LUCTOR ET EMERGO

4/21/15

Cherry. Almond. Vanilla. Grass. White Flowers. Wood.

I have to premise my review with the disclaimer “I am unarmed!”  Now I shall duck and wait for the rocks to be hurled in my general direction, because, get this, I don’t like a cult classic!  In fact, I may even venture to say that I find it very hard to sniff around and find what others find sublime here.  Maybe it’s my weird relationship to cherry.  Outside of the fresh fruit itself, which is faultless, anything cherry in flavor just makes me think of 2 tsps of the calpol of my childhood.  Maybe I was accidentally over-medicated and my subconsciously-suffering memory is rejecting the note altogether, but it is very hard to find an exit door for the feeling of synthetically-flavored doubt that cherry, for the most part, gives to me.  I intend to keep fighting the good fight though, and maybe cherry-love will bust through my prejudice with a grand huzzah.  I am DYING to try Rahat Loukoum; Serge Lutens’ homage to Turkish delight, in which cherry plays a part, but Luctor Et Emergo is not ‘getting’ me.  I find it for most of the longevity to be quite syrupy-sweet, almost like my wrists might get stuck together by goop if I touch them.  I can find the wood easier than the almond and to me this is what saves the scent from being mobbed by pre-teens looking for a Katy Perry concert and discussing their love of PINK.  Maybe it does have a broader appeal than that, to not give too much weight to my unsinkable level of sarcasm, but it’s a cherry-vanilla rush that to me would have been more welcoming during my wild forays to The Body Shop during adolescence.  With gourmands in general, I think there is always a narrow tightrope to be walked, and the space available to navigate to keep from falling into King Kandy’s outstretched arms as he perches on his Candy Castle throne is quite precarious.  If you don’t tumble, you may have a Jeux de Peau on your hands (insert 10 million imaginary little hearts at this point), but to me, Luctor et Emergo and King Kandy are in danger of becoming BFF’s.

Rating: 2 feet wedged in the molasses swamp.

BUBBLEGUM CHIC

Tuberose. Jasmine. Fruit notes. White musk.

5/2/15

I don’t know how you spend your Saturday mornings, but today I spent mine submerged face-down in a Pepto-Bismol gasoline spill with Mariah Carey serenading my semi-conscious corpse and maniacally throwing glitter at my head.  This was my initial impression with Bubblegum Chic. On initial application, I was deluged with the vagina dentata of pink sickly sweet floral-fruit attack and left for dead. I think my face was paralyzed for about five seconds, and I lost brain function for about ten, as I tottered and tried not to crumple and hit my head on a corner of the bathroom sink.  I smelled, first and foremost, those gasoline fumes, and almost simultaneously the overpowering reek of bubblegum, but petal-infested gum, like a girls-only kindergarten convention had congregated in the tuberose fields and fired hubba bubba nerf pellets at the flowers, creating an abominable hybrid of petals and pink sticky goo.

The tuberose is an indolic flower, as is jasmine, which can result in a decaying smell reminiscent of feces that is activated when in combination with other notes.  That was the gasoline that flooded my nostrils. Some people are heavily drawn to that animalic association, which is not that hard to believe, as tuberose and jasmine are two perfuming favorites.  It also, as with all scents, can smell utterly different from person to person as our body chemistry is not the same, and also our attractions differ, so what had me wanting to divorce my arm to get away from the scent, was pronounced by my mother-in-law as smelling ‘wonderful’ on me.  Fortunately for me, the crazy catnip of the fruit-flower accord wore off after the first half hour, leaving the jasmine and tuberose to settle into a somewhat bearable but ‘too-potent-for-me’ white floral scent and allowing the white musk to press the flowers down a bit to make sure they behaved themselves. Half star added for the vivid originality, but as I had to give an acerbically-deferential nod to the queasiness it inflicted on me by applying green eyeliner so that it would match my complexion that day, I have to give the stigma of a single star.

Rating: 1 1/2 gags for air.

L’AMANDIERE

Green almond. Jasmine. Rose. Tilia.

