hortus conclusus

From an email sent to me from my perfume pen pal, Tamara: Ok...so I gotta tell yah what happened to me today! I got a generous sample from a new PPP [perfume pen pal] of mine- God bless her! In these samples is thee infamous Mitsy edp! And whoa bebe, I'm excited to try her on for size. I've read so many threads on her and reviews galore. I am ready to dive into her legend that is alive and well in  Perfumistaland. I'm puttin' on my 'big girl panties' for this one! I get her on me. And.. It's Mitsouko Mayhem to my nose. I recognize the smell of too many a lady in a too small office, so much peachy spicy Mitsouko love these women had! Where is that love now- on me?  She is murdering me, assaulting me with her delicious d eath moan. I do my best to fend her off- "Be nice Mitsy, love ME Mitsy!" I try to scream at her but she attacks my open mouth , I shut it and quit huffing her. But to no avail- she clobbers me  nearly t...

L' Heure Bleue. I am twitterpated by her pensive softness. She is lovely and melancholy and I want to give her a home right by the fire come late fall. Everything about this scent is perfect. I know some people can't handle what they perceive as "G'ma's here!" But I am enamored by the spicy carnation, fluffy violet and creamy rose and tuberose. And the drydown is what I crave the most. I know she stands for the The Blue Hour in twilight and I get that but for me she fits right in with my tender dreams of spring on a brutal, grey /blue day in the heart of winter when each afternoon bleeds into the next with no change in sight. We can console each other till the dawn.... Aaagghhh there I go again, waxin poetic to yah! Fragrance gets that outta me everytime. Written by Tamara CREDITS: Viktor Vasnetsov, “Snow Maiden,” 1899, in Tretyakov Gallery, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I love perfume. I want it. I want to own bottles of the things I love. I am coming to understand that these urges need to be counterbalanced by a little self-awareness and frugality. SO here, I present you with the rules I have established to keep my growing addiction in check. keep your collection in plain sight of your household; if you are ashamed of your passion and feel the need to hide it, maybe you need to examine it a little more thoroughly. make a monthly budget and stay within it—this is hard, especially when you run into a great sale. never buy a bottle cold—I must sample the fragrance on my skin at least 5 times before buying.  use the bottles you have. Don’t just let them sit there unused.   bear in mind that this is a collection—some people stock a cellar with wine-you choose to do the same with fragrance. No need to feel overly guilty about a legit hobby, but just compare your budget and use of resources with peers who col...

Every time I think I have a handle on the incredible Guerlain lineup of fragrances, the ground shifts beneath my feet, I smell something again, for the first time, for the latest in the string of revelatory times, and my perspective changes. I then see the quality of one category of fragrance completely differently—all other iterations of genre pale in comparison to the one brilliant Guerlain creation. Such was my experience tonight with Nahema , a Guerlain I know well, own in several forms, thought I understood….I was wrong. Tonight was a hot rainy day, followed with a humid overcast evening. I put on Nahema and she radiated from my skin. I finally understood her, because she was part of me, or was I part of her? It didn't matter, really. There she was, a shifting whorl of impressions, now a lavender, now a cinnamon, now the smell of damp sweat, now the physical incarnation of the idea of the dark tang of love at midnight. never a rose in the sense of a rose is a rose is a r...

Time to get a present for Dad, and if yours is anything like mine, that is a serious challenge. Most dads don’t want anything you can afford to get them (cars, computers, trips to exotic locales) so you usually flake out and go for the easy options (ties, food, drink, fragrance, books, gift certificates, etc.) Well, this is a fragrance blog, so I can help you with one of those categories. Here are my top ten picks for smells for Dad for this year. Some are pricey, some are cheap, some are in the middle. These are not only some of my favorite masculines, they are also all a little more unique than the ubiquitous Ralph Lauren Polo or Hugo Boss. You can also check out my guidelines for picking out perfumes for mom , but sometimes dads are a little harder to read, and give you less to work with. These are in no particularly significant order, by the way. These are not necessarily my favorite masculines of all time; they are just ones I think most men would not push away in disgust, and ...

