Morphing

Frozen in the garden trug a few weeks back
When reading the runes, the "ice" symbol represents "the element to which all things must return before they can change"

I've been on a perfume purchasing hiatus for a while.  I go on them from time to time, for one reason or another or some combination thereof.  The most common themes are: 1) Health, 2) Budget, 3) Nose/Brain fatigue.  And by fatigue, I don't really mean being twisted dry from too much smelling -- though that did happen a couple of times.  I mean more that I am done with the input portion of my {now recognized as} cyclical pattern...that it is time to either ponder, or just let things lie fallow for a while.

It's a combination of thinking patterns (sometimes described as "creative," sometimes just "proceessing") and physical patterns (migraineurs know full well there are times when certain sensory inputs are a Do Not Enter zone of high danger).  To tell you the truth, I don't mind.  Many passions and interests in my life have involved nearly manic hunting/gathering periods, followed by intense exploration, followed by thinkings, followed by time off.  (Or an overlapping progressing more or less following that pattern.)  Filmmaking, for example, is structured that way: pre-production is the hunting and gathering, production is a crazy intense exploration/application time, editing is thinking/application, and then you are done.  So done.  So quiet, after all of those people and all of that noise and all of that thinking.  Teaching, too, runs that way with me: creating and preparing a class is the hunting gathering, going through the semester and guiding/leading is the exploration (because any good teacher knows you aren't simply delivering information, you are ready to process and learn based on feedback from students, whether the learning is about the subject or your own teaching methods), and then the evaluation of the "products" the students come up with at the end of the class.

Not to flog a prone horse, but I could build similar cases for gardening and the never ending process of child rearing.  And those are all longitudinal...gardening, filmmaking, teaching, child rearing, they've all played and replayed the cycle over time.  There are other things, like my passion for cooking, that had one major cycle and has been on a slow simmer with occasional flare ups ever since, or my interest in antiques, or or or...a whole slew of stuff that involved One Big Dance and has since simply been folded into the repertoire, revisited from time to time.

I'll figure out how to categorize my music playing over this paradigm later.

So while the third thing I listed, budget, is an external reality that affects purchased acquisitions, it is really just that:  An external factor.  Sure, if I had a more generous budget...which means at times simply having a budget for it...I'd probably acquire more perfume things.  More splits, more venerated discontinueds, more wacky explorations into the unknown.  But the fact of the matter is, I'd build a back catalogue.  I already have one of a sort; it's not nearly as extensive as what some of us perfume people have amassed, but I'd be deceitful if I didn't acknowledge that the typical consumer would check out what I could sniff at any given moment and cock their head sideways and adopt one or more looks from a list that includes incredulous, suspicious, pitying, evaluative, and pondering intervention.

Who knew there would be a day when I use my piles of books as a shield, a diversion, a way to deflect possible condemnation?  As if there are more respectable things to hunt and gather...which to be honest, I think there are, in a public perception sense...I mean, folks reveal their libraries, their recorded music collection, their Lladro figurines, their orchids.  Funny, isn't it, that in some households, Beanie Babies went on proud display, but meanwhile you'd have to dig around to find my Intoxification, my back up bottle of Black Cashmere, my boxes of splits and decants?

But I digress.  Somewhat.

And somehow, I wanted to get to Parfumerie Generale Aomassai.

Right!  So, I've been on a triple threat smelling/purchasing/thinking hiatus.  Mmmmm...let me clarify the thinking part.  I've not been thinking about perfume on the "smells like" level for a few weeks.  Not directly, not metaphorically.  I've been thinking about perfume occasionally, and wearing it occasionally, but not actively, if that makes sense.  Not with the heightened consciousness of taking in something new, not with the extra awareness I often like to apply to an "old friend" to see if things are the same or changed in our relationship.  So I've been low on perfume reviews.  (What?  What's that chuckling??  Oh, right; I'm never much one for a straight up review.  But they did used to happen more regularly.)

