Remiss

Dear Fragrant Friends,

I know I haven't been posting the way I should. Forgive me. I will be much better in December.

From tomorrow, in fact, I will up the amp.

Today, however, something important:

In December, there will be a number of chances to win holiday surprises on the blog.

To do this, you must make a comment on a post, though, as winners will be picked (at random) from those comments.

So, keep watch and comment, comment, comment!!!

Antidote

It's been freezing and grey here. And it's dark at 4:30 in the afternoon -- not light again at the mo till 7:20 in the morning. Not my fave time of year light- and weather-wise.

I was planning a post on the holiday cards my son's school has asked the students to design which would segue into some comments on holiday smells I love.  Nope.

For the past couple of days, I haven't been able to get the image of the Columbia Road flower market out of my head. Tells you what I'm focusing on: light and heat.

In any case, Columbia Road is a long-running market located in East London. Only open on Sundays, it's truly truly great: hugely crowded and full of colour and scent. You can get plants, flowering plants and cut flowers.

I've seen people do their dinner party flower shopping there coming away with enormous armfuls of different things: long-stemmed roses, gladiolas, eucalyptus, gerberas -- you name it, it's there.

In spring into summer, you can get rose trees, jasmine vines, honeysuckle, bedding plants to fix up and/or sort out your garden.

The place smells green and floral, with other more urban smells barely impinging. Although it's hard to move around, and you have to be patient, I find it tremendously soothing to visit because of how beautiful everything is.

So, that's my Saturday thought for a cold and dark London.

Alas...

I said I'd manage a perfume post on Wednesday. Didn't happen. I promise I'll get something up for the weekend.

A whirlwind

Monday and Tuesday were somewhat calmer after an extremely busy and exciting weekend. I spent a good part of Saturday and most of Sunday processing orders, most of which came in direct response to the blurb in the Financial Times about Tauer L'Air du Desert Marocain being one of the best fragrances of the past ten years (I haven't been able to find this column in the online version of the FT, just the paper one).

L'Air is a truly great fragrance and I hope everyone who has purchased a sample or a bottle over the past days derives real pleasure from it.

I am also very pleased that many customers who bought samples of L'Air ranged round the website and purchased disparate things as well. It's great to think that people who maybe have not experienced niche fragrances in the past are now delving into these sorts of perfumes.

I'll be back tomorrow with a perfume post.

Congratulations to Andy / A run on L'Air

At a bit past noon on Saturday, I got a call on the site telephone number. A very apologetic woman (phone hours on Saturdays are 9-12) wanted to know if I had any Tauer Perfumes L'Air du Desert Marocain left. Yes, I said, and explained about building a profile on the site prior to being able to order.

L'Air is a best seller, but I had noticed a very sudden surge in interest. So, I asked how she had heard about the fragrance. "I read about it in the Financial Times today", she said. Oh, oh my... ohmyohmyohmy. What didn't I know that I should? Out I went to buy the Weekend FT.

There was a column in the Life & Arts section (see page 2) reflecting a conversation with Tania Sanchez of Perfumes: The Guide. The question asked of her was name three each for masculines and feminines of the best perfumes from the past ten years. There, under masculines, L'Air du Desert Marocain was number 1. Below TS's sound-bite was a reference to the web address for Scent-and-Sensiblity Perfume.

I did some fluffing around in pleasure and then checked my stock in a panic. After this 'run' on L'Air I only had a box left. Emergency call to Andy and a parcel of L'Air winging its way westward.

So, many congratulations to Andy for the richly deserved recognition.

As to L'Air, I'll have more bottles in stock by the end of this week.

Matthew Williamson's The Collection Incense... or too much 'nice'

I was all set to have a rant about the Home Delivery Network, the shipper Amazon UK has been using recently. In the past, HDN drivers have managed to not deliver on noted days even when I've been home (instead sticking postcards through the door and disappearing, with the postcard showing delivery to a neighbour and the neighbour's address incorrectly noted). However, on this delivery, which mostly held holiday gifts for my son, the driver not only showed his face, he was courteous and considerate.

So, no rant. On to perfume.

