Epic Gardenia

I don’t consider myself a white floral lover but maybe I’m wrong. I think I’m not because I dislike (usually) anything resembling gardenia and jasmine and I mostly hate ylang ylang. Or so I think. My reason for disliking gardenia and jasmine (soliflores in particular) is because both notes remind me of people from my past that I don’t like. I’ll never wear Serge Lutens A La Nuit. Ever. A La Nuit is a beautiful airy jasmine but I could never handle it on my skin for more than 11 minutes. Of the gardenia fragrances I’ve tried, and believe me, it’s not a long list, I think Jo Malone Vintage Gardenia is pretty good. Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia is grossly true to the actual flower and makes me shudder. Annick Goutal’s Gardenia Passion doesn’t smell like gardenia to me nor do I like it and I generally love everything from Goutal.

Strange Invisible Perfumes takes it’s name from Shakespeare, a line from Antony and Cleopatra: "From the barge a strange invisible perfume hits the sense of the adjacent wharfs." Strange Invisible Perfumes (SIP) hooked me on two of their tuberose fragrances, namely Narcotic and Heroine. At the moment, SIP is only making Narcotic and Heroine in pure parfum, not edp, which is frustrating because I get the most from SIP scents when I can hose myself down like I’m on fire and need extinguishing. Because I’ve grown to love the trademark strangeness of SIP scents, I had a hunch I’d like Epic Gardenia even though it’s dedicated to gardenia, my floral nemesis.

As expected, Epic Gardenia begins with some strangeness, but it’s not the usual musty medicinal stench, I think it’s an easier start than most fragrances from SIP. Others have called Epic Gardenia “humid” and I can see this, there’s a similarity between Epic Gardenia, Amaranthine and Manoumalia in their damp tropical quality.

Epic Gardenia reminds me of wilted rotting water from a 5 day old vase of flowers that hasn’t been refreshed. When you’re channeling your inner Martha Stewart you change the water in a floral arrangement every day or two. When you forget, the flowers don’t last as long and you find a vase full of stinky water. You might think I’m being disparaging or describing why Epic Gardenia is awful. I’m not. I love Epic Gardenia. It’s the only gardenia fragrance I can wear and I have been wearing it for months. Epic Gardenia does smell like gardenia blooms but these imaginary blossoms are much less sweet, cloying and heady than what I deem to be the typical gardenia note in perfumery. Epic Gardenia’s gardenia note is tempered with an undercurrent of green earthy musk and there’s an obvious bergamot thread throughout. To enjoy Epic Gardenia I think one needs to practice suspension of disbelief. Actually, to enjoy most SIP fragrances you need a healthy suspension of disbelief; you can’t force the scent to conform to your typical ideals of what a perfume should smell like. If you are able to maintain an open mind, I find the majority of SIP scents will come around and surprise you. The rotting vegetation subsides after about 20 minutes (either this or I just stop noticing it) and Epic Gardenia blooms into the most lush, velvety gardenia note I have ever not disliked. It is sweet, but it’s not cloying or heady or “too much” of anything on me. I can’t even complain about its longevity. The sillage is quiet, of course, being an all natural/botanical perfume, but as long as I spray myself wet, and take care to spray a little on my clothing, I find it lasts at least 5 hours.

Before you ask, I have never tried SIP’s now long gone scent called Lady Day. As I mentioned, it’s a fluke that I even tried Epic Gardenia, given my disinterest in gardenia, so I missed the boat on Lady Day, which might be for the best.

Epic Gardenia is my #1 favorite gardenia scent and my favorite among the somewhat new “humid, tropical” category. I’ve been wearing it so often this year that I neglect to notice its strangeness, maybe it isn’t even odd, and maybe it’s just completely beautiful.

Coincidentally, Epic Gardenia is available at Beautyhabit.com for 25% off with the code Oprah until August 13th. Otherwise it’s $175 for 50 ml. I’m tinkering with the idea of buying another bottle. I’m going through mine at an alarmingly fast rate. Which shouldn't be alarming, it's a good thing, because in theory, I want to drench myself in my perfumes and enjoy every whiff.

PS: explanation for the above pic... Epic Gardenia reminds me of Fantasy Island. When I was a kid I loved staying up late on Saturday Night to watch Fantasy Island (and Love Boat) when sleeping over my friend's house. I suppose Alexandra Balahoutis is too young to recall this, so she couldn't have been invoking Fantasy Island when she created this one.

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.

