When I think about Frederic Malle, hands down the most interesting perfume to me is Dans tes Bras. Although it’s a complex fragrance (more on that in a moment), its defining characteristic is a spicy musk that is a dead ringer for bubble mixture. I played with these a lot as a child, and the unique scent is well embedded in my memory.

Maybe because of this association, I’ve thought of Dans tes Bras as a deceptively lighthearted fragrance. Like something that you might choose because of its effervescence, but that you keep going back to because there is something about its development that is intellectual and weird. The sweet floral notes–violet and candied heliotrope–feel like an ironic reference to the type of powdery soft “round” fragrance that this never becomes because it pairs its “natural” side with the slightly chemical and determined-to-be-smelled musks. Cashmeran is a listed ingredient in Dans tes Bras, and cashmeran on its own manages to be simultaneously abrasive and smooth, like sandy skin, and like Dans tes Bras itself, actually.

When I started writing this review, I was surprised to read how many people think Dans tes Bras smells of mushrooms. I never had, but of course as soon as I read that, I saw the connection. And now, I can’t get mushrooms out of my head when I wear Dans tes Bras. It’s the reason I waited so long to post this. “How am I going to address that?” was a question I couldn’t figure out how to answer. I really don’t like mushrooms, and I definitely don’t want to wear them. So for the moment, Dans tes Bras is a bit spoiled for me, and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else.

In the end, as you see, I’ve decided just to put it out there. My hope is that a little distance will cure my nose-buds, and the next time I wear Dans tes Bras it will transport me happily back to slightly off-kilter bubble land.

My rating of Dans tes Bras is a 2.5 to 3: Bordering on “I like it.” Why? Luckily, my rating hasn’t been affected by the mushroom issue. Although I have always liked this fragrance, it’s not something I usually love to wear for itself; I often find that I’m treating the wearing of it like a science experiment, and true fragrance love for me is never purely intellectual.

For reviews of Frederic Malle Dans tes Bras, see Bois de Jasmin and Katie Puckrik.

Givenchy Electric Rose. I heard about this when EauMG mentioned the song sung by Liv Tyler as promo with it. The perfume is pretty, an aldehydic sweet rose, not very original. Very little sillage, though. All the duty free shops are giving away Liv’s performance with purchase, of course. I liked the song more than the perfume.

No. 5 Eau Premiere. I am patiently (or not) waiting for Chanel to do a nice atomiser in this. I’m told the more substantial ones come out at Christmas, but that didn’t stop me from scouring duty free. The closest I found was the set of three purse sprays, but the canister was disappointingly lightweight plastic.

Miss Dior Cherie. Lured in by the light pink leather atomiser, repelled by the crystal embellishment around the lid. It is encouraging to see more atomisers, though.

Eau Savage Extreme. My reigning favorite men’s fragrance for a few years, now, but this is the first time I have been able to spray it on Mr. APB. Luckily, a total success!

Dior Midnight Poison. This is actually what I haven’t been sniffing. It’s my favorite of the Poison flankers, and I had promised a comparison post, but so far on this trip I haven’t seen this one.

Kate Moss Vintage Muse. More to come on this.

Hermes Hiris. Another of the things I love about duty free are the random clearance sales. Alas, even at half off, I don’t love Hiris. Also on clearance this trip were Guerlain Cherry Blossom Sparkle and Shiseido Zen for men.

Guerlain Bouquet de Mai. This is the first in the Aqua Allegoria line that I have liked more than “ok.”

Guerlain Bouquet Número 1 and 2. These are apparently duty free exclusives, which in my experience with Guerlain means “for the Asian market,” and these are no exception.

And that’s it for now! I have moved countries since my last post, so I am out of the sheep stage of the trip and into a city stage. More perfume, in other words!

Tarleisio’s perfume blog (currently at The Alembicated Genie) is home to kaleidoscopic prose and an almost mystical exploration of fragrances that speak to her. I never click to The Alemicated Genie with an expectation of anything else than a passionate discussion of a perfume. She has a way of getting into the dark sides of even the most “well behaved” perfumes.

Which is exactly what she did with me through her novel Quantum Demonology. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a reader who seemed less like “the audience” for Sheila’s novel than me. Sheila is leather jackets and spike heels, and I’m jeans and converse. She’s Tuberose Criminelle; I’m Kai perfume oil. She reads Faust; I’m dedicated to The Daily Bunny.

