Playing With Samples

Money has been extremely tight around here for months now, and I kind of put perfume aside for a time, since I really can't afford to buy any new samples, let alone buy a full bottle of anything. But I've been reading the perfume blogs again, and I realize that Ihaven't been getting full value out of my collection of samples, or writing about perfume, which I enjoy, so I am planning to get started again.

Right now I smell like Attrape Coeur, and I am thinking about whether I actually like violets or not.

Baume du Doge

Oh, Lord, why are they doing this to me? Eau d'Italie, creators of Sienne l'Hiver, my obsession scent, are coming out with another perfume, Baume du Doge, with a Venetian theme.

Top notes are orange and bergamot, cinnamon, coriander and cardamom, fennel and black pepper

Heart notes are myrrh, frankincense, clove and cedar.

Base is vetiver and vanilla, plus benzoin.

I am BROKE. They cannot do this to me.

Apparently it's not out in the States yet. There's some place in Germany that has samples for three euros, but the cost of having a three euro sample sent from Germany to California is prohibitive.

Apparently people are having some trouble with the name, which is being understood as 'baum' as in tree, and/or 'dog' as in 'dog'. I think they should have called it either "Bucintoro" or "Serenissima", but they didn't ask me.

Ayyyayyyayyyayyyayyyy!

Developing an open nose

Similar to an open mind, but you know, a nose.

This evening I have a dab of Eau d'Italie's Bois d'Umbrie on one wrist, and I'm considering it. My first impression of Bois d'Umbrie, a couple of months ago, was that it was harsh and hideous, like whiskey with raw wood in it, plus that disconcerting black olive note that Eau d'Italie likes so much.

It's still a puzzling smell to me, but I'm much happier with it now. It still smells like whiskey and wood--the smell I'm identifying seems to be rotting wood under moss, with a sort of boozy kick to it. A very browny green smell.

I think I'm developing a broader scent palate now, and smells that I initially rejected as being not 'perfumey' enough now seem interesting or attractive.

I like it, (B d'U), but I don't know what to do with it. I couldn't wear it, I don't think, not like a perfume. It would be sexy on a man, but I don't think my husband can be persuaded. I suppose I will keep a little vial of it, and sniff it occasionally on fall evenings.

Bois des Iles

This is absolutely beautiful.

Made by a Russian emigre, of course, how else could I love it so much, and full of woods and flowers. On me, with the EDT, I'm also getting an odd touch of soap, which I don't mind at all. It seems to wear close to the skin, and fade a touch fast. I'm going to get a sample of the parfum and see how that works for me.

It starts woodsy and clear--I've heard that some people find it harsh, which I don't at all, and then slowly develops flowers and soft gingerbread spice. It smells warm, mature, confident, a perfume that could go from jeans and denim for a fall walk, to a pretty dress and a formal dinner, to a nightie and gingerbread cookies with a child before bed. It smells goooood. OMG.

Bad Shiseido! BAD Shiseido!!

I went back to Feminite du Bois, because after the last post, once I had identified the smell that was making me not like Black Cashmere, I wanted to see if I would mind the clove note as much now that I had identified it.

I have a terribly symbol-driven mind, and once I can put words on something, it often feels very different to me.

The problem is that I now really, really like Feminite du Bois.

Which, of course, Shiseido does not sell in the United States. Making it awfully expensive, and very hard to find.

This perfume thing is rough. I also like Attrape Coeur very much, and Guerlain has apparently discontinued it after reissuing it as Attrape Coeur, when it used to be Guet-Apens.

Well shoot. I guess this is what they sell decants for.

Eureka!

I have identified the mystery scent that I hate! I think.

I ordered a sample of Black Cashmere, and just found it way too loaded down with a sweetish spice note I could not identify--I began to describe it as a combination between cinnamon and anise, and then just as a 'red-brown' smell I did not like.

