Axe Dark Temptation

Y'know, I'd be really remiss if I didn't mention this stuff. Here's the dizeezy:

When I went home for xmas, I didn't take any deodorant, because who knows if you have to put it in that ziploc bag, right? Well, we went to Publix (don't get me started on Publix; I change words in xmas songs to "Publix" because I love it so. One of the biggest joys of xmas is just being in Publix), and I'm looking through the deodorants (these days I pretty much always wear either Old Spice Original or Speed Stick Musk. However, I'm open to exploring other deo choices; I would just prefer ambery/woody/musky to fresh/ozonic/citrusy), and I see this Axe Dark Temptation body spray. And I was like, WTF??! Because everything about the bottle suggested that it would smell of chocolate (the tagline is "as irresistible as chocolate," even); and I thought that pretty surprising. Because I've smelled the Axe body sprays before, and by and large I don't care for them. I'm sure part of that is because I can't remember the ones I've actually smelled, since the names are all so dopey that I don't pay attention to them when I give em a try. But the chocolate angle really intrigued me--it's like Angel has finally made it to the men's body spray market. So I said to Mom and I'd give it a try, and even if I didn't like it, "I could write about it in my perfume blog." And I was not in a contemplative mood when I said that!

So I started using it, and I started having those, "Who is wearing that amazing perfume?" and "Why does it smell like great perfume in here?" And I put two and two together and realized it was the Axe. OK, it doesn't smell THAT wonderful, like it could replace your regular scent, but it's pretty damn good, and the best for a body spray that I've ever smelled. And if you use it, when you try it out you'll probably have that experience of smelling the clothes that it was on when you wore it and thinking, "How did a nice perfume get in these clothes?" because it almost smells like the last remnants of a nice perfume. And yeah, perfume. Not "cologne."

Does it smell chocolatey, though? Hmmmmm. Maybe a little. No more than that candle company's "Mexican Cocoa" scent, that I discussed somewhere below. I guess if you're thinking "chocolate" when you smell it, or if you layer it with a good chocolate (Amour de Cacao, I still can't stop extolling your praises), you'd call it chocolatey. I wouldn't say chocolate immediately. I don't know what I'd say--perfume-y? ambery? But even though it doesn't really smell like chocolate, it's certainly versatile, and maybe if you layered it right, you could walk through the streets smelling like chocolate cake. Here's a recipe for that:

-cocoa butter out of the shower
-a cream-cheese scented body oil (because it's hard to find a good chocolate one--chocolate must be tricky, because it can smell like a Milky Way the second you put it on, but then usually it collapses, sometimes into tobacco, sometimes into shitty-cheap vanilla)
-Amour de Cacao all over

But that's kinda boring. Let's get REALLY gourmand:

-that cocoa butter oil gel in the shower; the one that smells like almond-hazelnut
-cocoa butter out the shower
-that Pink Buttercream Frosting body spray, or a cotton-candy one if you're feeling daring or girly
-that cream-cheese oil mixed with that macadamia oil
-Vanille-Amande by CSP
-Amour de Cacao for a chocolate thing; Vanille-Banane for a fruity tone; both for if you want to see if you can pull it off

Now if you wear that, you may get told one of the following things:
1) It smells like vanilla over here.
2) You smell like cookies!
3) It's like getting mugged by a bakery.

Only #3 is positive.

But I've gotten off-topic, and notice that I didn't include the Axe in the chocolate recipe, because it smells more complex that that. I really like the way it smells (it doesn't smell like Axe) and I hope it stays on the market.

Now, there are some other new(ish?) Axe products out there: One based on vetyver (it says so on the label); one of bergamot and I think an amber. These are less exciting. I have the vetyver--I liked it initally, because it seemed to smell earthy and not sweet like vetyver, but the more I use it, the more it seems that that's just the very initial expression, and once it fades, you're left with a regular Axe scent. The thing about the chocolate is it smells just as good, maybe better, 12 hours after you first sprayed it on.

BLOMP!
E

ADDENDUM: I got the body wash the other day, and it smells even better than the spray. It smells spicier, and even a bit chocolately, and kinda like Angel for men without the laundry note. Yeah, it smells awesome. I'd say get it before they take it off the market. It's one of the best-smelling shower gels out there, if you like those. Suave's Mango-Pomegranate smells good too. And there's one by Zest that's absolutely incomparable. Can't remember the name, though, but all the gels from Zest are good. Just goes to show ya--you don't have to spend a mint for good-smelling shower gel.

And the answer to the mystery is....

...Maple Furanone. I think.

So you know about the mysterious maple syrup smell that has ever and anon wafted around NYC, right? I think it started in 2005, and I remember learning of it from gawker, because I don't remember ever smelling it myself, even though I lived in the Columbia 'hood at the time. Anyway, for some time now I've been certain that it's maple furanone. Why? Uhhhh, because I'm a scent nerd---DUH!

But seriously, this is why: I knew that caramel furanone is one b9itch of a molecule that you don't want to mess around with. Because it's STRONG. Believe me. I've once owned some 3% caramel furanone (diluted in propylene glycol, I believe), and trust me, it's very, very, very strong. Now, I knew that it was extremely strong, so I thought maybe it could be the culprit behind the mysterious maple smell, because it can smell of caramel or maple, depending on the concentration. Amberway, one day I was googling it and came across this page from Leffingwell, about burnt sugar notes. And it discussed maple furanone, which apparently is MUCH stronger than CF. Behold:

With a detection threshold of 0.00001 ppb maple furanone is nearly 3,000,000 times more powerful than cyclotene and in fact is one of the most powerful flavor chemicals known to man.

Odor Detection Threshold (in water) = 0.00001 ppb
Powerful maple-caramel aroma and taste

When I read that I knew for certain that this had to be the chemical behind the maple smell. Because I know there are flavor/fragrance manufacturers in NYC and NJ (the actual manufacturing plants are probably all in NJ; the "artistry" is probably done at headquarters in the city, perhaps like at a place like Symrise), and it's entirely possible that just a small spill of MF could scent a whole city. I know I read something in a Luca Turin book (methinks) about a town in France that smelled like a cumulus-cloud-sized fruit (pineapple? mango?) when someone dumped some of a certain raw material down the drain chez a fragrance material manufacturer's.

Annehathaway, when Bloomberg announced today that the source of the odor (and who knew they were really researching the source?!) was some plant in NJ that manufactures flavors from fenugreek, I knew that it had to be MF, because it's extracted/synthesized from fenugreek (another name for it is ethyl fenugreek lactone). Now, he said that the odor was an ester, and I admit: I don't know enough chemistry to speak to that, but I feel sure that MF is the the culprit here--perhaps the 'ester' part comes in when we're talking about what it's diluted in? A company in NJ manufactures it 50% in "Triacetin"? According to wikipedia, triacetin is "the triester of glycerol and acetic acid." So maybe that's where the ester part comes in.

Arboritumway, I made sure to post my prediction for what the smell was on the boards for the Brian Lehrer show today before Bloomberg announced it, and either I was right or sounded right enough, because a producer emailed me and asked if I had insider info. "Nope, just an enthusiast"--story of my life, right? Whatevz--so I might be on the show for minnut or two tomorrow for "follow-up Friday," but we'll see.

But I certainly didn't post with any thought of getting on the air--my thought was to DOCUMENT this shelleezy. Because I KNOW I had mentioned to someone that the maple smell must be maple furanone in the past year or so. I know that I had. So when I posted that, I took screenshots, because it's about time I started getting cred for my predictions. I'm like the Faith Popcorn of, well, uh, all that random stuff I'm interested in, except I don't have a drag queen-sounding name. (I have a "sounds like a Duke in England" name.) For further proof of my dizzazzling prognostication powers, I direct Thee to my latest post on the WFMU blog, where I discuss how I've been saying that "oxytocin is the new serotonin" since at least 2003. (It's a 13,000-word entry. No, really. That's according to Microsoft Word's "word count" feature. So scroll to the endnotes for the oxytocin ish. Yes. I did endnotes. Because I can get highfalutin.)

I shall post the screenshots laterly, since I forgot even to email them to myself. But I shallst!!

And that's the I-was-right-bow-down-before-my-futureknowingness beep for now.

-E

PS: Yes, I'm available for fragrance private investigator work. My consulting rate is, uh, $1,495.77/hr. And, yeah, we can work this into a movie or TV series if you want: Ed Shepp: Scent PI. We'll have to shoot on location in Hawaii, though, because that's where my character will be scouring nature for new odorants when he's not solving mysteries 'n stuff. Know wa'ah mean?

Flame!

So how am I just hearing today that Burger King, of all companies, has a body spray out called Flame?! This is like the kind of thing I would have known about some time ago and looked forward to. Anyway, I'm guessing that apparently it must have a grilled meat accord in it, because its tag line is "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat." Craziness. So what does it smell like?

Yes, I happened to get a bottle today. And I gotta say, I'm terribly disappointed in the size--it's .17oz, just a bit bigger than a good tester size. I guess it's sold in small bits because it's a marketing stunt. The design is great, though. Anyway, before I tell you how it smells, you need to forget everything you've read or heard about it and let go of any preconceptions. Because you've probably heard people say that it must stink or smell cheap or smell like beef fat. And you may have a preconception that nothing that costs $3.99 can smell very good, especially if it's from Burger King. So forget all of that. How does it smell????

