A random round up of perfume oddities

I am sorry that I have been gone awhile...in my flimsy defence, I have been preoccupied with recurring bouts of eye eczema - unusually for this time of year, as the main triggers are pollens of every stripe. At first I blamed a conditioner high in natural ingredients, which can be as irritating if not more so than synthetic ones, only to experience another episode a couple of weeks later despite avoiding the offending hair product, leaving me none the wiser. These flare ups are now commoner than periods of "good skin", and I am even starting to wonder if I should believe in chemtrails after all, and that planes are spraying some irritating chemicals in the atmosphere that are landing on my face, haha. At this point in my bafflement and frustration I am open to any explanation, however off the wall.

Staying with the notion of "off the wall", this post will take the form of a compilation of odd things linked to perfume that have struck me lately.

The perfume bottle that isn't

Reprising the theme of a post in 2013 on "perfume related imagery", I have another example to add to the pot, namely a dish I bought in a charity shop for £3 (see above). Does that not look like a bottle of Estee Lauder Private Collection Amber Ylang Ylang to you? Okay, a bit squarer perhaps, and without the beaten gold top. And the top it does have admittedly resembles a wan and bloodied finger, and is on the skinny side. But a definite resemblance nonetheless, I would say. Through half-closed eyes the white streaks could even be seen as representations of sillage, hehe...

Source: Boots

The perfume reviews that weren't

I did originally think I would review the latest release from Papillon Perfumery, Spell 125, as I have a fondness for the house and have covered most of the perfumes in the Papillon stable. Not quite all of the line, mind - not Anubis - but most of them. And Spell 125 is a very fine composition like its fragrant forebears, even if it is not really "me". For I have a problematic relationship with pine, and found it difficult to connect with Spell 125 on a personal level. It struck me as more of a "foresty atmosphere" rather than something you would wear to accessorise an outfit - the olfactory equivalent of the musical sleep aids found in the deepest recesses of the Calm app, some of which go by the startling name of "dronescapes". Claire of Take One Thing Off makes this very point in her own stellar post on the scent, using the term "environmental", and later alluding to Spell 125's "ascetic, modern spaciness", though I promise I had the same reaction independently. ;) She does concede that Spell 125 would nicely accessorise a yoga outfit - and act as a kind of scented "om" mantra perhaps? So that would have been the angle I would have taken, but there was absolutely no need as Claire had eloquently mined the same metaphorical seam before me. Spell 125 also reminded me of a poem I wrote when I was 11, which was published in the school magazine, although I have no copy of that or the poem itself anymore. I know it was about a crypt, and evoked the dank musty, chilly feel of the sarcophagi in that underground space where no light could get in. I remember the first two lines and that is it:

"Alabaster icy cell / This is where the spirits dwell"

Sarcophagus in St Mary's, Ingestre

I do know the poem had a meditative, dronescapey quality to it, with bonus murmuring insects outside in the churchyard and a fair few mossy flagstones, but my memory is as fuzzy as I believe the atmosphere of the poem was. So that scuppered the review as well. And the third thing to do so was the fact that while I am aware of the significance of the name "Spell 125", every time I hear it I instantly think of "Bet 365", possibly because they are a local company - and major employer in the area! - in Stoke. And that was the final nail in the coffin of the review that wasn't, and is what qualifies it as an "oddity" for inclusion in this post.

Then there is another new perfume I am not going to review, because it would dispel the mystery readers may prefer to solve for themselves. As soon as I sniffed it, I immediately thought:

"Woody soapy iris".

My next impression (before consulting the note list) was of a muted and hazy, more high end take on Bourjois Soir de Paris, which was of course a huge hit in its day. 

Top notes: Violet, Peach, Apricot and Bergamot

Middle notes: Iris, Heliotrope, Rose, Ylang-Ylang, Jasmine and Lily-of-the-Valley

Base notes: Amber, Sandalwood, Vanilla and Musk.

Soir de Paris is noticeably fruity and sweet (due to the first three notes above), and "puts out more", whereas this new fragrance is a sophisticated, understated veil. Interestingly, 11 of the 14 notes in Soir de Paris are in the new scent, though it has many more besides. But that could well explain why I went straight to the Bourjois in my mind. Below is a photo of my vintage mini (featured here), which is sadly too irrevocably gunky to be used now.

My world is not JPG

Recently I have been progressively friended on Facebook by a bunch of perfumistas, who all seem to know one another and be from The Netherlands or Belgium. I accepted the friend requests and was soon hit up with the following invitation to join a group about Jean-Paul Gautier called "mijn wereld is JPG" - at 4.04am in the morning! So many assumptions involved here: that I speak Dutch/Flemish, that I like JPG enough to wish to join a group devoted to the brand, and (most improbably of all) that I am awake and raring to respond in the middle of the night! You may well ask why I don't turn my phone off to avoid such disturbances, and that is because I drift off to sleep listening to podcasts or meditations or one of the aforementioned dronescapes and my phone is therefore still on for the rest of the night.

