From the Mountaintop: Norma Kamali Incense

As soon as I smelled this magic stuff, I knew I had to sign on and talk about it, because I waited forever to try it, and my hesitation had to do mostly with how infrequently I heard it mentioned. Incense couldn't be all that--it couldn't be too terribly fantastic--with so little being said on its behalf. I revisited the reviews on makeupalley again and again--one of the few places I saw it discussed--trying to find a common denominator in the general opinion there. Incense was said to be strong like you can't believe, one of those assault weapon fragrances which make massacre of your nearest neighbors. It was said to be linear ( like a bullet leaving the chamber, it moved straight to its victim), offensive, too bold to be tolerated. How could anyone actually wear his stuff, people asked. In theory, this sounded like my kind of fragrance, but the stuff goes for a whopping two hundred and twenty bucks, which is quite a sum for a feckless gamble.

I should mention: I'm not an incense fanatic. I rarely seem to back flip for whatever the latest craze seems to be, and I often resent the din of conversation centering around something which seems more about marketing than merit. Wonderful things have been done with Oud--I own a few of these things--but I grow weary seeing someone's mouth start to make the shape of the word, worried I'll have to hear more about it. Fig and iris were like Brittany and Kate Plus Eight to me. Where did these things come from? How long would they be cultural wallpaper? Would everything be brought to their level? The various permutations of these trendy notes fascinated me about as much as a photograph of Brittany emerging unawares from a limo, sans underthings. They were distractions, more than anything. Incense, for me, was just another one of these pointless celebutants. I loved some of the fragrances, the Comme des Garçons series, particularly, but for a while it seemed like learning to love the enemy, someone with whom you'd be forced to share a small cell indefinitely.

What drew me to Norma Kamali's version, I can't exactly say. Probably the idea of its force. I make no secret of my love for the stinky. This makes it into a joke, but really, for me, it's about embracing scents others make silly excuses not to like. My friend Bard says that when people say a fragrance is overpoweringly strong, what they essentially mean is, they don't like it. Which isn't to say some fragrances aren't loud. Poison is an intense scent. Amarige can be. Habanita is. But I'm always shocked, when I discover such pariahs for myself, how tame they actually are compared to these reports, and I've gradually learned to pay attention to the fragrances people dislike intensely.

I finally dropped coin for Incense, and I knew the moment I sniffed from the stoppered bottle that it would enter my top ten. I got the feeling it had always been there, on the list, waiting for me to join it. Incense is just about everything I might ask for in a fragrance, and so much more than a simple, straightforward variation on a them that I'm disinclined to call it by its name. Incense is robust but smooth, balsamic, charismatic, a little smoky, vaguely spiced, woody, diffusive, and persistent. It does smell like incense. It smells like a lot of other things, too. At the same time, I'm again thoroughly baffled, Bard's words aside, by the response to it. I don't consider Incense to be a particularly "fierce" or "potent" smell. I don't find anything in the opening which singes the nose hairs; nothing which resembles paint thinner or lighter fluid fumes. It doesn't tip heavily toward the masculine to me. The reports of its relentless linearity confuse me as well. While I do feel that Incense remains consistent from beginning to end, and while I agree it goes through no radical shifts, I suppose I wonder what fragrance truly does. Incense operates like a natural fragrance, shifting mercurially, full of nuance and depth. You smell it on someone and it speaks of a story. You feel there's something going on there, under the surface. Incense seems to collapse the idea of a surface, forcing you to sense depth. It has the kind of presence most perfumes are developed by creative teams to avoid at all costs. By this, I don't mean it's loud, or even that a little goes a long way; I mean that it has character and is unique.

Those who adore it and assign it top ratings like to point out that a bottle will last you forever, because you only need one drop. More strange praise, which I know now contributed to my resistance; why spend 220 bucks on something you can never have too little of? The truth is, I see myself moving quickly through Incense. I sprayed myself about five times in the summer heat yesterday and by no means or stretch did I scare anyone out of the room. I was working side by side all afternoon with a colleague and had no problem. Trust me, I asked. Incense requires no more or less application than any other scent that comes to mind, but, then again, like many of the fragrances I love, it's often most misleadingly described by its devoted admirers. It's the kind of scent you can't find the proper words for, maybe, even as it compels you to search.

Finding a great fragrance can be a religious experience, and you want to share the pleasure it brings you. It alters your consciousness a bit and leads you to see things in a different way. You want to shout it from the mountaintop. That can come off like proselytizing. It can also come across as superiority--something I often pick up from other perfume bloggers. I think I understand that. I empathize. Ultimately it's a process of trying to put into words, with some kind of definitive elan, why one fragrance has touched you more than another. In order to emphasize its greatness, something else must be less great.

