hortus conclusus

Last night I had to go directly from a yoga class at my local YMCA to a dinner with my thesis adviser and my husband, so I dabbed on a few drops of my favorite dinner perfume, Samsara , that love-it-or-hate it child of the eighties. It was only when I was sweating my way through my seventh sun salutation that I realized that the samsara was radiating off my body in waves because my body temperature had gone up. I was a little embarrassed. Although I love Samsara , many don’t, and the peace-loving essential oils or bust crowd assembled in that room probably was not appreciating my parfum de choix. I was perfectly happy, of course. The sandalwood and vanilla was going nuts, and I was enjoying my little fantasy journey beyond the confines of the utilitarian gym space filled with grumpy yuppies. Then the irony of the whole thing struck me; here we were, a bunch of overworked white professionals, trying to snag a moment in our days to seek enlightenment, and here I was, brin

I have to sit in a graduate seminar on Chaucer and Gower today, and it’s a tight space; I’ll need to wear something that is super close to the skin and unoffensive; most of my colleagues are of the modern perfume-haters school. I guess I will choose one of the least offensive—and least interesting—frags on my shelf. Bvlgari’s Thé Blanc will fit the bill. It is pleasant yet not far-reaching, wears well, and doesn’t smell anything like white tea (LOL). At times I enjoy its nondescript, expensive soapiness—it smells less like perfume and more like a good shower. And it certainly won’t distract me from my profound cogitations on Middle English poetry ; ). There; I put it on. I will report back later to let you know whether I am still pleased with my nondescript self when I get back from the university today. Back now: no one noticed. ; )

I have been thinking about two of my favorite teas, and wondering if an analysis of their properties might not get me closer to understanding my own fragrance preferences. They are as different as night and day, but equally wonderful in my mind. The first, Russian Caravan , is a deep, extremely smoky, black tea. It smells like tea and smoke in the most fabulously romantic way in the pot, and has a deep blackish brown color. There is, in my opinion, no other tea that goes as well with as many savory foods. Its smokiness makes it perfect for brunches with meat and eggs—it tastes absolutely lovely with sausage, bacon, and all that, for its depth of flavor matches or even exceeds the foodstuffs, and it complements the meaty, creamy flavors of breakfast so well. I love it with a bit of milk with some fat content, for it rounds out and enhances the smokiness of the tea and eliminates any potential bitterness. The other tea is very different from Russian Caravan, but no less exotic. Chi

-Guerlain Vetiver -Chanel Bois des Iles -Estee Lauder sensuous -Cade -Tea Rose -Burt's Bees Bay rum -L'occitan Pour Homme -Zents Earth -Guerlain Samsara -Pacifica Waikiki Pikake (March 31, 2010)

Today is another grey day. It’s cold and brisk, and I sense rain looming. Might as well continue my run of woods and incenses. Today I am wearing Caron’s Parfum Sacre , a fragrance I find extremely linear and straightforward; it’s candied incense in a bottle. Not my favorite—I love incense, but I don’t like the way perfumers tend to smear a bunch of flowery sugar over the top of what should be a deep, dry, haunting smell. That said, wearing Parfum Sacre is a joy, because it never goes away, and I get to smell it throughout the day because my nose never becomes immune to it. It certainly kept my spirits up when I had to give up the dreamy freedom of spring break and go back to teaching again today. Somehow, seeing the blanks faces of the rows of tired young college kids wasn’t as disheartening as usual, since something was with me.

Well, I've come through one long, rainy day on a night of a full moon with no major attitude problems; there's no way to prove it, but it could very well be the calming, misty, divine influence of the Bois Des Iles. My husband also seemed quite attracted to me today, although he claimed not to smell anything special on my skin. Perhaps it was just me knowing how special I smelled to myself.... Now all I have to do is get to sleep--I wonder if a spritz or two of L'Occitane's discontinued Lavande would send me off to The Land of Nod.