Kathy of the post on tea and mango recently ceded me a sample she had been given of a Matthew Williamson fragrance simply called Incense. This is part of Williamson's The Collection set, which is a travel-inspired group of four fragrances.

This is not, I understand, the same as the limited edition Matthew Williamson Incense, which was created by Miller Harris and reached a sort of cult status several years ago.

I have to say at the outset this strikes me as a non-incense-lover's incense. I'm not saying it's not nice, the intro is soft, smoky and distinctly woody. However, this isn't a full-on incense/myrrh/frankincense sort of perfume like Andy Tauer's incense-based fragrances, the Comme des Garcons incense series or Etro Messe de Minuit.

This fragrance isn't swirling dense smoke or seriously resinous. It doesn't evoke deep mysteries. Just so we're all on the same page on this.

Apparently The Collection fragrances were based on sectioning out aspects of the original Matthew Williamson perfume. Incense has notes of frankincense, patchouli and labdanum (per NSTPerfume).

As I said, it is nice. It is also so soft that it almost disappears after 20 minutes on my skin. It is also somewhat indistinct in its composition. Yes, I think I get some frankincense and patchouli, but do I really or am I just thinking that I do?

A couple of hours in, I could barely smell this. It had settled into a veryveryvery soft musky-incense on my wrist. As I keep saying, it's not unpleasant -- in fact, sort of nice -- but there's lots of more distinct and interesting 'nice' out there.

Matthew Williamson The Collection Incense comes in eau de toilette strength. I would think you would have to spray quite liberally and on fabric as well to give it any real heft or lasting power.

Kathy ponders the smell of herbal tea vs the taste, and the fragrance of mangos

One of the participants at last Thursday's scent gathering brought up two issues which I thought merited their own post. One was how many herbal teas smell better than they taste and two was a query about there being any fragrances on the market that included mango as a note.

First, tea.

I thought the tea comment was interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, I agree with Kathy that most of the herbal teas I have experienced smell much better, and more interesting, than they taste.

A quick troll through my tea cabinet. Raspberry leaf smells of thicket and fruit. It's a lovely, sort of autumnal fragrance. However, I know this tea tastes of wan fruit, as I have almost finished the 20-bag box. Then, there's mint, which smells great. Dried mint leaves hold the lovely fragrance of the mint plant pretty well. As to the taste, it's sort of gently herbal and almost sweet. My mint tea is certainly more 'pleasant' than the raspberry. On to fennel tea, which is great stuff. It smells strongly of licorice, but the flavour is quite light and a bit astringent. I love to have this when my stomach isn't feeling quite right. Lastly, I find a box of green tea. As to the smell of this, the best description I can come up with is herbal and astringent. As to taste, well, herbal and astringent.

I expect people who take their tea more seriously than I do, and use leaves and a strainer, will have stronger opinions on smell and taste. I must admit the jasmine tea I recently had at Bea's of Bloomsbury smelled absolutely gorgeous of strong jasmine and black tea. And, it tasted compelling, both of the flower and of a lovely smoky tea.

On to mango (about which, I discovered, there are many websites -- who knew...).

There are two perfumes containing a mango note that stand out for me. The first is Annick Goutal's Folavril, which came out in 1981. I first encountered this when I saw a small review of it in the New York Times years ago. The writer had been looking for an unusual perfume that made her feel womanly. She described Folavril as being lush and fruity but also having a whisper of women's underthings. I think I had tracked it down within four or five days. I adore pong in perfume.

Notes for Folavril include mango, jasmine, boronia flower and tomato leaf (per NSTPerfume). On me, it starts out jammy, with that lovely over-the-top sweetness of ripe mango. I do recall it moves into a fruity-floral phase when the jasmine moves to the fore, and it does have a nice peppery kick to it, which keeps the perfume from entering an overly sweet pitch.

Alas, I didn't buy Folavril all those years ago and it still isn't quite right on me. But, I do think it is a great, lush, mouth-watering fragrance which is worth seeking out.

I'll be brief with the 2005 addition to Hermes' Garden range of perfumes, Un Jardin sur le Nil, as I've posted about it in the past. You can read the story behind this fragrance in Chandler Burr's book, The Perfect Scent.

