Frederic Malle: Portrait of a Lady

Have we all had our hissy over this one?  Is it possible to discuss it with any objectivity now, or do we need more time?  Remember just a few months back, how desperate so many of us were to smell this?  The review Abigail wrote on Portrait was one of our most trafficked posts that month.  Some people reacted orgasmically to the fragrance, once they finally laid hands on it.  Many seemed slightly peeved with it----first confused, then openly hostile or dismissive.

image: David Kozlowski

On the one hand it's lovely.  Me, I get no fruit in Portrait.  It's rose and oud all the way.  So I'm confused when I read so many people saying it smells like a typical fruit-inflected floral patchouli thing.  Were I to smell this in a store, without any name or brand attached to it, I'd consider dropping coin for it.  It is most definitely an oriental.  And even for an oriental, it hardly seems pedestrian to me, costly or no.  It represents the apogee of a type of scent I don't have and want but can't find.  The closest relation for me is Montale's Black Aoud.  I've come this close a few times to purchasing Black Aoud: it's the perfect combination of rose and oud and priced at about 100 bucks for 50 ml, which seems pretty reasonable by indie fragrance standards.  The problem is, it doesn't last long on my skin.  Portrait solves that problem, lasting all day and then some.  It feels as if made with the highest quality ingredients.

TWRT 12.6.09

This Week’s Random Thoughts –

Perhaps I’m cranky, but do you ever wonder why certain people go to the trouble to post their masses of reviews on basenotes and MUA when you find the majority of them worded like this: “well, I don’t usually like tuberose (floral orientals, chypres, just fill in the blank) so I loathed this and needed to scrub it off my wrists.” Personally, I don’t need anyone, who prefers sheer citrus scents like Annick Goutal Duel, to review Amouage Gold from a dab-on 1 ml vial, and tell me it’s just “a big heady, cloying 80’s scent.” Thanks but your opinion is useless. I often wonder why these people do this. Are their lives so boring that they get an ego boost out of being a “top reviewer” on MUA or basenotes? If you are not inclined to like anything sweet, heady or powerful then don’t bother buying a vial of the stuff to tell me how much you dislike it.

So, Serge’s next release (L’Eau)is as fresh as a dryer sheet. I’m not reading anything mysterious or mythical into his choice aside from the fact that he’s a sell out just like everyone else and needed a fresh cologne in his line-up.

On the cooking front, I made turkey pot pie this week for the first time. It was an exercise in using up Thanksgiving leftovers. I learned that you need to boil the potatoes before putting them in the pie to bake. It was otherwise good.

Amouage Ubar smells a bit like bug spray. And I normally like big florals like this.

I’m having a huge affair with Strange Invisible Perfumes lately. It might end badly but for the moment I’m anxiously awaiting a big box. For those who need to know, Heroine has been reissed in parfum concentration. And, just to clarify, because I was dopey and didn’t get it myself, it’s heroine with an ‘e’ on the end, as in female hero, not heroin the very bad drug.

I thought I was doing well this year with holiday shopping. Suddenly I realize it’s December 5th and I have loads to do and I’m stressed as usual.

I ordered Angel Excessive Parfum in the limited edition bottle because it was on sale. I’m so happy I did because the bottle is a thing of excessive tacky beauty and the juice is as powerful as a nuclear explosion. I want to hide it away and sniff it in 20 years and see what I think then.

Guerlain’s Chypre Fatale is not really a chypre nor fatal. It’s very fruity with a little patch in the base. Oriental Brulant is the nicest from their Elixir Charnal limited edition series.

My nose is changing. Now when I go back and sniff things from a year or two ago I seem to smell them more clearly (if that makes sense?). I wore Divine eau de parfum this week and was in heaven. This is truly some gorgeous glamour juice. It’s such a well done ‘big floral.’ I don’t know that I’d call it buttery, like LT in The Guide, but I will call it amazing. It’s big, blowsy, retro and oh-so -feminine and pretty. To me it’s a big powdery tuberose but when it dries down it seems to turn into a lovely bouquet of hyacinths.