Classical gingerbread? Chanel Bois des Iles

Some thoughts on tuberoses

I love tuberoses--one of my abosolute favourite flowers. Beyond having a lovely shape, their scent is extraordinary: rich, sweet and heady, but also slightly strange and rubbery.

You don't get them much in flower shops here. I've found them a couple of times at the stand on one of the streets radiating off the Seven Dials towards Covent Garden. I tried growing tuberose once: got a nice stem but not much else.

Tuberose is certainly not a shy or retiring flower or smell. Seriously femme fatale stuff. There are some remarkable tuberose fragrances out there.

Etro Messe de Minuit: Urban smells

A couple of weekends ago, we met friends in Highgate Wood, a 'park' in north London. There is a cafe next to a big field, where people picnic and play football and cricket, but otherwise this really is more an urban forest than a park.

Our visit was on the first clear day after several rainy ones, and the temperature was just starting to rise back to reasonably spring-like levels. We parked in a road off the park with beautiful big Victorian houses. The area is between Highgate and Muswell Hill and so is quite high up, with incredible views over London.

Honeysuckle flowers: Annick Goutal Le Chevrefeuille

We've just finished a warm spell here. Perfect spring weather. Blue sunny skies. Been cleaning up the garden and noticed the honeysuckle vine, which has struggled for the past two years, is flourishing. Loads of new shoots. No flowers yet, but, then, it's not quite time.

This got me thinking about the scent of honeysuckle flowers. So, off I went in search of Annick Goutal Le Chevrefeuille. Unlike rose perfumes, there aren't many honeysuckle solifloresout there.

While John Lewis at Brent Cross has some Annick Goutals, it doesn't have Le Chevrefeuille. I took my son to the Natural History museum on Saturday and combined that with a visit to Harrods, which I know has the whole AG line.

VanillaAlmondPowder: Laura Tonatto Plaisir

Czech & Speake Neroli cologne

There was a recent run on the Makeup Alley perfume notice board that one could get cologne samples from Czech & Speake gratis by registering on their website. So, I did.

Czech & Speake's main business is upmarket bathroom fittings, so doing colognes seems a very reasonable sideline. Their store is in Jermyn Street, located in quite a swanky area of central London, and the website is clean-lined and easy to navigate. They offer nine scents altogther. I started my troll through them with Neroli on no other basis than it was on top in the sample box.

Parfumerie Generale Corps et Ames

Parfumerie Generale Corps et Ames is a 2006 release within the Private Collection from this French niche perfume house. I've seen it called a 'green chypre', and since 1) I've been contemplating chypres recently and 2) the name of the scent keeps drawing me in when I look at samples in my sample box, I decided to give it a more close examination than it has merited in the past.

Straight up, I have to say this is not a scent that I am drawn to out of the vial. And while its notes make it sound very intriguing, it just doesn't work that well on my skin. Listed notes include pepper, bourbon geranium, immortelle flowers, rose, jasmine, Melati wood, leather and sandalwood.

A rose but something more

In the runup to Christmas I was thinking through what to include in a sampler pack which was to be a gift for a good friend. She's someone to whom I've gifted quite a few very different samples over the past few years. It's taken a while to get a clearer picture of what she likes and what works on her chemistry.

A recent success, to my surprise, was Serge Lutens' Rose de Nuit. She was very taken by the slightly-past-its-prime animalic roseand went home with a decant.

So, with this in mind, I included a sample of Agent Provocateur in the Christmas pack. This seems to me a very 'can' or 'can't' scent: either it works on a person's chemistry or it turns sour. A rose chypre, it is a bit off in left field for a rose perfume: not a rosy rose but spicy and mossy, with a decidedly skanky drydown.

The smell of Twilight

I'm afraid I must confess that I've read Stephenie Meyer's four books about a vampire/human romance, The Twilight series. In fact, I've read them more than once. Now, however, I've managed to move on to Ian Rankin's crime series featuring Inspector John Rebus. There are around 18 books in the series, so I'll be occupied for some time yet. But back to Twilight.

