Mother-strong - Miller et Bertaux bois de gaîac et poire (Close Your Eyes And...)

In 2007, I listed this fragrance among my "Best of" list, but I didn't do much of a review. I mentioned that my skin brings out woody scents like mad, a fact which renders most perfumes with a strong cedar note unwearable, and then proceeded to gush for a few sentences about this scent.

I revisited this scent recently, and was again stunned at how lovely it was on my chemistry. When you sniff the concoction on a card, it's mostly ordinary-pretty - a powdery floral which doesn't have much oomph besides rose and cedar. It's Kenzo Flower with cedar replacing violet. (I think that simple replacement on its own is worthwhile, even though I love Flower, but I digress.) Sprayed on a card, the wood isn't remarkable.

Then I put it on me.

Oh my. I have to say, when I was an ignorant child reading all those Victorian stories which included lush descriptions of "teakwood," this is what I imagined teak would smell like. The wood note is almost resinous, smelling remarkably sensual without being sultry, and the rose and heliotrope fade into a scattering of warm face talc... not baby powder, but that unique mineral-ish powder smell. It also has a tiny tinge of brandy, which is kind of thrilling. It makes me into a woman of old, writing in a small room, with an apertif by her side. Or I am Jane teaching Adele how to write by a cloudlit bay window. Or I am a gifted pirate figurine on the desk of a lonely captain from the East India Company. Most importantly, in this scent, I am Sara Crewe's mother-memory.

"Close Your Eyes And..." turns into this stunning nostalgic scent on my skin while being modern and romantic. If you have the type of chemistry that makes cedar scents turn to ground pencils, I highly recommend you try this scent.

citrus salsa - Sisley's Eau de Sisley 3

Well now, this was a surprise. I'm not normally a Sisley fan, but for #3, they surprised me. It looks like they took a page from the book of Ultraviolet (Paco Rabanne) and mixed an unusual flower and fruit with something spicy. But where Paco Rabanne combined pimento and capsicum with osmansthus, Eau de Sisley #3 removes the pimento and adds TONS of citrus to the top, combining the bittersweetness of grapefruit with lemon and mandarin. I had no idea that the combination of sweet citruses would work so well, but they do - the "ginger" note is a melange of typical ginger aromatics plus the tinge of capsaicin.

You wouldn't know the difference until you ingest ginger alongside the fragrance - then you can tell that the sesquiterpenesque notes are enhanced ;) Capsaicin is the obvious culprit, though I have no proof whatsoever. However, if you mix sliced grapefruit, sliced mandarin, and sliced ginger, then sprinkle cayenne pepper on it? You get exactly what this smells like on my chemistry. Since grapefruit normally smells nasty-sour on my skin, this is a sheer success. This smells STUNNING on my skin. So much so, that I needed a whole bottle. I'm not normally a fan of fruity fragrances, but successful citruses are a distinct exception. Even during the (brief) romantic and ambery drydown, the citrus and ginger lives on, and considering how fleeting citrus usually is, I'm VERY happy with this concoction. #3 will be a lovely summer-into-fall scent, for those of you who are seasonal with your fragrance-wear

Notes:

top / citrus, bergamot, mandarin, grapefruit, lemon
heart / red ginger, osmanthus
base / patchouli, vetiver, benzoin, vanilla and musk.

Light the lamp - Crazylibellule and the Poppies Dans tes Bras

There is something lovely and accessible about the Crazysticks line that Isabelle Masson-Mandonnaud created as the opening salvo of Crazylibellule and the Poppies. One can acquire niche-fragrance charm without having to pay niche-perfume prices. The sticks come in interesting and pretty paper containers, and they last quite a long time, even if the scent fades quickly.

I admit to being dubious at first. It seemed a bit odd. But the notes were appealing, so when I received a sample of Dans tes Bras (In Your Arms), I tried it.

Well, I could SMELL there was something lovely in this, but it's overlain by a far-too-distracting smell. I apologize to those who use this medium, but I can't help it. I smell the paraffin base as though someone was burning one of those interesting glass lamps. The smell has a LOT going for it, but I simply couldn't smell it until 2 hours had gone by, and by then it was so faint I wasn't sure I was smelling it correctly. However, if you all try it and don't smell the paraffin, do feel free to share your views!

Notes: juniper, pink pepper, patchouli, peach, cedar, amber, musk

the 14-yr-old wallflower - Juliette Has A Gun's Miss Charming

As a woman who loves words, I occasionally get fluffy over a perfume name. Plus Que Jamais? Passage D'Enfer? Iris Silver Mist? All are perfect examples. I am unsure how many of these perfumes would rate so highly on my scale without their names.