"Hallo, ik heb deze groep op Facebook gemaakt waarin je mogelijk bent geïnteresserd - mijn wereld is JPG"

The perfumista alarm clock

I bought a travelling alarm clock on eBay the other day, as my trusty old folding leather one was in for repair and not expected to come out alive. Even if it did - as it has to my surprise - it must be "on its last hands", and it is always handy to have a back up against the time that nobody makes them anymore, on the assumption that we all now use our phones instead. If I have a very important early start - say if I am catching a train - I will often set two devices, not being a morning person. Anyway, the clock arrived yesterday - a dinky little thing with a cheery orange leather interior - and I was almost as excited by the design of the clock itself as I was by the tissue paper in which it was wrapped, which had Penhaligon's perfume bottles all over it. How very unexpected! And what an inadvertently apt choice on the part of the sender. ;)

The Alien perfume sample

I know Omicron is about to descend on us all shortly, and possibly precipitate another lockdown, but I have managed to get out and about a bit lately, and recently met up with a Japanese friend, who kindly donated a clutch of skincare and perfume samples she had acquired as GWPs when buying larger skincare products. The one that intrigued me most was the sample of Mugler's Alien, with which I am familiar already. It was the delivery mechanism of the sample that tickled me - you pulled a cardboard tab upwards to reveal a white plastic nozzle, and then pressed the image of the bottle to deliver a spray from it - which is the closest I have seen to a sample replicating the experience of using a tester. ;) Genius really, and guaranteed to appeal to my inner little kid. 

Do you have any perfume oddities to report? Let me know in the comments.

The Scent Crimes Series: No 18 - Tantalising convex bottoms

'Does my bottom look convex in this?'

I have just had a quick look at past entries in The Scent Crimes Series, and of the previous 17, a surprising seven tackle assorted irritating aspects of perfume packaging. I was saying to Val the Cookie Queen only the other day that I seem to be becoming more and more easily annoyed these days, and that it doesn't take much for something on Facebook to set me off: from the eerily well targeted ads for brow lifts, wide fitting shoes and funeral plans, to the generalised ranting, humble bragging, cryptic cliffhangers, inexplicably inflammatory terms of endearment (especially 'my lovely' and 'hun'), not forgetting the self-help memes - and even (when I am feeling particularly curmudgeonly) the surfeit of cute animal videos. Though sometimes it is a video of a squirrel nibbling on an acorn before falling over in ecstasy, or an otter doing backstroke with its baby on its tummy that is precisely the tonic I need for these unfortunate bouts of misanthropy.

But yes, it would seem that perfume packaging also has boundless ways to wind me up. For those who have come latterly to Bonkers, here are a few of the past titles to give you an idea:

No 6 - Opaque Perfume Receptacles
No 11 - Bombastically Big Boxes
No 12 - Impregnable Perfume Miniatures

And possibly my top peeve!:

No 15 - The infuriating shape sorting puzzle that is Cuir de Lancôme packaging

And then the other day I was thwarted by perfume packaging in yet another way - namely by a miniature bottle of Estee Lauder Amber Ylang Ylang, to be exact - when it failed to yield up its remaining drops on account of the convex surface of the inner bottom of the bottle. In vain did I tip the mini this way and that; the precious few drops of scent simply slid out of reach to one or other corner, beyond the pumping range of the admittedly very short tube.

Now it is because I so rarely finish anything bigger than a sample or small decant - most of my full bottles will probably have gone off before I do so, with a handful of notable exceptions - that I was caught on the hop by this. But it was all the more frustrating as I was in the mood to wear Amber Ylang Ylang at the time, and there was no other way apart from activating the nozzle to get the juice out. In fairness I do also have the same issue currently with a bottle of Clarins Foundation, to which I am quite tempted to take a hammer in my piqued state. Such drastic action would only hasten the run off of the last drops of Amber Ylang Ylang, mind, so I am well and truly snookered on this one. All that is left is to take a moment to enjoy the beaten gold top, whose stippled allure partly drew me to this scent in the first place...

Hmm, on closer inspection, I see I have a concave bottom problem going on with the Clarins...

Have you found yourself thwarted by this troubling phenomenon of tantalising convex bottoms?

It is of course also a problem if you are estimating fill levels prior to hosting a split or selling on a partial bottle of perfume - how do you account for the missing juice where the glass bows out? All oddly shaped bottles are tricky in this regard, come to think of it - well anything that isn't rectangular or squarish and with an even thickness of glass throughout.

Argh! I just learnt that this Amber Ylang Ylang has been discontinued - cue more annoyance! That is a great shame, as it was a fine example of a sweetly comforting gourmand scent with its tenacious base of amber, sandalwood, and vanilla.  Here is a link to Angela's review on Now Smell This. She does admittedly call it the ultimate 'cashmere sweater scent', but I will overlook that ;), as it was back in 2008, and Angela may well have been one of the first people to use - if not indeed coin! - the phrase that has gone on to become the doyenne of perfume cliches (well, if you are a crabby old stick like me, that is).

And if you aren't bothered by tantalising convex bottoms particularly, do you by any chance find yourself more readily irritated these days? I blame middle-age hormones - what's your excuse if so?