hortus conclusus

Last Tuesday I picked up some gorgeous daffodils which were just about to open at my thesis advisor’s house. They opened over the next few days and filled the room with that ethereal jonquil smell—green, powdery, and very light. They looked positively luminous on our dining table, and I enjoyed every second of their presence in my home. Now, 6 days later, they look like this. I guess because I’m a literary type, I read this as a symbol, a reminder of the brevity of all beauty in our lives, and as a reminder to enjoy what we have while we have it. Fragrance functions as just such a reminder, a memento mori , for me every day. In its ever so brief lifespan, a fragrance is born, flowers, and decays , over a length of time comparable to the lifespan of a mayfly. Nothing Gold can Stay, by Robert Frost: Nature's first green is gold Her hardest hue to hold.  Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to gri...

The Goddess Flora has been giving me many little presents the past few days. Today, I stepped out on my back porch and discovered the most delicate little wild violets. Time to make candied violets, one of my spring rituals. Violets remind me of my beloved grandmother, who I still miss daily. Her backyard cobbled courtyard was always full of little wild violets which sprung up in the mortar between the slate stones. It drove her nuts to have them th ere, and she often paid me to hang out and weed the stones for her when I was growing up, but I know she also loved them. I love having candied flowers on hand for impromptu parties when I need to create a beautiful cocktail or for decorating cakes. First, I found the most gorgeous, perfect specimens available, which is sometimes difficult, as you can see; they often hide in the grass. Then I harvest them and wash them very  carefully to avoid bruising their tender petals. On the left you can see part of my lovely harvest. After they h...

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...

Like the James Hilton novel that began the craze for the fantasy of the lost utopian fairyland in the Himalayas, this is going to be an exercise in orientalism. After all, I have never been to Yunnan province, so I can only project my own desires and fantasies onto that place. But Orientalism, like every decadence, can be wonderful in moderation, so I invite you to come with me on a trip to Shangri-La. Since Yunnan is the original home of Camellia Sinensis , you must brew yourself some Pu-erh tea. This is a dark, earthy, yet somehow floral tea, ad it tastes exotic and unique. Sip it l ingeringly, and enjoy it while wearing Jean-Claude Ellena’s masterpiece, Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan , which I consider to be his very best tea scent, minimalism done exactly right. Note how well the scent of the tea and the imagined floral tea interact with one another.   I also recommend watching the chapter of the BBC’s Wild China on Yunnan Province. It is absolutely gorgeous, a...

To wash that t errible Givenchy (Ange ou Demon le Secret) from my nose, I scrubbed myself down, had some coffee, took a deep breath, then applied one of my favorite roses, the lovely, understated Les Parfums de Rosine Ecume de rose , a salty, fresh rose with a certain herbaceous quality to it. Something about the way this interacts with my skin creates that tangy salty smell--or is it a feeling-- that you get when you smell the skin of somebody who has been exercising outsid e in the cold. it is briny, a bit metallic, tickles the nose ever so slightly, and is very real, and it makes all sorts of memories come flooding in. The vetiver (one of my favorite notes) at the base gives this a woody, rooty, musky slant, and really does summon images of a rose bush growing on some rock overlooking some wild oceanscape. Really quite lovely. In some ways this reminds me of a beautiful day I spent with my sister last year. She lives near Seattle, and the day before I had to leave we went to a...

My husband is a lot more meticulous than I am. Where I am slovenly and haphazard, he is careful and graceful. I especially admire the way he makes his daily routines into aesthetic rituals that have a real depth and beauty to them. For example, while I shower in a dark closet of a bathroom, he bathes in a foggy, luminous steam in the other bathroom, which has a window in the shower area. He uses Guerlain’s Vetiver body wash to wash his body—this makes that steam smell absolutely luscious—and a local company’s equally marvelous Mahogany soap for his face. He washes his hair with lavender shampoo, and sometimes conditions with rosemary mint. He says that on of his favorite things about the process is “smelling all the different stuff as I put it on.” Once he feels sufficiently steamed up, he wraps his lithe little body in a white towel, and sets to work on his dark, bristly beard. He lathers up some Crabtree & Evelyn Sandalwood Aromatic Shave Cream and paints it on his face with...

