Cuir De Russie

First things first--I first tried Cuir de Russie some months ago, in warmer weather, and did not take to it at all. The scent was ordinary, ambery baby powder, I got no leather, and I simply didn't get why everyone raved about it so much. Worse, I got a slight indolic dampness, which reminded me unpleasantly of babies--not that babies smell bad, but you wouldn't necessarily want to rub one all over yourself for a night on the town, no? I put the Cuir de Russie aside.

Anyway, a couple of nights ago, now that the weather has chilled substantially, I dabbed another dab on, and oh, dear, it it gorgeous. The damp baby is gone, and the leather is softly sophisticated, and the whole composition is filled with wondrous light, and, oh, cool, now there's another Chanel Exclusif I wouldn't mind having a bottle of, at another two hundred bucks I don't have. Oh well. I will try it again this evening. Perhaps the damp baby will come back.

I've dabbed. Damn. No damp baby. Now it has a sort of incense note as well. This is no good. Maybe it has a slight wheaty note I don't like? I will meditate on the wheaty note.Oh well.

Anyway, while I was thinking about Cuir de Russie, I popped over to the Chanel website, and discovered that not only is this stuff only available in 200 ml. containers, for $200 a pop, but that according to the website, "CUIR DE RUSSIE captures the essence of the wild and lavish world of 1920s Russia".

This brought me to something of a pause there. My own great-grandparents left Russia not too long before the 1920s, and 'wild and lavish' is not exactly the image that has been passed down from generation to generation. More like 'miserable and short on food'. I understand that there were in fact Bolshevik flappers--much disapproved of by their elders--but frankly, the '20s in Russia began with civil war, and ended with Stalin in charge, and I kind of figured that the lady to the right over there more summed up the spirit of the day than her contemporary flapper girl up top there.

Then I read some more reviews of the fragrance, and people raved about troikas, and furs, and leather boots, and some guy named Ivan bringing them more caviar, and it suddenly struck me that THIS is what they're talking about:

This, of course, is Liv Tyler, playing the beautiful and virtuous Tatiana Larina, in the 1999 remake of Pushkin's 1831 novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. The film is titled Onegin, Ralph Fiennes plays the title role, and, well, it's too British for my taste, although very beautiful.

This is what they're referencing with Cuir de Russie--Imperial Russia. Leather boots, troikas, lavish fabrics, wild hearts, French flirtations, princesses, grand balls, St. Petersberg, Anna Karenina, Onegin, vodka, caviar, snow on the birch trees...(pogroms, oppression of the peasants, ignorance, superstition...nevermind).

OK. Guys--think maybe 1820s, or 1850s. Not 1920s. Okay?

Parfum Sacre

I'm wearing Parfum Sacre by Caron today, and grooving on it. This is another of my developing taste developments--when I first dabbed P.S. on, attracted by its reputed incense note, all I got was a sort of sweet ambery vanilla. I didn't think much of it then.

I can smell the incense now, and the pepper. I love this stuff, it's lingering and clear without being intense. Sweet, but strong. It wafts nicely off my skin.

Yum.

Chanel No. 22

I have some new samples. And one of them is a mililiter of Chanel No. 22.

But first, an interlude.

Some years ago, I was living in London, attending rabbinic school for a year (long story), and I made friends with a woman who'd made a lot of money as an antiques dealer and was living now in a beautiful apartment in Mayfair--very chichi.

She invited me over to her 'flat' for a New Year's Eve get together. Beautiful place, occupied by two happy cats who were collaborating to destroy a bazillion-dollar couch together, nice food. At some point in the evening I went to the bathroom.

Her whole countertop was taken up by GIANT bottles of Chanel perfumes. The big, big classic splash bottles. And they all had numbers.

I was fascinated. I knew about Chanel No. 5, because it's incredibly famous. I hadn't realized that there were other numbers. I also hadn't realized that you could get perfume in bottles that big. I examined them (without touching), for several minutes, and then forgot all about them.

Twelve years later...

I dab the left wrist with Chanel No. 22, and go sort of swoony. It starts off somewhat powdery, and a little floral--I can smell the lilac in the first moments--and is full of incense--and is awfully familiar from somewhere. I've been sniffing and sniffing, and cannot track the smell-memory down. I suspect it dates back to childhood, and I sniffed this, or something similar, somewhere, probably on an older female relative.

The powderiness subsides as the drydown proceeds, and the incensiness progresses. About five hours into the process, I now have a smooth, lovely, white incense with just a touch of powder and a touch of floral.

This is really really good smelling, one of those things where you dab and then you keep smelling and smelling and smelling. I think I want a bottleful.

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.

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!

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.

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.