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?

Perfume Persona

What does it mean when you find that what you actually want to wear does not accord with your ideas, when you became a perfume newbie, about what you would want to wear?

I mean, I love Bois des Iles. And I love Feminite du Bois. And I've developed a bit of a yen for Tann Rokka Signature. (And Samsara.) But despite a fondness for some of the woods, most of the stuff I assumed I would like, I don't like so much. Incense, except for a tad in Chanel 22, has let me down. Spice, rich roses, amber and musk, lavish Orientals, all of the things I assumed I would naturally gravitate toward, I mostly haven't gravitated toward. I like a few things in each of these categories, but not all THAT much.

What do I like? Apparently I like GREEN. It started with Chanel 19. And then Bandit--OK, after Bandit I was done for. I like galbanum, and bitter lovely viridian green perfume. Everything in my wardrobe may be in warm colors, but it's the hot greens I want on my skin.

I wonder if this indicates some lack of self-knowledge, or just a lack of knowledge about perfumes when I got started.

Tabac Blond-History Comes Full Circle

Tabac Blond, by Caron, is kind of a legend. Created in 1919, it was developed at a time when French women were beginning to take up smoking, and was meant to be a complement to that. It has a reputation for being edgy, chic, and sophisticated.

The first impression is of a sort of standard Caron, sweet and vanilla-floral. With the sweetness, though, comes the tobacco--cigarette tobacco, so fresh and photorealistic that there's almost an impression of a cigarette forming out of the ether.

It's a fascinating thing to smell, but the problem is that history has moved on. Where fashionable young ladies in Paris after the war took up smoking, American women of my generation largely do not smoke, and smoking has a declasse reputation that has overridden it's previous glamorous one. Cigarettes are the last thing I want to smell like.

Tann Rokka Signature

OK, it used to be called Kisu. Whatever.

Signature is based on 'ancient Japanese bathing rituals', according to its literature. I have no insight on ancient Japanese bathing rituals, although it summons up an image of very elderly Japanese ladies, blissfully up to their necks in hot tubs. And the juice really does smell rather like that. If I had to identify this smell it would be cedar planks that have been washed down repeatedly in soapy scalding hot water. It's the smell of a hot-tub with nice incense burning in the changing room.

People refer to this having 'aquatic notes', but I don't smell the water, just the effect of the water on the wood. This is a beautiful cedar, and I love my cedar. It's simple, domestic, and wears soft but persistent on the skin.

The opening is a bit wacky. Lots of people on Basenotes ID it as Lysol. It's a bit cleanserish, but I think it's more like Simple Green or something--and at any rate it goes quickly, at least on my opening-note-eating skin.

This stuff is really nice--a lovely scent without being overly perfumey. It seems homey, suited to all seasons, and pleasant and easy to wear.

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.

In Which I Sail on a Sea of Molten Woods, and Don't Like It Much

Hmmmph. I loved Bois des Iles, and I loved Feminite du Bois, and I really liked Secret Obsession, and so I was developing an idea that I liked woods, in general. Subsequent to this, I decided to try more woods, and I developed a deep interest in trying 10 Corso Como. To round out the sandalwood experience, I also ordered up a sample of Bois de Santal, by Keiko Mecheri, whose Ume I appreciate.

I think it's cedar that I like, or maybe I just need different sandalwoods. Perhaps I should have remembered my unfortunate experience with Esteee Lauder's molten-wood experience, Sensuous, which left me with the unnerving experience of having my arm smell like furniture varnish.

10 Corso Como is a decided disappointment. I really liked the idea of liking it--it comes with lots of accessories, like lotion and bath oil and solid perfume, and it's all in neat little retro deco packaging--like, how cute is that bottle? But it doesn't smell smoky or incensey as advertised, it smells like raw wood, and develops an unpleasantly screechy sulphurous note when the geranium topnotes wear off. I just don't yike it. Now, I did have a problem with Feminite du Bois until I got used to it--this could just be a matter of educating my nose--but I don't think so. I think I just don't like this stuff very much.

Today I am wearing the Mecheri Bois de Santal slathered on, and I can hardly smell it. There's a faint sandalwood whiff--bland and sulphurous--and that's about it. The flowers and musk advertised hardly appeared.

Hmmm. Starting to think the sandalwood is a dead end.

Fracas

The deeper I delve into perfume blogs, the more names I start to see over and over again. Fracas is one of them, mostly connected to phrases like 'skankahol' and 'femme fatale'.

I didn't try Fracas for a bit, because I didn't initially expect to be interested in white florals, and the whole overtly sexy genre wasn't all that interesting at first. But then I saw the bottle at Sephora, and it was so lovely--all black, with that beautiful label--and a character in a Jennifer Weiner novel was wearing it--and I spritzed a little on a sample paper.

My first reaction was 'for God's sake don't let it get on my skin!' I'm not sure why. It didn't smell bad. It just smelled INTENSE. I sniffed at it briefly, and then went away for a while.

Then I did some more reading, and I decided I should find out what it smelled like on me. With this in mind, I went back to Sephora, spritzed both wrists, full strength, and then took BART home. I apologize profusely to the other commuters.

Fracas is a celebration of white florals run amok. It is not polite, although it is sweet. It is swooningly intense. And there is a peculiar sour-butter note, which I don't mind, especially since it seems to punch up the sexiness past the simple sugariness that some white florals seem to have. It's flower sex combined with people sex, if that makes any sense.

It's crazy stuff. I don't know if it's ME, but it's pretty cool.