A couple of days ago, I got my first "new" scents in over two months.  (What?  What's that chuckling? A non-perfume person happens to be reading, and that strikes them as a somewhat silly sentence?  Yes, I understand.  But this is the world of perfume.  Try to imagine yourself without a new book, a new movie, or heck, a new foodstuff, or a fresh skein of yarn, to explore for nearly a whole meteorological season.  It's kind of like that.  Non-tragic, but notable.)  Splits of Parfumerie Generale Aomassai, Eau d'Italie Baume de Doge, and Caron Coup de Fouet.

I can nutshell the second and third for the moment:  Coup de Fouet, the edc version of Poivre, is just how I like a carnation delivered:  spicy, with depth...in this case the depth is provided by a woody creamy base, but being an edc, not a dense chewy one.  Early in the wearing it reminds me a bit of an old chewing gum--Beeman's? the clove gum? something on my grandfather's desk.  Anyway, a nice way to blend light delivery with serious notes.

Flowers from Sicily, found on James Hull's Italy Photo Blog

Baume de Doge also takes me to something food-related, but in this case, a fine execution of what on the surface would be a simple cake.  I have to go for cake and not cookie because it is not dense like shortbread...it's lighter, airer, like something that would have "crumb"...but still has enough density that I don't want to go to cocktails.  Though come to think of it, I'd like a cocktail version of this on a warm spring day.  BUT (getting back on track), the cake I'm thinking of is a vanilla with orange zest and a shot of Fiori di Sicilia.  The sprayer is broken on my decant, and I need to fix that in order to see if I get more development like Kevin at NST does.  I'll come back.

But the whomper here, the magic morpher that entered my life just as I was thinking "hey, I haven't met a good morpher in a while"--which I happened to think while wearing my beloved Chamade during the period of not thinking, one of the uber-morphers in my playbook--the crazy morphing something from Parfumerie General, Aomassai.  


Unlike Chamade, which is pretty and then stunningly beautiful, Aomassai is intriguing but difficult, then nearly ugly, then a small fugue of those two plus a third, kindly smell personality.  The burnt caramel opening is one of those things that triggers the "check the oven!" danger reflex, but also pulls me in to sniff it again.  And again.  Is it burnt badly or not?  Then some chocolate thing, not sweet, starts weaving through. Then sweet somewhat threatens, then the not sweet chocolate tones it down, then you worry about calling the fire department again.

And that's just the first round.

Then you get placed in some sort of grass hut, it's kind of damp, and you're pretty sure it's started to molder.  It's interesting, but like the first round, you don't know that you really want to be here.  In fact, you start realizing that for all the challenges of the first round, this second act could possibly suffocate you if this is going to be where you are left.  Because you might dare visit that grass hut, you might wear that wet basket on your head, but you would never plan on carrying through the rest of the day that way.

For me, thankfully, then comes a breath of air.  Of course, whatever was cooking in the oven comes wafting back through (it was at this point I realized I maybe had smelled burnt hazelnuts earlier on, which is a horrible smell, btw, but never came fully through), but at this point, it's more than okay.  And, if you are patient and wait for it, you'll live through a fugue of where you've been and what is coming and then finally settle in a zone that is comfort scent.  Yes, intelligent, intriguing comfort scent, perhaps held cozy all the more so for the earlier tussling.  Now the caramel is just toasted, but has depth from the spices, the cocoa, the wood...and the tussling.

So there you have it.  I've been on a perfume hiatus, and actually still kind of feel like I'm yawning and stretching and getting ready for whatever is coming next.  But then I blindsided you (and myself) with a trio of new smells.

You go deep, you come out.  Cycles.



first photo is author's own
fiori di sicilia from the King Arthur online catalog


Check out Wikipedia's disambiguation page on Morphology -- linguistics, astronomy, math, rivers, more.  It's a fun launching pad for hunting and gathering.   Food for thought in terms of how things change.  And a bit of a chuckle...would that I could disambiguate myself...  