However, I am not the sort of person to get fluffy of a description, no matter what, and so poorly written ones will send me quite the opposite way. Therefore, I am presenting this review with the understanding that I am SO unbalanced by my reaction to the description, I cannot be held accountable.

No, really. When I read this I had to wonder who would fall for it:

The perfume of a virgin witch, docile and provocative, elegant and sensual. One instant, holding up the pressure of the world and the next, crying host tears over the death on Enzo, her bowl"

sic, and sic sic sic again. Yes, host tears on her bowl. The name, Miss Charming, did little to reconcile me to it. So with some intense reservation, I sprayed on skin.

Well, it isn't horrible by any stretch of the imagination. After the first few minutes, a sort of strange, powdered, almost aldehydic apple-y rose comes to the fore, and woody notes and some oakmossy tones start jamming in the background. Each component on its own is not offensive in the least. The problem is the combination. Sniffing this reminds me of nothing more than a young girl showering before the school dance, then applying Rose Milk lotion and Johnson's baby powder before lightly spritzing some Charlie.

Poor girl doesn't know that the three just don't go together. Drop one out of the mix and a girl might have something keen; the three smack of trying too hard. And so I imagine the girl standing against the wall all night, even her friends deserting her as the music twirls.

Now, once that funky appley rose dies down, things get better. It smells a bit more like a 60s-style chypre, and on that level I really enjoy it quite a lot! By that time, though, I am reminded of older Catherine Deneuve, and while the moniker of "Miss Charming" can still apply to her, that description has seriously got to go.

Notes: Moroccan rose, musk, wood fruits

Sensual from All Directions - Etat Libre d'Orange's Tom of Finland

I bought this during Sniffapalooza, after reading the notes and sniffing it on a beautiful friend. I openly admit that I never tried it on my skin before buying a full bottle. Smelling it on S and then noting that the purchase benefited a foundation dedicated to preserving erotic art was enough to warrant a purchase.

Given that, it's a damn fine scent on me.

But let me rewind. First things first: no one told me that the box would be so SILKY. I think I've spent about 30 minutes just stroking the box. It's like the subtlest suede ever - like those soft, velvety book covers in the 90s, the Bukowskis from Black Sparrow Press, the reprints of Miller's Tropics, or the selected poems of Anne Sexton. I don't know who else will know what I'm talking about, but the texture is unique. Skin-like. Like touching a young person's neck. For this particular texture to preface a fragrance is for someone to open my memories of a time when a young man said to me (whilst holding one of those books), "I want you to be my Anais Nin."

(Yes, that is a true story. Luckily, I didn't play that role for long.)

Therefore, the jump into Tom of Finland's briny, earthy playground seems apropos. According to the description inside:

This is fresh, pure water, with top notes of aldehydes and lemon, a water that washes away the sins of the night and leaves the skin luminous.

To me, that's hardly the water I get. I smell the lemon, but it's more the smell of the garnish of oysters - I smell the slightly earthy tone of seashell, from the birch and vetiver, straight off the bat. Those notes never die, and thus while I can grade it as a masculine smell, it smells incredibly good on my chemistry.

After a while, one's heat brings out the cypress and the pepper, but pine and geranium are never pronounced. Normally I don't smell good in evergreen notes, but this concoction makes it work. It's not particularly sexy on female skin, per se, but during the top and heart notes it is ultimately very playful.

Then it dries down.

Oh, dirty, dirty, dirty.

No, really. Romantic, but dirt. Lovely, springtime, wet musky earth. But with, oddly enough, really subtle yet gorgeous ambery sillage. Imagine a pretty amber with the lightest touch of lemon and birch, overlaid on a rich peaty whiskey scent. Heavy swooning on this end! Even better, your spring-earth-fecundity stage will only be noticeable by those who are close to you. As a quick note - vetiver earth is vastly different from patchouli earth, and it should be noted that there is no moment where the earthiness ever smells in any way unclean. Even the tonka bean note, which usually ends up as halitosis on me, is the tiniest, wispiest smell.

All in all, an incredibly pleasant, sensual, yet unthreateningly unique fragrance. The lack of anything particularly unsettling is unusual for something branded as racy. There is nothing brash or over-the-top about the way this smells. It is, all told, a scent that is charming with its surprises.

(In the meanwhile, I can still be entertained by the idea of me as a male Delta of Venus. Hold Nin's later works, please - I shall stay fervently within the non-contentious Four Chambered Heart.)

Notes:
top/aldehyde, lemon
middle/birch, leaves, pine, safraleine, pepper, cypress, galbanum, geranium
base/vanilla, tonka bean, iris, vetiver, styrax pyrogene, suede, musk, gray amber

p.s the box says "dirty drawing inside" but all I found was a drawing of two men kissing. I feel both cheated and sad for the society that thinks this needs a 21+ warning.