4/19/15

Green is a color and an image-evoker that has always been close to my heart.  Those connections were fused at a young age.  My last name before I was married was Greenwood, which I was not a fan of as child (I’m sure you can imagine the bevvy of nicknames that school produced), but having shed it over 12 years ago and in retrospect as a woman of a certain age, there is a nostalgia now connected that has associations not only with family, but with the country of my birth.  Americans love it. “Oh, it’s charmingly English,” they screech in delight.  And even while, as the eternal cynic, that cloying optimism gets me muttering under my breath and sets my eyes rolling in my head, I understand they are right. It IS English, and I have fluttered into the realms of fancy myself over thoughts of the Greenwoods of days of yore embarking on historical exploits in the forest; regal attendants to the jaunty rides of kings of old.  Who knows? We could possibly have been cobblers or muck-sweepers too for all I know, but that is utterly unromantic, and I refuse to entertain such an idea!

So green:  verdant, lush, awash with ferns and firs and the sounds, smells and tastes of the woods. It’s a cooling color, for body, mind and soul. While blue is the color that I find the most meditative, it has to be striven for. Green seems a part of my national identity, my genetic makeup, so to speak, so maybe James Heeley being an Englishman himself paved part of his olfactory path in hitting this goal dead on target.  And l’Amandiere is incredible. I don’t know if I really smell the almond in this fragrance as much as the GREEN in the almond.  This is from the immature stage of the almond growth, and in this state they are only available for a very short season in the spring.  So they don’t have that typical almond-y aroma that I also adore and which is a key note in some of my other absolute favorite fragrances.

Smelling this scent is like peering inside one of these tiny little nuts and if you can imagine by putting your eye to the pinprick perforation you enticed into the shell, you may be lucky enough to see the whole of spring encapsulated there. It’s new growth and fresh grass and stalks and the dew on those stalks and fresh rain and dappled sunshine.  No, I am not gone with the fairies.  Please, I implore you, try this and see.  In back of it all is the delicately-sweet swaying of the tiny linden blossoms, together with the cut stems of jasmine and rose; veritable will-o’-the-wisps of floral softness, doing their own little thing off in the background.  This perfume wants to be Green with a capital G, and it just makes that point splendidly, but yet spring flowers provide the checks and balances to ensure it is never harsh, overbearing or too serious.  As an extrait fragrance, it just lasts forever, with the green phasing out eventually like a chalk painting that is slowly subsiding with the tenacity of the day-long spotting rain and then transmuting into a powdery floral that’s perceptible right up against the skin.  Kiss, kiss Mr. Heeley.

Rating. 5 royal rumpuses in the green wood.

MAD MADAME

Rose. Amber. Blackcurrant. Freesia. Peony. Patchouli. Tuberose. Moss. Jasmine. White musk. Tolu balsam. Vanilla Absolute. Castoreum.

3/5/15

There you are in the perfume boutique. Hi! You begin your search to find an ideal scent. You pass a red-bottled hussy sitting shameless on the shelf, but you ignore her.  You want a ‘nice’ rose, you say, and are in no mood for games. You are having trouble finding ‘the one’; are undecided.  You happen to glance back and you see that red bottle winking at you!  And then she sticks out her tongue! Startled, you alert a sales assistant, and together your eyes move in the direction of your pointing finger, but like the Cheshire Cat, the tongue and the wink are gone in a flash, leaving you red-faced and humiliated. The saleslady mumbles something half under her breath and sidles away to help someone ‘normal’ and as soon as she is gone, you catch that strumpet prankster giving you a double wink. In your surreal reverie, you even imagine that you heard the last peals of an unconscionably spirited laugh issuing from her pearly teeth. You throw your hands up. Juliette 1, you 0, as you grab her and head to the register.

Mad Madame is a very quirky and unique vinegary-rose scent, and one you have to be prepared for. The salacious delight of it all is that you cannot be ready, and a few seconds after first application, you casually sniff and OMG! This is crazy! Rose doesn’t pop to the fore like in some other scents, but you can easily spot her there in the mosaic of notes incorporated.  Like I said, I picked up on what I can only describe as a slightly sharp vinegary backdrop which punctures little holes into the flesh of the rose, the sweetness of the vanilla, the juice of the blackcurrant and those top floral notes.  At one point I personally caught a mild rice-like odor floating somewhere in the mix, but I may have just been caught up in the flight of fancy!  The name of the perfume is just so fitting.  ‘Mad’ makes me think of Alice in Wonderland, The Mad Hatter, ‘unbirthday’ tea parties with the Dormouse, and indeed, down the rabbit hole Alice has fallen clutching a bottle of Mad Madame; but she is a vaudeville Alice, who will flash you her frilly knickers on the way down and not give two hoots.

