hortus conclusus

IN my other non-perfumista life, I am writing a dissertation on the medieval English outlaw   tradition, so this hilarious post over at “Geoffrey Chaucer hath a Blog” really tickled my funnybone this morning. Check it out, if only to marvel that this blogger writes everything in Middle English! I think it is especially fun to think about Robin Hood in the summer months, when the leaves are green and the birds are singing, and it’s possible to imagine a happy life among the greenwood trees, living off the land and an occasional deer. Question: is there a fragrance that captures the summer scent of a ferny deciduous forest? My go-to Robin Hood perfume (yes, I have one, why are you looking at me so funny?) is Wild Hunt , but that isn’t really high summer. Suggestions, anyone?   Images by Wyeth and Pyle, courtesy of the Robin Hood Project

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 ...

. Krh'ssai nu' pot? w?^d? e?mmele'ws po'dessin w?rxeu^nt? a?pa'lois a?mf? epo'enta Bw^mon po'as te'pen a?'nðos ma'lakon ma'teisai. Thus sometimes, the Cretan women, tender footed, dance in measure round the fair altar , crushing the fine bloom of the grass. Grassy scents for your consideration: Balmain Vent Vert Tommy Hilfiger T Girl CB I hate perfumes To See a Flower Nasomatto Hindu Grass Tauer Vetiver Dance Demeter Firefly Weil Bambou and antilope Gap Grass (I haven’t tried this) Annick Goutal Petite Cherie And a grass scent that ‘de-stresses’ here Marc Jacobs Grass Other ideas? CREDITS: Claude Lorraine painting and 3 dancing nymphs relief from Wikimedia Commons, Sappho poem and translation at Sacredtexts.com

Today is my birthday, April 18th, and I have always found it significant that it also happens to be the day that the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales set out on their pilgrimage, “the holy Blissful martir for to seke/ that hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.” As a medievalist, I love it that I share my special day (well, at least the day of my birth) with one of the greatest compositions in the English language, as well as the fact that the tales open with an invocation of springtime and rebirth, an idea that I am always in love with this time of year: "Whan that Aprille with his shoores soote/ the dorughte of March hath perced to the roote/ and bathed every veyne in swich licour, / of which vertu engendred is the flour...and smalle foweles maken melodye / that slepen all the nyght with open eye/ So priketh hem Nature in hir corages, / Than longen foolk to goon on pilgrimages /And palmeres for to seken straunge strandes / to ferne halwes, kouthe in sondry londes....

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.

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, ...