I got this message on YouTube from someone called BlackWid0w:
"I have been wearing Le 3ème Homme de Caron (The Third Man) and absolutely loving it. I guess it a man's fragrance, but I love it on my skin (am female). I first read about it on your blog, so thanks for turning me on to it."
The thing is, Dan, you were the one who turned her on to it, extolling its charms in a blog post a year ago, while I've let the decant you sent me languish. Until now. Inspired by BlackWid0w, I'm wearing The Third Man right this moment and enjoying it greatly.
The happiest, grassiest, flower meadow scent ever!
Flora Nymphea is the only one out of Guerlain's ongoing Aqua Allegoria series that I've smelled and instantly gone, "Wow! That's pretty!”
It's the happiest, grassiest, flower meadow scent ever.
It turns out that Flora Nymphea's buoyant orange blossom plus honey equals a wonderfully youthful and exhilarating perfume, especially for spring and summer. Or if you want to pretend it's spring and summer. Or if you want to pretend you're youthful and exhilarating.
Basically, Flora Nymphea can smooth out a lot of rough spots, both with the weather and your life. It's kind of a full-service perfume.
What's your take on Guerlain L'Heure Bleue? Wikipedia says it's akin to Après l'Ondée, though less bright and more melancholic. (Can you believe I'm going to Wikipedia before I go to you? I can't either.) I like Après l'Ondée very much, and even its modern cousin, L'Eau d'Hiver, which I've been wearing steadily since buying a bottle at the Frédéric Malle event. But I find Après l'Ondée melancholic enough. Do I need to smell more melancholic? Is L'Heure Bleue eleven on the melancholy amplifier? Just typing that last question made me excited; what does that say about me?
L'Agent, Agent Provocateur's latest bodice ripper of a perfume, might be also considered a codpiece ripper. (Hey -- careful where you're ripping, lady!) This edible, drinkable, smearable leather, with its muscular blend of ylang-ylang, apricot, rose and chocolatey patchouli, is decadence a go-go no matter the gender of the smeared skin.
I find L'Agent shares a kinship with dense, savory-sweet orientals like Christian Dior Hypnotic Poison, Laura Mercier Minuit Enchanté, Amouage Memoir Woman and Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, but I like it better than all of those. In fact, I l'ove L'Agent! It's flowers in drag, jasmine in leather armor. It's a mesmerizing shimmy between liqueur and dustiness. It's torrid.
Old perfumes are the new niche, I've decided. My newest favorite perfume blog is Yesterday's Perfume, where Barbara Herman explores our collective cultural history as embodied in fragrance.
She writes in her profile: “We know what the past looks and sounds like, but do we know what it smells like?”
I'm fascinated by the scent of myrrh. This bittersweet balsam works a sticky, spicy mystery into some of my high rotation favorites: Diptyque L'Eau Trois, Prada No. 10 Myrrhe, Etro Messe de Minuit and Christian Dior Bois d'Argent. My fevered response to its resinous, scalpy smell marks me as a regular myrrh-maid.
So when I picked up on the myrrh in the beautifully-burred oriental skin scent that is Prada Amber pour Homme Intense, I was delighted -- and surprised. Mainstream fragrances rarely feature such ancient embellishments.
Amber PH Intense also features another Queen of Sheba pop pick: labdanum, especially noticeable in the long fadeout. Both labdanum and myrrh are soft here, easing the powdered cocoa patchouli into a cushy situation that hovers close to the body while inviting closer inspection from interested parties.
And interested parties might be interested to know that Amber PH Intense isn't really too pour homme at all: labdanum and myrrh-loving femmes are encouraged to give this one a spin, too.
Amber pour Homme Intense is available at Sephora.com, starting at $55 for 1.7 oz
For more on Prada Amber pour Homme Intense, click here.
Christophe Laudamiel, perfumer behind Humiecki & Graef Skarb, S-Perfume S-ex, and Tom Ford Amber Absolute, as well as innovative concepts like ScentOpera and Thierry Mugler's coffret inspired by Patrick Suskind's Perfume, discusses how to assess the quality of a perfume.
The clip comes from Big Think, a YouTube “knowledge forum” featuring "the ideas, lessons, stories and advice of leading experts from around the world."
Laudamiel discusses one the rarest things in perfumery: the invention of new structures, and touches on what makes a fragrance smell cheap.
I like that Laudamiel says that it's important for the consumer to be aware of the variable nuances within “interesting” and hack stuff alike so that they can make informed choices on the perfumes they buy. You'd never hear someone from the corporate side of a perfume house imploring customers to assess the actual quality of their luxury products before they purchase!
If the perfume-buying public actively rejects shoddy creations as they become more educated, perhaps perfumers working for the big houses will get leeway to create challenging fragrances with better raw materials. A pie-in-the-sky wish, I know...
Thanks to Nathan Branch for alerting me to this wonderful clip.
It was with a sense of fumie duty rather than frothing anticipation that I approached Love, Chloé by Chloé. Requests for review were tumbling in on my YouTube channel, so I grudgingly obliged by spritzing my Nordstorm sample and poising fingers over the keyboard, waiting to be underwhelmed. Chloé eau de toilette, eau de parfum and Intense (which I'd liked the best of the three) had lulled me into a soapy rose stupor, and I'd assumed Love, Chloé was bound to be a snoozy harmony on the same old tune.
Wrong. Wrong! The cool new bottle holds a cool new fume, created by Louise Turner and Nathalie Gracia-Cetto, and built around violety iris and powdery rice. It is incredibly beautiful. The story goes that Love, Chloé is inspired by the scent of old-fashioned face powder, and that is charmingly apparent as the first few wafts lift off the skin.