Bulb bumps progressing

Slaying dragons beyond the blog, but am here to remind you that I will draw names for the free copy of "The Secret of Chanel No. 5" tomorrow.  Late tomorrow.  Go comment on Saturday's post if you are interested.

Posting a picture of the hyacinth bulb progress.  Am continuing to turn a blind ear (yes, blind ear) to yearnings for spring.  Winter has what it has.

I love the way the roots know to reach out for water that is just beyond.  Soon enough, they'll have engulfed the marbles, and I'll have detangling to do when all is said and done.  Things change.

Speaking the language

Syntax is key, but it is not written in stone.

When you transition from one phonemic language to another, when you go from one pot of words-to-sentences to collections thereof which make thought clouds to another pot using the same constructs, it helps to remember that the conventions of assembly can vary.

It's the same in music and poetry.  There are structures you are familiar with -- the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus of a popular song.  The rhyme and rhythm of a limerick.  The syllable per line allotment of a haiku.

In perfume, you fall down the rabbit hole and learn about the opening, the development, the drydown.  You get excited when you start to recognize these these things, and appreciate when certain perfumes perform their acts well, whether because of the composition of each, of the transitions, or the new notes they hit which end up having the effect of tickling your fancy.

Then, perhaps, you get used to this structure, this particular form of the language, and get accustomed to communicating in it.  So when another Romance language comes along, you might recognize the phonemes, the fact that something is being communicated...in fact, the language might be analagous enough to your own that you can identify cognates and comprehend in some sort of pidgin listening way.

But no matter how much you are catching on, there comes a point when, at least for a little bit, it's best to shake off your "knowledge" and just listen with fresh ears and clean slate.

You might find that, in the end, combining the two approaches leads to your best understanding of what was being said.

***
A few weeks ago, I applied to be a "tester" of a flight of perfumes offered by Essentially Me.  Lo and behold, an e-mail arrived from "Alec and Sian" letting me know I would be sent a sample set.  "Alec" I am presuming to be Alec Lawless, a perfumer who has written about the subject.  I had a certain set of backdoor information about Lawless and the Essentially Me operation, because I troll the blogs (and therefore had read Helg's review of the book) and had come across a piece on Lawless consulting to a BBC show.

The perfumes themselves weren't really on my radar.  For one thing, Essentially Me is based in the U.K., and my explorations with independent perfumers admittedly started either with Big Names (ah, those days when The Different Company seemed like a radical independent) or locals (and I remain a fan of folks like Liz Zorn, Laurie Erikson, and Ayala Sender, even as I still need to get to know more of offerings from Dawn Spenser Hurwitz and Mandy Aftel).  Add in one more adjective differentiator to indpendent, the "natural" perfumer, and the list gets even shorter.  I have played in the sandbox with Roxanne Villa and Anya McCoy, and a little bit with Abdes Salaam.

It's an interesting business, this, the natural perfume thing.  I've avoided writing about it, because I have felt I haven't been able to fully put my hands around it.  Including the fact that I was trying to figure out just how I felt about something I knew should be discussed with perfume, as perfume, but perhaps not as "Perfume."

A language and sorting thing.

Because, at a certain point, the naturals play differently.  That is neither good nor bad; it is what it is.  But when I fell into perfume, I had a past as a person who went through an aromatherapy zone.  I learned essential oil notes and applications, dangers, ways of blending, etcetera, and employed essentially oils for pleasure and practical purposes.  (Homemade house cleaners, anyone?  Potions to make boogey men afraid to enter bedrooms? Clearing of the sinuses? Calming of anxious nerves? Elimination of foot fungus? Oh, that and more.)  So I suppose, in a way, the fact that the way the notes were brought together (their aural presence, in a music metaphor), and the fact that their presenting structure was different (from the short story of aromatherapy to the elegiac sonnets of a Perfume, perhaps?), allowed me to leap languages and not pay much attention to the previous experience.

