Camping, Biking, and yet, Perfume

So I'm not posting much, it's true, but am still a perfume freak. How to tell? Well, I had a scent of the camping weekend, so that must earn me at least some of the perfumista points I'm losing with every blogless week. So what was my SOTC (scent of the camp)? Ormonde Jayne Champaca. Got positive comments on it, too!

The picture is our view from the tent of the Pedernales River in Texas Hill Country on Sunday morning. After a rain-drenched Friday night (dry tent, though, so yay!), we were a teensy bit worried, but the skies cleared up as if on command for our Saturday morning group cruise. On Sunday our whole group put our many talents together and focused on eating, eating some more, swimming, and slooooowly packing up the tents to go home.

Amouage Tribute Attar

Amouage's Tribute Attar perfume oil bursts out of its tiny bottle with a slightly astringent, almost lemony (is that just an incredible, nonbitter saffron? that's what the notes say) and silvery frankincense, like a combination of the rarest silver-tip Assam tea leaves and velvety fir tree needles.

As the frankincense mellows, it transforms into an unbelievably beautiful forest scent, one so vivid I can almost hear the creaking of the ancient trees around me, and the earth under my feet is padded with a thick, loamy bedding of leaves and fir needles of past seasons. Rose and jasmine pop in for a little while to keep everything from getting too unrelentingly masculine. They feel not like florals so much as shafts of light penetrating the depths, and then gradually they get nudged away by rich tobacco and animalic, leathery, dark beauty.

This is the most powerful perfume I've ever smelled. Seriously, I at first had only a tiny sample, and I just barely scraaaaaape the barest smidgen from the plastic applicator onto my wrist, and it just blooms for hours. Other bloggers have talked about a drop lasting for hours, so I feel the need to specify that one drop would probably kill me and everyone else in a three-block radius. This stuff costs 350 dollars for 12 ml, and that amount would last several lifetimes on me. It'll probably take me a couple of months to get through the 0.25 ml sample, and I keep applying it in microscopic amounts compulsively, since I'm addicted to the path it takes me on each and every time. I put Amouage's Ubar on my best of 2009 list, but Tribute Attar may be on the way to a best-of-all-time level, along with my vintage L'Heure Bleue, Dzing, Cuir de Russie, Muscs Koublai Khan, and Apres L'Ondee. I now own a treasured 3 mls in a tiny bottle.

Annick Goutal Un Matin d'Orage

This is wet garden loam and beautiful gardenias for about 30 seconds. After which, at first I got only grapefruit in the heart notes, which was very acrid. I've never liked grapefruit -- it smells like cat pee on me. But there's something about it that made me keep coming back in the weeks after I bought this in a blind buy. Its fizzy, unusual delicacy along with a bracingly sour, mineral quality makes me compulsively want to smell it. For me, it's a bit like wanting another candy sour.

So as my head twists around this thing, I get the grapefruit combined with the herbal shiso (also called perilla leaves), and I find myself compelled to say I... really like it. It's got an interesting quality like unripe fruit--or perhaps better described like the smell of grapefruit rind, not the fruit--which all eventually calms down into the florals (jasmine, champaca, and is that maybe the return of the gardenia there after a while? I can't be sure...) and a soft base of indistinct sandalwood.

Have you ever smelled the Shiso fragrance from Roger et Gallet? If you can, you may want to try it in combination with UMdO. I think there's a discontinued Shiso fragrance from Comme des Garcon, too, but I've never smelled it. I happen to have a sample of the Roger et Gallet fragrance spray, and it helped my nose recognize the basil-ish, cilantro-ish scent of shiso and distinguish it from the cat-pee of grapefruit. That, in turn, really helped my nose get past the grapefruit rind and start appreciating the complexity and uniqueness of this scent.

Other reviews of UMdO can be found at Now Smell This, at Perfume Shrine, and at Bois de Jasmin, among others!