“A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.”— Clive Bell , Since Cezanne , p. 32. Strange and wonderful is the perfumer’s art. I am thankful for it every day, since it brightens my life and gives me great joy. Like any other high art form, it can be cheapened, or made obtusely complex just for the sake of obfuscation. Not so with Swiss perfumer Andy Tauer’s Une rose chyprée , which is just as artistic as it needs to be, just as complex, as unique, as it should be, nothing more, nothing less. A real work of artistic maturity, in my opinion. Tauer’s Une Rose Chyprée boasts an intriguing  cinnamon nose-tingle, peachy depths, soft ambergris, salty shimmer, green labdanum, and a large dose of quality rose that doesn’t behave like a rose at all. The base is, as the official notes describe it –as ‘dark and resinous...

One of my favorite moment moments in modern fragrance history is the great Spicy Oriental boom of the Eighties. These fragrances were awesome, in my opinion; Opium, Cinnabar, Shalimar, Poison, Coco —these ladies didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought of them. They were huge, domineering, impossible to mistake for another, and were so powerful that they launched the biggest backlash ever—the ultimate domination of ‘quiet’, ‘linear’ fragrances like CK One and Bulgari’s Thé Vert . What nobody seemed to realize, or at least care about,  at the time is that these fragrances were singing the swan song of the great operatic fragrance a la big perfume house. Since then, most new releases—even from the great houses of Chanel and Guerlain—have been nice at times, but never as complex, dense, and intriguingly impossible to completely understand as these powerful creatures of their time. Of course, niche perfumers still create grand fragrances  with lots going on all the time, b...

All you Shalimar purists out there may want to avoid this post. I mean it, step away NOW! I am doing something to one of the first and best orientals that you may find unconscionable, so if the idea of tampering with the magnificence that is Shalimar makes you break out in hives, stop now before it’s too late. You see, (and this is embarrassing for me to admit this) I have been layering Shalimar with…well, let me start over at the beginning. You know how I like to buy fragrances wh ile I’m on a trip , so  I can associate the memories of the trip with a fragrance and then use it to recall the memories in greater detail? Well, when I went to the medieval conference in Kalamazoo, I took a little day trip to Ulta to search for a nice oriental to wear to the big dance on Saturday night. Nothing really struck me after a long sniff session, so I bought some banana boat sunscreen and headed back in my car to campus. But I was hungry, and saw a Walgreens, and pulled in, inte...

  Well, my love is away, and we have been apart for over a week now, and two days to go. I am lonely but not too; after the conference and the very pleasant but busy visit with my brother and sister-in-law in Detroit, I am happy to have some time alone. Alone that is, but not alone. I have Guerlain’s princess Nahema , a blowsy dark friend who floats around me, whispering in my ear. I have a glass of wine. and I have the moon. And I have my poems, one of which reflects my sentiments tonight exactly. Moon, Flowers, Man I raise my cup and invite The moon to come down from the Sky. I hope she will accept Me. I raise my cup and ask The branches, heavy with flowers, To drink with me. I wish them Long life and promise never To pick them. In company With the moon and the flowers, I get drunk, and none of us Ever worries about good Or bad. How many people Can comprehend our joy? I Have wine and moon and...

As those of you who have been keeping an eye on this blog over time may know, this is a relatively new blog. I have been obsessed with fragrance for many years now, and keeping notes for myself, but it has only been a few months since I began making my thoughts and feelings on the subject public in this forum. I thank you for staying with me as my husband and I tweaked the format of the blog pages, and tried to get all the feeds, searches, etc. running properly. I am still feeling my way around the blogosphere, learning what works and what doesn’t and trying to figure out exactly how to tailor my own blog.   There are a LOT of really great fragrance blogs out there, and I follow and admire the work of many writers who know way more about the fragrance industry and the art of perfumery that I do. I admire them and am not trying to complete with their expertise and knowledge. I simply add another voice to the chorus of fragrance enthusiasts, and offer a focus on integrating fra...