Rating: 4 rousing choruses of “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!”

EXTRAORDINAIRE CAMELLIA 209

Camellias. Bergamot. Cedar Wood. Cardamom. Lemon. Musk. Peppercorn. Tea. Vanilla.

2/27/15

When I was a girl, there was one place that I never tired of going, and that was to my grandparents’ house.  I particularly found that my Grandmother influenced me in many ways as I grew up, and she was the grandparent I felt the closest to.  She was eccentric and flamboyant, and often a complete ‘nudzh!’ but some of the happiest of my childhood memories were forged in that environment.  My Grandma seemed to be able to do everything.  She was an amazing cook; her sauces and pies were to die for, she taught herself languages, yoga, made me outfits for my wardrobe and fairy princess dresses for dance and makebelieve and, along with my Grandad, spent many hours in her beloved garden.  My Grandparents had lived in the same house since my father and his sisters were children, and so, to me, thinking of that place where we spent many a wonderful Christmas pulling on ribbons emerging from a cotton-wooled snowman to get the presents hiding beneath, helping to put the angel on top of the Christmas tree, being allowed access to the treasure drawer as a special treat, pirouetting around ‘the temple’ in a dress adorned with tiny rosebuds that my grandmother had sewn for me, or seeing her dance around the kitchen to the radio while having me conjugate French verbs is a step back in time to a very precious time in my life.

And, amidst all those flowers in the gardens that her and my Grandad worked so hard to cultivate, there are the three things I remember growing.  One were the chives that I was allowed to snip under supervision when we were going to be sprinkling them on cucumber and chive sandwiches, another was the glorious plum tree that bore the sweet and delicious plums that I gorged on on more than one occasion, and the last was the camellia bush that filled the area in front of ‘the temple.’

My grandparents LOVED those camellias.  And when they were in full bloom with their raspberry-hued petals ablaze in the sunlight, it was quite a sight.  I will never forget it.  So, of course, when I see a perfume whose title is ‘extraordinary camellia,’ hello; of course I am going to want to try it.

This is a very unusual fragrance.  And I like it and I don’t, both at the same time.  The problem is, I had been longing to smell what a dedication to this flower could possibly be like.  The Camellia was also Albert Krigler’s favorite, and this scent, launched in 2009 on the 105^th anniversary of the house was intended as an homage to him.  What is not my favorite is that the muskiness and woodiness of this scent are more present than the flower.  Maybe this is partly due to the fact that very few varietals of camellia have any fragrant qualities, and when it is present, it is not that strong.  I suppose I was hoping for an amplification of what is only faintly present in nature.  Lemon is also discernible, but not overwhelmingly so; just enough to give a citrusy hand to the composition.  I like the scent because of the uniqueness of the ingredients and how they dance together, but I get more of a jitterbug when I was longing for a ballet.  If such a thing as a true soliflore perfume of the camellia flower exists, I would love to discover and try it, but I think I let my nostgalia sweep me off my feet, and the reality was sort of dampening.

Rating: 2 nifty squirrels scampering up my grandma’s plum tree.

WOOD SAGE AND SEA SALT

Ambrette seed. Sea salt. Sage. Red algae. Grapefruit.

2/22/15

Why do we dress differently from day to day?  Several reasons, probably.  Season and weather, circumstance, and mood all contribute.  Some days, we feel sunnier and brighter and want to wear colors to reflect our optimism and joie de vivre, whereas some days we might feel like a more neutral palette reflects that day’s apathetic attitude, or we wear dark colors because we might want to give an edge to what we are presenting.  I believe that the same is true for scent.  For me, personally, I have found that wearing the same perfume for days in a row does not always create the same effect.  What on Wednesday can conjure charming nostalgia, can on Thursday be an irritation, or I do not like it as much on that occasion.  Even if there is a perfume that you are in love with, wearing it day in and day out may eventually tire you and that initial moment that piqued your interest with it is not as easily expressible.  You might have a hard time drawing out what it was that you initially liked, and it might only be a shadow of that remembrance instead of that first excitable candidness.  For me personally, I have learned not to wear the same perfume two days in a row.  I may wear it often, but if I go away and come back, I get a much fresher take on the scent.  There can also be night scents, ‘going out scents,’ work-appropriate’ scents, scents that bring comfort, or nostalgia, or thoughts of summer in the depths of winter.