Then I ordered a sample of Feminite du Bois, which I had heard raves about, and dabbed it on. It was really nice initially--and then the red-brown smell surfaced. Not horrible, but prominent enough that I really couldn't ignore it.

Clove. I think it's clove. I DO NOT LIKE IT.

Her Fetish Perfume

Les Parfums de Rosine has hacked out their own section of the niche perfumers' market by doing nothing but rose fragrances. I approve. I also approve of their English-language website, which is hilarious. They may just have a translator who is not all that native-fluent in English, but I suspect that at least some of the time they're using computer translation. Add to this the very French method of describing each fragrance in terms of the woman who uses it, and you have some delightfully fun reading. The fragments below don't do it justice. Go and read.

They begin by telling you a little about the perfumer:

Marie-hélène Rogeon was born into a family of perfume makers and her grand grand father Louis Panafieu was creating Eau de Cologne for the Emperor Napoleon III and a famous Pommade des Mousquetaires for his lacquer like finish moustaches.

They also tell you about their production method:

Every product is scrupulously packed by experimented workers.

And they tell you about the perfumes. This is from my favorite description:

A new fragrance for spring, DIABOLO ROSE, a joyful combination of rose and mint.

She always moves. On a fine and fresh face draged out an impertinent smile.
She drinks sparkled waters, mint lemonades (lemon soda flavoured with mint syrup), green ice tea.

She walks in the street with her favorite purse, crouched under her arm like a charm.
She arrests and looks for DIABOLO ROSE, her fetish perfume.

When she was a child, she played diabolo, now she plays another game. To charm amuse her. She attracts attention. And hearts fly.

I've been experimenting with the Rosines to see if they make my rose-loving heart fly. Here's the results from the first five products from the hands of the experimented workers:

1. Zeste de Rose ("On a fresh and delicate note, Un Zest de Rose gives the feeling of being neat.") This is a citrus rose, very fresh and in-your-face to begin with, and developing a sort of tea-rose (or Tea Rose) quality. Almost apple-y, although I don't think there's an intentional apple note. Very summery, clean and not too sweet. I like it.

2. Rose d'Ete ("Rose d’Eté is wearing by a blooming and happy woman whose beauty is natural and sensual.")At first sniff I did not care for this as much as the Zeste. It has lotus, or something, one of those watery-smelling things I usually do not go for at first sniff. It smelled a bit--unfocused. Not so much rose. I kind of shrugged, and went out wearing it--and it bloomed. I was getting lovely wafts of it, and it was mixing in with the wafts from people's gardens as I walked, and it was just cool, and pleasant, and the absolute soul of summer. I REALLY like it. Possible purchase.

3. Rose Kashmirie ("She is so baroque and loves to be exuberant.") This is supposed to be an oriental, with rose attar, and saffron, and God knows what else. A "wintery" rose. I was hoping for a slightly more affordable and functional something-something like the great YOSH Winter Rose disaster. I get baby powder. Nice, slightly rose-scented baby powder, but baby powder all the same. I have put the sample aside, wondering if it may develop better on me during cold weather.

4. Rose de Feu ("Her universe is intimate and is only revealed by the firelight.")
Spicy rose, and I may return to this, because I haven't really worn this all day yet. It is indeed spicy, and seems nice. I suspect it's another cold-weather fragrance. Look for later commentary.

5. Poussiere de Rose ("She may be nostalgic, also she is very active. Her world is the soft elegance of her apartment.") I had to look this one up, "poussiere" means "dust". It's a woodsy, incensey, floral, rather subtle, and it does dry down to a sort of dry quality, which is indeed more like incense dust than powder. It's got some of the qualities I was looking for with the Shaal Nur, and I really do like it.

More to follow--I have ten or eleven of these things to go.

Playing at Sephora

Yesterday I happened to be in downtown San Francisco with a little time to spare, so I popped into Sephora and played. A few notes follow.