The notes list for this include green mango, lotus flower, aromatic rushes, incense and sycamore wood (again, per NSTPerfume).  I enjoy this fragrance but do not love it. On me, the tart green mango runs all the way through and is very pleasing indeed. The other notes underscore that nicely. I like the strangely aquatic lotus flower. The incense and wood give what could have been a rather light perfume a satisfying heft in the drydown.

Still, so far for me, I prefer to eat my mangos, enjoying the smell and taste of the ripe fruit. There's certainly more than enough pong in that experience to keep me happy.

November scent gathering

Last week on Thursday evening, I hosted a scent gathering. This is the third one I have done (the first one last July; the second in early October). If you haven't read one of the past posts, a scent gathering is 6-8 people with wine, cheese, etc; an intro by me about the eshop, its origins and my history as a perfumista; and testing of a good portion of my stock. Participants discuss perfume and life. These are turning into very interesting and pleasurable gatherings indeed.

There were six participants (plus me) at last Thursday's gathering, two of whom had been before.

Post the introduction, I asked, as I have with past events, whether participants wear perfume on a regular basis, which ones, who buys their scent and/or where the juice was purchased.

I'm coming on a pattern: a majority of participants have, at some point in their lives, worn Chanel No 5. At the most recent event, participants mentioned Chanel No 5 and No 19, Estee Lauder Youth Dew, Clarins Eau Dynamasante and YSL Opium.

Niche fragrances didn't get a mention.

We settled in and I started with a few of the Lostmarc'h fragrances, as they are reasonably light. We worked our way through Ael-Mat (much appreciation for its salty floralness) and L'Eau de L'Hermine (comments that this subtle lavender-based perfume would be great for summer). They also tried the cereal-based gourmand Lann-Ael, which got hmmms. No one had experienced gourmand or foody fragrances before and all participants were a bit perplexed by the idea of wearing them (though this feeling shifted a little when I brought out I Profumo di Firenze's Vaniglia del Madagascar later).

We then moved on to the Hilde Solianis and did Stecca and Bell'Antonio, both of which engendered a lot of discussion. No one was on the fence on these, with much appreciation of the evocative Bell'Antonio. Stecca, too, was viewed as evocative, but also seen as an interesting and unusual idea for spring/summer wear. Someone did comment that this smelled of her grandfather's allotment and thus was off-limits.

We worked our way through the I Profumi di Firenzes. Magnolia Purpurea was the winner from this line (there seems to be some relationship between having worn or continuing to wear Chanel No 5 and liking this fragrance). Caterina de Medici also earned plaudits. There was some unsureness about the loamy, earthy, mushroomy aspect of Violetta di Bosco.

Among the Tauers Reverie au Jardin and Vetiver Dance were admired. Interestingly, at the October gathering there was one woman who detested incense in fragrance. This time there was more appreciation for the Taurade, Andy's rather unique base which is present in his heavier fragrances.

As with the previous gatherings, I found it fascinating to experience niche fragrances via people who haven't much experience with the genre. I hope these gatherings continue to open up a new area of fragrance to many more people. Now to start planning the mulled wine gathering for mid-December.

Discordance... or advertisers' strange ideas about marketing perfume

A few days back I was watching telly when a commercial came on. It featured a sailboat, a pretty man and the music was I Heard It Through the Grapevine. I immediately thought this must be a perfume commercial because there was no mention of the product: just pretty man with shirt off playing on boat to completely inappropriate music. No discernible relationship between the imagery, the song and the product. It was just meant to be an enticing snippet.

Indeed, the commercial was for Chanel's Allure Homme Sport. I can't get the YouTube video to work so you'll just have to do a search for it (it's 30 seconds long) and look out for the commercial.

In any case, of course, after watching, I just had to go out and sniff it.

With notes of mandarin, orange, aquatic accord, black pepper, neroli, cedar, tonka bean, vetiver, amber, white musk, and aldehydes (per NSTPerfume.com) this doesn't appear, on the face of things, unusual or ground-breaking.

For sure, it ain't.

I managed to try it on both blotter and skin. This is so seriously generic men's cologne that I'm not sure what to say about it. The mandarin, which is very apparent on my skin, is sweetish, cloying, chemical and rather irritating. I think I get the 'aquatic accord' because there is something melony tied to the mandarin which I can't ascibe to any of the other notes. I feel the desire to wash this off.

