When Continents Collide: Sampling The Le Labo City Exclusives In London, And My Shamefully Suggestible Schnoz

I have just come back from two days in London. No, that is not strictly correct - it was 29 hours in London - but it felt like two full days and more, as I packed a lot in. The night I arrived I attended Nick Gilbert's talk: "Voyage Around My Collection" (the first event of the newly formed group, Perfume Lovers London), then the next day I popped into Seymour Place to check out the new branch of Les Senteurs and watch Nick at work, before meeting Tara of Olfactorias Travels for a most enjoyable four hour sniffathon in Harrods and Harvey Nichols.

And before the talk on Thursday I swung by Liberty's, where I managed to fit in a fairly businesslike romp through some of the Le Labo range with which I wasn't familiar, including most of the City Exclusives. Poivre 23, the London one, was clearly displayed on the counter on its own, and when I inquired of the sales assistant if I had missed the window of opportunity when the full set was available in the capital, he said that I had, then promptly whipped out the testers in question from a drawer against the wall (see photo). Yay!

I would like to stress that I smelt these scents (except for Vanille 44 and Baie Rose 26) "exclusively" on card, and didn't even stop to note down my thoughts as I sometimes do, but am relying on my short term memory to conjure them up again in my mind. Moreover, though I kept the blotters carefully segregated in a clear film wallet, I can't truthfully say that most of them have retained enough of their scent to act as an aide-memoire today. And obviously that was the first port of call on my London visit, and I have smelt a TON of stuff since... So please take these mini-reviews as impressionistic jottings that give you a rough indication of whether a particular fragrance was a thumbs up, a thumbs down or a maybe.

Aldehyde 44 (Dallas, Texas)

Notes: aldehydes, neroli, tuberose absolute, narcissus absolute, jasmine sambac, vanilla, musks and woods

A bath bomb of sparkling, granular aldehydes up each nostril - nay, the aldehydic equivalent of an Apollo mission blasted off inside your nose. I did not hang around for the drydown, so I don't know how this went on, however, the general consensus in the blogosphere seems to be fairly positive. The sales assistant told me that Aldehyde 44 was inspired by the perfumer's vision of Dallas as an ultra-modern, glitzy city built on oil wealth, whose citizens are confident, sassy go-getters groomed to within an inch of their life (my paraphrase).

Vanille 44 (Paris - France, not Texas!)

Notes: natural bergamot, incense, mandarin, gaiac, vanille bourbon, muscenone, pipol, hedione

Okay - hold on a minute - how come this has the same number as Aldehyde 44...? That doesn't seem right. Anyway, being the "card-carrying vanilla ho" that I am, I gave this some prime arm space and liked it from the word go all the way to the far drydown, not that it developed much. It reminded me very much of Diptyque Eau Duelle ie a soft, mysterious, woody vanilla that treads that fine line between cheap bath product or foody vanilla and rich, boozy "70% cocoa solids" vanilla for hardcore vanilla lovers (where the cocoa is purely metaphorical, you understand). Yes, this was very nice, very easy to wear, but I don't need it as I already have Eau Duelle and a sample of Creed Sublime Vanille and a decant of Annick Goutal Vanille Exquise - in short, I have all the main congenial vanilla bases covered.

Poivre 23 (London - England, not the one in Kimble County, Texas again!)

Notes: pepper, cistus labdanum, incense, sandalwood, patchouli, vanilla, gaiac and styrax

Now you will never hear me complain about the presence of pepper in a perfume, whether black, pink, white or blue. I am very partial to the stuff, cliche'd or not. My initial impression was of a strong jolt of pepper, mixed with woods and incense and tingly spice. The overall effect was soft and rather quirky in a luxe pot pourri kind of a way, and I was suprised that I liked it even during this very brisk opening. The fragrance strip does have a lingering note of vanilla on it even now, and I suspect that the rounding and grounding duo of patchouli and vanilla lends this scent its particular charm for me. I wouldn't mind a sample of Poivre 23 in fact, but didn't bother to ask, as in my experience Le Labo are not noted for their largesse in this regard.

(On a side note, as it is not a City Exclusive, I even surprised myself by not hating Patchouli 24, a five star Luca Turin scent I had not dared to try, ever since LT likened it in "Perfumes: The Guide" to the smell of decaying books and chemicals in a lab at Moscow State University. I can totally see where he is coming from with this description, as the opening is very medicinal. The SA said he likes to spray Patchouli 24 on his scarf before he goes to bed, so that it is at the optimum stage of wearability when he gets up the following morning. And sure enough it is as odd as three, but by no means ghastly as I expected - more hauntingly weird. Definitely a dusty library vibe going on, in fact I would go so far as to say that - to adapt Tarleisio's phrase - this is an "intergalactic musty library" scent, if such an image is not too preposterous in itself. But Patchouli 24 is pretty out there, it must be said.)

Gaiac 10 (Tokyo)

Notes: olibanum, gaiac wood, cedar absolute, musk

I was interrupted by my phone going off as I was testing this one, so probably didn't give it my full attention. The opening was woody in a slightly sharp way: I do like gaiac wood as a rule, though it is teamed with cedar wood here, which may account for the initial roughness. Gaiac 10 didn't seem to have any distinctive qualities to it, though I daresay it probably softened down nicely if I had had a chance to revisit the strip much later in its drydown, instead of being on my second glass of white at Nick's talk by that point. The blotter does actually smell quite sheer and pellucid now, which is a pleasant surprise.

