Bonkers about Perfume turned Eight (last Wednesday week!), a mini-review of Yves Rocher 8e Jour, and a traditionally rum giveaway

Bonkers-looking cake via Cake Central, Seattle

Well, yet another year has gone by, and in what is fast becoming time-honoured fashion I missed the exact date of my blog anniversary again, which was in fact 25th October. So it fell right between the post kicking off my 'Return to Sender' postcard series on 22nd, and the one on lipstick, on 29th. Speaking of which, it seems ironic that I featured all those photos of me wearing lippie only to be struck down this week with a recurrence of the facial eczema to which I am prone, this time on both lips and in the corners of my mouth. It does look rather as though I am trying to extend the lip line northwards on one side, or as if one of ex-Mr Bonkers' many sock monkeys has been let loose on me with a chubby stick. But it is starting to clear up now, thank goodness. The funny thing is that I do faithfully remember the birthday of my old English teacher, which falls in the same week. Every year for...um...forty years since leaving school (it would have been too Teacher's Pettish while being taught by her, obviously) I have sent her a birthday card, and every year she writes back and thanks me for it. But my blog anniversary seems to slip down the memory cracks much more readily for some reason.

Anyway, I would never have thought eight years ago that I would still be at it in 2017. I have just been testing a big bunch of fairly recent releases by DSH Perfumes, many of which I liked, and some of which I may well feature on here. So that little exercise showed me that while I am still firmly on the plateau in terms of my perfume j*****y, I am far from becalmed there. Hold on, do you even get water on plateaux? Somehow I doubt it, and water strikes me as rather a prerequisite for becalming. Oh yes, and the friendship of fellow fumeheads is as important to me now as it has ever been, and probably more so.

The bare stats behind the Bonkers archive - for anyone interested, and I would quite understand if you weren't! - are that I have single-handedly written 627 posts, had 1,707, 258 page views (at the time of writing, but clearly this is a moving feast!), and collected 150 followers along the way. I did have 151 for a good long while, but managed to lose one the other week, sorry, Follower 151! I try to console myself with the thought that 150 is a nice round number, but I can't help wondering where I went wrong to prompt that person to stop reading. Ah well, you can't please everyone, as my Mother used to say.

So yes, here comes the mini-review of the floral oriental Yves Rocher 8e Jour ('8th Day'), a highly pressurised metal canister of which came into my possession together with a load of other vintage scents that once belonged to a friend's mother-in-law, who has since died. I didn't interact with it for the longest time, as Yves Rocher isn't a brand I have historically got excited about, though I do know it has a number of perfumes in the line that punch above their price tag, and I have also tried a few and liked them. But because this one features the numeral '8' - '8e Année' perfumes being extremely scarce on the ground it would seem, though you can be sure I did look - I figured a few words about it might not be a bad way to mark this occasion. Now Samantha Scriven of I Scent You A Day is of course the Queen of Yves Rocher reviews, though I note that she hasn't featured 8e Jour, possibly because of its historicity. The perfume was launched in 1993 and discontinued at a point I have yet to ascertain.

Top notes: Iris, jasmine, ylang-ylang
Heart notes: Rose, honey, cinnamon
Base notes: Myrrh, vanilla, sandalwood

Close up of the highly pressurised nozzle!

Well, well, with the exception of cinnamon those are all amongst my favourite notes, and the overall impression I have of 8e Jour is of YSL Nu if you can bring that to mind - also discontinued I believe - crossed with Camay soap / the cold cream aspect, but NOT the smell of Dior New Look, and then made sweeter. With bonus echoes of Eau d'Italie's Baume du Doge and fainter ones of L'ELDO's Like This. It is powdery and markedly creamy like high end soap, and woody and floral and incensey and honeyed, all at the same time. Maybe a fraction too sweet for some tastes.

In the opening there's even a touch of Puredistance BLACK, which had a good slug of cinnamon in it as I recall. And there is also what ex-Mr Bonkers used to describe as a 'craft shop' vibe to 8e Jour, though only slightly. This was his way of expressing a spicy pot pourri-type aroma. To be fair, he described almost every perfume I wore in these terms or some variant thereof, such as 'craft shop at the bottom of the garden', 'craft shop with the window open', 'craft shop on fire' , 'craft shop SHOULD be on fire' etc, but in this particular case, were he here to sniff 8e Jour and pronounce it a bit craft shoppy, he might actually be onto something.