I love true citrus fragrances, and this Hermes always hits the spot for me. It has a very classic profile, and is extremely well-mannered. It opens with a lovely, extremely true, sour citrus, then quickly dries down to a lovely, gentlemanly bergamot/oakmoss. Although I love my large sample of this, I will never invest in a bottle simply because I have found it to have almost no staying power. If it were a 30 dollar bottle, this wouldn't be a problem, but at this price point, its better just to keep a little sample around to sniff from time to time.   That is the problem with citrus in general. Like Guerlain's Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat with its evanescent lemons, or Pacifica's Tuscan Blood Orange, it doesn't seem to hang around too long. It took me a long time to figure this out in my journey towards loving fragrance. I used to find--and still do most of the time-- the synthetic-smelling citrus topnotes in mass-marketed perfumes completely repulsive, proba

My friend Jane, a born business executive (it's only a matter of time before she scales to the highest ranks of the company that is lucky enough to retain her for good) LOVES all things Burberry. She is singlemindedly dedicated to its aesthetic, and longs for the day she has the resources available to obtain all the Burberry goods she can possibly imagine. I hope she likes the new fragrance release, Spor t , available in formulations for men and women. I got a whiff of the masculine version, and was intrigued, although I have been burned by Burberry in the past; they nearly always seem to almost get there with their fragrances, but then take a wrong turn and end up with something unpalatable or banal. This one seems to explore the idea of ginger in intriguing ways. It reminds me--appropriately--of a bottle of liqueur that Jane and her husband Zach prefer, the niche-y, gingery Canton, produced by the same folks who brought us my favorite, St. Germain: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/0

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/fashion/29bazaar.html Sometimes I wonder if the incredibly high-profile ad campaign (4 A-lister Spokeswomen!!!) might have killed the positive critical reception of what I think is one of the best mid-market fragrances released in a long while.

Well, it's a rainy, moist, somewhat gloomy day here in my town--typical spring, I guess. Luckily, I have just the remedy for the sluggish malaise that can creep up on me on days like these. Chanel's Bois des Îles interacts with the wet, muddy, rainy smell in the most miraculous way, making even the most mundane walk to the library seem like a mystical event of deep significance. The reainy smell makes the sandalwood go nuts, and it becomes like a prayer to divinity, offered up on my skin. I feel cloaked in an aura of otherworldliness, an untouchable magical splendor. (I must wear this to my job interviews next year). The bitter nutty notes add just the slightest edge to the warmth of the gingerbread. This is a masterwork, and every time I don it I feel like I am wearing a work of art of the highest order. And that is the best thing about perfume. It offers a forum for the individual to interact with art in a deeply personal way, beyond even

I chatted with my friend José last night about scent; His seven year old daughter, he says, spends hours and hours in the bathroom, ‘making perfume’. I told him the next time they came over for dinner we could smell perfume together and talk about their compostion. He says she is very interested in chemistry; the parents are both extremely talented scientists—maybe she could become a parfumier ; ) Then Jose and I got to talking about his memories with cologne. He says Shalimar and Tribú remind him of old lovers. Chanel no. 5 is his mother. His father, a wealthy and powerful Mexican artist and politician, is YSL . He himself wears Lacoste . His wife wears nothing. My dear friend Julie, 7 ½ months pregnant, wandered around the party smelling amazingly exotic, yet intensely familiar; It took me awhile to figure out that she was wearing Sensuous , one of my very favorites. It smelled fabulous on her, and it was a very cool experience to smell it on someone else besides me—I’ve almos

Well. I ended up wearing Creed Spring Flowers to the baby shower, and I’m glad I chose that because the shower was full of baby talk and baby paraphernalia, but it was a gorgeous, powerfully bright early spring day. If I had worn something more powdery, I might have risked feeling overwhelmed by the atmosphere of almost suffocating maternal energy and babyish juvenilia. The Spring flowers kept me centered, reminding me that it was finally Spring and that this was all part of a vast phase of rebirth that all the people in the Northern Hemisphere were sharing right now. Spring Flowers isn’t my favorite white floral, but its elegant simplicity was a perfect choice for the luncheon, and its joyous and unapologetically feminine bouquet made me feel just as feminine as the other guests, but just in a different way.

