Scent Notes for the Downtrodden

Everyone go have a look at my scent post for the WFMU blog. Click here. Glerp!

CdR

The other day I went into the Chanel store, as I occasionally do, and doused myself in the Cuir de Russie. Not because I love the fragrance, but because I want to understand it. It's never smelled like leather to me--more like irisy, or I guess you might say orrisy. But everyone raves about it. And Luca Turin even said it smelled like the inside of a Bentley. Or something. But I've never smelled the leather in it.

The other day I did.

Sure, I still smell that iris/floral/whateverness, but now I smell something sort of akin to leather I think. Something that I've smelled in materials like labdanum and whatnot. Very pleasant.

I want this scent, but it's crazy expensive, so I'm wondering if I should barter something for it. Six months as my favorite, or maybe some personalized hagiography or something. I wonder what would be worth it to the type of person who could afford this fragrance. Hmmmmmm........ Glerp.

Hmmmmmmmmmm

If I were looking for a job in the fragrance industry, would it behoove me to send out paper resumes that I store in a box with a grain of ambroxan at the bottom?

Lola

Oh, Lola. Your scent is as ugly as your bottle.

Love,
Ed

Hell is Just Like Soylent Green.

What was that phrase about L'Enfère? Oh yes--c'est les autres. File this in that category.

Since I'm in a bad mood, I might as well mention one of the many annoying things about being a lover of things fragrant. No, not the girlish, frivolous perception that liking perfume has; not the ridiculous fawning over brand names like Chanel and Guerlain; and not the the whole "natural perfume" thing. This is something that could very well be peculiar to me, but I sense is not:

Because I like perfume and scents, people assume that I want to own a "perfume shop." (What IS a perfume shop??? Sephora? Bloomingdales? Crabtree & Evelyn?) The other day someone tried to use this idea of owning a perfume shop as an example to illustrate something about my personality to me. But it fell flat in the same way that people who hit on me used to say that I "would someday be a really famous actor," or some such crap, assuming that would flatter me. But it didn't. Because I never wanted to be an actor (but for a while I let people believe that I did, because it was just easier than going into a whole thing about what I really wanted to do, which wasn't so clear anyway--it didn't matter anyway, because people don't listen, unless they want to fuck you, and then they're just listening for the next thing they can glom onto to get you home with them. L'Enfère...). So naturally whatever target this person was aiming for, he missed.

A lesson, impressionable readers: If you want to seduce someone, or even influence him or her, KNOW the person. Do your homework. Reference what they really are interested in. If someone has really taken the time to get to know you, and wasn't spending the whole friendship waiting to talk about him or herself, that person can make you fall in love with her. Why? Because so few people ever actually pay attention to others. There have been occasions that I have thought, "If that person only meant ______ by that, and was speaking allegorically, it would make him so clever I would fall in love with him." That said, I'm just as guilty as everyone else. I hate it when people glaze over when I talk about perfume, but I regularly go over a mental grocery list when people start talking about their relationships or jobs or cats or nephews. But anyway...

Why do people assume that I want to own a perfume store? The logic doesn't seem straightforward to me. I get the "he likes perfume, so he wants to own a perfume store," but it's far from my idea of the thing someone who likes perfume would want over everything else. It's certainly never been a dream of MINE. The dream, which I think would be beyond obvious, is to have my own perfume. A bottle with my name on it with a scent I had created (by a perfumer, because I can't make perfume--another thing people seem to think is that if you like perfume, you'd be good at blending it. Not necessarily. I have a good voice, I've been told, as far as vocal quality, but I'm a bad singer. Same idea.). Not to own a shop or boutique. The dream is to have a big setup in Bloomingdales, or to create something timeless and iconic, like No. 5. Or even to create really cool commercials, like Calvin Klein's were considered back in the day.

And since I'm bitching and it's a related idea, I don't understand why people think I would want to work at a fragrance company. As an assistant or something. Why in the hell would I want THAT?! It would be great to work at one as a perfumer or even someone in the marketing/advertising side, but not as an assistant or in some accounting role. That would ruin fragrance for me. I love Barnes and Noble, but after working there once for a short period, I wouldn't go into one for almost a year. Why would I want a crappy job at a perfume company?? Because spreadsheets and meetings about perfume are so exciting?? Because maybe 5 floors up and two offices down decisions about something interesting are taking place? So I can read PERFUME executives spell common words incorrectly? It's beyond me.

