The Whole World is Mothers and Daughters: Estee Lauder Private Collection (Review and Bottle Giveaway)

Private Collection is one of my favorite fragrances, yet I've resisted reviewing it until now. Like Estee, I guess I've wanted to keep it a secret. I'm not sure why I've been hesitant to talk about it, unless I just want it to stay in some magical, imaginative domain, some fantasy realm where only I know about it, as if it were made expressly for me. It's as if Private Collection and I are dating: I'm the geek, and Private Collection is very popular, and if I bring our relationship out in the open, no one will believe me, and it will be clear that it was all in my head: Private Collection belongs not to silly insignificant me but to much more important people in the world.

High school analogies are inevitable when it comes to this one, because I have such strong memories of my teenage sister wearing it. Remarkably, I've maintained a pretty fierce devotion to many if not all the fragrances she wore when we were growing up. I remember Coco, Bill Blass, Lauren, Albert Nipon, Anais Anais. As far as I can recall, my sister wore one at a time. We didn't have a lot of money--we were quintessentially lower middle income, Middle America--and when I look back I can't picture more than one bottle out on her dresser. She didn't have a collection. She emptied each bottle before moving on to the next, which probably went a long way toward building my own attachment to them.

For months she would smell exclusively, and strongly, of a single charismatic fragrance. Like a song you hear over and over, each fragrance became a sort of soundtrack to our childhood. I smell them now and, while I can't construct a chronological time line, I move directly back into the heightened emotional landscape of that period. Impressions flood back in. I remember the way the light came through my sister's bedroom curtains. I remember the feeling I got from that. I remember the painted treatment of her dresser; the way her room looked behind me as I viewed myself in her mirror, wondering what it was like to be her, or, at the very least, not to be me. I remember the feel of the textured green carpet in the hall outside our rooms, the way it rubbed on my feet. It was comforting, like being in your pajamas.

My sister wore a lot of Estee Lauder, so the soundtrack is pretty heavy on that specific, instantly recognizable instrumentation. Estee Lauder connected mother to daughter. It reinforced a cohesion in the home. Recently, an almost satirically snotty commenter referred to me as being "geographically marginalized," because, I suppose, as a blogger, when I want to contact a perfumer, whether to interview him or befriend him or, say, sleep with him, I must negotiate it all online, as if, by not living in France, I am out of some essential loop. It's a joke, of course, because at this point, no one is geographically marginalized. Ask Facebook. There's probably a perfumer or two waiting in your suggested friends box. There is no center. The world is full of centers. There is no "there" there anymore, as another saying goes.

Back when I was a kid, to be American was truly to be stuck in your own skin, in your own pocket of experience. A term like "geographically marginalized" would have meant something then. Corporations understand this as well. Estee Lauder achieved something back then that very few companies can any more. She was ubiquitous. It was a name and a brand that signified very specific things. Very American things. America was a conglomerate of remote, far flung outposts. You were alone in your experience and the world was way, way out there, somewhere past the shag carpeting of your suburban hallway--but others, way, way out there, were using Estee Lauder too. The name was everywhere. It was on TV, at the store, in magazines, on your mother's lips. Estee Lauder was a kind of American mother figure herself, and her brand reinforced an idea that all these geographically marginalized satellite points were connected, even if you couldn't prove it yourself or see exactly how. You trusted her on that.

You saw the Lauder name in your mother's medicine cabinet. In the family bathroom. In the make-up bags your sisters and mothers used. It was a reassurance of some kind. I wasn't attracted to women sexually but I was fascinated by them. They seemed connected in ways guys weren't. They seemed to understand those distances separating everyone and every thing. There was a combustible bond there between women which I thought must be unique to the gender. Estee Lauder seemed in on this conspiracy of connection. It was a secret code, a part of that language. You'd go to the mall and women were clustered around the Lauder counter. It was always the hub. It was hard to believe they were just talking about foundation and lipstick. The way they were huddled, their excited speech, indicated some sort of strategizing must be taking place, as if, across the country, they were all plotting their escape. I wanted them to take me with them.

My mother tells a story about me which makes a lot of sense when I consider it in this context. Apparently, I roamed away from her at the mall once. I couldn't have been older than five. She looked all over for me. She had security searching too. Finally, the sound of female giggling and chatter. As it turns out, I'd crawled into a glass-fronted display counter. They found me because a crowd of women had gathered around to watch. I was wearing a bra as a hat. I was putting on some kind of show. Maybe I wanted to be at the counter because that's where they all seemed to want to be. Obviously, I wanted to be part of that conversation. Now that I'm older, I understand that what they were talking about was less important than the basic fact that they were talking, which is kind of why I talk too, probably.