Oh I say, I just happened to glance at my very first post in 2009, where the craft shop concept according to ex-Mr Bonkers is explained!

To sum up, I do like 8e Jour quite a lot, notwithstanding the sweetness. And that is pretty much all you are going to get from me on the subject. In my defence, as long ago as 2015 I did moot the idea that I might write - or do I mean 'commit'?- a series of 'tiny unreviews of unprecedented vacuousness'. Hmm, I may have served one up for you right there. ;)

Which brings me to the annual (is it annual?) invariably underwhelming giveaway I host on here. Do you remember the elephant perfume bottle? It did find a loving forever home even so.

There is only one prize, but you have a choice...sorry, no actual rum is on offer, though if I had some I would be glad to give it away, being more of a gin person as you know.

1) The New Book of Perfumes, by John Oakes.

This is a sort of directory or mini encyclopaedia of 150 perfumes.

2) A set comprising firstly a copy of the Roja Dove(!!)* Haute Parfumerie Magazine.

This ultimate in 'coffee table magazines' is semi-informative, and does also boast some rather lush perfume bottle porn in it, as well as reproductions of vintage ads.

(* Did I hear someone say 'booby prize'?)

In this lot also comes the programme from the Harrods Perfume Exhibition, The Perfume Diairies, which is somewhat more informative and also features illustrations of vintage adverts. Here is a link to the first of my blog posts about the event (there was a lot to cover!), which was already seven years ago, I see.

I just remembered that it was at that exhibition that I first met Katie Puckrik, who popped in very briefly on her way to the theatre.

The giveaway is open to readers worldwide. Anyone in the UK may additionally have a sample of 8e Jour, if they would like one. Once again, I am so sorry I cannot post perfume further afield, for I have lots of that which I would otherwise put up as a prize. After my resounding reprimand from the Royal Mail, I am too nervous to attempt such a thing again, and it seems unfair somehow to have a lopsided draw that excludes readers everywhere else in the world from a more substantial perfume giveaway. Hence the rather mixed bag of non-liquid items!

The draw is open until midnight next Sunday, 12th. That is Remembrance Sunday, as it happens, so there is a fighting chance (no pun intended) that I will remember to draw the draw.

All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment (also stating if you would specifically like not to be entered, otherwise everyone will be considered in!). That's it. I know full well that the mere act of managing to leave a comment on a Blogger blog, given its technical vagaries, is a feat in itself! Then if anyone has an idea when 8e Jour was discontinued, I would be interested to nail that fact, and to hear whether anyone has ever owned it in a different format. I can't find any pictures in Google images of the metal canister I have, certainly. A comment about your favourite perfume with a numeral in it would also be fun to know. ;) Not necessarily a Chanel, even!

So there you go. It just remains to thank everyone who has been reading Bonkers at any point along the way. I would witter on into the void anyway, but it is knowing that people are in fact out there - which I learnt loud and clear in the wake of my recent post about commenting on blogs - that makes the whole venture so much more worthwhile!

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Lyn Harris La Fleur, La Rose & La Poudrée For Marks & Spencer - Part 2: Mini-Reviews

Lyn Harris looking satisfied with her handiwork, as well she might!

I thought I might write mini-reviews of these three new perfumes for M & S, partly because I am never very confident of my nose's ability to deconstruct the development of a fragrance, but also because I wrote 14,000 words for work since my last post!  Yes indeedy.  I can hardly credit it, but my brain definitely feels as though it has been through the wringer in the past week.  I am not totally "worded out", but let's just say that I find myself massively drawn to non-verbal communication of all kinds at the moment.  Oh, I just looked that up, and there are eight types, apparently - as many as that?  Here they are:

Facial expressions, gestures, body language and posture, eye gaze, appearance (includes choice of perfume! Or it could do, though that is not an example they give...), haptics (I know that from my studies on car dashboards - it's a fancy name for touch), proxemics (fancy name for personal space) and paralinguistics (fancy name for tone of voice.  No, strike that one, as it also involves words, and we are keeping those to a minimum, or trying to.)

