely Smith sisters, both Audrey and Ashley, sent me this great photo essay showing Former Secretary Hillary Clinton in every country she's visited as Secretary of State. Apparently she set a new record for foreign visits. Are you ready for the count? 112! Incredible. And all over the world, we had this smart, thoughtful, passionate, shrewd woman representing our country. I'm deeply proud she was our SoS.

~ If you like dystopian, paranormal & supernatural YA reads and you aren't already stalking HarperTeen's Pitch Dark Days site and following their twitter, you should be. My favs in this group are: Boundless, the conclusion of Cynthia Hand's Unearthly trilogy; Everbound. the sequel to Brodi Ashton's terrific Everneath; and Requiem the conclusion to Lauren Oliver's dystopian world where love is a disease. But I have to say, I find routinely new authors to love among the Pitch Dark Days collection, so get if you like your YA dark, then get thee to the website and start browsing!

~ Just in time for Valentine's Day, Crave Online brings readers this piece on six loving couples Marvel recently destroyed. I really enjoyed it, both for the couple histories, and for the critique of how hard it is to have a relationship as a hero, particularly if Jason Aaron has anything to do say about it. Reading all the way to the end certainly made me appreciate how easy David and I have it with our random arguments over whose turn it is to do some neglected chore. Also, it underscore that a love that last fifty years or more is bound to encounter big challenges, so be generous with one another and appreciate the time you have. A good message as we approach the Cupid season, or any time of year, really.

~ Thanks to our lovely friend and reader, Jillian, for the link to this unique fashion tumblr, which provides outfits based on characters from literature. It is a great tumblr! I don't care what you're a fan of – they've got it. Here are a few of my favorites:

Classic Greeks like Antigone
Modern YA favorites like Karou from Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone and District 12's gritty heroine, Katniss Everdeen
Harry Potter characters good/bad/ugly, like the loathsome Rita Skeeter
Classic literary figures like Street Car Named Desire's Blanche Dubois
Long time youthful favorites like Sweet Valley High's famous twinsome, Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield
And last, but never least, in honor of my deep and unabiding love for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the wonderful author Jane Austen. (Yes, they have all our Pride and Prejudice favs as well!)

The full character/outfit list is here.

Okay. That's it for me today. Hope this gives you lots to click through, keeping you busy and entertained until I return. Work is busy but good, in a trying-to-keep-my-head-above-water sort of way.

Until then, dear reader, don't forget to read deeply and smell pretty!

Notes from the Plague Den, Part 5: The Plague Girl Bloggeth!

2013-02-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

A Review of Aftelier Perfumes Cepes and Tuberose EdP

Rejoice and be glad, dear reader, for I have seen the light at the end of the plague tunnel. I went back to the doctor yesterday because I thought I might be developing a secondary infection. They just called – nope! My sinuses acting up are more likely “environmental irritants” and as of Monday, I should be all clear to go to the office and return to my new work endeavors. Yay! After my chest infection became bronchitis became walking pneumonia and three months of suffering last year, I cannot tell you how happy I am to have a job that supports my efforts not to drag my immuno-compromised self all over town.

In celebration of this turn of healthful events, I will now share with you my favorite of the Aftelier Perfumes offerings thus far. Aftelier Perfumes Cepes and Tuberose is described as follows:

Wild mushrooms, with animal undertones and one of the world's most voluptuous florals. Wild porcini mushrooms and Italian tuberose play a mysterious and earthy duet.

 Featured Notes
Top: bois de rose.
  Heart: tuberose, Moroccan rose.
  Base: cepes absolute, benzoin.

Cepes and Tuberose, which Aftel describes as a “Fougère family” scent, was chosen as one of “100 Perfumes Every Perfumista Should Try” by Now Smell This.

Chocolate, tobacco, hay, roses, tuberose, oh my! Cepes and Tuberose reminds me of a confection made to look like a mushroom with a chocolate cap and powdery spores. It is sweet without being sweet, foodie without being specifically edible, beautiful and supple and deliciously, delightfully weird! Mushrooms in perfume have never had it so good.

In her review, Marina talks about Cepes and Tuberose containing something that is a “tongue-coating” 5th taste. I find – interestingly – that I can always 'tastesmell' (i.e. I put my mouth over my wrist and inhale through my mouth, breathing in the taste of the scent – weird, I know, but I made it up so go with me) Mandy Aftel's scents as well or better than I can smell them through my nose. Sometimes I even get different, delightful notes this way. Cepes and Tuberose has this earthy, savory, “tongue-coating taste” smell in spades.

Cepes and Tuberose gets slightly sticky, sweeter on the drydown with me. The sillage is moderate, and the lifespan is....great! Cepes and Tuberose succeeds in long, lovely wafts from my skin where Candide and Trèvert fail me. I have tried it several times, and it is so beautiful. It is unique and wonderous; it completely deserves to be on the list of 100 scents every perfumista should try. Mandy Aftel's greatest strength as a perfumer may be in her uncanny ability to put together one-of-a-kind creations that continue to impress and wow even the most experienced noses.

Cepes and Tuberose EdP is available direct from Aftelier Perfume. $6 will get you a 1ml sample of the EdP. For $170, you can have 30ml of the EdP or ~7.5ml of the pure parfum. I will probably try the parfum before I settle on a purchase, but make no mistake – I will be buying this one. Delicious, delightful, delovely. A full 5 stars.

Want more reviews of Cepes and Tuberose? Try…
~ a review from Olfactoria's Travel
~ a review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ a review from Martha of Chickenfreak's Obsessions
~ a review from Indieperfumes
~ a review from Scent-and-Sensibility
~ a review from Another Perfume Blog
~ a review from Lipstick Musings
~ a review from Smelly Thoughts
~ a review from fragrantfanatic

In the interest of full disclosure, the perfume sample above was provided by the perfumer.

Notes from the Plague Den, Part 4: The Plague Continues!

2013-02-03T10:35:00.000-08:00

A Review of Aftelier Perfumes Trèvert EdP

Yes, here we are again, dear reader. One girl, one bed, one persistent flu virus that will not vacate the premises. But! We have cats now. Cats, a wide variety of high quality teas, and all the internet provided video entertainment you could want, plus my extensive DVD collection. Also, clean clothes. After living on campus for many years and suffering the trials and tribulations of the communal laundry room, I really appreciate my washer and dryer.

And speaking of things that make me happy even in my plaguey misery, let's talk some more about Aftelier Perfumes! Today we're going to talk about Aftelier Perfumes Trèvert, which is described as:

Verdant pine absolute, leafy flouve absolute, and ambery clary sage contribute to this "very green" eau de parfum. All shades of leafy green aromas, wrapped around a tuberose heart that lends warmth and roundness to the gorgeous smell of pine needles.

Featured Notes:
Top: grand fir, tarragon.
Heart: tuberose, clary sage.
Base: pine needle absolute, flouve.

Trèvert's opening is so green! It is bright, tangy, and so super green! On me, Trèvert smells strongly of sage with highlights of firs in the opening. I wish this aspect lasted a little longer because it is really delightful. Then Trèvert quickly slides into a dry hay-like note. The tuberose is extremely reigned in here, so don't let that scare you off if it isn't your favorite note. In fact, if you ever wanted to try a tuberose that wasn't all about tuberose, Trèvert is a great selection.

Trèvert's middle and end is more toward that sweet hay-like note mixed with a healthy dose of mint and grasses. The overall effect of Trèvert reminds me of a hike across a lovely fresh cut park with rolling hills and framed with pines and firs in the distance, their scent gently wafting toward you in the warmth of summer.

As with Candide, Trèvert is so, so pretty. It might be one of the most gorgeous green scents I've ever tried. It avoids all your greenery-related traps: it isn't overly Christmasy, it isn't like a cleanser or a cheap scented paper tree hanging in your car, it has nothing in common with a bar of Irish Spring. It isn't overly strong. It doesn't bite at the nose. But...

...it really doesn't last very long for me! I am so sad about it. SO UTTERLY SAD. I can't justify purchasing it for myself when I spray and spray and it's faded to almost imperceptible on me with two hours. Sadly, Trèvert isn't available in a parfum, so for me–and it breaks my heart to say this–I have to pass on this one. Not because it isn't a unique, lovely tour de force of a green scent, but because my perfume budget has its limits, and I can't justify it for myself. You should try it, though. It's really terrific. I wish it didn't die on my skin so quickly.

I give the scent itself a full 4 to 4.5 stars; due to the longevity, however, I have to give the overall experience – for me, at least – only a very respectable 3.5. If I had more money, the uniqueness of the scent might be worth it despite the short life on my skin. Heck, if I had the money, I'd practically bath in the stuff and swan about my house smelling terrific, then two hours later, do it again.

The only review I could find of Trèvert was this lovely endorsement from Monica at Perfume Pharmer.

Trèvert EdP is available direct from Aftelier Perfumes in a 1ml sample for $60. 30ml will run you $170.

Tune in again tomorrow, when I talk some more about, well, frankly? How much I love Mandy Aftel.

In the interest of full disclosure, the perfume sample above was provided by the perfumer.

Notes from the Plague Den, Part 3: Left Coast Edition!

2013-02-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

A Review of Aftelier Perfumes Candide EdP

Hello dear reader! I come to you once again from my plague den. Different location, same tenacious disease!

At least I am home now. Home comes with certain comforts not even an expense account and endless delivery Chinese soup can provide – namely, CATS! No, they don't talk back, but when even maid service stopped coming to my room and I went for entire days without seeing another human being in Boston, the comforting sounds of my roommates downstairs and cats meowing and general catly liveliness has been really comforting. I feel much less like I'm living a terrible missed chapter of World War Z or some other weird post-apocalyptic tale where all the world has ended but because the cable keeps playing I don't realize I'm the only one alive for miles.