The things that really gets me sad about this is imagining some nice, but fairly naive young man going to his local department store in search of a fragrance. He smells this, he smells Gucci by Gucci pour Homme and that ilk and, in his heart, head and nose, he can't find much of a difference between the various colognes. There isn't a knowledgeable SA to point him towards Dior Eau Sauvage or a YSL or Hermes, so he randomly buys one of the generics.

This is getting to be formulaic: the mediocre perfume (in particular, men's fragrances) backed up by a attractive and expensively made sex/adventure/wild world marketing theme (see my post on Gucci by Gucci pour Homme in April 2009).

It's too bad they don't put the dosh into the juice.

Francis Kurkdjian Lumiere Noire pour Femme... or on being confused

I promised a fragrance post -- and I'll manage another one over the weekend, given I've been so remiss. 

There has been a serious buzz on the blogs about Francis Kurkdjian's new line, along with the new exclusives from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpel. I plan to visit all of these over time.

Here, the Kurkdjians appear to be exclusive to Liberty. So, having the excuse of getting a haircut reasonably close by (well, not really, but a bus ride away) I visited Liberty to check things out.

I ended up just testing one fragrance from the line, Lumiere Noire pour Femme, as I miscalculated the amount of time I had. In any case, given descriptions I'd read, it was the one I expected to be most interested in anyway.

First off, the bottles for these are gorgeous. Good, solid square glass, with a beautiful metal top. I guess the vibe is retro and classic perfume, and they'd look gorgeous on a dressing table. They are heavy, but not too heavy. Just beautiful. Kudos to whoever designed them.

Now, on to the juice.

From what I read, I expected this to be heavy-duty diva. Sprayed on the blotter, then on my wrist.

What a surprise: fairly light, somewhat aquatic. How very strange.

I looked for a notes list and this is what I came up with: spiced rose (cumin, hot pepper), patchouli, narcissus (per PerfumePosse) and mugwort herb (per NowSmellThis). I'm not sure if it was Patty or March on PerfumePosse who called this a 'bosom-heaving woman' scent.

In any case my chemistry wreaked havoc with it. Aquatic? Melon? Don't see those notes in the list but that's what I got. Also, it's was relatively light and didn't develop much on me. A good six hours in it was still apparent on my skin, but it was somewhat indistinct. I did get a bit of rose peaking through the aquatic melon.

I didn't check the bottle, so am not sure of the formulation, though I think eau de parfum likely.

I think because I had such an out-there experience with this that I'm going to have to retest it. It just doesn't make sense.

Apologies for having gone to ground

Sorry there haven't been posts since Monday. Busy life. There will be a perfume post tomorrow, I promise.

In the meantime, I'll have a grumble about suburban cosmetics counters.

I visited the Bobbi Brown concession at the Brent Cross John Lewis with blush intent. But, no dice. 1) There was no tester for the Pot Rouge in Blushed Rose. 2) No one bothered to ask what I was interested in.

Moral of story: Too bad for them, as an SA somewhere else (Selfridges, John Lewis Oxford Street) will get the sale.

Talisman

Per The Concise Oxford Dictionary, a talisman is a "charm, amulet, thing supposed capable of working wonders". As long as I can recall, I've had a number of 'things' that I view as talismen (Oxford doesn't list a plural, so I'll just have to assume that this is correct). A recent post on the PerfumeShrine blog about the pomegranate (see here: www.perfumeshrine.blogspot.com) got me thinking about the talismen, since for me the pomegranate is a sort of talisman.

So, some thoughts on talismen.

The pomegranate is my autumn marker. I know they now show up in the shops at other times of the year, but it's not right and I never buy them until the leaves start to fall. The fruit has a tough but ambiguous outer appearance (armoured but deceptively apple-like), a unique inner structure (the strangely ordered cell-like layout of red, juicy seeds covering the white stamen-like cores -- ie, juice then crunch), and a very pronounced and unusual sharp-sweet tasting juice that has a slightly viscous texture. Pomegranates show up in myth and legend with reasonable frequency and their presence is frought with implication -- regarding sensuality, regarding strangeness, regarding danger. A perfect representation of change.

