Monthly Archives: November 2012

The Poison Rose – Paestum Rose by Eau d’Italie

Short perfume review, World of Perfume November 26, 2012 Comments: 13

I don’t remember the last time my perfume caused so many reactions, from “Please don’t wear it ever again as it’s making me sick” (coming from my boyfriend), to “It feels like entering a poison ivy cloud, it clears the sinuses” (by a colleague). The last one was actually meant in a positive way. 🙂

I read my old review of a sample of this perfume and here is where the whole dabbing vs. spraying a perfume make all the difference.

Spraying Paestum Rose gives you a day-long sillage you can smell. I’ve been smelling it for the whole day and enjoying myself – I really like this perfume even though it seems I will have to stop wearing it.

Notes: Davana, cinnamon, pink and rose pepper, coriander, blackcurrant buds, osmanthus,
peony, Turkish rose, tea, elemi, incense, myrrh, opoponax, cedarwood, papyrus,
patchouli, wenge, vetiver, musk, benzoin

Truth be told, there is an edge to this perfume. I think that is the reason why I love it so much, it seems to be the perfect blend of a well-formed and redolent rose in full bloom, but in this case the thorns have a smell and they warn you not to get too close. Taking apart this perfume by the notes you can smell, will not bring you close to picturing the smell in your mind – it is they type of perfume that gives you an aura. A poisonous one it seems, but I mean that in the best possible way.
I love feeling poisonous if it means I smell of Paestum Rose.

But I understand why other people might not be so happy about it…

I’m lost

I've been thinking, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume November 20, 2012 Comments: 15

I believe it’s the case of as I know more the less I feel I know.
I am getting a bit lost among my perfumes (and perfumes in general).
Each morning I stand in front of my stash and I have no idea what to put on. I don’t seem to be able to see the trees in the proverbial forest (I’m getting it backwards). 😉
I can’t seem to figure out what exactly is it I want to wear. I like the choices I make, after all, there is a reason I own those decants and bottles but something is not clicking.
I am prone to blaming it on stress ( stress is such a great thing, you can blame it for everything) but I think it’s more likely the case of me not getting as familiar as I should with both my collection and the perfumes outside my ‘comfort’ zone. I realized yesterday I’m a bit stuck in the groups I like when I went to a little sniffing session in Flores here.
I decided to try CDG Daphne again and realized I now liked it. I tried it twice before and completely dismissed it.
I think that the fact so many perfumes go through my hands makes me lose focus of the things I love and enjoy and that is how I lost myself among the perfumes.

I am now hoping that by trying to smell my samples and getting to know better all I have, I will regain my focus and enjoy wearing the perfumes I have much more than now.

I do not plan on adding anything to my collection until I get a handle on what I have. Swapmania withstanding as I’m getting some lovelies through that. 🙂

Ok now that I’ve rambled through this post, I should say it was prompted by smelling Amouage Opus III.

I like it even though it’s not my kind of perfume but I can’t figure out whether I would wear it or not. Even though it reminds me of the dentist’s office for some reason.
Does this happen to anyone else? Something similar maybe?

Sample of the day: Ambrarem by Histoires de Parfums

Sample of the day, World of Perfume November 14, 2012 Comments: 7

I’ve been smelling this sample for over a week now and each time I smell it, I have something else to say about it. I find it extremely strange and I don’t think I could wear it but I am strangely attracted first to its brooding peculiar smell and then to its ambiental nature. It would be the perfume for a strange, dark sexy, ambivalently good hero of the Northern sea-dwelling people. 🙂 I have no idea where that came from but that’s how it made me feel this time around.

Top Note: Pink Peppercorn, Elemi
Heart Note: Iris Absolute, Oud, Saffron
Base Note: Castoreum Absolute, Bourbon Vanilla, Sandalwood, Amber

In the beginning, I thought of it as an herbal amber, leathery, slightly green (as in shrubbery green) and lightly smoky. Now I smell the light pepperiness, leatheriness and smokiness rising from my arm and feel the connection to the rest of the Histoires de Parfums collection (there is something in there that makes you connect the dots to the rest of the collection).

