Tag Archives: Shalimar

Feels like a special day

I've been thinking, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume June 27, 2020 Comments: 13

Although on the outside it looks like a normal summer weekend’s day. But for me it feels special.

After a long time, I finally feel enthusiasm regarding a new perfume release. I’m blaming Cookie Queen and Tara for this one. But I’m already in love with the idea of that perfume. I love the name, I almost love all the notes, and as it’s a Chanel Exclusif (I love several of them), I don’t think this one will disappoint. I can finally say I’m eagerly awaiting to try a new perfume.

And then, in the middle of reading that review, I receive a post pingback. That hasn’t happened in a long time. It turns out my Shalimar habit stuck with Undina and now she has a post up about other possible nightly perfume habits we (perfume lovers) might have. You can go and take a look at what other people think of wearing perfume to bed.

To end my perfume-related day, the cake I made for a friend’s birthday turned out great. I’m mentioning the cake now because I received the recipe several years ago from another perfume blogger.

That is why it feels like a special day – everything today seems to be saying it’s time to enjoy the perfume world again.

P.S. Now that I look at my post it seems to be all over the place. 🙂 But who cares, it’s a perfume-world day for me.

Quarantine perfume log #1

I've been thinking, Leisure, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume April 1, 2020 Comments: 9

Although it’s not actually quarantine (at least I don’t think so), even though it feels like it after 5 weeks of working from home and rarely leaving my apartment the last three weeks. I think. Days and weeks pass away and they all look the same.

So while at home, although not having as much free time as everyone seems to think people do (I mean we work from home, my days do not suddenly have a whole bunch of free time), I felt like writing a bit about the perfume related thoughts I’ve been having.

As you can assume, being at home most of the time, I don’t really apply perfume much (almost at all). But I’ve come to all sorts of realizations.

I guess it happened the world over, the search for disinfectants and rubbing alcohol. I wasn’t searching for the alcohol as I had a small bottle at home, but when my mum asked if I can find any, I gave her mine. Several days after that, it dawned on me that I have a lifetime supply of alcohol. 🙂

I saw the perfumes in my hallway.

So, now I have no worries when it comes to running out of rubbing alcohol as both eau de toilettes and eau de parfums contain more alcohol than it does.

Which brings me to the fact that my phone now smells phenomenal. 😀 I’ve been using Jicky to disinfect it with.

My bottle of Jicky

Continuing the Jicky train of thought, my soap is lavender which incidentally doesn’t remind me so much of Jicky, but of Shalimar. I don’t know why my nose makes that jump, but I think it might be the reverse engineering. I remember, quite some time ago, when I recognized traces of Shalimar in Jicky. I wonder now if the fact that lavender soap comes smelling sweetly of vanilla, my nose is going reverse on the perfumes.

And now while checking to see if I ever wrote about Jicky or Shalimar, I came across this great post. At least I think it is great . 😀

Once more a big thanks to Asali for coming up with ideas for it.

My secret Shalimar habit

Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume July 4, 2018 Comments: 8

It’s not a secret that  I am a huge Shalimar fan.

I still chuckle at the irony of that, each time I write it, due to shal2

the fact that I hated it the first time I tried it.

The bad thing is that experience has shown Shalimar not really being appropriate for work. And that is where I wear perfume the most.

So, in order not to take away from myself the pleasure of smelling Shalimar, I put it into my routine of changing bed sheets.

All I can say is, it’s a win-win situation.

I spray my matress with several spritzes of Shalimar each time I change the sheets

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This is what Shalimar in bed feels like

and then I go to bed with a light misty feel of Shalimar in the air. And the best thing is it lasts for a few days!

The upside to this? Additional one I mean.

I change my sheets quite often nowadays.

Ok, that didn’t come out as it should have. 🙂 But you know what I meant.

Traveling in France – Paris

Paris, Perfume shopping, Perfume thoughts, World of Perfume January 14, 2016 Comments: 25

In December I finally had a chance to visit Paris again, even if it was only for two and a half days. It was a quick getaway that happened at exactly the right time to re-charge my batteries before work hit me hard for the rest of the month.

I arrived on the first Sunday of the month and the optimist in me thought to visit museums for free. 🙂 This is the closest I got to a museum – this is Rodin’s. Louvre and Musee d’Orsay were out of the question, the queues were unbelievable! Still, just walking in the gardens of Musee Rodin was a beautiful experience.