It smells great. Not like meat, though, which is kinda disappointing. It actually smells a lot like Gucci Envy for Men. Specifically, it smells like a combination of Envy and Burning Leaves by Demeter. I've said before that Burning Leaves, depending on what you're thinking when you smell it, can make you think of a fire of wood and leaves OR it can make you think of barbecue-flavor potato chips. Because it essentially smells like smoke flavoring. Flame smells smoky and woody, but you don't really smell barbecue from it. If you're thinking smoke flavor when you smell it, you might see how that odor could be in there, but it doesn't give you that general impression. Right as you spray it on there's the smoke and the wood, but also a light cedary note not dissimilar to the opening of Joseph Abboud for Men (the crisp opening wood note, not the sour musky drydown). The smoke/wood smell sticks around, and maybe doesn't soften enough as it fades, but if you like a smoky wood note, that's fine. I don't get a whole lot more from it, so it's too spare if you judge it against a favorite perfume. But you could layer it very easily. In fact, you could wear it alone and you'd be fine.

Fine until you have occasion to tell people what it is. Then, of course, you'll get people telling you you smell like meat, or that it smells like a cheap cologne you're wearing. That's just people. Try this: have people smell it and tell them it's the new Chanel. Or tell them it's something you saw at Barney's. I guarantee they will rave. But then you could douse yourself in Lysol and some people would go gaga over it if you told them it was Chanel. Too many people think that the quality of any fragrance is directly related to the label.

Interestingly, I had one of my roommates smell it--the one whose sense of smell exceeds that of an alien robot bloodhound, and I asked her what it smelled like. Without telling her what it was, of course. "It smells like cologne," she said. No hint of grilled meat, even after I told her what it was. So there you have it.

At any rate, I would go out and get some just to say that you had some of it, for when it's no longer sold. It's fun to smell it, and the concept is hilarious. So, I must say, is the website, firemeetsdesire.com. Be sure to spray the bottle a few times when you go to it. The site is really well done. Actually, I think the whole campaign is well done.

Beep!

Le Labo!

Okej, today I went to Le Labo in SoHo today for the first time. Wow! Such a cool experience. At first I just smelled a couple of their scents, both of which I liked very much--Iris and Labdanum (although I didn't so much like the drydown of Labdanum--it started to smell very "sports ambery" to me; actually it reminded me a LOT of the first cologne I ever owned: Rookie by Avon. At first that was charming, but I wouldn't plop down SoHo prices for Rookie when I could just buy a certain amber from Aphrodisia and get a similar effect). But, of course, the real fun was in smelling the raw materials behind the counter. I smelled calone (which does smell wonderfully aquatic), ethyl vanillin (I'd known of this before; calone too--this smells like whipped cream or marshmallow, a light, sweet vanillic smell with none of the complexity of vanilla extract), a musk that I'd read about but never smelled and did NOT smell powdery, fresh, floral or any of the adjectives you'd expect to describe "modern" musks, tuberose absolute, mimosa absolute, neroli bigarade, tonka abolute, leather base, and some hexylene that really did smell like just-cut grass--Hexanal? Oh, and Iso E Super. They didn't have helional, and I didn't see hydroxycitronellal. And I can't remember if we smelled dihydromyrcinol (I probably got that name way wrong--it's the odor that's in all the men's colognes today). (Oh yes, it was I and Jason Atkins, the lifestyle editor for The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment.) And I may have missed some that we smelled. It was wonderful, though, and I had to say that I was surprised that some of the raw materials smelled so nice on their own. Of course I'm thinking of the single-note synthetics like Hexanal and calone. Calone smelled lovely--I can see why it was so extensively used in the 90s, maybe 80s. I believe that Luca Turin says that Calone has the peculiar property of smelling stronger the more you smell it. So that a cologne that smelled really interesting and amazing in the 90s now smells all of Calone. Well, that's how I understand that he meant it. I wasn't surprised that some of the ones smelled faint (I could barely detect benzyl salicylate, which Jason and I had just before read in Perfumes: The Guide that it was the main event in L'Air du Temps, and that some people are anosmic for it but can detect its presence in a blend), because I'd smelled ambroxan and cashmeran before, and they both didn't smell as strong as their effects in perfumes suggest. Iso E Super didn't smell strong to me either, but it was surprisingly pleasant for a single woody-smelling chemical (it seems like those are often harsh alone, but I don't have enough experience to know)--it just smelled like dry, dusty wood.

So Le Labo was a riot for me--I love learning about raw materials in perfumery. The girl behind the counter used to compound perfumes, so it was great to hear her talk about that. Anyway, after LL J and I went to Bloomingdales, where I smelled a buncha stuff I've smelled before, and then to Enfleurage, where I looked at stuff. I noticed that Pacifica, which has started producing eau de toilettes for their candle scents (!), has come out with one of those for their Mexican Cocoa scent. I'd burned the MC scent before, and liked the almonditude to it, so I gave that one a try. Well, it starts out with a gigantic supersweet cherry-almond boat that you get in. Really, it's strong and kinda screechy. You get in the boat, which sails on a river of this sweet floral-spice smell, the kind that makes you think something-with-the-word-eugenol writ huge in glowing pink letters; it's reminiscent of Demeter Orchid: super sweet spicy-floral; nice but bare, and a little cloying. Well beneath this river, at the floor, is something that smells maybe like chocolate. Or maybe vanilla or maybe amber. It's hard to tell, since it seems like you never see the ground--that weird spicy floral note, which I think is in there to suggest the "cinnamon and clove" that the box says is in the scent, seems to last FOREVER. But smelling it, even though it's not something you smell and go immediately, "chocolate" (like you do with Amour de Cacao by Sud Pacifique, which on the drydown smells, ecstatically, of Cocoa Krispies), you can kinda convince yourself it's chocolate because the name of the scent is Mexican Cocoa. Anyway, I don't like it. I mean, I do, but that spicy floral note just ruins the concept. Personally I could find the scent pleasant, and I think you can pull it off well only by layering it, but if you wanted something cheap to wear for when you want to wear perfume but not expensive perfume, or if you just wanted to indulge in the sweetness on a rainy day when you're just ambling around or something, then this might work. But you could also make it work for a more important occasion by layering it with stuff that's better done. You could layer it with Amour de Cacao, if you don't mind walking around smelling like superamazing cereal. And why should do, really?? I frankly don't understand why people don't like gourmand fragrances as true gourmand notes---People say things like, "I don't want to walk around smelling like chocolate cake!!" But why not?? Chocolate cake smells great. People have great associations with it. And speaking as someone who's worn creamy vanillic stuff and almondy stuff and cocoa stuff, I LOVE fragrances that really smell like food (and not a tiny-initial-burst-of-food that quickly craps out into something powdery, like all those "cake batter" scents do; sometimes you can find a cheap vanillic scent that will make you smell like Lucky Charms, but you have to luck out); I think they're unique in the kind of lift you can get when you perceive them through the day. And everytime I smell Amour de Cacao or Vanille Amande, some part of me just instantly relaxes. But anyway, if you want to mix this with amber and then spray a very chocolatey or vanillic scent over it, I think it could really work. If you mixed them well it could become a signature scent. Of course that doesn't change the fact that the scent isn't good enough to work when you want to wear something good. Of course, you'd be stunned if a scent inspired by a CANDLE were that good. At least I would be. (Although I have to say, I TOTES covet Feu de Bois by Diptyque, and I think I'd wear it if it's available in eau de whatever.)

Oh yes, and in my run-on sentences I completely forgot--Le Labo has some $520 kit with li'l bottles of all the raw materials they have behind the counter (presumably so the consumer can educate him or herself on raw materials. Who would do that but a scent geek like me?! Also, why can't you make scents with said raw materials?! They don't sell them individually, as far as I could tell and I could be wrong, and I don't think you can blend them. WTF?!?) (also, [yeah, yet another set-o-parentheses] why do they mix the perfume "fresh" for you?!?! It's not a smoothie!!! Isn't perfume supposed to "macerate"?? I think they just pour the ready made perfume for you--no "mixing" involved). So someone out there can get that for me for Christmas. There you go.

And that's my beep for now.

Beep!

PS: GAK! How could I not mention that I smelled castoreum at Le Labo?!?!? I have to say--it wasn't offensive at all. I mean, I could see how some might find it so, but I think Luca Turin had it right when he called it the olfactory equivalent of brown. It smelled animal, but more leathery than fecal. I wish I had some. Get me that for Christmas too! And since I mentioned Castoreum, we also smelled the civet, which smelled just like the (CHEAP) civet at that other place, which smelled just like the civet at Symrise. So you don't have to spend out da pants to get a perfectly good artificial civet. Ditto for mimosa--LL's mimosa absolute smelled remarkably similar to the oil at Caswell Massey.

Symrise Part II

OK I guess I should get to the latest Sniffapalooza thing at Symrise, which I'm calling Symrise Part II right now.

This was quite possibly the best presentation I could imagine from a flavor/fragrance manufacturer (for the most part) aside from just being let loose and allowed to smell the raw materials. It was about (and I may misremember things, so there's your warning. I'm just winging it; I ain't no journamalist) luxury scents, and they were letting us smell some scents that they've pitched to their clients for 'inspiration.' One of the groups they were pitching was luxury scents--one of the qualifications for luxury was long-lastingness; another was quality of materials. Quality of materials. Think on that one. Because that was what made this presentation so great--we got to smell some scents made out of top-quality, expensive materials. Scents that no accounting department in a company that sells fragrances would greenlight. So basically we were smelling perfumes to expensive to ever be mass-market produced.