"So get on with your mini-reviews then!", I hear you chorus.

LA FLEUR ("Truth or Look" aka "New Dare")

“A floral classic, white gardenia and Indian tuberose flowers set the tone with gentle woods, vanilla Bourbon and musk.”

Source: haircomesthebride.com(!)

When I first applied La Fleur on skin in store I had a banging headache and thought it was a bit loud and shrill, with that shampoo-y chemically vibe commonly found in gardenia-"containing" scents (well, excluding the really high end ones like Isabey).  Yes, Jo Malone Vintage Gardenia, I'm looking at you.   No wonder you were discontinued.  Then when I tried La Fleur at home, with all my faculties on form, the opening was more "bright and juicy", and still a little bit synthetic if I am honest, but the impression was not as marked.  I was reminded quite a lot of Madonna's Truth or Dare, which also has a big loud artificial opening, though it additionally has all that caramel undercurrent going on.  And it is somewhat louder than La Fleur, I might add!  

But anyway, very quickly that startling entry settles into the main turn, as La Fleur morphs into a very creditable  poor man's version of Dior's New Look 1947 laid over a bed of Truth or Dare - minus the caramel.  Not a deep bed, mind - one of those narrow caravan mattresses.  For I get more New Look than Truth or Dare as La Fleur wears on.  Oh, and I mean "poor" mainly in the monetary sense, for aside from the first few moments, La Fleur feels anything but cheap.  And at £25 for 50ml, it actually is every bit as inexpensive as a celebuscent.  As Truth or Dare, indeed!  But La Fleur comes across as classier than Truth or Dare - which I thought wasn't at all bad when it came out - and its quality feel overall is somewhere in between that and New Look, just as one might expect from such a hybrid smellalike!  I can't quite make up my mind where it sits along the spectrum, but at least half way.  I sense that my knowledge of how much New Look actually costs may be playing into my perception of its superior quality, and I really would have needed to have smelt La Fleur and New Look blind to be sure of my ground.  Though it should be remembered that the opening of New Look doesn't smell artificial, not even for a minute or two.  

When La Fleur gets properly into stride though, you have this pretty big white floral that has been tamed, and tastefully muskified - but crucially not laundry muskified.  In fact The Duchess of Cambridge would have been better off wearing this on her wedding day, because it is the sort of perfume she was going for, though she ended up with something much more sharp and artificial throughout.  

For reference, here are the notes for New Look and Truth or Dare - they are by no means the same, but there is some white floral-vanillic-musk crossover for sure.  I see there is no musk mentioned in New Look below, but maybe the benzoin strikes me that way.

New Look: peony, ylang-ylang, pink pepper, jasmine sambac, rose, tuberose, iris, benzoin, and vanilla

Truth or Dare: jasmine, benzoin and white lily, vanilla absolute, caramelized amber and sensual musk.

LA ROSE (A Mohur-style sleeper?)

“An elegant classic; rose petals with sparkling green notes of galbanum and red berry with a base of Indonesian patchouli, sweet musk and amber.”

Right, so on first smelling this one I immediately thought that La Rose was Lyn Harris's concession to the traditional M & S shopper, the "blue rinse brigade" if I may be so uncharitable.  I got a lot of powdery rose, which can so easily read as old-fashioned to my nose, Floris White Rose-style, and the rose was of that sharp metallic type that I think is the more expensive sort (a natural of some kind even? - can anyone help me out?), but which isn't really my preferred style of the note.  I also got a rooty, earthy facet coming through, very likely from the patchouli, together with the piercing sappy brightness of the galbanum, a note I find challenging as a rule.  I thought La Rose well done and realistic, but on balance probably not my thing, at least not in its early stages.  Then as it develops, Diptyque L'Ombre dans L'Eau came to mind, which also showcases the vegetal quality of the rose.

For reference here are the notes of White Rose and L'Ombre dans L'Eau - interestingly, I seem to have picked up on a shared base of amber and musk!:

White Rose: white rose, violet leaf, carnation, violet, iris and jasmine, amber and musk

L'Ombre dans L'Eau: rose, blackcurrant bud, amber, musk, and myrrh.