Another talisman is multiple, as in sea shells. I've collected them for ages. They live ranged among baskets all over my house. I love the sea and feel an true affinity for it. My mother used to say I swam around her womb when intrauterine. I pack a shell or two in my sponge bag when I travel. I don't like to be without them. Certainly there is a wildness associated with the sea, but there seems to me little danger in sea shells and so they are sort of the antithesis of pomegranates. Strange shapes and textures, but comfortable, alluring. And the salty smell seems to linger long after a shell has been moved from the shore. They represent attachment for me.

Onward to earrings. As a young girl, I ached for pierced ear lobes for years. My mother called piercing 'barbaric' and held off until I was 14 (I'm not sure what the regulations are here in the UK, but in suburban New York I still needed written permission for ear piercing at 14), when she finally relented (I can't recall why -- maybe she was just tired of my begging). Since then, only on a handful of occasions have I left the house without earrings. I feel naked, undone, without them -- to the extent that I foolishly wore a favourite pair while in labour and lost one. I can't quite put my finger on why earrings are so important -- for some people it is rings, or even tattoos that hold this place. This is more than mere adornment: it is cherished ritual, something ancient and primal.

Finally to perfume. I've written endlessly about my love of perfume. But, it's always been something more than just the smell, the importance to me of particular fragrances at particular times. The ritual (again) of anointing is part and parcel of it, and I tend to feel undone, distracted, if, as with earrings, I leave the house having for some reason forgotten to scent myself. I feel I am doing something ancient and magical by scenting myself and this is something that speaks to the core of my being.

And this brings us full circle, back to the final entry in Oxford's derivation for 'talisman': that it is "something capable of working wonders". That explains perfectly the hold all these things have over me: that they represent the abstracted world of wonder, things out-of-the-ordinary, and the consistency of possibilities.

An ode to pikaki and plumeria

Yesterday, in the house of lurgy, we watched Surf's Up, which is an animated film about surfing penguins (and a chicken). My son adores penguins. He was a vampire penguin for halloween.

For the majority of it, the film is set on an idyllic island, with thick vegetation, gorgeous beaches, fantastic, inviting-looking water and extraordinary lush flowers.

I love Surf's Up. It always reminds me a holiday taken many years ago on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. I had read a rather strange novel by Susannah Moore, called The Whiteness of Bones, which partly takes place on Kauai. I couldn't get the island out of my head after that.

I stayed in a big hotel on the north coast of the island, ate loads of sushi and drove around in a red Mustang convertible. Fantastic.

One day, I went for a traditional lomi lomi massage. This wasn't just a massage and the process took most of the day. One sat in hot rooms drinking loads of water for a couple of hours to get rid of toxins. Then, there was the massage: first, a salt scrub and then a massage with fragrant oils. Two people, four hands. Mind-blowing.

A key fragrance memory from that trip was the plumeria, or fragipani, flowering trees. They exuded a fragrance so dense and velvety, I recall wandering around in a circle outside my room trying to work out which of the many beautiful things was doing this, as I had never smelled it before. I finally managed to isolate the flowering tree.

After that, I would stop and stand under any plumeria tree I encountered.

I bought a frangipani lei a ways into the holiday, which I wore with extreme pleasure. The fragrance lingered long after the blossoms started to turn brown. Somewhere, in a book, I know I pressed on the blossoms.

There were many flowers on Kuaia that were beautiful to look at: bouganvilea, bird of paradise, hibiscus.

But, along with the plumeria, I was most taken by the pikaki, Hawaiian jasmine. The pikaki had a completely different vibe to the plumeria: still dense, but much more acrid, not at all sweet.

I spent a lot of time on that holiday following my nose: looking for plumeria trees and pikaki plants. I bought a small bottle of pikaki essence, but although it smelled good, it in no way captured the fragrance of the live flower. I have, over the years, found jasmine fragrances to love but I think it is more the compositions of these perfumes than that they are specifically jasmine. They've all had a completely different feel to that Hawaiian pikaki.