So, if you are a girl, and are anything like me, you have a passion for anything 19th c. novel-ly. Scott, Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, and of course the immortal Miss Austen have been your friends and playmates since you were but a wee slip of a girl. You long for an age of refinement and courtship--or at least enjoy fantasizing about it. You buy tickets in the first week for anything period, and keep up with the BBC's output of historical dramas and classics. But you have tired of the clichéd girls' movie night fare of Pride and Prejudice--even though you, like every other red-blooded female in the Western world, do enjoy mooning over Colin Firth from time to time, and have lapped up even the most silly riffs on the Georgian Romance Theme, like the BBC's ridiculous but pleasurable Lost in Austen . Luckily, there exists a solution to this quandary of movie ennui: you can satisfy your desire to slip into another time, immerse yourself in the minutia of domestic life, and i

The smell of black earth being turned over in a moist spring, complete with earthworms and rotten leaves. An incredibly evocative fragrance, and perfect for me today; I have been dying to garden, to get my hands in the dark earth, but alas, we live in a condo now, and gone are the glorious days of gardening for hours and hours while avoiding my teaching responsibilities and my dissertation. I wonder what my mother would think of this perfume. I must save up and buy her a bottle. She grew up on a wheat farm, and she tells me that one of her favorite things to do as a little girl was to fill up an empty glass Coke bottle with dirt and then drink it. She laughs about it now, joking that she must have had some sort of vitamin deficiency that was righted by consuming that rich farm dirt, but I know it is because she just deeply and truly loves dirt. SHe loves its smell, appearance, and even its taste. I am glad I have inherited my mother's palate. I too love the bitter, earthy,

Vanillic, incredible enveloping warmth, powdery softness, heady danger, just the faintest hint of smoke...but take care. Too much may kill you and those around you--only the smallest amount of this EDP on the skin can tantalize, draw others in like a faintly shimmering tiny diamond on a necklace at the throat's hollow, but too much can be scary and gaudy. I don't get the bergamot note at all here. All I smell is vanilla, powder and smoke--and the sweet myrrh note, which gives it the slightest twinge of herbiness. The other thing to say is that this fragrance is supremely artfully balanced, a composition that weighs the elements agains one another playfully yet creatively. Later on in the drydown, you get almost the sense of a shimmering, milky veil of stars floating around you that is quite heavenly. It is dry yet creamy, and certainly dreamy. Like being haunted by a vision of a past lover. And I guess that's the point, since this perfume

Yes, This is the kind of voluptuousness we are all looking for in a nice musky floral oriental. Something that smells like that silk looks, that would cling to the gauzy whitness of her stockings and dress. That would blend with the smooth warmth and softness of her skin. That would smell feminine, yet masculine, Eastern, yet Western too. That is the essence of Orientalism, in its most exotic, aesthetic form. That feels familiar and maternal, yet dangerous too. That feels rich and creamy and woody and floral all at once.

I have just been rereading Chaucer’s obscure work The Legend of Good Women , and I discovered this delightful ode to a daisy in it. Chaucer’s devotion to the daisy seems earnest and intense: Now have I than swich a condicioun, That, of alle the floures in the mede, Than love I most these floures whyte and rede, Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun. To hem have I so great affeccioun, As I seyde erst, whan comen is the May, That in my bed ther daweth me no day That I nam up, and walking in the mede To seen this flour agein the sonne sprede, Whan hit upryseth erly by the morwe; 50 That blisful sighte softneth al my sorwe, So glad am I whan that I have presence Of hit, to doon al maner reverence, As she, that is of alle floures flour, Fulfilled of al vertu and honour, And ever y-lyke fair, and fresh of hewe; And I love hit, and ever y-lyke newe, And

Well it is certainly much better than Miss Dior Chérie, which was a truly atrocious fruit and caramel explosion, girly in all the wrong ways. This has an almost herbaceous nature, a sort of accord between florals, citrus, and woods, and is certainly greener and more natural smelling than its predecessor, which are all plusses in my book. The problem is, as with most modern perfumes, it takes absolutely no chances. I doubt I would recognize this scent again if I smelled it on someone, It smells generic, and too watery. A safe bet, but nothing special.

