Katie,
I need to check out Le Labo Oud 27. All of those wild claims of rank smells are contagious, methinks. Kind of like when someone in an office building gets a headache and claims it's the ventilation, and before you know it they're having to evacuate the entire building because everyone thinks they're sick.
Dan
Dan,
I tried a spot of Oud 27 at Le Labo today. After everything I'd read, I thought it was going to be harsh blast similar to their Patchouli 24. Something you couldn't begin to appreciate until after the fabled 10-hour mark.
But it wasn't! It was leathery, animalic, labdanum-y. With an intriguing moment of critter-invading-your-personal-space at the top. But not exactly diaper-pail territory, which I'd been lead to expect. I liked it fine, but have that area covered with my Labdanum 18, and would venture out to L'Artisan Parfumeur Dzing! for my leather/animal needs before I went to Oud 27, I think.
Katie
Katie,
I, too, tried Oud 27 today. And it's what you say it is: tough to take out of the bottle and on the skin for about five minutes, and then soft and leathery later on, almost tame even, especially compared to those Montales. It's alright.
But wow, this Oud 27 does kick some serious ass out of the bottle. Is it possible my Barneys guy accidentally put embalming fluid in there by mistake? Because this doesn't smell like something you'd put on your body while you were still alive.
Dan
Does Lenin "wear" Oud 27?
Dan,
Oud 27 turned out to be the perfect thing to wear on my trip to the Cat House Sanctuary out in the California desert. I knew the volunteers would be spraying Yves Saint Laurent Opium and Calvin Klein Obsession for Men on cardboard boxes for the leopards and jaguars to scratch, sniff and maul, because everyone knows big cats love their orientals.
I wondered how Oud 27 would compete for the animals' attention, and it turned out that smell-wise, I was the belle of the ball.
As I stood near, the cats' heads whipped around and their nostrils were a-flare, jaws slack in "dumb kitty" position to savor Oud 27 on the breeze. Looking at the state of their well-loved cardboard boxes, I was glad of the bars separating me from their paws and maws.
Oud 27: It's Wildcat-Approved.
Katie
I wear Oud 27 and love it. I put in on when I want to feel mysterious for the day and in reference to an earlier post,I customized the bottle with my dog Gus's name. Gus is no longer with me but everytime I put it on I think about him. I kind of made my own link of memory and scent.
ReplyDeleteOud 27 reminds me of when I went to visit a college friend one summer. Who lived in Maine. On a dairy farm. If one gets close enough to that much excrement, one cannot help but notice the complexity of the aroma, and get one's hair curled at the same time.
ReplyDeleteWell we've learnt never to wear Oud 27 in Big Cat Territory, thanks for experimenting on yourself Katie!
ReplyDeletei haven't got on with oud so far because of the sourness but this one sounds smoother than most. Weirdly, I don't find Patchouli 24 harsh as soon as it's settles on the skin and plan to buy a bottle later this month. I can't get enough of birch tar scents though and P24 has a massive dose. Shame they got the name wrong.
onesmalldog -- given how different Oud 27 is from most perfumes one would expect to waft up from a well-groomed person, I'm sure you're cultivating mystique wherever you go. While also enjoy your own little tribute to Gus.
ReplyDeleteScott -- "hair curled", yuk-yuk! I do appreciate a multi-tasking perfume.
tara -- there have been more than a few times when I've gone hiking in mountain lion territory, and then realized that I'm ponging prettily of a big cat-approved oriental. Those are always flinchy hikes.
I couldn't "get" P24 until I smelled it on Pen Pal Dan last summer (when I finally met him for the first time!). The smokiness is beguiling, not harsh, and plays off nicely against the vanilla. It smells beautiful on him!
Oh wow, you only met Dan for the first time last summer???! I had assumed you were old friends. Now I'm wondering if there's some mysterious Perfume Pen Pals agency that paired you up :) Must have been a blast to see/smell him for the first time. Glad to hear he's a Patchouli 24 fan too, hope it smells as good on me!
ReplyDeletetara -- it was a blast to finally meet/smell Dan, and it was instantly easy to be with him. We didn't have the benefit of a Perfume Pen Pals agency to introduce us. Instead, he'd read a posting re my Burger King Flame YouTube review on Basenotes, watched it, then realized that he'd read my memoir 8 years earlier when he was editing his magazine "Speak". He got in touch, we started talking fumes (and music and books), and "Perfume Pen Pals" was the result.
ReplyDeleteKatie thanks so much for filling me in. I love the Pen Pals posts so it's great to have the background on how they started.
ReplyDeleteIt's really not that common to meet fume fanatics in "real life" - like the NST article says, there's a difference between people who LIKE perfume and people who LOVE perfume. Guess that's why we love wonderful fume blogs such as yours :)
Hey, another Le Labo, not quite as labeled.
ReplyDeleteI'm making a mental note to try this one and see if it, like the new Dior Leather Oud, is an oud that won't leave a mark. (Or your hair curled, per Scott's comment.)
Okay, I almost posted to another blog an idea I thought you should do, directly relating to the "kitty response" you speak of. Here's the set up:
You and oh, say, three perfumes. Passerby get to spray one of their choice. One of them is, say, Attrape Coeur. Or now Oud 27. The unsuspecting don't know what could come next, but oh! we do! we do!! ...somebody's gonna get a kitty...
...okay, maybe not so brilliant. But, hey, if SNL can beat a bad thing to death when it never had life in the first place, I think you could work this one into having legs.
Or curled hair.
I'd love to try Oud 27 on skin. I got a spritz on a test strip in Libertys over a year ago now, the sales guy was keen to see how I'd react. I loved it! I tucked the strip inside my newly purchased paperback copy of The Guide, and I could still smell it on the card 12 months later. It's big stuff.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the cat was "flehmening" which is when they raise the head, open the mouth slightly and mouth-breathe with a vacant (dumb-kitty) look -- that's to pass an interesting scent over the ventronasal receptor which is in the roof of their mouths -- usually they do this when trying to decipher a pee-mail message! Sounds like the LeLabo fooled them. (I thought it was quite pleasant, myself.) My cats seem to dislike all perfumes, but are fooled by a little vial of civetone I have and will flehmen and paw at it, eyes dilated, in a little show of crazy cat-behavior.
ReplyDeletePip,
ReplyDelete"Big stuff" is right. And that's funny - I do the same thing as you with The Guide: place blotters spritzed in perfumes on their appropriate pages.
Olfacta,
I LOVE that there's an official word for "dumb kitty face"! So, "flehmening" is what that moronic slack-jawed smelling stance is called. And yes, Oud 27 did fool them. I wonder how coherent the message was in cat language, or if it was an English-translated-into-Japanese mish-mosh of information?