I am getting ready for another round of academic interviews for professorships and have been plotting my fragrance strategy, and I figured other people would be interested in my quandary: what does a woman wear to an important job interview? She needs to feel empowered, subtly womanly, and happy, but she should obviously wear nothing that could put people off (so out goes one of my favorites, Samsara , which isn’t everyone’s), but what other criteria should she use to judge which fragrance would be best? Here is a list of criteria I came up with, but I’d be thrilled to get your input! the scent should be classic—nothing too unusual, exotic, or oddball, i.e. Chanel’s Cuir de Russie , not Thierry Mugler’s Angel.  the scent should skew masculine. Consider wearing a classic men’s cologne, like Guerlain Vetiver , Geo F. Trumper’s Royal Fern, or Caron Pour Homme. Although it is wrong that we still live in a sexist world, you might as well play the game an...

Tonight we are going to take a gorgeous trip through the land of vanilla. First stop: Guerlain’s Shalima r , the qu een of Orientals, the vanillic fantasy goddess. Second stop: vanilla pudding, warm. Third stop: your most comfortable, yet beautiful clothes. Fourth stop: a down comforter, and someone to cuddle with. Maybe you put on a favorite movie, maybe you just enjoy one another’s company, maybe you play a lush, gorgeous album—I suggest Caribou’s Andorra or Iron and Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog --  and listen to it together. But as you are eating the pudding, think about the sweetness of the sugar, and the way it interacts with the cream, and the smoky softness of the vanilla. Smell the Shalimar and keep the scent in your nose and mind as you sample the pudding. Note how well the two play together.Hug the blanket closer around you and feel the fabric and the plushness caress your skin. hug your partner. Think about whether you these experiences are in accord with the vanilla puddi...

I have been going through a citrus phase lately, wearing Hermes Eau d'Orange Verte and Serge Lutens' Fleurs D'Oranger lots and lots , and even sometimes the light citrusy juices Eau de Fleurs de Cedrat and Euphoria Blossom . I found myself mixing a drink last night that really summed up my feelings on the matter. You can see that it looks a bit like a raw egg, so I'm still trying to come up with the right moniker. The 'yolks' in the center are little kumquats, cut in half and squeezed lightly to release their singular citrus fragrance and flavor. I cut up a lime and put it in a shaker with just the tiniest soupcon of Saint-Germain elderflower liqueur, then poured in the Russian Standard vodka that is my hands-down preference for vodka (an article coming on this soon) and a bit of homemade club soda. The composition overall is very fragrant, delicate, and delicious, and tastes a little bit like drinking some bespoke flower water.

Does anyone else feel the way I do about Whistler's Peacock room? This room, an orientalist fantasy dressed up to the nines, is absolutely gorgeous, and I think if I could have any living space in the world to occupy for the rest of my life, I would choose this one if it were only possible. See the exhibition pictures here . It is like living in a perfume bottle. I love the way the gilding looks on the teal walls, and the built in golden shelving. I also love the fact that Whistler just totally ignored the owner's wishes and went all out decorating the room while he was away. The question is, what perfume ought one to wear in such a room as this? My bet is Bois des Iles , or maybe Mitsouko , but I'd love to hear other opinions! It needs to be decadent, over-the-top, but oh so perfect....

I am deeply in love with Samsara . I have decided, upon reflection, to like the name, even, since the deeply seductive nature of this perfume would certainly derail anybody on the path to enlightenment. (see the great article on Samsara’s name and history here at Perfume Shrine ) I have yet to try the newer formulations, but in my opinion, the treatment of sandalwood here is exceptional--as good as, dare I say it, Chanel's Bois des Iles. I don't care if some find it an inferior Guerlain. They are just letting crap ad copy get in their way, I believe. On my dry skin, the sandalwood lasts and lasts, and the jasmine functions as a sort of shimmering infusion. In the EDT, the opening is slightly unpleasant--green, hyperfloral, and slightly cloying, but wait ten minutes, and you'll find yourself on a boat to a dreamspace full of warm sheets, aromatic woods, and beautiful dark-eyed women. This is actually a skin scent on me; you have to get close to me to detect it, and ...

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 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...

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...

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...