My mother or grandmothers wore Youth Dew and Estee. My sister went through Beautiful, White Linen, Cinnabar, Knowing, Tuscany, and, most memorably, Private Collection. I don't remember picking up most of her bottles. But I can say that, picking up my own bottle of Private Collection several years ago, I had an amazing sense of deja vu when I felt the thing in my hand. The glass has a specific feel to it. Your fingers make a unique sound whistling along the glass, a hushed but emphatic kind of thing. Of all the perfumes my sister wore, Private Collection had the most gravitas. It was formal in an outdoorsy way. It felt a little like Christmas, with its evergreen aroma and the kind of emotional intensity one finds centered a lot around the holidays.

My sister was popular but intense. I still don't know what was going through her head during those years. I still wonder. She was very pretty, gorgeous really. She was feminine, but like many of the women in my family she was also very headstrong in a way which indicated deeper reserves of masculinity. Private Collection shares a certain feeling of athleticism with another favorite my sister wore, Clinique Wrappings. It's that flushed sensation of someone coming in after a brisk run in the cold. There are florals in the mix (specifically, orange blossom, linden, jasmine, chrysanthemum, rose) but I never really notice them until I force myself to. Private Collection feels like a cold air fragrance to me. It feels like the outdoors brought indoors, like frost on the windowpanes. There's a brilliance to it, a sun on snow kind of quality. Its slightly powdery feel only adds to the wintry impression.

I don't know when it was created. It was released in 1973. Company legend has it that Mama Estee reserved it for her own use, before being convinced to pass it onto her daughters out in the world. I think another reason I've resisted sharing Private Collection publicly is the fact that so many react in visceral contempt for the brand and its fragrances, almost the way we grumble at the suggestion we've grown up to resemble our own mothers. We want to enforce a sense of separation there, maybe. How many times have you seen a mother protest when her daughter doesn't apply lipstick before a photograph? How many times does the daughter rebel? Maybe it's something like that. Estee is mom and mom tells you what to do. To love her is to mind her, and maybe it's impossible to appreciate our mothers objectively. Whatever the reason, I've chosen to avoid soliciting unfavorable scrutiny about Private Collection particularly. I want to protect it from that rejection, I guess.

I have a bottle to give away--but I should be clear: this is Eau de Private Collection. I'm not sure what the difference is. It's lighter, to be sure. It lacks some of the powder. And I believe it lacks oakmoss and some of the heavier players which make the base of Private Collection proper so durable and persuasive. However, it's very similar; i.e. wonderful. The bottle is 1.7 ounces. To be eligible, you must have commented on this site before. Drawing will be conducted Monday. Conducting these giveaways, I realize, is a way for me to get back into the glass fronted counter. See you there.

Christmas Smells: A Purely Biased List of Favorites, PART ONE

I'm not one for seasonal strictures--I'm dressed in white as I type this--and when it comes to fragrances, I find that I wear the ones I love all across the calendar. Still, scent is associative, and no time evokes specific memories around smell more than Christmas.

The fragrances I love to rediscover during this holiday aren't always the usual suspects; certainly not often the flankers intended to conjure a fantasy feast of gingerbread and fruitcake. My favorites scatter the elements of Christmas like a cubist painting, approaching the subject from a variety of angles simultaneously. They parcel Christmas out into bits and pieces of sensory memory, rendering them with photographic detail. Theoretically, I'd have to wear these fragrances all at once to get the bigger picture. In reality, they only work separately, one at a time, demonstrating how complex and textured the memories surrounding holidays are. Forty Christmas seasons have accrued a dense system of overlapping triggers. The following are the tip of the icicle.

New Haarlem (Bond No. 9)

There are several good coffee-centered scents in my cabinet (Ava Luxe Cafe Noir and A*Men Pure Coffee, to name a few). New Haarlem is something of a curiosity among them. While the coffee note is unmistakable, it tends to be much more impressionistic, depicting not just the steaming cup but the mood of the breakfast table conversation. As it wears, New Haarlem becomes slightly spicy, with interesting undertones of amber.

Ambre Fetiche (Annick Goutal)

Ambre Fetiche is a deeply resonant mixture of resins and leather (birch tar, maybe?). It lasts and lasts, and lasts some more. This is a slowly collapsing, intermittently crackling pile of resinous logs left burning in the fireplace, viewed through the frosted glow of nighttime windowpanes.