I am calling this a "Mohur-style sleeper", not because La Rose smells like it particularly, apart from the retro powdery aspect - this is much greener, however - but because I suspect it will be the one that is overlooked in the trio.  La Fleur in particular is more accessible, more of a contemporary crowd-pleaser, while La Rose feels like a scent from a bygone era.  It comes across as high quality from the off, and may appeal to vintage lovers.  I must say that once the tinny green rose aspect wears off a bit, along with the excess powder of the opening, I do like its later stages quite a lot.  Which I know sounds like damning with faint praise, but the drydown is the longest stage, after all.

LA POUDREE (Hold the opening!)

 “An oriental classic; raspberry and peach nectar with soft rose, orange flower, iris Florentine, vanilla and musk.”

Fleur Oriental incense - the opening of the scent does get up my nose a bit!

I had a polarised reaction to this one: I liked the opening least out of the trio, and the drydown most.  On first application, La Poudrée hits you with a wall of thick musk which instantly harks back to Miller Harris Fleur Oriental, which I do not care for for this very reason, and in this regard is also reminiscent of Parfums de Nicolai Sacrebleu, which has a similarly suffocating opening.  A fug of powder or musk or both - I don't rightly now what I am smelling, but it could induce a headache amongst those of a delicate constitution, as I was the first time I tried it.

Compared to La Fleur, La Poudrée takes longer to move into the next stage, but it is very beautiful when it does - a rosy, fruity, vanilla oriental that I defy anyone not to be seduced by (or anyone who likes vanilla orientals as a category at least).  I can't think of any other overtly fruity vanilla orientals, but this is as lovely as it may be ground-breaking (and it probably isn't - please say if you know of others!).  I can see La Poudrée being a top seller, along with La Fleur.  And I can see La Fleur being more generally wearable, also for me.

For reference, here are the notes of Fleur Oriental and Sacrebleu - ooh, I see Fleur Oriental has musk AND heliotrope - that goes a long way towards explaining its particular fug wall!  And Sacrebleu is a seriously big production as you can see, but - and this is key - it shares "stifled orange notes" with Fleur Oriental and La Poudrée in its opening.  I also note the potentially worrying presence of tonka bean:

Fleur Oriental: fresh orange blossom, heliotrope, spicy carnation, Turkish rose, amber, vanilla and musk

Sacrebleu: mandarin orange, fruits and red berries, carnation, tuberose, jasmine, cinnamon, olibanum, woody notes, vanilla, patchouli, sandalwood, peru balsam and tonka bean.

Overall verdict?  Very well made scents, excellent for the money.  I'd buy two of the three, and with La Poudrée would simply waft and wait a bit.  Now we can all pick up a Miller Harris perfume along with our underwear and ready meals, and the high street is much the better for it.  

Photo of Lyn Harris and shots of the trio of Lyn Harris scents from the M & S website, photo of green rose from 1ms.net, photo of Fleur Oriental incense from the Miller Harris website.

A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: No 2 (Belgium & France) - A "Drowned And Out In Paris" Sniffathon: Printemps & Guerlain

I am still "coming down" from the excitement of meeting Olfactoria again yesterday - together with her family this time - but Bonkers is nothing if not chronological, so I will carry on this account of my latest series of work trips with a report from Belgium and France. Nothing much happened in Brussels, except for a major bus-taking coup to my appointment, saving some 55 euros on taxis, which I promptly went and blew on a bottle of Tom Ford Violet Blonde later in the week. Oh, and the fact that within the space of 24 hours I was kerb crawled AND had a teenager give up her seat for me on the Metro. This prompted me to speculate whether I am now on that finely balanced cusp between cougar and care home... ; - )

Then last Tuesday found me in Paris. The day got off to an inauspicious start: I had to get up preternaturally early (for me) and caught a train out to a gritty and rainswept suburb north of the city centre. By 8.40am I was queuing outside a branch of McDonald's waiting for them to open. I was cold and wet to the bone (umbrellas being a liability in the prevailing high winds), and the day had barely begun. At 9am, the drive-by hatch opened (though unfortunately not the seating area), and I enjoyed the freshest egg McMuffin ever made, washed down by a piping hot cup of tea (for McDonald's!). I could even overlook the lack of milk just to have something warm to wrap my hands around.