But if I had to be the last living person in the state of Massachusetts, at least I would have gone out smelling AWESOME. That's right, dear reader. I have my priorities in line. If I die, let me die peacefully in my sleep with dignity and not eaten by zombies or wild dogs or wild zombie dogs. But if it must be zombie dogs, at least let those survivors who find scrapes of clothing as the only trace of my remains think, “This mysterious dead woman smelled beautiful even to her tragic and grisly end.”

Wow. That was weird and dark. Blame the fever brain. That's what I'm going to do.

Moving on to the event you've all been waiting for – the perfume! Let me start out by telling you about the joys Aftelier Perfumes Candide. Candide is described thusly:

Bright, uplifting floral, expressing its theme of optimism through sublime jasmine and age-old frankincense. Recent research in the Journal of Biological Chemistry finds that the scent of jasmine is better than Valium at calming and soothing. The sunny color comes from the orange shades of jasmine, pink grapefruit, and blood orange essences. The smell of jasmine is uplifting and cheerful in a sexy way – the perfect blend of high and low, sweet and dirty. The pink grapefruit is juicy and sweet; the blood orange smells of mouth-watering orange mixed with raspberries. The name is an homage to the great novel from Voltaire, with its theme of optimism.

Featured Notes:
Top: black pepper, blood orange, pink grapefruit.
Heart: jasmine grandiflorum, Moroccan rose absolute.
Base: frankincense, oppopanax absolute, myrrh.

Okay, for you literary types, let me say up front: this is not what I imagine Candide would smell like. That said, it's such an interesting scent! The black pepper is really prominent on me in the opening, and it gives the citrus a sharp, tangy edge. It's not foodie but it's not the light girlie note citruses so often come across as in scent. When I talk to people about the gendering of scent, I always like to use citruses as an example of the ways we tend to gender scents in silly ways. FN1. Candide is a perfect example of a scent with a strong citrus top note that would work well on a woman but doesn't necessarily come across as girlish or feminine. I think this is in part because the opening on me is medicinal and a little green, which I'm crediting to the rich base notes.

While there are hints of rose here, jasmine is the primary floral note for me, but it is well-balanced against the incense and citrus to the point that I honestly think it's probably 40%/30%/30% on me. It works beautifully together in a kind of harmony. As for the base, Victoria of Bois de Jasmin describes “the effect of opoponax is glowing and sensual” in perfumery, and I get that in Candide. There is a sensual glow to Candide, but it isn't overwhelming. I'd say it's sexy in a way that isn't obvious or overtly self-aware. It's a sexy scent that isn't trying to be sexy, that doesn't necessarily know it's sexy...and yet, it is. In that way, it is a perfect scent for the scent lover of any age.

A lot of people found the scent to be spiritual. Reviewers comment on the “Happy Buddha” or the “cathedral” aspects of Candide. FN2. I don't find it a particularly religious experience as scents go, but then, that may be due to my particular array of religious experiences.

There are also a lot of reviews that cheer the scent for being happy and joyous. I can see that, certainly, but I don't think that really does Candide justice. A lot of citrus-oriented scents get tagged with “happy,” and while Candide does have an element of that, I'd argue that it ultimately rejects any hint of a kind of Polly Anna glass-half-full-ness. It's a tempered optimism, an appreciation that only comes with the knowledge of the bitter. As Brian says in Vanilla Sky, “You can do whatever you want with your life, but one day you'll know what love truly is. It's the sour and the sweet. And I know sour, which allows me to appreciate the sweet.” I'm reminded of that quote when I smell Candide. It knows enough of sour to appreciate the sweet. I like that.

My only complaint is that the longevity, on me, was on the short side. The sillage is moderate at first, but becomes quieter and quieter until it just...dies on my skin. This is a real surprise to me because I'm one of those people who usually get a lot of life out of...everything. I'm the girl who gets four to six hours out of almost any scent that hits my skin. And with Candide, six hours is the absolute max for me, and I have to hunt with nose pressed to arm to find it. Normally I wouldn't find this a huge drawback except....at this price point, it is a real struggle for me to balance the truly beautiful scent against the longevity against the cost. Because of this, I strongly recommend a sample first of this scent, because not everyone who tries it has this problem. I'm wondering, upon reflection, if the decision to get the EdP version of Candide was where I went wrong (which I will dutifully correct with my wallet forthwith).

The scent itself is very well-done; in the 4 to 5 star range. However, due to the short skin life of the EdP on me, I have to give the overall experience 3.5 stars. Upon reflection, though, I keep going back to what the lovely Martha said regarding the Aftelier Perfumes line in a comment on this blog a few weeks ago:

I wish that I could find what Henry Mitchell (my favorite garden writer) had to say about the question of long-blooming flowers, but the gist of it was that a peony or a once-blooming rose is often beautiful enough to be worth far more than many sturdy flowers that bloom all summer. The three days that they bloom before being torn apart by the last spring storm, gone until next year, is ample payment for the space that they occupy.

The same is true for Cepes & Tuberose, and Honey Blossom, and most of the Aftelier scents that I've tried; even if they did only last an hour, they'd be worth it. And you don't even have to wait until next year to smell them again.

I have to agree with this statement. Everything I have tried from Aftelier Perfumes is so singular an experience, I am tempted to say hang the expense. I leave that debate to you and your wallet, dear reader. It's going to depend a lot on how much longevity factors into your personal evaluations, and whether you think great scent -- at any length -- is worth it.

Candide EdP is available direct from Aftelier Perfumes. A 1ml sample of the EdP or .25ml of the pure parfum will run you $6. A 30ml bottle of EdP is $170. A 2ml mini of the parfum runs $50.

Okay. Back to watching a little mind-numbing TV while I wait for the sleepy meds to kick in. Tune in tomorrow for more reviews of Aftelier Perfumes! Now for one last cat picture before I go...

Want more reviews of Candide? Try…
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Olfactoria's Travels
~ a review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ a review from EauMG
~ a review from The Non-Blonde
~ a review from Scent-and-Sensibility
~ a review from Katie Puckrik Smells
~ a review from CaFleureBon
~ a review from Scent Less Sensibilities

__________
FN1. I usually use leather, oranges, and vanilla to point out to people that when we encounter these elements in their real world expressions – a vanilla bean pod, a horse saddle, a luggage store, a grapefruit or an orange – we don't immediately think “girlie!” or “dude!” or “unisex!” We only assign these items a gender when we are lead by societal norming/commercialism to do so. I implore you – DO NOT FALL FOR THIS. As Admiral Ackbar would say, “It's a trap!”

FN2. I have to say that the “cathedral” review from Marina is my favorite of Candide as a reader of perfume-inspired writing. I encourage you to read it, especially if you're a lit/philosophy type. I really like the way she ties the scent to its literary namesake.

In the interest of full disclosure, the perfume sample above was provided by the perfumer.

Notes from the Plague Den, The Sequel - Now with extra plague!

2013-02-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

A week of reviews: perfumes, bath salts, body oils, books, digital content, and more!

I am still sick, dear reader. I am in the middle of what I hope is my exile period. Middle Exile is a lot like Middle Earth - treacherous. So, to distract myself, let me continue this set of reviews!

First, my dear fumies, to the books! You know why? Because I love books. Seriously. I love them. I carried my nook with me, but I have a backlog of terrific paper books waiting to be read, so I dragged two of them along with me, and managed to finish one of each. Each was a great read, and waaaay better than anything I could get on TV. FN1.

First up: I want to recommend Melissa Marr's Carnival of Souls. This is the first book in the series, and it is a quick read. It is the first book I purchased full price for my Nook, and the first book I've finished on my shiny new digital device. FN2. FN3. It's also the first book I've read by Marr, despite having met her in person. And let me tell you this: Melissa Marr is unassailably cool. Seriously. She is intimidatingly cool. I've met a lot of smart, funny, charming authors, but Melissa Marr is one of those people who you meet and think, “Holy crap, I want to be you when I grow up.”

Meeting Marr was enough to push me toward her books, but following her on twitter and occasionally perusing her LJ sent her to the top of my list of AUTHORS TO READ, number one with a cold iron bullet. Why? You know how, sometimes, you don't need to meet someone in person to tell that they are good people, that you can just kind of tell, that the goodness flows out of them? Marr is like that. She's a good heart wrapped in black leather. That's the kind of person I want writing books teenage girls read; someone they can respect as being badass and who also sets a great example for a life well-lived.

Okay, enough fangirling. On to Marr's books! I have the first book in wildly successful Wicked Lovely series on my bookshelf, but I started Carnival of Souls because I knew if I loved the WL books, I wouldn't be able to stop until I read them all, and there are a lot of other books I already own that deserve my attention. So I started with Carnival of Souls:

In a city of daimons, rigid class lines separate the powerful from the power-hungry. And at the heart of The City is the Carnival of Souls, where both murder and pleasure are offered up for sale. Once in a generation, the carnival hosts a deadly competition that allows every daimon a chance to join the ruling elite. Without the competition, Aya and Kaleb would both face bleak futures—if for different reasons. For each of them, fighting to the death is the only way to try to live.

All Mallory knows of The City is that her father—and every other witch there—fled it for a life in exile in the human world. Instead of a typical teenage life full of friends and maybe even a little romance, Mallory scans quiet streets for threats, hides herself away, and trains to be lethal. She knows it's only a matter of time until a daimon finds her and her father, so she readies herself for the inevitable. While Mallory possesses little knowledge of The City, every inhabitant of The City knows of her. There are plans for Mallory, and soon she, too, will be drawn into the decadence and danger that is the Carnival of Souls.