Ultimately, however, the way a fragrances reaches one person will be very different from the way it does or doesn't connect with another, something we all know very well, however much we engage in dissecting the unclassifiable. We collectively pretend that we can reach consensus on fragrance: this, over here, is the good stuff; that, over there, that's the crap. The pile of crap is usually a gold mine, and gives away the lie of all these glorified opinions. Few have called Incense crap, mind you. But many sing its praises in a way which doesn't do it any favors, particularly when you consider that, had I heard it described differently, I might have purchased it months ago.

(The accompanying image is a photograph of a Norma Kamali dress taken by Mark Seliger)

Mystery of Musk: DSH Musk Eau Natural

Of the twelve perfumers who submitted their work for this project, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’ (DSH) is the one whose work I’m most familiar with. It was within the past year that I suddenly realized I knew her shop from my college days in Boston. DSH had a boutique on Newbury Street called Essence Studio. I’m not sure why this took so long for me to realize, (in fact I'm pretty sure she told me this) but it suddenly clicked (this 'sudden realization phenomenon' also known as dawn breaks on Marblehead to New England natives, with an additional silly connection ~ Dawn’s first name and Marblehead being a town I called home in Massachusetts). But I’m digressing to the point of no one understanding me. Anyway, the point is, I spent many hours in Essence Studio in Boston. I was such a young budding perfumista back then ((sigh)). And I’ve since had the pleasure of becoming familiar with a great number of DSH fragrances these past few years.

For this project, DSH created a fragrance called “Musk Eau Natural” which she describes as an Art Deco inspired scent from the 1920-30’s. Musk Eau Natural is parfum concentration so the depth and detail are particularly luscious. DSH has created a wonderfully spicy, resinous and incense-y fragrance in Musk Eau Natural. It actually seems more spicy and resinous and less about dirty musk than what I initially expected. For this, I’m glad, because while I look forward to testing some damn filthy musks during the course of this project, I personally prefer spicy woods to, well, bum sweat.

Musk Eau Natural is a warm, inviting, peppery-at-the-start, fragrance. If I *had* to compare it with an existing musk perfume the one it veers toward is Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur. So, if you're familiar with Musc Ravageur, you'll know this means Musk Eau Natural has a strong labdanum, woody tendency, with a velvety sort of beeswax/angelica underpinning. The body odor aspect is minimal while the warm woods and spices are most evident.

Whoever wins the giveaway at Perfume Shrine is one lucky little devil. This is a numilicious spicy, woody, musky skin scent. One amusing note, the person who was forced to sniff my wrists while wearing Musk Eau Natural today said it smells like: "an attic with a wardrobe of vintage (read: previously worn) clothing in the corner." I can't say I smell anything that would have conjured this image, and maybe he was pulling my leg, but it's what he said!

For more details on notes, you can visit the DSH website

Mystery of Musk: background musings

Some background thoughts before I begin reviewing the fragrances ~

Musk is an interesting idea. If one were debating what smelled good a few hundred years ago I would understand why musk (civet, etc) would top the list. Humans smelled differently 100+ years ago. Without central plumbing and near constant bathing we were musky little creatures. Present day humans exert an enormous amount of energy ensuring we do not smell, well, human. We brush our teeth, shampoo our hair, deodorize our under arms, chew gum, launder our clothing after one wearing and in nearly every obvious olfactory way, we remove any trace of the smell of our humanity.

I can only speak for myself, but it often strikes me as a craving, a need to recover some of this lost animalic sensuality when I hunger for some musk, some “skank” (descriptor courtesy of the writers at Perfume Posse) in my fragrance. Perhaps now more than ever, with the onslaught of so many pointless “eau de laundry detergent” scents, I’ve desired a bit of musk in my personal space. I am so otherwise scrubbed and deodorized.

As we all know, natural animal-sourced musk has been banned for decades. What we are familiar with now, are synthetic musks. This task is especially challenging for natural perfumers, who cannot and choose not to use man-made synthetic substances which would be quite an easier route to my mind. All of the perfumers involved in this project are using (creating, sourcing, imagining) natural substances. For the natural perfumers involved in this project, this is no easy “grab synth-musk accord #69 off the shelf” for them.