When I explored natural perfumes, I often found an extra sort of noise entering my processing.  Because I was recognizing specific notes and "accords" and associating them with the previous hierarchy (antibacterial? antiinflammatory? good for burns? dermal irritant?), and, they were, like, totally getting in the way of me sitting down with a perfume, dude.

So if a natural didn't at least follow the sonnet structure, I set it aside.  Because I was playing Perfume, and needed the participants to at least know when to insert verse, and when to jump to the chorus.

**
My experience with reviewing the Essentially Me flight reflects a transition.  Or perhaps an assimilation. Part of it is the perfumes themselves; they clearly have a form, they transition, they have different acts.  Part of it is me; I've been playing Perfume long enough that I can insert a little sitar into my Brit pop, a raga structure into my Coltrane chorus, without getting lost.  I'm going to post my reviews next, but I thought it was important to set out the context in which I experienced them.  For me, at least.

image from the Poem Shape blog

Dreamy Morpher : Lieu de Reves

Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee; thou art translated
                                          A Midsummer Night's Dream  (III-i)


Hijinks made an ass out of Bottom.  Well, out of his top.  Bottom's head was transformed into that of a donkey.

Bottom was a morpher, you could say.  So is Lieu de Reves.

It's late at night now, and for the past few hours, Lieu de Reves has been a comfortable skin scent, a gently sweet amber that lays very close to the skin.  In the afternoon, it went on like L'Heure Bleu gently impregnated with a mixed floral bouquet.

I've worn it a few times now, and I can say this about Lieu de Reves: I did not have to learn a new note, decide if I enjoyed being slapped, or pay attention through a dazzling technical riff.  I just liked it.  And that, my friends, is a happy place.  I appreciate that it is there, and that I can visit.  And I will.

Midsummer approaches.  I love this time of year, and feel a kinship with the summer solstice in many ways.  I'll always remember "finding" Lieu de Reves at this time of year.  But I can see this as a perfect scent any time of year for two purposes:

• One, just to smell good.  In a mildly floral/wafts of PlayDo/morphs into an easy amber kind of way.
• Two, to use as an alternate to L'Heure Bleu, one of the very few perfumes I can wear to bed--something I don't do very often, FYI.  In fact, LHB has always been The One for calming at night.  Lieu de Reves would work in that capacity not only because of the reminiscence to L'Heure Bleu, but because when it gets to the Bottom (as it were), I'm going to like it there.  The drydown not only wouldn't disturb my sleep, it would support pleasant dreams.

Come to think of it, I could wear it during the day for pleasant daydreams.


Lasting power is right on the Michigan mitten, between Lakes Huron and Superior.  At 5-6 hours, closer to the sunrise side.

Peonies, aka flowers that morph in the garden (plus one that morphs out of the bottle)

The past few days, the house has been redolent of floral soap, aka peonies.

I don't mind one bit.


The yard is full of blooms.  I am breathing a sigh of relief.  After a few years of nursing divisions of still not quite established plants from the old school, which had been transplanted from the old house, plants which had been either dug up by my grandfather from his yard, or by me from an about to be razed yard across the alley, their journey seems to have found a resting point.  With thanks probably due to an unusually drawn out spring--this week, we once again find ourselves with rain and cool temps, after a couple of rounds of very hot and humid--peonies are blooming in succession in various spots in the yard.  Shade and different varieties have meant that this is the third week with buds opening into blooms.

Stretching out the experience is a gardener's sleight of hand.  In succession gardening, you choose and arrange plants according to their known bloom times, so that there is always a flush of color somewhere. You can make this happen in one bed, or move the openings across space.  (In my yard, I have planted bulbs and perennials so that the first open farther away from the house, and then move closer, but as the growing season closes, that last hurrah bulbs are again moving away.)  You can also play with the boundaries of where a plant will survive, as with the peonies.  Peonies will tolerate a range of sun and shade as it is, so they are a natural for placing here and there to extend bloom time.

