I Wore This: Chanel Cristalle EDP and Vero Profumo Mito

Cristalle is nice, and I prefer the edp to the edt, which is nice too, for the all of five minutes it lasts on me. Cristalle in that big brick bottle Chanel makes. My Cristalle edp comes in this brick but hits you like a feather. I keep trying to like feathers but I prefer bricks. So the Cristalle feels like a beautiful tease, and puts me in an irritable mood.

Mito Voile d'Extrait is a brick - not a blunt thing, not bombastic, but it has force, it's got a confidence and an assertiveness about it. People compare it to greens like Cristalle and maybe Chanel No.19, Scherrer, Givenchy III. References can be useful. They make you feel you can control the narrative happening to you.

I don't compare Mito to anything but other Vero Profumo fragrances, each of which, in each concentration, is a different state of mind. I find it difficult to put them into words. I can find all kinds of words but I don't want to restrict the fragrances. I don't want to break them down or compartmentalize them. They happen to me in a place outside of vocabulary. They make words feel feeble at a time when almost everything does back-flips to assure you it can be summarized succinctly.

I've heard that Vero Kern, the perfumer behind Mito, was inspired by an Italian garden, at Villa d'Este in Tivoli. Smelling Mito I don't need her to describe that garden in words. She's brought it alive in my mind. Cristalle is this kind of thing: beauty as an ethereal concept, something that wafts across your consciousness as a veil. Sheer, really. Chanel takes pains at all times to reassure you that you are in control of what you see and experience.

Mito takes you over the way extreme beauty or experience does. There's no safety from it. There's no remove, no conceptual detachment. A veil sits between you and the thing you see through it. It imposes an abstraction, a sensation of separateness, locking you securely behind the wheel of your own experience. It pats your hand and affirms your sovereignty over your perceptions, the things you see out in the world. They don't happen to you; you happen to them.

What Mito does, what all of the Vero Profumo fragrances do for me, isn't precious that way. When I see someone or something beautiful, I experience it, it colonizes my emotions, changes the alchemy of my thoughts and mood. There's no separation; there's no protection from it. I'm communing with it and being changed by it and it might end up being stronger than I am. It is in that moment. It can make me feel tiny, a speck, swimming around in powerful, gorgeous and fraught otherness.

Do you know that moment in a beautiful place, where everything seems to be perfectly constellated, caught in a moment of full bloom? It reminds you what a miracle a moment can be, how fugitive it is. Mito sits on my skin bringing that alive. A brick as in a force of beauty. Cristalle assures you beauty can be handled, minimized, abstracted, ordered. Mito reminds you what a fantasy that is.

Shifting Clouds: Organza

I keep thinking I must have written about Givenchy's Organza.  It's one of my favorites - even though, until recently, I didn't wear it all that much.  Weeks ago, a friend discovered a tiny bottle, probably 5 ml at most, in a flea market, and he wore it so much I was compelled to bring my bottle out of effective retirement.  Suddenly, I saw Organza in a different light, the way you do when you watch a favorite movie with someone who's never seen it before.  I appreciated it more, and saw some of its qualities more clearly.

I always liked Organza - creamy, rich, and long lasting, it's pretty hard not to like.  But when I bought a bottle a few years ago, it was only an ounce or so.  My friend loves Organza, along with Poison and Moschino de Moschino - and his signature, Chanel Egoiste - and it smells so fantastic on him (everything seems to) that I hated to see him dabbing rather than spraying, so I gave him my bottle, and I went looking for another one.

The bottle I gave him is older, and my bias against reformulations led me to assume it must be better than the current version.  I was surprised to learn that whatever they're currently stocking is just as good, if not a little better, than the original.  That's not the case with the fragrance's flanker, Organza Indecence, which is still nice these days but less in some indefinable way than it was.  Weirdly, Organza doesn't seem as robust now but projects with more presence and seems to last even longer than the old stuff, which is muskier but moves more quickly through its development, if something as linear as Organza can be said to develop.  The latest Organza envelops you in a mood, permeating your outlook all day.

Organza was created in 1996 by Sophie Labbe.  That surprised me too.  Labbe isn't one of my favorites. In fact, there isn't much of anything she's done that I would recommend.  The last thing she did that I smelled, Calvin Klein Beauty, was..what it was:  a clean, musky floral with all the presence of a raw peanut.  Nice enough for a Christmas gift - unlikely to offend anyone; it was a bit like giving your father a striped tie or a winter scarf (guilty, by the way), beige or camel colored, the kind of thing he wouldn't cry too much over if he left it behind after dinner at the restaurant.  He might not even run back for it.  Labbe's Parisienne, for YSL, left me kind of cranky.  Why mess with perfection?  Like Belle d'Opium, Parisienne seemed like some kind of vandalism: like Jean Luc Godard remaking Breathless as Porky's, although I suspect someone like Godard would have made the material a little more interesting, if not exactly re-inventing the wheel in the process.