But after I got the impression of my dark hero, later on, I smell the place he lives. It smells like dark, weedy sea at the beginning of a stormy night and the oud definitely adds to that idea. Really ambiental. And the image makes me go weak at the knees.

I sincerely appreciate the strangeness that is this perfume.

The notes work in synergy to bring to life this transporting perfume – those that I can smell not being the whole of what I smell (peppercorn, elemi, oud, hints of sandalwood and ambery saltiness in the drydown).

 

My sample was made by the lovely people at Jovoy while in Paris.

P.S. Aragorn was the closest to my sexy imagined dark lord I could find.

Running

I've been thinking November 12, 2012 Comments: 12

That seems to be the theme of my life these days. Not only do I go running regularly, I also seem to have a lot of things that need doing so I’m running around trying to finish them all.

I have no idea how that happened and when I look back, I cannot pinpoint a moment where I lost control and running (around) became the theme of my life. The good thing about it though, is that I also seem to be getting a lot more accomplished this way.

Yesterday I ran my second half-marathon. I still have a hard time believing I started running and 21km later I stopped. OK, so it lasts much longer for me than it does for many others but I get there in the end (and not as the last person). At what point did my idea to do something for my general fitness rampantly run away and made me a person who can run a half-marathon? I have no idea. I just know I love it. (I don’t love the fact that I have a hard time walking today as my muscles ache somewhat incredibly)

But I believe in there lies the reason why I can run around these days and get a lot done. Even when I don’t feel like I have enough energy, it’s there and I go through my chores and still have time to read more than several months ago.

I understand now how people get hooked on running and never give it up. I sincerely hope I never give it up either as it brought me nothing but good. Ok, except for when I get so hungry I feel I could eat a horse and then I proceed to eat a lot. 🙂

I realize I’ve been rambling in this post but I wanted to share my love of running with you and since I am still tired from yesterday, I can’t get my thoughts to follow a coherent pattern.

In the end, I decided to share the photo of me before the finish line even though running photos generally make you look like you are suffering in hell. 🙂

Btw, I should add here I feel very lucky that the next half-marathon our school is wanting us to go to, is in spring. 😉

 

Pic taken by Zvonimir Mikasek of www.3sporta.com

 

Kim Newman: Anno Dracula

Book review, World of Books November 8, 2012 1 Comment

Ha! I’ve been writing this review for several days now and now that it’s done, it’s Bram Stoker’s 165. birthday anniversary. so, I’m right on time. 🙂

Let me start by warning you that when the cover says savage new world, you can take that literally. It is a really cruel depiction of Victorian England, or what Mr. Newman imagines it would look like if Vlad Tepes/Count Dracula made Queen Victoria a vampire and married her. I shudder just thinking about it.

That said, the book is actually fun to read. 🙂 It’s not funny though. It’s cruel and depicts a dictatorial system where vampires are taking more and more power unto themselves (in England).

There is a whole bunch of famous people appearing or being mentioned in the novel, some who were real, some who are only famous through their own books (like the Holmes brothers, Jack the Ripper, Van Helsing and so on).

This Dracula is the one from the Bram Stoker’s novel, only this time there is no novel and Bram Stoker is gone with the Dracula in power – this Dracula has no romantic connotations we might imagine from the original story, all bets are off in this world, and you better relocate to some other country if you want to live your life to old age.

We follow the story of several political (and criminal) factions trying to discover who is killing the vampire whores (Silver Knife renamed by newspapers into Jack the Ripper). That is how we meet both Genevieve (the vampire) and Charles Beauregard (human) trying to discover who that person is. You, as the reader, follow several characters’ minds and know quite early on who is the killer, but that doesn’t detract from the story.

I must say I didn’t see the ending happening in the way it did, but it was good.

I have no idea how this series flew under my vampire books radar for so long but I’m glad I know of them now and the next one is already on my TBR pile.