Generally I like eating flowers. I love violet pastilles, rose-flavored baklava and rice pudding, and jasmine tea. I love the idea of consuming fragrance. But I hate eating lavender. Maybe it is the deep association with soap--even on the level of semantics, lavender means washing-- or just the sharp herbal edge, but eating or drinking lavender has always repelled me somehow. I love the smell of lavender; it has to be in the top ten of my favorite fragrances, but I can't bear the idea of eating it. For example, once, years ago, a dear friend of mine made some tea cookies for a party I was throwing. So far, so good--I love the powdery, nutty crunchiness of tea cookies. But unfortunately, she spiked them with lavender, which may seem like a good idea to some, but resulted in a cookie which--to my palate at least-- was reminiscent of lavender talcum powder. I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there it is. The one exception I have found is something beyond tolerable. It i

I bought a bottle of this for my husband, who loves the smell of lavender, the sweet dear! It has quite a nice almost medicinal-smelling herbal punch in the first few minutes after spraying, then dries down to a very sedate, yes, English-smelling lavender, rounded out with a bit of powder and sage. The problem with all lavenders, as far as I can tell, is that they have almost no staying powder, making lavender one of those essential yet ephemeral elements in perfumery. I would like someday to find a true lavender scent which lasts and lasts, although to my knowledge, such a creature is an impossibility. Yardley does the trick for that fleeting hour or so of lavender joy, then fades away.

SO everyone talks about scents to wear to weddings--generally big flower scents with a vanilla base--but as far as I know there's no scent for baby showers. I am wondering about this because one of my best friends is having a baby shower tomorrow, and I'm wondering what to wear to get myself in the mood to talk about babies. I am almost never in the mood to talk about babies, and the older I get, the more cantankerous I get about it. Something powdery and vanilla-y, of course, but it will be hard to find something in my wardrobe that fits that description, since I shy away from such scents instinctively. They remind me too much of babies. Maybe something that smells a little milky. Maybe that Harajuku lovers frag called Baby - I remember sampling that and it did sort of smell baby-powdery, in a good way. Basenotes says love's Baby Soft - -maybe I'll pop over to the pharmacy and give that a try. Any suggestions?

This gorgeous cologne has to be the holy grail of men's woody fragrances. I cannot get enough of it. It smells like cedar, but a cedar in heaven, surrounded by ferns and fragrant oriental spices. I really don't think it could be improved. Perfect balance, seemingly simple, yet so evocative and handsome. I imagine green forest, fresh and moist, with moss growing on craggy rocks. It is twilight, it has just finished raining, and all the leaves of the woodland plants have been bruised ever so slightly, and they all give off an incredible scent. When I lived in Missoula, I used to go with my friends to this natural hot spring out in a cedar forest. We would have to hike in a mile or so, often through wet snow, to get to a miraculous place, where hot water bubbled out of the side of a mountain and cascaded into a green/blue river. You could sit in this river an remain warm in a little pool of water from the hot spring. It was truly heaven, and it smelled humid and musky

Ok, the one for whom? This is nice, a well-blended fragrance. The peachy top notes are round and warm-smelling, and the musk blends in nicely. It is not cloyingly fruity or floral, which is certainly a virtue, and it is hard to figure out what scents are at play here, which I think is actually pretty cool. The ultimate result is a creamy, peachy, super-feminine effect, with not great sillage. I don't get the bergamot or the other citrus topnotes at all here. I appreciate that D & G is not catering to the masses too much here. It is not that overly sugary, fruity, lollipop profile which has plagued the industry for years. That said, this perfume is not 'the one' in much the same way as Scarlett Johansson, the poster girl for this fragrance, is not 'the one' in any sense of the word. It is an unexciting, unadventurous scent which relies on a media juggernaut and mass-market unimaginativeness to launch it into some faux 'legendary' category. Ju