/rant

Bullshit-Inspired Perfumes

I'm not one of those people who cares particularly what a perfume's bottle looks like, but sheesh--how long is this "so shitty it looks like you made it in the garage" look gonna run its course??!?

And maybe it's my present bad mood, but I find something offensive about making a set of perfumes based on the idea of tarot cards. It reeks of gimmickery, or, as the Mugler people would call it, "gadgetry." (I will never forget that from their presentation long ago--that, the fact that the one could call dogs with his s's, and the whole "skin accord smelling like butter" thing.) However, it's not half as offensive as the article in Elle about it. It makes me want to vomit when I read these purple descriptions of the "notes," and I'd rather have explosive diarrhea than read their "who it would be great for" claptrap. Like one of the scents would be great for Lady Gaga and another would be perfect for Linsday Lohan. Blech!

Zest Aqua, You Are My Cool Wintergreen Breeze

Zest Aqua:

If you were a perfume, I would wear you every day.

(Except the days I wouldn't.)

Do you have a sister named Amarige?

Beep.

Eternity for Men Summer, I choose you.

I've lived long enough and know enough about perfume to be both proud and ashamed that I like Eternity for Men Summer.

What's more is why I like it: It smells like a mashup of Eternity for Men and Escape for Men.

Every time I smell it, I shall think, "I have EARNED this."

FiFis

Allright now, seriously. Is anyone taking "the FiFis" seriously? I'm so not taking it seriously that I'm not even going to check the spelling. Is anyone out there aching to watch/read the results of the FiFis? Is anyone liveblogging them, having parties for them, gearing up beer-pipe hats for them? I'm guessing.................... not.

Unless you're a perfumer or a company. Or maybe a tiny town in France that supports one perfumery, and has a scent that's nominated. (Although I've always felt, flipping through the nominees or results, that every release gets nominated.) But if you're a regular person, can you really get excited about them? Even if you love perfume?

Because really, you have to admit that the name is stupid. The FiFis??? Isn't that what clueless, awful rich women in sitcoms named their toy dogs-when-they-weren't-cool? (They're still not cool to me.) At least Oscar is a real name. And Emmy could be the name of a plus-size model. And Grammy is some scifi, spaceage name from the future. Or past! And with none of those names do you have a substantive connotation. FiFi sounds like a froufroulala, frivolous name. And yet we use it for the perfume awards. When most people consider fragrance completely frivolous and unnecessary; and worse: "girly." Could there be a bigger sin than "girly" in American culture? (Hmmm, maybe "poor." "Not always ebullient" could be another, but it's such a long, enervating phrase. ) (I love that word, enervating. I once filled in for someone at some job who had a really long, really clumsy quote tacked up. I don't remember it, because it was so long and ploddy that it wouldn't have stuck in my mind, but I remember the gist: it was trying to sound profound, so instead of short beats of words, it used long, clunky ones. Enervated was one of those. Why say enervated when you can just say tired? ESPECIALLY if you're trying to create an aphorism!) I wish we could call the awards anything different. Anything that maybe conveyed that there's more science behind perfumery, without the art losing some of its sensuousness. Because the whole goal of fragrance is sensual pleasure; technology plays a huge role, but it's all in the service of creating pleasure. Words to build a society by, people!

Of course, it's not just the name. Two other things come to mind: First is the fact that if you read through the nominations (which I'm too lazy to link to), you get the impression that EVERYTHING has been nominated. There are a lot of divisions, but if you think about it, there should really only be two primary ones: Expensive perfume and Cheap perfume. That's like Best Picture and Best Actress. There are subdivisions, but those are pretty much it. With the FiFis, it's hard to know exactly what they mean, so you assume that they just invented categories so everyone could win. Second is that too many nominations seem to have an obvious winner. For example, Chanel's No. 5 Eau Premiere is nominated. Well, that's gonna take that category. People fall head over heels to praise No. 5, so that's in the bag. I'm not such a big fan of No. 5, to be honest, but I don't need to be to say of Eau Premiere: Enough already. How long ago did that scent come out? You already have 5 in eaux de toilette and parfum and in parfum as well; and while it slips my mind right now, I'm thinking there's another offshoot of 5 out there. So why make Eau Premiere? It's like making wet wetter. Or more like making money more moneylike.