1. Eau des Merveilles and Elixir des Merveilles

I remembered that I had sampled Hermes' Elixir des Merveilles at some point, and hadn't liked it, but I didn't remember why, so yesterday at Sephora I succumbed again to the name, the pretty bottle, and the rave reviews at various online sources, and spritzed the Eau and the Elixir at point up my hand and arm.

Eau des Merveilles starts with a happy frivolous blast of chemical orange, but then--and now I recall why I rejected the Elixir last time--it turns to bug spray. The stuff that your mom spritzes on you to keep the mosquitos off? That stuff. I can't even analyze the smell. It's bug spray.

Elixir des Merveilles does not even bother with the happy citrusy top notes. It goes straight to bug spray. I kept waiting to see if something else would develop, but it stayed bug spray, even after I scrubbed the back of my hand with the antibacterial foam Macy's provides in little dispensing machines by the elevators. This stuff has some good staying power.

I kept sniffing periodically all the way home, trying to see if I could get past the DEET and find anything else. Maybe kind of a woodsy smell? Whatever it was, the bug spray prevailed, above and below, and I have written this family of pretty bottles off, unless I need an elegant perfume to spray mosquitos with at some point.

2. Un Jardin en Mediterranee

However, happiness was mine not six inches away from the site of the mosquito-repellent disaster. I had ordered a sample of Hermes' Jardin Apres la Mousson, and while I like the watermelon opener a lot, the whole thing gets sort of musty and dry, and wasn't that great for me. Expermentally, I checked out the other two Jardins--Sur le Nil and Mediterranee.

Sur Le Nil smelled nice, and I will have to go back to it some day. Mediteranee got the whole back of the hand that wasn't covered in des Merveilles horror. I MUST HAVE MORE.

It starts with that bergamot blast thing that's apparently required by law for any fragrance that references the Mediterranean region--but already I was liking it--and then it just MELTS into softly sweet tree-flowerness, and woody herbs. There's a fig note, and I realized that I really like fig when it is just a note, as opposed to, say, a political statement. (Premier Figuier is a political statement. They grind up an entire fig tree, soak it in some alcohol, and present it to you. "Here. FIG. It smells more like sex than anything in the vegetable kingdom. You will WEAR it. You will LIKE it.")

Anyway, the Mediterranee just goes on being spectacular, and then it becomes more woodsy and herby, but still spectacular, and then it slowly, slowly fades away--and I want some. This is an official full-bottle purchase as soon as I get employed again.

Shaal Nur Frustrates My Schemes

I will admit, I had high hopes for Etro's Shaal Nur. For one thing, I liked the name. This is a general annoying perfume trait o'mine--I like things that have nice names, or are packaged in a way that's appealing to me--and it should be all about the juice, no? No way. I am too verbal for that. I'm Irish. Deal.

Anyway, it's named after a Mughal princess, and it's a citrusy floral incense, and it sounded good and I got a vial and dabbed it on.

And the top notes hit me, and my heart soared. And I KNEW, KNEW that I was going to get a bottle of this stuff and wear it for the rest of my life. Lemony, flowery incensey goodness. Wow.

Five minutes later the top notes wore off. And I ended up with something that smelled like dried-out preserved lemons--sour citrus and must. UGH.

I have tried twice more, with the same results. The first rush KNOCKS ME OUT, but when it's gone, minutes later, I'm left with something that smells sour, old and unused, and totally wrong.

Crud!

Safran Troublant

Splashed Safran Troublant by L'Artisan all over me, and went about my business.

First things first--Safran Troublant makes me smell like a Persian dessert, with all that saffron and the rose backup. I have no problem smelling like a Persian dessert. It was pleasant. I like saffron in food, and I found it kind of nice to have floating around me.

I do not understand the name. 'Troublant', if I understand correctly means 'troubling', 'disturbing', something like that. L'Artisan translates the name as "Saffron Spell". All of this led me to imagine something deeper, more acrid, more intense. Naah. Iranian dessert treat. I think Mashti Malone makes an ice cream that tastes exactly like this smells, with pistachios in it. It's sweeeeet saffron, that's the strongest impression I get from it. Innocent. Kind of charming.