There was one that was made mostly with orris if I remember. When I smelled it, it actually smelled like this very cheap synthetic orris that I got at a health food store years ago, except fuller and softer. It was really lovely! It brought to mind Hiris by hermes, and also carrot seed oil. I really liked it, and kept smelling the strip throughout the presentation; it only got better. Then there was one built around immortelle absolute, which is wonderful and smells darker and deeper than the essential oil that I'm used to (and slightly prefer). It smelled closer to labdanum, but still had a distinct caramellic backnote. There was one that was supposed to smell like a classic floral, and did, in the sense that it smelled like it could've been launched in 1950 (in the good way). There was one greenish one with seaweed, that smelled so clear and fresh and beautiful that I was just bowled over. There was another floral meant to smell like a stargazer lily, and it DID! It smelled as exactly like a lily as I could ever imagine. It was made with all synthetics too, which is interesting.

The last group of fragrances they showed us was themed around something like "Less Is More." Basically here they showed us scents built around Symrise branded compounds--there were quite a few built around ambroxan, one around cashmeran and one with ambroxan and timber propanol. I've smelled ambroxan and TP before, and I could smell them in these. Ambroxan is pleasant, but kind of spare to be building scents with it as a dominant. The whole exercise seemed kinda masturbatory in their part--because there weren't real perfumes in these raw materials, and I don't really know what they were after by showing us stuff built with only ambroxan (the branded name is something different, like Ambroxide)--I mean, it's not THAT great alone. (It's supposed to be magical BLENDED with other notes--providing a fixative effect but also making the upper notes pop.) And I think I remember reading somewhere that it's going a little out of fashion in perfumes. Also, they said that it's really expensive, but I wasn't so sure about that--if you look on some resellers' sites, you can see generics of it, and to look at their prices, it doesn't look expensive at all. Compare it to a jasmine, tuberose, vanilla, beeswax, ambrette or even cassis absolute, and I think it compares well. It surely compares well to real ambergris, which I'm sure costs a fortune. So anyway, smelling those scents was kinda perfunctory, since once you smelled the scent that was nearly all ambroxide, everything else smelled the same.

There was one scent in this part that I really didn't like, and everyone else in the room seemed to have a different reaction. it was this one with a metallic-woody note on top and a dry woody drydown. I found it very unpleasant--it smelled metallic and harsh, and just like really piquant synthy wood notes screaching. But other people in the room found it very sexy and were bordering on the salacious in their comments. I couldn't smell the sexiness. I couldn't smell the leather in it, unless it was that "burnt wood" flavor of leather. I just did NOT get what everyone else smelled in it. Maybe I'm anosmic for something.

Anyway, one of the best parts came at the end, when I got to smell some raw materials: cashmeran, cocoa absolute, bran absolute, tiare absolute, immortelle absolute and a few others. Wow, that was cool. I couldn't smell much of cashmeran--isn't that interesting? That these are really strong, uber-longlasting base notes that don't smell strong by themselves, but really do amazing things to blends? I think it's fascinating. Cocoa: like very dark chocolate--I so wish I had some of this. Bran absolute--I think it's called son, actually. Interesting. Tiare--wow, this is great. I've never smelled the actual flower, but this stuff really does smell like a flower. Immortelle--like I said, deeper/darker than the essential oil; lovely.

And that's the Symrise beep.

Beep!

Barney's

So a few weeks ago I decided that I would FINALLY get a bottle of Bel Ami, which I've been pining for since there was different packaging and I DRENCHED myself in in Paris. It was a Sunday, and i went directly to the Hermes store, which was closed. Dammit! But then I walked down to Barney's, where I've never bought anything in my life and I wasn't even sure it was a real store, and I found it there. So I bought it. But the cool thing was that I saw all these scents that I was only dimly aware of--either I'd heard of them, seen them once or twice before or read about them in Perfumes: The Guide. So I started smelling.

I forget the name, but apparently there's a perfume line where the owner just let the perfumers do their thing and he didn't mess with it. So the perfumes have their own names, but also the name of the perfumer on them. Jean-Claude Ellena did one or two. I think someone named Roudnitska did another. Well, some of these are just divine. The Gardenia one is great---it's like gardenia, but when I first smelled it I got tuberose. And not the flower, but more like the notes that are in the natural oil that you might smell at Enfleurage (though not the enfleurage tuberose)--inky, indolic maybe, very green and not altogether pleasant. Of course, these notes are blended well with the rest of it, and the whole thing works. Good stuff. There was a musk one that I liked too. Another thing I really liked at Barneys was something from the Bois 1920 line I think it's called (yes, the salesperson pronounced it "boyz"), and it smelled of evergreen and firewood. Interestingly, when I first smelled it the word "phenolic" filled my head, because it smells distincly smoky, but also almost like a chemical leather, somewhat similar to the Baseball Glove oil that CB I Hate Perfume makes, which itself smells like leather shoes or car seats, but with a weird, chemical nuance. And it smells weirder and muskier when it starts to degrade, which is remarkably quickly compared to pretty much every other fragrance you'd pay for, even drugstore brands. I loved it when I smelled it, and I was telling a friend about it, and I mentioned that when I smelled Sycomore by Chanel, I was all like, "For that price I could make this." Because you know that making your own will ALWAYS cost more than buying it prefab. But with Sycomore it cost so much that I knew I could make it with stuff like galbanum and diluent; it just wouldn't be as long-lasting. Anyway.... I remember saying that I could make that but not this Bois 1920 one. And then my friend smelled it and he was like, "You could make this. You HAVE made this with that leather oil you had." And I was like, "Hmmm, yeah. He's right. Because that leather was extremely phenolic...." Interesting.

So I bought the Bel Ami, and it's a good thing that I went there, because I got all these testers. There was one for Ralph Lauren something or other, but I think I gave it away because it was too fresh. And there was another that was sickeningly fresh and I gave that away even faster. But there were these three Italian scents which were breathtaking, but ridiculously costly: there was Cuomo (I may screw these names up), a leathery-sounding one; Tabaco, self-explanatory, and Sushi Imperiale, a gingery spicy one. Cuomo: hated it. It smelled leathery only in the sense that English Leather smells leathery. In fact, it kinda smelled soapy. Gross. Tabaco: amazing. It smells just like pipe tobacco, but in a general way. It really smells like it has a crapload of tonka in it. In fact, I was afraid that if I put too much on I might get some kinda coumarin sickness. But it's just lovely. And long-lasting too. Sushi Imperiale: brill. Love it. Just brill. But all of these retail for I think about $140/oz. That's a rip. They're very pleasant, but not innovative enough to pay that kind of money for. Forget it. Another great tester I got was for Five O'Clock au Gingembre, and I can't really say what it smells like at this point, because everytime I smelled it I smelled something new that is a favorite scent of mine: labdanum, spice, tobacco, helichrysium, hay/beeswax, tonka.... I was like, "OK, this scent can't possibly be/have all these things. Something is coloring the way I'm smelling this. I can't smell it if I'm thinking 'labdanum' and get an objective reading. I'm gonna have to smell this again later." And I haven't smelled it that much since, but there is that possibility that it's an absolutely brilliant scent that is life-changing. (OK, not "life-changing"...) I do have to note that I wore it one day and had that experience of thinking, "Who is wearing that amazing perfume?!? Is it the UPS man? Is it someone in the building? Is there some cake from another dimension somewhere? ...OMG, it's ME!!!!!" So that's a good sign. It, however, is also around $140 an oz, so forget that. I suppose if I really wanted a tonka like scent I could just mix tonka, flouve and helichrysium into some diluent and have something natural-but-not peak performance.

Anyway, in spite of all those testers, I'm really, really, really happy that I finally own some Bel Ami. Because even though it's apparently been reformulated in recent years (I'm not sure if I've ever smelled the original), I still love love love the way it smells. When I put it on I think mostly of this particular notion I have of a hay/labdanum accord, and I lerv that. Even with the citrus notes and the cumin, which I'm not sure I detect well. I also like the fact that it's not typically sweet, nor is it "fresh."

And that's the beep.

Pier One

So I went to Pier One today cuz I gotta smell all the new xmas shizz. Damn, what a disappointment. I seem to remember that once upon a time Pier One had maybe a cool scent here and there, but now I'm wondering whether I've been mistaken the whole time. Didn't they have a great foliage scent once? Anyway, I was smelling their new Christmas stuff, and it's a wreck. The whole store is a wreck, in scent terms anyway. There were about 8 different names for Christmas scents, most of which weren't even available to smell. But really, how different could they smell? Christmas scents pretty much always have the same accords--citrus-spice, cranberry-citrus or spice, fir balsam. They're so ingrained that if you look for applications for certain raw materials, sometimes "Christmas blends" will come up. Anyway, no one seems to do all that much around these themes--the evergreen smells are pretty standard and decorated either with cinnamon or cranberry notes. The citrus spice and cranberry notes are similarly joined. And sometimes someone tries to throw them all together, but that seldom works. Oh, and there's the very predictable evergreen-cedar combination that seems to sell, but for the life of me I can't understand why. Cedar can smell like saunas, hamster cages and sometimes vaguely woody notes, but it doesn't evoke Christmas for me. I would like to see more of the evergreen-firewood accord, and maybe someone could do more with a cinnamon-tonka blend, since cassia cinnamon is so high in coumarin. Or more of a spiced plum accord. OR, if you're going for that "sparkling pine" type scent, why not combine evergreen with fresh crisp green notes or ozonic notes, as opposed to peppermint? I mean, wouldn't pine/ozone work better? Of course, when you're talking about combining crisp green with evergreen, you do run the risk of coming up with a smell that evokes Chinese food. The Body Shop had one a few Christmases ago that smelled like that.