The thing you notice most about Organza - which might just be a lie of the mind, an illusion created by the color of the "juice" and the name itself - is an odd impression of oranges, odd because there's nothing the least bit citrus about the fragrance.  The notes list orange blossom, but orange blossom doesn't smell like oranges, nor does Bergamot really, which is also listed.  The effect resembles Anne Pliska, another deceptive use of orange - though the two fragrances are otherwise pretty dissimilar.

That orangey impression never really wanes for me, though the floral heart makes itself known from the beginning and only deepens as the top notes recede.  Nothing really recedes, I guess, in Organza.  You just become aware of different things the longer you spend time in it.  The orange is abundantly creamy.  The florals - gardenia, honeysuckle, tuberose, ylang ylang, jasmine - are even creamier.  Organza is sweet - and gourmand - but doesn't feel sugared or foody.  It feels slightly old fashioned - perhaps because it's so rich and expansive - and big boned, like another creamy floral, 24 Faubourg (by Hermes), but the sweetened aspects make it feel distinctly contemporary at the same time.

Some of the sweetness - maybe a lot of it - can probably be pinned on the vanilla.  There's quite a lot of it in Organza, but, again, it's so perfectly balanced with the florals and a dash of nutmeg that it feels inseparable from them.  Smelling Organza, I would never think "floral", either, whereas with Faubourg you can't think anything else.  The base isn't really much of a base, as when Organza "dries down" it remains consistent with its initial impression.  The base is more like a coat the fragrance is wearing.  In addition to the vanilla, it includes amber, cedar, and sandalwood.  There's the faintest woodiness to Organza.  It's an amazing construction, this thing.  You regard it the way you do the sky, amazed at something so huge and wondrously constellated, its slow-moving clouds constantly shifting into the subtle shapes of only vaguely recognizable things.

I have way too many perfumes.  I make it a policy not to say just how many.  The point is I have no business getting anything larger than 50 ml.  Eventually, it will run me out of house and home.  Were I a more practical, sensible person, I would buy decants, or travel sprays.  Lately, though, I've been drunk on the way a big brick of a fragrance feels in the hand.  Case in point: those older, slender Chanel chunk bottles (what's dreamier than something called Cristalle in a container which strikes you as a fortress?)  I bought a bottle of Organza that is so enormous and formidable it feels like a staggeringly tall building on a busy street corner.  I can't help myself.  Nothing equals the feeling of a bottle like that, or matches so perfectly the scale a fantastic fragrance like Organza dictates on your fantasies.

Parfums de Nicolaï: Week-end a Deauville

Week-end a Deauville (WaD) is a pleasant surprise. When I read about the two springy launches from PdN last year I was most interested to try Violette in Love. Violette in Love was nice enough but it didn’t knock any of my favorite violet fragrances off their pedestals. I took my sweet time getting around to buying a bottle of WaD and lo and behold this is the easy winner of the two.

Why do perfume houses do this to us Americans and make certain fragrances exclusive to Paris (or Europe?). Is there a financial/profit issue I’m not understanding? For instance, I’m trying to get a bottle of Roja Dove Scandal and the Roja Dove website is under construction and I don’t think the other stores that carry it ship to the U.S. Week-end a Deauville is another one of these non-exports. So, this is another reason why it took me a lot longer to try this little gem.

Weekend a Deauville is a bright, cheery, sparkling, effervescent, dry citrusy floral chypre (enough adjectives for you?). It reminds me of Chanel Cristalle except without the sharp galbanum claws; in comparison WaD is a gentle little pussy cat who is so darn adorably soft and purrs so happily on my skin. I like Cristalle but sometimes she just claws me up a bit. I don’t think The Scented Salamander was as taken with WaD as I am. She describes it as simply pretty and nice for a casual weekend getaway, making the name perfectly fitting. I agree with The Scented Salamander where she writes that this is an unusual chypre in that it’s casual. Most chypres strike me as rather formal fragrances, too, but WaD is resolutely fun, fresh and flirtatious; words I would not normally use to describe a chypre.

For a citrusy chypre, WaD’s longevity is exceptional. Usually citrus notes are the most fleeting but here the combination of citrus and galbanum last and last. This is a huge accomplishment in my book. Week-end a Deauville begins citrusy and green and actually stays this way. The florals are lily of the valley, hyacinth, mimosa and rose and I don’t detect any of these individually, and the overall floral thrust seems an early spring bouquet – delicate and charmed.

I’m quite taken with Week-end a Deauville; so much so that if I had tried it in 2009 it surely would have made my favorites of the year list.