Image courtesy of zigmasolutionse.com

Gianni Versace vintage parfum

The original Gianni Versace parfum is something I've been wanting to try since reading Marina's mighty tempting review in her Perfume-Smellin' Things blog. So the other day, after occasional hunts, I lucked out on fleaBay and found an inaccurately listed bottle of the parfum for $9.99. Whoohoo--here are a few thrills left on the flea, I guess it goes to show.

I can't tell a whole lot about the top notes, because they're a little damaged in the bottle I've got: rich, subtle fruit (no jam or stewed fruit, thank goodness) and florals is my main impression. After a few minutes, though, I get the love. This has a similarly raspy, animalic quality as the vintage Rumeur I reviewed a while ago, but with sweeter, tuberose-laden florals in the middle notes. It's both earthy and nectarous.

And perhaps because this is the parfum, it's quite deliciously relaxed--not as much an '80s-shoulderpads and warpaint type of fragrance as I expected. I definately smell the myrrh and especially the benzoin in the dry down, doing its resinous, sexy thing. But I wouldn't have a problem wearing this to lunch with a girlfriend. Not at all what I was expecting from the Versace fashion house, which I'll always associate with Liz Hurley in thigh-high-slit dresses embellished with silly couture safety pins. But then again, Liz in the first Austin Powers movie may be a good metaphor for this perfume. She had a smart, fun-loving, tongue-in-cheek take on the sexpot superagent in that movie, and that does indeed match this fragrance. It doesn't take its juicy, balsamic sexiness too seriously.

One online source lists the following notes. Top notes: aldehydes, spices, fruity notes, and bergamot. Middle notes: carnation, tuberose, gardenia, orris root, jasmine, lily of the valley and narcissus. Base notes: benzoin, leather, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, oakmoss, incense and myrrh.

Reversal of expectations: Havana Vanille and Vanille Galante

Two short reviews have been calling my name--calling me out of my writing malaise. I often feel like I don't have much to say about perfume anymore, until I come across either a vintage find or a comparison that might be helpful to others. The spiced, rummy opening of Havana Vanille by L'Artisan Parfumeur already has me reaching for the dish soap to scrub it off. I wrinkle my nose and bear it, but after that it just gets worse, with helichrysum (read: maple syrup) gooping up all that ethereal, smoky tobacco-leaf I was expecting.

On the other hand (literally), I'm shocked to like the gently aquatic opening of Hermes' Vanille Galante from the Hermessences line. Its topnotes hush quickly, almost as if it's been chastised, to a soft murmur of lily. A sexy librarian's scent for sure: it makes the velvety lily in L'Artisan's Passage d'Enfer seem positively screechy in comparison. There is fruitiness, but it's a really intriguing mixture of salt and sweet--a banana-ish sweetness, almost like licking up the most delicate tropical dessert you've never eaten off warm skin. I think if Vanille Galante were a dessert, in fact, it would dissolve in your mouth like a traditional hard meringue. There's something endearingly introverted and lisping about it. It makes me feel a little like Apres L'Ondee does--a bit shattered, watery, tender--and that's high praise.

Diptyque Philosykos Solid Perfume

Like a comforting little worry stone, I like to keep the solid perfume version of Diptyque's Philosykos close, and I take it out when I want a quick dose of comfort at work. It has almost no projection, but it lasts longer than the edt, I find.

Philosykos is often described as the smell of an entire fig tree: fruit, branches, leaves, and the soil it grows in, even. I think the branches and soil come through more strongly in the edt, and the solid perfume emphasizes the green leaves and creaminess. To me, it smells a bit like an avocado shake that you'd get at a Thai restaurant. With a shade of coconut, as well. I usually don't like fruity scents, but fig is just too perfect for even a hater like me to resist.

I absolutely adore the elegant black metal case, too. It reminds me of a little intaglio jewel, it's weighty, the hinge is bomb-proof, and it has a little grey pouch to slip it into to protect it from scratches.

