"The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion, but cosmetics are easier to buy."
—Yves Saint Laurent
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If you're new to this blog, then read our guides to the basics: Skin (Part I), Skin (Part II), The Supernatural, Color Theory I, Color Theory II, Eyes, and Brushes.
Also, check out the blogsale.
Contents
Favored
Art Tattler
the glamourai
The Non-Blonde
Perfume Shrine
Lisa Eldridge
Garance Doré
Smitten Kitchen
Into The Gloss
Grain de Musc
Lacquerized
Res Pulchrae
Drivel About Frivol The Selfish Seamstress
Killer Colours
Bois de Jasmin Glossed In Translation
Jak and Jil
Toto Kaelo
Worship at the House of Blues
I Smell Therefore I Am
Food Wishes
The Natural Haven
Messy Wands
1000 Fragrances
Moving Image Source
Wondegondigo
The Emperor's Old Clothes
M. Guerlain
Colin's Beauty Pages
Barney's jewelry department
Parfümrien
loodie loodie loodie
The Straight Dope
Sea of Shoes
London Makeup Girl
Sakecat's Scent Project
Asian Models
Ratzilla Cosme
Smart Skincare
Illustrated Obscurity
A.V. Club
Tom & Lorenzo: Mad Style
Eiderdown Press
Beauty and the Bullshit
La Garçonne Flame Warriors Everyday Beauty
Fashion Gone Rogue
Now Smell This
Dempeaux
Fashionista
The Cut
A Fevered Dictation
Nathan Branch
101 Cookbooks
Like most of the Internet, I love this Old Spice commercial:
So archly funny and, unlike the craptastic Brut ads from last year, it plays on the "manly man" concept without being misogynistic, homophobic, or 10 years behind the times (mocking boybands in 2009? Really?).
Except that the premise of the ad, useful as it is from a marketing perspective, is flawed: in my experience, it's not that easy to stop a man from smelling like a man. Men and women apparently sweat a bit differently, but I've smelled a number of men just out of the shower, having used various girly bath products, and they still smell like men, not women. My boyfriend uses Dial almond body wash, which smells like a very low-rent take on Hypnotic Poison, and he still smells like a man. And I don't smell like a man, even when wearing Pour Monsieur, Guerlain Vetiver, or Troisième Homme.(Of course, since North American culture still generally mistrusts femininity in men, it's far more socially acceptable for me to wear Pour Monsieur than for my boyfriend to wear Hypnotic Poison. More's the pity.)
Having this background, I was surprised to read in Turin and Sanchez's Perfumes: The Guide that skin chemistry doesn't affect perfume, or affects only the top notes, as this isn't my experience at all. Not only do women smell different from men, but we vary as individuals: plenty of people report that their skin amplifies some notes in perfumes and "disappears" others.
On my skin, most roses turn sour and boozy, even those that have a reputation for softness. Jasmine and tuberose have to be quite strong and indolic not to turn metallic and irritating, like the feeling of aluminum foil between one's teeth (hedione is apparently not my friend); green florals frequently turn into syrup or potpourri. But the real demon is melon. Le Parfum de Thérèse, widely loved for its jasmine and fruit salad aspects, smells utterly vile on me, like watermelon-flavoured Jolly Ranchers sucked on and spit out. And yet this is a very well-regarded scent: I have to conclude that it's my skin or my nose altering it this way.
This is what's especially difficult about writing about perfume, I think: most of us can see the same basic range of colours and call them the same things, and even guess, based on looking at each other, which makeup will flatter and which won't. But noses and skin chemistry are individual and not easily predicted; perfume really has to be tested.
Labels: old spice, perfume notes
3/10/2010 [1]
I received Chandler Burr's The Perfect Scent as a Christmas gift; I'm reading it now and shall post something about it when I've finished. I'm nearly done; the highlight for me is definitely his vitriolic take-down of the Hugo Boss line, but then I love watching articulate people bitch about things they dislike. (I was also fascinated to read the lists of 2003's bestsellers in America and France; American women really love florals, so it seems.)
