Tag Archives: Perfume review

Tranquility connected to whiteness – White Aoud

World of Perfume December 12, 2012 Comments: 15

I’ve known for some time that smoky woody notes, especially those that were historically used for holy (and similar) purposes work for me when I need psychological tranquility. So it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise that oud would fit right in with those type of perfumes.

I feel like a broken record, this whole year I kept whining about how stressed I am and I kept hoping it would pass. Well, it hasn’t, and I’m even more exhausted now which is why I am craving tranquility in any manner I can gesnow whitenesst my hands on.

So, in keeping with that thought, yesterday I went to try some of the decants I have but never use, and ended up trying White Oud.

Oooh, the serenity that went through my nose and spread to my mind!

Today when I sprayed it on I got the most weird opening that is terribly familiar but for the life of me I couldn’t remember from where. 🙂 I keep thinking it must some type of medicine I took at some point in my life but can’t remember what. The saffron, oud and cardamom combination are to be “faulted” for that but I really enjoyed it. It doesn’t last long though, and I find it funny that even though I can smell oud perfumes and realize the differences between them, I still have a problem smelling those differences that aren’t oud.

There is some kind of bitterness swirling around the rose in the heart, possibly a combination of patchouli, cardamom and vetiver. It is also where the rose is most prominent to my nose.

Wearing White Oud has really helped me be calm and collected today and managed to keep my stress levels low as I breathe it in with each inhale (and I furtively smell the collar of my turtleneck each chance I get).

The combination of whiteness outside (there is still snow around) and the White Oud (how aptly it is named in my case) are really working for me – obviously the whiteness spells tranquility for me.

 

Notes: Damas Rose, Safran, Oud, Cardamom, Jasmine, Patchouli, Mysore Sandalwood,
Precious Wood, Amber, Vetiver, Vanilla, Labdanum

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.

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 PrĂ©cieux

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.

 

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.