So that's what I think of the FiFis. Tell all your friends!

Beep
E

Bloomingdales

I do have to rant about this. Perfume people at Bloomingdales: I hate you. I absolutely detest you.

I went in to Blooms with a friend so he could get a new cologne. The Perfume book from Luca Turin had called his scent, one by Clean, a "trash floral." So he wanted a new one. I suggested Chanel's Pour Monsieur, since it's practically the reference sweet citrusy and a little floral type scent. (For a while I hated it, because I'd worn it to some job interview or something at Universal Studios, and it was a bad experience, and my mind had tied the scent together with it. So for years I just couldn't get near it. I like it again now, though.) So we went to Blooms and smelled it at the Chanel counter, where no one bothered us. He loved it. Then we went to other counters.

Such a horrible experience. Everywhere you turn people trying to get you to come to their counters and smell things that you've smelled before. But the worst are when the people try to tell you what to smell. And by that I mean the ones who turn you away from the women's scents, as if you don't know what you're looking at, and push the men's scents, only because you're a man. First off, I know I'm smelling "women's" scents. I don't need to be told. And I don't need to be told that I SHOULD be smelling the men's. I'll smell and buy and wear whatever the hell I want! And in the end it won't make any difference. People most likely won't even pick up on the fact that the scent is for women. Secondly, is it too much to ask that the people selling the scents know how to pronounce them? No, it's not "oh duh Haddrien," It's Eau D'Hadrien. Not difficult. You don't have to speak French to know how to say one phrase.

So yes, the perfume counter at Bloomingdales is a horrible place. But I'll probably still take it over the bitches at the Saks counter. Then again, I haven't been there in so many years, since I stopped going when I asked to smell No. 4 at the Jil Sander counter and the woman helping me couldn't find it, and suggested I try another one. "Here, this one is good too...." WHA??!?!

/rant

E

Paloma

So the other day I was at Sears (!) and I was peeping at the miniatures. I like miniatures, since there's no commitment--you can enjoy the scent, but it won't last long enough for you to get tired of it and you won't lay out a lot of dough. I decided to get a li'l mini of Paloma Picasso, since I'd had one before and really liked it. And when I used to smell it frequently in Atlanta (it was one of the first chypres I ever liked) I used to go crazy over it. It was mossy and dark, and I would always end up thinking of enchanted forests and that kind of thing when smelling it. It's almost like a more floral version of Aramis to me.

So I got the mini and opened it to smell it. I put it on my hand and was kinda shocked at how it smelled. It wasn't anything like the Paloma I remember. This one was all rosy and kinda fresh, and I could barely smell any moss at all. It was actually quite horrible. Has Paloma been changed in the past few years? When I smelled it ca. 1998 in Atlanta it was at a discount place, so the bottle may have been old. And when I had a mini here that was old too--I think I got it at Canal street. Even the juice was kinda dark. Is it possible that in between those bottles and now the perfume has had everything interesting reformulated out of it? If so, that's pretty sad.

E

TStS

That stands for "today's sojourn through SoHo." I just have a couple things to say, so I'll be uncharacteristically brief.

Banana Republic's candles are exceptional. I like them all, although it's confusing to me why the one with a name like "Fireside" smells so intensely vanillick. (I'm sorta making up that word cuz I don't know if one says 'vanilla' or 'vanilla-like.' I'm sure if enough people see this post, someone will tell me. They always do.) Shouldn't it smell more like firewood? It's nice, though. And another of them smells woody and smoky. They're to be commended in that they all smell kinda dry, not too sweet. There must've been a temptation to make the Sangria one smell sweetier and fruitier, like an Escada perfume (I look a' thee, Tropical Punch. That said, I used to wear a fake of you, and I got complimented by guys in a grocery store. Hmmm, was I in good shape then? I'd like to think it was the perfume they said smelled great; but hell, it was a gay part of town and I had a toned body a few years back. Whatevz), but they held back and it's fruity-but-not-too-sweet. So their candles rock.