On Christmas Day, I mentioned my developing perfume habit to my grandmother, whom I associate very strongly with the smell of Jean Patou Cocktail and, to a lesser extent, Joy. As it turns out, she said she has never worn perfume, but had a collection of scents she'd received as gifts over the forty-plus years she's lived in her house, which she urged me to take.
And so I have a small collection of minis, mostly from the '60s and '70s, revealing as examples, not of my grandmother's particular taste, but of what people thought suitable to give a woman in her forties at that time. The most exciting thing, to me is a full-sized bottle of vintage Chamade EDC, 2/3 full, still nearly fresh. Chamade is a heartbreaker on my skin; the first fifteen minutes (particularly in the vintage) are phenomenally beautiful, the most lush, creamy hyacinth imaginable, and then it becomes dried-rose potpourri, a high-quality potpourri to be sure, but still too, too sweet. I must put it on fabric and see if it fares any better there.
Larger than actual size, of course. Is this not the most darling thing? Houndstooth! I think I would keep this even if the juice had turned. Chandler Burr writes that vintage Miss Dior smells like armpit. I didn't believe this until I tried it on and...I'll be damned, it kind of does. I think it needs to grow on me; at present the leathery bitterness (a scent related to armpit, evidently) is a bit disconcerting, although it softens and sweetens in the drydown.
My grandmother also had a half-ounce bottle of Helena Rubinstein Courant.
This surprised me: a chypre, on the sweet side, with the warm-skin feeling people call "animalic". I think the top notes have suffered some from being in a cupboard for 30 years, but I still find it lovely, eminently wearable. I suppose it isn't surprising it was discontinued; it was released in 1972 and is recognizable, even to me, as a 1970s chypre, a style that went out of fashion (as did Helena Rubinstein, to a great extent; certainly the brand no longer has the profile it once did).
And now, dear readers, a mystery -- what is this?
There was no box and there's no label anywhere on the bottle. It smells like an oriental (through the seal beneath the cap, as my grandmother never opened it). It looks a little like a Youth Dew bottle, which would certainly make sense, but I'm stumped.
Labels: christian dior, guerlain, helena rubinstein, perfume notes
1/03/2009 [3]
Unlike Dain, I was an ignorant fragrance noob before this year, and in many ways still am. Blogging about perfume has been not so much an effort at educating other people (who am I to do that, after all?) as a record of my own enthusiastic yet clumsy explorations. For other, more seasoned entries, read Dain's entry here, or check out the other Retrospectives:
1000fragrances
Ars Aromatica
A Rose Beyond the Thames
Bittergrace Notes
Grain de Musc
I Smell Therefore I Am
Legerdenez
The Non Blonde
Notes From the Ledge
Olfactarama
The Perfume Shrine
Savvy Thinker
Tuilleries
For years I wore single-note fragrances, if anything: most of these are now of little interest to me, although I retain a soft spot for Demeter's Gin and Tonic; it smells like Christmas at my grandparents' house, when my martini-drinking grandfather was still alive. My first "proper" perfume, a couple of years ago, was Tocca Stella, an uncomplicated thing despite the list of notes -- aquatic topnotes, musky drydown, orange, orange, orange. It claims to be blood orange, but for the real bitterness of blood orange one has to go to something like Fendi's much-mourned Theorema -- of which I just tracked down a full bottle (yes!).
Much of what I've learned has come directly from Dain, although I've also done plenty of lurking on the sites linked above.
What amazes me at the end of this year is how quickly the nose develops when you start smelling a lot of scents. After six months of exploration, I can now detect the orange in Organza Indécence; Bulgari BLV Notte, which I adored on first sniff, so much that I considered buying a full bottle before my mini was empty, is now oppressively sweet and heavy; I use words like "animalic" and "vetiver" with something approaching confidence, which I would not have done a year or even eight months ago.
Anyway, enough babbling; here is my Top Ten of 2008, the perfumes that I either fell hard for, learned from, or both.