I like it, I do. The saffron smell is awfully nice. I guess I was expecting something dryer and darker. I can see wearing this again--it's a nice sort of weekend smell. It's also inspired me to make risotto milanese some time soon, so this is an all-around win, no?

YOSH? OMG!

So, OK, somehow I become fixated on descriptions of the YOSH Winter Rose perfume oil. Everyone keeps commenting on how expensive it is, and indeed $200 bucks seems quite expensive for a full bottle, but I figure it sounds really good, and I should smell it, so I order up a sample from Luckyscent.


Now, eight bucks is more money than I have ever spent on a perfume sample, but what the heck, so I order me my sample, and they deliver it, and I notice, you know, that it's a very small sample.


Oh hell, smell it, says I, so I smell it. And I hope, by now, that it will not smell nice, so that I can stop being obsessed with this stuff.


But it smells nice. Dear God it smells nice. Apparently cardamom and rose is, like, the world's most inspired combo, like chocolate and peanut butter, or Lucy and Ricky.

It makes my heart yearn and calm at the same time. It smells super. And I smear on a bit more, and go about my business.

And the smell vanishes.

I mean, vanishes.

Now I normally do not like perfumes to stick and stick, but this stuff simply vanishes off the face of the earth, like five minutes after application. So I apply some more, and it is really nice. But after about two minutes I can smell the oil base more strongly than the rose and cardamom and this continues until the scent completely vanishes at about minute seven and a half.

OK, so it's a lovely smell, but not really suited for wearing, and expensive--strike this one off the list, reluctantly. But then, somehow, I go back to Luckyscent to read the reviews--discovering in the process that I am not the only one this fades on--and I suddenly realize something.

That $200 bucks? That's for EIGHT MILILITERS.

OK. This is simply a scam.

But the rose/cardamom is amazing, really amazing, and I may try to recreate it with cheaper oils at some point--it's kind of wonderful.

White-Out

I ordered a sample of L'Artisan's Passage d'Enfer, because I am starting to think I might like incenses--or I was, now I'm starting to wonder--and because everyone raved over it. Try it out, says I. Teeny tiny decant on the way.

Basically, to this untrained nose, it smells exactly like the incense they use at my father's parish church. Which is nice, definitely. Attractive, and with pleasant memories of Christmases and Easters past. But I cannot see wearing it as a fragrance. When I close my eyes--I've taken to trying to define fragrances by color--I get pure white light, which is cool and everything, but I'm not an archangel, and I don't think I can pull this smell off.

Piment Brulant

How could I resist? L'Artisan's Piment Brulant is supposed to be inspired by xocolatl, the Aztec forerunner to hot chocolate. Think unsweetened cocoa mixed with hot peppers, vanilla and other spices, and thickened with cornmeal. Sometimes, apparently, they added honey, and annatto, and Lord knows what. Good, whatever it was, and associated with the fertility goddess Xochiquetzal, which is probably why legend has it that the Aztec emperors drank fifty cups of the stuff a day. They must have been jittery as hell, with all that caffeine, but I guess it was worth it.

The word xocolatl apparently means 'bitter water', but the cocoa bean's Latin name is Theobroma cacao, theobroma meaning 'food of the gods'. This is one of the very few times you will catch me suggesting that the Latin for something is preferable to the Nahuatl for something.

If it's Mexican it gets my attention--even if it's Mexican as interpreted by a snooty French niche perfumer--so I had to order a teeny tiny vial and check this one out.

Piment Brulant smells like hot peppers and green tomatoes and chili powder, vanilla and sweet spices and a warm trace of bittersweet chocolate. It smells like the best dessert enchilada in the world, or something, and if you sniff your skin too closely right after applying it, you get a sharp little capsaicin blast to the sinuses. It's rich, and lovely, and WOW. Hot, but not at all overheated or stuffy. I can imagine wearing it year round.