Their fragrances? (Eaux de Toilette, which Comptoir Sud Pacifique call "Eaux de Voyage"--good for you CDP! Sharp and bold. You rock for that. So much for brevity. And coherence. I'll quote the SOV here: "Oh gosh, I'm not posh. I do what I'm doing, yeah.") Not so great. Nothing particularly wrong with them, they're just not up to much. Like, I'd wear Corduroy or Black Walnut, but I'd never, like, pine for them, you know? But the worst is their main one, which I smelled today for the first time in a while. I've been a little interested in their newer ones, and I remember the main one being flimsier, but I tried it again today, as I read the description: "Modern, clean...." There was another word in there, but it seemed like what they were implying was that you'd smell essentially of nothing. Of just "clean." And clean in the way that things are clean in Gattaca. Because really, isn't everyone who shops at BR (and especially Club Monaco and FCUK) trying to live in Gattaca? Anyway, so I sprayed it on, wondering if it would prove to be this amazing cologne that really did smell of modern, clean minimalism; and if so, what kind of layering possibilities could that create? Something that gives you a minimalist clean scent, something between laundry, ozone and stainless steel--you could match that with anything ozonic or aquatic; maybe with green smells or that Marc Jacobs one that's very figgy. Hmmmm, just the smell of cleanliness and simplicity, that would be interesting. So did it smell like that?

No, not at all. It started out with what I guess was a grapefruit smell--something zingy but not in a ginger zingy or a nose-tingling way. Then there was this weird fern(?) or green(?) accord that persisted a while. Then it was all laundry detergent. Which is what I expected initially. Pleasant? No. Interesting? Yes. Because even though it had that green/fern accord, which smells kinda 70s, but they did it light here, which was unexpected, it said NOTHING from start to finish. It had less personality than Clinique's Chemistry. It said absolutely nothing. And if you can appreciate fragrance at all, then you know what I mean. A good fragrance, for the generic you, is one that speaks to you. It could be Stetson Original, Individuel, Polo, CK One, Baldessarini, Gentleman, Equipage, Un Jardin Sur le Nil, 5 O' Clock au Gingembre, or anything. Even Lady Stetson. As long as it says something to you deeply, it's a good scent for you. Maybe not for the rest of us, especially if it's something like, say, Le Male (cuz let's face it--that's LOUD), but it's the best for you. And for the peeps out there who like fragrance (and I guess you wouldn't be on this page if you din't), you know that some scents have something to say, some have more to say, and you don't necessarily have to like them to say that; but there are also scents that say nothing. And this BR one falls into that category.

I think it's amazingly ironic that it bills itself of smelling like nothing but clean and tries to do so by communicating nothing. If the description were the perfume brief, and they had a talented perfumer, I'm sure that it could smell like that--there's new scent tech coming out all the time; what they can do with raw materials now is astounding. But alas, it only could've been. (They're playing some love song written to the tune of Greensleeves on the radio now. It's distracting. And it's really crappy. How fitting.)

So that was BR. I also sniffed some scents at French Connection UK. I went in there specifically to try to bribe a cashier to steal one of the mannequin wigs for me. Because they're cool, and if one fit, I'd shave my head and wear it all the time. I smelled their two fragrances, which were bland and terribly preictable. The first was this one that was supposed to smell really fresh, but smelled really HARSH like Demeter's Gin & Tonic, but with a lemon note. I tried to like it, but it was gross. The other was better, but so forgettable that I don't recall it, except I remember them telling me it was the "more masculine" of the scents, which were both "technically unisex." Yeah, that technically unisex thing is huge--right now, the trend at the expensive houses is to make everything unisex, which makes sense from an artistic standpoint, and if it could make florals more acceptable for men, which would be awesome. But it'll never work in the US at least. Because the companies know that they can keep Americans convinced they have to wear their own "gender" of scent, and that's a scent strategy that potentially doubles your consumers. God help us, Gaultier is trying to introduce makeup for men, and please cod, let this never take on. Just my personal bits: 1) It's so nice to NOT have to wear something more. I mean, now everyone's getting manicures and pedicures and shaving this and trimming that.... who needs one more thing you have to do? 2) Honestly, most women can't put on makeup. So let's not make men try and have more dumb-looking faces out there. If you can't wear makeup, girls, don't wear it. You'll probably look better without it--no woman NEEDS to put on lipstick and eyeliner to look presentable. 3) I'm sure men wearing makeup would look like men who get their eyebrows waxed: ghastly. Now granted, someone from Los Angeles told me the other day that those are only the men with the bad wax jobs. The ones with the good wax jobs, you can't tell. But finding a good eyebrow waxer seems like it would be as difficult as finding someone who can take your dark brown-with-gray hair up to when-I-was-23 light brown with NO orange. In other words, damn forking hard. So I'll pass on the whole eyebrow waxing thing. For the record, though, I've been known to put on makeup for occasions--like do the whole raccoon-eye thing on Halloween or New Years' Eve or shit (see above); but not for everyday.

