plum-wonderful

I do not normally screech about body care products, but: . . .

Dr. Hauschka's Regenerating Body Moisturizer smells exactly like Chan Pui Mui.
If you have ever wanted to smell like Chinese childhood, Popo or a handful of assorted preserved plum products, run and bulldoze over everyone in your path to get this. This is the greatest body lotion ever.

Caron - Tabac Blond (late 70s/early 80s)

This is a perfume that carries such expectations that you need a good, Hoovering influence to put you on level ground again.

HUSBAND: It smells like a bridge club.

HUSBAND: It smells like a bunch of bluehairs playing canasta.

HUSBAND: It smells like old women playing pinochle.

HUSBAND: It smells like Febreeze on a casino carpet.

What I say: This is a monstrously uncompromising fragrance. For me, the girl-on-whom-any-oriental-turns-to-smoke, this throttled me to the ground, rolled me into an open grave, and bashed me on the head with a spade. Repeatedly. I had flashbacks of Berdoues' Tabac - roaring, hellish, spot-on cigarette smoke sealing up all the cracks in the apartment while I cower and cry.

Perfect example of fragrance wearing me.

Perfect example of hag-ridden kelpy casualty.

Bitter, black black, claw-marks.

Amber filth.

This is the most unwholesome thing I have ever smelled. All aspects bodily are magnified.

I would like an oxygen mask and a six-hour-long bath, please.

These are my first immediate thoughts.

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EDIT: Husband: You smell like a loose lush.
Me: Oh, do I smell like I have had many men without washing in between?
Husband: No, you just smell like cigarettes and booze.
Me: Well then, this fragrance has SUCCEEDED!

*confetti falls from ceiling upon an unleashed horde of 20s garconnes rubbing shoulders with men in raccoon coats and brilliantine*

I love my children.

Okay, my poor neglected PRPP, I shan't let you get fallow ever again. Sometimes accumulation leads to fatigue, but my love has been replenished by finding Caron's Tabac Blond for the stupidest price of all time. I was hopping up and down and looking like I had to seriously use the bathroom when asking the shop-lady. I couldn't help it. IT WAS A FIND THAT ALTERED MY PHYSICAL STATE. I nearly transmogrified. Maybe I metamorphosed into a vapour for two seconds, then switched back into human form. I wanted to eat the bottle whole. I love you, bottle-of-late-70s/early-80s-extraction-in-the-last-throes-pre-Fraysse-1988-re-orchestration.

Question: Do you say hello! to your perfume collection in the morning?
Do you kiss and hug them goodnight?
Do you think of them fondly during the day?

Possible answers: Yes
                           No
                         you insane woman

L'Artisan Parfumeur - Tea For Two

As in the words of my fellow: "Ginger Cake's holiday bread." Or was it "Ginger cakes, holiday bread"? Indefinite qualities of the spoken word, etc.

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!