Votive duet: Aftelier Perfumes Vanilla Smoke & Amber Tapestry mini-reviews - plus an Ajne retrospective

Made by me - a rare gift TO my elderly friend!

Strange to report, I didn't develop a liking for wine till I was at least 22, and olives still remain a challenge too far today. In the nine years of my perfume hobby, I have also come late to appreciating natural perfumes - that's with the exception of Carmel-based Ajne, a house to which I was introduced by Michelyn Camen early on in my perfume j*****y, before she founded Cafleurebon. I still possess a small bottle of Calypso - a woozy blend of frangipani, jasmine, cardamom and vanilla - which doesn't seem to have turned yet, despite being at least eight years old. Ajne* had quite a low profile in the blogosphere back then, and I never hear tell of them now. For a while though the range exerted a hypnotising pull over me, due to the hyper-realism of the luxurious ingredients, coupled with the delicate filigree of the Bohemian bottles, and the ritualistic way I would dab on my precious collection of samples. There was even one called Om, described as 'a consciousness-altering blend of smoke-laden sandalwood, Himalayan heart incense cedar, deep forest lichen and smooth musk'. I remember liking Om quite a lot, but I was busy chasing samples and splits of the other heady florals in the range apart from Calypso, notably Printemps (gardenia, linden), and Fleur Blanche (gardenia, stone fruit). It all feels like a lost chapter in my life, with only the increasingly amber-toned remnants of Calypso as testament to my ever having had this intense but fleeting dalliance with natural perfumery...

Ajne Calypso

Then something happened recently to ignite a spark of interest in naturals again, namely an email from Mandy Aftel, explaining that she had spotted my comment on a blog post by Tara of A Bottled Rose, expressing an interest in trying Amber Tapestry and Vanilla Smoke, both of which Tara had reviewed. Mandy invited me to pick a couple more samples to go into the package, and after an enjoyable evening spent reading the reviews of fellow bloggers with tastes congruent to mine, I settled on Wild Roses and Honey Blossom (which I may feature one day).

But before getting to my impressions of the scents themselves, I must devote a paragraph or two to the packaging, which greatly contributes to the 'devotional' aspect of my response to them - though not before mentioning the lightning speed with which the package arrived. It took an astonishing three days to come by FedEx Express all the way from Berkeley, California (including a brief pitstop in a depot in Cannock!). Why, I have known Christmas cards take longer to get from Littleworth to the other side of Stafford.

After the speed, I was completely smitten by the packaging...the golden Jiffy bag, the dear little cardboard box with its charming country scene and the tiny scent pots nestling in paper 'straw' at each corner.

Oh, and the distinctive use of priestly purple as Aftelier's 'house colour'. (Which reminds me of the time my father - not known for his largesse - bought me a colour TV on a whim, purely so he could watch a televised procession of bishops in New Zealand in all their ecclesiastical finery.)

Then there are other dainty touches to savour: the mysterious motif of a long stemmed retort, like a spindly garlic bulb, and Mandy's characterfully spiky calligraphy on her little note, enclosed in a glassine bag to protect the ink from the elements.

How much did I love all these thoughtful trappings? It activated whatever part of my brain - somewhere deep in the amygdala, perhaps? - is excited by miniaturisation, and brought back happy memories of dolls' houses and advent calendars of yore.

And there is something very significant too about the little pots; the Ajne samples were similarly presented, though it was all so long ago. I do believe these tiny receptacles predispose one to a mood of solemn reverence when applying - nay, anointing oneself with - the perfumes. And Vanilla Smoke in particular had the meditative quality of Ajne Om, or the Om at least of my distant recall.

