hortus conclusus

I love seasonal changes! In fact, I love them so much that I even teach a class about them at my university, called (admittedly a bit awkwardly) “A Midsummer Night’s Weirdness.” This class chronicles in particular the liminal moments of the seasonal year as celebrated in traditional societies, for long before Shakespeare wrote his play, strange things have been happening on the longest day of summer and the longest day of winter in Medieval European literature. Portals to other realms open up, lovers fall in and out of love, strange fairy women appear to choose a mate or a victim, and magic boats materialize at the shore, waiting to take an adventurous hero away on a voyage he’ll never forget—and from which he may never return. My class examines some of the texts which describe the otherworldly effects of these weirdest of nights, including Celtic, French, and Spanish romance, including works by Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, British ballads, ...

There has been a lot of bad press about Detroit and its environs lately, but I must say, it is a great place to shop for perfume. I have had a great time this past week exploring the little specialty boutiques, as well as the big stores packed with scent. It is a welcome change for me from my small upstate town, which is nice in its way, but has absolutely nowhere to sniff things! SO here, my list of must-dos in Detroit for perfumistas. First, one simply must head off to Birmingham, a gay-friendly suburb of the big city filled with locally-owned upscale boutiques as well as a few chain stores here and there. There you’ll find two very pleasant venues for sniffing. Well, actually, these shops are more than just pleasant. I had a great time in both of these charming boutiques, and found myself wishing I lived closer so I could enjoy the sniffings offered in Birmingham more often. The first, Lori Karbal , is  an adorable, well-curated beauty supply and clothing store. I spoke w...

The Phoenix , an Anglo-Saxon poem, tells the story of the Phoenix’s migration across exotic lands to find its special island, where it builds a nest out of exotic spices with loving and tender care, only to immolate itself in this fragrant nest/bier. The poetry is very beautiful. You can hear it being read out loud in Old English here. Bið him neod micel þæt he þa yldu         ofestum mote þurh gewittes wylm         wendan to life, feorg geong onfon.         þonne feor ond neah þa swetestan         somnað ond gædrað wyrta wynsume         ond wudubleda to þam eardstede,         æþelstenca gehwone, wyrta wynsumra,         þe wuldorcyning, ...

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...

Damn that Mariah Carey and her saccharine juvenilia, now complete with tooth-rot, Laurent le Guernec AND repulsive references to engagement. Behold the latest atrocity: link to NYT article on Mariah’s new perfume line Credits: Brown Sugar pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I am introducing a new feature here on Hortus Conclusus , in which a perfume bottle sings a little riddle, and it’s up to you, dear readers, to guess which bottle of perfume is riddling. To start us out on the best possible foot, My first poem has an easy solution! Which of you will be the first to guess, I wonder: I’m not a pentangle. I live in a square I bubble like golden champagne filled with air, My obscure beginnings are shrouded in mystery But that won’t stop people from telling my history. I fly through the air, I swim with the fishes. Scientists say I reside in all ditches. I go everywhere, and all know my fame therefore I know that you have guessed my name. I will never die; you keep me alive. By now you have guessed, I’m ________! Image of Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.  

Don’t forget about the Tauer perfume giveaway! Enter Here . Ormonde Jane Woman is a very interesting fragrance; arresting, powerful, and very unique. It is a very intriguing blend of what I would categorize as ‘dusty’ smells—things that are not ‘powdery’ per se, but somehow feel dry and crumbly, as if the molecules are falling apart into little particles as they rise into the air. This is an unscientific way to describe the feeling I get when I smell violet, cedar, sandalwood, and some vetivers. Ormonde Jayne woman brings all of these together in one mysterious little fragrance, with the addition of ‘pure hemlock absolute’ which here sort of functions as a wild card, with a certain woodiness and round sweetness to it that somehow perfectly complements all the dusky dusty smells. The pepper and cardamom open up with spicy strangeness this unusual yet magnetic fragrance, then give way to a mildewy powderyness that is the heart of the fragrance (and I mean mildewy in the best possi...

I have been thinking about this question a lot lately, since I find that I ‘see’ fragrance in different ways depending on what scent I’m wearing and how much I have on. For example, if you only wear a little light perfume on your pulse points, do you imagine those spots radiating with scent? Or imagine the fragrance sitting on them as a different color or as a mist? If you perfume your body more heavily, do you imagine yourself wrapped in an invisible garment, which can be glittery, fuzzy, warm, etc. depending on the perfume? And on a similar line, how do you understand/mythologize/visualize your sillage? Do you imagine the scent you leave in your wake in literal terms, like the wake left behind by a boat? Or do you think again about clothing, about having a train flowing behind you? Or do you think of it in terms of music, of leaving behind the memory of a song? Scentshelf’s wonderful post over at Notes from the Ledge has gotten me thinking about all the unusual ...

