TWRT 12.16.11

This Week's Random Thoughts ~

Note to perfume companies: I have an idea. Let’s not use the word chypre anymore since this category no longer exists. 

I have been wearing Kate Walsh Boyfriend off and on all week.  I like it.  But I desperately want to tweak it!  I want to amplify the patchouli-woods-chocolate to make it less of a vanilla fragrance.  It smells good, don’t get me wrong, but I just want to make it more than vanilla (which always makes me hungry).

So, after wearing Boyfriend, I went into an all-out frenzy over patchouli-vanilla-chocolate fragrances.  In the end, I realized I swoon every time for Serge Lutens Borneo 1834.  Chanel Coromandel does it for me, too, but Borneo is even more decadent.  What are your favorite sweet patchouli bombs (patch-vanilla-chocolate especially)? 

Just about the only thing I buy from Bath & Body Works are candles.  And I simply cannot wait for their Holiday sale every year when I buy their huge 14.5 oz candles for just $10!  Today I ordered so many candles, online no less (no schlepping heavy candles around the mall) with free shipping (DecShip50)!  How cool is this sale?

Almost everyone on American Horror Story is now a ghost.

I forced myself to finish We Need to Talk About Kevin because I enjoy Tilda Swinton but this was up there with Drive as one of the slowest, most draining movies I've ever seen.   And, no, I have not seen Tree of Life or Melancholia or Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene and at this point I’ll need some strong convincing to bother.  I thought We Need to Talk About Kevin would be fascinating, it’s about a woman destroyed by raising a child who is a sociopath.  Sadly, the film is incoherent and dreadfully slow.

I highly recommend The Sister’s Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.  The writing and characters are among the most memorable I’ve read all year. 

My book club’s assignment for February is 11/22/63 byStephen King.  This is going to be the book that breaks me and causes me to buy a Kindle!  It’s so heavy and huge (only in hardcover right now) and I’m now in the market for a Kindle so I don’t have to “heft” that book around.

I learned how to perfectly poach an egg this week and it’s my new favorite thing.  I don’t use any device just gently pour the egg into almost boiling water.   I dislike “runny” egg yolk, which I realize is perhaps the whole point of poached eggs, but nevertheless I cook mine an extra 2 minutes making sure the yolk is soft but not oozing (gags).  A poached egg on whole wheat toast with salt, pepper and paprika can be one of the most delectably simple meals.

Top perfumes for me this week: (in addition to above mentioned stuff) Love, Chloe Eau Intense, DSH Mahjoun, Sonoma Scent Studio Tabac Aurea, M. Micallef Gaiac and original Prada.

I haven’t seen The Muppet Movie yet but I want to.  I'll see The Muppet's along with Hugo and Tin Tin next week during family time (aka 'escape from family' time).

My Patchouli Problem

I admitted recently that I’ve given up trying to like vetiver and leather fragrances (aside from Tom Ford Tuscan Leather and some old classics that don’t register as Leather with a capital L on me like Bandit and Cabochard). You can add cedar to that list, too. Cedar is the reason I’m not enthused about a number of Serge Lutens fragrances which are considered among his very best (Bois de Violette, Feminite de Bois). But these notes; vetiver, leather and cedar I just do not like. They don’t blend with my body chemistry; they stick out, smell awful and bother me.

One note I have a strange conundrum with is patchouli. I love the scent of patchouli. I crave patchouli, almost like I crave chocolate. I find patchouli to be warm, earthy, resinous, sweet, balsamic, multi-layered and just plain amazing. I could wear straight-up patchouli oil, if my mind would let me. In fact, I used to wear patchouli oils way back in the early 90’s when I was a kid going through a hippie phase. It was about ’90 or ’91 and I was, rather typical of a 19-20 year old, trying to figure myself by putting on various personae’s; so I dove into the whole hippie/love your mother/Grateful Dead scene for about 1 year. I wore a patchouli-rose oil purchased from Arsenic & OId Lace in Porter Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sometimes I wore straight patchouli oil and other times I mixed it with myrrh and frankincense. After about 10 months of being a hippie; wearing anklets and jewelry that jingled, long flowy bright skirts and not shaving my legs, I was quickly over the whole scene. The hippie thing was not for me. First of all, I couldn’t stand The Grateful Dead, it was a combination of the music and their scene (their followers) that drove me nuts. All those people living out of VW vans, following The Dead from show to show, cooking falafel, speaking with accents that were a mixture of California and Vermont (a unique twang all its own) and reeking of the obligatory patchouli and pot combination just got under my skin and made me want to don a conservative suit and go to Harvard B School.

So...to this day, when I smell patchouli I think of hippies and pot. My conundrum is that I love patchouli and so many patchouli prominent fragrances are fantastic. A few years ago, I think it was 2007; I was traveling with a colleague in his car to an offsite meeting. After being alone together in the car for about 5 minutes he asked if I was wearing patchouli. I was, indeed, wearing a patchouli-rich scent, it was Chanel Coromandel. This comment ruined Coromandel for me. I still absolutely love it to pieces, but I feel conspicuous when I wear it, like it signifies I’m hiding a grow room in the basement of my home. Since 2007 I don’t think I have worn any of my favorite patchouli scents in public. No more Coromandel, no Serge Lutens Borneo 1834, no il Profumo Patchouli Noir, no Keiko Mecheri Patchoulissime, no Tom Ford Purple Patchouli and no Prada (in the pink box).