Carnival of Souls is fast paced and engaging, and I enjoy Marr's wordsmithery. The world is lush and real, detailed enough to keep your imagination engaged without overdoing it. One of the most interesting things, though, is the switching POV, which makes the book feel accessible to the part of me who will always be a stubborn, head-strong, heart-led fifteen year-old as well as the grown-up woman I am (and have simultaneously always been). I had to grow up fast, and as a grown-up, I remain there, teetering in that balance of fifteen-going-on-forty, with my better angels and better judgment winning now more than losing, but always feeling the tug toward the other side all the same. This book is told from the perspective of characters who reflect, in turn, that tension – innocent and inexperienced, world weary and heart-hardened, cynical and suspicious – and yet, all the same, loving. Each of them, so loving in their own way, loving and willful and doing their best for themselves and those they care for with the hands they've been dealt in life. I can't wait for the next book, and I highly recommend this one to any of you looking for a quick and intriguing read.

The ink-and-paper book that made my plaguey reading list was the final book in Becca Fitzpatrick's Hush, Hush series, the appropriately titled Finale. I have been following the adventures of Nora, Patch, Vee, and, yes, even Marcie, since they first hit the page, and I put off reading this book in part because it came out very close to the last book in my beloved Beautiful Creatures series from the talented duo of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, and honestly? I wasn't willing to give up both of these wonderful worlds right on top of one another. FN4.

Also, when I am invested in a world the way I am invested in Fitzpatrick's Hush. Hush, I'm always a little nervous about being disappointed. I can't help it. As a reader and as a writer, I want them to all be as good as the first hit that drags me into a whole new world. Some truly great series that I leapt into take missteps here and there over the course of the books that can be hard to overlook. FN5. So when I tell you this series is tightly written from the first to the last, I mean it. Fast, interesting, more turns than a prima ballerina with something to prove, Finale holds up to the rest of the series, and then turns it up to eleven.

I also have to say, I admire Fitzpatrick's writing style. It is not easy to decide your love interest talks like a 30's noir detective/50's street tough a la “Rebel Without A Cause”/“The Maltese Falcon”/Keanu Reeves in Paula Abdul's James Dean homage video, and then stick with that style and make it work in a modern day teen romance. FN6. At first, even I'll admit it was a little, well, weird. But the longer I knew the characters, the more I loved it! Patch was everything James Hurley in Twin Peaks should have been, and wasn't. FN7. And it just...works! Then by the end (mild spoiler alert!), when Nora starts to talk a little like some dame who just walked into his office and will turn his whole world on its head? I cheered inside! Nora was changed by her experiences in the book, right down to picking up some of the lingo. When I finished the last page, I literally hugged the book, eyes full of tears. And those tears? They were made of awesome. If you've already devoured Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games or Beautiful Creatures or Ally Condie's Matched, or are living each day on pins and needles for the final book in Veronica Roth's Divergent series like I am, pick these up to fill the void. I really think you'll like them.

And for those of you still reading who are ready to shout, “get to the damned perfume already!,” I'm getting there.

Tomorrow.

For now, I'll will simply say this: there's nothing like a good bath, and if that bath smells delightful, so much the better. So before I'll get to the perfume, I'm going to talk a little about bath and body products.

My bath treat was courtesy of Velvet & Sweet Pea's Purrfumery, who sent me some bath salts when I ordered her delightful perfume Fir-Ever Young. I haven't used bath salts in ages, dear reader, not since before they became a weird code name for some street drug and my husband started insisting I call them something else. But I was stuck in a hotel room, feeling like gum scraped from a shoe, with a tub I did not have to clean myself, so I thought – yeah, this seems like a good time for bath salts.

The bath salts I used were the lovely Terrain, which is described as follows:

A rich blend, grounded in frankincense and sparkling with citrus and geranium, with therapeutic properties of relaxation, anti-anxiety, and stress relief. Perfect for a bath after work or before bed to ease you into sleep.

Relaxation? Anti-anxiety? Stress relief? Sounded right up my plague-ridden alley.

Huzzah for bath salts! It smelled so good up in there, yo! And yet, Terrain was not overwhelmingly scented, which was good because my nose was all sneezy when it wasn't stopped up. The scent was gentle and relaxing, the salts dissolved beautifully (I didn't give them enough time before I got in, but that one's on me), and the whole experience was soothing and decadent. The best part was it wasn't one of those bath product experiences that left me feeling like, “Okay, that was nice and all, but now I need a shower to actually get clean.” It was more like that feeling you have after a facial, where whatever is left on your skin feels like it is supposed to be there. You skin is happier and healthier for the experience, not covered in soap film. I give Terrain a sold two thumbs up. And for only $26 for 17 ounces, I think I might add them to my “makes an excellent gift” list.

And speaking of indulgences, you know what else I tried? Some deeply wonderful body and hair oil from Aftelier Perfumes. I swear, every time I try something Mandy Aftel has created, I feel like the Joker in Tim Burton's Batman, asking in a mixture of wonder and frustration: “Where does [s]he get all those wonderful toys?”

Because I am not going to lie. I saw the label on this one, and even though I picked it out, I had my doubts. I gave myself a bath and follow-up application of Pear, Fir, and Coffee, then settled into my plague bed to read. I dropped the book almost immediately.

Crisp fruit and Fall woods with an earthy back note. Our body oil & hair elixir is in a nourishing non-greasy base of moisturizing jojoba oil and fractionated coconut oil. This lightweight formula absorbs easily, immediately moisturizing, softening, and conditioning. Damp hair is the most vulnerable to frizz: our oil won't weigh hair down and seals the cuticle to prevents moisture from creating frizz. It leaves a veil of fragrance on your skin or in your hair that mixes beautifully with your own chemistry.

It was bliss, I tell you! Pure bliss. What crazy brain puts those three scents together and thinks, “Yes, that is exactly how someone will want to smell her hair to smell when it billows in the wind?” A mad genius, that's who. And a little bit goes a long way with this–because hey, it's an oil–but it was the best body oil experience I've had.

Also, because it's an oil, it keeps going! It lasts a long and lovely time, and makes a nice, subtle scent accent or alternative to a traditional perfume. The price point is great, too - 105ml for only $50! I will definitely be buying some more for myself, and I highly recommend it for any scent lover in your life. It was just...it was beautiful. There's no other word.

Beautiful.

So, thanks, Mandy. You deserve ever ounce of praise lovingly heaped at your feet.

And on that happy note, dear reader, I am going to bed now. Or perhaps I will take a bath first....eyes bathroom door longingly.... yes. Just a short one...before....I....

Tune in tomorrow when I tell you what pretty scents perfumed what has got to have been the sweetest smelling plague den in history.
_________________
FN1. Keep in mind that I didn't have the CW. The hotel TV didn't carry it. For realsies. I almost wept. You know how many times I've been TWO WEEKS behind on The Vampires Diaries since it started airing? Let me tell you – NEVER. That's right. NEVER. I've basically had to avoid the entire internet to avoid spoilers, so the first thing I'm doing when I get home is locking myself in the bedroom with HuluPlus.

FN2. Oh, and did I mention I scoured the whole of the vast and treacherous series of tubes for the appropriate bling for my amazing book innovation? I didn't? Well, let me tell you – THERE WILL BE PHOTOS. Oh, yes. There will be photos. Just as soon as I get home to the pile of packages...waiting there....for me....

FN3. ...being locked in a hotel room with nothing but the same six movies on cable for company really lends itself to vast and deep online shopping. Seriously. That was probably the most dangerous part of the entire experience. No one to talk to. Too sick to really work or write or honestly, even read a lot of the time. My glazed eyes and illness-clouded mind were good for two things – hitting the “Last” button on the remote in a diligent effort to avoid commericals, and surfing the internet for things to buy. I think I did pretty well reigning myself in, all things considering. A little perfume...some shiny new tech-related toys...a whole crap load of stickers.... I could go on, but for the sake of my own pride, I won't.

FN4. You'll notice I waited until the Beautiful Creatures movie release was basically on top of me before I finally started Finale? Yep. Completely on purpose. Also, I am psyched for the movie. Do you hear me, dear reader? I am so in fangirlish love with Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes and their world that I will probably see it twice in the first two weeks it is out. It has EVERTHING I LOVE – magick, love, betrayal, large family in-squabbling, secrets and intrigue, magick, southern accents, gothic architecture, Florence + the Machine on the soundtrack – and did I mention magick? *Heartsandsparklesexplosion*

And the best part? I will be in Seattle, with two of my best YA-loving friends, Becca and LillieMae, who have both read and loved BC, for the release weekend! I'm not going to lie to you – there may be costumes. Or t-shirts. Or hair dye. Or theme jewelry. Or alloftheabove. CASTER GIRLS WEEKEND FTW! <squeals with teenage delight>

Whew! Okay. I'm better now.

FN5. *Cough, Cough* Anita Blake books, Southern Vampire Diaries, *Cough*. As for YA, I'm looking at you, Lauren Kate. I love and still recommend the Fallen series, but now I always do so with the caveat that 1. the third book feels strangely off, and does not hold up to the rest of the series. (The first book is one of my all time favorite YA series kick-off books); 2. the antagonist, at the very end, comes across as a weird stand-in for someone in Kate's life she had drama with, and those issues would have been better resolved with a therapist than in the book; 3. I was so sure the story was going another direction, a dastardly and OMFG so clever direction, I was a little disappointed it didn't go down like I'd expected. (Typical writer – heavy with the critique.) All that said, the last few pages? One of my favorite series ends ever. Truly. So I still say unto you, dear reader – read those books. Even though they're uneven in the middle, the end is worth getting to. Made me want to start all over again from the beginning.

