Nuit de Tubéreuse by L'Artisan Parfumeur

This perfume starts out cold and candylike in equal measure. The candy quickly turns to gasoline fumes and decaying roots pulled straight out of the dirt--but not just dirt. Dirt mixed with overturned chunks of asphalt and cement in an abandoned urban lot. Then a cool, slightly weedy, angelica-tinged tuberose steps out of this chaotic scene, like a Hitchcock blonde on a hot, sticky night who mysteriously steps out of a grave, wipes a smudge of dirt off her satin pumps, and fixes her lipstick. Exhilarating opening.

But I should start from the beginning. At first sniff I thought this was going to turn into the vegetal musk of Strange Invisible Perfumes, which I'm sorry to say I loathe. But I tried it again on another night, and find, thankfully, it doesn't get too damp and dank. After that breathless, candy-asphalt-and-decay-opening, it gets softer for a while, then its complexity spirals out into a familiar but still impressive Duchaufour signature incense. The top notes (Robin at Now Smell This attributes them to a spicy mango in her astute review, and I'd agree) of mango mixed with orange blossom gives way to a mesmerizing, juicy floral and wood mixture warmed by cardamom and just a bit of tuberose. Then as it continues to dry down it gets even more familiar to Duchaufour fans (of Timbuktu, especially) with its strangely beautiful, tart incense.

Nuit de Tubéreuse, after living in it for a while, has a most indelible likeness to sweat and skin mixed with asphalt and flowers on a hot summer night. How does Duchaufour make incense that is both ethereal and tartly sweaty? I'm not sure I can wear it, but I can imagine finding it gradually more addictive, like I now find Les Nez's Manoumalia, which I first briefly described as a flesh-eating floral. This is likewise a truly astounding corrupted floral. It may start like the cool, self-possessed Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, but ends more like her good girl pulled over to the wrong side of the tracks by Brando in On the Waterfront.

I obtained my sample from a prize draw hosted by the kind Marla at Perfume Smellin' Things, and you should read her impressive review too.

And if you're yearning for yet more on this truly weird and beautiful perfume, read the fascinating interview that Denyse of Grain de Musc did with the perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour: Parts I and II.

Picture of Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant in Hitchcock's North by Northwest from suspense-movies.com. Picture of Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando in Kazan's On the Waterfront from cinepatas.com.

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.