Nuit de Noel (Caron)

Christmas is the smell of things stewing, simmering, and roasting. So what's with all the marzipan? Nuit de Noel is that rare seasonal fragrance, which bypasses sweet tooth for smoked savory and mixed nuts. That would be wood smoke and hazelnuts, and mingling somewhere within is the combined effect of all the settled-in perfumes worn by the women of the house.

L'eau (Diptyque)

The pomander hanging over the dinner table, distributing the aroma of clove, fir branch, orange oil, cinnamon, and dried rose in all directions. Approaching religious experience, it manages to insert the mood of Christmas Eve cathedral (those vast, vaulted ceilings and a Christmas tree the size of Rockefeller Center) into the dining room.

Wrappings (Clinique)

While not technically a seasonal release, Wrappings is sold only at Christmas. You get a 30 ml bottle with perhaps an equally modest tube of lotion. Forget the lotion, and buy the gift for yourself. This stuff is Ormonde Jayne Woman writ in neon the colors of pine tree and holly berry. Where Woman is warm, sleepy-eyed, and twilit, Wrappings is blinding bright and bracing cold. Woman is a solitary walk along a forest trail. Wrappings is a party in the snow. Mace, artemisia, cedar, and moss go the expected places. What veers Wrappings down an unknown path is the steep cocktail of cyclamen, jasmine, rose, carnation, and orris, electrified by aldehydes. The overall effect is as exhilarating as a snowball fight deep in the woods.

Minuit de Messe (Etro)

I get confused when people go on about this one's gothic prowess, as if it were all dungeon stone and incense smoke. It must be my chemistry, or my nose. Messe has always been user-friendly for me, a mellow, resinous incense. There's a wonderful zest of citrus up top, which takes its time leaving. Upon its departure, frankincense and amber move to the center of the picture. Truly a midnight mass, materializing a dim cathedral full of well-dressed men, women and children, all buzzing with barely contained, drowsy excitement under a veneer of respectably somber supplication.

Gaultier2

There's too much dissonance in there to dismiss this as a sweet-shop essay on all things cake and cookie. "Woodsy notes" are listed in the pyramid, along with amber, musk, and an admittedly ubiquitous vanilla. This doesn't begin to get at the weird play of contrasts in Gaultier2. It's a dividing fragrance. Some find it saccharine. I find it has just the right touch of Barbasol. There's enough five o'clock shadow and tobacco in there to complicate the picture. One of the few fragrances to remind me of the men hanging out on the periphery of the Christmas festivities. Simultaneously robust and laid-back.

Anne Pliska (Anne Pliska)

Somewhere between Shalimar's citrus petrol and Obsession's electric spice, Anne Pliska's signature scent strikes the perfect balance between edible and inedible on the oriental continuum. Abundantly tranquil, like a half-recalled moment of a forgotten Christmas day, where the chatter of family and the steady rustle of gift wrap evolved into a quiet, subtle hum, clearing your mind to unnoticed pleasures, scents from the kitchen you hadn't been able to smell through all the noise.

Agent Provocateur (Agent Provocateur)

Roses are really the last thing the holidays bring to mind, yet despite all its comparisons to rose chypres past, Agent Provocateur manages to evoke the season in a way none of its predecessors did. It's probably the saffron up top, the cedar down below, and the vetiver somewhere in between, which situate the florals in the sweet but boozy territory of spiced rum cake, an aroma ascertained through elaborate plumes of cigarette smoke.

Cinnabar (Estee Lauder)

Truly a classic. Woozier then upright Opium, this oriental has dipped into the punch bowl with a little more abandon. You can smell the fermented fruit on its breath, and its fuzzy state of mind is palpable from the other side of the room.

Noel au Balcon

I get pretty weary of the slams directed at Etat Libre D'Orange. The more time I spend with this line, the more I appreciate its artistry and quality. Even it's most ostensibly mainstream (i.e. throwaway) fragrances, like Don't Get Me Wrong, Baby (I Don't Swallow), offer riches worth revisiting. The sense of humor is refreshing and conversational. Why is it that we can laugh at the unintentionally silly and overblown ad copy of estimable houses like Guerlain, while faulting Etat for its open sense of the ridiculous? Why is it we don't bat an eye at horsey Hilary Swank writhing in the cosmos for Insolence, but decry the squirting penis of Secretions Magnifiques, as though the latter weren't the subliminal thrust of the former laid bare? In an industry which serves no higher goal than the bottom line, releasing only what has been test-marketed to death, what exactly is the beef with a house whose nerve is prodigious enough to push boundaries in the form of a fragrance like Secretions Magnifiques? I find it hard to take Etat's detractors seriously.