So without further ado, here are my impressions of these two - I must stress that they were both written without reference to the note list!:

Source: kevineats.com

Vanilla Smoke 

I was not too sure about the first few seconds of Vanilla Smoke, as it was all about the smoke initially. A resinous puff of something like birch tar - or gunpowder? - in a quiet register, but still a bit too 'medicinal smoky' for me, if that makes sense. Very slightly like burning Band-Aids. But I was not at all daunted, having read enough reviews to be confident of a more seductive sequel, and so it proved. Soon a veiled sweet note emerged, like jaggery sugar or a dark, veering to treacly, vanilla, and smoothed out the smokiness. The texture of the scent was now silken and soft and comforting, the stern opening quite forgotten.  Who knew a bonfire (for there is smouldering wood still going on in the base) could be so cosseting? If anyone knows Om, cross it with Mona di Orio's Vanille and you would be in the right general ballpark. Vanilla Smoke is a judicious blend of austere smoky backbone and yielding vanilla vulnerability, if I may lapse into purple prose for a moment. Given the purple livery of Aftelier, I am hoping this may be excused! Vanilla Smoke is at once haunting and calming, and unlike any take on vanilla I have ever smelt - and vanilla being my favourite note, I have made it my mission to sample as many of its incarnations as I can find. I am not religious, but as I intimated earlier, dabbing a drop of this on my wrist borders on the spiritual. Hmm, I sense the dabbing part is key. Maybe Aftelier perfumes should only be available in tiny, dabbable quantities to foster this association. Now there's a radical idea... Or if my reference to transcendental experiences sounds a bit un-bonkerslike of me, at the very least Vanilla Smoke would be the perfect accompaniment to one of those Headspace apps where you sit still in a chair, scan your body parts one by one, and generally try to feel floppy. I  loved it, and wouldn't mind if I never smelt any of those 'straight up gourmand' vanilla scents (of which I have so many iterations in my collection) again.

Notes: yellow mandarin, Siam wood, saffron absolute, vanilla absolute, lapsang souchong tea essence (for which the tea leaves were smoked over pinewood), coumarin and ambergris

Source; pixabay

Amber Tapestry

Now although I didn't peek at the note list before marshalling my thoughts on this one, I remember reading somewhere that Amber Tapestry had jasmine in it - very likely in Tara's review - and was also waiting for a cosy, more amber-forward drydown. Instead I got a whoosh of fresh, green, vaguely mentholated, mahoosive and slightly bubble gummy phantom tuberose! And I promise I mean this in a good way! It was really, really interesting, and transported me back to the Palm House of Belfast's botanical gardens, inhaling the dewy, fleshy, otherworldly scent of some unspecified and faintly triffid-like plant. Think the blowsy Vero Kern Rubj crossed with Tubereuse Criminelle and you won't be far off, though I have only smelt the latter once. I see Tube Crim contains jasmine AND tuberose, as well as orange blossom and vanilla. And an eclectic collection of spices. And it is amber coloured to boot! So yes, those two...and maybe lob in a soupcon of Nuit de Tubereuse for good measure.

Source; Wikimedia Commons

Amber Tapestry is a highly unusual scent: odd and shapeshifting and not at all what I expected. Now that I have spied the note list, I reckon the faux-tuberose effect may in fact have been created by the combination of heliotrope (which can read big and 'plasticky') and the jasmine. And how intriguing that both Vanilla Smoke and Amber Tapestry should contain yellow mandarin and coumarin, not that I could have picked either of those out unaided. I suspect the coumarin could also be amping up the heliotrope and helping it stage this surprise tuberose stunt. I can't honestly say I get amber. Or even a drydown as such. The compelling tuberose chimera simply becomes more attenuated and finally fades away.

To compensate for my strange take on this scent, which I realise is way off the reviews I have now caught up with(!), I am inserting pictures of tapestries I have made - or co-made with my mother in the case of the footstool. Both feature an orange colour that could loosely be called amber.

Notes: heliotrope, yellow mandarin, jasmine, jasmine sambac, pear and cinnamon, amber, labdanum, benzoin, castoreum, ambergris and coumarin

The full footstool!

*Ajne did of course famously mark their card by unexpectedly closing early on the day I said I was coming to visit, hehe.

A Bacchanalian Sniff-In With Freddie of Smellythoughts

Selfridges via geograph.org.uk

I have heard it said that many Londoners - notwithstanding the cornucopia of culture on their doorsteps - do not fully take advantage of what is going on in the capital.  By the same token, Birmingham, the second largest city in Britain, is a 30 minute train ride away from where I live, and I hardly ever go there either - whether to attend concerts, exhibitions, or just to cruise the temple to consumerism that is the newly revamped Bullring.  But last Saturday I propelled myself through my inertia and bought a ticket for a matinee performance of a film I had been dying to see (Good Vibrations), which was showing for two days only in the UK's oldest working cinema, the Electric.

