squawks

Tokyomilk Dark - Excess No. 28
Dandruff shampoo, or a training wheels little boy's cologne.
Five hours later if you squinch your nose a bit, it could be a wan interpretation of ELdO's Vraie Blonde.

Bois 1920 - Sandalo e The
Something of the fluorescence of Euphoria, very bright, glaring.

Creed - Love In Black
What is with these blinding assaults on my senses? Obliterating violet, the feeling of soaking in theatrical greasepaint under hot floodlamps. Everything is neon and screaming. I just want peace and quiet. WHY DOES EVERYTHING TORMENT ME? I JUST WANT SLEEP! I just want sleep

Houbigant - Quelques Fleurs L'Original
Dreary, granny's-soap thing. Sunday school teacher. This is antithetical to my personality. I feel like I'm wearing a shroud.

Pirouette Handmade Essentials - Moss Garden
This provided a harmonious backdrop to a morning of hiking (ignore me direly in need of poles for balance, running into my husband and stumbling back like an intoxicated ibex). It really is like petting a moss-heavy log, peering into a terrarium, or pulling a Lady of Shalott. The ultimate outdoor recreation fragrance (notice how I am avoiding the s-word, it smells nothing like s-word fragrances). It is light and vivacious, cheap enough to spritz generously (even though Givenchy III is gorgeous, you probably don't want to use it for a hike!), and in these oakmoss-endangered times, it is a very very very good reference to have when you are disoriented by a sea of fruit-syrup chypre-pretenders. Stockpile.

Boucheron - B
"Son of Generic Video."

Unwanted Vintage Perfume Buying Advice (from a world authority)

1) Eff the internet. Get to know the (hopefully rural) towns around you and explore everywhere within a 2-hour radius. Discover exotic scenery (mine: dairies, alien land strewn with gigantic wind turbines, mountains), pack all kinds of Cocteau Twins CDs and candy in the car, and make a day of it.
2) It helps to have an extra pair of eyes. I am a shrimpy fillette with rubbish eyesight, but my darling (tall) boy-friend-oh aids me immensely by getting to shelves where I can't, can spot round Guerlain bottles with laser-precision and can separate the wheat from the chaff like a CHAMP. (examples: "I found something that said Guerlain, but it was a factice," etc)
3) SET YOURSELF LIMITS. Bring $20 cash and make that your allowance for the day. For mini-bottles, no more than $5 - large bottles that are half-empty, $10 - and for full bottles, $15. For my purposes, the mini is king - I can try more things, and it always helps to have a reality check (Do you really need 300ml of Eau de Givenchy? Do you really?)
4) Just because some bigwig says a scent is important, doesn't mean you have to have it. Books like Fabulous Fragrances I and II by Jan Moran and Perfumes by Jean-Yves Gaborit have lovely tables in the back that help sort out what kinds you like. According to Countess Moran, I am a chypre-floral-animalic girl! Rowr! I tend to zoom in on those first, because I know that certain fragrances will give me more pleasure than a frenzy of indisriminate greed.
EXAMPLE SITUATION: few weeks ago - saw Shalimar EdT, 1826 by Histoires des Parfums, L'Air du Temps EdP, Miss Dior EdT, Givenchy III parfum, and Chanel No. 19 EdT - I walked out with the latter three, happy and content in my green reverie.
5) Don't cry over empty bottles - take a breath, and let the memories of Inoui, Gardenia by Chanel, and Diorama go. All together now.
6) Don't double-buy. You have one bottle of L'Heure Bleue. Be honest - you will never finish it, let alone another. Save space and money for a rare bird.

BUYING REPORT SEPTEMBER 17, 2011:
Miss Balmain spray mist - $3
Bernard Lalande - Irise parfum (who is this person??), $2.95
Shalimar - $7. Did I break one of my own rules?

bargain bonanza

OH, who got fabulous 1/2-full bottles of Un Lys and Fleurs De Citronnier by Serge Lutens for $3 each?
Oh me oh me oh my!

Melvita - Cologne aux 8 essences

If Limacol is harsh enough to induce fears of spontaneous combustion upon application, and Christian Dior's Eau Fraiche is swooning in swandown, Melvita's Cologne aux 8 essences is exactly in the middle: a Meret Oppenheim'd cheesegrater, a fur-covered mandoline.

It is inexpensive, practical, and you can use it all in a month or two. Orange, lemon, bergamot, litsea cubeba, lavender, rosemary, petitgrain.

"Of course they visited the parfumeries and indulged in all manner of mingled fragrances, cunning fards, and rare oils. Some of the scents were made from real flowers, others from mysterious unnatural blossoms, whose odours were full of the intoxications of desire. There was Jasmine, full of intangible charm, refined and delicate as a Schubert melody; Geranium, curiously reminiscent of withered loves; unblended Ambergris, that had the power to excite the most anaemic virgins; Civet; Saffron; Benzoin; Stephanotis; Kiss-me-quick; Frangipanni; Cul-me-to-you; Bouquet des Amours; Peau d'Espagne; Fleur d'Amour; Jicky; Bouquet Largillerie; Jardin de mon Curé; and Bosom-Caresser."

from Count Fanny's Nuptials by Simon Arrow, 1907, via Bizarre ed. Barry Humphries.

Aroma M - Geisha Noire

This smells like Shalimar.

The end.

Rochas - Femme vs. Femme

1) Old Femme (OF, parfum) - cedar, woods, the smell of Max Klinger, a soft female hand sliding into a chamois glove, buttons up the forearm.
2) New Femme (NF, presumably eau de parfum) - cumin, a vinegary, high-pitched top note (olfactory acidulant)
3) Switch to OF and the velvet drapes fall - a cocooning plum skin, downy, meditative dusky silence - light in Georges de la Tour paintings
4) NF and the curtain's yoinked up and too many damn things are going on, like finishing a Tetris level: men in big boots leaping to balalaikas, bears snapping at their bonds, pixellated onion dome, disjointed reedy cumin and pickling brine
5) OF - clove studded pomanders, beeswax, port wine, dark purplish lipstain.
6) NF - armpit; something like morning sex on a summer's day.
7) OF - glowing coals, clove-cedar-plum lit up and deliquescing.
8) NF - this smells like someone's face post-giving-cunnilingus. I know, because this happened yesterday.
9) OF - the aforementioned clove-cedar-plum configuration being rent apart by Michael Snow's Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)
10) NF - approaching softness.
11) OF - warm skin.
12) NF - softer, honeying.
13) OF - pensiveness.
14) NF - Essentially, this is a sweaty glow after a good run. It needs a good bath (the cumin doesn't let up), has hair matted to its face, but is flushed and in good spirits.
15) OF, on the other hand, has perfect composure, and smells at home on the neckline of a formal gown, deep in the billows of a four-postered bed, or a monastic cell (the clove is very prominent on me).

(Exeunt NF, leaving drips of beeswax)

OF - entering two-hour mark, intensifies - thick stone-fruit compote, headier than it's ever been.
End - Sinking into furs, chypre sleep.

Notes: For bonkers clove richness (and perhaps not going out in public), smell Fendi's Asja.
For cedar and plum, Shiseido's Feminite du Bois.