An earthy yet unworldy scent: Bright Earth Parfums Eau de Earth review, and another milestone giveaway!

Now that I have been blogging for a while, I find myself at the receiving end of more and more emails from brands and PR companies - and sometimes directly from perfumers - notifying me of this or that launch, or special offer, or what have you. I am genuinely excited to receive news from some of my favourite brands, while tuning out to some of the others, to be honest. These emails often comprise a press release about the fragrance in tastefully lyrical 'PR-esque prose', and usually sign off by asking me to get in touch if I have any queries or would like any further information. I never have any queries or want any further information. Oh, and there may additionally be a pdf containing some high resolution pack shots that they are probably hoping I will use on the blog, but I mostly prefer to use my own, which is more in keeping with my Bonkers 'house style'.

So last month I was quite taken aback - in a good way - to receive a very personal, direct approach from the owner of Bright Earth Parfums - a 'down to earth' approach, if you will. The gentleman in question, Nicolas Fromanger, is a French national living in New York. I was immediately drawn to his surname, which is just a surplus consonant away from Fromager, or 'cheese-maker', a subject close to my heart, having worked for a dairy company and in a specialist cheese shop. I even wrote my postgraduate thesis on cheese. But I digress...Monsieur Fromanger is crucially NOT a cheesemaker, though 'manger' means eat at least. I spy the makings of a fine pun in there.

Here is the introductory email which caught my attention:

"i am French based in NYC, made a perfume 'Eau de Earth', all natural flowers scent, eau de parfum, 1 oz, built like a classic, i would like to send you a bottle, enclosed please find some photos
i just started a small ecommerce, you can find the fragrance at https://www.etsy.com/shop/brightearthparfums
please let me know where to send a bottle
you are a woman, it was made for you too!!!"

'Do I look small next to these lilies?'

Various things intrigued me about this opening gambit: the reference to the scent comprising just 'natural flowers', the blithe disregard for upper case letters, the fact that Monsieur Fromanger (hereinafter known as Nicolas, as we got quite pally, by and by) was selling perfume on Etsy, which I associate primarily with a myriad of handicrafts - it is where I found ex-Mr Bonkers a zombie sock monkey, for example! - and last but not least, the fact that he assumed that the perfume would be to my liking because I am a woman. With the email Nicolas had sent two photographs of the bottle and its box, posing alongside two different types of lily. A clue to the notes, as I later learnt...It was very much the sort of homemade photo I just said I like to use on Bonkers!, but it is unusual for the perfume brand itself to eschew the glossy hi-res shots of a typical press pack. One photo landed in my inbox on its side, while the other was upside down ;) - and the lilies did rather dominate in one picture, but still. If anything, I liked Bright Earth Parfums all the more for these minor malfunctions.

So yes, this refreshingly unslick introduction to the brand worked like a charm, and I accepted Nicolas' kind offer of a bottle, which duly arrived. Even the packaging was splendidly basic, much as I would expect to receive a used bottle I had bought on eBay or scored in a swap. There wasn't even a note inside, or a comps slip.

The box, sadly, was a disappointment. I had been enjoying the lack of obvious commercialism up to this point, but found I couldn't embrace the dark blue box, with its graphic of the earth seen from space - or specifically the sea seen from space - the photo was given to Nicolas by NASA, no less. The bold graphics put me more in mind of a cigarette packet, or a packet of playing cards - or the box containing a boy's toy or game, maybe. It just didn't compute for me as the container of a perfume bottle...

Source: pics-land.ru

Luckily, the bottle itself did look perfectly like a perfume bottle, and I rather liked its circular shape, doubtless to denote the earth again, with the swirly white overlay evoking cloud cover seen from space - or, for that matter, the spray from the sea - for the scent itself definitely has a feeling of rain or droplets of water of some kind to it, without being remotely 'aquatic', if that makes sense.

Which leads me neatly on to my experience of Eau de Earth, into which name I feel an urge to insert an apostrophe, by analogy with Eau d'Hadrien, Eau d'Italie. Eau d'Orange Verte, Eau d'Hermes or Eau d'Eden. So that was another quirky aspect to the perfume, come to think of it.