Forgive me for not digging into the details of the natural substances used, because this has never interested me. It does not interest me in synthetic perfumes nor does it interest me in natural perfumery. I consider myself the end user, the consumer, the one who appreciates the experience, the final product, but I don’t groove on the specificity of how it’s created. I smell perfume and I either love it or hate it no matter the substances involved.

The Non-Blonde’s description of natural perfumery resonated so much that I’d like to repeat her words here and then add a few of my own.

The Non Blonde: I know I'm not telling you anything new, but it's worth repeating: true luxury (and not just in perfume, it's true for jewelry, handbags and cheese) isn't bought at Macy's and doesn't have a famous label one can buy at the mall. True luxury is a unique item, hand-made by a skilled artist who selected the best materials and has a point of view and a personal touch. The natural Perfume Guild brings together the people who create these gems; it educates and promotes quality and artistic expression in perfumery.

I think of natural perfumery as a personal choice, a philosophy of life, a political statement and everything in between. There is a growing movement in the U.S. for organic and locally grown/made products. Do you have a Whole Foods Market in your town, how jam packed is this place?! I think it’s obvious there is an enormous shift/trend towards these types of original artisan created goods. Natural perfumery falls under this broad umbrella of original hand-made art for me. I think it’s purely coincidental, but the roll-out of this project occurring around the same time as America’s Independence celebration is a curious connection. Natural perfumery strikes me, by its very nature, as free, independent, pioneering, adventurous, edgy, stripped of pedagogy, outside of the mainstream and also sometimes a rather acquired “taste.”

I recall the first time I smelled some creations from Anya’s Garden, Strange Invisible Perfumes, Soivohle’ and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. Some of their darker, animalic and more adventurous scents made me recoil a bit. After an entire lifetime of smelling synthetic scents, some naturals, certainly not all, many natural perfumes are simple little lovelies just like many simple little synth scents, but it’s the daring scents which took some time to understand and acquaint myself with.

I think I am in for a wild ride with all the sniffing I need to do for this musk project. But I am looking forward to it, because after my initial shock (this is a several years ago now) I have come to appreciate, love and adore several scents from a handful of natural perfumers I admire. For me, my positive hit rate is no different from the number of perfumes I like from large houses churning out synthetic scents. There are always hits and misses.

Onward!

Other blogs participating in the Mystery of Musk project:
Perfume Shrine
The Non Blonde
Bitter Grace Notes
CaFleureBon
First Nerve
Grain de Musc
Indie Perfumes
Olfactory Rescue Service
Olfactarama

il Profumo Blanche Jacinthe

Blanche Jacinthe as described by il Profumo website:

“opens with celestial notes, given by the preponderance of the white and intense water hyacinth, which appears also in the heart of this perfume, in a very deep and sensual way. This alchemy is completed by orange flowers and jasmine. It closes with a trail of amber and musky notes.”

Announcement of Blanche Jacinthe on NST last year added galbanum and chamomile as additional notes. Obviously the ad copy is a bit lacking here so I’ll sum up the notes list in my own words with what I actually smell: water hyacinth (or insert hyacinth, lotus and/or water lily here), galbanum, chamomile, orange blossom, jasmine, and white musks.

Blanche Jacinthe (which I normally would shorten to BJ but you might imagine why I will not) reminds me enough of other hyacinth focused fragrances for me to group it into the same category with Annick Goutal Grand Amour, Guerlain Chamade and Parfums MDCI Un Coeur en Mai. However, Blanche Jacinthe also reminds strongly of Byredo La Tulipe with its soft green vegetal “freshly cut stems” quality.With a little snooping around, it turns out water hyacinth are a completely different plant from regular hyacinth. Water hyacinths are destructively invasive plants, considered ‘pests’ of the plant world but work nicely when used to make wicker (rattan type) furniture. Who knew? Well, we do now. I confess to not having any idea what water hyacinth smells like and am guessing il Profumo mean to convey that Blanche Jacinthe contains a watery, aqueous smelling hyacinth note, hence “water hyacinth” as opposed to generic hyacinth. From what I am smelling it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that the idea of lotus flowers or water lily is evident in this lovely little number as well. If anyone has actually smelled water hyacinth and knows that the scent differs greatly from regular hyacinth just let me know.

This article at NST is incredibly helpful and bears repeating given the list of notes in Blanche Jacinthe. The “notes” listed for a perfume are not an ingredients list. The notes are purely marketing or advertising copy. The list of notes is meant to convey how the overall fragrance smells but it by no means suggests that, in this particular instance, essential oil (or synthetic essence) of water hyacinth is used.