I am a huge fan of Alexander McCall Smith's series of books about the Botswanan lady detective Precious  Ramotswe, all of which are truly a joy to read. McCall Smith's deceptively simple prose somehow succeeds in bringing me on a journey to a place--surely partly imaginary--where life is simple and so is the ethical code, which is based on a lovely notion of traditional values. Precious Ramotswe often finds herself in difficult quandaries, but she always chooses the path that shows care and respect for others while maintaining her own dignity. That may sound boring or too moralistic, but believe me when I say that these books are refreshing, sincere, and completely uncynical. So to inaugurate my new series of Synaesthetic adventures--blueprints for little themed adventures for all your senses--I give you my plan for a very nice afternoon that challenges all your senses. Put the pot on, and brew some nice Rooibos tea . I like it with milk and a tiny bit of sugar, but you...

My husband and I have been mourning the death of one of our favorite products, L'Occitane's Cade After Shave Splash , and have been casting about for a replacement. Then it occurred to me that we could at least try to create a suitable substitute, since what we really need is a strongly spicy/juniper accord in a super-alcoholic splash--I can do that, I told myself. I'm no perfumer, but I figured trying once wouldn't hurt. So I created a base of essential oils of vetiver, cedarwood, rosemary, juniper, and tea tree, blended it, and let it sit. So far so good. Today I pounded down cloves, cardamom seeds, mint, lemon peel, coriander, pepper, cumin, allspice, nutmeg, juniper seeds, and bay leaves into a rough powder in my mortar and pestle, then added a bit of rosewater, my homemade vanilla extract, and a tiny bit of almond oil and pounded again to create a paste. It smelled pretty heavenly, I must say! I funneled the green paste into my essences, the poured in a bunch...

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.

This is an insane opening--the aldehydes hit you like a ton of bricks; this strikes me as a joke in a way, since it seems so out of character with the drydown, which is smooth, smooth, and ever so delicate. This is not the kind of fragrance I personally prefer to wear, but I can certainly appreciate the artistry of what is clearly a perfection within the genre of complex white floral/powder/aldehydes. I sense a cinnamon/jasmine/amber-vanilla accord at the heart of Baghari, and I think it must be the cinnamon that keeps this interesting, adding complexity to what could have been a rather banal (dare I say that?) aldehydic amber.

This is what the trees outside my condo are doing today! I love spring so much! It looks like a magical fairy ring, and certainly brightens up the unfortunate midcentury institutional aesthetic! Now I just need the Lilacs to bloom, and I will be completely happy...

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....

To wash that terrible Givenchy ( Ange ou Demon le Secret) from my nose, I scrubbed myself down, had some coffee, took a deep breath, then applied one of my favorite roses, the lovely, understated Ecume de rose , a salty, fresh rose with a certain herbaceous quality to it. Something about the way this interacts with my skin creates that tangy salty smell--or is it a feeling-- that you get when you smell the skin of somebody who has been exercising outsid e in the cold. it is briny, a bit metallic, tickles the nose ever so slightly, and is very real, and it makes all sorts of memories come flooding in. The vetiver (one of my favorite notes) at the base gives this a woody, rooty, musky slant, and really does summon images of a rose bush growing on some rock overlooking some wild oceanscape. Really quite lovely. In some ways this reminds me of a beautiful day I spent with my sister last year. She lives near Seattle, and the day before I had to leave we went to a public rose ...

Ok, this one is a scrubber, but I am going to bear the disaster on my wrists to get it down on paper, er, in my file. This is a plastic yogurt container filled with baby perfume and bubblegum, maybe some tea, and some accord of faux fruits, all heated up into a microwave until it explodes into a carcinogenic superfund site. There's no secret here--just candy-forward atrocity. Whatever synthetic wood base that is that's lurking at the bottom doesn't do enough work to save it. No intriguing angels or demons here either, unless we count the noonday demon, who is certainly going to creep up on me if I contemplate this any longer. It makes me melancholy to think of all the gorgeous creations that could have come into creation in place of this run-of-the-mill girly thing. If this is 'the secret', kill me now.

This is a revelation. The second I smelled this, I knew I had to have a bottle, immediately (and I bought one, immediately, on Ebay--Pure Parfum, original formulation). Vent Vert accomplishes over a long span of time what CB I hate Perfumes Black March only accomplishes for the briefest of moments--capturing the early green growing things/wet overturned dirt scent of earliest spring. This is classic yet entirely original, masculine, and delicate. I think this is a supergreen, but the earthiness of the vetiver and the galbanum brown it intensely as well. I have never experienced a better earth fragrance for women. This is a little miracle of perfumery, and it is certainly a deep tragedy that it was reformulated with so little care! What are these people thinking? Obviously I am going to have to stock up on the older bottles so I can keep this around me.