Wow, I am seriously digressive today. I'm blaming it all on the medication.

FN6. Anyone remember the name of the song in question? First one to comment with a link to a youtube video is going to get a pretty package...

FN7. Seriously, that story arc with the black widow? Are you kidding me? Weakest part of the entire Twin Peaks series. In my head, I always think of that arc as “That time David Lynch got bored and decided to try out the plot points for Lost Highway he was already noodling around with.”

In the interest of full disclosure, the bath salts and body oil samples above were provided by the respective perfumers.

BREAKING NEWS! Emergency Posting in Response to Developments in The Lizzie Bennet Dairies

2013-01-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

{SPOILER WARNING! If you are just starting/have not yet started The Lizzie Bennet Diaries follow NO LINKS. NONE OF THEM. Start at the beginning, right here. For the rest of you, read on.}

Dear Reader:

I must interrupt this week's run of plague-related musings to bring THIS EMERGENCY UPDATE wherein I share, in GIF form, my reactions to yesterday and today's developments in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, generally relating to the rogue known as George Wickham and his dealings with the totes adorbes Lydia Bennet, aka THE LY DEEE YAAAH!

Here, in graphic form, are my various stages of coping with the wickedness of Wickham following yesterday's reveal:

THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!

SERIOUSLY? IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING?

And then while externally I am doing this...

...so my housemates don't realize I am genuinely unhinged

over the twists in a story I already know the cannonical ending of, inside?

I feel like this...

...which quickly becomes this...

...and also this....

So then I turn to my other LBD fans for comfort.

And they help me...or at least, they try.

But really? We're all SIMULTANEOUSLY

FREAKING THE F*** OUT...

...so it ends up being more like this.

At times like this, there's only one thing left to do:

And when it comes to saving Lydia, we all know who we need:

Though is this particular case it's more like...

And when I remember to have faith in Darcy, I feel like this.

And there you have it! All the stages of my Lydia/Wickham-related freak out.

But remember ladies, here in the really real world, don't be too swept up in your Darcy-worshipping. Instead, keep these fine words from The Doubleclicks (aka my college friend Angela and her talented sister Aubrey) in mind when deciding whether the boys of your current daydreams has the good Darcy qualities or the....less ideal ones:

(Ed. note: Apparently when I am emotionally unhinged, I cannot spell the word 'diaries.' Fixed now.)

Notes from the Plague Den - The Beginning of Exile.

2013-01-31T05:00:00.000-08:00

A week of reviews: perfumes, bath salts, body oils, books, digital content, and more!

Hello dear reader:

Are you tired? I am. I am emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. Switching entire career fields is demanding! And bonus: I have managed to come down with the actual, honest-to-god, knock-you-on-your-derrière flu. I've been in bed for over two weeks, which has made it difficult to smell…well, anything really. And yet, I have smelled terrific the whole time, which has been a joyful note in the cacophony of task-shifting and illness-ridden noise in my life.

It's funny how much my mood can be affected by the presence or absence of scent. Six or seven years ago, I'd never have thought of it as important. Now, it can turn a whole day around. Scent is no longer incidental to my life. It is a kind of presence that weighs on me in its absence. I love; you don't know how much you are missing, then once you have it, missing it is so much more than never knowing.

Want to know what I've had to sustain me for lo these many sleep-filled days and nights? Well, first of all, my only real company has been this tiny Eeyore. If you are estimating his height at no more than three inches, you have the size correct. Thank goodness David insisted I pack it. I resisted, but being sick and three thousand miles away from my kittens? A little snugglie, it turns out, goes a long way.

As you might expect, I also have this bevy of cold and flu crap: orange juice, daytime and nighttime cold and flu tablets, Emergen-C, various soups from every local Chinese delivery place in the area, whathaveyou. Two things I want to point out, though, that have been extremely helpful. Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream, and Rosebud Perfume Co. distributed Smith's Minted Rose Lip Balm.

The Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream, which was provided by my hotel, has kept my hands, my cuticles, and my elbows moisturized despite my frequent crazy hot showers, my cranking the heat in my hotel room, and spending hours buried under blankets and pillows. I'm impressed that this relatively cheap moisturizer has done such a handy job. I'm sure there are better products out there, but for the price point? Terrific. I'll never leave home without some again.

Smith's Minted Rose Lip Balm I would have sworn by prior to this incident. However, having suffered through dry, high winds and incredibly low temperatures followed by a terrible flu, the fact that my lips are still intact -- no flaking, no drying, no cracks or bleeding -- has made an unwavering devotee of this $7 gloss available at Sephora or through Beautyhabit, which is where I first found it. It is a little flavorlessly waxy and a smidge on the sticky side, but I will trade those minor shortcomings for a gloss that gives healthy lips even in the harshest of conditions any day.

I rarely stray from perfume into recommendations on other beauty products because, honestly, I feel completely out of my depth endorsing one over another. I don't hoard, errr, I mean collect them the way I do perfume. But when I run across a low priced, knock out product that I feel truly good about? I see no reason to keep such info to myself. So expect me to continue to drop a little bit of cheapskate-oriented beauty product knowledge on you going forward. I splurge heavily on perfume, but I tend to be pretty chincy on everything else, so if you're cash strapped, I'm happy to provide you a few tried and true items that would make great stocking stuffers or 'bad day' retail therapy-related purchases.

As always, know that this is based solely on my own product experience, and comes with all your latin-based buyer beware caveats. Deal? Deal. Moving on.

Since my world has consisted of nothing but delivery food and bad cable TV for the last week, let me tell you what I've been watching online. The internet at the hotel was too slow for Hulu or Netflix, but it was good enough to run one of my new obsessions: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. A friend pointed me toward this awesome online adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The story, told as a series of online interactions between modern versions of the main characters through tweets, tumblrs, jams, and vlogs, it is a surprisingly compelling remaking of the classic tale. I like the real time aspect. I appreciate the emphasis on the ways the themes are just as engaging today was they were when the book was written. And most of all, I love the hilarious modern twists -- Darcy as a hipster? Hilarious!

The best way to catch up is to follow the story link, so you don't miss a single nudge,wink, or Q&A. It takes…okay it took me hours to catch up, but it was worth it, and it didn't cost me a penny! Now that's entertainment. I could wax poetic for hours about this, particularly given that we just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. Instead, I am going to point you toward my delightful friend Thu, who not only introduced me to The LBD, but did her master's thesis on Pride and Prejudice, and wrote this awesome piece in celebration of the pub-a-versary.

As for scents, I had the opportunity to try a few different items, including some bath salts, a terrific scented body oil, and a couple of perfumes. But….

…right now I need to sleep.

So come back tomorrow and I will talk to you about adventures in scent, as well as a couple of YA books that helped me get through the week of plague.

What Would You Wear To An Interview No One Could Smell But You?

2013-01-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays from PDX

Dear reader:

First of all: happy holidays to you and yours. Hope you had a wonderful December full of food and fun and friends and fragrant delights.

Second: Holy cow! Has it really been over a month? Wow. And what a month! I can't believe I haven't talked to you in so long. My apologies. After a fairly stagnant 2012, so much has happened in the last thirty days, I hardly know where to start.

News of foremost importance: I have a new job! In a whirlwind turn of events, I am left my old job. On Sunday, I board a plane for three weeks of training on the East Coast that begins my training and transitioning, not just to a new company, but into a new field. Or in my case, an old field. My very first jobs were in IT and customer service, and I am returning to form as I take a position in customer service and tech support for a web development company.

Endings and beginnings, they all
mean one thing: PAPERWORK.
Exhausting!

What does this have to do with the law, you ask? Absolutely nothing. This is a big shift in my life and times, and I'm excited to have you along for the ride, dear reader.

One of the things I'm most excited about it that my new employer has no restrictions on scent in the workplace, so I can now wear my lovely perfumes with abandon (provided I'm not, you know, knocking people down with them). And I thought of you, dear reader, as I was doing my interviews only two and a half short weeks ago, and how I wanted to talk to you about all my plans and schemes and future dreams and where scent fits into them.

All my interviews occurred in the span of four days in the wee, small hours of the morning and at a distance, thanks to the wonders of Skype. Nonetheless, I got up and did my hair, make-up, suited up, and generally got gussied so I would be in the proper formal mind set and feel like I was projecting the right attitude. (Though I did not once have to wear painful shoes, and it was glorious.) As I primped and prepped, I went through my scent wardrobe and thought about what to wear.

It was an intriguing challenge, because I needed interview scents, yes, but since no one would be able to smell them but me, it was a question of what would comfort me, challenge me, help me put my best foot forward.

My picks were as follows:

So much love for Mandy
and her gorgeous scents!

First Round Interview Day: Aftelier Perfumes Cepes and Tuberose, which I am currently OBSESSED with and will giving its full review due very soon. I picked this because I felt like it was both sophisticated and soothing, refined and elegant, but still warm and comforting. I felt both fancy and at ease, and that's not an easy scent combo.

Second/Third Round Interview Day: This was the big interview day, and felt very "make it or break it." That morning, I laid heavily into the Chanel No. 5 EdT, such that a cloud of lovely was following me all day long. It was good I wore my perfume steel, too, because this was a tough round of interviews. Despite feeling my confidence shaken like I'd just gone twelve rounds with Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia," the scent kept hitting me all day, reminding me that I am resilient, not to mention classic and beautiful and enduring, and would survive no matter what came next.