A while after moving to London, I discovered Ormonde Jayne's perfumes and noted she offered a plumeria fragrance named Fragipani. I visited the small shop in the Royal Arcade. I sampled a number of scents. I went for a walk. An hour later, I went back and bought Frangipani. I wore it for a couple of months but it just wasn't right, just wasn't the same experience. I gave it away.

I tried a couple of other plumeria-based scents, including Chantecaille Frangipani. No dice -- and I'd learned my lesson after that. Plumeria is a fragrance beloved in nature and that's just the way it's going to stay.

House of lurgy

I've lost my voice. This happens whenever I catch cold. My son has some sort of virus. This is the house of lurgy.

So, I'm afraid I've been a bit busy and distracted regarding getting a post on smells together.

Rather, a quick one on what I'm reading at the moment.

I've been deep in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Larsson was a left-wing journalist in Sweden. He died quite suddenly after writing the three books.

I'm almost finished with book 2 and will have to make a trip to the library to get number 3 when boy is well enough to venture into the wider world.

I've been alternating these with the True Blood books, which are an entirely different animal.

The Millennium books are classified under Crime in my local library, which I guess makes sense, as they revolve around solving different crimes. But, they are a whole lot more than that.

Beautifully written, impeccably plotted, seriously moral, and absolutely strange in the best sort of way, they are completely un-put-down-able.

They deal with the human condition in the rawest terms. Well worth seeking out.

PS I promise a perfume post for tomorrow.

PPS I recently got an email from Amazon regarding the JC Elena book, which will not be published any time soon. Anyone know any more about this?

The pleasure of candles

As the nights draw in, I start using candles.

I know lots of people who light candles year-round, but for reasons I can't quite explain, I only gravitate towards their unique light come autumn. I wonder if this is because I am a spring/summer person and the light (and longer days) during those seasons suits me fine as is.

Autumn and winter (less) light seems to require support. I'm not sure I suffer from SADS, but perhaps I view candle light as more 'natural' than electric and thus a necessary supplement in the darker seasons.

Almost all my candles are scented, though I do use some wonderful tall natural beaswax candles in holders around the house.

The fragrances of my candles have ranged widely over time -- and, as with my perfumes, I can recall when a certain candle was purchased and (sometimes) why.

A few favourites.

Much love and long-lived, which I 'decanted' from its original Moroccan tea glass when the wick got 'lost' in the wax, is a very pungent orange flower. I purchased this from Momo's tea room in Heddon Street, which runs behind Regent Street. I got it when I was veryveryveryvery pregnant and spent several hours one summer's day in Momo eating a mezze lunch and drinking mint tea. I recall it was extremely hot during a very hot summer but the candles were still lit and the orange flower wafting was completely intoxicating. I just had to buy the candle.

More favourites came from a trip to Paris years ago. I would never buy Diptyque candles in normal circumstances (money taken away from perfume), but on that trip I felt like treating myself. I got three gorgeous candles that lasted for a couple of years. The jasmine was the most pungent and pongy of jasmines. The saffron had a strange and enticing acrid aspect to it (and I'm not sure it's offered any longer). The chevrefeuille was the smell of a hot mid-summer evening in the garden.  

Two candles from Geodesis were picked up for a song at a shop in Crouch End (I don't think they knew what they had). One is large in a very true lily fragrance; the other, small one, is a delicate and true mimosa.

On a visit to Devon around five years ago, I picked up a Cote Bastide Figueur candle at a deep discount (again, I'm not sure why this was going for such an inexpensive price, but I sure didn't complain). I adore fig fragrances and felt this was a true coup. The scent of this is fig fruit, with a bit of coconut: a gorgeous fragrance perfect for dark cold evenings.

Finally, the last, and the oldest, is from Santa Maria Novella in Florence. This tall Melograno (pomegranate) candle was purchased over ten years ago. An unusual fruity fragrance, the 'throw' is the essence of autumn -- and the choice for a dark, damp November evening.

More postal strikes?

We've just had another three days of postal strikes.

I would reiterate the point I made regarding the earlier strikes: Signed For packages are still being delivered.

While the best choice currently from the site's postal methods would probably be to use Special Deliver Next Day by 1 PM, First Class Signed For seems to be working too.

I won't post on this issue again until the run-up to Christmas.

I'll be back later today with a post on fragrance.