Anyway, back to Pier One. So firstly, they had about 8 different "Holiday This or That" smells, but they probably revolved around only 2 accords. Then I went to the other candles. ....When did Pier One start selling Yankee Candle and White Barn candles? Odd. Anyway, those were no better. It's like they decided that they just wanted to sell what everyone will buy instead of something interesting. Secondly, there's no secondly, so I don't know why I said firstly there. Going on to thirdsley.... So when I was looking at the regular candles I came across one called Vanilla Tonka. Great, I thought, something cheap and easy (just plop vanillin and coumarin together, right?); it should smell good. Well, I think it was misnamed. Instead of Vanilla Tonka, perhaps it should've been called something like "Caramel Furanone 1%."

So yeah. That was my visit to Pier One. Totally disappointing.

But if you'd like to know where to get the GOOD Christmas smells, I'll tell you:
There aren't any.
Seriously, there really aren't. There's nothing particularly innovative out there, even at the upper price ranges. There is ONE Christmas scent that I distinctly like, and I buy it every year: Crabtree and Evelyn's Noel. Now, there should be an umlaut there, and I think that most of what they do is kinda old-fashioned and heavy-handed (with the exception of that Island scent they have out now. It's not a perfect scent, but it's very pretty. It's citrusy enough that I would consider using it, even though it's kinda feminine. But it's nice. In the vein of, but not as lush as, Beyond Paradise. Hmmm, I hope I didn't commit heresy by saying that), I do quite like Noel. I read it as an evergreen smell with a very dominant drydown of frankincense. There's some citrus and cranberry in there too, I believe, but really, it's the frankincense that's the star. It's very nice, and refreshingly strong--both diffusive and long-lasting. Be careful if you buy it, though: don't store it with the dropper on. The oil will eat through the rubber. Store it with the cap. Now how does the oil eat through it? Dunno. Not sure if it's something in the scent or in the diluent, but I've seen it happen with one other C&E scent, also with that frankincense base. Anyway, I totally endorse this Christmas scent. Most of the others are pretty interchangeable. I like the candle and wax tart versions of Christmas Wreath by Yankee Candle, but it doesn't smell exactly right in it's other iterations, namely the plug-in, the oil and the car thing.

Beep!

Symrise

OK, I'd REALLY be remiss if I didn't mention this. A few weeks ago Sniffapalooza had an event that was hands-down my favorite one so far. Even more so than the Estée Lauder one. It was a lunchtime thing where we went to Symrise and they gave us a presentation on what they're working on re: the Russian market. Because apparently the next big markets for fragrances are BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China. I don't have any of the materials here with me, so I'm going to have to do this from memory, but you'll have to deal with it, because as I said in the last post, I have the svårmod. In fact, you can just call me Evald the Svårmod, and draw a big sorglig brontosaurus to represent me.

Anyway, the theme of the presentation was Russia, so we walk in and there's some cool Russian stuff, and they gave us a li'l "refresher course" on Russian history, which no one in America knows about, so it was more like a brief overview. (No one in America really knows anything about any other country, and most of us get our own history wrong. And yes, I speak for every citizen in every state of this land. Just yesterday I learned that Thomas Jefferson was on the penny cuz he, like, wrote the Constitution and not for that beer that he makes. ...Or was it wigs??) Then we went into the room for the real presentation. And it was probably then that we got the overview, but who can remember anything about history....

Then we got a PowerPoint presentation and a movie. Or a movie and then a PowerPoint presentation. Whatever. Then they showed us li'l mockups from marketing about the scents they've developed to appeal to the Russian market, and what the idea behind them was. The mockups looked, well, like mockups. They were probably done at the last minute, because I was sitting there thinking, "I could do better Photoshop than this. I've DONE better Photoshop than this!" But then I remembered how everywhere I've worked, nothing ever got done until the last minute. Surely their presentations to actual perfume houses will be better. I wish I could remember the actual titles of the juices and what not, but I can't. I know they did some by season, and then there were some that were done with a different theme in mind. Then they passed around scent strips with the juices on them and asked us what we thought. w00t!

I was actually vocal. Usually I just kinda draw back, because I assume everyone else knows what they're talking about and I'm just an idiot. After all, in spite of the fact that I can probably identify more odors than your average person, my olfactory sense per se isn't really all that sensitive. And I'm not confident that I can describe why exactly I like a scent---I mean, I'm better than people I know who aren't into scents, who just say, "I like it. I don't know why. I don't know what it smells like. I just like it." So I don't speak up all that much. But this time I actually did.

What of the actual scents? Well, this happened months ago, and since I don't have the li'l booklet they gave us in front of me, I dont' remember what most of them are. I do remember that one smelled like something out of Bath & Body Works, which made sense considering that Symrise makes stuff for them. And another one for women smelled dark and woody, which I like, because you never see that these days. (I want to declare a War on the Perfumes of the 90s--those "fresh," "clean" scents that smell of nothing. I mean, was there ever a bigger swindle than Zirh's cologne for men? Top notes: Alcohol. Middle and Bottom Notes: Void. I don't necessarily want to bring back that powerhouse 80s type of perfume, although I DO like them; but I want that fresh, clean, aquatic bullshit to take a vacation. Gimme funk. Gimme strong, earthy, woody, animal scents. Spicy florals that you can drown in. Honey and tonka and smoke and myrrh. And let's retire that whole line that goes by the name of "Clean." Hey, it's a Depression, so let's have some more scents like Youth Dew. There. There's my screed for now. You'll hear more of it soonly, I'm sure.) There was a scent that smelled just like Baby Doll to me. And a men's one that I quite liked--kind of autumnal, maybe a little "Christmasy" (oh how I hate it when people use that word! now here I am using it!). I wish we'd gotten li'l bottles, but they were just rough drafts.

Then after the presentations and the initial smelling, we got to ask more questions. The presentation was done by a couple of marketing people, but there were a couple perfumers there too. Perfumers! And perhaps the marketing people need to spend more time with the perfumers, or at least they learn how to pronounce the word homme. Speaking of words, though, I learned a new one: floralcy. OK, not so much a new word, but a new form. I probably would have said flowerfulinessitude. :P

Then they served some food, which was good for me because I had major cottonmouth and needed to eat and drink something. Here are two cool things: Someone mentioned No 5, by Chanel. I mentioned that I don't particularly like it all that much. I mean, I sort of like it, because I've gotten used to it, but when I first smelled it I did NOT see what the fuss was all about (of course I knew it was the aldehydes, but while those were piquant and novel at the time, that they are no longer). Anyway, they said that when they do blind tests in focus groups and they include No 5, no one likes it. They have the same reaction I do: "It smells old lady. Soapy. Powdery." Interesting. But what was more interesting was when somehow civet got mentioned. And the woman asked me if I wanted to smell some. YES!!!!!!!!!!!! So she went and got it and opened the bottle and put it on a strip. Now, I thought the whole room was going to smell like feces at that point, but no. I smelled it and it just smelled like a rotten tooth. Not so offensive as you'd expect, given its reputation. It was probably a dilution. And I would have to assume it was a synthetic reproduction, because no one makes civet oil anymore, do they? But here's where it gets interesting: I'd smelled something called civet before at some wiccan store where they sell essential oils and synths (it's on 9th street---their "deer's tongue" {um, it's actually "deertongue," but whatever} smells very coumariny. Their tonka smells.... sort of like frankincense. Odd, because you'd think the tonka would smell more coumariny), and I'd assumed that it wasn't very close to what anyone would call a civet accord. It smelled unpleasant, but not like I'd expected, and nowhwhere near as strong as I expected, and someone with me said it smelled "like old people." At the time I thought she or he meant like diapers, but I think now that civet has a bit of a naphtalene smell to it, and I certainly associate that--it's basically the smell of moth balls--with old people. Anyway, I thought the Symrise civet smelled much like the wiccan one, so I went back to the wiccan store, and sure enough, they smelled identical. So if you want some civet, go there. But if you want the civet without the glycol or myristate or whatever it's diluted in, you have to find a raw materials supplier. OR just go to Enfleurage, now that I think about it! Because while they don't have civet, I'm TOLD that they had some real ambergris, and that it might just smell like locker room. I don't know what that says about the quality of the ambergris, but it's certainly cool to discover something that actually smells unpleasant.

And anyway, that was the bagoosh with that. Glorp.