I have given Eau de Earth at least half a dozen wearings now: the first time I sprayed it I was vividly reminded of Bourjois Soir de Paris, on account of a big, sweet, heady, rather vague floral bouquet, that was decidedly retro in style. I thought I smelt violets and also picked up on a powdery cachou note. I have no sample of Soir de Paris to hand anymore, but I remember it as being a bit 'too much', almost headache-inducing, whereas Eau de Earth is way more restrained than that comparison might suggest, being tempered by what I can best describe as a 'rained on' quality, coupled with a sort of flinty, mineral aspect.

My mini of Soir de Paris, sadly no longer extant

I wrote back to Nicolas with my initial impressions, as he had expressly asked me to do. I also quizzed him about the note list (see, I do have queries after all!), which he was reluctant to divulge for fear of "copycats", though over the course of several more email exchanges he did reveal quite a lot about the composition of Eau de Earth, including the fact that it took him a full year to finetune. The main flowers are jasmine and lilies, plus some citrus, while the base is "a classic built like Guerlain, and in between the top notes, the medium and the base, I assembled a few so to hold those 3 basic levels together, and one of the hard part was to recreate the mist or spray smell of the sea, that instant pure freshness that you encounter as soon as you reach or are near the sea!!!"

So I was right about the 'watery' aspect...

Nicolas then suggested I spray Eau de Earth on a piece of paper or card, leaving it in a room where I would walk past it often, to see how it attracted my attention and whether I spotted anything new or different about the scent when appreciated on a different medium to skin, and in a more ambient way. So I wrote back, accepting this challenge:

"I will try that wafting trick to see what happens. Your spray smell of the sea could be what I mean by the 'flinty' / 'mineral' aspect."

Well, I had a good go at this, leaving a folded sheet of paper liberally spritzed with Eau de Earth on the edge of the dining room table, and wedging another piece of paper in a drawer in one of the bedrooms, but I can't truthfully say I noticed anything very much - I really had to lean in to catch a whiff, and it was broadly the same as on skin. And this despite Nicolas' assurance that:

"It is an aerial perfume, it has the ability to spread himself thin into the air and expand to reach for attention and capture it!!!"

Well, I cannot confirm the aerial aspect, but the watery one for sure, and both perfume and creator had certainly captured my attention!

On the next wearing, I was hit right between the nostrils - would that be the septum, maybe? - by a resemblance to Guerlain Apres L'Ondee. There was the same olde worlde, wistful, powdery yet watery feel to it. I was still getting (as it turned out) phantom violet, though wondered if it might be iris. Anyway, the Apres L'Ondee analogy really stuck in my brain, and now that I have worn the two scents side by side about four times, I am more than ever convinced of the resemblance. Eau de Earth is more of a 'regular floral' and less offbeat and anisic than Apres L'Ondee, but the distinction between them is much more blurred when it comes to the perfumes' respective drydowns, and they both have a spookily similar 'atmosphere'. I immediately emailed Nicolas with this latest impression.

It seems my nose was on the money this time, for Nicolas wrote back and said that Apres L'Ondee was "one of the perfumes I deconstructed in order to put together later different parts of different perfumes for a new one!" He asked if I could spot Chanel No 19 for the green accord or Hermes (unspecified) for the citrus combination. I now think the No 19 connection might explain the bee in my bonnet about a violet/iris facet. But Eau de Earth isn't terribly citrusy on me at any point. And I was not able to pick out any Herbes de Provence or cistus, although they are all in there too apparently.

Anyway, so far, so very interesting, especially given the fact that the perfume contains no aromachemicals, only the flowers themselves and alcohol. As for how exactly the flowers have been processed, I don't know enough about it to speculate, though assume some combination of essential oils, absolutes, concretes, tinctures etc.

Source: parfumo.net

In one of his later emails, Nicolas reveals more about the idea for Eau de Earth - it was inspired by a chance find in a bazaar in Egypt of a little bottle of perfume which was "very much the smell of the Earth after it rained...that scent could remind you of Apres L'Ondee, because it is one of the closest perfumes that gives you that rainy feeling..."

Importantly, however, Nicolas is trying to break away from the melancholy vibe of Apres L'Ondee:

"it is ephemeral, like catching a glimpse of something that you long for! let say a pang, but with joy! and that is what the Earth is for me!!!"

