Category Archives: World of Perfume

The smell of candy in the air

I've been thinking, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume April 1, 2014 Comments: 12

This candy to be precise (PEZ):

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Basically it’s a lightly sweet smell permeating the air close to blooming trees.

As my knowledge of trees and plants is somewhere around kindergarten level, I can’t tell you what trees those are, but my guess would be some wild/decorative kind of fruit trees. Whatever it is, the air is rather warm these days so the smell wafts around you as you walk and all you can do is breathe it in and smile as childhood memories beckon with a grin of their own.

I grew up with those candies and even though I still remember the smell, I don’t really need to as now my nephews are the ones who are growing up with them.

So, tell me, who else remembers PEZ candy (and the accompanying dispensers) from their childhoods? And their powdery fruity smell?

 

P.S. It just never occurred to me before now how the smell of those candies was actually reminiscent of the smells in nature.

(I guess someone did a really good job with those aromas)

And the winners are…

World of Perfume March 27, 2014 Comments: 11

random

 

 

Congratulations! 🙂

Suzanne gets Parfum de Therese, and SallyM and Anna in Edinburgh get Cuirelle and Dries Van Noten respectively (since they didn’t state their preference). Plus the chocolate.

And, as there were only 7 participants in the giveaway, and all were interested in chocolate, feel free to send your addresses as well, and some Croatian chocolate will find their way to your doorstep! 😉

Thank you all for celebrating with me! 🙂

Open letter from Luc Gabriel (TDC) – Save the independent perfumery

Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume March 25, 2014 Comments: 6

I received this a couple of days ago and thought it needed to be shared as many times as possible.

Even if only one new person sees and reads this, the message will slowly spread.

 

Save the independant perfumery

March 19th 2014 – We are perfumers, perfumeries, brand owners. We drive our energy towards creating olfactory beauty and each of us is a key part of this amazing process that turns components into olfactory emotions, futile for some, of the essence for us and our clients.

The recent proposals made by the European Commission, if they become law, threaten to destroy fine perfumery as we know it, an art slowly built for centuries by creators and craftsmen and part of our cultural common good.

This destruction will end up in modifying formulas of mythical perfumes, in restraining the freedom of using key ingredients that are absolutely necessary for a creative high end perfumery (some of these components being used for centuries in our fragrances), in losing a unique know-how and in destroying thousands of jobs.

Our goal is to have our line of work recognized by the institutions and the general public as it is and always have been: a collective cultural good, a pillar of our history, an art which contributes to the beauty of the world.

We want to have the concept of Freedom recognized along the concept of Safety and Precautions and have perfumers free to create, brands free to develop and customers free to choose, our profession being already widely regulated.

Eventually, we intend to inform the general public and the institutions on the reality of our business and our products and communicate as widely and transparently as possible so that they make their choices fully aware and informed.

If you share our values and wish to contribute to saving a perfumery in danger, thank you for signing this manifest. We will inform you on a regular basis about the actions taken and we might also ask you to contribute to the ”think-tank” and our actions.

Truly yours.

Luc GABRIEL/The Different Company infoatthedc.fr – François HENIN/JOVOY

Missed my anniversary

Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume March 24, 2014 Comments: 29

Again!

It seems since this is the fifth, I would have remembered the date by now.

Seems I was very wrong. 🙂

I haven’t been a very proficient writer the past couple of years but I somehow still managed to keep my blog alive and I certainly hope I will keep on doing that for quite a long time in the future as well.

As it’s my 5th blogging anniversary (or was on the 20th), I want to celebrate it by doing a little give-away.

3 lucky winners will get some Croatian chocolate and one of three of the following decants: Cuirelle, Dries Van Noten and Parfum de Therese.

You can state your preference in the comments. The draw closes Wednesday midnight.

 

P.S. And please leave a way of contacting you so I can notify the winners (sometimes winners forget to check back they won something).

Caps

World of Perfume March 15, 2014 Comments: 16

It seems counter-intuitive to get new caps when spring is here, but I just couldn’t resist them. I saw them on Carol’s blog and asked if she could make one or two for me.
Then I saw the colors and decided one (two) weren’t enough.
So, these are my beginner selfie attempts to show you the caps. 🙂

Please ignore my strange-looking face in these attempts.