Enfleurage

I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the stuff I saw recently at Enfleurage. They now have a tuberose enfleurage (as opposed to the regular one, which I guess is steam distillation?) oil, which smells..... [wait for it].... like tuberose! Like the actual flower! WOW!!! I've not seen anything like this before. I don't find the tuberose oil they've carried up to now particularly pleasant--I can kinda smell the link to tuberose, but I don't smell the actual flower. It smells green and earthy and maybe a little inky. But the enfleurage oil (which is done with vegetable oil instead of animal fat; I'm told it would smell better if it were done in animal fat) smells like the actual flower. I was stunned when I smelled it. So of course I went to the neroli enfleurage, which didn't thrill me like the tuberose did. I smelled a neroli bigarade oil once in Atlanta (and never since) that actually smelled like orange blossoms (remember I grew up in Florida, so I know--or I knew, at least--what an orange grove in bloom smells like), and I was hoping I'd have this experience with this stuff, but I didn't. It just smelled like the regular petitgrain/neroli type thing you see everywhere. Maybe a little softer, but it didn't stick in my mind enough to remember. All that said, it's been so long since I've smelled real orange blossoms (and I might not smell them again--there's some virus attacking Florida's citrus crops, or so I'm told; anyway, most of the orange groves that were there when I was growing up have given way to {over}development, so they're disappearing nonetheless) that I don't particularly recall exactly what they smell like. I feel like if I smelled an oil that really smells like orangeflower (neroli, orangeflower, orange blossom... I use the terms interchangeably) that I would notice it, though. Like, if my mom had worn No 5 and for years I kept smelling imitations, and then smelled the real thing, I think I'd notice. ... Or maybe not. But I digress. I have the svårmod now, so you the reader may have to endure digressions.

I think there was also a gardenia enfleurage. And if there was and I'm not misremembering, it too smelled like the actual flower. We had gardenia and hibiscuses in the yard when I was growing up, so I know the smell of gardenia. I also know that hibiscus flower has no smell. (I think the root has one, though.) So when you go to a perfume place that has an "absolute" of hibiscus, and I'm looking at you, Williamsburg, it's probably an absolute of horseshit.

And that's the glorp for now.

Stetson Rich Suede

I confess. I'm really interested in Stetson again after reading the reviews of the various Stetson concoctions in Perfumes: The Guide. One point for thought: I never realized that Stetson was very feminine. I think TS reviews it (I don't remember her name), and she goes on that it's very much like a rich women's oriental. I'll have to smell it again. I remember liking it a lot when I was young. But it's the kind of thing you can't really wear today, because even though it's rich and warm (and I do have to smell it again, because I don't recall exactly what it smells like), it's just too recognizable. I tried smelling it a few years ago, hoping to maybe get a bottle and be able to wear it--my thinking was that maybe people had forgotten it and it was wearable again. Kind of like Aramis is wearable again---it no longer reminds you of your grandfather, because if you're old enough for it to do that, then your grandfather is probably dead. Or maybe just I've changed, which is probably the case. I used to really like Aramis in the summer and only in the summer. Like I like Polo at Christmastime, but only at Christmastime.

Back to Stetson. They mention another release of Stetson, Stetson Untamed, which I'd seen in the drugstore but never bothered to smell. Well, they say it smells of toasted marshmallows, cardboard and woods. That sounds awesome! I've got to find me some of this and smell it.

The coolest Stetson development, however, has to be a new release from them that just came out, after the book was published, apparently: Stetson Rich Suede. I saw this the other day, and today was able to smell it. And guess what? I love it! Maybe it's the name, but to me it smells mostly just like dry wood, and a bit of leather/suede/something like that. A little bit like Cuiron, back in the day. I think it might have some citrus in the beginning too, because everything does. But I love how it's mostly just dry woody. I hope it sticks around. I'm going to look for a bigger bottle. At the very least, this is the kind of thing you can layer--i.e., spray on your undershirts or beneath your clothes or whatever, before spraying something compatible (Bel Ami, perhaps?) on your skin and outer clothes, depending on the kind of impact you like to make. (A note on impact: I am emphatically NOT that person who sprays the cologne in the air and tiptoes through it like a dancer in the Nutcracker. Oh HELL to the first Noel!!!! I've done that on days, say, when I've had job interviews, but mostly I'm a drencher. When I was younger, I wanted my scent to have a KAPOW!BLAMN!!! impact--to introduce me into a room. I got away from that. ....But I'm kind of getting back into it. I think it's just part of Original Ed Shepp. Maybe it's the Southerner in me, who wants to go overboard with everything. Or maybe it's the me who wants to be noticed. Or the me who wants to walk all over people. Or maybe it's the fact that I came of age in the 80s. Who knows... It could be a midlife-crisis. Shudder!!!!! Let's not talk about those...)

And here's the best part about Rich Suede: you can get a free sample! Just go here, or to stetsoncologne.com (where you'll see Tom Brady plastered all over the place looking preposterous--I mean, sexy, yes, but why would you wear a big leather coat with no shirt underneath?!?! Well, I guess if I had a kickin body maybe I would. ....Or wouldn't. Because it's so impractical! Alas!!!! Does it sound like I'm yelling, "GET OFF MY LAWN!!!" Were we talking about midlife crises?), and fill out their litle dinkley-doo, and I guess they'll send you a sample. Hopefully it will arrive in fewer than 6-8 weeks. Remember when it took 6-8 weeks for stuff to arrive in the mail?!?! Thanks cod that email changed all that. So get a free sample and all that blingblongtiddlewiddle, and see what you think.

Beep!

Cartier's Roadster

So here's a brief overview of the last Sniffapalooza event I went to, which was Cartier introducing its new scent, Roadster. Now, I lerv Cartier scents--Eau de Cartier Concentree was my fave for a really long time, and I've had a couple bottles of Declaration--so I was excited. In fact, I'd seen the ad for Roadster at Bloomingdales before I heard of the event. So when I got word of the event, in which someone from Cartier would be telling us about the history of the company and about the new fragrance, I was breathless. AND they were serving breakfast!!! w00t w00t!!!!

Anyway, so I show up at Bloomingdales (where the event was held) just in time to get a seat next to my friends. They started serving the coffee while this woman from Cartier spoke to us about the company. Great, whatever. I wasn't really interested in that, but it's fine. They then passed around bottles of the scent, and as we all sprayed them on our hands or whatever, we looked at each other to gauge everyone's reactions. "I don't smell anything" was repeated. I looked at the bottom of the bottle, and sure enough, it said "Factice," so those were just models. Oh, the bottle! Well, you can check it out when you see it--it's made to evoke a car or something, but the fragrance is actually named after the Cartier Roadster watch. I didn't know anything about a watch, but wow, talk about tacky. Hermes names a scent after a bag and now Cartier does so after a watch? What's next? Aisle 3 by K-Mart??

So the woman talks and breakfast, which seemed to be catered by lower-end McDonalds, was served. Then she goes into the scent. I remember seeing a ridiculous movie montage, the point of which escaped me, and then her going into her spiel. So here's Cartier's thing about how they're representing the fragrance: They're not describing it in terms of top, middle and base notes, because it "doesn't have those." Um, OK. (Never mind that the whole top/middle/base notes thing is pretty much marketing crap anyway; I think Luca Turin wrote that in so many words, and when I read it I was like, "Yeah, I alwayskinda thought that.") No, they constructed the fragrance in four Cs, to correspond with the ways one judges a diamond (because Cartier was "the king of jewelers and the jeweler to kings"? Or something like that. You'd think I'd remember--she repeated it enough.)--cut, clarity, color and coherence. No, wait, carats. I can never remember that one. So she went into the "notes" then--"So what's the 'cut'? Right! It's bergamot!!!" What a bunch of crap. I zoned out. I couldn't believe we were being asked to participate in this ridiculousness. Come on Cartier, we like fragrance--that doesn't mean we're brain dead. I really did feel a bit insulted by the crap she was shoveling. And if anyone from Cartier is reading this, get your marketing department under control. Seriously.

So what does the cologne smell like? Benzoin. Straight-up, fresh from the bottle benzoin like you can get at a lot of health food stores. Not a bad thing, not at all. But I kind of expected more. If you're not familiar with benzion (and usually for perfumery the benzoin Siam is the preferred material), it has a cocoa-vanilla, ambery smell with kind of a weird tone somewhere in there. When I had a friend smell it, and I asked how it smelled he said, "It's.... different." To which I replied, "Actually, it's rather familiar. It smells like cocoa-vanilla." But there was always that part of it which smelled peculiar to me--not the resiny amber part, but some kind of up top smell. Well, now I think I know what that smell is: mint. Because Cartier's Roadster apparently has bergamot, mint, labdanum and vanilla, making it I guess an ambery fougere. The Cartier person stressed that it was a fougere, and equally stressed that that was the the best selling category for men's fragrances in the U.S. Oh--I didn't realize that was the reason for making a fragrance. So we're supposed to accept the romantic cut/color/clary/carat/crap while knowing that you made it in this fragrance category not because you find it particularly beautiful, or because you have something to say in it, but that it's the best-selling category.

Anyway, I think that minty is what that off smell in benzoin is. Because I started to smell the mint in Roadster after a while. I still don't smell the bergamot. But to sum, basically the scent smells like good benzoin made sprayable and more effusive and long-lasting. Nothing more. I didn't get the emotional impact from it that I got from Eau de Cartier Concentree and Declaration. It's a fine scent, but I wouldn't buy it. I'd buy more Eau, maybe more Declaration (although I'm kinda tired of it now), I might would buy Pasha Fraicheur Menthe (but probably not--I'd probably buy Polo or Aramis first), but I don't think I'd drop coin for this. And since we're talking about what I'd buy, I would also buy Bel Ami and Equipage by Hermes, Yatagan by Caron, and possibly Incense Avignon by Comme des Garcons. And any scent that, when sprayed on my commputer, would magically put in all the diacritical markings that I'm too lazy to do right now.