Normally I am quite the chypre, oriental and floriental lover but this year I’m having a field day with springy, pretty, girly white florals. Blanche Jacinthe could easily be dismissed as especially fresh, clean, watery and one-dimensional. I would only encourage sampling of Blanche Jacinthe if you are an avid hyacinth fan or perhaps tried La Tulipe this year and fell for its charms.

I am pleasantly surprised by Blanche Jacinthe and can easily say it’s one of my best unsniffed purchases so far this year.

A note about edp vs. parfum: I’m finding the parfum to be a tad greener and the additional notes of galbanum and chamomile seem most obvious in parfum concentration.

Sillage is soft and comfortable (yet present) and longevity is fair to average lasting about 3-4 hours on me (5 sprays).

D.S. & Durga

I got a chance recently to smell some of D.S. & Durga's limited edition fragrances, and I liked them enough that I'm now pretty curious about the entire line. There's an overall sense of mystery about the brand, which seems deliberate, like the perfumers are trying to stay out of the way. You can read the website for background on the duo behind the company, but the gist of the official story seems to be that D.S., a musician, and Durga, an architect, fell into perfumery the way one falls into an unexpected hole out in the yard, as though they hadn't seen it coming. This, along with the delicate botanical drawings featured on the website and on the packaging itself, makes the pair sound like something out of Beatrice Potter, characters who traipse through dewy green forests until some little stone appears to guide the way into ever more magical territory. Even the descriptions of the perfumes are somewhat whimsical. Here's the type for Royal Purpure:

"A fragrant study upon the Heraldic tinctures of medieval Anglo-Saxon families of Devonshire and Cornwall."

I have no idea what this means, but meaning doesn't seem to matter. Clearly, it's more about mood and tone. D.S. & Durga are sending up (I hope) Victorian apothecary culture the way a band like Arcade Fire appreciates the imaginative rhythms, look, and feel of the post-industrial gazette or early Sears Roebuck catalogs, creating a world of impressions bigger companies can only think to ape by employing skinny-legged models to sit on phallic objects with their skirts open.

The pair have a quiet indie sensibility which feels more like Portland to me than Brooklyn, but I started avoiding Brooklyn after the backward trucker cap infestation a good decade back, so Brooklyn ins't exactly a known entity to me at this point; I'm probably unfairly biased. I'm sure there are wonderful people in Brooklyn, some without their hats on backwards.

The D.S. & Durga website is good fun--artsy and eclectic. It avoids the usual pratfalls of indie perfumery (chiefly, lack of imagination or vision when it comes to packaging and the experience surrounding the product), without knocking you over the head with the distancing effects of impossible hipster chic. The boxes and bottles are simple without being flimsy or inelegant. They feel like something humble and special, resembling vintage drugstore designs.

None of this thoughtful attention to detail would matter if the fragrances were nothing special. While D.S. &Durga's fragrances are nowhere near as visionary or compelling as Sonoma Scent Studio, nor as accomplished as Andy Tauer, those two are useful comparisons; I don't think D.S. & Durga have any ambitions to work in that vein, which isn't to say they aren't doing compelling work; these are fragrances played in minor chords, creating uniquely nostalgic, off-beat moods. They have more to do with minimalism.

Royal Purpure is pine and fig, cypress and cedar. It's lovely, sharing something of Dzongkha's bitter spiciness. 1538 Rheims and East Mideast are the standouts of those I tried. I can smell cardamom and saffron in East Mideast, and a bit of the rose. 1538 Rheims smells of musk, patchouli, ginger, and iris. The copy reads:

"A handsome lady begins to appear in the upper window of a ruined tower, enchanting the whole township. A minor chaplain searches the ruins in vain. The room she appears in is mysteriously locked. Air blows from beneath the door."

Again, good fun, this stuff, but not so trifling, either. Most of it seems to last well, smelling soft but rich several hours after application. After reading otherwise on a few perfume boards, I'd expected differently. The fragrances are mellow but diffusive, and they have a quality I haven't sensed in anything else currently being made--handcrafted, mass produced, or anywhere in between. D.S. & Durga have some kind of licensing agreement with Anthropologie and can be found at most of its stores (unlike, say, Histoires de Parfum, which is on the website but not at many of the brick and mortar locations). They've just released a trio of edp's in larger sizes (50 ml, as opposed to .6 ounces), more affordably priced. Of these, I like Shake Shake Senora the best. Island Marigold, Heliotrope, and Vanilla Orchid, says the packaging. It's a wonderful treatment of vanilla, more herbal than I've smelled before, subtly medicinal.