Diptyque Opôné: A Review

Disclaimer: I’m a lover of many Diptyque perfumes; Tam Dao, Oyedo, L’Ombre dans L’eau, and Philosykos are among my favorites. Diptyque launched Opôné in 2001. I never investigated it until recently and think it might be because there are several Diptyque fragrances that begin with the letter “O” and I just sort of missed it. Had I known Opôné was a rose & saffron scent I would have sampled it many years ago!

Opôné is what I wish Juliette Has A Gun, Lady Vengeance had been. Opôné is rose, saffron and soft woody spices. I’ve noticed Opôné is often called a vampy rose fragrance but I don’t think it’s vampy, it’s really quite tame to my nose. It reminds me of a woody rose potpourri and I mean this in a good way. Some say Opôné is dark and earthy, but it’s definitely not earthy like L’Artisan Voleur de Rose, and nowhere near as edgy as Strange Invisible Perfumes Black Rosette. Opôné is an easily wearable rose/spice fragrance. The overall effect of Opôné is an equal blending of rose and saffron/spices ~ the rose doesn’t stick out more than the spices and vice versa (so don’t expect this to smell mostly like a rose fragrance sprinkled with a little saffron). Like most Diptyque fragrances Opôné doesn’t evolve much from the initial application. This is good, I suppose, because you’ll know right away whether you like it. I really like Opôné, it’s dry, rosy and spicy and while not edgy, it’s unusual and interesting enough to keep me smelling my wrists all day. I have my very own bottle of Opôné now and will definitely wear it often.

Lasting power: slightly less than average ~ about 3 hours on me.
Sillage: depends on application, but if you apply about 2-3 sprays, it has soft/average sillage.

Tribute to the Indies

I'd like to express my gratitude for the indie perfumers. I’m focusing on the indies, not the niche perfumers, who seem to be an entirely separate category. Niche perfumers are usually well-funded and spend much of their production budget on sexy packaging, designs and bottle labels. The true indies, are usually one-woman/one-man acts, who are seriously passionate about fragrance. Most indie perfumers, to me, seem more adventurous than any large perfume house. They might have little financial backing but they are willing to take risks, because the juxtaposition of scents intrigues them. I love that indie perfumers aren’t necessarily concerned with what’s trendy, what the “it” note is that year (pink pepper!). I imagine indie perfumers to create what they think will be interesting.

To illustrate this point, an article in the New York Times from a few years back quotes Beth Terry responding to a question about the livelihood of an indie perfumer:

“….it’s not an empress's ransom, exactly, but enough to fuel a perfumer's creative vision.
I don't want to rule the world; I just want to keep experimenting.'' Recently, balmy spring days made her think of sangría. ''Don't you love that smell? Wouldn't you like to bottle it?'' Ms. Terry asked. '' I think I will,'' she said.

Being able to create and bottle up whatever they please, is what allows many indie perfumers to make some unusual and stunning fragrances. Take, for example, Midnight Violet by Ava Luxe. Until I smelled Midnight Violet, I didn’t like violet scents. Ava Luxe (Ms. Serena Franco) took violets, and removed all the syrupy sweet powdery-ness and placed those delicate blue & purple flowers in a dense forest of damp earth, balsam, hemlocks, cedar and the dark of night. It’s as if she combined yin and yang, masculine and feminine, day and night into one fragrance. Violet is almost exclusively associated with uber-feminine girly perfumes. And earthy, balsam, cedar scents are most often associated with traditionally masculine fragrances. Ava Luxe has married the two and it works like a Shakespearian sonnet. I don’t mean to focus solely on Ava Luxe, I have a whole slew of indie perfumers that I’d to honor by listing them here but Midnight Violet sticks out for me because this is the perfume that allowed me to finally appreciate violet.

Here are the indie perfumes that I’m familiar with, I’m sure there are others, but let’s give a big round of applause for:

Aftelier
Aroma M
Ava Luxe
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (memorable website)
Creative Universe by Beth Terry
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz
Keiko Mecheri
Mandrake Apothecary
Michael Storer
Neil Morris (just discovered this week, where have I been?)
Possets Perfume
Sonoma Scent Studio
Soivohle' by Liz Zorn (adding on 7/15/08, Gail pointed this out to me in her comment and I knew I had forgotten someone!)
Strange Invisible Perfumes (SIP is now being carried at Barneys, is SIP still indie?)
Tauer Perfumes (Andy Tauer has hit it big time, Aedes de Venustas is now carrying his line, so can we still consider him an indie?!)

I’d love to know of more indies, I know this is a short list. I have questions next to some because they’re now being carried at exclusive shops and I wonder if this will take away their indie status and potentially impact their creativity?