That's pretty much all I can recall from that event. They gave us a gift bag with testers and a small purse which I promptly gave away in Central Park (You'd be surprised how difficult it is just to give away a purse). I LERVED the Baiser du Dragon (where have you been all my life?!), in spite of the fact that Turin hates it (he hates Spellbound too, but I'll NEVER give that up, even though I don't actually own any; maybe I should say I'll never give up the dream of owning a bottle to spray on my sheets); I thought the Declaration body wash didn't work well for the fragrance; I didn't really smell the Delices eau Fruitee, and I didn't smell the Must. And since I mentioned Luca Turn (yeah, I keep referring to Perfumes, the Guide, which I never bought but flip through all the time), I'm really wanting to get another bottle of Stetson and give it a try. I hearted it when I was super young. And I'd love to try Stetson Untamed, because it's supposed to smell like toasted marshmallows and cardboard. And of course, Stetson Suede, which I just saw tonight and isn't in the book, and couldn't possibly live up to its name, but you never know, right?

And that's the beep for now.

Beep!

Doppin Science!

Before I talk about recent stuffs, I thought I'd drop a li'l science, since smell seems to be all in the science these days.

First, a thinglet I got form Very Short List, which has proven to be really cool. They talked about a book called If There Ever Was: A Book of Extinct and Impossible Smells. It's "a scratch and sniff book of 14 extinct and impossible smells including the smell of the sun, communism, and extinct flowers. The book accompanies the exhibition of the same name curated by Reg Vardy Gallery (April – June 2008) and involved a collaboration with 11 fragrance designers and organisations such as NASA and International Flavors and Fragrances." Sounds awesome. I wonder how long the scratch-n-sniff thingies last, though. At 12 pounds, I suppose it's worth trying out. But what's the smell of communism????

So that's first. Secondly, a science story that I didn't get around to looking at until forever after it was published. The findings? Apparently, wearing too much perfume could be a sign of depression, resulting from anosmia. From the article: “Our scientific findings suggest that women who are depressed are also losing their sense of smell, and may overcompensate by using more perfume,” explains researcher Prof. Yehuda Shoenfeld, a member of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. “We also believe that depression has biological roots and may be an immune system response to certain physiological cues.”

Interesting. I always suspected that wearing too much perfume may correlate with unhappiness, but I never suspected that it would with depression, especially depression resulting from anosmia. So why did I think that? From my own unscientific observation: In so many places I've worked, I noticed that the ladies in housekeeping would walk around wearing lush evening perfumes, and I figured that they did to ameliorate the suckiness of their jobs. Because I would wear a lot of cologne or perfume at my jobs (which I hated) too, because it gave you at least a little bit of pleasure. So I assumed there might be a connection. Who knew?!

And that's the scent beep for the moment.

Grand Re-Opening

Beep!

Well, I have more time now, and I can't stop yammering on about scents, so I guess this blog shall be re-opening soonly. Stay tuned for the next post.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Shutting Down

This blog is shutting down. Thanks for visiting.

Demeter on the Brain

Lately I've been liking Demeter a lot. Over the summer I wore Rain a lot after I finally found a bottle. (Whole Foods had been sold out, and someone there even told me the scent was no longer made.) Incidentally, Rain: to me it smells like a tangerine floating in ozonated air. When I first experience it, I thought of the smell of coming out of a swimming pool, except not chlorine-like. That's hard to describe. Anyway, the site says, circuitously, that the scent essentially combines earthy, plant odors. I think.

One of the scents that I wear now is Bonfire. It's supposed to be the smell of burning maple leaves. I was looking for Fresh Hay, which I also love, when I picked this one up instead. It does smell like smoke. Here's the interesting part, though: Think of smoke and smell it. Done? OK. Now, think of barbecue-flavored potato chips and smell it. Fascinating! I wonder if this accord is used in smoke flavors.

And another Demeter scent that I quite like is Myrrh. To me, it smells just like myrrh, except perhaps a bit lighter. It strikes me as a very understated, subtle scent to wear; I also think it would combine well with other scents. A note about the smell of myrrh: I always think of dried saffron when I smell it. I haven't smelled saffron in years, and I haven't compared the two, but I think they smell similar. Do they? Does anyone else think that?

And that's the beep for now.

Perfume!

Whoah!!! Someone made that Patrick Suskind novel which I've still never read, Perfume, into a movie! The site says it's "coming soon." I wonder when it will hit theaters, or whether I'm so behind the beans that it already has and I just didn't know about it. Cool! I can't wait to see it. From the trailer I could tell that Dustin Hoffman is in it. And I thought I saw Claire Danes, but I'm not sure. (She's probably not in it--I'm terrible with faces. This is how I could walk around Manhattan for 6 years and never notice a celebrity.) The trailer looks interesting, but don't all trailers? Man, that's good work if you can get it--making movie trailers, that is. Anyway, this is one movie that I'm definitely going to intend to endeavor to attempt to try to see while it's in the theaters.

Oh yeah--the trailer. I saw it here, on youtube, of course. Here's the long one in German(?). ...And the short one in English.

Beep!

Antidepressant Perfume Smells Like BS

The other day my roommate asked me if I'd heard of the "antidepressant perfume," something he'd seen in New York magazine. Whahappah?? I said. So I performed a Web search using google (is that the correct terminology these days?), and found a blog entry about it with a link that didn't work. Herein I shall reproduce the quote that the blog quoted from the site:

Prescription free happiness, now available?! Smiley offers a unisex and universal range of products with micro-nutrients to activate happiness! Its secret: the formula is based on natural bio-chemistry combining theobromine with phenylethylamine derived from pure cocoa extract. This psycho stimulant cocktail is available in a whole range of preparations using galenical pharmacology. A 100% medical look for a unique therapy, the range is revealed out of the confined box of the luxury perfume industry! This antidepressant remedy is to be consumed without any moderation: in the shower, in the bath, for specific use anytime you wish! The formulae are preserved in exclusive perfume bottles developed by the prestigious glassmaking techniques of Saint-Gobain and desinged by Ora-Ito, the most sought after designer of his generation. Nothing like it to contain the happy therapy!

Load of crap, as if you needed me to tell you. Granted, I'm not a doctor; I'm not a biochemist; I don't play either on TV; I don't know Hugh Laurie. But I don't think you need highly specialized knowledge to determine that a perfume containing minute amounts of allegedly psychotropic chemicals isn't going to act as an antidepressant. First of all--theobromine and PEA. Theobromine? Since when was that associated with well-being?! I thought for a moment that it was similar to caffeine; then I got the bright idea to wikipedia caffeine, and, sure enough it is. Caffeine is methyltheobromine. So I guess theobromine could have an effect, but I doubt it would affect your mood. But wait! Wikipedia says that theobromine can affect mood. Who knew! And PEA--well, PEA is supposed to skyrocket in your brain when you fall in love, and some antidepressants (and maybe illicit drugs; not sure) are derivative of PEA. I guess it could alter your mood if it got into your system and crossed the blood-brain barrier. Which brings us to the bigger questions:

• How much of these chemicals could be in a few sprays of perfume?
• Would they be absorbed through the skin?
• Are they stable enough to survive on a store shelf long enough to be effective?
• Do they not react with the other components of the perfume (eg, the fixatives, the fragrant materials)
  

I'm sure someone with knowledge of chemistry could point out other reasons why the whole idea of antidepressant perfume is preposterous. At least this one is. I guess if you wanted to produce an antidepressant perfume, you could simply spray the outer side (the one not touching the skin) of an EMSAM patch with fragrance. [Duh note: Do not do this! I am neither a doctor or a chemist; I do not endorse spraying medical devices with perfume.]

So much for the antidepressant perfume.

Beep!

Well, I was at the Body Shop last night to check out their new seasonal oils, and I gotta say--I'm very pleased with what I found. I was very, very pleased to see one called Fireside, which, true to its name, has a kind of smoky odor, although it's not exactly the perfect burning wood-type scent as, say, Demeter's Bonfire, which I find excellent. Fireside, I think, has more woody-green notes.

Interestingly, you can actually look at the notes in the oils now on the Body Shop site. You couldn't do this before, and when you'd go to the store and ask the person behind the counter, "What's in this Pine?"and they'd say, "Pine," and you'd say, "Aren't there other notes? Because I really think there's orange in here." "Pine." Now when you want to know what's in something, you can just go to the site. For example, here's their description of Fireside:

Top notes: herbal armoise, crushed leaf and pine needles, hints of aromatic juniper berries and delicate wood smoke. Heart notes: cedar lots, freshly cut incense and fir cone. Base notes: warm smoky sandalwood, hints of patchouli, spice and lichen.

Lovely! I love having it right there for me. I'm going to be experimenting with this oil at Christmastime--adding it to the Christmas Wreath tarts from Yankee Candle that I love so well. And this winter I really have to get the Firewood candle by Henri Bendel, even though it smells more like Helmut Lang's Cuiron than firewood per se. But I can't afford the really expensive Feu de Bois one. I guess the smell of woodsmoke is finally having its day, and it's about damn time.

A couple of other oils I liked at the Body Shop were Toasted Marshmallow, which was too subtle to really pick up amid the olfactory cacophony of the store, and Steamed Milk, which smells so natural it's uncanny. I really, really like this Steamed Milk one. What does it smell like? Steamed milk! That's the only way to describe it! Toasted Marshmallow is nice, kind of vanillic, I think, with a fruity tone. You can go to the Body Shop site if you really want to know what's in them...