1. Mitsouko. Funny that even in this 1938 ad, Mitsouko is presented as something rather harsh, haughty and forbidding (if I read the image right), because it has never struck me as a difficult perfume. Mitsouko was what gave me an inkling that fumeheads might be on to something, since before that, almost everything smelled unpleasantly "like perfume" (read: alcohol and fake flowers) to me, and I imagined nothing complex would ever work on my skin. I put on a sample of the EDP, thinking "this is interesting, but not for me", and then, a couple of hours later, spontaneously noticed that I loved the way I smelled. Mitsouko is an odd thing on me, chameleon-like, sometimes hinting at white flowers, sometimes at spice cake; usually it's recognizable as Mitsouko, though, a spiced-peach glow, the light that shines through autumn leaves in the late afternoon, in perfume form.
2. Bandit. On my skin, Bandit EDT is indeed (as Luca Turin calls it) a "dark and fresh" fragrance, reminiscent of under-lit streets and deep green leaves after an evening rain, no flowers, no fruits, no sugar. Bandit says "do not fuck with me." Bandit is really the ideal thing to wear out to small-town bars where unattractive and overly persistent frat boys follow you around; Bandit makes me feel like I can kick ass. Bandit might also be the first perfume I encountered that truly was not sweet.
3. Tabac Blond. I have only a decant of the extrait, but I think this is the sexiest perfume I own; I'm sharp-nosed and flat-chested, cleavage-in-a-bottle scents like Fracas make me feel silly, but Tabac Blond is dark, warm, a bouquet in a leather-bound study, half-hidden in a cloud of cigar smoke. Alas, it has apparently been messed with so much that even the recent version I like may be gone any minute.
4. Theorema. I still have an affection for gourmands; they work well on my skin, unlike most fruity florals, which tend to become loud and aggressive, projecting syrup for miles. Theorema is that marvellous thing, a grown-up gourmand, bitter orange, nutmeg and cream; why, why was this ever discontinued?
5. Iris Poudre. I thought I disliked aldehydes. I was wrong. Hell, I thought I disliked perfumes that smelled "like perfume", and I was wrong about that too. Probably the most "traditional", "ladylike" fragrance I've fallen for, so far.
6. Songes. I loved this on first sniff, but was sure I would tire of it. I haven't. It's sweet, yes, but it has complexity and balance; vanilla, banana, dark chocolate, and that full, blooming jasmine over all. My favourite comfort scent, by far.
7. Bois des Îles. I haven't had the greatest luck with Chanel scents; so far, they've all had a forbidding smoothness, too perfect, too luxurious, nothing to reach out and grab me. Bois des Îles is the exception; it is so strongly, recognizably sandalwood that the aldehydic touches are decorative rather than definitive; Tania Sanchez described it as being like No. 5's brunette sister, and I think she hit the nail on the head. It hints at gingerbread in the drydown. I could wear this all winter.
8. Vétiver Extraordinaire. Swoon. The most dusky, fresh, woodsy vetiver, without the fresh citrus-y touches of Guerlain's; I'd happily wear this myself, yes, but on a man it would be absurdly sexy.
9. Une Fleur de Cassie. I have a huge crush on the Frédéric Malle line; I've yet to smell one of these I disliked, and several of them (as you see) I adore already. To me, this one smells like a young cousin to L'Heure Bleue; that same almost-edible floral sweetness, lightened, freshened, and utterly radiant. It's nearly impossible for me to describe Une Fleur de Cassie; it's more of a chord than a succession of notes.
10. Lolita Lempicka. A certain lack of taste on my part? Maybe. But my skin seems to absorb most of the Angel-like super-sweetness in this fragrance, leaving only licorice, 7-Up fizz, baked apple, and a touch of salt. I couldn't decide on first wearing whether I loved this or hated it. Now I'm confident: it's love.