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So, since my free entrance to Louvre was out of the question, I decided to pay for it and used most of my Monday to stroll around it. I seem to have been fascinated with staircases this time around but I’ll post just one picture of them (ok, maybe two). 🙂

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There are so many beautiful things to see in Louvre. I’ve been there once already, my first time in Paris, but I really wanted to visit it again.

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The jewelry on display is “magnifique”!DSC_1394[1]

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This time I was actually able to snap a rather ok photo of Mona Lisa.

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It is not a worthy trip to Paris if you don’t visit a perfume shop and this time, my perfume wanderings took me to Jovoy (no pictures from there but a perfume did come back 😉 ) and to Caron which had an amazing Christmas display in their window. I didn’t buy anything there but the SA was amazingly nice and cooperative and explained everything. I went away with arms smelling of many perfumes and a sample of Poivre.

Honestly, I feel old French perfumery is calling me back to its folds. I seem to enjoy it more and more.

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Of course that no trip to Paris would be complete without a visit to Guerlain. This time a friend and I decided to visit the famous tea room (Le 68 Guy Martin) at Guerlain and it was the first time I discovered what the French insolence feels like. You see, you need a reservation for the place and we didn’t have one. But as it wasn’t really full we somehow managed to convince them to let us in for tea and cake.

That was misstep number 2. You see, you cannot come around 2 for tea and cake. 😀 Because that is lunch time. As we were very haughtily informed. Still, they obviously made an exception in our case.

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And since I didn’t know if taking a photo of my dessert would be misstep 3, I took it quickly so it’s not the best one.

That said, once we started eating our dessert and being so obviously appreciative of it, the chief waiter (one being frenchly mean to us) actually appeared with a smile on his lips. Honestly though, this was I believe the best dessert I ever had in my life. And I can’t even remember its name and can’t find it on the restaurant’s menu either (some kind of chocolate profiterole).

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My Guerlain visit ended with a purchase of Shalimar tea. Again the optimist in me thought I’d buy more than just Shalimar tea, but once I saw the prices, additional tins were out of the question. 🙂 Oh well, at least I tried one of them with my dessert. 😉

Finally Shalimar! Or how orientals are taking me over

World of Perfume October 11, 2010 Comments: 9

There’s just no point denying it, I’m on oriental perfume freak. I seem to be falling deeper and deeper into the mysterious cloud they are creating around me and more and more are in that cloud.

As you can see from the title, my new oriental find is Shalimar. Or, more like, we finally hit it off. All we needed was a second meeting and we’re ok now. Well, more than ok actually.

The thing is, lately, Shalimar has been jumping out at me from all over. First, I saw a Katie Puckrik clip where she’s also all over it. Then, I was browsing through a store here, and it winked from a shelf. I never ever noticed it before on a shelf anywhere. Only to end this weekend with Angelology and one of the girls (the rich one) wears it as her signature scent at the beginning of the WW II.

So, I located my mini bottle and re-acquinted myself with Shalimar. We’ve been hanging out ever since. 🙂

Btw, if you are ever in search of notes, there is quite a lot of them to be found if you keep searching. Here are all those I managed to gather.
Notes: bergamot, lemon, jasmine, rose, iris, incense, opoponax, tonka bean, vanilla, tangerine, cedar, patchouli, orrise, benzoin, peru balsam, leather, vetiver, heliotrope, civet, sandalwood.

I have no idea if all of them are in my EdT but it certainly smells great. I guess you just can’t barge into the world of perfumes and know what stuff is great or what family you prefer. Some perfumes are going to reveal their secrets only after you cover a lot of ground.

So, what I like about Shalimar is that on me, it is not a sweet oriental. I was actually surprised by the beginning which is dry, spicy, slightly almondy but austere in appearance. It strikes me as being quite strict, no soft smiles on this lady. Only after a while it mellows a bit but don’t you dare think it is a nice and lovely girl. Oh no, it’s a strong woman with serious backbone, one that will seduce you and you won’t know what hit you.
One of the reasons I kept on searching for notes was because I was surprised by smelling patchouli in there (some dryness and earthiness combined) so I felt quite good when I saw it listed together with cedar which I realized was alongside patchouli. The things is, you just can’t describe Shalimar through the notes. Although I can say that jasmine was hiding each time I tried it. 🙂
As soon as I can, I’ll try the EdP to see if the underlying booziness will get stronger (I would love that benzoin to get a more prominent role).

In the meantime, I’m falling asleep each night with my wrist under my nose…

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