The fact that mine have a personal history helps motivate the desire to keep them around, in the yard and as cuttings in the house, as long as possible.  The fact that I care enough about them to want them survive no matter what means that there are homes throughout the greater metro area that now have these plants growing in their own yards.  I let go of a little piece of me in both transitions...but there have been rewards in that difficult process.  Such as knowing that even if I mess up, my grandfather's peonies have a greater chance of surviving in the world.

When peonies buds first start swelling, you get a hint of what they are going to look like, color-wise.  But there could be surprises inside...flames of other color, or splotches, or outright shares, or central stamens that contrast.  Plus, the flower could be one of those double filled ones, or a single cup, or "standard."  Getting to this stage takes 2-3 years from the time of division/planting a young specimen.

Getting a plant full of them takes another year or two.

I have to admit that I have a preference for the stipey buds, the ones that echo the flame tulip.  Yup, the flame tulip that cause such a stir back in the 16th century that people did the equivalent of taking out a mortgage in order to buy a few bulbs. Bulbs which were so highly valued because of the unusual striping on the petals.  Markings, aka "color breakings," which, it turns out, were caused by a virus.

Remember...development happens.  What you see here might not clearly indicate what happens next.

No flames on the open flowers, but contrasting yellow stamens.

Waiting, nurturing without obvious result, letting go in order to secure survival...difficult.  But such rewarding potential outcome...

This is but part of the reason why the smell of a peony in bloom will always be a striation of simplicity and history.  Sure, it's a soapy floral.

But what it took to get there...and the various forms it can take in delivery vehicle...


***

There are perfumes, of course, which morph as much as that red & white striped peony bud.

And which smell as simply soapy floral as the blossom.

When it comes to perfume, I'd rather wear the morpher.  I still can't get No. 5, my uber-soapy floral, to a "brings happiness" place.  I have my sensors up, waiting for an opportunity to try Patou 1000, which has brought happiness to Abigail, whose opinion I like to pay attention to. But I fear that my generation might sentence me to forever getting "soap" out of aldehydic florals...and something perhaps related to the fact I am uncomfortable wearing turtlenecks leading to me getting "smothering" out of an outright floral without lift.

So, I tend to search among the morphers and the unusually juxtaposed to get my floral happy place.  Andy Tauer's Une Rose Chypree, for example, which puckers your nose ever so slightly in the opening by letting the vegetal greenness of geranium and the sparkle of a hint of citrus go through a little sparring demo and then you start to realize the whole thing was choreographed, and the choreographer steps and a lo and behold it's rose, but the show is of course not focused on the choreographer.  Later, on me, the whole thing becomes and ambery wonder, to the point where I have forgotten what I sprayed that turned into that.  So maybe that's cheating, because the "floral" idea suggested by having a flower in the name never really turns out to be a straight up floral...but I did warn you that I'm not a fan of the straight up flower when it comes to perfume.

But wait, you say...what of the peony?  Can you stick to your thought train a little more closely and discuss not just the idea of flowers, or a flower which is not a peony, but maybe an actual peony scent?

And the honest answer is, not really.  I haven't tried much perfume which features peony.  Not the Stella in Two, not the Angel flanker, not any of Yardley or Crabtree and Evelyn or such.  Okay, I probably sniffed something in my dark ages before perfume, and that buried memory could well be contributing to why I am not inclined to do so today.  Maybe some day, the interest of scholarship.  If I did, I would start with the Yves Rocher Pivoine, because YR has provided some pleasant perfume surprises, and has that amber which I think is a fab bargain in terms of quality for price, plus I keep on seeing positive comments in comments on the interwebs.