So saying, Wood Sage and Sea Salt is a ‘calm day-by-the-sea’ sort of scent, a fairly pretty, but unmemorable day.  The tide remains low.   It’s the day where you can take a nap on the sand, but you were hoping to watch surfers, see a dog joyously bounding in and out of the lapping waves, and laugh at children who build up their sandcastles, only to have the tide come in and knock it all down.  And you leave disappointed.  It is evocative of the seaside, but not the ocean, in all its tremendous awe.  You don’t feel the power, and the vastness and the grit, nor do you get sprayed by breaking waves. You don’t feel the rush of excitement.  Like the name suggests, salt and sage are present, along with ambrette seed for a faint muskiness and a subtle odor of grapefruit.  It smells prettier than it sounds, but is faint both in terms of potency and longevity.  I feel like the ice cream dropped from the cone before I got a chance to properly taste it with this fragrance.

Rating: 2 1/2 sun-baked seagulls squawking on  a distant rock.

JEUX DE PEAU

5/1/15

Milk. Wheat. Coconut. Licorice. Immortelle. Osmanthus. Apricot. Spices. Sandalwood. Woody Notes. Amber.

Ask yourself how you relieve stress.  Do you take a yoga class? Walk on the beach? Nap? Eat something delicious and full of sugar?  Is there an escape you have found which is able to bring you pure, unadulterated joy?  Now think about smell.  Could it be that the scent of the ocean, apple pie baking, fresh herbs, coffee beans, a rose, makes you stop for a moment and delight in something simple?

In a perfume which was inspired by the warm, fresh bread bought from the bakery of Serge Lutens’ childhood, would it be out of place to say, “This perfume is my jam”? I have been deliberately holding back on writing about it, because I don’t think I can do a good enough job.  I will shamelessly tell you that for right now at least, this is the piece de resistance of the perfume world for me.  Even after having fallen in love very recently, it feels like an old friend; like dis shit and I go way back.  Maybe this is the nostalgia note, which I would list as more prominent than actual ingredients.  Sure, Serge Lutens’ memories are not my memories; his life not my life.  But I feel like he created something for all of us here.  Consider the notes. It almost seems like a joke.  Milk? Wheat? Wait, what? Is he baking dessert or designing a perfume? Well, as it turns out, he is rather doing both.  This scent is grabbing and alluring. I have already mentioned before this being the baked brethren to Confetto by Profumum.  They are both infused with warmth, one by the sun and one by the art of the baker.  Jeux de Peau translates as ‘play on skin,’ a lovely name, and far savvier than ‘delicious croissant I want to devour’ which would have also worked here.  This gourmand does not leave you feeling overstuffed or guilty.  You are a shameless liar if you say you have never been bowled over by the heavenly waft of fresh bread as it cooks in the oven.  It is mouthwatering, and so is this perfume.  One of the things I love the most is that you carry that freshly baked smell out of the kitchen, out of the door of the store, up the street and away.  It’s like a cup of warm cocoa on a frigid winter day. The comfort and the infinite pleasure that sensation conjures, from a liquid housed in glass, is hard to find words for.  It’s as though a spirit resides in that same bottle, with the ability to mail gourmand-infused postcards upon first spray.  Spray one, a café in France! Spray two, the bread your grandma used to bake and spray three, butter and apricot preserves and nutmeg delivered to you posthaste!

Rating: 5. (2 tempting croissants, 2 baguettes w/butter and jam, and a cheeky scone)

IRIS POUDRE

3/3/15

Iris. Tonka bean. Vanilla. Musk. Sandalwood. Vetiver.