Durga (real name Kavita Ahuja) and D.S. (aka David Moltz) have referred to themselves as "rogue perfumers". I like that. I appreciate what they're doing. They seem to be true artisans. Everything is bottled and packaged by hand. They travel, picking up the essences they use in their fragrances, all of which were at one time and might still be bottled not just by hand but in their own living room. Many of the essences and attars come from a centuries old shop in New Delhi. Ahuja once included herb books, locations, music, outdated wisdom, recipes, old medicine, and childhood as primary influences. "Memory is the most essential thing to making a scent," she said, "as you must remember the impression something has left upon you even if you are using your imagination."

Said Moltz not too long ago: "We thrive on the collective spirit of out friends in NYC who put their heart and soul into their own arts and crafts--jewelry designers, painters, screen printers, architects, clothiers. A good deal of our close friends make something with their own hands. We share information and we wear each others' creations."

In an interview online, Ahuja said: "I think we put out something very special. It's a time consuming product and we put a lot of ourselves into it."

The above images were lifted from articles I found online about the duo.

Fashionable Attitudes: From Tuberose to Ylang Ylang

It's fascinating to read the comments about Abigail's Nuit de Tubereuse--mainly because I can't make any connection between what I smelled and what you all are talking about. A month ago, when I smelled it at Barney's, I found Tubereuse infinitely uninteresting. Like Abigail, I'm not much of a Bertrand D fan, though I do really love Amaranthine: I don't find it sugary or banal. But Tubereuse, which has been hyped for months and waxed poetically about, really seemed much ado about nothing to me, on top of which, the now-chronic persistence problem which characterizes all of L'Artisan on my skin. It's sad. Back when I first smelled a L'Artisan fragrance I thought the heavens had opened up. Now I'm horribly blase about the line. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe Bertrand just had his work cut out for him.

Meanwhile, I've smelled the new A Scent Florale and think it's a great addition to the original. Fainter, yes, and not as green, but the original has plenty of green to go around, and Florale retains a lot of it. I'm probably relieved that Florale doesn't feel like a corrective of some sort, an attempt to "fix" the most oft-cited problems with A Scent. Too sharp? Too masculine? Who cares? Florale is the kind of flanker I enjoy: it doesn't simply use its source material as a marketing springboard. It plays around with many of the same characteristic elements, tweaking and recombining them, almost as if the perfumers had been asking themselves, "How much can we push this, in baby steps, until it isn't quite what it was?" Only be staying very close to the original can the differences truly be enjoyed, the contrasts fully absorbed. The biggest difference are the highest top notes, a dewy burst of peony mixed with galbanum and, possibly, ylang ylang. Galbanum and Ylang Ylang have some interesting interplay, their rubbery, almost mentholated facets mingling nicely. The fragrance is closer to the skin than A Scent original but by no means a skin scent on me.

Speaking of Ylang Ylang, I'm only now getting around to Estee Lauder's Private Collection Amber Ylang Ylang. I'm glad to be smelling it now, while the conversation about Nuit de Tubereuse rages on. I remember how disappointed people were in Amber Ylang Ylang. I thought, wow, it must be pretty bad. I'm surprised to find that I like it very much, though I suppose like many who did I should qualify that by saying it isn't the most groundbreaking thing I've ever laid nostril on. I wonder what makes Tubereuse, which seems so uninteresting to me, the topic of so much excitement and praise, while Amber YY was regarded so resolutely as a failure. I can see things being worked out in it, like the challenge of bringing vintage balsamic florals into the future. Oriental Lounge seemed to be asking itself the same questions, and answered them differently and possibly more emphatically. My impression is that Amber YY aimed for a more languorous tribute to those older sisters Bal a Versailles and Youth Dew. Ultimately it presents a far more mellow meditation on those themes. Much was made of the price, but 80 bucks for an ounce of Amber YY doesn't really seem exorbitant to me. Again, I don't smell the vanilla overload everyone seems to have suffered under, but talk to me in the winter.

Know what I continue to love? Histoire D'Amour by Aubusson. Another Ylang Ylang driven fragrance which didn't have the good fortune to have been created by Bertrand D or manufactured by L'Artisan. Personally, I like it as much as anything I've smelled from either. Another good one for me lately, and I have yet to review it, is Yosh's EDP version of Omniscent. I've read very little about it, and it strikes me as one of the best releases of the past six months. I smelled the EDP version alongside the original when I picked up a bottle at Barney's. They smelled not very similar to me. I suspect people haven't been reviewing it because they assume otherwise. Like Amber Ylang Ylang and Oriental Lounge, Omniscent approaches the subject of an older style of fragrance with both respect and irreverence, resulting in a uniquely contemporary wear.