I ask you: what’s a gal to do? If you like patchouli as much as I do, do you wear it often? Do you have any hang-ups about it? Do you think the public at large smells patchouli and thinks of hippies and pot? I would love to begin wearing all my favorite patchouli scents in public again, but I need some reassurance...or perhaps you agree and don’t wear patchouli to the office or in mixed company either. I love patchouli and I'm stumped.

Coromandel: Second Opinion

Abigail reviewed Coromandel months ago during a Chanel intensive, and I remember thinking, "That sounds promising," but when I tried it at Nordstrom it struck me as being more than a little similar to Prada for Women--which meant a definitive No Thank You for me. As usual, I should have listened more closely to my co-blogger, because of course this stuff is leagues away from Prada (or anything else, really) and so good it's almost indecent.

I'm a fan of Jacques Polge and Christopher Sheldrake, the two behind Coromandel, and I do see a connection to Sheldrake's Borneo 1834, another fragrance adjectives fail. Is Coromandel Chanel's version of Borneo, as some have suggested? Probably no more than Diorella, by Edmond Roudnitska, was Dior's version of Le Parfum de Therese, also by Roudnitska. To be sure, Coromandel is closer to Borneo than to many of Sheldrake's other fragrances, but the contribution by Polge is significant enough that it fits resolutely within the Chanel line-up, not just its Les Exclusifs brethren but all the department store mainstays, from No. 19 to Allure, with a definite tip of the hat to Chance.

Coromandel has the trademark citrus shimmer that many of Polge's Chanel fragrances have, that sense of being illuminated from within, shot through with light. The most recent example of this tendency would be Chanel No. 5 Eau Premiere. The in-store displays for Eau Premiere feature a tiny light under each bottle, driving the point home. As far as I know, Sheldrake had nothing to do with the latest flanker to No. 5. Eau Premiere has a fraction of Coromandel's staying power, and none of its sturm und drang. Part of what gives Coromandel this sense of drama is probably its treatment of patchouli, a note it fully embraces. While few will characterize this as a head shop patchouli, no one will accuse it of transparency, either. Much has been made of the cleanliness of contemporary patchouli. Though definitely of its time, Coromandel has an earthiness the majority of patchouli-focused fragrances take pains to scrub away. For this alone, it sits alongside Cuir de Russie as one of the bolder iterations of the Chanel sensibility.

You'll find quite a dollop of vanilla in there, as well as amber, spices, woods, and frankincense. Coromandel broods around on the skin with a forcefulness that no other Exclusif displays. It smells of cosmetics periodically, specifically powder, and I would wager there are aldehydes in there, but none of these make it particularly feminine to me. Strangely, the overall effect is simultaneously subtle and robust, asserting itself with a sinuous stealth Ninotchka might applaud. Chanel calls Coromandel exotic and voluptuous, a "woody oriental", which is a bit like characterizing a Cadillac as a four wheel vehicle. For me, Coromandel straddles the gender divide with unusual finesse, making transitions back and forth as it plays itself out. Chanel says the fragrance pays homage to Gabrielle Chanel's passion for the decorative lacquer of the same name. The intricate, submerged intaglio of coromandel screens make an apt visual for the perfume's peculiar ambiance, rendering polished detail out of rough hewn lumber.

Lightning strikes twice, I guess. Last year, I received a half-empty bottle of Cuir de Russie from the Chanel Boutique in Beverly Hills. I assumed at the time that the leakage and the busted atomizer were due to magnificently silly packaging by the staff (several sheets of tissue paper and a lot of air space, if memory serves). Coromandel came in a box which was packed more meticulously than the cookies your grandmother sends at Christmas. Nevertheless, it too was half gone. The perfume was still in its cellophane wrap, and once I removed it I had to use a pen knife to pry open the Les Exclusifs container. That tells you something about the quality of oils used in these fragrances, so thick they served as glue with the addition of a little heat. The fact that the atomizer was askew suggests faulty design--or extraordinary bad luck.

Then again, I know that Abigail's bottle of Coromandel leaked significantly in the mail. That makes three, yet when I called Chanel to complain, the sales associate reacted as though I were reporting a Bigfoot sighting. "I've never heard of anything like that happening before," he said, adding very quickly: "I'm not saying I don't believe you." He didn't say he did believe me, and I had the distinct feeling it wasn't his first time around the block with this kind of phone call. At least they offered to send a replacement bottle, without asking me to return the first one. There's something vaguely tawdry and thoroughly inconvenient about returning a broken bottle of Chanel to Beverly Hills, as I was asked to do with Cuir de Russie. Call it insult to injury, or luxury goods buzz kill.