Fourth Round Interview Day: At this point, I felt pretty positive I wasn't even in the running. This interview was scheduled before the second round I felt like I blew, and I was worried it was more about going through the motions. Nonetheless, I wanted to put my best foot forward, so I went for something that would make me feel pretty and happy, something I find easy and undemanding to wear. I also wanted something with a strong personal appeal, something to make me feel good since I thought the interviews weren't going so great.

In the end, I chose a scent that I never get the compliments on even though I feel like I should. I settled on fruity floral fun in the form of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir, which turned out to be a great choice in terms of personal ease and confidence.

Then, dear reader, I did the only thing I could do: wore pretty perfume, took deep breathes, and hoped that this time the die would fall in my favor...

See ya, old job! Me and
my TARDIS stickies
are outta here!

...and IT DID!

Despite all my private hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing, I got the job! How much my perfume factored into this, I cannot tell you. In my mind, though, it is a measurable factor in my personal feelings of preparedness and appeal, and consequently my success.

Also, one of my new coworkers is a fellow 'fumie! We already talked perfumes on GChat! Surely, this is a good sign!

So what about you, dear reader? What would you wear if you had a job interview no one could smell but you? And what scents do you advise I take with me to meet my new employers while I spend three cold weeks in Boston this January?

Inquiring 'fumie minds want to know!

Observe the blood, the rose tattoo, of the finger prints on me from you.

2012-11-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

Aftelier Perfumes Wild Roses EdP

Dear reader:

I am currently captivated by a song called "Marlene On the Wall." Suzanne Vega wrote it about a poster of Marlene Dietrich she kept on her bedroom wall, and what Marlene might think of Vega's life if Marlene could talk. It is an intriguing song about the elegant and coldly beautiful Dietrich's observation of Vega being her own worst enemy in love:

Marlene watches from the wall.
Her mocking smile says it all
as she records the rise and fall
of every soldier passing.
The only soldier now is me.
I'm fighting things I cannot see.
I think it's called my destiny
that I am changing.

The song is about a woman with serious trust issues, a woman who's inability to connect is makes it impossible to know when/if she's met someone she can really trust. Though she seems to be breaking out of this pattern, it is unclear how that will effect her current relationship. I've listened to the song more than a dozen times, and I settled on two different and conflicting meanings.

In the one sense, Vega seems to be unable to reach beyond her own boundaries, the walls she constructs for emotional safety, to reach a deeper connection. The song seems to ask if she will be able to muster to the courage to be vulnerable with her current paramour, to allow him to reach into the heart of her, not keep him at arm's length.

My second reading is of a woman who cannot break out of a bad pattern with a man she loves, but whom she remains in a self-destructive loop with. Whether that loop is one she repeats with different men who are all lacking in the same specific way or the same man she can't break free of seems ambiguous. The point is that, whomever the soldier(s) is/are, he is interested in Vega for her body only, and Vega cannot keep herself from falling into bed with a man/men who have no interest in her beyond what he/they can get from her physically.

I love the tension in the song. Will she be able to love? Will she think well enough of herself to demand love in return? If she is changing, is it for good or for ill? The narrative arch, left unresolved, allows the song to contain both hope and hopelessness in tension, both the bitterness of betrayal and the disappointing knowledge that one has allowed oneself to lose something potentially stunning out of fear.

I also enjoy the (admittedly mildly) feminist overtones I find lurking in the text.

"Don't give away the goods too soon," is what she might have told me.

I consider myself a sex positive feminist. I generally think that talking about sex clearly with your partner is good, that reproductive freedoms are fundamental, and that shaming people around sex is counterproductive to health and safety. At the same time, I think it's worth admitting that, emotionally and physically, we have a tendency to give ourselves away sometimes thoughtlessly to people who neither respect or deserve what we have to offer. I think women in general are often inclined to do this for a variety of reasons that revolve around the historical commodification of women's bodies, mass media messages about beauty image that are anathema to self-esteem, and competing messages about the value of virginity and the desirability of sexual prowess. There is something to be said for thinking highly enough of yourself to believe - regardless of whether this is your first, fifteenth, or fiftieth partner - that you are worth of love, attention, admiration and respect on your own terms. Virginity isn't magical, but human intimacy is a valuable experience, and not one worth wasting, as Laini Taylor's surrogate father Wishbone so accurately puts it in the terrific YA novel Daughter of Smoke and Bone, on "inconsequential penises." Or inconsequential partners, for that matter.

I like the idea that Marlene Dietrich, if she could talk to Suzanne Vega, would tell her, "if he's using you, don't give in, or at least have the good sense to be aware of what he's using you for." I always think of it as the Norma Jean approach to navigating the sexual pitfalls of modern pop culture commodification. You only have two options: don't play at all, or decide what you want to get out of it and play on your own terms. While I find it odious that the world constantly decides a woman's value based, at least in part, on sex appeal, I have a hard time telling the girl who would be Marilyn that she's a sell out for attempting to harass her own sexual agency for benefit and profit. Instead, I'd rather tell her to keep in mind that you have to know what your giving and what you're getting in return, and you better be sure it's worth it it in the end. Also, stay away from the Kennedys.

What does all this have to do with Mandy Aftel's new perfume, Wild Roses, well, in my mind, a lot actually.

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times: I love rose scents. Roses and vanillas are the two kinds of scents you can almost bank on my running toward. As a result, I've smelled a lot of roses on the market at a lot of different price points, from low dollar minis of Demeter Fragrances Pruning Sheers to L'Artisan Voleur de Roses and Drole de Rose to niche scents like Teo Cabanel Oha, Agent Provocateur EdP, and Juliette Has a Gun Lady Vengeance to true independents like DHS Perfumes Beach Roses and the now sadly defunct American Beauty. And that's just naming the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Name a rosy category -- patchouli roses, dirty roses, leather roses, powdery roses, realistic roses -- and I've probably got a fav or two.

So when I tell you Mandy Aftel has created in Wild Roses an inventive take on the rose that might merit the creation of a new subcategory, it's worth taking note. Aftelier Perfumes describes Wild Roses as follows:

I wanted to capture in perfume the experience of walking around my garden and smelling each rose, as their perfumes blended in my nose. Wild Roses perfume evokes the garden in our imagination and memory -- the book of a hundred petals unfolding: balsamic, spicy, apricot, and honeyed roses, mixed with the smell of warm earth and herbs.

The apricot-rose heart is perfectly rooted in a base of tarragon absolute -- its herbal round anise aroma giving a nuance of both earth and leaves. The balsamic vanilla absolute and the whiskey-ness of aged patchouli support tarragon’s warm, powdery aspect. Indole contributes the almost animal aspect of ripeness in a rose. The heart is punctuated by pimento berry, lending its nuances of clove, ginger, and cinnamon. The candied-orange flower aroma of methyl methyl anthranilate, the soft powdery floral of heliotropin, and the slightly floral citrus of bergamot contribute a modern freshness to the opening.

Top: rose CO2, heliotropin, bergamot, geraniol, m-methyl anthranilate, damascenone.
Heart: apricot, Turkish rose absolute, pimento berry, p-ethyl alcohol, rose petals attar.
Base: tarragon absolute, vanilla absolute, indole, aged patchouli.

Upon application, Wild Roses is a sweet, dark cocktail of rose petals swirling in a sweet berry liqueur and strong shot of vodka. Slightly stringent or medicinal, this largely candied opening slides across the olfactory palette like a good drink or a terrible poison, the kind one imagine was concocted by a dark Queen with a serious grudge. It is a kind of biting sweetness, a traditional beauty that cuts, the thorn of the proverbial rose that, pricking a finger, sends one off to a dark sleep. As it ages on the skin, the medicinal aspect fades, leaving a berry-oriented jammy rose.

Wild Roses has a realistic quality, but clearly isn't meant to be exactly like a smelling a rose. It's more wearable than sticking a bloom in your hair. It's a rose plus a sweetness that draws you closer so it can take a bite. It manages to be both pretty, strong, alluring, and vulnerable, but without the direct sexiness of a patchouli rose or the delicate femininity of a powdered rose.

Lots of terrific samples!

And the reason I told you that whole thing about Suzanne Vega and her Marlene Dietrich poster and my general sex positivity being tempered with a desire that we simultaneously promote sex respect is this: Every time I tried Wild Roses, I heard the song in my head. I imagined this vulnerable woman acting tough and trying to protect herself from being hurt and acting like she doesn't care when she really does, and this is what she smells like.

Beautiful. Vulnerable. Strong.

It's a heartbreakingly lovely audiolfactory experience.

So let's all welcome the new world of the candied rose! It's decidedly worth trying. Wild Roses EDP is available direct from the perfumer in 30ml for $170. Samples can be purchased $6.

And even if I am in love with you,
all this to say:
What's it to you?
Observe the blood, the rose tattoo,
of the finger prints on me from you....

Other evidence has shown
that you and I are still alone.
We skirt around the danger zone
and don't talk about it here.

I tried so hard to resist
when you held me in your handsome fist
and reminded me of the night we kissed
and why I should be leaving.
Marlene on the wall...

___________________
In the interests of full disclosure: this perfume sample was provided by the perfumer.

Sunday Night Sad Bastard Music

2012-11-18T22:44:00.002-08:00

Jessica Lea Mayfield Edition

No new blog today as I am in the midst of NaNoWriMo and trying to catch up, but you can expect some postage later this week. I'm thinking -- a little perfume writing, a little holiday shopping recommendations, a little music, and of course, a little pop culture feminist critique, because this is Feminine Things, dear reader, and you know I cannot help myself. <g>

I'll probably also write something about writing itself at some point in the next month or two. Until I grace you with my multitude of ramblings, however, enjoy the beautiful darkness of this song, from the AH-MAZING 2011 album from Jessica Lea Mayfield, Tell Me. I'm mildly obsessed with it right now. If you don't have it, and you are feeling impulse shop-y, grab this while you're at it. You won't be sorry.

