Perfume Pen Pals: Eris Parfums

Katie,

Have you worn any of the Eris perfumes yet? It's the line created by Scent and Subversion author Barbara Herman with Antoine Lie. I got my samples and immediately put on Belle de Jour for no reason other than I’m compulsive and it’s the first sample my pudgy fingers pulled out of the bag.

Scents That Sing "Spring!"

My perfume collection is laughably un-springlike. If, say, Scheherazade needed to borrow something for a hot night at the harem, she’d be in luck. I have oriental mystery by the casbah-full. But for the tender, temperamental season of renewal, I’m not really prepared.

So when Ayala Sender of SmellyBlog rounded up a group of us “smell-and-tellers” to participate in a spring scent project, it was my cue to dig through my samples. Here are six that sang the most affecting melodies:

Van Cleef & Arpels Gardénia Pétale
I call Gardénia Pétale a “gardenia sorbet”, because it’s sheer and refreshing, rather than the full-fat ice cream of an Estée Lauder Tuberose Gardenia or Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower. Gardénia Pétale is a sleek ingénue next to those badonkadonks: light on her feet and not so prone to theatricality. Jasmine, with its olfactory reference to suntan lotion, supplies some of the sunshine here. Your good mood when you wear Gardénia Pétale supplies the rest.

L’Artisan Parfumeur Fleur de Narcisse 2006
Not everything evoking spring smells “pretty” -- not even flowers. L’Artisan Parfum has bottled up the 2006 crop of narcissusessssssssssss from the daffodils’ favored French stomping ground. And let me tell you, these narcissi ain’t no sissies.

In fact, I can’t even make out anything approaching floral in Fleur de Narcisse. Instead, the insinuating blend of smoked hay, tobacco, moss, and faint rootiness invokes the pregnant earth, bloomtime imminent, with the freeze of winter not yet forgotten.

Cartier L’Heure Promise
I first encountered L’Heure Promise when I reviewed Cartier’s five Les Heures de Parfums. Initially, I was just paying a courtesy call on L’HP, eager to hustle over to L’Heure Mystérieuse, the incense bomb bellowing, “Puckrik! Get your hindquarters over here NOW.”

I didn’t really think L’Heure Promise’s sharp, dry iris was my favorite time of the perfume clock, but then, the nuzzly-as-a-puppy-pile sandalwood drydown made me reset my watch.

This one is as “laundry fresh” as I’m ever gonna get, clean with a hint of salty skin. It’s a quietly optimistic perfume, just the thing for a season of new possibilities.

Penhaligon’s Amarinthine
Sexy teen Heidi spent all morning milking the goats in a sunny flower meadow, and this is what her sweater smelled like when the sweaty village boy unbuttoned it later.

Guerlain Après L'Ondée
Après L'Ondée is a watercolor iris living in a vibration between powder and smoke. Its paleness has an almost metallic sheen. Après L'Ondée starts with the faded sweetness of vintage lipstick, and finishes by putting the idea of green in your head, without ever really smelling like plants or leaves. A symbolic transition from indoors to outdoors -- the perfect match for spring.

Dayna Decker Bardou Essence Crème
In the entire weekend of Sniffapalooza Spring Fling 2010, I bought only one perfume, and it was Bardou. The Dayna Decker line has some song and dance about being all natural/no parabens/animal friendly, but all I know is that when I opened the jar of Bardou “body butter”, I just wanted to dive in and live there.

It’s the freshest, greenest, most alive rose I’ve ever smelled. While Bardou comes in an eau de parfum as well as a high-tech body gel, it was the perfume cream, thick with shea butter and jojoba oil, that really put the fling in my spring.

The sheer decadence of smearing what smells like an entire rose field at dawn over my winter-desiccated skin is almost obscene. And the feel of the cool, dense crème is rich, but not too greasy.

My teeninesy carp about Bardou is that the pepper which supplies a bit of a punch at the beginning is the last guy to leave the party at the end. But I’ll tolerate the pepper sidekick, if it means I get to hang out with that superstar rose.

Please bunny-hop over to these participating blogs to read their spring scent choices.