Sample of the day: Bond no. 9 So New York

Sample of the day, World of Perfume November 7, 2012 Comments: 10

Ok, who puts these notes as the main notes of a perfume?! Mirabelle, espresso accord and cocoa powder? (Btw, I had to google Mirabelle, I didn’t know that was a plum)

I mean, I find it a bit stupid as I was smelling it without checking the notes and at some point I was wondering if what I was smelling was flowers – rose and peony and a little more googling turned out Aus Liebe zum Duft and their more real list: bergamot, warm milk?!, patchouli, lily of the valley, peony, musk and precious woods.

Although honestly, the notes didn’t help much.

My initial thought was that it smelled a bit like Chinatown (the sweet fruity warm opening) and Lexington Avenue (the nutty sweet coffee and I thought I detected some smoke) but in a more subdued fashion. Could be the fact that I dabbed this and not sprayed it like I do with the other two but it still struck me as a lighter combination of these two.

Which brings me to the question – does New York smell of sweet fruit, coffee and cigarette smoke? As those seem to be a recurring theme in Bond’s NY perfumes.

I already described practically the whole opening, but if I were to ignore my associations, I’d say it smells like plums dipped in chocolate with some booziness added to that chocolate. Yummy!

 After some time the florals take over. I still can’t believe I pegged peony without looking at the notes. 🙂 Although lily of the valley completely escaped me before and after knowing the notes. The whole perfume is  kind of a strange mix of the notes I described, which work together rather well until the drydown and the musk. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of synthetic musk I think of as the clean musk that overtakes my nose and won’t let me smell anything and that is what happened here.

I know many people enjoy that type of smell but for me it ruined this perfume. I was bound to love a light type of mix of two of my favourite Bonds.

 

Pic taken from Bond No. 9 site.

Sample of the day: MPG Ambre PrĂŠcieux

Sample of the day, World of Perfume November 6, 2012 Comments: 7

Like I mentioned yesterday, I want to try and review, even if it sometimes ends up being two sentences, all the samples in my collection. Now that I said that, I don’t think that will ever be possible due to their immensity, but you never know. How many I manage to get through will be great.

So, notes from Luckyscent say: myrtle, lavender, amber, vanilla, nutmeg, ambergris, peru balsam, tolu.

Luckyscent also sets this on their scale as beginning masculine which upset me to no end when I saw it. 🙂 But I admit now they were correct. Which does not mean I don’t plan on wearing it.

The thing is, if you went by the notes, you might think this was going to be a sweet amber (with all the vanilla type notes). But it’s not. Which is kind of strange as I find it very intoxicating and can imagine that a man smelling like Ambre Precieux would turn female heads just by the fact that he’s wearing that perfume.

It starts of with an alcoholic amber opening, and when I say alcoholic, I don’t mean in it in the booze type of smell but more of the vintage variety where you can sometimes smell the fact that perfumes are mainly alcohol (the very good kind). 🙂

In the opening there is a lightly sweet note of the typical amber kind lightly combined in my opinion with something incensey (although that note isn’t listed). I thought I might be mistaking lavender and the spiciness in the beginning for incense (once I saw lavender note, it became clear I was smelling it) but later on I kept thinking I caught whiffs of it as the perfume loses that little sweetness it had and heads into dry amber with hints of salty skin territory.

Even though I love ambers and always smell any kind of perfume even hinting at amber, this one smelled original to me. Possibly because of all my ambers I never came across one that I would admit to being more masculine than feminine (I somehow always think ambers are feminine – they smell seductive to me).

It makes perfect sense though to create one seductive amber for guys to wear then. And Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier did just that.

 

Going back to my samples (of the day)

I've been thinking, Sample of the day November 5, 2012 Comments: 6

I used to do this in the beginning of my blog but for several reasons (life usually happens), I stopped with those reviews and never picked them up again.