Hate has brought me up the stairs into your house.
I will not let hate
be the one to make me naked for you.
My self-esteem is heating up the room.
You're intimidating as all hell,
but I ain't scared of you.

I know how you work;
I am just like you.
No matter what you say,
our hearts are wrong.
Our hearts are wrong.

Love has brought me down
like love's been known to do.
I try to deny with all my heart
that I'm in love with you.

"I don't really care."
You knew that's what I'd say.
The only time I miss you is every single day.

I know how you work;
I am just like you.
No matter what you say,
our hearts are wrong.
Our hearts are wrong.

~ Our Hearts are Wrong," Jessica Lea Mayfield

Let your love cover me; you are my family.

2012-11-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

Naked Leaf Perfumes First Breath

As I am writing this, my niece is about to be born.

Okay, yes, she is my second niece, and also, yes, she isn't really my niece.

It's technically my 'adoptive' sister's second daughter. It doesn't make it any less exciting to me, though. Also, I'm technically writing this piece a few days ahead of pasting it because I'm having some weird health issues this week and I like to stay on track. I'm posting this piece today because I am hoping they don't have to wait until next week to induce. If I am lucky, Ximena will be born today, on All Soul's Day, because it is a special day, a beautiful day. It is a day of remembrance, a day that connects us to our past.

A lot of people feel that our pasts way us down, but I'm a big believer in honoring where you come from, even the less pleasant parts, because they help you know where you're going. Trust me, my past ain't no picnic, but even I can find and pick out the good parts from a distance, and if I can, then I have hope for everyone. The good parts are still back there, and they are good. And the bad parts? They are parts I survived, and that makes me strong.

All of it is part of me, and I am comfortable enough in my own skin to be grateful to all those who made me, those who came before. Every year, on this day, I try to honor that, and to honor the memory of those loved and loathed and lost, but who still live here, in every breath and heartbeat. For that reason, I'd like to think of little Ximena coming into the world on a day where the wall between the past and the present is thinnest, a time when we honor our ancestors as we look toward the coming year.

But whether she is born today or not, I've been thinking about her and my sister Erica, particularly as I've been sampling our sixth and final Primordial Scent Project: Air Set offering, Naked Leaf Perfumes First Breath by perfumer Suzy Larsen.

In honor of midwifery, First Breath is a liquid prayer to empower when you need an unshakable inner strength and resilience--whether beginning new projects and challenges or birthing new ideas. The mysterious and sensual First Breath is clean, fresh, expansive, innocent and green while being a little sweet and comforting. It's your own midwife in a bottle giving you courage to take that first tentative step in a new direction. Let your inner sage-femme (midwife) guide you.

First Breath is an AIR element-inspired perfumer for Perfume Pharmer's 2012 Perfume Project: 'Primordial Scent'.

Notes: Sage, Lime, Lavender, Amroise, Bergamot, Clementine, Red Mandarin, Green Pepper, Rose Bulgarian, Rose Anatolian, Neroli, Lavender absolute, Black Current Bud absolute, Jasmine grandiflorum, Clary Sage, Fir Balsam absolute, Vanilla, Vetiver, Patchouli, Oakmoss, Benzoin and Hyrax in organic grape alcohol.

Lime, lavender, and bergamot are strong in the opening, which is very green and a little sharp. Ten minutes I start to get some rose and some of the patchouli base. I like rose/patchouli combinations, and the green and citrus notes lighten and compliment the combo, adding a pretty and, yes, innocent quality to a combination that I usually find earthy or sexy or dirty.

This is a pretty scent. A gentle scent. It doesn't have much of a 'skin' quality, or I'd say it was the air of newborn baby skin. This is not the brutal, bloody reality of birth, but the light, fuzzy bliss-fill memory of those first moments, where all you remember of a difficult new beginning is how it was all worth it in the end.

And to Erica and Ximena, and all lucky soon-to-be-moms and their almost-people, may your memories be as pretty as this scent.

You can buy First Breath for $50.00 for a 5ml parfum extrait direct from the perfumer. Samples are also available for $5.00.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

Can you fix this? It's a broken heart.
It was fine, but it just fell apart.
It was mine, but now I give it to you,
Cause you can fix it, you know what to do.

Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.
~ "Family," Dar Williams

We're one, but we're not the same.

2012-11-01T06:00:00.001-07:00

Coeur d'Esprit Natural Perfumes Ele-Metal Alchemy/One

Here we are again, dear reader, exploring the wonderful world of Air. I'd like to pause briefly and say, now that we are on day 5 of 6 days of Air, that one of the most interesting challenges in reviewing the Primordial Scent Project: Air Set is that there are a lot of different ways to interpret Air.

I loved each and every one of the Water scents, but there was a a thread I could discern running between them. Each take on water was, in some deeply fundamental way, always water. Air, however, has been all over the map, scent wise. And that is good, I think. It's forced me to broaden my impression of what Air might mean.

Each scent has taken the concept of the word and stretched it, tweaked it, made it more than I'd imagined before I'd opened the tiny tin with the yellow label. For that I'm grateful. It's always nice to be challenged. It's nice to take the moment to reconsider. And nothing has challenged me more in this set than Coeur d'Esprit Natural Perfumes Ele-Metal Alchemy .

Ele-Metal Alchemy is described by perfumer Lyn E. Ayre as follows:

This five-layer fragrance was born in the Earth, forged in the Fire, cooled in the Water, and dried in the Air. Then it was blessed by Spirit with the number Three, the Infinity symbol, colour & crystals, toning, and a prayer that it be worn for the highest good of the wearer. It now lives in the Ether around the wearer, balancing and harmonizing the inner and outer elements.

The perfume plays out backwards to how it was created. We detect the first whiffs of scent through the ether. It brings up images of airy clouds in the light blue sky and the ethereal whiffs of pine and spruce bent over from the ocean winds; the honeybee winging from flower to flower; and the green leaves, hanging by a thread and flittering in the wind.From Crown Chakra to Third Eye, to Throat, then Heart down to Sacral up to Solar Plexus down to Root up, it spirals in Fibonacci fashion.

Crown – the dream is given through Clair-gnosis, as I sleep.
Third Eye –the vision is inwardly viewed and constructed before pen goes to paper or a bottle is even opened. Accords are what is needed for this project.
Heart –The Air accord of pine and mints refreshes the senses and opens them up to the water experience.
Sacral –The Water accord of Ocean tincture (sand, shells, seaweed, sea grass in alcohol), Ambergris, and aqueous White Flowers such as Frangipani, Blue, Pink, & White Lotus, Jasmine sambac, and Neroli remind us of our birth place in the deep primordial oceans of time.
Solar Plexus –The Fire accord of hot spices and balsams burn in the heat of our passion to be more of who we are meant to be.
Root –The Earth layer of Vetiver, Cedar, Hyraceum, Frankincense grounds the wearer into Gaia.
Throat –Ether: This perfume breathes the concept of ‘ONE’ – organized network of energy; It lives the notion of ‘I AM’ – it all matters; it tones the theory of the ‘OM’ – only me. In essence, it says, ‘I am only one but I am one, and only I can take responsibility for my life’s path, and the ultimate ensuing, journey until my last exhale.

This scent is complex. The opening has a kind of zing to it that reminds me of the taste of fresh horseradish mixed with mint, which slides into a lot of warm spice and wood within about a minute of application. This is the place Ele-Metal Alchemy lives on my skin the longest - in a woody, minty, warm spice area. It also has a strong rubber note at times, that at other times reminds me of Cheerwine?

Ele-Metal Alchemy is an unusual scent. It doesn't remind my of anything else I've tried, which is impressive, and it seems a little different every time I wear it. Maybe that means it is really reactive to whateveer is going on with my skin chemistry right now, but it could also be that, at different points when I wear it, I'm in need of various parts of the spiral Lynn describes.

I've tried Ele-Metal Alchemy a couple of times and it is an interesting Air indeed. It bubbles, it fizzles, it pops. It's pretty, but that's not all it is. It's also warm and sizzling and layered. And yes, pretty. But pretty seems like a bonus in the midst of all this interesting substance. On the whole, a curious scent worth further exploration. If you're into perfume and feeling like you never try anything new, I encourage you to try Ele-Metal Alchemy. It's an awakening all its own.

Ele-Metal Alchemy is available direct from the perfumer in a 10ml atomizer for $37.20. Please note that when the Primordial Scent Project is complete, this scent will simply be called "One."

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

One life,
but we're not the same.
We get to carry each other...
One.
"One," U2

Perfume photos taken by me. Photo of Cheerwine taken from NYTimes. All Rights Reserved.

There's no place like home for the holidays.

2012-11-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

NPG Home for the Holidays: Mermade Magickal Arts EverGreen Incense 2013

November First, dear reader! We have reached November! First! I can now unabashedly run toward the winter holidays with open arms. FN1.

I love winter holidays. I love Thanksgiving and Solstice and Saturnalia and Christmas, and I'm sure I'd love Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, too, given the opportunity. November 1 to January 1 is always my most wonderful time of the year. Also, when I'm super lucky, there is SNOW!