By 1pm, things were definitely looking up. My meeting over, I was in position in the area around the Gare Saint-Lazare, home to the upmarket department store Printemps, with several more cups of tea inside me and a grim determination not to let the truly diabolical weather get in the way of a good sniffing session. It turned out to be an episodic day - or a "sodding epic" day, to borrow Mr Bonkers' robust phrase - and here are the highlights...

I had visited Printemps on my last visit to Paris in 2009, and remembered that it offered a good selection of niche scents in a compact area within the main perfume hall known as the Scent Room. To be honest, given the rather fluid floor plan, I couldn't quite work out the demarcation between the Scent Room and the rest of the perfume counters, not that it really mattered.

I decided to be quite focused in my approach and spent most of my visit split between the Jo Malone, Dior, L'Artisan Parfumeur and Etat Libre d'Orange counters.

JO MALONE

The tea range was nowhere to be seen, and the assistant was tied up with a "proper customer"(!), so I couldn't even blag a sample of Wild Bluebell (to replace the grapefruit one I was given in error in Germany!); instead I contented myself with having a quick and ginger sniff of a couple of the Intense Colognes.

Iris & White Musk

Does what it says on the bottle - pleasant enough, but forgettable.

Rose Water & Vanilla

Thick and throat catching, a bit like one of those treacly Guerlains.

I steered clear of Amber & Patchouli and Oud & Bergamot, as patchouli and oud are not my favourite notes at the best of times, never mind amplified by an "intense cologne" effect!

DIOR LA COLLECTION PRIVÉE

I asked to try a few of the Collection Privée range of which I had read favourable reviews, and the sales assistant also suggested one or two others for me to try.

New Look 1947

I already know and love this one, and cherish my small decant. I picked up the cylindrical 125ml bottle with its clunky magnetic top, fondled it for a bit and put it back again. I don't need 125ml of any perfume, though 150 euros was a reasonable price to pay, ml for ml. I shall wait to see if the lemming gets the better of me, in which case I can always pick it up in London for the slightly lower price of £120. I gladly accepted the sales assistant's offer to perfume me generously around my neck area. In this way she was able to mark her territory and hopefully reel me in to make a purchase later in the day. "With an EDP or EDT you'll find that if you really love it, you will use it up." And despite my collection of bottles now topping the 70 mark, I almost....almost...believed her.

Ambre Nuit

Soft, sheer, barely there, faintly spicy oriental. Very elegant - my next favourite after New Look 1947. I only tried it on card but liked it enough to look up the notes:

Pink Pepper, Bergamot, Spices, Turkish Rose, Amber, Balsamy (sic) Notes, Cedar, Patchouli, Gaiac Wood

Mitzah

Didn't get beyond a tentative sniff of the nozzle with this one. Heavy, spicy ambery, boozy fright wig of a scent. For all I know, the drydown might be spectacular, but I am not sure I could last the course to find out!

Bois d'Argent

A pantomime horse with Juniper Sling at the front end - with the merest hint of Craft, the most metallic scent from Andrea Maack - and Chanel No 19 Poudré at the back end. A very stylish and wearable unisex scent. "Pantomime" is in no way meant as a criticism.

UPDATE: I have now been given a generous decant of this by Tara, and it smells nothing like the scent I smelt in Paris. As a check, I have just sprayed Bois d'Argent on card, which clears up the discrepancy - it is a totally different animal on card, on initial spraying, certainly - then it becomes more like the decant version. On skin this is the faintest leather and honeyed vanilla, while on card the opening was bright and citrus-y with the iris peeking through. How weird!

Granville

As I think I said in a comment over on Olfactoria's review of Granville, this scent is forever destined to remind me of a local wine bar with the same name. That aside, it smelt just as I imagined, if not better: that MH Fleur de Sel-like, bracing, aromatic, seaside vibe. Not a genre that is really "me", but extremely well done.

Milly-la-Forêt

A ho-hum fruity floral not worthy of inclusion in the range, imho.