When I first applied Iris Poudre, my first reaction was that of a sulky pout. I felt like a powder puff had exploded next to me, drenching me with a cloying vapor of soapy sweetness and talcum. Having adored Malle’s Lipstick Rose from the get-go, I had been anxious for another fragrant miracle. HOWEVER, it did not take long for that overly-aldehydic opening to sweep its stage curtains aside, revealing the layered and exquisite set behind.  Powder morphed into silky cream; the view that was blocked to me by the dense forest opened up to the majestic vista beneath. Bravo! And complexity! Like the triumphal scene from Aida, there is so much going on.  The iris becomes so much more tangible, swathed as it is in musk, softness of vanilla, dusky warmth of sandalwood and a pinch of pepper. It feels like walking barefoot through a scented and hidden grove that you have happened upon and where nothing else is stirring.  The changes within the wearing time, which is 6-8 hours on my skin, are profound and discernible.  Some perfumes seem to smell pretty much the same from first spray to final dry-down, but not this.  I love it when a cherished scent fills the car as you drive, not in a nauseating or impertinent way, but almost as a tour guide to add depth and nuance to the scenery.  Great perfume just makes everything feel better.  And although markedly different, I see a relationship between this and Lipstick Rose.  Sisters they are not, but rather cousins, different in style and temperament; Lipstick the vixenish brunette of the night, a seductive temptress in her lair of velvet and furled cigarette smoke, Poudre her blonde bombshell of a distant cousin, more alive during the day; the resort queen, resplendent by crystal waters.  What they both share is a vintage-era slinkiness; the blonde and the bronzed, the doe eye and the smolder.  I start to imagine wearing different clothes, my hair is a different color, my car certainly not a Prius! The point is, you can almost believe that you can perceive, in essence, the spirit of someone that isn’t you.   As Roja Dove says, “Perfume can make the lady of eighty feel as though she is eighteen again.”  This perfume is the conjuring of a bygone era.

Rating: 4 bathing suits sunning on the Riviera.

LYS 41

2/15/15

There is a scene in 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral where Scarlett, watching the bride float down the aisle, says to Fiona, “Isn’t she beautiful?” to which Fiona wittily retorts, “Scarlett, you’re blind.  She looks like a big meringue.”

Lys 41 is the perfume equivalent of the big meringue.  It carries huge silage in the form of its 100ft wedding veil, careening down the scented aisle at the wedding with no budget cap.  It is an extremely potent white floral scent.  It seems to be that there must be a couple of fields’ worth of lilies in there, a shocking amount of tuberose, and these flowers,  like the dress, open up to a giant, undulating mass that stretches as far as the eye can see.  Lys 41 is not a scent for the meek.  I believe on the right person it could work very well.  It is a diva of a scent, but one that is deserving of a big, exuberant personality to showcase it.  It takes no prisoners in its arrival.   For the woman looking for a statement scent that is going to bear hug everyone in the room, then I think this could be the ticket, but I personally felt like I was smothered in a zorbing ball of scent, and someone just shoved me off the top of a very steep hill.

Rating: 2 Bridezillas in furious slapping match.

MURE ET MUSC

2/10/15

Imagine, if you will, having come across a secret garden.  Therein, you spy a sumptuous fruit bush, laden with rich, ripe blackberries. As you step forward, hand outstretched, to indulge in this pleasure, a large dog, fangs bared, steps between you and your prize, now winking its tantalizing eye just beyond the reach of your fingertips. You dare not approach to seize the fruit, but you have been sorely tempted and now you are caught inextricably in a trap.  You cannot quite get what you thought you wanted, but you are powerless to retreat.  You wait there, half trembling in the shadows.  Finally, the great beast becomes drowsy and sleeps, everything grows quiet, and you are free to feast upon that object of your desire, which has now softened and ripened ever more.

Such was my experience with L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Mure Et Musc.  One of the company’s most iconic fragrances, Mure Et Musc was created in 1978, by Jean-Francois Laporte, house founder.  The strange and unusual interplay of blackberry and musk created a revolutionary scent at a time when niche fragrance was few and far between, and remains a bestselling perfume for the label.

I found dark yet alluring notes upon wearing this fragrance.  The dog is animalic musk, which draws you in, but is beautifully cradled by the soft ripening of the berries.  It feels to me like you are indulging in a hidden, but quasi-frowned upon pleasure with the prominence of those base notes really seeping through.  The perfume seems to sit close to the skin, which I like, as I find the wearing experience a more personal one.  Later, during the dry-down period, the scent releases its fangs from the wearer’s wrists, and that euphoric madness that initially captivated and piqued your senses washes away like the tide, leaving you at last free to feast on the now more subtle hint of blackberries remaining.

Rating: 4 gilded keys to the secret garden.