...But don't rely strictly on the descriptions! I was really excited to smell their Plum Pudding oil, because the notes made it sound delicious, but it just didn't do it for me. It reminded me of their Spicy Berry oil, which was sharp and disastrous.

Let's see... what other seasonal oils were there? Golden Apple: underwhelming. Cinnamon: see Golden Apple. Pomegranate: Unmemorable. Gingerbread: more like "fresh sharp lemony ginger, with maybe some vanilla in the background"--didn't smell warm and cozy, like you expect a gingerbread-type scent to smell. (L'Occitane's gingerbread scent is also a dud, but that's no surprise.) Vanilla Spice: Acceptable, but a litle harsh--not very natural. Holiday Garland: I bought this last year, and the smell, which is kind of herbal, reminded me somewhat of Chinese food. I don't think it smells like Christmas at all. Pass on this one. Fresh Baked Cookies: Surprisingly natural. A confection-y, very oily/buttery vanillic smell. Not bad. Almond: Why not just call it "Benzaldehyde"? You can find fake almond oil for cheaper, and it's the same. Then again, $7 for this beats whatever the bitter almond essential oil, which is pricey, is going for these days.

And that's me quick update for now. I shall endeavor to intend to plan on aiming to attempt posting more soon, especially since I took all those notes that the first Sniffapalooza I attended, which was quite a while ago. So, as the IM'ers say: l8r.

Beep!

ADDENDUM: After smelling the Toasted Marshmallow again, I have to say that it smells faintly like strawberry. Kind of like cotton candy, actually.

Crabtree L'Occitane

First off, a word about L'Occitane. I went to their SoHo store a few weeks ago and inquired whether they had an autumn fragrance. You know, how Crabtree & Eveyln came out with Harvest a few years ago and how the Body Shop comes out with autumn oils? That's what I meant. But the salesperson said something like, "We don't have seasonal lines. You have to be a little more creative here." So then of course I was at a different L'Occitane last week or so and saw their Pumpkin Chestnut, Gingerbread and I think Caramel fragrances. So much for being 'creative' with scents. But on to the scents: They're terrible. But I wasn't surprised when I smelled them, because they've put out crap before. Some of their stuff is good, but a lot is bad. The Pumpkin Chestnut should have been called just 'Chestnut.' The Gingerbread and Caramel ones should have just been called "Poor Synthetic Reproductions of Gingerbread and Caramel." The gingerbread doesn't even small culinary. It doesn't even smell like ginger. I can't recommend any autumn fragrances from L'Occitane, except for their Pear, which is passable.

Crabtree & Eveyln: I liked their autumn line of oils, which included Warm Evergreen, Vanilla Truffle, an apple one and Moroccan Spice. The Warm Evergreen was the best: It smelled like the frankincense accord in Noel; The Vanilla Truffle was pretty much a regular culinary vanilla-type; The apple one was a nice apple; Moroccan Spice I didn't care for all that much--I think it was spicy (duh). Here's one thing to know about Warm Evergreen and Noel (I'm not sure if it holds with their other scents: Don't store the oil with the dropper top in it. Store it with the regular cap on and then switch to the dropper when you need to. If you store it with the dropper, the oil will eat through it. This has happened to me with both Warm Evergreen and Noel. In fact, my whole bag smells like Warm Evergreen, and even though I tried ionizing the bag, it still smells like that, and it's strong. Alas!

And that's all I've got for now.

Beep!
Ed Shepp

Autumnal Extravaganza!

Lots of autumn fragrances out there, and I couldn't be happier. Let's go over what I saw over the weekend:

Bath & Body Works: They have(/had) their Perfect Autumn line out now; I can't remember if it was out last year. It contains Pumpkin, Apple, Plum and Caramel scents in candles, sprays, 'scented stones' and oils. They're all pleasant enough--I don't expect transcendently beautiful scents from BBW (but I do from Henri Bendel, who does one of the candle lines they sell). I was very disappointed by the fact that they were sold out of all their oils (the second store I went to was; I don't know about the one in Manhattan in the 20s on 5th--no one was providing customer service for me there), but I was more disappointed when they told me at the store that they were taking this line down today (It's not even October! It's really not even autumn!). HUGE disappointment in Bath & Body Works.

Speaking of Bath & Body Works, they also had a couple new scents in their Tutti Dolci line, an amaretto and a tiramisu-type scent. The amaretto-type also has notes of coconut macaroons. It's intensely wonderful. The tiramisu scent is also luxurious and decadent, but the amaretto one takes the cake. It could be the best one they've done. Clarification: I'm referring to the Body Moisturizing Soufflés. The eaux de toilette don't cut it--they don't last and they change quickly in the drydown. They can't hold a candle to the creams--don't buy them.

The Body Shop: They have a few seasonal home-fragrance oils out now, including Vanilla Spice, Spicy Berry, Sweet Maple, Blackberry Apple, Candied Citrus and Pumpkin Nectarine. I've written about Pumpkin Nectarine and Spicy Berry before. As for the others: Sweet Maple is lovely if you're looking for something that basically smells like pancake syrup (and there's nothing wrong with that); Vanilla Spice is pleasant enough, but it doesn't really convey the title all that much--actually, there's an orangey note that's very prominent in the blend--it could easily be called Orange Anise with hints of synthetic Vanilla; Blackberry Apple I regretfully didn't get to sample; Candied Citrus is pleasant but apparently not especially memorable, since that's all I can remember to say about it.

Pier 1 Imports: Pier 1 has some nice autumnal scents this year. Harvest Spice, which was renamed Harvest Pumpkin Spice last year, has been rechristened Pumpkin Bread for this year. (I think that etymology is correct.) New this year are Spice Cake, which smells pleasant but isn't anything to make a fuss about; Mulled Cider, same as Spice Cake; and Sugared Pecan, which smells wonderful and almondlike. Of course you must buy the Pumpkin Bread scent, since this is the scent from Pier 1 and it's a required purchase every autumn; but Sugared Pecan is also an excellent choice for a fall/winter scent. I recommend them both; and I should point out that they're both available as spray air fresheners as well as candles.

Yankee Candle: Gotta mention Yankee Candle, because I noticed that this year they have plug-in and spray versions of Bayberry and (drum roll, please) Christmas Wreath!!! I actually wrote them last year inquiring why Christmas Wreath wasn't available as a spray! So I'm very, very glad to see this development. But I have something unfortunate to report: last year I bought the refresher oil for their Mistletoe scent, and it was very disppointing--it had the green notes that the candle does, but they were far overshadowed by a bizarre sweet fruity note that I don't detect in the wax version. I think it's the oil vector--I think it just contributes this note by virtue of the different formulation. Unfortunately it totally changes the character of the scent. And doubly unfortunately, it seems that the plug-in oil for Christmas Wreath seems to share this deficiency. It doesn't smell like the candle. However, I've yet to actually plug it in, so maybe in December I'll be pleasantly surprised. But my experience in this department leads me to believe I won't. The news isn't all bad, however: I didn't smell the Christmas Wreath spray, but I did buy the Mistletoe spray a couple years ago, and it smelled just like the candle; so I have every reason to believe that the Christmas Wreath spray will as well. I hope I get to go home for Christmas this year--I can finally have a spray that actually smells like a Christmas tree!! ...And since I mentioneded the plug-in scents, I got their plug-in Golden Spiced Pear, and it's performing wonderfully.

And that's the fragrance beep for now!

Splattering Through Sephora

I gwankled over to Sephora over the weekend to finally pick up a li'l bottle of Demeter's Fresh Hay. I decided that I simply had to have it for autumn, even though I never buy Demeter fragrances, since they don't last. But I got this one, and in fact I'm wearing it today, mixed with Chanel Pour Monsieur. (And to think I never thought I'd wear Pour Monsieur again, since for years I've associated it with that dogawful job interview so many years ago for somewhere we'll call Goondiberstal Stuvios Finordida.)

Whilst in Sephora, I gandered around and made a couple notes: I smelled Comme des Garcons 2 Man, and I love it! I don't think I've ever smelled it before; I think I avoided that line ever since Odeur 53 didn't live up to the hype in my mind. To me, 2 Man smelled like that ambient smell in the air that I always expect in autumn (but never really smell): woodsy and burnt, kind of like firewood. 2 Man had a very burnt wood smell to me, and I suppose that makes sense when you see that one of the notes in it is "white smoke." I couldn't detect much else of the scent, but the smoky note just made it for me. I like this stuff. I'd wear it in late autumn and winter, before winter becomes unbearable and I wear summer fragrances just because I want any escape from winter possible. This is a fragrance to wear when you're glad that the weather is cool. It's a November fragrance.

Peeping at some of the women's scents, I saw the new Escada, called Escada (wasn't the original scent called Escada? I guess it wasn't.) For a second there I wondered if the name might be Escada Pink Dot, because there's a pink dot on the otherwise color-free bottle, and if there's a significance to said dot, I don't know what it is. Fully expecting it to be in the same vein as pretty much all the other Escada scents--a big bag of tropical fruit with a few flowers thrown in--I sniffed with trepidation. But I was surprised and impressed by the actual character of the scent. It is probably a fruity-floral scent, but the effect that hit me was of a sheer, abstract, very linen-y floral, with only a vague tropical fruit feel that I wasn't sure I was actually smelling or just expecting from an Escada fragrance. The scent struck me as something appropriate for a casual date or for daytime, and it was one that I would definitely feel comfortable gifting. It may be on the list to give my sister this year for xmas.