What next? I have entered a masculine/unisex phase; I love Le 3ème Homme and wear it frequently, Caron's Pour Un Homme has persuaded me that I actually do like lavender, and Dain has promised to send me a decant of my other Guerlain love-at-first-sniff, Jicky. Also, I think I shall have to buy a bottle of Mitsouko at some point; I've found a Canadian distributor I like (Enchante Perfumes) and I'm very tempted by the tiny bottles of parfum.
Labels: annick goutal, caron, chanel, fendi, frederic malle, guerlain, lolita lempicka, perfume notes, robert piguet
12/29/2008 [2]
I haven't posted in nearly a month! I plead law school exams. Now that I am done trying to wrap my head around lex loci solutionis, coverture, and the "kiddie tax", I can happily return to frivolities for a while.
One of Dain's marvellous series on perfume is called "The Mnemonic Sense", and indeed, one of the most enjoyable things about this newfound perfume habit of mine has been attaching names to memories. My father's female colleagues wear Coco and Chanel No. 19; Angel brought back vivid memories of high school; Poison is the unmistakable scent of office parties. I recently bought a mini of Jean Patou Cocktail (sadly discontinued), opened it, and was transported back to my grandmother's closet.
When I smelled Y by Yves Saint Laurent, I was immediately reminded of my mother, so strongly that I was sure she had worn it at some point in my childhood. When I asked, I found out she had never worn it; the perfumes she mentioned wearing were Jean Couturier Coriandre, which has apparently been reformulated, and Millot Crêpe de Chine, discontinued in 1968 and since re-launched by Long Lost Perfume.
My mother seldom wears perfume or makeup; aside from a fondness for L'Occitane, she isn't really interested in cosmetics at all. I buy my mother's stocking stuffers every year and I have bought her a small bottle of the re-launched Crêpe de Chine EDT, which I could not resist sniffing before I wrapped it. (My mother doesn't read this blog.) Although I can't compare it with the original, this is a recognizably old-fashioned scent; sparkling bergamot and orange rapidly give way to a velvety soft, powdery rose on a dusky woods base that reminds me of Habanita's. I smelled it and thought, of course my mother liked this. It's politely soft-spoken, classic, a scent for feminine introverts, and like Y, it's youthful (my mother must have worn it as a teenager, after all) without being sugary or childish. If Chanel No. 5 is a black sheath dress, this might be a soft green one.
To me the current Crêpe de Chine is a little too well-mannered; I prefer the slight sharpness of Y, the bitterness of Bandit, the spicy glow of Mitsouko. In context I suppose it isn't surprising; I'm quite similar to my mother, but I've always been more impulsive, more opinionated, sharper-tongued and hotter-tempered -- more than my mother was at my age, as she recalls. Amusing that our taste in perfume should follow.
More on the scent (vintage and re-release):
Now Smell This
Basenotes
Bois de Jasmin (brief mention)
Perfume-Smellin' Things (brief mention)
Makeupalley
Labels: long lost perfume, millot, perfume notes
12/24/2008 [0]
I think this book has suffered from its marketing. The book jacket proclaims it to be the "definitive" guide to perfumes, which is understandable (who, besides a confirmed perfume addict, would buy a non-definitive guide to perfumes?) but also silly, and when you read the reviews, you realize Turin and Sanchez aren't trying to be objective. They're presenting their own opinions, sometimes with elaborate metaphors, sometimes with funny but hardly illuminating quips, sometimes drifting off into personal anecdote.
I love this. I think they are both hugely entertaining writers; I love their bitchiness, I love Turin's arrogance, and I love their willingness to sum perfumes up with lines like "If you drive a Moscow taxi at night, this one's for you" and "If you like this kind of thing, your thong is probably showing above your jeans." Consider the image that came to my mind the first time I smelled Fracas:
Followed by this image:
And it's not that I don't like or appreciate Fracas; I do. But I don't wear it, simply because no matter how beautifully orchestrated the peach-and-tuberose combination, no matter how lovely I find it on others, it feels like a fragrance for someone else: a bombshell, a sexpot, "a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole through a stained-glass window". There's nothing technical or intellectual about this response; it's all memory and emotion -- but isn't that why most of us wear perfume?