Carol, thank you so much!

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Easing into spring with Impossible Iris by Ramon Monegal

World of Perfume March 11, 2014 Comments: 14

We had a really strange winter this year (more like no winter at all) so it started feeling like spring in the middle of February. But the spring is basically here this week. even though it seemed to have been hesitating for a while.

Like me when it comes to perfume. I’m not really sure what to wear these days, something still for the cold days or something spring-like?

So, at the moment I’m exploring the flowers with some warm undertones. Which is how I came to try and like Impossible Iris with its fruity warmth and cool iris.

Notes: Italian Iris Concrete, Cassie d’Egypte Absolute, Raspberry, Comoran Ylang-Ylang, Egyptian Jasmine Absolute and Virginian Cedarwood.

I saw that many reviews center themselves around the raspberry note. It makes sense, as that fruitiness cannot be missed and lasts for quite a while. But for the life of me, when I first smelled it, I couldn’t come up with raspberry as the fruit I smelled. I thought it was more in line with forest berries with some orange (possibly peaches) thrown in. Turns out I was very wrong.impossile

The thing is, I have a hard time putting into words exactly what I smell.

I love the fact that it feels like a cousin of Cuirelle, due to a similar grey feel (I wonder if that’s cedarwood). I haven’t explored many of the Monegal perfumes so I can’t say if there is a signature to it.

For me, Impossible Iris starts with a light cleaner-like smell, slightly citrus-y with a hint of evergreen. Hmm, looking at my notes and the official notes, I wonder what in the world do I think I’m smelling?! 😉

Anyway, the fruitiness is there from the start basically and at some point it actually overpowers the flowers. But not for long. The perfume also veers on the edge of white muskiness (or whatever kind of musks is in everything these days) but I say veer, as the musk never bothers me like it usually does, instead it feels more like a facet of the iris than anything else.

The general feel of this perfume is like the raspberry iris is resting on a warm mattress of hidden white flowers. With some cedar chips thrown in to make it more elegant. With such a beautiful aura.

That is one thing I cannot help but think about when I think of this perfume – the beautiful warm iris-y aura you waft around yourself when you wear it. Definitely helped by the raspberry note. 🙂

My sample came courtesy of the Monegal company.

Sharing the perfume bug

I've been thinking, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume March 6, 2014 Comments: 22

I can’t really say I shared the perfume love as what I chose requires more getting used to than what people generally smell in mainstream stores (god, that sounds so condescending). 🙂

Anyway, yesterday I shared my love and a little bit of my collection with my female colleagues. I already had several perfume-y coffees with one who then spread the word. So that is how yesterday I ended up giving them a crash course through what perfumery offers if you know where to look.

I admit to being ambitious and offering them 22 perfumes to try. 😀 That was mean of me. 😉 And they did!
I never expected them to find anything to love among them, my goal was to make them understand how many more notes and possibilities exist out there and that they should try and figure out if they possibly like something and might want to discover more.

What I learned surprised me. 🙂 It seems people  (women in this case) are fed up with sweet perfumes. That was what everyone kept saying, I don’t want anything sweet. And the general consensus on what they found good was also surprising (although it shouldn’t be as I love it as well).

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I made them cheat sheets with all the perfumes so they can take notes for themselves

That was Monegal’s Cuirelle. 🙂 Closely followed by Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather. 

I shouldn’t get surprised anymore that Cuirelle is such a hit among people who smell it. Especially after reading Birgit’s interview with Ramon Monegal where he said his favorite perfume is “true leather”. It’s obvious he knows what to do with that. 😉

It was a boisterous gathering (all perfume gatherings somehow end up boisterous) and we laughed a lot. I heard some interesting adjectives being ascribed to perfumes:

– smells like toothpaste (for Vamp a NY)

– lemon peel! (Bigarade Concentree)

– Terrible! Smells like sweat. Just too much. (Tubereuse Criminelle – I had to bring that one for shock effect) 😉

– Toilet cleaner (Tuscan Leather) – actually have no idea how that came about…

We agreed to meet again with a selection geared more toward spring and summer in a couple of months.