L'Artisan Parfumeur Nuit de Tubereuse

I’ll start by admitting that L’Artisan and me, well, we just don’t see eye to eye on what makes a good perfume. To me, a perfume is an art, a craft, a science and a consumer product all rolled into one. The piece I think L’Artisan misses is the consumer product aspect. They just don’t make many fragrances that last (some, yes, most don't). And if I can’t smell my own perfume, let alone anyone else ever getting a decent whiff of it, then it’s a big fail in my book. Reminds me of the moral of The Emperor Wears No Clothes; or like drinking wine and never feeling a buzz or taking a sleeping pill yet never falling asleep.

First off, Nuit de Tubereuse (NdT) is not much ado about tuberose. So if you’re a huge tuberose fan like me, you shouldn’t expect to find the creamy, sexy white flower we adore. But Nuit de Tubereuse isn’t meant to be a soliflore, you say? Well, correct, you are right, but I really can’t even find a hidden tuberose aspect or a tuberose agenda anywhere in here. It could easily be any white flower, it’s a nondescript floral aspect which could be jasmine, mimosa, gardenia, ylang ylang or a blend of all these. This floral is tropical, it is sweet and sultry and not sharp or heady or cloying at all. I wish L’Artisan had instead named NdT something like Nuit de Fleur Blanc or Encens de Fleur Blanc because this is what it smells like to me. Actually Encens de Fleur Blanc would be perfect. Pardon my French, I have no gift with it, I’m just playing here, so stop snickering in the corner over there.

Nuit de Tubereuse opens with a tropical, sweet, almost candy-like beginning. In essence, it’s a fruity floral. (Just say it with me people, “it’s a fruity floral!”) It’s a fruity floral with heaps of incense and earthy resinous dirt. So imagine a nice fruity floral, with a natural vibe, with about three-quarters resinous incense taking up the composition. You’ll easily recognize this incensey-resinous heart and base, I think Robin at NST has named it “Duchaufourade.” At times there’s a bit of morphing, I smell some vanilla here and there, however I get zero of the green, bitter or vegetal quality others have discussed and I've been looking. On me, this is how I would describe it to give you a reference point: Take YSL Nu edp and mix with a sweet tropical fruity floral and viola you have Nuit de Tubereuse.

Am I a Bertrand Decahufor fangirl? Not really. I think he makes interesting aromas, things that are fun to smell, to sniff for a short while to see how they morph, but I don’t think he makes real perfumes. I just scanned the long list of perfumes Duchaufour has created (thanks to Robin at NST for her amazing ability to keep us all organized and in the know). Of Duchafour’s long list of works, I only have feelings for a few, such as L’Artisan Havana Vanille and Fleur de Liane (a nice green floral), Eau d’Italie Paestrum Rose and I actually like one of his lesser known works probably the best, Lalique Flora Bella. So much of Duchaufour’s work strikes me as interesting aromas but not proper perfumes. For instance, I don’t think of the following as proper perfumes: Piment Brulant, Timbuktu, Dzongkha, the CdG insence series, etc.

You might recall that I felt like the lone dissenter who hated Amaranthine (another Duchaufour creation). Well, I certainly do not hate NdT, in fact, I think it smells quite pretty, but I don’t find it wears like a perfume on me. It lasts about 1 hour maximum and the sillage is nonexistent. I’ve been wearing NdT for 3 days. For three days I’ve applied 4 sprays to each forearm and 2 big sprays to each wrist and then I spray in the air and walk through it. I’ve accosted several household members and asked if they smelled me. Three different family members said they didn’t smell much, one gave me the best she could with “you smell nice, a little sweet maybe?” For me to smell NdT I have to bring my nose to within a 1/2 inch of my arm. You might have noticed that I become extremely frustrated by lack of sillage. As far as I'm concerned, NdT is a consumer product and a perfume needs to last and project a bit. Shouldn’t that be a rule? A LITTLE projection, not Angel projection but just enough?

You might ask “what if NdT had plenty of sillage and longevity?” Well, then, I might like it a great deal more. At least I wouldn’t have anything to complain about and could focus solely on the scent. As I’ve already stated, NdT is a pretty smell, not particularly odd or unusual to me, just a nice fruity floral over an incensey base.