Since I'm new to perfume, I'm not really concerned about what reading Turin and Sanchez might do to my own critical judgment. At this point, I don't feel I have much, and fragrance is such a very intimate, personal thing that I think it's hard to be too much swayed by others' opinions. It's one thing to muscle your way through a book you don't like, quite another to live with a smell you don't like. I have smelled Bulgari Black and Dior Homme, both of which get raves from Turin, and...well-composed they may be, but they both give me an instant headache, and that is that. Estée Lauder Beyond Paradise, which Turin has called "the perfect floral", was another headache-inducing scrubber for me, calling up images of Mystic Tans and all-inclusive resorts. I don't think Annick Goutal Eau de Charlotte smells like a "soapy green" at all; I think it smells like mimosa, jam and several types of powder (baby powder, cocoa powder, icing sugar), and I'm clearly not alone in that. And on a more general note, my personal experience doesn't bear out Turin and Sanchez's assertion that skin chemistry is unimportant.
I think this book could have been edited a little better; for example, it's odd to see Turin and Sanchez repeatedly reference perfumes they don't review in the book (Knize Ten, YSL Champagne/Yvresse). And again, I don't consider it "definitive" in any way. But it's enormous fun, often hilarious, and a good resource for a relative novice like me, someone learning the basics of perfume history and trying to decide what to sample next.
Labels: luca turin, perfume notes
10/02/2008 [5]
I've often walked by Yves Rocher in the mall (there are actual stores in Canada; I gather this is not the case in the States), but never had any interest in going in; I'm not sure why. I think I figured it for some kind of vaguely snooty spa right up until the day I started figuring it for a French Fruits & Passion. In fact it's rather like a French cross between The Body Shop, Avon, and Bonne Bell, with constant sales and a moderately priced salon in the back.
This amuses me: was there ever a makeup item more clearly intended for twelve-year-olds? LipSmackers, I suppose. This confirms for me that the innate good taste of the French is a half-truth. French good taste is fantastic, French bad taste is just...bad. (Nobody who has walked past the Moulin Rouge can be surprised by this. Yikes.)
Anyway, despite what Luca Turin calls its "resolutely downmarket" image, Yves Rocher actually has a decent reputation in fine fragrance; they often use famous noses (Annick Ménardo, Sofia Grojsman), and they're said to use better ingredients than you might expect from a cheap line. I tried a few of their offerings the other week, before I ran out of arm space; I have samples of a few more, although not much to say about all of them.
I'm not sure why I don't like patchouli; I should like the rich, spicy, vaguely dirty quality of it, but to me it has too many hippie associations, and my skin tends to amplify it unpleasantly. Cocoon has a patchouli drydown for patchouli-haters, very comforting and soft. Unfortunately, before I got to the drydown, I had to smell like a stale Dairy Milk bar for a couple of hours. Perhaps this is just me. A mini of this stuff sells for $4 CAD ($3 USD), and there are frequent sales, so trying it might be worthwhile if you like patchouli or gourmands.
Rose Absolue (Rose Absolute over here) was composed by Christine Nagel, who also composed Lancôme's lovely but stupidly overpriced Mille et Une Roses. Rose Absolue is not quite as soft as Mille et Une Roses; it's fruity, as most rose soliflores are, and the fruitiness of the rose is amplified by an apple note that I rather like. Smelling this on my skin, I was overcome by a wave of nostalgia; the first perfume I ever owned was The Body Shop's Tea Rose, and this put me in mind of that, but also of the rose garden my father doted on when I was a child. In October, around the time the Ontario apple harvest started to come in, the last flowers would be blooming, and he would pile straw around the rosebushes to protect them from the frost. I suppose for me this is an autumn fragrance. 