While I am on the subject of sweat, I have to rant a little. Why is it so hard to find a nice-smelling drugstore deodorant for women? I mean, at least the men have their classics-- Brut, Old Spice, Jovan Musk , you know the drill--we will ignore all the sporty newfangled abominations. Women have what? Secret? Carribean Cool? Bah humbug. All of them smell sickly sweet and carcinogenic to my nose. The natural ones, alas, do not work. For many years I relied on Dove Fresh , which had an understated but natural-smelling jasmine perfume, but on my last trip to the drugstore, to my dismay, I discovered that they have reformulated that as well and it has become way too sweet smelling now. What to do?

I am sure it's not just me; one of my favorite smells in the world is the smell of a sweaty man. To me it is a rich, fragrant experience, which means happiness and safety. I got this way when I was very little. Two of my most important male figures in my family--my uncle and my best friend's dad--were both very fragrant men, and I loved being near them because I loved them. My own father didn't smell sweaty in this way--his was more subtle, a scent that would linger on his pillowcases and bathrobes, but you couldn't smell on his person. I associated the comfort of his presence with the smell of whiskey and Borkum Riff pipe tobacco. As I write this, I think, no wonder I like all those woody, darker scents. It's all regression, at the end of the day, or at least Herr Doktor Freud would say so! As I got older, I--strangely enough--tended to date men who had little personal fragrance at all. My first serious longtime boyfriend did not smell unless he had been

This is girly, sugary, and not unpleasant, but nothing I would buy for myself or anyone else. The sugary fruitiness does pull away fairly quickly, leaving a decent patchouli base lingering on its lonesome. But there's the rub; who needs another fruity, sugary, patchouli scent? Nobody. But because it's Dior, it is bought by hordes of young things, or people who want to smell like sugar-coated young things, although for the life of me I can't imagine why. One of the delights of growing older is being able to grow into more interesting perfumes than concoctions such as these. Too expensive to be worth it. I'd prefer D & G La Lune any day.

Well, maybe it's me, and maybe it's jasmine, but all the supposedly successful white flower bomb, jasmine perfumes don't seem to do it for me. I have been wearing Cashmere Mist today, and in spite of the woody notes, the scent is simply to one-dimensional, too sickly sweet, to make me want to invest in a bottle, especially when I feel Avon can do as good of a job with a perfume this uninspiring for an eighth of the price. The musky bit of it is ok, and the hint of woods is intriguing, but in the end it just comes off as a generic perfume with nothing in particular to recommend it. Nothing interesting happens in its lifespan; you put it on, and wear it until it wears off. I can see how this could be a comfort scent for some, perhaps the same crowd of people who are overly influenced by ad copy and think 'cashmere= comfy & luxurious, so this perfume must be both those things too." But I am pretty sure, as I sit here and sniff myself, that 'comforta

I thought that Tim Burton's Alice was a horrible, pointless waste of great talent and an even greater story. What an unfortunate, yet totally unsurprising, disappointment! it's so sad, though. My two favorite actors--Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry--given bit parts with absolutely nowhere to go with them. I have never seen a more bland Cheshire cat, and the caterpillar lacked all the requisite weirdness. I blame it on the screenplay, but I am still not happy about it. And don't even get me started on Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. Puke. You can see I'm still mad about it two days later

I have just been checking out this young musician's blog , and am totally impressed with the quality of his compositions. If I lived in Michigan, I would totally seek him out and beg him to start a band with me! He made his own electric cello and has recorded some really original stuff. I love the way a cello sounds. I feel that it is one of western instruments that comes closest to the human voice, and Dave Haughey really exploits this quality.