L'ARTISAN PARFUMEUR MON NUMÉRO COLLECTION

Having torn myself away from a purchase of New Look 1947, I headed over to the L'Artisan counter to check out more of the Mon Numéro Collection, being only familiar with Nos 6 and 8 to date. No 6 was an unfortunate mix of Fleur de Liane crossed with PG Papyrus de Ciane (beware of scents ending in -iane is the clear learning point here!), while No 8 was the pretty iris skin scent I remembered. The assistant tried to nudge me towards a purchase by playing the scarcity card: "This is the one developed for the Japanese market, you know, and when it is gone it is gone. No 10 has already gone, for example."

In fact, the only other ones left to try were Nos 3 and 4, both of which were resolutely not my thing. According to the SA, No 3 contained notes of lavender, vetiver and patchouli, while No 4 had notes of lavender, carnation, spices and muscat. The only useful comment I can add to that is "Yeek!"

ETAT LIBRE D'ORANGE

Moving on swiftly, I had a quick test of a couple of scents in the neighbouring Etat Libre d'Orange fixture: Sécrétions Magnifiques (which I had managed to dodge up to now: in hindsight - or in "nethersmell" - with good reason!), and Bendelirious, of which I had just read a review by the Candy Perfume Boy that day, so it was top of mind at the time - and very much the ditzy, va-va-voom floral he described.

Pausing briefly in the Hermès concession to cadge a sample of Santal Massoïa for Olfactoria (using my tried and tested "boyfriend with upcoming birthday" ruse), I started to wander vaguely in the direction of Place Vendôme. In view of the weather, I more or less gave up trying to navigate, but still managed to pass entirely at random a Maître Parfumeur Gantier outlet, two Guerlain boutiques, one of Annick Goutal, one of Comme des Garcons and one of Maison Kurkdjian.

GUERLAIN BOUTIQUES (and ongoing forensic inquiries about Plus Que Jamais)

I only actually went into the Guerlain boutiques, because I was either familiar with the ranges of the others, or didn't care for them in the main. Well, the former reason also applies to Guerlain, but I was on a continuing mission to find out what became of Plus Que Jamais - or Plus Jamais , as it should now be known since it was discontinued. In both stores the assistants tried to find me a substitute - namely Nuit d'Amour and (most oddly), Jardins de Bagatelle.

Try as I might, I couldn't seem to convey the fact that I only wanted this particular scent, or if I couldn't have it, I wanted to know why it had been axed. One assistant had heard that a specific ingredient in it was now on the prohibited list, so rather than reformulate the scent, they had decided to knock it on the head completely.

I find this terribly sad... If I get a moment, I might ring up the people at No 68 (which I didn't have a chance to visit this time) to see if they can confirm the truth of this. I would also like to know what the offending ingredient might have been that led to the premature demise of Plus Que Jamais, and whether they had had any inkling of the rule change. I sense not, for they can't have recovered their development costs during the scent's all too short lifespan.

Time to dive into another cafe for more tea and homemade creme caramel...

Coming up in Part 2 - the Fragonard Museum, JAR, and IUNX revisited (hard on the heels of Ines and Asali!)


Photo of Printemps exterior from routard.com, photo of Printemps display from parisdeuxieme.com, photo of Jo Malone Rose and Vanilla Intense Cologne, L'Artisan Mon Numéro No 8 and Guerlain Plus Que Jamais from fragrantica.com, photo of Dior Ambre Nuit from aufeminin.com, photo of Place Vendôme by night from destinationsperfected.com - no photos my own on account of the rain!

A Trio of Bonkers Trips: No 1 (Germany & Switzerland) – Doorstepping myBeautyBlog in Lüneburg

In everyone’s circle of friends, there is supposedly at least one person you could ring up in the middle of the night if you had to, say if you were having a personal crisis of some kind. I believe I have at least a couple of friends like that, but I trust I will never be in such dire straits as to feel the need to take them up on their kind offer. If I were them, I wouldn’t particularly relish being roused at bleary o’clock to lend a listening ear or some more practical form of help.