My winter good mood got an early kick off this year when I received the following scentvitation from the Natural Perfumers Guild:

The holiday season means it’s cold outside and everyone is spending more time indoors, with the windows and doors closed. It’s time to feature beautiful natural scents to highlight the festive spirit. The Guild members are dedicated to using 100% natural aromatics, and for this season, members of the Natural Perfumers Guild created ambient fragrance for the home and office, using incense, candles, room sprays and wax melts.

Eight Guild perfumers and associates have independently created lovely ambient scent products to celebrate “Home for the Holidays” 2012. The natural scents work hand-in-hand with the idea of fragrant Christmas trees, boughs and wreaths fragrancing the homes and offices.

Now I ask you: who could say no to such an offer?

I received a beautiful an exceptionally generous package from Katlyn Breene of Mermade Magickal Arts, which included EverGreen Incense 2013, along with a beautiful electric incense burner, foiled paper, and a carved wooden incense server stick to use with it. EverGreen is described as follows:

A rich Resin Incense Blend created to celebrate the Ancient Forest. The best of the woody, balsamic and green scents, it is a wonderful blend for the Winter months and seasonal celebrations. It has a base of resins and woods with notes of green fir, pine and cedar. Fresh and invigorating and filled with the scents of the wilderness, of tree resins and growing things. Burn this incense to let the forest in, and enliven your space with the spirit of the holidays.

Contains: Hougary White Green and Black Frankincense, Copal Blanco, Pinion Pine Resin blended with Cedar tips (wild crafted), Himalyan Juniper, Grand Fir, Fir Balsam and Western Cedar oil.

EverGreen smells like...evergreens? Ha! How succinct of me. Truly, though, it smells like the beautiful green trees I love among. The primary scent is the smell of dried pine needles and tree resin. If someone made the floor of the forest into an incense, this would be that scent. It has that peaty smell of layered greenery moldering and mulching and becoming the death that helps make new life. It has a gently medicinal quality with hints of good dry straw, like the smell of a pile of fresh hay piled onto a cart for a harvest hayride.

This scent is perfect for the winter holiday season because there is nothing commercially 'Christmas-y' about this scent. It smells like the evergreen woods: dark, lovely, and deep. I haven't had a chance to try the body incense yet, but I suspect it will be terrific.

In the electric burner provided, set at only a heat setting of 10, less than a teaspoon of EverGreen filled our entire two story house with beautiful scent in under fifteen minutes. It's been a couple of hours now, and though the incense has been spent for about an hour and the burner has been off for almost two, the house still smells wonderful.

EverGreen is available for only $10.75, and is one of a number of fine quality incense blends available for equally reasonable prices, any of which would make an outstanding stocking stuffer. While we 'fumies are constantly bombarded with pitches for matching perfumed candles and fragrant oils and reed diffusers, there is something to be said for a well made incense, a scent that is strong and beautiful and requires a little heat to bring it to life.

Also, I'd like to make a pitch for the electric burner. I have never had an electric burner. I have been using incense for probably about twenty years, and both the quality of scent and the method of burning is far superior to anything I've ever experienced. If you like or use incense or resin, I really recommend getting an electric burner from Mermade Magickal Arts. It is a beautiful, handcrafted item available for only $59.95, and would make an excellent gift for the scent lover in your life.

I am really grateful to Katlyn for introducing me to this option.

To read about the other NPG Home for the Holidays offerings, check out these other fine bloggers:
~ Ca Fleure Bon
~ Perfume Critic
~ Perfume Shrine
~ The Passionate Perfumista
~ That Smell

Other Natural Perfumers Guild members participating are:

Andrea Shanti of Holistic Body Therapy : Anita Casamento of Happy Herbs Soaps : Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden Perfumes : Elise Pearlstine of Belly Flowers Perfumes : JoAnne Bassett of JoAnne Bassett Perfumes

______________________
FN1. Shut it, holiday haters. I don't want to hear a single word about how it is 'too early.' It is never too early for winter wonderland magic for me.

Over the lilies there that wave and weep above a nameless grave!

2012-10-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Esscentual Alchemy Moon Valley

Dear reader:

Happy All Hallow's Eve! Today is the day that all things spooky, scary, eerie, unsettling, and otherworldly come out and have a heyday. And while we're celebrating the unexplained mysteries of the world, let's talk some more about about primordial scents, particularly those that celebrate the mystery of the unseen, shall we?

Today we reach Day Four of Six in our exploration of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents. As befits our holiday, I bring you a dark and lovely perfume for this, the Day of the Dead. Esscentual Alchemy Moon Valley, created by Amanda Feeley, is a natural perfume that...

...opens with a hint of the dew that falls at night. Following with a fresh heirloom muskmelon scent, and exotic herbs. Mouthwateringly enticing. Next comes the smell of well-travelled luggage, that has seen alluring, glamourous, and out of the way ports of call, and has stood the test of time, and the rigors of the journey. Ends with a spicy dry down

Perfume Ingredients: Vetiver, Antique Oakmoss, Hyrax, Orris, Jasmine Grandiflorum, Lilac, Tuberose, Carnation, Peach Accord, Virginia Cedar, Heliotrope Accord

The first time I tried Moon Valley, it reminded me of standing on my front porch on the first real night of winter, wisps of cold night air bringing me the mixed scents of fireplace and woodstove fires inside homes all over the neighborhood, people burning up the night to warm themselves. The smoke snap freezes in tiny crystals that float, unseen, toward me, each one a tiny orb carrying a view into the lives of others, like the floating bubbles of dreams in Jim Henson's '80s classic Labyrinth. FN1. That smell is one of my favorite winter smells, and it is always best the first night of every season.

The second time I tried Moon Valley, I thought of death. Specifically, I thought of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Valley of Unrest."

Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.

The third and final try before I ran out of perfume because I liked it so much, what I thought of constantly was the smell of cracking a fresh package of bleached white lined paper, taking out a sheet, and writing on it in a rich, thick, black blue ink with a fountain pen. Heavy words flow from that pen, words of sorrow or ending or resolution.

Overall, this scent is air meets darkness. It is a kind of liquid night, dry and bitter. Is it wrong to say this is, for me, the perfect perfume for a winter funeral? It is. It is rich and lovely and foreboding. I'd recommend it for Halloween, but this scent lacks the candied fun of children trick or treating. This is the real stuff of spirits, mean and serious, not in the modern torture-porn horror way, but in the way the classic Mexican surrealist film The Exterminating Angel is deeply unsettling without any of the gore that seems to be required today. FN1.

Musically speaking? I can think of no better music than this:

The scent reminds me most closely of INeKE's Evening Edged in Gold, but less fruity or sweet. This is darker, earthier, and more, well, primordial. Less pretty, more...guttural. It comes from a place somewhere in the core of the self. Fundamental. The Quintessence, if you will.

Moon Valley is available direct from the perfumer. You can buy samples for $5, 5ml EdP for $22, and the perfume in 1oz spray for $115, 1/3oz gift presentation for $150.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

_____________________________

FN1. The film is available for watch for free on Hulu and I recommend it highly to any of my readers who like art films. Directed by Luis Buñue, it is considered one of the top twenty films in all of Mexican cinema. Without going too much away, I think is a deeply interesting exploration of group psychology and human beings ability to create hell here on earth that likely exceeds anything we'd have to fear is a traditional hell.

FN2. P.S. How GREAT is this cover of "As The World Falls Down"? Allow me to answer for you. Really f-ing great.

All photos taken by me, copyright 2012. All rights reserved.

Of cloudless climes and starry skies...

2012-10-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

Neil Morris Fragrances Spirit of Air

Once upon a time I had an enormous crush on a woman because she always smelled good.

Don't get me wrong. She was a generally lovely woman. Attractive, funny, good-hearted, bright minded, sweet. There was a lot to like about her. But at the time, what I liked about her was that she smelled so good.

The best thing about it was she didn't smell good because of a particular shampoo or perfume or body wash. She wasn't really into fragrance. She didn't consistently use particular hair and body products. She just smelled good. It wasn't her clothes of soap or hair spray. It was her. The essence of her. She carried this loveliness around her like an aura, floating in the air around her, a cloud of beauty. Like the famous Lord Byron poem, she walked in beauty.

I never could properly describe her scent, but I still remember her loveliness. Though we were never more than friends, I will always remember her and the way her scent made her that much more beautiful.

And speaking of the air of beauty, let's talk about our third Primordial Scent Project: Air Set offering, shall we?

Neil Morris Fragrances Spirit Of Air is described as

part of a quartet of perfumes honoring the 4 elements. This scent is the second in Morris' series, after Spirit of Water. Spirit Of Air has notes of "Lemon Verbena, Linden Blossom, Plum Blossom, Lily of the Valley, Sunflower, Light Musk, White Amber, Ozone Notes.

This is a lovely, gently sweet floral. In a world of artful takes on air, this is very wearable, which is quite an accomplishment. Sometimes scent is art and sometimes scent is accent and occasionally, very occasionally, you find a scent that works as both. If Spirit of Air is an essence of air, it is the essence of air captured in the hair of your beloved, the way it smells when you bury your face against their head or at the nape of the neck.

This air is the air of romance. It reminds me of that lovely woman, whom I assume is still out there, somewhere. I have no doubt that where she walks, she takes that inherent beauty with her, not unlike this scent.

To purchase, go directly to the Neil Morris Fragrances site, choose any of the Vault fragrances and then request Spirit of Air at checkout. And if you're interested, don't delay. Until November 5, Neil Morris Fragrances are available at 10% off and free shopping for orders over $70.00.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
~ "She Walks in Beauty," Lord Byron

Photo of perfume taken by me. Photo of woman walking courtesy of the Library of Congress, all rights reserved.

It flutters like soft wings in flight...