It's like--women in black lace mantillas, and women in blue jeans sitting around a table together. The Cathedral Metropolitana in Mexico City. Aztec hot chocolate in Spanish china. Tangled green gardens. Papel picado and TV antennas. Ancient, old-fashioned and modern things all happily coexisting in a wash of sweet spice and chili powder.

I think what appeals to me most about this is that there is something sophisticated and feminine about it, but without the powder and heavy florals. It does have a black lace quality to it, but not blatantly sexy black lace. Black lace and flan and chocolate mole. And tomato plants. And beautiful women.

Two Plum Fragrances

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

-- William Carlos Williams

I have now sniffed something from L'Artisan. (It's a momentous moment in a wannabe-perfumista's life.) The something that I sniffed is Voleur de Roses, which is apparently a rose/patchouli fragrance with a plum 'note' or hint. At least that's what I get from various online readings. You couldn't tell by my nose, which informs me that this perfume basically smells like a plum. A superlative plum, with some rose and patchouli making it even better.

The straight juice in the teeny-tiny vial smelled awful to me, chaotic and very alcoholic, but as soon as it was on my skin it relaxed and began to smell wonderful, plummy but, at this point, with a fair amount of rose, and something I identified as violet-like. It smelled goooood at any rate, mysterious, but simple and serene.

I spent a few minutes sniffing my wrists while I did my morning before-work stuff, and determined that all the bloggers who said L'Artisan scents fade quickly seemed to be right. (This is OK with me. Perfumes that cling and cling tend to make me crazy.) I put on some more, several dabs more, and headed off to work, smelling serene and mysterious.

By the time I started work, the smell had turned into a clear, vibrant, plum scent, sweet but with a sharpness that reminded me of that sour taste that stays around a plum pit no matter how sweet the fruit. Just a little floral, and a little patchouli. It smells amazing, fruity but not too sweet, like the smell of an orchard with rose bushes and cold dew-soaked grass under the trees, with just a little wet dark earth.

Somehow it felt like a very deep and emotional smell, but serene, super serene.

Later that evening, after the last of the vibrant, emotional, plum serenity had wafted away, I tried Keiko Mecheri's Ume. This is a totally different plum, spicy and salty and reminding me a great deal (as I had hoped), of the little sweet-and-salty plum candies I remember from when I was a kid, that they still give you after your meal at the King of Thai noodle places. Definately a plum candy rather than the straight plum off the tree. It's rich, and has a kind of deliberately exotic smell to it--sort of 1920s Orientalesque adapted with a little modern Asian-American irony. It's cheerful and sexy, maybe even sassy, and it made me smile.

Oddly enough, thinking about where I would wear these, I came up with New Years', but in a very different context. Voleur de Roses, I thought, would be great for Rosh Hashanah, with that harvest-fruit scent, and the deep calm that goes with it. Ume I could see wearing either to a secular New Years' party, or for the Lunar New Year in February. It would be a great winter smell, as spicy and warm as it is, and I can see wearing it while eating Chinese food and toasting the new year with plum wine that smells a little like my perfume.

Funny, I never thought fruit perfumes would be something I would go for.

More Decants On Their Way

So I got paid, and I needed a treat (life being, right now, stressful), so I ordered up another batch of teeny-tiny decants. On their way:

Stella, by Stella McCartney--because rose and amber sounded good

Tresor--because apricot jam sounded good!

Magnolia Romana by Eau d'Italie--loved Eau d'Italie, and Sienne l'Hiver, so giving this a try.

Ume by Keiko Mecheri--I grew up in San Francisco, and salted plum treats are a fond childhood memory. I want to see if this is anything like that in perfumey form.

Three L'Artisans: Piment Brulant, Passage d'Enfer and Voleur de Roses--I'm trying Passage and Voleur because they sound intriguing, and I've heard lots of good things about them on the web. The Piment Brulant I want to try simply because it's got some of my favorite things--chocolate and peppers (yay!), and how can I pass up something that's described as being based on an Aztec love potion?