I will be honest, for me - because of the major similarity with Apres L'Ondee that I just can't get out of my head now - Eau de Earth is more melancholic than not, but that is no bad thing in my book. A 30ml bottle of an all-natural perfume that smells like a Guerlain classic and is selling on Etsy for just £18.27! That sounds like a bargain to me.

The perfume is only available in the USA at this time, though the brand would like to find outlets in Europe.

NOT the Bright Earth bottle ~ Source: polyvore

Oh, and I note that Bright Earth Parfums is going for a more 'earthy' (as in 'raunchy'!) positioning on Etsy, describing it as a LOVE ELIXIR (I see we have abandoned the lower case now!), that is "mysterious and enchanting" and liable to "take you where no women has been before!"

So the packaging and Etsy copy - which is its only sales presence at the moment I gather - are a bit cheap and cheerful / cheesy to my mind, but if you can see past that the perfume itself is quite lovely, in that wistful, attenuated, mournful kind of way.

Finally, I thought that Eau de Earth might be a good - and very rare ;) - scent to feature as a giveaway to mark Bonkers reaching one million page views. I am really busy with work at the moment, so will leave the draw open till midnight GMT on 22nd May. If you would like to be entered in the draw to receive a decant of this (men may also apply!), just leave a comment, explaining why you like the sound of Eau de Earth. I don't wish to overplay the Apres L'Ondee similarity either - for as the scent does draw on elements from a range of other classics, you may well get something else again. NB I don't mind posting to the USA and Canada, using the standard wily ruses to fox the customs officials, but obviously I can't guarantee the perfume's safe passage.

Oh, "Vienna": Olfactoria - and Val the Cookie Queen - travel to Stafford...in spirit at least!

While I was up in Scotland visiting my brother and sister-in-law this weekend, I spied a Facebook status update posted on my wall by my good friend - and perfumista protege-in-progress - Clare:

"Making a rare visit to the Big Town (Stafford).  When did we get a Guerlain shop?"

To which my instant and feverishly excited response was:

"Good grief.  Not JUST Guerlain, surely?  With the Paris Exclusives and everything?"

Clare let my mischievous riposte die a natural death, replying:

"Guerlain, La Perla and Wolford."

At this point our mutual friend Nicola chipped in, making the very understandable point:

"I think you must have stumbled into a different town, Clare...easily done."

But no, we do have a new, 'Guerlain-forward' perfumery: in Crabbery Street, on the site of a failed cake shop, and a failed shoe shop before it.  For anyone not familiar with my adopted town, I should point out the sorry fact that many shops fail in Stafford, including - to my great chagrin - its lone delicatessen.  Oh, and we have never been lucky enough to warrant a wool shop selling the sort of ball that doesn't give you an electric shock.

Frau Hermine Mayer, Proprietor of Vienna in Stafford

So today, notwithstanding an urgent need to recce Stafford's sherry and turkey crown options, I braved the intermittent hail to check out this latest retail phoenix, called "Vienna".  It turned out to be a tiny perfume shop carrying a variety of high end brands (principally Guerlain, Lalique, Hermes, Amouage, Cartier, Ruth Mastenbroek(!), Patou, Bvlgari and Fleurs d'Ombre), shoehorned into a small luxury clothing store.  The flacons nestle cheek by jowl alongside Wolford tights, La Perla lingerie, a selection of high end Austrian coats, a pile of Scottish wool blankets, some soft kid leather gloves (as worn by The Queen!), and an assortment of expensive handbags.  I also spotted a Filofax by The Bridge.  The proprietor, a pretty blonde lady called Frau Mayer, turned out to hail from Vienna, which explained the Schneiders coat collection - albeit they are technically from Salzburg. And Wolford is of course from Bregenz - I accidentally drove past their Head Office once as I was crossing several borders in short order (an occupational hazard in that part of Austria), and my eye was distracted by the forest of pedalling mannequin legs in the foyer.

Frau Mayer & daughter Monika - flanked by happily co-existing tights and Amouage scents

Frau Mayer and I got to chatting in a mixture of English and my rusty German. I learnt that her sister Elvira Birkin had been the proprietor of "Elvira", an eponymous 'perfume-in-a-coat shop' in Newcastle-under-Lyme,  some 15 miles from here.  I had been tipped the wink about this store by Ralph, a fellow fumehead I had a blind sniffing date with once in Stafford, but - for my sins - I had never got round to visiting it.  Now, after 25 years of trading, Frau Mayer's sister had sadly died earlier this year and she had come over to run the shop for a spell, before deciding to close down there and try her hand in a different location, namely Stafford.  Frau Mayer is not planning to stay for long, but rather is simply moving to fresh pastures for a spell.