Okay, maybe I exaggerate slightly. I do own a leather jacket, and when I was younger I wore ill-advised amounts of black eyeliner. But what I’m trying to say is that I’m too much of an ostrich about the dark side of life to be immediately drawn to a book about the Devil seducing a metalhead aspiring writer. That doesn’t change the fact that Quantum Demonology drew me in, locked my attention for two solid weeks, and taught me that—surprisingly—I’m fascinated by the inner workings of the Devil’s mind and can easily relate to a character who is in love with a man who is sometimes shockingly brutal and with whom she has no hope of a future.

Tarleisio’s novel is so good. That’s the first thing I want you to get from this post. The second is that I’m still that same bunnies-and-rainbows person, and as great as they are, bunnies and rainbows do not always prepare one to take on perfumes like those prepared by the perfumers participating in The Devilscent Project. So bear that in mind over the course of this project.

The Devilscent Project is a collaboration between Tarleisio and several natural perfumers who created scents inspired by Quantum Demonology. You can read more about it here.

The first scents I received were Devils number 1, 2, and 3 from Esscentual Alchemy by Amanda Feeley.

Devil No. 1

The dominant note in Devil #1 is, to my nose, fir. A fresh branch of fir, just a little bit woodsy. I also think I smell labdanum (a tricky note for me) and something bracing, almost camphorous but not, I think, camphor. At times this note almost smells aquatic on me. Devil #1 feels like a masculine to me. Not particularly dangerous. This is Tarleisio’s Devil when he is at his most “normal.” As Devil #1 dries down, it goes woodsier and a bit sweeter on my skin.

Devil No. 2

Smelling this was one of the most visceral scent experiences I’ve ever had, but unfortunately not in a way that is helpful for me to tell you about it. It smells to me like someone I disliked when I was younger, someone I associate with the smells of mold and dirty skin. Blinded by that, I can only hazard one guess at a note in this scent, and that is that I think I smell a very dirty, hay-ish honey accord.

Devil No. 3

On first testing this, I wrote “a candied version of #1” in my notebook. It isn’t sweet, but it’s a sweeter reprise of #1. There is more frankincense in this, and I think some cedar. As it develops, it is much drier and less sweet, so in that way it is the opposite of #1, but they feel very much like a family to me. And #3 feels more like the dangerous sides of Tarleisio’s Devil; it’s more compatible with fire and brimstone.

Click to read Tarleisio’s review of Esscentual Alchemy’s Devilscent perfumes.

Big thanks again to Tarleisio for including me and to Amanda, for the perfumes.

These include B*Men, the Les Senteurs, and the Chanel No. 19, all of which several people had asked about after they were spoken for. An up-to-date list is provided on the original post. If you want any of those perfumes, send me an email at anotherperfumeblog (at) hotmail (dot) com.

I do need to restrict this to US buyers, unfortunately.

For today’s happy hour, I’m drinking a perfectly okay glass of wine from a picnic-sized bottle I smuggled home from the work trip I was on this week. (Class all the way, Natalie, class all the way.) It is marked “Sonoma Cutrer” and “Russian River Ranches.” It tastes like an un-oaked Chardonnay to me. It’s fine. What I am looking more forward to is having a glass of Kalyra’s Sticky Wicket Chenin Blanc later. A dessert wine from my favorite dessert winery; it is almost guaranteed to be delicious.

On the perfume front, I am still feeling a little giddy over a few vintage minis that I have acquired recently.

The first is a perfume I have been looking for for some time: Evening in Paris by Bourjois. I have always thought the bottle was really pretty, and this is a perfume that has a real place in perfume history. But when my Mom told me that my Grandma had said this was an “ever present” perfume when she was young (to the point of being almost a joke, considering that her and all of her sisters had it and yet seemed to get even more bottles as gifts), I was more determined to get my hands on it. I found this at an antique store a few months ago.

If my bottle is legit, vintage Evening in Paris is a rose-violet with a strong cosmetic-waxy-powder accord and a surprising amount of spiciness. My bottle looks like it dates from the 1950s, but the stopper throws me off. I’ve never seen another bottle with this stopper, so either it isn’t the original stopper or not many of this style were produced.

