Small break

I'm going to be here for a short break, meeting up with family.

Am hoping to go here,

as well as the Kandinsky exhibition at the Pompidou Centre and eat well.

Oh, and do some sniffing as well, of course.

Yves St Laurent Paris

Paris is a rose for divas. Not a shy, innocent rose; not a full-blown luscious rose; not a slightly-past-its-prime animalic rose. Paris is rose and violet, powdery and jammy, almost candied--and very in-your-face. This is the kind of perfume that precedes you into a room and lingers once you've left.

Years ago, a friend in New York, who was a knit-wear designer, wore this. She invariably over-sprayed, which meant that during a night out with her you were enveloped in the cloud of her perfume. Initially, this could be head-ache inducing. After a while, you adjusted. Since these nights out were a bit wild and jarring anyway, it all fit together.

Serge Lutens Arabie

I have never been to the Middle East, but I have frequently seen Serge Lutens' scent Arabie described as the smell of the bazaar, the scent of people living life in a particular environment.

Most of Lutens' offerings cannot be construed as in any way mainstream. His view of perfumes seems to be that they should offer much more than just scent for a the body. His many different offerings attest to the idea that beauty and stories can be distilled down and offered in a bottle.

Arabie definitely has a story to tell: of life lived in someplace warm, where people still shop day to day rather than by the week, and where the scents of cooking and life mingle in the open air. This is not a retiring, inward or 'clean' perfume.

Yves St Laurent Kouros

When I went to pick up the bottle of Kouros at Fenwick's YSL counter, the SA commented that I should "be careful because that one is very strong". I nodded and sprayed it several times on to my right wrist. Now, I have to give the woman her due: she was definitely right. For strange reasons of circulation, perfumes sprayed on my right wrist last for a far shorter time than those sprayed on my left one. But, the Kouros held its own, still full and strong hours after I sprayed it.

From what I've read, this one is love it or hate it, with comments ranging from it being soapy to having a fecal smelling. 

The advertising is very in-your-face, showing a very fit naked man (he is definitely not a 'nude') in front of the Kouros bottle.

L'Artisan Parfumeur Bois Farine

I bake bread a lot. This is my habit of late: bake once a week and we have breakfast bread sorted. My son will happily eat the home-made stuff, whereas he is a bit more picky about which supermarket breads are acceptable. Very nice not to have an argument in the morning over what will be consumed in the irritable period between getting up and getting into his school uniform.

This got me thinking about the scent of yeast. Now, the smell of baking is wonderful. We have a very good bagel bakery up here in wild north-west London and the place smells gorgeous. And anyone who has wandered through Paris streets in the very early morning will have experienced the glorious warm-bread-infused air. My house smells wonderful on a baking day. But however much I love the fragrance of baking, I can't love the smell of yeast. It's just too sour. I know there are many out there who do, though.

I can think of no perfumes that smell of the tangy, sour scent of yeast itself. It's one of those things that makes other things better (ie, flour and water don't do that much together but add yeast and bake and you get something truly great-smelling).

Diptyque Eau de Lierre

This is green with an upper case 'G'--and that's what is it. A bit circular, I know. What I mean is that what you get on impact with the skin--green, stemmy, watery--is the sum total of the fragrance. It does this for a while (a good couple of hours) and then it's gone. Pouf. That's it.

Antonia's Flowers Tiempe Passate

Tiempe Passate: such a beautiful name.

This is one of four fragrances by an East Hampton, Long Island (NY)-based florist named Antonia Bellanca. It is a fragrance I have tried a number of times over the past ten years. It has always seemed like something I should, in theory, love. I think this last sampling is around number five or six. Finally, it seems to work on my chemistry. I guess if you wait long enough...

In any case, it is a rather unusual scent, with a pronounced salty aspect. This could be very strange, but on me it comes over as the smell of sun-warmed skin after a swim in the ocean. One of the notes is Montauk rose and this is what comes out most on my chemistry: something salty, rosy and sun-baked--a reflection of a wonderful high summer day at the seaside, with swimming, sunning, and then fresh fish and cold white wine in the evening eaten in a garden in full flower.