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 ...

I always thought sangria was a stupid invention. I mean, why would you add citrus to wine? It seemed all wrong. Ditto orange in chocolate, coffee, etc. Why take two intense flavor profiles which have little in common—and what they have in common isn't something you want to enhance, like acidity—and then push them together into some Dr.. Frankenstein creation. Such was my line of thought as I sat out on my back patio, sipping my husband’s homemade sangria, which is nice as far as such things go, when I spritzed on Andy Tauer’s newest creation Orange Star, to review.   In a moment of serendipity, it all came together. When I smelled that intense, superfesh, almost Tang-like orange topnote in conjunction with the fabulous Tauer resinous incense, which here smells fabulously bitter, but in a nice way, like a good juicy orange peel, I understood so much more than the fragrance itself. I understood what it means to go out on a limb, to try something intense, problematic, difficult. ...

. 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

This isn’t a real post today, just a link to the most amazing toiletries carrying case I have ever seen! (Made by Hermes in the 30’s, of course—who else, I ask you?) In a perfect life, this is what I travel with, and all my favorite juices are tucked snugly into their respective compartments. This has to be seen in its entirety to be believed. Go check out the full set of photos from Habitually Chic. This blew my groggy little mind this morning. How do you all travel with your fragrance? I only bring samples I haven’t tried yet to test, one for every other day, and usually buy  a bottle along the way …. Yours, La Bonne Vivante p.s. Don’t forget to enter my Tauer Perfume giveaway here ! CREDITS: pic at left from Habitually Chic.blogspot.com.  The beautiful image of leather luggage borrowed with permission from my friend THE TRAVELER

My dear friend Jessica, who has been a sweetheart and followed this blog from the very beginning, through some synchronicity always leaving encouraging comments  when I’m about to give up this foolhardy project, is a brilliant art historian who works on medieval Islamic art—cool right? She divides her time between Upstate NY, Minnesota, Morocco, and Spain. Her husband is a dashing young Moroccan man—I so envy her glamorous life. SO, as she’s been following this blog, she has noted, with a specialist’s eye, how often Morocco seems to come up in modern perfumers’ portfolios. I’ll quote her response to my giveaway of Tauer perfumes (you should enter! Go here ): “Seems like the man has a thing for Morocco, no? If I win I can't wait to see how much I think this really smells like the Morocco I know.” I doubt it would smell like the Morocco Jessica knows, the real Morocco—or at least her real Morocco, (since how do you make a smell that represents a whole country? I shudder t...

First, a reminder to enter for a chance to win my Tauer perfume giveaway here as you dear readers may know, I am an old fan of the great English domestic novel , but I have noticed a disturbing phenomenon; as I grow older, I begin identifying less with the sweet young 15 year old heroines, and more with their mothers and aunts with all their peccadilloes of character and odd obsessions. Do they ever grow tired of watching, aiding, and abetting the young females as they perform their elaborate mating dances, flirting and giggling till the wee hours of the morning at country dances while they, the older women, gossip and play cards? Do they ever tire of living vicariously through them, when their blood is pulsing just as quickly—or even more so--through their own veins? Do they  ever wish their stolid, unimaginative, dependable husbands would shape up and be more attentive? As they sit in their boudoir among their pots of cream and scent, do they fantasize about a new romanc...

First, a reminder to enter for a chance to win my Tauer perfume giveaway here You know I love Persia. Here in the classic erotic handbook The Perfumed Garden , find a fragrant cure for impotence. I imagine drinking such perfume might make anyone feel in the mood, provided he doesn’t get a bellyache… “Undoing of Aiguillettes (Impotence for a Time ) Know, O Vizir (God be good to you!), that impotence arises from three causes: Firstly, from the tying of aiguillettes. Secondly, from a feeble and relaxed constitution. And thirdly, from too premature ejaculation. To cure the tying of aiguillettes you must take galanga, cinnamon from Mecca, cloves, Indian cachou, nutmeg, Indian cubebs, sparrowwort, cinnamon, Persian pepper, Indian thistle, cardamoms, pyrether, laurel seed, and gilly flowers. All these ingredients must be pounded together carefully, and one drinks of it as much as one can, morning and night, in broth, particularly in pigeon broth; fowl broth may, ...