While the writing is frequently overblown and the plot mechanisms sometimes almost unbearably trite, these books (bar the last one) are a very compelling read. Meyer said the story is based on a dream she had and I think it must have been a very good and interesting dream indeed.

Smell and scent are a big, and very compelling, feature of the series, and in most cases they are rendered well, I think.

An homage to Andy

Several years ago, fairly soon after they were released, I got samples of Andy Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain and Maroc pour Elle. I'm now sure those samples were off because I disliked both scents intensely.

Why off? you ask. Because several years later, there was a brief explosion of commentary on the perfume blogs, about a limited release scent by Tauer Perfumes called Orris, which was so extreme in its positivity it caught my eye. Also, the notes list for Orris promised something wonderful (Bulgarian rose absolute, cinnamon, pepper, grapefruit, Orris, Frankincense, oud, Mysore and Australian sandalwood, vetiver, ambergris). So, I got hold of a sample.

Earrings and perfume... and eyeliner?

I had a makeover recently at the MAC Prostore, which is located in Foubert's Place, among a warren of pedestrian streets near Liberty in central London. 

Until this visit to MAC, my recent (last ten years) morning ritual consisted of getting dressed and putting on perfume and earrings--and then, depending on whether it was a home or a work day, the gammut ran from a nothing on my face bar moisturiser, to a lick of mascara, to a rather haphazard rendering of foundation, blush and eye stuff. I've followed a routine with makeup over the years: decide to visit a makeupcounter, buy stuff, wear it for a while, and then gradually cede it to the oblivion of the used product drawer.

Don't know what you got...

I recently got a new oven. The old one hadn't worked for a while, but I backed and forthed between getting another built-in to replace the old one or justing chucking the whole set-up and getting a stand-alone cooker. Ended up replacing the built-in oven.

The funny thing is you don't know how useful an oven is until you suddenly have one again after months of cooking solely on the stove top.

So, an ode to garlic bread, pasta bake, toasted cheese sandwiches -- and to baked goods.

Boundaries

I ordered a mini of Lalique Encre Noire off ebay late last year. It took several months for it to reach my local postal depot after it entered a limbo between the Spanish and British postal services. I am currently not buying full bottles of anything. However, this is an HG and I did not want to be without it, so the mini.

Many reviews of this call it fresh. I don't get that at all. Rather, on me Encre Noire is loamy, spicy, the smell of an established wood or cemetary. And, very interestingly, it also has a viscous aspect, like good black fountain pen ink. A vague list of notes: vetiver (Bourbon and Haitian), cyprus, cashmere woods and musk.

Knock me over with a feather

Angel by Thierry Mugler has been around for years but it took me until very recently to try it. I think that was because it is so popular and so hyped and I just let this get in the way of my sampling it. In any case, what an extraordinary surprise it turns out to be.

This was created in 1992 by the nose Olivier Cresp. Vague list of notes includes a top of fruits, dewberry and honey; a middle of chocolate, caramel and coumarin; and a base of vanilla, sandalwood and patchouli.

Theo Fennell Scent

I bought a bottle of Theo Fennell Scent over the summer as a reward for passing the first half of a work financial exam on FINRA regulations for publishing research (obscure indeed). It's a fairly difficult exam, which took hours of study time over a six-month period.

In any case, Scent was a very fitting reward for the hours and hours spent over something requiring focus, discipline and denial of other pleasures. It is the antithesis of denial, being round, voluptuous, unapologetically womanly.

Le Labo Oud 27

Scent and memory

Oh, the stories they could tell

Frisson

I'm originally from New York, where thunderstorms are a summer staple. Brooklyn in mid-August means an edginess of electricity and humidity, along with searing heat, before the sky opens up.

In Miami, where the humidity is like wearing too many clothes, you can see the storm coming: the wall of water moving in from the ocean.

A heady new adventure

I've long been a perfume lover (I recall my first holy grail scent being Love's Fresh Lemon body spray about four decades ago) and became an enthusiastic scent blog reader when the perfume blogsphere came into being. Now, as a result of some major life changes (don't worry, if they're not all good yet, I hope to turn them in that direction in the near future) I decided this was the right time make my entry into the online perfume community.

See you on Monday!