Highly recommended!

Image from beautyhabit.com.

Best of the best 2009: Joint blog project

Happy New Year, everyone! I wish everyone only the best in 2010. Here is my very random "Best of" list for 2009. Hope you like it.

Best experience:
Happily relinquishing my illusion of control and contented self-sufficiency, because I want this man to always be on my team.

Best home project finally realized:
Building the back deck I've wanted since I bought my house, and then finally having a deck party with dear friends and visiting parrots.

Best trip:
Going to Florida to see my dad get married, even when I was driving back to the airport after three hours of sleep and every time I stopped for gas I kept finding more magic-markered wedding wishes the kids wrote all over my rental car.

Best creative activity:
Haiku postcard exchange, which meant I received not just bills and junk mail in my mailbox, but lovely words such as these from my friend Shawn M.:

your song, a current
strangers walking parallel
sad note sunshine air

Best songs to sing along to at the top of your lungs in the car:
"I Never Had Nobody Like You," M. Ward
"Carbon Monoxide," Regina Spektor (Couldn't find a link to this one, sorry!)
"Twist the Knife," Neko Case (Couldn't find a link to this one either...)

Best musical rediscovery:
The Smiths, all of 'em, but especially live versions of "What Difference Does It Make" and "London" almost make me long for teenage angst again (almost!) so I can do it properly and with a better soundtrack.

Best cheesy pop songs to dance around your house to:
"Umbrella," Rihanna (Thanks for reminding me of the joys of commercial pop, Aimee G.!)
"Heartbeats," The Knife (Synthesizer yumminess.)
"St. Petersburg," Brazilian Girls (I defy you not to dance to this one, sniffle-ushka.)

Best fragrance discovery:
Timbuktu, L'Artisan Parfumeur
How can incense be both smoky and green and speak like a living thing? I have no idea how Bertrand Duchaufour did it, but this one has just the most intriguing things to tell you. Robin at NowSmellThis did a review of Timbuktu that is so similar to my experience that I'm gonna be lazy and just link to that rather than bother with my own at the moment.

Best full-bottle purchases:
Muscs de Koublai Khan, Serge Lutens, from the lovely Nazrin at the theperfumeshoppe.com -- I've repeatedly contemplated traveling to Paris for the sole purpose of getting this skanky wonder, and it finally went export. So when you think about it, I just saved the cash for an entire trip to Paris by buying this bottle. Man, I'm so thrifty!

Woman, Ormonde Jayne, at ormondejayne.com when they had their fall sale -- I've wanted this one for a while, too, and now that I can indulge in spraying it rather than dabbing it from a little vial, it has revealed even more hidden depths and twisty hemlock notes up front. This stuff makes me feel all mysterious, even when I'm just in my pj's sick in bed with a cold.

Best website discovery:
thehypemachine grabs and compiles music tracks people post on the web for free. It's a total win for those of us who hate assessing a new iTunes purchase with a 20-sec-or-whatever clip, and I couldn't have linked up this post without it, either.

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There are many other participants in this "Best of the best 2009" project--go read their blogs, too!

First of all, many thanks to Elena at Perfume Shrine for initiating and organizing this joint blog project.

http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/

http://ayalasmellyblog.blogspot.com/

http://bittergracenotes.blogspot.com/

http://qwendy.typepad.com/shoescakeperfume/

http://www.eiderdownpress.com/Perfume_Journal.html

http://www.scenthive.com

http://olfactarama.blogspot.com/

http://journal.illuminatedperfume.com/

http://arosebeyondthethames.blogspot.com/

http://thenonblonde.blogspot.com/

http://underthecupola.blogspot.com/

http://sonomascent.wordpress.com/

http://www.savvythinker.com
http://alliam-aredhead.blogspot.com/
http://scelfleah.blogspot.com/
http://ismellthereforeiam.blogspot.com