Meanwhile, I contacted Freddie Albrighton of Smellythoughts - whom I managed to miss meeting at recent PLL events in London - and asked if he fancied hooking up afterwards for a sniffing session and/or a coffee.  Happily Freddie was well up for a blind date (as we do!), but because he works on a Saturday we agreed to meet straight after my film, just outside the train station.

The upstairs foyer at the Electric Cinema 

It was easy to spot Freddie at the bottom of the New Street ramp on account of his distinctive hoop earrings, and he led me without ado to a favourite watering hole, a cellar bar in Burlington Arcade called Bacchus.  It was like stepping into an Arthurian legend: there were vaulted stone arches, flaming torches in sconces and tapestry wall hangings.  The bar was divided into different levels, with cosy snugs at every turn - sadly all of them taken by early doors revellers.  So I loitered with intent in a spot where I could keep an eye on people's comings and goings while Freddie got the first round in.  I can report that despite the medieval ambience of Bacchus, the bar stocked a number of contemporary tipples such as Appletizer and Freddie's preferred brand of Antipodean pear cider, Rekorderlig - an apt choice for someone who recently spent a year in New Zealand.  Moments later Freddie returned with the drinks, and suddenly we spied a table just being vacated, on which we swooped with alacrity.

Bacchus Bar via grapevinebirmingham.com

The next two hours were a blur of enjoyable chitchat about our lives, our "perfume journeys" (if I may briefly annexe that hateful X-Factor term), our favourite styles of scents, our approach to blogging and thoughts on the latest developments in Perfume Land.  And it goes without saying that there was a Bacchanalian orgy of sniffing and sample exchanging.  By the end of the session we had covered ourselves in a veritable cacophony of scents all up our arms.  I do recall that Freddie had Damien Bash Lucifer #3 in the crook of his right elbow, while I had the cult scent Shiseido/SL Nombre Noir below the base of my right forefinger - but the rest is consigned to oblivion.

My sample haul from Freddie included three Vero Profumos (I get to try Mito again!), three samples from Magnetic Scent and two from O'Driu (lines that were completely under my radar), plus a complete set of JAR Parfums (which I smelt in Paris but would like to try again, even though at least three smelt of carnation. : - ) )  Freddie also gave me a vial of Miel de Bois - he is a self-styled "enfant terrible" after all, and it was every drop the evil honeyed thing of my traumatised memory - and one of actual perfumer's ambergris (1 year old 1% black ambergris tincture to be precise), which I was very excited to smell.

Source: nyu.edu

On the day, my preferred scent out of all the ones I tested has to be Nombre Noir, a dark aldehydic rose with osmanthus, though to my nose it read in a lighter register - a bit sherbety and springlike, with a vibe not unlike Guerlain Chamade or a powdery version of DelRae Debut.  Freddie explained how Luca Turin considers Nombre Noir to be "one of the five great perfumes in the world".  It is pretty special for sure and I am very glad to own a little bit of this (criminally discontinued) legend.

Then today Freddie has followed up his initial generosity with another pouch of perfumes in the post(!), including three from Aftelier - I am currently swooning over Secret Garden and completely revising my previous lariness around natural scents - Miriam(!), Tawaf from La Via del Profumo and a few other bits and bobs.  Special mention should also be made of the curious upside down test tube vials Freddie favours.  They certainly score highly on the snap-fitting front and I may seek out some of my own.

The JARS are in a cheeky Hermes box - ha!

A highlight of my meeting with Freddie has to be a discreet shufty at his tattoos, which are extensive but completely covered up by his clothes.  I have never been tempted to get a tattoo myself, but Freddie's were an impressive sight and there is clearly a lot of artistry involved.

Oh, and there was one more thing I brought up during our chat which amused Freddie - my diary entry from the very day he was born, a snowy winter's day over 20 years ago:

"Got up late c11am.  Ventured out to shops in blizzard conditions!  Bought impulse present for Mother.  Tea and scone in Soup Kitchen.  Power cut c5pm.  David pissed off and I spent the evening reading The Telegraph and New Woman by bicycle lamp, after finding a rather unsavoury pasty at Oasis."  

Notes: David was my lodger at the time, while Oasis is a chippy that has changed hands several times since.