I may have touched them before I saw the sign, but I think I got away with it!

The store's move to Stafford is an admirable yet bold one; and while I thought the Schneiders coats were well worth the c£400 they cost, I am not in the market for one at the moment, and I fear your typical Stafford shopper may not be either.  I am not even in the market for any more perfume indeed, though Frau Mayer is holding two testers she is selling off of Mitsouko and Nahema extrait de parfum for me in case I can find an interested party.  They are £90 each for what looks like 30ml, which is a bargain versus the typical retail for a new bottle of parfum of 270 euros approx. There was also one bottle each of Vol de Nuit and L'Heure Bleue in extrait, but they are spoken for, and all the Amouage (regular) perfumes are also sold. So that is encouraging, certainly.

As well as talking about local demographics and Frau Mayer's home town of Vienna, I couldn't not mention my meeting with Birgit of Olfactoria's Travels and the fact that another Austrian-based blogger, Val the Cookie Queen of APJ, must surely clock a number of Schneiders coats striding the chilly streets of Salzburg on her morning delivery rounds.  In short, it was all rather surreal.  Sampling Mahora and the latest Ruth Mastenbroek in Stafford while talking German was almost as bizarre an experience as if I had met Bertrand Duchaufour in Lidl during the turkey and sherry scoping exercise.  And in one of my Scent Crimes Series posts, entitled "Binning the classics", I relate the sobering tale of the bemused reaction Clare herself got in Stafford's Co-op department store (as it was then) when she inquired about Mitsouko...

Mahora - so unexpected and so not Lacoste Touch of Pink 

So there you go - a pop up shop that will pop down again shortly, as serendipitously as it came, so if you are within striking distance of Stafford, come and grab a bargain while you can!  Support local enterprise in this, the most worthy of product categories!  Oh, and there is 25% off all the standard perfume lines... ;)

And as I say, if you are after slightly sprayed testers of Mitsouko or Nahema parfum, please let me know in the comments or drop me an email at 'flittersniffer at gmail dot com'.  I probably have an option on them till Christmas, say, maybe a bit beyond.


Up next, in time for Christmas...the results of the Puredistance BLACK sample draw!

Playing Siri Games - My Not-So-Smartphone's Sorry Attempts To "Talk Perfume"

The other day I was using Siri (the voice recognition system on the later generations of Apple iPhones) to write an email, in which I was talking about a friend's love of Gorilla Lust perfume.

"I enjoyed whiffs of indolic sillage" I dictated, taking care to enunciate clearly, as Siri works best if you speak as though you are in an elocution lesson. If you mumble, it won't have a hope in hell.

Despite my efforts to speak clearly, Siri rendered this sentence as:

"with supervision Daleks village"

...which prompted me to laugh out loud, even if it did nothing to get the email done.

So today for a laugh, I decided to speak the names of some iconic perfumes into Siri and see what it made of them...To this end I fetched up a Daily Mail article entitled "The 20 Best Ever Perfumes", to randomise the exercise basically, so no one could say that I deliberately picked tricky names that Siri would be predisposed to massacre. That said, as you will see below, Siri doesn't do too well with anything perfume-related. I think it may well be because Siri doesn't speak any French whatsoever, and some of the most classic fragrances and their houses are of course from France.

But anyway, here goes - these are the undoctored results - and I promise I wasn't mumbling.

CHANEL NO 5

"SHM.HA Shimano closed at 48.98 euros 14 Nov 2012 down 9.88 euros or 16.79%"

Does Siri mean the manufacturer of cycle gears?

SHALIMAR BY GUERLAIN

"I don't know what you mean by 'Shalimar by Geller'. How about a web search for it?"

So I hit the button "search the web"... and the top result on Google was:

"17 year old Equitation - The Capital Challenge Horse Show", in which a horse called "Ellie de Shalimar" appeared to have entered.


L'AIR DU TEMPS BY NINA RICCI

"I don't understand 'Leading Trump I nearly', but I could search the web for it."