For our next adventure in sinaesthesia, I bring you something a little less cheerful and a lot more romantic. Here is the first version of Keats' famous poem of enchantment and perdition, La Belle Dame Sans Merci: Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful - a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. I set her ...

I have just discovered this very sexy scent. This is a bedroom scent for the sexually explorative new millennium. It is, to my nose, a gourmand floriental, but it is also a skin scent; it enhances the smells we make naturally after a night of...enthusiastic sex. It opens up with a subtly indolic floral accord, but the cumin is there under the surface, and one's the wheels of the imagination start whirring, to say the least. All--and I mean all--the human secretions are alluded to here in this perfume, but just made more intense in generally good ways. It is nasty, yet not too dirty, and very suggestive. The drydown is lovely, and the cumin really shines in conjunction with the musk/patchouli/cedar. Clean yet sweaty and, yes, a bit dirty. Brilliant art, though definitely not for everyone. And as strong as an EDP it is not, despite its name.

What a revolutionary perfume Cuir de Russie must have been in its day! It is so masculine, so gender-bending, that I imagine it even would make a huge splash today--and ruffle some feathers. This is classy, classy, classy woman-as-man scent, and it has a certain theatricality to it, a sort of "I'm pushing the limits" cigarry, almost urinous, edginess, but then the florals swoop in, and it says, 'I'm only kidding; I'm just a woman, after all.' Like all classic Chanels, for better (Bois des Iles) or worse (No. 5), this is a super complex thing; it tells a very upper-class story. I imagine one of those virago femme fatales that populate Wodehouse novels wearing this; brassy, horsey, masculine, yet deeply feminine, with hidden urges towards female role-playing that need only the right situation to bring them out. A tour de force, truly, something that both sweeps one's imagination into the past and fits in perfectly into our own postmodern world.

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 ...

I ordered a sample of one of Guerlain's new Voyages Olfactifs, Tokyo, and I must say I am a little disappointed with the resulting green fragrance. It seems awfully one-dimensional for this house, and lacks much excitement. It seems pretty linear, and, dare I say it, rather generic. Tea notes plus cedar plus violet plus orange blossom= meh for me. If this were in the more reasonable price range, I might appreciate it more. Like, Vera Wang should be producing this for the boring mass market. Not Guerlain. This is simply not up to snuff, and I find it tragic that the great perfume house known for baroque elegance is trying to enter the uninspiring modern perfume market in such a way. This is sellout thinking, and I don't like to see it in Guerlain. People should come to this house once their noses have been educated and they are ready for a real fragrance--or they should use Guerlain to educate themselves. Guerlain should not come to them. Grr! Plus, why those trashy bottles? Oh ...

This is a gorgeous violet; it immediately conjures the most delicate mindspaces--Italian forest floors in spring, when the little violets peep out from the leaf mold, delicate mountain streams you come upon just knowing that you surprised a bathing nymph, since a delicate, haunting odor pervades the air. A tin of violet pastilles, floral, musky, and with that core of violet/anise. E.M. Forster's A Room With a View . Diana in a diaphanous linen gown, arrows and bow at her side. The color violet. Sweet breath. It smells old-fashioned, yes. And that is wonderful. It is nostalgic for a time of delicate love letters, prolonged courtship, and refined table manners. A time when spring really meant the airing out of one's house and one's life, walks in the countryside, and the delicate surprise of a perfect, scented little flower.     Candied Violets: Tasting the fragrance of Spring

Hermes bel ami is a gorgeous surprise! The citrus at the top is perfectly calibrated with the spice and the woods below it, and smells so refined. I get a little dirt topsoil note too-probably vetiver, that grounds this and makes it spread out. It reminds me--in the best way-- of sweat, bitter and salty, and I can imagine being very turned on by a man who wore this. What blows me away about this is that it smells so complete, so perfect in its way, both craggy and rounded. A contradiction in its very nature. I guess that is what leather is; something that is smooth yet durable and edgy at the same time. I love the idea of a perfume paradox.

I just tried a tester of this straight musky scent and am impressed with it. I then checked online reviews, and was somewhat surprised to see so many people put this down, saying pretty much the same thing, every one of them--an unexciting, well-behaved musk. Suspicious, I checked my copy of Tanya Sanchez and Luca Turin's Perfumes, the Guide , and sure enough, he gave it two stars, and, you guessed it, said it was an unexciting, well-behaved musk. this just goes to show how much of the perfume-connoisseur business is, like other things like wine tasting and art appreciation, an Emperor's New Clothes deal. If one of the big players says something, God forbid someone thinks otherwise!