The second bottle is a Miss Dior mini (for $5!!!!), which I also have struggled to date. I think it must be 80s-era, but the white cap throws me off, as most of the houndstooth bottles I have seen have houndstooth caps too. (And this is definitely the right cap; it’s embossed with CD). In any case, I was delighted to find this. Like Evening in Paris, this is an iconic perfume that I wanted to have in my collection in vintage form. Also, I like the current version and wanted to compare with having more than just a tester of vintage at my disposal. (But I haven’t compared yet.) For a bittersweet story about vintage Miss Dior, see Undina’s story here.

The third bottle is a purse spray of the original Shiseido Zen. I am unclear as to how long this black bottle was made. The perfume launched in this bottle in 1964/5, and was reformulated a few times. But I’m not sure if this bottle was used up through or even during reformulations. What I do know is that the perfume is very pretty, the bottle is beautiful and satisfyingly substantial, and it had never even been unwrapped! I plucked this from the jaws of the store in San Francisco where I bought my vintage Bellodgia and Coty Emeraude Powder. This bottle has been there since before I moved, and I’m glad it was still there for me to buy on my recent weekend back in the city.

I’ll be posting separately about these three perfumes eventually, after I have had more time to wear them.

I hope you are enjoying your Friday and your happy hour, whatever it involves. Cheers!

A few weeks ago, Tara of Olfactoria’s Travels wrote about Vol de Nuit as a leather jacket fragrance. Her post almost coincided with me realizing I was often choosing Vol de Nuit on days I felt (or wanted to feel) a bit fierce. With its classic perfume feel and fuzzy powdery edges, I wouldn’t have expected Vol de Nuit to join the ranks of perfumes like Chanel No. 19 as my version of a “power scent.” But it has. Stark notes like iris and galbanum always feel strong and fearless to me, but the warm woods and the Guerlainade in Vol de Nuit keep it feeling human, too.

Since I first posted about Vol de Nuit I have run through numerous samples of the EdT and one of the modern parfum. Not bad for a perfume I didn’t like much the first time I tried it. I hope and plan that eventually this will join my collection.

The highlight of the last few weeks was a visit to San Francisco this past weekend, when I got to spend time at some of my favorite old haunts and with friends, including Undina. A good time was had, and some mystery twin scents emerged (as soon as Undina solves one, as she has done two recently, a new one appears!). I will post about this after I’ve done some preliminary investigation. (Cue Pink Panther music.)

I was also thinking on the plane home about my New Year’s Resolutions. And when I say “thinking about” I mean “trying to remember,” which does not bode well for how well I have been keeping them, does it? Fortunately, I wrote them down. So let’s see how I’m doing.

1. Test every perfume I currently have in my sample closet. It was certainly ambitious for me to think I could do this and resolution #5 in one year. Now that I’m no longer self-employed, it is tough to wear more than one perfume per day or to test multiple perfumes during the day, as I used to do. However, I have been testing a lot and have made my way through a good number of samples. But, their number is legion, so I still have a long way to go. This reminder has inspired me to step up my testing. I give myself a D on this resolution.

2. Purge my perfume collection of a few albatrosses. I made a good start on this with my recent blog sale. But I still have not listed those perfumes that didn’t sell on ebay. I give myself a C on this resolution. (If you see anything on the blog sale post that didn’t sell, feel free to make me an offer.)

3. Keep more thorough and more orderly notes of the perfumes I test but don’t blog about. I completely forgot about this resolution. Oops. F is for utter failure. I will do better!

4. Abide by the one in / one out rule of full bottles, meaning I must sell or use up a bottle before buying a new one. (I will allow myself one exception for the year.) I started off the year with a few missteps on this front, but due to shipping fiascos, two of those bottles never made it into my hands, and were sent back to the warehouses—and I never reordered them. I do plan to reorder, but am no longer in a big hurry. So considering all the bottles I cleared out, I feel like I’m ahead of the game with this resolution. I’ll do a post soon about new bottle additions to my collection. But overall, A+.

5. Wear my favorite perfumes at least a few times per week. This I am definitely doing, and I’m so glad. It’s like getting reacquainted with old friends to wear one of them for a full day, without thinking “I really should wash this off and do some testing” or “I really want to test such-and-such new perfume, so I’m going to wash this off.” The slower pace of perfume wearing has it’s positives and negatives (see #1), but overall I am glad to be wearing my favorites more.