Noel au Balcon is a subtle inversion in some ways of the seasonal release. Key word release here, as indicated by the stuffed corset of the perfume's accompanying illustration. Noel au Balcon takes the dense cakey comfort food of Five O'Clock au Gingembre and turns it on its nose with perfectly judged touches of cistus and red pepper. It truly evolves on the skin, from sweet to salty, maintaining an interesting floral backbone throughout. Apply it before you meet the family. It will linger until you leave with mandatory leftovers. It has far more gravity than its brethren.

Une Rose

The only other Christmas rose for me. This one is straightforwardly rose, but its wine dregs hint at that half dark, half jolly place the right kind of holiday party can take you. This is rose as high drama--moody, like the emotional baggage you bring to the Christmas table, a state of mind where a butter knife can look like more of a weapon than you ever had cause to notice before. A scent like Une Rose makes all the trivial resentments and longings teased out by the holidays seem as majestic and impertinent as classic opera performed in combat boots.

Four Things I've Been Wearing Lately

Hermes Caleche

Yes, it has that weird, Godzilla synthetic vetiver all the older perfumes have been "updated" with, and it smells a little cleaner than it once did, but I liked it enough to buy a small bottle of soie de parfum. An at first sharper, then mellower floral aldehyde than another favorite, Lancome Arpege (which also has the vetiver in question). Caleche dries down to a warm, subtle but persistent skin scent. Once contained oakmoss, which isn't listed on the box I own. An interesting example of a masculine aldehyde: soapy and robust, then golden-hued and langorous.

Estee Lauder Youth Dew Amber Nude

Like a ghost twin of the original, this Tom Ford-directed flanker to the flagship Lauder fragrance is a sheerer version, spectral by comparison, yet without feeling watered down or otherwise diluted. I was excited to find it in the Duty Free at the Milano airport, in the Lauder section, though Lauder doesn't sell it or stock it anymore elsewhere. The bottle updates its ancestor as well. Amber Nude is boozier than Youth Dew, subtracting some of the balsamic heft which can make YD smell so baroquely excessive on the skin. I prefer the original, as it projects the impression its wearer harbors interesting secrets. But Amber Nude is a nice, refreshingly uncomplicated alternative.

Clinique Wrappings

Oh how I love this stuff. An old reliable for Clinique, sold only during the holidays in the United States. In Europe, it's sold year round. Bracingly green, it comes on like a morning in the woods, cold enough that your breath fogs. Technically a floral aldehyde, it smells very little like one, submerging rose, hyacinth and orris under a carpet of artemisia, lavender, mace, and cedar. The pyramid lists leather, patchouli, and a marine note. I get none of these, which isn't to say they aren't there, just that they're very well integrated. I'd like to know who created it.

Mona di Orio Nuit de Niore

Smelling this, I feel protective, like the drama queen who famously ranted and wailed against Britney's detractors on youtube. Leave Mona ALONE. This reminds me of Bal a Versailles, old and new, but mostly old, thanks to the civet. Nuit lasts, is by turns alarmingly strange and wondrously addictive, is weirdly maligned, and yet people do love Mona's fragrances. Once, in Portland's Perfume House, a woman came in off the street and after smelling Arabie for the first time said she hadn't experienced anything that wonderful since Oiro. The guys at Aedes in NYC sold her on a bottle, and describing it to me her eyes rolled back into her head. I didn't understand this when I first smelled Oiro, months later. But I sprayed some on and went to a movie, and halfway through, I fell in love with the little spot on my hand where I'd sprayed it. Mona's fragrances develop like no other I know. They actually have stages. They're moody little things, deepening on the skin in complicated Escher-like patterns. It's hard to see where they're taking you when you first set out with them. The trend in contemporary fragrance, oft-noted, is geared toward the first ten minutes, a hard sell in the top notes, and chaotic banality in the dry down, such that there is one. Nuit works in direct opposition to this. It doesn't bullshit you. It doesn't pander. It takes its time, and patience pays off in dividends. Supposedly, Aedes has stopped carrying the line, making it even harder to come by in the states. Perhaps the guys behind the counter got tired of batting their heads against a brick wall.