Dan,
I'm very much enjoying wearing Annick Goutal Encens Flamboyant today in the 90 degree heat, and it's still going strong after a hindquarters-shredding Pilates class. In fact, it was a very nice smell to sweat in: clarifying and mountain-fresh during my hour of teeth-gritted voluntary torture.
Katie
Katie,
Here's something sort of amazing: around the exact moment you were writing the words "Encens Flamboyant," I was taking advantage of a steal of a deal on Beauty Encounter for another Goutal l'Orientaliste -- Myrrhe Ardente, the perfume you called “mushroom-flavored root beer”.
The thing is, I was a little intrigued because I like vegetal fragrances and I like root beer, even though I can't imagine those two things blending well (this contributes to the weirdness, right?).
Dan
Dan,
I don't know if you remember, but over a year ago I burbled this about Myrrhe Ardente:
“It is so WEIRD! It's sort of moist and dank and milkshakey and mushroomy. I kind of love it and want to vomit at the same time!”
I've just applied a dab of Myrrhe Ardente to refamiliarize myself with it, and I think you might like it. The root beer/mushroom also reads as sweet smoke, and I know that's your flavor of funk. Hmm! I'm liking this more than I remembered.
I just found this review of Myrrhe Ardente on Makeup Alley by Amy Kelley and I think she's right on the button (mushroom):
“Myrrhe Ardente smells like the inside of a box that's been used to store sheets of Papier d'Armenie and black jellybeans. I'm not sure which ingredient resembles licorice since I don't see anice listed anywhere as a note, but this isn't the screechy anice of Aimez Moi or Anisia Bella. It's just enough to give the smooth myrrh and benzoin a bit of a cola-ish bite. Frankly, it's one of the best skin scents I've tried in a long time, and I like it even more than the somewhat similar (and similarly priced) Bois d'Armenie.”
Katie
Katie,
Amy Kelley is good. And to the point. She says what she smells without any silly hoo-ha (yours truly). Her description of Encens et Bubblegum ("it's like someone dumped a packet of Grape Kool-Aid into a bottle of Sacrebleu") seems so spot-on, I believe it might be true.
But Tania Sanchez doesn't like Myrrhe Ardente, and says Serge Lutens La Myrrhe is still king of the castle. Apparently, I beg to differ, as I wrote this about La Myrrhe in my notes a while back:
"Smells like an ungodly combination of Chanel No. 5 and some heavy Neil Morris scent. I don't like it at all."
Of course, that was nearly a year ago and so I don't remember it. Plus, I'm much more mature now. Back then, me reviewing the wonderfully sophisticated Serge Lutens line was like a child reviewing caviar. Cute but not worth consideration.
Dan
Dan,
Right now I smell really good -- an unintentional combination of Bruno Acampora Musc and Encens Flamboyant.
Katie
Katie,
And back to Encens Flamboyant, I think you should write a "Top Fragrances To Sweat In" column. It's an interesting angle and, at least for me, the results are often surprising. Certain heavy perfumes do seem predictably oppressive during exercise, while others fuse to the sweat and somehow manage to form a whole that's greater than its parts.
And some simple, discrete perfumes are fine, giving off a pleasant little waft of pretty, producing a kind of yin and yang, flowers and toil (the name of my new band, by the way).
Others just smell annoying, they ridicule you, they say, "you think you're some athletic tough guy and yet you're wearing perfume, and everyone can smell it, and they're all laughing at you, they're saying 'look at the tough guy running around in his pretty carnation perfume! I bet his mother still does his laundry.'"
And it's not fair, KP, because I do my own laundry. I've always done my own laundry!
Dan
Find out what happened when Dan received his Myrrhe Ardente...
For further Encens Flamboyante talk, click here
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