Comme des Garcons Zagorsk--I almost went for the Avignon, but I liked the sound of the notes for this one better, and well, Russian, Russian...

and Serge Lutens Fleurs d'Oranger, because it sounds wonderful. And because I gotta try something by this Lutens guy, and see if the perfume is as fabulous as everyone tells me.

Apparently I pick things to sample because they sound like they taste good, or because of cultural associations. Well, I could have told you that!

Eau d'Italie

I am still in the newbie stage of perfume addiction, where I want to smell everything, and I keep reading all the blogs, and getting excited about each new brand and scent I hear about. I want to smell everything. It was while I was trawling around for rose perfumes--I love rose scents, and haven't actually found The One I want yet, that I learned about Eau d'Italie, from someone who was reviewing their Paestum Rose perfume.

Apparently, Eau d'Italie is the brainchild of a woman who is part of the family that runs the world-famous (although I'd never heard of it before) Le Sirenuse Hotel in Positano, Italy. Eau d'Italie (and why does it have a French name, pray tell?) is a series of perfumes meant to evoke various parts of Italy. I was sold. For one thing, the whole set-up seemed like the setting for a Judith Krantz novel, and for another, I could hardly think of anything cooler than smelling like Italy. (There IS nothing cooler than smelling like Italy. Really.)

So I ordered me some decants.

The concept behind the first fragrance, Eau d'Italie seems to have been to capture the scent of the Amalfi coast in summertime. I have never been to Amalfi (alas, alas), but the Mediterranean summertime smell of this fragrance was incredibly familiar and resonant for this Northern California girl. "Angel Island!" I said after wearing it for a while. "Marin!"

It's the smell of clay and soil baking out in the summer heat, just a note of citrus from someone's backyard, a million herbs and flowers, dust kicking up under your hiking boots, and a chorus of insects screaming in the hills as the Pacific rolls silver-bright downhill from you. Well, it is for me, anyway.

I guess this makes sense. I live in a region with a Mediterreanean climate, and I suppose it is natural that some of the natural scents and aesthetics should overlap. The note that seems to make this perfume stand out for me is the red-clay smell that I get most strongly from it. Per fragrantica.com, "The accord of soil or the mineral accord of clay (argile in French) is the central note of the composition." It reminds me most of the summer smell of the hills around here, and I got another strong whiff just yesterday when I accompanied students from the school I teach at to a park with a baseball diamond. The red clay smell hit me in the face, and I said "Eau d'Italie!" And grinned.

I also got a little decant of Sienne l'Hiver. This did not require any time to get to know it and think about it. I had a visceral reaction to Sienne l'Hiver. Synapses went off. Pleasure centers in the brain lit up like fireworks. And I had to crack down on my first instinct, which was to drink it. Swear to Bob, as my students say, I almost poured out the decant straight onto my tongue.

Having avoided this, (what happens if you drink perfume, anyway? I grew up on stories of drunks in the U.S.S.R. drinking cologne for the alcohol content--but I made myself fairly queasy accidentally swallowing a slug of mouthwash a while ago) I am still experimentally taking the top off the Sienne l'Hiver every couple of days and sniffing it, just to get that "Uh huuuuh!" reaction from my brain again. It's so totally a fall/winter smell that I haven't been wearing it, although I sometimes dab my wrist so I can sniff while I watch TV or grade papers.

I get a lot of roasted chestnut from it, and smoke and incense. Apparently there is a black olive note--perhaps that's the slightly salty-rich smell that seems to underly the whole thing. I think the concept is to evoke a winter day in Siena--the chestnut vendors and the historical churches and such. For sure it's less familiar a smell to me than the Eau d'Italie is, but it evokes a wonderful sense of comfort and wonder combined--and I have a dreadful feeling that I will buy a whole bottle. I can hardly wait for November, just so I can wear this in cold, bleak weather. Mmmm. Good.