It is not surprising to me that my resolution-keeping is a bit uneven. But I’m determined to do better on a few of these, so we’ll see if I can pull out a strong performance by the end of the year.

If you made resolutions (scented or otherwise), I’d be curious to know how they are going, if you feel like sharing!

In my college film class, we studied ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’ I think this was largely so my professor, a man who styled himself a feminist but managed to conduct the whole lecture without mentioning Anita Loos, could share his theories about Marilyn Monroe. The theories seemed to require playing her scenes repeatedly. I spent most of the lecture exchanging notes with my best friend’s boyfriend, who sat behind me and periodically passed his notebook over my shoulder so I could read his latest message.

By age 21, most of us have seen men who want to sleep with us. For some women, the evidence is a gaze that lingers too long at their breasts. For others, it’s the burn of a man’s eyes staring as they walk away. As for me, I knew my weapon, and I wielded it shamelessly. My kind of body can be almost naked without anyone thinking it is scandalous, as I discovered when I was a teenager. Some kids at my private school called me “Lala no bra,” but I sailed past the administration without even one dress code violation,  in boyish cutoffs and shirts and shift dresses that slipped around however they liked, baring stomach, back, or  rib cage whenever I moved.

It was George’s notebook that gave him away. At first, he thrust it aggressively over my shoulder, tapping it against me if I didn’t take it right away. But by the end of lecture, he was sliding it gently over my exposed shoulder blade, tickling my neck, reaching so far forward I could feel his hand like the presence of a stranger in a dark room. I dropped the class the next day.

My best friend was, after all, my best friend. True to the time-tested patterns of friendship, we were physical opposites—she was a full foot taller than me, with measurements that Marilyn Monroe herself would have envied—but we were loyal to each other. George and his notebook were off limits.

A few years later found me dating a man named Adrian. We’d met at a charity golf tournament, where he admired my ability to lug a bag of clubs that was almost as big as me. He gave me the nickname “Whippet,” and when he proposed, had it engraved inside my ring.

Adrift in a world obsessed by women’s bodies, it seemed that I alone was secure mine could hold its own. When my best friend flew out to plan my bridal shower, she immediately started with her usual complaint: “You make me feel so massive.” And my fiance barely threw a glance at her. “She smells so womanly,” he said, as if it was a dirty word. “Like baby powder and sex.” I wanted to know what I smelled like, but all he said was “I don’t know. Flowers.”

The wedding announcement for Adrian and my best friend appeared in The New York Times yesterday, and today, I have been reading But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes and cursing that college professor, who never mentioned Anita Loos.

***

Bois des Iles smells like Lala’s best friend, like baby powder and a sensual but comfortable blend of civet, rose, jasmine, aldehydes, a bit of lemon, and woodsy notes. To me, it reflects the “classic” Chanel formula epitomized in No. 5, but rather than the aldehyde overdose that makes No. 5 so loud and effervescent, Bois des Iles is almost a skin scent. After the quick burst of aldehydes and citrus in the top notes, the notes don’t necessarily shift, just warm and soften.

This was not an easy scent for me, and I’ve gone back and forth on whether I think it’s a lovely classical perfume or is too matronly for my taste. My discomfort with the feeling that scents like this invite us to define “feminine” in a particular way is reflected in the fiction piece above. But in the end, my rating for Bois des Iles is a 3.5. Why? It’s the skin-scent feeling that ultimately wins me over. It can’t be easy to take such a classical structure and make it feel like it could be the natural scent of someone’s skin.

For a great, in-depth review of Bois des Iles, along with a comparison to the perfume it most reminds me of, click on over to The Muse in Wooden Shoes.

I’ve added several new blogs to my links at right. I’m always finding new perfume blogs I enjoy reading, so please feel free to leave a comment with your blog if you are not included and think you should be.

Similarly, because I am always finding new blogs I enjoy reading, it’s becoming harder impossible for me to read the blogs I want to read every day, or even as they are updated. I want you all to know that I read through all the blogs on my link list at least weekly, although I don’t always comment. And I typically read my top favorite blogs several times throughout the week. So, I apologize that I make the rounds less often than I used to, but I hope you all keep writing, because do I love reading!*

*Reading this back through, I think it sounds like I am suggesting that me reading is the reason you are blogging. Ha! Obviously, I don’t mean that. I just mean that I hope you all continue to feel inspired to write, because I’m one of the readers who benefits when you do.