Geo Trumper Sandalwood Cologne

Geo F Trumper is a London-based gentlemen's barber and perfumer that his been around since 1875. There are two stores you can visit, in upmarket areas of London, which offer grooming services as well as a large range of products, including shaving creams and soaps, skin food and moisturisers, bath soaps and shower gels, plus razors, shaving brushes, mirrors, etc.

While Trumper has a fairly wide range of colognes, I think the sandalwood is best known. I had been 'aware' of it for quite a while but have only recently managed to get hold of a sample.

The strongest and deepest smelling of sandalwoods is Mysore from India, which was over-harvested. It is now protected, meaning there is much less on the market for use in perfumery and it is more expensive than it was in the past.

Sandalwood has a wonderful deep woody-peppery almost astringent fragrance, but now many perfumes that used sandalwood have been a bit dampened down.

Chanel Pour Monsieur

On a sniffing expedition to Liberty a month on so ago, I happened to check out the scents kept in a mother-of-pearl cabinet opposite the sales desk. The classic Guerlains and Chanels live in there. I was looking for Jicky but noticed the bottle of Chanel Pour Monsieur down at the bottom. I'd read about the fragrance in The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. Turin refers to it as a reference masculine. So, I sprayed it on a blotter, stuck it in my bag and went back to focusing on Jicky.

When I got home and unpacked the bag, there was the blotter and, oh, did it smell good. Really seriously, outstandingly good. This is old-fashioned good suit and shoes sauve with a upper case 'S'. The smell of a man who has no need to raise his voice, dress loudly or wear a fancy watch to be noticed. Someone with gravitas and taste, emotional oomph. Someone who knows how to listen and watch.

Listed notes include lemon, petitgrain, neroli, cardamom, carnation, cedarwood, oakmoss and vetiver. I get a clove aspect that I know isn't cardamom, so there must be a bit of that in the mix, but the cardamom is very apparent in the drydown and it is completely delicious.

Men's scents

Last weekend, The Times of London published the results for its annual cosmetics/perfume poll. It turns out that the most popular men's scent is the 1990s icon CKOne (which smells like tomato leaves to me--not unpleasant but not terribly interesting or memorably either). I'd been planning on some posts about perfumes specifically marketed as masculines and targeted at men, and this clinched the deal.

Many mass-marketed masculinesare trulytruly banal and generic cologne smelling. But, there are some perfumes sold along-side these that are not and are worth seeking out. The following three can be picked up from larger, decent department stores, one more is available in more upmarket department stores, and the final one is a bit more difficult to find but worth the effort. So, really, there's no excuse for smelling of blah bergamot-cedar or too loud citrus or indeed like every third guy on the same bus or tube carriage.

Bulgari Black: Vanilla-rubber-black tea-amber. Sounds weird? Smells great. Smooth, woody, vanillic, but with a rubbery accord that is so strange it's perfect. Notes include black tea, rosewood, bergamot, cedar, oakmoss, vanilla, amber, sandalwood and musk.

Dior Eau Sauvage: Initially fresh citrus, floral in the middle, sitting on an animalic base and damn, it is good. Notes include basil oil, bergamot oil, cumin (there's some of your animalic), fruit notes, lemon, carnation, coriander, jasmin, orris, patchouli, sandalwood, amber, musk and oakmoss. This has been around since the 1960s and is adult, interesting and sexy.

Dior Homme: This has been around for a few years and when women on the Makeup Alley perfume board are asked which men's fragrances they like, it is almost always mentioned. Created by the nose Olivier Polge, notes are sage, bergamot, lavender, Italian iris, cocoa, amber, vetiver and patchouli. It is fresh initially, but the iris, vetiver and patchouli ground it nicely. Quick note: there are a load of flankers for this fragrance. I suggest you go straight for the original Homme.

Some thoughts on choosing perfume, No 2

Moving on from yesterday's post (ideas for how to choose a perfume when you haven't worn fragrance in a long while), today's post focuses on buying scent, with a brief discussion of niche perfumes.

While it's obvious you can go to a store and buy a bottle of perfume, there are some other things you can do if you've been out of the market for some time.

You've started looking for a perfume. Maybe you've tested a fair number of things and found a few you really like. However, you want to be able to wear these a number of times to see if you like one or another of them enough to invest in a bottle. The best way to address this is to ask the sales associate where you've tested the fragrance if they have any samples.