And then there's Demeter. I saw a couple in the women's section that I don't think I'd seen before, since it's been a while since I've been in Sephora. Waffle Cone and Banana Flambee. Waffle Cone is the typical buttery, Belgian-waffle type smell, and it holds up well on paper (it doesn't collapse into some weird powdery or coconut note). Banana Flambee I found very impressive at first. I love banana-caramel type scents. Unfortunately, it seemed to collapse into a coconut smell too soon on the test strip. Alas! Well, there's always Vanille Banane by Sud Pacifique, which is second-to-none.

Lastly, there's another product at Sephora that seriously deserves mention: Sephora-brand "Whipped Body Delights." Basically they're thick, heavily-scented creams for the body (I presume--I'm not exactly sure what a 'whipped body delight is supposed to be), and they come in wonderful, true-to-life fragrances like Marshmallow Fluff and Bamboo Garden (a green, foliage-y scent). But the best scent, and the one I had to have, is Pumpkin Thyme. It smells just like heaven, which is to say that it smells just like Harvest Moon Pumpkin ice cream. And if you've never tasted that, you're missing out; if you come across it, put a moratorium on living la vida low-carb and pick up a pint. It tastes just like pumpkin pie with the whippied cream on it, except cold. Words cannot describe its perfection. The best part of it is that, like pumpkin-spice-flavored coffee, all the brands do it well (but I recommend Edys or D'Agostino brand). And this cream by Sephora is the olfactory equivalent to this ice cream. So if you want a pumpkin-y treat for autumn, this cream is definitely a good buy (especially at $8).

And that's the fragrance beep for now, gbeeplets.

An Idea from the Main Blog

Here is an idea from the main blog that works here as well:

I was talking with some peeps about waking up in the morning, about how I want one of those sunrise simulator alarm clocks that slowly dims from darkness to full power, and something occurred to me: why not have a coffeemaker that's timed to go off when you want to wake up that makes bacon-and-eggs-flavored-coffee? That way you get the full-on olfactory experience of breakfast (which would get you out of bed), and you also get the full-on gustatory experience when you're drinking your coffee. Honestly, I think that if it could be made properly, bacon&eggs-flavored coffee would be quite good. I think if you're having it with bacon and eggs, you wouldn't even notice the hint of flavoring. That said, flavored coffee in general almost always ends up tasting so bad (it's so acidic; pumpkin-spice-flavored coffee is the only really good one) that this idea might not work. So I tweaked the idea a little: a coffeemaker that goes off when you want to wake up and makes regular coffee, but has a component that you put a cartridge in which creates a separate scent that you experience in tandem with the coffee's aroma. The cartridge could be either: 1) bacon and eggs 2) belgian waffles 3) toast 4) cantaloupe or 5) a combination of the above. There could be 3 or more slots for cartridges. It could be noted that people needn't use the cartridges only for breakfast alarms, and I'd predict that scents like coffee cake and belgian waffles would be popular for general home fragrancing. (You better not be scoffing there! You don't believe that Belgian waffles make an extremely pleasant home fragrance? Check out Crabtree & Evelyn's Patisserie from their Cooks line, or the Grandma's Cookies plug-in from Airwick, both of which smell like Belgian waffles.) (Incidentally, someone tried to shoot down my idea, saying something like, 'Would you want to go around smelling like Belgian waffles all day?' My answer: Obviously, the smell wouldn't be strong enough or heated for long enough to cling to clothing, but even if it were, people 'go around smelling like' Belgian waffles all the time--look at the sales of vanilla-based perfumes like Cake Batter by SmellThis, Vanille/Vanille-Abricot/Vanille-Coco/Vanille-Banane by Sud Pacifique, the Desserts line by Jessica Simpson and countless other gourmand-type fragrances, within which I would dare to include Mugler's Angel, the hallmark of which is its cocoa-vanilla accord. I will also note the reaction many people have when they walk into a yogurt store that reeks of vanilla and cocoa-butter: "I'd LOVE to smell like this every day!" So there!)

Beep!

New Mown Demeter

I was at Sephora last night in the Time Warner Center, gandering at different things, and I noticed they had some Demeter fragrances in the mens section. All of the flavors were I guess what they would construe as 'masculine,' flavors like Riding Crop, Leather, Humidor, Mesquite... But the two that caught my eye that I haven't seen before were Fresh Hay and New Zealand.

I was excited to see Fresh Hay, but didn't expect much. I love that new mown hay/tonka smell, but everytime I come across another product that I think will have the scent (eg, the Henri Bendel Tonka Bean candle) it disappoints. This Demeter fragrance, however, did NOT disappoint! It's absolutely perfect--a perfect coumarin/new mown hay/tonka smell. Actually, it would be totally perfect if it had a fixative in it--Demeter fragrances don't, which is why they flit away after 2 seconds. However, hay is a base note, so maybe this one would stick around for a while, especially if I sprayed it on my clothes. So this scent is definitely a must-have, especially for fall. But since hay is such a versatile and extremely pleasant note (I could probably combine it with Aramis or something grassy/lavendery for a summer scent), I could probably wear this scent any part of the year. Two thumbs up for this scent, definitely.

New Zealand was interesting. I didn't realize that the entire country has one distinct odor, but I suppose it does. Apparently it smells like fresh grassy notes that fade into an ozone-like freshness that's almost identical to Demeter Rain. It's not unpleasant, but if I wanted to wear something like that I'd just buy Rain. Because the grassy notes just don't last long enough, even in their Grass scent, which fades into something not dissimilar to Fresh Hay. (I've noticed this with grassy scents. Either they start out fresh and sharp and fade into a foliage-like, almost hyacinthy tone or they start out fresh and sharp and fade into a coumarinic tone.) I wouldn't recommend this scent.

In a last li'l note, the other fragrance I noticed was Obsession Night. I wondered why this scent was necessary, and if it smelled like Obsession, which calls to mind something like the smell of a urine-soaked nightmare. Obsession Night actually smells much better, very woody if I remember correctly. But it's not something that I went gaga over. And I couldn't see myself wearing something like that--the bottle is so cheesy.

And that's that for now.

Tommy Bahama

A Macy's thing came in the mail a couple weeks ago with scent strips for Tommy Bahama fragrance for men and women. I love these! The mens one was warm and woody, nice. Something I might wear in cooler weather here but any weather if I lived in the Bahamas, I assume. The womens was the one I really liked, though. It's a fruity floral, and kind of smelled like Carolina Hererra to me (probably the tuberose in it shining through), but with fruity tones at the beginning of it. Very lush and tropical. That's a fragrance I would love to give to someone. I'm really loving floral tropical womens' fragrances in general now, like Beyond Paradise, Bora Bora and this one. I wish more people wore them.

I also like the whole branding of this Tommy Bahama line. It's all very consistent, and just looking at their materials I wish I could run off to those islands and live a carefree life wearing these fragrances and sitting in wicker chairs swatting mosquitos.

Tonka Beep

I smelled the Henri Bendel Tonka Bean candle last week, and for the first time, I was disappointed in something from that collection. Tonka bean is a wonderful, amazing smell, sort of like almond & coumarin, sweet and sometimes with a jam-like backnote. The candle smells nothing like tonka bean or tonka bean absolute. It smells kind of like a woody, cocoa smell. It's just off. And it's a damn shame too, because tonka bean is a fantastic smell that you just can't find. I like it in autumn, but it's appropriate for all year, I'd say. In fall/winter it's nice cux it's warm and vanillic; in spring/summer it's nice because there's a coumarinic note in grass and lavender that tonka echoes. Alas, you get none of it from this candle. A shame.

And that's my li'l tonka beep.

Celeditude and Basil

Today is Celeditude, the celebration of my birthday. And since citrus/orange blossom are traditional for Celeditude, I'm wearing an eau de cologne scent. This one I got from L'Occitane en Provence, and I have to say I'm very impressed with it. It's called Feuilles d'Oranger Eau de Cologne (I think--I don't have the box in front of me and it's hard to figure out their exact name for it), and it's basically orange/lemon/bergamot notes with petitgrain. It's light and citrusy, and very similar to Eau d'Orange Verte by Hermès. The similarity is a good thing, because the L'Occitane stuff is MUCH cheaper, and smells just as good. And I should say that I prefer the Feuilles d'Oranger to their Neroli perfume, which just doesn't smell right. It has a heavy ambery note, if I remember properly.

As far as other Celeditude fragrances go, I got as a gift Chanel Pour Monsieur, which is perfectly appropriate, as it has topnotes of citrus and neroli. So it's a great Celeditude fragrance. And a great summery one, right up there with Eau de Cartier Concentrée, which I love so well.

And one more thing: I was at Bed, Bath and Beyond the other night gandering at the candles, and I came across one of the new scents by Colonial Candle - Sun-Drenched Herbs, I think the name was. The scent is wonderful--very much like basil. And something of another find in terms of lessexpensiveness, as I was pining for the Henri Bendel Basil candle, and almost bought it when it was on sale (but opted for Tuberose instead); now I can just buy the Colonial Candle wax tart, which needless to say is much cheaper than the $24 Henri Bendel candle.

And that's the beep for today.