Don’t let the cheapness, the incredibly yellow juice, or the straightforwardness of the name put you off buying this perfume. I f you want a soliflore—and sometimes nothing else will do, Tea Rose is right on the mark. It smells exactly like a tea rose, and there’s not much more to say, beyond that it is lovely, big, and bloomy, and fabulous. My husband loves this perfume on me, because it reminds him, as he says, of pure happiness, of the feelings he felt when we first began dating (for the first time around). When pressed for more details, he says it reminds him of me naked under my red silk embroidered Chinese robe, pouring tea for him the morning after, and a particularly good shower with me in my old rickety garret apartment in Missoula….enough said. No wonder he gets so excited when I wear it. But I won’t wear it all the time, nor am I eager to make it a ‘signature’ scent, as much as I know he would love that, because I find it to be, well, one

At first sniff this smells God-awful. Like some super heady synthetic sludge. Synthetic and overpowering, not nice at all. It has a sweet play-doh-y feeling and a slight woodiness--but the woodiness seems very synthetic and not very deep to me. I can say that it does smell very foreign, and very alien, and that's not just the ad copy influencing me. The question is, is it a good kind of foreignness, or is it just wrong? As those awful and scary topnotes dry down, the jasmine, the best aspect of this fragrance, comes to the front. The Jasmine and vanilla combine to create a sweet accord which to my nose lacks depth. I keep wanting the woods to come out more to play. The first two hours after the loss of that awful synthetic ugh are this lovely jasmine powder scent, which is very appealing. I begin to like it more the longer I wear it. It is like the smell of jasmine soap in the shower when it picks up the unwashed human body smell and becomes sort of tangy and vanilla-y. Ali

Ok, first of all, this has to be one of the worst bottles I have ever seen. SO CHEESEY. So. Late. 90’s. In the worst way. That sort of retro-girly-cosmo cartoon aesthetic that looks oh so dated now. But I sniffed, and liked. I don’t love it, but I feel the reviews I found when I was browsing the internets for other people’s opinions about this scent and in the perfume bibles were a little harsh. Ok, it smells a bit like D & G Light Blue. So what—is that a crime?If emulation is so bad, most perfumers should be locked up by now. Luca Turin was especially hard on it—one star? Come on, it’s not that bad. It’s nothing special, but it is certainly wearable. It is a straightforward fruity floral scent, good for a girly spring mood. It’s like carrying around a fruitbowl filled with apples, oranges, and lemons, which some fairy magicked so that the boughs of fruit blossoms were still on it. The sillage is not great, but, again, not terrible either. It’s something I imagine donning for

This has to be one of the very best MST3K of all! Or maybe I just like it because I'm a freak for folktales, and the comedy team lampoons their conventions so well in this show. Especially delightful are the wicked stepsister--who really does look like Tom Petty--the priggish main character, who is transformed into a bear for his misbehavior, and, of course, the somewhat creepy character Jack Frost, whose giant wand freezes anything it touches (foreshadowing, anyone?). Anyway, check it out. I'll never forget how hard I laughed (i think I might actually have peed my pants) the first time Isaw this episode. My good undergrad friend and I were at her family's wheat farm in the middle of nowhere in North Central Montana, and they happened to have recorded this on a videotape. We laughed and laughed. A very good memory. Here's a link to the episode on Youtub e . Enjoy!

First of all, the bottle is gorgeous, and it's hard to describe the attachment I have formed to it. Something about the way the little glass ridges feel in my hand--it makes the bottle feel almost oily, but in a good way, like I'm caressing some smooth, well-oiled alien skin. The color is perfect too; it is not pink nor copper nor yellow, but somewhere in between all of them, with a sort of mid-century blocky rose gold cap. Mine stays right on my bedside table, and I find myself admiring its form from time to time. Granted, it's no exotic bottle, but something about this perfume just does it for me. We first fell in love two summers ago, as I wandered the Bloomingdale's on Sixth Ave. in search of a gift to present some Brazilian hosts I had never met, who were putting us up for my brother's wedding to one of their nieces. Well, we didn't fall in love at Bloomingdales ; we had to get to know each other better. But despite my better judgem