At this moment I feel a bit too practical. I feel like the dissenter, once again. I read others impressions, most are falling all over themselves with adoration of Duchaufour and I just think, “so what? If I can’t wear it like a perfume, then it’s just some sort of aromatherapy.”

Additional reading:
Review at NowSmellThis
Exclusive Duchaufour interview at Grain de Musc
PereDePierre's review
Review at Muse in Wooden Shoes
Review at Ca Fleure Bon
Octavian over at 1000 Fragrances
and the server for Perfume Posse is down otherwise I would link to their reviews (yes, more than one!)

Oh, the Womanity!

The big question: “What does Womanity smell like?”

To me, it smells like salt. It’s a little woody, a smidge sweet, but mostly it's a mild salty skin scent with some aldehydes. For a Mugler scent, Womanity is low key. It is not a sillage monster like previous perfumes from Mugler.

Womanity begins with some bright citrus notes but quickly dissipates into a mild, vaguely fruity (fig) scent over salty driftwood. Caviar is listed as a note and I don’t smell anything resembling fish eggs (thank goodness). Womanity is much more subtle and tasteful than I expected. It’s quite wearable; anytime, anyplace, and I think it would work in the heat as well as cold weather. Actually, I’m not sure what others will think but the most apt description I can give you is salty driftwood. It reminds me of the seashore, of the breeze blowing off the ocean on a mild and temperate day. I like it.

For a fantastic piece on Womanity, with marvelous pics and witty commentary, vist Nathan Branch’s blog

For an in-depth critique of the marketing and progression of the Mugler brand visit Grain de Musc

For Robin's take at Now Smell This

Above pic not entirely stolen, credit is being given, to the brilliant Nathan Branch.

Some Oils

It's probably the heat but my skin isn't doing much with most of the fragrances I own lately. Even the strongest old reliables (your Habanita, your Poison, your Opium, your Shocking) have been disappointing me. For a few weeks I stopped wearing much of anything. Then I turned back to oils.

I've been collecting oils for years, dating back to high school, I think. I can't remember the first oil I got but I do remember a lot of the earlier things, like a bottle of "Sandalo" a friend brought back from a trip to maybe Guatemala. I can't remember what friend, or what he was doing there, and I'm not a fan of Sandalwood, really, but I think this one is probably better than most of the versions they sell today. I was always very good at tracking down places which sold oil. And I probably bought them mainly because I could. It was even weirder back then for a guy to buy perfume. Oil I could say was diffusive, atmospheric. It was environmental as opposed to personal, which in my mind made it okay. I had an alibi for it. I looked for oils at head shops and import places. Later, in New York, I found it all over the place. I kept the oils in an old wooden box.

I still have the box, which sits in my office, pretty separate from all the perfume I own, which indicates to me that I regard oils and perfume as two entirely different things. Perfumes are to be worn, where oils are to be taken out and smelled. I realized only recently that, though I now wear oils more frequently than I once did, I still maintain that weird bias. Mostly I've worn oil around the house, until recently. In the past month, I've resumed looking at oils when I shop, and I've come home with some pretty interesting things.

It was great to see a post on perfume posse the other day about majmua attar, especially considering I'd been wearing some lately. Mine is made by Nemat and was picked up at Whole Foods. I suspect it isn't as good but it's no less a jolt to the system. You really have to smell this stuff for yourself. March at perfume posse described it as "simultaneously green, floral, woody, and earthy" and she's right, "it shifts". A lot of the oils I like do, but Majmua is particularly mercurial. There's so much going on, in such a concentrated substance, that it really does seem to unfold over time. Your mind probably takes a while to put all its qualities into perspective, too. Majmua is the antithesis of most modern perfumery, which aims to be instantly apprehended, all parts clearly perceived at the outset. Majmua is openly dense, and it wears amazingly in the heat, deepening rather than thinning out as most fragrances seem to on me.

I first got Djinn, by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, back in January. It wears well enough in the cold, but is strictly medicinal without something to warm it up and activate its smokiness. I avoided it until about a week ago because I thought it would be too much right now. To the contrary, it's an amazing thing. The humidity airs it out a little, so that it really does have the waft of smoke. I could never figure out where the actual smoke of this so-called smoke fragrance was. In the winter, it had a whiff of ash to it, but more than anything it reminded me of something more astringent, approaching witch hazel. Now I can smell all kinds of things. Today I'm smelling cinnamon, and barely-there clove. I praised BPAL's Highwayman to high heaven months ago; yet, the exact opposite of Djinn, Highwayman is a heat scent that requires cold to paint its picture. In the summer, Highwayman is truly overwhelming. It's all creosote; all the florals you smell in a cooler climate are gone. Djinn, on the other hand, thrives with scents of burning wood and ash and various things you barely ascertain beyond its veil of smoke.