BTW, I tend to get chided for touting the Voile d'Ambre, because I'm revealing some sort of secret, but hey, that's in production.  It's not like I'm directing you to an auction for a d/c scent that I'm in the midst of bidding on.  Plus, it's summer, and you'll think, oh, yeah, I should try that, but later, when it gets colder...and then you'll forget...and then it will still be a scent they mass produce for me, just me...  ;)

Have a great weekend.  Walk a garden.  Bring some blooms inside.  Maybe put one on.

**

Andy Tauer's own words on Une Rose Chypree, from his blog (which is, incidentally, an interesting read if you have by some odd chance not been there yet; he discusses his process as he goes about creating scents, as well as business, and other odds and ends as it suits him):

“Une rose chyprée” is an oriental rose on a chypre base. It is an elegant perfume built around two natural extracts from rosa damascena, absolute and the steam distilled essential oil.
Its heart is lifted by spices (Bay and cinnamon) and a fresh accord built around bergamot, lemon and clementine. Green Bourbon geranium oil lets the rose petals shine and contrasts with the dark resinous accord in the base, built around labdanum, oakmoss, patchouli, vetiver and vanilla.

*

all images are mine

the Une Rose Chypree juice I respond to comes from a Tauer-bottled sample, won via a blog contest, and I hope to replace it with more soon

all opinions expressed herein are solely those of the nom de plumed writer known as ScentScelf, which should be patently apparent given that not only is this a blog authored by ScentScelf, but these opinions are often imperfectly expressed and kind of twisted, so who would I take them from?  for that matter, who'd want 'em?   I'm feeling silly today, and am noting it here, for your amusement as well as mine if you've bothered to read this much fine print

speaking of fine print, agate is a stone, not just a type size, and you can find them in Lake Superior, along with, of course, the Edmund Fitzgerald.  now, if you've read THIS far, type "Gordon Lightfoot" in the comments, and you can get a sample of one of two florals I do enjoy:  Bulgari Rose Essentiale, DK Gold, or one I don't, Guerlain Mahora.  phew!  let's see if anybody's paying attention...

A moment with two Les Heures

I consider these little sample vials precious, so haven't hit them much.  Yesterday was the third time, in fact.  But it may be the first time it was just them, all day.  XII and XIII, that is.  First time all alone, perhaps because sometimes I'll try something on bare skin but after something else already is developing...the "I'm so excited to see this I want to try some now!" slip.  Or perhaps because one of the times I was for sure in a sniffing orgy with a friend in perfume.

This time, just me, those two vials, and passing hours.

Out of the bottle (vial), they continued to be what all the first reports were.  One bitter tea patch mash up, the other cold earth spice spiked leather.  NO, more than that.  I'll come back to that, in fact, because they are complex and interesting and challenging and I'm still not sure if I am seduced by them but I am intrigued.

It's the creature that comes out after that seduced me.  My goodness, folks...these things morph.  And for all the demands the opening makes, the drydown is...easily beautiful.  Hints of Attrape-Couer wafting in the air above your skin, kind of like how En Passant can sometimes haunt you with Apres L'Ondee.  Which means you can start your spray/day projecting I Am Complex and Interesting And You Will Have To Spend Some Time With Me to Figure Me Out (Though It May Not Be Easy).

And then end it with purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I am making a note to return to this, to do a more traditional job of catching XII and XIII in words.  But for now, I thought I had to share.  Share the discovery that yes, after hours and hours of catching whiffs of this delightful, deep, and yet ghostly cloud, I was able to confirm that it came from spending time with The Hours.

If you find yourself in a position to sample them, do so.  And sample nothing else.  (Fight that urge!  Fight it!!  Bring vials, remember?  Make up samples to take home.  Nothing on your skin but Time!!!)  Then engage with those openings...they're doozies.  But wait for the waft in the drydown.  I am telling you, I think Mathilde Laurent is haunting herself.


See Denyse Beaulieu's reviews of XII and XIII in her wonderful Grain de Musc blog.  She'll take you through the notes, as well as illuminate backstory to their creation.  These reviews are part of a series on Les Heures, along with an interview of perfumer Mathilde Laurent.  