Notes include: essence of Italian bergamot, petit grain from Paraguay, galbanum, lily-of-the-valley, rose, mimosa, pepper essence, pink pepper, clove, oakmoss absolute and styrax balm

Cristalle Eau Verte: A review plus a free sample drawing

Chanel seems to do everything right. There isn’t a fragrance from Chanel’s Les Exclusifs line that I don’t like. I find them fleeting (except Coromandel), which is a major problem, but the scents themselves are all excellent. So here we are in the spring of 2009 with a flanker to Chanel Cristalle called Cristalle Eau Verte. I knew I must have this – unsniffed – and so it was.

Upon receiving Eau Verte I immediately applied the original Cristalle edt on one arm and Eau Verte on the other. Eau Verte is its own perfume, it may share the Cristalle name and a citrusy quality but that’s about all. Eau Verte starts off like a Tanqueray gin & tonic with a dozen limes, a clementine and a lemon. Eau Verte is verdantly citrusy, and juicy limes and citrus are all I smell for the first 5 minutes.

I like Cristalle edt and edp. I wear them both but can’t say that I’m smitten with either of them. Cristalle is a practical fragrance for me, something I’d wear during the warmest months to feel fresh and put together. Cristalle is something I’d wear to the office, but not something I’d wear just because I love the smell. It’s more of a wardrobe basic than a true love. Eau Verte, on the other hand, is a fresh, green citrus that I rather like a lot. Eau Verte smells more contemporary to me, it seems fresher, cleaner and more natural than the original Cristalle, and it doesn’t have that synthetic Chanel aldehydic base that tends to bother me.

The difference between Cristalle and Cristalle Eau Verte is almost exactly like the difference between No. 5 and Eau Premiere. There is a contemporary crispness in Eau Verte that I don’t find in Cristalle, in fact, when I compare the two, Cristalle suddenly smells very 1974. The dry down of Eau Verte is lovely. To me, it smells like citrusy honeysuckles, abstract white florals and fresh spring air. The beautiful floral accord is much more pronounced in Eau Verte than in the original Cristalle. In fact, once dried down, the overall effect of Eau Verte is of a warmer and less sterile/cold white floral with hints of citrus and green. Eau Verte is lovely. I will now wear Eau Verte instead of Cristalle edt and rather than it serving as a basic wardrobe fragrance it will be a personally enjoyable scent.

Eau Verte’s longevity is better than Cristalle edt, lasting about 4-5 hours on me.

If you’re interested in the free drawing, please leave a comment along with your email address. Comments will be accepted until Monday, May 11th, at 5PM US EDT, at which time we'll choose the winner of the 2.5 ML spray sample. Good luck!

Banish the Guilties

Yes, I’ve been feeling out of sorts lately, too. I read a wonderfully candid piece on OlfactaRama blog called Fiddling While Rome Burns, about fragrance obsession guilt while the economy is in a downturn. People are losing their homes. This isn’t just random “people” on the news, I know someone who is foreclosing on her home. Our country is still at war, people are dying. So, OlfactaRama asks, “does it feel a bit extravagant to be writing about perfume?” My answer: Yeah, it does.

Lately, I think I’ve been unconsciously focusing on fragrances that I already have. I’ve been having a love affair with decidedly “un-trendy,” inexpensive perfumes that I’ve had for years. Ivoire de Balmain was one, then Loulou, Bvlgari Black, Ava Luxe Mousse de Chine and today it’s Chanel Cristalle. But this is sort of a self-imposed guilt, I think. Surely it’s important to continue enjoying life, even in the face of difficult times and obstacles, right? I think the guilt more or less boils down to the idea that perfume is a trivial, unnecessary luxury item. Well, of course it is unnecessary, almost everything is truly unnecessary besides the basics that one needs to survive.

After feeling guilty for the past month and having these conversations in my head about the uselessness of writing about fragrance I’ve decided that this is silly. Life will march along, we will all manage to get through these tough times in our own ways, and I will continue to obsess about perfume because it makes me happy. In the moments where I’m sniffing a perfume for the first time or the fifty-first time, I’m happy. On my drive home from the office I think about which perfume I will change into for the evening I feel happy. When I know I have a box waiting for me at home, I'm ecstatic. When I’m writing about a fragrance I get so deeply involved with it's aroma that I experience “olfactory joy.” Perfume is a hobby, an obsession, an escape and it makes me very happy.

So, today I’m wearing Chanel Cristalle edp. It’s been a long time since I’ve worn this. I’d forgotten how wonderful it is. Chanel Cristalle is a beautifully light chypre based on citrus and florals. I love the aldehydic citrus kick in the beginning. The citrusy quality dies down after the first hour and it becomes a well-done fruity floral. I’ve had this bottle for at least 10 years and I’m happy to be under its spell today.