All I Am A Redhead
Ambre Gris
A Rose Beyond the Thames
I Smell Therefore I Am
Notes from the Ledge
Olfactarama
Perfume in Progress
Perfume Shrine
Roxana Illuminated Perfume
Savvy Thinker
Scent Hive
Smelly Blog
The Non Blonde

Thanks to Ayala Sender for getting us all to smell on command!

Fumies, what are you wearing and loving this spring?

Penhaligon’s Amaranthine

A sheer tropical floral with a hidden wee beastie.


One of the rewards of writing about perfume is that I learn stuff. Useful stuff. In my last post, for instance, I was answering a query from a fellow who wanted to “create the façade of an active sex life” to make his ex jealous. He needed to know if there was such a thing as a “sex scented perfume”.

I obligingly created a list of coital scents, including trampy tropicals (Vivienne Westwood Boudoir, LesNez Manoumalia) and ripe creamies (Etat Libre d’Orange Putain de Palaces, Guerlain Attrape-Coeur).

I also solicited input from sensory psychologist Dr. Avery Gilbert, and he told me about something called “competitive mating scenario”. It boils down to Jilted John spraying around the perfume of his ex’s best friend to make the ex jealous.

Basically, there’s actual science to back up childish game playing. Useful, right?

I learned more good stuff from my reader Patty. She told me that the woman who created Bandit for Piguet, Germaine Cellier, was apparently inspired to do so by sniffing the knickers of models hot off the catwalk. That just sounds ludicrous, but I’m going to blindly accept it as the truth, cuz it’s a fun fact. And fun trumps truth.

But the best thing I learned from the whole “skank fragrance” discussion was that my newest favorite perfume was out there waiting for me, and I didn’t even know it. My newest favorite perfume turns out to be Penhaligon’s Amaranthine. The funk-freaks assured me that any knicker-sniffer worth her salt would crave it -- and they were right.

I’ve always had a fondness for Penhaligon’s: their cute Victorian hole-in-the-wall shop off London’s Bond Street, their olden-days-y bottles with stoppers, their prim soliflores -- like Bluebell, which forever links Margaret Thatcher, Princess Di and Kate Moss in an unholy trinity of fandom.

But “sexy” is not part of the Penhaligon’s equation, so I was bemused by the official description of Amaranthine as a “corrupted floral oriental" “reminiscent of the scent of the inside of a woman’s thigh”. Bemused enough to hustle myself a sample the very day I learned of its existence.

At first sniff, it occurred to me that it’s a grown-up version of all the creamy, fruity-floral, teen-friendly musks out there in Perfume Land. Thick, sweet, milkshake scents like Christian Dior Miss Dior Chérie L'eau, Gap Close, and The Body Shop Love Etc.

But I said “grown-up”. As in “adults-only”. Amaranthine is indeed milky, but it’s not a milkshake. Any sweetness here stems from flowers, not calories. And even with the presence of ylang-ylang, a fleshy tropical bloom, along with rose, and jasmine on the verge of decay, it’s not thick. This baby is sheer. Green, even.

And yet, there’s a wee beastie in Amaranthine, a sweet/sour twang that evokes the hum of an unwashed nook or indeed, cranny. The friction of this eau de parfum’s spices, including cardamom and clove, creates the borderline sweatiness.

The sweat seasons the sandalwood and vanilla woven through the greenness, keeping you guessing as to whether Amaranthine will eventually land on the side of “fresh” or “not-so-fresh”.

Bertrand Duchaufour is the maestro behind this, Penhaligon’s most risqué scent. And nobody puts Bertie in a corner, because none of his other creations -- woods and incenses like L’Artisan Parfumeur Timbuktu, Comme Des Garcons Kyoto, Amouage Jubilation XXV -- prepared me for this femme, elegantly sultry number.

Despite the seal of approval from the Skank Brigade, Amaranthine is no “gusset gourmand”. The dissonance between naughty and nice creates a luscious tension, but it never slides into wholesale ho territory. Penhaligon’s has a Royal Warrant, after all. And the Queen ain’t no hollaback girl.


Lily Cole and Dominican Cows by Juergen Teller