That was FCUK. I stop into Mont Blanc to smell some Presence, because I like the way it smells. The person behind the counter, who I really wanted to talk about the cologne with (without him thinking I was hitting on him), didn't seem to want to engage. Or maybe didn't know anything about the colognes, which I think may have been the case, since he called Individuel a "day fragrance" (IIRC, the shite smells like electric neon raspberry-strawberry, the olfactory equivalent of staring into a pink eclipse) and said that his other main fragrance is Le Male. OK, that's all I needed to hear. It was like when that chick who sells tickets at Angelika told me that that STUPID Woody Allen movie, Rebekah and Clairemooneydoo's Most Awesome Barcelona Adventure, was a "good movie," like "Woody Allen grows up." She was serious, incidentally; if she's in college, she hasn't met the "older man who's doing well" yet who will date her and hopefully teach her a bit about culture. (No, I'm not old enough yet to be that guy. He has to be in his 40s and have more gray in his hair.) Oh, and Presence is discontinued. So I left.

And I only mentioned Club Monaco because they had an awesome orange belt that I wondered if I should buy. I mean, I AM orange, right? Oughn't I to own the perfect shade of orange belt? Unfortunately, it was one of those wire ones that you have to tie, and I can't figure those out. Fortunately, I'm just fat enough to never need to worry about people seeing my belt, because I wear all my shirts untucked. Thanks cod that is doable these days. In the 50s, they'd ship you off to a leper colony if you went around with your shirt untucked.

Then I bopped in Sephora. Damn, that place is such a disappointment these days. The word naff comes to mind, even though I hate the concept behind that word. There are only three men's scents I'd spray in that store: Polo, Eau d'Orange Verte or maybe Baldessarini del Mar, and that Prada one that smells of orris, which is an impressive scent to me, because when I'd first smelled Prada I declared it all shite, and my mom wears Prada occasionally, and I absolutely detest the smell of it. I may just get her some Beyond Paradise or Burberrry London for her birthday. Hmmmm, maybe I should get a scent that's xmas-appropriate, though, if she's going to wear it when I'm down at xmas. Then again, that may not make any difference--she was wearing Pleasures Intense at xmas. That's nothing near an xmas scent. It's a finnocking good scent, though. I wish my mom wore more Esteee. ANYWAY.... You can't find estee lauder in Sephora, there's so much else you can't find. It's just a huge storehouse for dreck. Sure, they have Opium and some Chanel stuff (blech), but almost all of it is the new JLo or the Escada-of-the-month or whatever Calvin Kliein or Armani is out now. You used to be able to go in there and smell such a wide range of things, from ancient ones to totally modern; now it's like a bigger, more expensive KMart cosmetics department. Such a shame. But while I was in there, I checked out the new version of Happy--who can keep up with how many anorexic versions of that polyanna scent they come out with?!--and guess what? It's not unpleasant. There you have it. Then I sprayed Burberry London on a strip--I love that stuff. So floral, almost berry-like. It almost smells like actual flowers some time when you smell the strip. I have to buy that for someone one day. Then I smelled Chanel No 5 to see how it compared with the Burberry---still hate it. Then I smelled Un Jardin Sur le Nil again, and everytime I smell it, I like it more. It's really great for a unisex fragrance--fruity but dry, a little earthy and "vegetal." A roommate of mine wanted to buy it once, but didn't because it was in the "women's" section in Sephora. Ugh. And Hermes calls it unisex, so who is Sephora to classify it like that?! Same with Eau de Cartier--the original formulation is in the women's section, the "concontree" is in the men's. I guess the concentree is probably a more traditionally masculine variation on it, rather than a more concentrated version. Canny of Cartier to do it like that--disappointing, but canny.