I definitely hope to keep this up until their perfume vocabulary upgrades from: It’s interesting/ok/sweet/too much, to – Oh, I smell white flowers/amber/green stuff, etc..

That’s not asking too much, is it? 😉

 

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky – the movie

I've been thinking, World of Perfume February 16, 2014 Comments: 6

I saw it two days ago and I’m still under its influence.

The main thing I got out of that movie is the fact that whoever tried to write a biography of Gabrielle Chanel probably failed. As I haven’t read any of them, I don’t want to sound like I’m passing judgment on books I never read, it’s just that this movie brought to life the complexity of who Coco Chanel was that I don’t think anyone trying to write about her life can encompass her personality and keep true about it.Coco_Chanel_&_Igor_Stravinsky

I’m aware this also sounds very presupposing after only seeing one movie but I’m blaming it on the director (Jan Kounen). After all I’ve read about her and now seeing this movie, all I can say is she was obviously a personality larger than life that kept her thoughts to herself and went through her life doing what she felt she should. Smiling a mysterious, mischievous smile of hers and dropping men to their knees after saying anything in that smoke-battered voice of hers. At least that is how I imagine her after seeing her brought to life by Anna Mouglalis (who was masterful).

The strange thing is, I now think of Igor Stravinsky as a loser. A weak man when it came to women. Again, I have no idea what their relationship was like but the idea I got is that he couldn’t handle her being more successful and well, richer. Men rarely do. 😉 I could be wrong on account of Igor though…

Basically, after seeing this movie, I feel a renewed wish to understand fashion and enjoy it more, but also to smell the original Chanel perfumes – the time depicted in the movie is around the birth of Chanel 5.

But most importantly, I would love to have met her in real life. Woman ahead of her time, one probably reviled by the women of her acquaintance but still strong and successful and enduring.

I wish I knew where women like that get their strength from. So I could find it in myself as well. She might have made some dubious choices in her life, but she made them and went on. We all make mistakes, but ours aren’t made public. How many of us would be willing to forge our way ahead in spite of them?

 

P.S. Even though the movie depicts Stravinsky’s work and worries, I admit, I didn’t really care much for his part, I just loved the way Coco was portrayed. I did enjoy the music in the movie immensely though. 😉

A lingering collection

Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume February 14, 2014 Comments: 20

That is what I have. 
My collection has been growing for years but unfortunately my perfume review output hasn’t. And I can’t get rid of anything I haven’t actually reviewed (unless it’s so bad I never want to smell it again). Or anything I grew out of in my smelling journey. The irony in all this is the fact that for what seems most of my life I’ve been lecturing my mom on clearing her life of stuff she no longer uses, only to end up in pretty much the same mess.
According to my limited knowledge of Feng-shui (very limited actually), the stuff you don’t use but only accumulate weighs down your life energy. As my life energy feels pretty much down most of the time, I’m guessing I did it to myself (well, it’s not really guessing if I’m sure of it). 😉

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So basically, if I don’t want to weigh myself down I have two choices. Start writing even short reviews if I don’t have much to say so I can decide what to let go, or just have a quick smell and let go of at least half of the stuff I have (I’m talking mostly decants now).
Then again, I keep thinking what if there is something of what I let go I later decide I would like to revisit and I no longer have it?

Has anyone faced a similar problem? How do you let go of accumulated perfume which lingers because you never got the time to get to know it?
Should I let it go or still try to get to know it?

I must say, I don’t have such problems with clothes. At least my wardrobe is clear of lingering clothes… 😉

Behind times

I've been thinking, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume February 4, 2014 Comments: 15

It’s not really surprising I’m behind perfume news considering how much free time for it I have (basically none). It’s a busy time at work and after it there really isn’t that much time (or energy) left for anything but bed.

But I don’t want to bore you all with the fact I have no free time, I was more shocked with the fact that pleasantly surprised as I was with what I thought were news about the new Dior Collection Privée Elixirs Précieux (Rose, Ambre, Oud and Musc) – a short Google search showed it was only news to me. 🙂

Even though it is only news to me, I got very excited after reading the French Vogue article where they said they were meant for layering. I must say I have high hopes of them smelling good by themselves and together.

Seeing though that they cost 280 €, I might have to decide they don’t really smell that great… 😉