Nemat actually puts out several oils I like. Jannatul Firdaus seemed too soapy to me at first, but I put it on before leaving one morning and for hours I could smell its complicated composition. Much lighter than Majmua, it shares that woody, green, floral fusion, minus Majmua's very thick balsamic backbone. I'm pretty sure the sandalwood Nemat uses is bottom of the line, but you get nice whiffs of it throughout Jannatul's development. Jannatul is an interesting choice as a masculine I think. Mogra (Indian Jasmine) is more determined to stay on the feminine side of the continuum. That doesn't stop me from wearing it, as I like it's darker take on jasmine, faintly spicy, if not particularly indolic. Again, I suspect that Nemat is a more watered down, Whole Foods friendly version of what you might find from other, less ubiquitous distributors, but it's a great scent. I have a massive bottle (we're talking probably 4 ounces) of Arabian Wood, which used to be a lot better than Nemat's current version. It was once a wonderfully smoky oil. It's still perfectly nice, but I have trouble smelling it on my skin.

Another Whole Foods stalwart is Kuumba Made, which distributes a selection of oils I generally like. My favorite is Tunisian Opium, but Arabian Rose runs a not so distant second. Tunisian Opium is very much like YSL's Opium, but there are noticeable differences, some more subtle than others. It has an herbal bent missing from classic Opium. And it amps up a presence of vanilla. It's actually a little closer to Youth Dew than Opium, all things considered, but different enough from both, primarily in its persistence (those both last forever in the winter; not so much in the summer). Arabian Rose has pretty nuclear tenacity, and while pretty is far from sweet. Black Coconut and Tunisian Opium are great, as is the Amber paste Kuumba makes. The Frankincense and Myrrh combo is decent but nothing special.

On a recent trip to Joshua Tree I discovered a line by Ramakrishnananda. My favorite by far is Padma, which mixes rose, clove, and jasmine to interesting effect. It isn't heavy, but it lasts, and it has presence, and I would say it's perfectly unisex for something with so much rose and jasmine in it. Other oils by the line are interesting but not as compelling. One is a dead ringer for Fahrenheit. Another is a fairly artless (if nice) blend of orange blossom and honey. An oil called Aphrodesia is also pretty fantastic. Outwardly nothing special, it wears well. I smell florals mostly but softened by musks probably. The oil is deep purple and comes in a nice box, also purple.

I would love to hear what oils other people wear and how they get them.

Soivohle' Geranium Rose Mint

With the name Geranium Rose Mint you might expect something sharp or at least very green with a bit of toothpaste. Not so. I was surprised to find this such a soft scent with hints of geranium, rose and mint. The mint isn’t especially noticable at the start, it begins with a lovely green citrus, rosey geranium leaf, with an abundance of soft, mild, somewhat vanillic musk.

My point of reference for geranium scents are Miller Harris Geranium Bourbon and Frederic Malle Geranium Por Monsieur. Both are much sharper with outgoing personalities. The Miller Harris dries down to a green, refreshing scent while the Malle stays very minty throughout.
Soivohle’ Geranium Rose Mint (SGRM) is an extremely laid back fragrance considering it’s cast of characters. The notes of geranium, rose and mint are definitely discernible but in a lazy Sunday sort of way. None of the notes are fighting for your attention, they just languidly make themselves known, with the mint showing up much later, almost upon dry down. SGRM is fresh overall but a softly subdued and sweet sort of fresh. The base notes of vanilla, amber and musk are strong throughout, lacing the entire composition together and keeping the scent quite gentle, airy and sweeter than anticipated.

I admit that I sampled this fragrance expecting (and wanting) a green zesty little number. But upon wearing it the past few days I’ve decided its quite nice the way it is. Geranium Rose Mint is within Soivohles’ naturals collection, the longevity is decent, sticking around maybe 2-3 hours on me. Sillage is low but it’s still there on the skin for about 3 hours.

For a point of reference, there’s a slight similarity between SGRM and Guerlain Acqua Allegoria Mentafollia. Both in their style, scent, softness and longevity. But they’re still entirely different fragrances worth giving a shot if this type of fragrance appeals to you.

Notes taken from Soivhole website: sweet orange, mint, geranium, roses, marigold, jasmine, with a light vanilla, amber base.