This search led to a couple of contrasting results, one featuring a gambit in card games - "Leading Trump in Defense" - and one to do with Donald Trump!

JOY BY JEAN PATOU

"Sorry, I can only look for businesses in the United States, and when you're using US English."


POISON BY CHRISTIAN DIOR

"I don't know what you mean by 'Waiting Bagleys'. How about a web search for it?"

The web search brought up the website of Bagley's Poplar Ridge Vineyard.

EAU DYNAMISANTE BY CLARINS

"Sorry, I couldn't find 'Codeine in me' in your music."

Oops, what would Clarins make of that?? : - )


J'ADORE BY CHRISTIAN DIOR

"Schedule by Christine Dall. When is your event?"


I could go on, but I think you get the idea...

So to anyone reading and in possession of a Siri-enabled (I use the term loosely) iPhone, I would LOVE to hear your best - as in worst, and funniest - results using Siri to speak the names of your favourite perfumes. Or any perfumes indeed, of whose names you think it might have even half a chance of making a decent fist.

Oh, I should just try Patou's Sira des Indes, shouldn't I? Siri might just take it for a relation.

Nope - but close..."SIRI DAYS AND". This time I skipped the web search...


Photo of Siri logo from zdnet.com, photo of dalek from Wikimedia Commons via Peter Trimming, photo of Donald Trump and Shimano gears from Wikipedia, photo of Bagley's Vineyard from rburks.com

Fahrenheit 1901: Fragrant Anachronisms From My Furniture Forays

It may come as some surprise to readers to learn that I haven't actually moved yet: I should have been installed by now, but the vendor of my new house deferred for a week, so the big day is now next Wednesday. I have, however, been largely off the blogosphere radar in the past fortnight due to a rush work project - my first paid work this year! - which of course I grabbed with both hands even though its timing could have been more opportune.

In any spare moments I have carried on with the decluttering and packing process, as well as stalking Ebay and making forays to local antique stores in the hunt for essential items of furniture such as a dining room table and chairs. Some of my Facebook friends may have clocked the recent table coup - I posted a photo of it on my wall - but the quest for chairs is still ongoing.

I have been so consumed with work and house stuff lately, that not only is my perfume hobby firmly relegated to the back seat - I wonder what type of seat, and whether it would work with the table? - but some days I am still forgetting to wear perfume. Therefore you may imagine my surprise this morning when these two worlds of furniture shopping and fragrance unexpectedly collided during a routine sortie to inspect some French Edwardian chapel chairs in Cannock.

For there atop an Edwardian dressing table was the following incongruous collection of perfume bottles:

Armani Code Luna
Prada Infusion d'Iris
Armani Diamonds

And perched on an upper shelf, to which its adventurous spirit had doubtless prompted it to clamber, was Davidoff Adventure.

I was just chuckling to myself about these fragrant anachronisms - where, pray tell, are the vintage Guerlains and Carons?! - when I spied another arrangement on a Victorian dresser against the far wall, comprising:

Daisy Eau So Fresh (x 2!)
An empty cut glass stoppered bottle

And on the opposite side on its own:

Dior Fahrenheit

Now in recent weeks I must have visited upwards of 10 different antique shops, but this is the first time that I have found any items of bedroom furniture "accessorised" - or is the word for it perhaps "staged"? - with perfume bottles, never mind such comically modern ones. A tortoiseshell or silver-backed hairbrush or one of those lace doiley things might have been more in keeping.

What were the owners of the store trying to tell their customers, I wondered? Interestingly, no other ornaments were used on any other items of furniture to suggest possible usage. There were no fruit bowls on the dining tables, no hats on the hat stand, no monks on the monks bench, for example.

Maybe it was a message from on high to me not to completely forget my love of perfume in all the hurly burly and chaos of the move. The very incongruity of Diamonds and Daisy etc may have been deliberately intended to provoke a shock reaction, which it surely did.

So here I am, marooned in a sea of cardboard boxes, but wearing perfume again and blogging about it!

Meanwhile, the little French chapel chairs didn't quite cut the mustard (they are lighter and more variegated than they appear in this photo).

However, I have my eye on these ones from Lincolnshire instead...

Photo of Gainsborough chapel chair from churchantiques.com, other photos my own