Now my sample stash has grown into a jungle, overtaking a lot of free space around me, I feel it’s time to put this back into motion and work my way through them. I wonder how long that will take…

Anyway, it probably won’t be an every day occurrence, but I’ll try and smell one each day I don’t have a regular review planned (or anything else).

Knowing my posting habits, that seems rather optimistic and ambitious but one should never be modest in what one wishes for. 😉

We’ll see how it goes… Hopefully now I’ve made it public, I’ll try and stick to my words. 🙂

Natania Barron: Pilgrim of the Sky

Book review November 4, 2012 Comments: 2

This book is an interesting mish-mash of everything and it works.

I still feel a bit dazed after reading it – you get hit by many different worlds, ideas, characters, gods, but for some reason all that steampunk, romance, action and fantasy somehow combine into an interesting read. And you emerge dazed from the adventure. 🙂

I’m still wondering about the final choice and the love there but I think it has more to do with the fact I’m still getting back into real life than anything else.

So we have parallel world and twains across those worlds, not always in every world but at least in several and they get reborn (some more than others). We have dragons but in the initial (completely lost to modern person) meaning of the word – that’s why I’m not going to reveal it.

Maddie lives in our world but the next one she is taken to is the steam-punk one. And a very interesting version of our Earth it is, I should add.

I really can’t go into the story because if I want to explain anything, I will have to explain a lot and that will just reveal too much.

It’s basically what I said in the beginning – something of a mix of many interesting ideas all working together to make this novel an interesting read.

I wonder if there will be a sequel? That seems a must these days although not really necessary in this case.

I mean, the story felt complete for me but I’m sure Maddie is a character who could get into many more advenures.

 

Pic taken from http://pilgrimofthesky.com/

My ebook came courtesy of NetGalley.

Finding beauty, Puredistance Opardu

World of Perfume November 1, 2012 Comments: 11

It always takes me a while before I can try and organize my thought on any of the Puredistance perfumes. I believe one of the reasons lie in the fact that their perfumes really reflect the elegance the company tries to instill in them and that is something it is hard to smell these days generally and the other is I lack words to describe them precisely because of reason number one. I haven’t smelled that many elegant perfumes that my perfume vocabulary can describe them adequately.

I will try though. 🙂

The first thing that comes to my mind when I smell it, is that it has the usual Ms. Buzantian touch – it is at the same time elegant, and mellow. Which is strange when I consider the fact that I also feel its beginning being slightly brash (in a good way to get you noticed) due to what I consider a clean nettle feeling which is at the same time sharpish, I would say thanks to carnation.

What I love about Puredistance perfumes is that they make me forget they are mostly about flowers, I am not one to usually fall for flowers, but when A. Buzantian does her thing, I don’t realize it is flowers I smell – I smell the elegance of a well-mannered lady that knows her presence will be noted when she walks into a room but she’ll ignore it as she knows that whoever comes close will be seduced by her perfume even before she does it (and she is the kind of lady who will).

I see the notes say there are powdery notes in this perfume, so I’m guessing they are responsible for the clean and mellow feeling I get from the beginning to the end of this perfume, although lessening after a while.

I would never go so far and say I smell the notes listed as the flowers I smell in this perfume lean to white but their beauty is hidden behind green foliage that tries to hide them but fails miserably. You cannot hide the beauty of these flowers as their smell leads you straight through the foliage to their place of hiding.

Notes revealed so far: carnation, tuberose absolute, purple lilac, jasmine absolute and gardenia with a background evoking the gentleness of romance through soft powdery notes.

 

What Puredistance site says on the perfume:

“OPARDU has an instant hypnotizing effect that revives memories of love, romance and seduction. Be prepared for a perfume that will bring you back to the velvety nightlife of Paris in earlier days.”

Now that I’ve been thouroughly seduced by Ms. Buzantian’s flowers, I cannot help but wonder what she would come up with when creating an oriental perfume. She would probably make me fall to my knees. 😉

 

Pic taken from http://www.puredistance.com/

My sample was sent by Puredistance for review.