It can be hit or miss as to whether a company will provide samples to instore perfume counters but it's still worth asking. If they do offer samples, you'll probably end up with a 1ml glass vial from which you can get three-four applications of the scent. Otherwise, it is possible to buy samples at a small cost for 1-1.5ml of perfume.

Another way to test-drive a perfume or buy less than a full bottle of something is via decants, which are larger sizes of scents but still not full bottles.

Some thoughts on choosing perfume, No 1

Clarice left a comment recently about how you go about choosing perfumewhen you haven't worn fragrance in a long while. This is something perfumistas love discussing, so I thought I'd answer her query in a post rather than in a personal email.

While I don't believe choosing perfume should be overly intellectualised, there are a lot of offerings out there. So, a bit of preparation can help to narrow choices and make the process a bit easier.

Don't expect to find something you like based on the advertising or notes (constituents) listed. The former has nothing to do with the quality or makeup of the perfume and the latter might add up to something totally unexpected and unrelated to its various parts.

So, first, take a bit of time to think about what sorts of things you like smelling (and might like to smell of). It might help to make a list of around 20 entries to help focus your mind. The entries don't have to be traditional constituents of perfume. Your list might include rose, fresh cut grass, coffee, wet pavement, baking bread, dog paws, etc.

Then have a think about whether you would prefer something lighter, closer to your skin, or something heavier, with potentially more sillage (this is what the wafting of scent around is called). Formulation from light to heavier: eau de toilette and cologne, eau de parfum, parfum and extrait.

A tree in Brooklyn: Czech & Speake Mimosa cologne

After writing on Prada Infusion de Fleur d'Oranger yesterday, I thought I'd stay on the theme of light and clean by reviewing Czech & Speake Mimosa today. The weather forecasters here are becoming more insistent that we will have a hot, dry summer--fingers crossed--so if one is partial to floral colognes this might be worth a sniff.

Mimosa flowers have a very sweet, almost soapy fragrance. And straight off, Mimosa cologne is a sweet, soapy floral, in the same category as the Prada. Again like the Prada, I get the smell of white bath soap.

Prada Infusion de Fleur d'Oranger: clean and soapy

Every once in a while, someone posts on the Makeup Alley perfume discussion board asking for a 'clean' fragrance. I usually don't have any recommendations for these threads, as I'm not that interested in light, clean fragrances. However, now that I've tried Prada's new Infusion de Fleur d'Oranger there's something I can suggest.

I tried to sample this a few weeks ago at Fenwicks Brent Cross, which stocks the various Pradas, but it turned out that the store didn't yet stock this particular fragrance. On lunch break from a recent all-day workshop I stopped in at House of Fraser in the City and discovered that that store did stock it. So, I've finally was able to test it.

Holy Grails

I was digging around the sample box recently and discovered a vial with a quarter of an inch of Santa Maria Novella Patchouli. This was once one of the holiest of Holy Grail scents for me, the only bottle I owned and perfume I wore for a year and a half around ten years ago.

I can't recall how I originally discovered Santa Maria Novella scents, but I started to sample them at New York's Takashimaya, which stocked them. I was drawn to Melograno, the pomegranate scent, both for the way it smelled and because I love pomegranates and liked the association of smelling of them.

Guerlain Mitsouko

I both love and am confounded by Guerlain's Mitsouko, the benchmarch chypreperfume, which was created in 1919 by the perfumeur Jacques Guerlain. The name comes from a Japanese novel about a doomed love story.

All the Mitsouko I have worn is pre-reformulation, so more than a few years old, and I've only owned the perfume. First, I got a half ounce from escentuals.com here and wore that almost every day for I'm not sure how long. The empty bottle now lives in a dresser drawer, long since having lost its fragrance.

Byredo Green: It sure is

I had an appointment with the dentist yesterday to get two fillings replaced. My dentist is in the City, which is a reasonable distance from Belgravia and the Les Senteurs perfume shop, which stocks Byredo. I've been wanting to sample Green for a while now, so I thought I'd combine the two.

An hour and a half at the dentist and then off to Les Senteurs with both sides of my face from the nose below numb. I discovered that one can still smell in this condition, but not do the physical action of sniffing very well.