Now, the scent that actually brought me to this line, you may recall, was the Paestum Rose. To which my reaction was, in the words of Bart and Lisa Simpson, 'meh'. It's nice, but I basically smell heavy sweet roses and incense. I have no problem with either smell, but I am willing to bet I could find a body oil that smells exactly like this in a store on Telegraph Avenue or the Haight for seven bucks. It seems pretty strong for anything except a rave, (which I so rarely attend ;). There's something old-fashioned about it to me--it either evokes hippies (one of my students, who love Led Zeppelin could wear this), or very old-fashioned indeed--it seems Roman, possibly. Something ancient, and interesting, but not something I could wear any more than I could wear Liz Taylor's eye makeup from Cleopatra. (I bet Cleopatra would have gone for this fragrance, though. It is pretty sexy.)

I totally want to try the Magnolia Romana and Bois d'Ombrie scents.

The packaging, as you can see, is pretty awful. WHY have a line evoking all the regions of Italy and then package them in generic hairspray bottles? Oh well. When I have my own hotel in Italy I can put the signature perfume in anything I want, I guess.

Gunmetal Rose

In my first round of decants ordered from Perfumed Court, I decided to try out Creed's Fleur de The Rose Bulgare. I have a fondness for all things rose, you see, and I'd heard such lovely things about this fragrance that I just figured I had to check it out.

The problem I've found is that, rather than the pure fresh rose I was expecting, the effect is rather like a pure fresh rose mixed with metal, and not nice metal. (What would nice metal smell like?) That smell your hands get after you've rolled all your loose nickels into rolls for the bank? It's that smell, compounded with flowers. Roses pounded with dirty nickels. Floral base metal.

Ghahhah. The mind rebels. I actually pull away from the smell of this, with my face screwed up, trying to avoid it. Apparently I am not the only person afflicted with this problem. One commenter at Now Smell This writes: "For some reason, that one came off metallic, like tin, on me. It smelled like a rose wrapped in aluminum foil."

Now Smell This sensibly replies: "It is a wonderful thing when something expensive smells horrible on the skin, no?"

Oh yes. I still have the better part of a milliliter of this stuff left. Send me an SASE, and it's yours. Now I have to go and scrub my wrists. I put on one last dab of the gunk before posting, to see if the earlier impression was hasty. It was not. My wrist smells like gunmetal and dying flowers. Soap! SOAP!

Happy to Be

Here in Northern California, we are having a heat wave, and my bottle of Clinique's Happy to Be has finally come into its own.

I picked this up after a long love affair with Clinique's Happy, and for about a year, found that I could not wear it. (This is the sort of thing that used to make me feel like an idiot until I heard scentbloggers saying the same kind of thing. What scentbloggers may say about my love affair with Happy is another matter. Hands off my Happy. It makes me happy.)

Anyway, I have discovered that the defining element for making Happy to Be's honeysuckle-and-cucumbery notes get along with my body chemistry is heat above eighty-five degrees. The sweetness no longer radiates obnoxiously the way it does when I wear this in slightly cooler weather, the weird watery chemical notes smell clean and cool, rather than, well, weird. Best of all, the scent is somehow tricking my brain into believing I am surrounded by cool gardens full of ponds, rather than in my sweltering apartment with a pool outside that will not be opened until Memorial Day, no matter HOW hot it gets.

The only problem I am facing now is how rapidly the scent is burning off in this weather--while in cooler times, my concern was how determinedly it clung to me--but I just keep spritzing, and praying for fog.

Teeny-Tiny Molotov Cocktails

I have discovered the world of the perfume decant, and I see trouble ahead. Specifically, I see a world in which I have far too many 1-mililiter vials in my life, cluttering my bedside table and my drawers. And what do you do with the teeny- tiny vials full of stuff you turn out to hate? Is there a teeny-tiny decant exchange somewhere? Or are they only good to be turned into teeny-tiny Molotov cocktails?