☛ My sample of XII and XIII was prepared by me in a Cartier store, with permission from the sales associate.  I *have* mentioned keeping vials with you, yes?

Trick or Treat : Black Magic

Trick: 

Nasty.

Bad, not thinking me.

Lancome does not make a "roll on" of Magie Noire.

I bid and "won."

Trick!!!

Treat, with trick:

Yohji Yamamoto "solid powder" perfume.

One came as a gift (thank you!), another purchased as back up.  Or a gift.  (Karma = good.)

But there's a trick, too:  d-i-s-c-o-n-t-i-n-u-e-d.

Still available on Amazon!

Tricky treat:

Habanita.

Tricky little senora.

Who knew that queer tobacco & sharp stuff would dry down to vanilla comfort?

Yum.  Wait for it.

Treat:

Mmmm, Black Cashmere.

Speaking of sharp, that's how it hits some.

On me, after an edgy opening, spiced incense in sharp focus, but not harsh.

In fact, occasionally veers off into sweet land.

As I will today, with ghost, goblins, and other ghouls showing up at my door to demand their due.

photos all by author

Caron Violette Precieuse, vintage version

It's one of those tales--you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll call your friends.

Should you get hold of even a small driblet of the original Violette Precieuse, you'll experience one heckuva morph.  I did, at least.  It started as what seemed like yet another violet--you know, that note you can find in Penhaglion's, in a bar of soap your grandmother had, in the bath shop, the smell that says "I am a violet perfume."  A hint of something else, maybe?  But nothing worth working your drawers up about.

Had my driblet not been a precious resource from a perfume friend who has a thing for special scents, I would have scrubbed.  Plus, I knocked around taking care of a few things, and it was getting late for my walk, so I just left it.  And forgot about it.

A third of the way through my walk, I raised my hand to brush away a leaf, and WHOA!  Something smelled interesting.  I played a little game for a moment; I was wearing gloves, and I have a pair that have most serendipitously taken on the scent of L'Ombre Fauve.  But I knew I wasn't wearing those gloves.  Let's see...what could it be...scents that I would have worn that had an edge like this...but I didn't recognize it, so I must have only worn it once...okay, raise glove again...it's not on the glove.  Cognitive dissonance...confused moment...and it hits me.  It's the Violette Precieuse.

This smell is new enough to me I can't give it notes (not that I'm particularly good at that game, anyway).  It's vaguely medicinal, vaguely leathery...and you'd only know there's violet running around in there if you had experienced that opening.  I don't even know if I like it; I just know that I am enjoying spending time with it so much, I'll play with it again.

Which brings us to the sad part of the tale...when my driblet is gone, no more play pal.  Because VP was discontinued long ago, reintroduced a few years ago--with a different formula.  So I will be better off if I decide I don't like it.

I already know this: I'll never regret the introduction.

Peut-Etre, Theo Fennell

A study in contrasts:

Peut-Etre, steady eddie, goes on as a glove scent that I am happy with from first moment--which is a good thing, since what you whiff is what you get.

Theo Fennell, magic morper, starts off with a skanky waft that changes into a golden floral (and I mean that in a positive sense), then spends time weaving back and forth, touching on other notes along the way.

Peut-Etre could be a kinder, gentler L'Ombre Fauve.  (Not that I, for one, need L'OF to be any kinder or gentler.)  It is different in that it is haunted by flowers...flowers not freshly opened, or freshly cut, but mature...could have been in the vase for a day, or have spent a day in the sun out in the garden.  This is totally in my wheelhouse, for an all-purpose scent that has interest.  (As opposed to those all-purpose scents that I know are safe at any speed, the ones I can wear around students or to dinner or in close quarters with fellow musicians.)  The interest is in the way I think any good scent has that element that introduces the "better" portion of a "your skin but better--here, the betterment coming from leather and flowers.*  