And then there are the friends you can disturb during the day – by just turning up unannounced, pretty much – and know (or be confident at least) that they will be pleased to see you at virtually no notice.

MyBeautyBlog is such a friend. She is both perfumista and make up blogger, The Non-Blonde of the German-speaking world, if you will - or “DACH-Gebiet”, as it is known in business circles (the acronym DACH being composed of the country abbreviations for Germany, Austria and Switzerland respectively). There may well be others, but I have only come across one other perfume blogger writing in her native German, namely Lena Brombacher of Olfactorialist – well, in both English and German in fact, for there are two versions of her blog. For of course the other well known blogger from that neck of the woods, Olfactoria of Olfactorias Travels, has opted to write in English, giving her blog international reach far beyond her home turf of Central Europe.

But for perfume lovers in the DACH-Gebiet who prefer to interact in their mother tongue, myBeautyBlog (real name Andreea) fills an important role, and her proudly advert-free blog is still going strong after six years. Andreea is in her early thirties but looks as young as Ari of Scents of Self actually is, though she doesn’t look her age either…! : - )

MyBeautyBlog and I “met” on Now Smell This, the mother ship of blogs where a number of my early fumehead friendships were forged. We first met in person in spring 2009 on a blind sniffing date in Hamburg, and then again in April of this year. We took a sightseeing tour of Andreea's home town of Lüneburg and enjoyed a memorable al fresco meal by the river in the company of her fiancé and his best man-to-be. And then in August it was thanks to a timely text exchange with Andreea that I discovered the Königsparfümerie in Dresden.

And so to the latest bonkers trip… After my first appointment near Hamburg at the start of my itinerary, I called Andreea on my mobile and asked her to guess where I was. “Er, round the corner?” she replied, sussing my game immediately. “Nearly – I am about 16km away. I know it is cheeky to call you out of the blue like this, but would you have time for a cup of tea?”

And so it was that some 40 minutes later, myBeautyBlog met me outside the university where she works. After a quick peep in her office, we adjourned to the canteen for that much needed cup of tea (on my side), and had a good old catch up on news, notably how the plans were going for her imminent winter wedding (now just over a week away!) To preempt reader inquiries the groom is predicted to wear Guerlain Cologne No 68, and the bride is hoping to be surprised with a wedding scent gift on the day. Well, I use the word “surprised” advisedly – I think the groom has been given some fairly heavy – and named – hints, including Parfum d'Empire Eau Suave and Kelly Calèche Extrait if my memory serves me.

At some point obviously we needed to sniff one another’s scent of the day: Andreea had applied hers to the nape of her neck, which made for some comical and ostentatious craning on my part, but if they did happen to notice, no one in the canteen appeared to be remotely fazed by this strange friendship ritual. I correctly guessed that Andreea was wearing a cunning mélange of Jardin sur le Nil and Jardin sur le Toit, while my own SOTD of Dior New Look 1947 had her foxed, but that was fair enough given that she had never smelt it.

After a pleasant hour or so of shooting the breeze, we said goodbye back at my car, but not before I had extracted my vial of Hermès Santal Massoia for Andreea (a big Hermès fan, as you may have gathered) to try right there on the spot, for those 4ml tubes do not lend themselves to being shared. We stood in the dark and cold for a couple of minutes as Andreea huffed her wrists – she liked what she smelt, but in no time at all the scent seemed to disappear, a phenomenon which she lamented as happening to her more and more often lately.

And I thought how curious we might appear to anyone passing by, two women standing by an open car boot, barely acquaintances really - from different countries and different generations - both intently sniffing the same pair of wrists, united by our passionate shared interest.

And then it was my turn to disappear, off to my next port of call…

Have a wonderful wedding next week, myBeautyBlog! And if and when you have a moment, do let us know what you wore on the day!


UPDATE: MyBeautyBlog's wedding report is now up on her blog here. It is in German, admittedly, but even for non-German speakers it is well worth checking out this and an earlier post for the lovely photos of Andreea's dress, makeup and bouquet.



Photo of Lüneburg from bach-cantatas.com, photo of myBeautyBlog from her website, photo of Leuphana university from ffb.uni-leuneburg.de, photo of Hermès Santal Massoia from stylelist.com