2012-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

Velvet & Sweet Pea's Purrfumery Honey

Dear reader:

Despite my obsessive fantasies of travel, I have only been out of the country one time. It was less than a year ago. My friend LillieMae and I went to Victoria, B.C.

While we were there, we had some plans: we were going to go see a castle (turned out to be a big mansion, but hey, it was still historic and cool), have high tea (delicious!), and go to the Butterfly Gardens. FN1. Though it took a long, bumpy (and in Lillie's case moderate car-sickness-inducing) bus ride to get there, the gardens were worth the trip. In fact, they were pretty amazing. FN2.

There were so many beautiful winged beasties, both minuscule and enormous, and the air scent was a mixture of the cool, wet mist pumped through the space to keep the leaves of all the tropical plants green and flowering and the sweetness of the copious sugar water feeders hanging everywhere to keep the butterflies fat and happ. After the long ride in the massive heat, it was a great respite in an active day. Despite the summer crowd, it felt kind of magical to wander in the dewy air under hanging vines, among huge fronds, and twisting around trees with fat leaves, supple and heavy with life, while all around you tiny iridescent creatures in more hues than the rainbow has colors swooped and dove through the air.

When I smell Velvet & Sweet Pea's Purrfumery Honey by perfumer Laurie Stern, I think of that place. Honey is described as follows:

Notes: All hail to the queen bee! This regal, opulent composition of French orange blossom, and Moroccan and Bulgarian roses sits on a throne of deep vetiver, Madagascar vanilla, honey, beeswax from the Purrfumery’s bees and my bee guru’s propolis. It is crowned with rare antique clove, pomegranate and pink grapefruit. This royal blend is set in a rich base of sandalwood and vanilla infused alcohol.

Honied and sweet, this scent is the Air of Spring. It has clarity and openness like light glinting on water, like the brush of butterfly wings against skin. I get quite a bit of beeswax, and the floral, fruit, and vanilla sweetnesses blend smoothly, like the warmth flow of poured honey. As a lover of honey scents, I tend to like these scents, and this one is unique in that it seems less foodie in its honey essence and more the idea of being surrounded by pure honey atomized into the air.

Honey, as the name implies, is a rather sweet scent, but it is truly lovely. Though the opening is quite strong, about 45 minutes in it lightens considerably, so if you like sweet scents on the lighter side, this might be a good scent for you if you can give it a bit. It's an intense experience at first, much like the deep darker wings of butterflies hiding in shadows; the lingering effect, however, is the image of pale-winged Lepidoptera Papilionoidea soaring through a bright sun overhead, light gleaming through their iridescent skin.

As Laurie Stern states, "honey liquid perfume makes a royal gift, bottled in an elegant Brosse crystal stopper bottle and tucked into an enchanting dupioni silk purse with its own Victorian scent card." It is available direct from the perfumer in three sizes: 8 ml for $185; 15 ml for $325; 1 oz for $550.

Editor's note: Honey is also available in an EdP at 6ml for $75.00 and a solid crème perfume at 10ml for $225.00. Thanks to Monica for the note.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

I feel it when you're with me,
It happens when you kiss me,
that rare and gentle feeling that I feel inside.
Your touch is soft and gentle.
Your kiss is warm and tender.
Whenever I am with you I think of butterflies.
~ "Love is Like a Butterfly," Dolly Parton

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FN1. We decided to pass on Butchart Gardens for a number of reasons: expense, time, my allergy to bees, etc.

FN2. Next time, Lil, we will either take the car or rent one. I promise. While the public transit system in Victoria is very easy to use and all the bus drivers were really nice, it was really not worth the additional illness, especially given...the ferry.

Perfume photos taken by me. Awesome butterfly photos taken by LillieMae Stone, 2011. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

When Your Circumstance is Movie-Sized: The Smell of Air

2012-10-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Six Days with the Primordial Scent Project: Air Set

When I was fourteen, I fell in love with a song by Liz Phair called "Stratford-on-Guy." I discovered it on a late night alternative rock show on MTV called 120 Minutes. I was sitting in my dad's room, watching videos while I waited for him to leave for work, and this video came on. I immediately set about trying to find the album, which back then was a lot harder as it required you to have the artist's name and the name of the song (though album was better), then make a physical pilgrimage to a record store or, in my case, music store full of cassette tapes in the local mall, to try to track it down. I had Exile in Guyville pretty much right as it came out thanks to this single, and I played the cassette over and over.

The song isn't particularly profound. It's about the experience of being on a plane. Not like, "here I am separated from my love or going to war and this plane is a metaphor for my loss," but about the visceral experience of being on an actual plane: the stillness of the people, the way the world looks from above, the loud quietness of the space itself, the sense of being connected and disconnected, or moving and not moving, of doing something menial (sitting and reading a magazine, drinking a coke and eating peanuts) and simultaneously extraordinary (flying). The description of the experience got to the heart of me in some deep and fundamental way, like a poem I keep returning to and finding new colors in the words.

At that point in my life, it would be another two years before I flew on a plane for the first time. When I finally did it, I was terrified. I was entranced. It still seems impossible that you don't fall right out of the sky. Impossible that you become surrounded by clouds so that every window in all directions is filled with nothing but whiteness. Above you, below you, left and right, whiteness. It's as if you've entered a strange kind of otherworld, where childhood images of heaven, or the unknown great hereafter, is nothing but pearly clouds and angelic figures.

Even today, every time I fly, there comes a moment when the earth disappears and space disappears and there is only a small room surrounded by whiteness, all manner of whiteness, and the thrum of the engines is barely noticeable on your skin and in your ears and the space has a strange kind of stale coolness. In that moment, I wonder if this is what those first few moments after dying will be like for me. It won't be a tunnel of light or a large foreboding gate or a set of scales with my soul on one side and a blackbird's feather on the other. It will be me, going somewhere unseen and unknown at an impossible speed, not alone but still profoundly singular in the experience, not quite here or there yet, in progress.

After all, isn't that the space we all really live in? Hurtling toward the future at an impossible speed, yet not quite free of the past behind us? If you died there, in that space, would you even know it? Or would you just ask for more peanuts?

That's a lot to get out of a 120 Minutes video. Twenty years later, and I still listen to the album a couple of times a year. When "Stratford-on-Guy" comes on, I feel that profound sense of being outside and yet somehow in the moment, every time.

The thing that makes me tell you about this experience, dear reader, is that we have reached another week of the Primordial Scent Project. For the next six days our focus is the primordial element of Air. I knew I was getting the Air set before it arrived, and the concept intrigued me. Water? Fire? Those are scents I feel like I have a relationship with. Whenever I thought about how to capture Air as an element in scent, I kept thinking of "Stratford-on-Guy" and the liminal experience of air travel.

It took an hour, maybe a day,
but when I really listened, the noise just went away.

What does it mean to make a fragrance that captures the essence of air? Is it a sort of nothing, an almost absence of scent? Is it a particular scent, a moment captured on the wind? Is it a mishmash of all the things one loves best, a kind of everything scent? Or is it somewhere in between?

That's the question we're going to explore this week with the Primordial Scent Project.

Our first Air scent is Michael Storer's Djin. The Posh Peasant describes the scent as follows:

A powerful djin is what Aladdin brought forth when he rubbed his famous lamp.A spectral and prismatic interplay of olfactory sensations is what you’ll set free with just a few sprays of Djin parfum. Djin’s notes range through all the chakras from the base of the spine with very male Aldrone, leathery castoreum, civet, musk, tonka bean and teakwood, to a middle of sweeter woods tempering the bitterness of grapefruit oil, blackcurrant absolute, clary sage, just a hint of vanilla and iris. This all carries on through the upper spine right to the forehead with an aura of ozonic and marine notes, rose and topped with mind-opening spices including cardamom seed and floral aldehydes. This is all we will reveal. You’ll just have to rub the magic lamp yourself to experience all the full-bodied power of Djin.

The immediate opening is green, sweet, and woody, a fresh light scent that would be easily interpreted as either masculine or feminine. The middle section of Djin is a lovely ozone and marine mixture that reminds of me the prettiest aspects of the smell of the kind of recycled air on a plane, but without the stale unpleasant points. It reminds me what my grandmother used to call "store bought air," with a hefty emphasis on a kind of green dewiness.

I tried Djin a couple of times, and there was always something about the scent I couldn't quite put my finger on. When I couldn't place it easily, couldn't find the right words, I kept going back to that concept of liminal space. An in-between scent for the not quite here or there moment, both in travel and in life. It lives in the quiet beyond the busy-ness of our daily lives, that place where we are forced to sit and wait for our external selves to begin again. In that moment of not-quite-here-or-there-ness, we find a strange kind of peace.

Now what could be more magical than that?

Djin is a light, pretty scent lingers over the skin for hours. The sillage is low but the longevity is good, lasting on me about eight hours.

You can buy Djin for $75 from the Posh Peasant. You can also buy by contacting the perfumer directly.

You can buy the entire Primordial Scent Project: Air Set for $28.00 here.

For more reviews of the Primordial Scent Project: Air Scents, try: Perfume-Smellin' Things; The Perfume Critic; John Reasinger, writing for Perfume Pharmer; Indieperfumes; Donna Hathaway, writing for Perfumer Pharmer.

The earth looked like it was lit from within
like a poorly assembled electrical ball.
As we moved out of the farmlands into the grid
the plan of a city was all that you saw.
And all of these people sitting totally still
as the ground raced beneath them, thirty-thousand feet down...
~ "Stratford-On-Guy," Liz Phair

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Photo of scents taken by me; other photos from Creative Commons: Airplane in sky and Clouds from airplane. All rights reserved.