And that was the last of the smells. Oh wait, I ambled into Fresh for a while, but I just hate that place. It's all crap except the cucumber one. The Milk scent COULD be something good, but how would we know? It doesn't come in a spray, and it's too hard to get what it would smell like as a cologne by smelling the soap. The Tobacco Caramel scent is a disgrace. How hard could creating something called Tobacco Caramel be? I'll tell you: not hard at all. You just plop together some variation on coumarin and you have tobacco (some of the most expensive "tobacco" scents I've smelled, and I mean EXPENSIVE, smelled just like tonka and nothing more; so you can just put something comarinick in something and get a tobacco note; if you're feeling ambitious, you could combine coumarin with myrrh resinoid, like I've seen advised on a fragrance page) and then any of the accords available to suggest caramel. Hell, a few entries ago I discussed caramel furanone, which is supposed to create a carmel/maple note in extreme dilution. So how is it that their Tobacco Caramel smells nothing like tobacco or caramel? I think it smelled like the crappy, hamstery part of Atlas Cedar. Basically, it offended my nose. If you want something from Fresh, buy the Cucumber Baie. It's bearable. If you like lemon, you might like their Sugar scent (why isn't it called "lemon sugar"?).

OK, so THAT is the TStS beep for today.

Beep!

Neglection.

First of all, ugh. I log into blogger and now they list "followers," like twitter?? I feel so much pressure when I see stuff like that. And then I gotta remind myself, "They'll stop following when they see how little I post these days." Sigh, it's like that old saying, "A friend is just someone you haven't alienated yet." Hmmm, now that I think about it, I'm not sure whether that's an old saying or something Mark Baratelli said once. Well, I better give him credit just in case, or he'll go all Exorcist on me. So that phrase originated by the inimitable Mark Baratelli. He also originated this one: "Failure is God's way of telling you to step aside and let the good people succeed." Yes, folk, he's a comedian. But now that that's out of the way....

I have been seriously in neglection to this blog, since it's taken me so long to mention that I went to an event by the New York Academy of Sciences a few months ago about smell. I think that's who put it on--I'm too lazy to look up a link right now. Anyway, someone who did a lot of smell research spoke and the author of that book The Nose Knows. They were both really intelligent: she was pretty and he was engaging. I can't remember all that much about the presentations. There were a few bits that I didn't already know (and not a small bit of 'what I already know' had come from just perusing that Nose Knows book); but I honestly can't remember them right now. Well, I remember one, because what really stood out for me was smelling some of the raw materials they'd put out, which included:

Hexanal, vanillin, jasmine absolute, boar attractant spray and androstenone. I'd smelled all but the latter two (well, I'd never smelled plain old vanillin, but I'd smelled artificial vanilla extract, and that's just vanillin, alcohol, water and possibly a sweetener or preservative or something), and the latter two were essentially identical. In the talk they discussed androstenone and androstedienone--one or both accounts for a large part of the odor of male sweat. It was thought to be a human pheromone, but I think they said it doesn't have that function. It does, however, act very clearly as a pheromone for pigs, hence the boar spray. Two thirds of humans can detect the odor, and typically they describe it as unpleasant--sweaty, urinous or chemical. One-third of humans, who have a different genotype (I think it's one gene that codes for the ability to smell the molecule), either smell nothing or describe the odor as sweet, vanilla-like. So we all smelled it after the presentation to see which camp we fell into.

I could smell it. To me it smelled like a harsh synthetic woody chemical, so I guess you could put me in the "unpleasant," "chemical woody" camp (because there were actually a lot of different descriptors people used for it, from chemical to woody to urinous to sweaty to whatever; but urinous/sweaty seemed to be a dominant description for it), which sounds salacious to me ever since someone pointed out the double entendre of the word woody and insisted the word I wanted to use was "woodsy." No, woody is what I read everywhere. When I think of 'woodsy,' I think of the smell of a forest. Woody connotes the smell of the wood--it could mean sawdust, a particular raw material, a tree.... Woodsy connotes the smell of a wooded area-with the earthy notes and everything.

Anyway, after the speeches there was supposed to be a spread from Whole Foods, but it was so overcrowded in the reception area and the skrimps were so practically gone that I just went to a nearby Indian place, peeved at the crowdedness.

And that's the science beep for today.

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!