Un Jour Se Lève (sold in North America as "A New Day Dawns" -- is the French name also a cliché?) is the EDT version of YR's Comme Une Evidence. I read on The Scented Salamander that this is one of the best-selling fragrances in France, up there with Chanel No. 5 and Angel, so I ordered some when it went on sale. It's billed as a chypre, but it doesn't smell like a chypre to me (at least not the chypres I know); it smells to me like a contemporary fresh/fruity floral, dominated by lily of the valley and an interesting rhubarb note. (If my nose is failing me and this really is a chypre, it is the chypre equivalent of a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc: smoother, sweeter, less weird.) It's incredibly nice, though, neither cloying nor screechy, very long-lasting for an EDT, and pretty great for the price. It makes me think of a group of young mothers I saw in Paris, pushing tastefully sized strollers, dressed simply in well-fitted sweaters and neutral slacks, hair tidily pulled back: wholesomeness well done.Labels: perfume notes, yves rocher
9/19/2008 [3]
When I was in junior high, I rode a crowded, overheated city bus to school every morning. I was barely five feet tall, and being crammed into a series of business people's armpits at the beginning of every day gave me a lingering hatred for two things: solid deodorant and complex perfumes.
More specifically, it made me hate Amarige. This was 1993, and Amarige was near the height of its popularity, so some of the women on the bus were probably wearing it, but to me it became a catch-all designation for department-store perfumes, the kind with multiple "notes". I would say that no matter what the notes were supposed to be, they all just smelled "like perfume" to me: a stinging blast of alcohol followed by an obnoxious spicy sweetness that resembled nothing found in nature, and nothing you would want to find in nature.
I've never been an actual perfume-hater; I wore The Body Shop's Vanilla in high school (wow, that stuff was sweet) and Demeter colognes in undergrad, but I had no interest in anything but single-note and/or soapy fragrances until I started reading The Lipstick Page. I love reading about fashion history; the idea of smelling the fragrances women wore eighty or a hundred years ago was incredibly appealing. I ordered a couple of decants from The Perfumed Court: Worth's Dans La Nuit, which I liked wearing, and Guerlain's Après L'Ondée, which I did not. (I can appreciate it in the vial, and I believe it's beautiful on other women, but on me it smells of urinal cake.) Then, knowing that Dain loves Mitsouko, and Luca Turin had described it as "infinitely chic", I bought another tiny decant of the EDP, expecting to encounter another historical curiosity, or something a bit harsh and forbidding. Instead, I fell in love with it. (How boring, yet inevitable -- another Mitsouko lover!) It's been compared to a Tiffany lamp, and that's what it feels like: warm, glowing, multi-coloured, floral, fruity, spicy, but somehow more than the sum of its parts. It is amazing. It does something on me that makes me like it better -- it makes me think of that directive about pearls, to wear them frequently because they shine more brilliantly after exposure to skin oils.
I have turned into one of those people I used to roll my eyes at, people who will describe perfumes in terms of colour, emotions, references to music. (I was half inclined to mock this post until I realized my immediate reaction to it had been not "what a silly idea" but "what? Elizabeth Bennet would not wear Après L'Ondée!" Got me.) I fear I am on my way to perfumista status, which is ridiculous, as almost nobody around me wears or likes perfume and I spend a lot of time in buildings where it is actually forbidden (and having seen a classmate having an actual perfume-triggered asthma attack, I am not inclined to question this). Ah well. It wouldn't be the first time I've been ridiculous.
It's a weird pastime, trying to educate yourself about perfumes; you spend a lot of time skulking in department stores, spraying yourself with this and that, and then taking transit home in a cloud of scent that you rather hope no one else can smell. If your nose isn't well trained, as mine isn't, you may not be able to pick out more than a couple of notes. It's the emotional reactions I look for. I may not be able to explain exactly what Mitsouko smells like (or vintage Bandit, another scent I've fallen hard for), but I can describe the feelings it evokes, and send other people into fits of eye-rolling.
This is the context for anything I write about perfume on this blog. I don't have expertise, just personal experience, preferences and enthusiasms. But I suppose that's what a lot of bloggers would say about ourselves, isn't it.
Labels: givenchy, guerlain, perfume notes
9/07/2008 [0]
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