Theo Fennell seems to be a perfect "going out" scent.  Hits with the danger of skank as it starts on my skin, morphs into this lusciously deep warm without syrup floral, and then meanders back and forth between the two.  Who knew?  I am not a fan of skank, and I never would say I like a "floral" perfume, because I don't want to run the risk of an error.  (Because when a floral perfume is not good to me, it is SO not good.  Blechh.  Headache.  Cloying.  Artificial.  Any, all, or more.)  But this one, I like.  Wait a minute...something new going on...I tell you, almost every time the flowers come back, they are different.  And again, next round introduced a hint of something...foodie?  Oh my, but I am having fun.  And it's not just gimmicky; this is very nice material.

Maybe Theo needs multiple categories.  Sophisticated, quality interest for going out.  Sophisticated, quality entertainment for staying in.  Oh, dear...I'm talking like one of those people with disposable income...but of course, when it comes to music, books, certain foods, office/art supplies, and now perfume, I do behave that way.

Thanks, Marina, for the chance to experience these.  Not only do you write a fantastic blog, you are generous with your draws.  So far, that's three (these two, plus the CB Cradle of Light from Tom) that are further weighing down my "get this" list.  

Strange Huffing Effects: L'Heure Bleue

Do you have any L'Heure Bleu around? Even an eetsy bit? Will join me in an experiment?

I could swear that repetitive huffs--well, stronger than a wee sniff, not quite as dramatic as a full huff, but certainly each in a row without drawing back--result in instant morphing when it's L'Heure Bleu that's beneath your sniffer.

It starts with that powdery, vaguely Playdough scent that has been so frequently described. But right away, on the second huff, flowers start coming out. Sniff three, it's all floral, and sniff four, the flowers have gone sweet. So then, if you leave and come back quickly, it's flavored Playdough--flavored with floral infusion. If you wait, you need to go back to "Go" and start over.

Maybe it's just today. Maybe it's just the edp. (The nice sales rep gave me a sample decant of Eau de Parfum to try, since they did not have parfum. They did have Nahema, Vol du Nuit, and Samsara in parfum however.) I've been circling around this classic for almost nine months now, but this is the first time I've found this effect. I must admit, however, that I've become more liberal in both my spraying and my huffing, especially on return visits.

Let me know. If you try to call, let it ring a few times before giving up...I'm gonna have my nose stuck to my wrist a lot, and it might take me a moment to get away.

3,2,1 ... Caron Third Man : second wearing, first impressions

Nathan was right. I am liking it. But I have not yet reached conclusions.

Caron's Third Man is a scent I could wear. It opens with a lavender syrup punch that knows just when to start drying down. At the moment, in the midst of my second run with this, I'm trying to figure out why there's more incensey spice on my left arm drydown and a swath of summer garden flower on my right. It's okay, I'm alright--both are cool.

Good thing, because now the vaguely incense note jumped to my right. What IS up...I'm only sampling one fragrance at the moment, for Pete's sake; it happens to be on both arms, solo. No worries, I'm still alright; I remembering that my general impression on the first run was "I like," and had lavender running throughout, as it seems to this time. Now I'm burying my face in my arms, and got a simultaneous shot of cigarette smoke and lavender clothes detergent. Whoa.

Which means I pull back to a more traditional sniffing angle (one arm, nose just there), and I'm smelling 'em all: lavender. sweet (but now in the background). spice/incense. smoke ever so lightly curling through.

At two hours, I thought it was going to disappear, but no, at three, it still lingers. Huffs in series lead to separate impressions: first the lavender still hanging in an ambery sweet gel; then that vaguely incense-y thing (I'm writing too early, perhaps; my specificity, while never my strong suit, is still off ); then some combination thereof as a hangs in my skin scent.

I'm not going anywhere near Caroll Reed's film The Third Man right now, though it's dawning on me that this "what is up with this?" shifting experience could be related...(you think?)....