Baie Rose 26 (Chicago)

Notes: allspice berries, pink pepper, aldehydes, ambrox, clove, pepper, rose, musk, cedar

Now I have sniffed this scent in Chicago with Notes from the Ledge, and remembered it as being a not terribly remarkable peppery, spicy, woody rose. Mindful on the other hand of Olfactoria's recent acquisition of Tubereuse 40 when she was in New York in November, I was curious to try it. I asked the SA if he also had a tester of "the Tubereuse", and he heard "Baie Rose" and proferred a fragrance strip presprayed with the Chicago Exclusive instead!

Oh my goodness - I am ashamed to report that in my nose's eye, believing that I was actually smelling Tubereuse 40, for a few seconds I actually DID smell a languid hothouse floral scent - the sort of warm, heady, moist air that assails your nostirls as you enter the tropical house of a botanical gardens. Now this may not bear any resemblance to the real Tubereuse 40 - a quick glance at Olfactoria's review of this one suggests not - but it was a "genuine false" olfactory impression that was very vivid until the SA dispelled my illusion by explaining that he didn't have a Tubereuse tester and that I was in fact smelling Baie Rose 26...whereupon a whoosh of pepper and wood kicked in!

I was suddenly transported back to the Belle Dope phantom incense moment with Katie Puckrik in California, which in turn echoed the famous pistachio ice cream incident of my youth, where the waiter brought pistachio ice cream instead of lime, and my father proceeded to make me believe it really was lime to save waste. And it actually did taste of lime as I was eating it, my dad being the Svengali that he was.

So not only is my nose a bit of a blunt instrument at the best of times to start with, but to compound matters it is clearly highly suggestible. Now if I am a typical punter this may go a long way towards explaining why consumers buy a fragrance because - in the heat of the moment and the smartness of the store - they succumb to the persuasive patter of the SA who is describing it in seductively lyrical terms. For that brief window between "spritz on blotter and take bottle to till", that is the customer's olfactory reality.

It's just a little bit scary, don't you think?

And have I missed any more City Exclusive cities that are also in Texas? : - )



Photo of Liberty's from ell brown on Flickr, photo of Dallas from rkrichardson on Flickr, photo of vanilla from JosAclito Tirados on Flickr, photo of pepper from ralph and jenny on Flickr, photo of arch from matt hutchinson on Flickr, photo of pistachio ice cream from kusine on Flickr, Le Labo photo my own

Back From The Bonkers Fly Drive Trip – Part 2: The Scented Bit (Chicago)

As I indicated in my travel post, the ratio of perfumista hook ups to “proper” meetings on my latest US visit was impressively high – some might say worryingly so, for it was supposed to be a business trip after all. I think it was more a case of work hard, play hard, and only time will tell whether I have in fact got away with it…

The perfume sampling got off to an early start – 8am on the day of departure saw me scoping the duty free at Manchester (International) airport. This preternaturally early sniffage was not particularly memorable: I tried Jimmy Choo (a watery, peony-type floral that delivered a candy floss punch in the guts a bit later), and Estee Lauder’s Adventurous and Wild Elixir, which were neither adventurous nor wild, never mind having the characteristics of a “wild elixir”, though I am not entirely sure what might fit that particular bill. “Special brownies”? A good malt? One of those nasty bitter remedies like echinacea or goldenseal tincture that are frankly worse than the maladies they are meant to prevent? Okay, so Wild Elixir was a watery, sweetish green floral that smelt better than your average Holland & Barrett supplement, but the name remains “wildly” inappropriate.

Later that day I was installed in my uncomfortably fancy boutique hotel in Chicago, planning how - with supreme sleight of Filofax - I could shoehorn as many perfumistas into my itinerary as work commitments permitted. First up, I had agreed to meet ScentScelf on the Sunday afternoon. Sunday was not quite a day off, as you might have thought: I was drafted into a four way Skype conference that morning, which overran by 10 minutes, prompting a frantic semi-jog to Union station from where I was due to catch a suburban line train to ScentScelf Central. I had less than a minute to find my platform, and one glance at the ticket counter queue said I had no time to buy the correct type of ticket either. So I made a split second decision and bought an incorrect one from a machine instead, on the basis that a wrong ticket is better than none, before sprinting on to what I hoped would prove to be the right train.

Right train, wrong ticket, as I had feared. However, the good-natured inspector sold me a new one at no extra cost and I didn’t even have to play the hapless foreigner card that has served me so well on ticketless tram journeys in Germany – only because the machine wouldn’t accept large notes, I hasten to add.

Soon I had arrived at my destination, and as I crossed the tracks, I immediately spied a figure hoving into view who had to be ScentScelf - on the fairly reliable basis that they were the only person walking towards me smiling. As a back up, I had brought a little bag of perfume samples with me and was holding it conspicuously aloft, but I needn’t have worried. On the day there weren’t too many people alighting at this particular halt who resembled my avatar. In case anyone is wondering, ScentScelf in person is not in fact a montage of disparate artefacts, but an attractive whole person, stylishly attired.

Introductions over, we headed to a local mall, which boasted a Nordstrom and a Macy’s. We hit the perfume hall running, as it were, and cruised the counters looking for new launches or scents we hadn’t tried. In my case these included Kiehl’s Original Musk (too soapy), L’Artisan Poivre Piquant (promised to be interesting later, had I only clocked the later when the time came), and Fou d’Absinthe (not a fan of the drink or the scent). We both scored samples of Si Lolita, a peppery sweet pea scent that I preferred to regular Lolita Lempicka, and which I figured would make an acceptable work scent on those days when, regrettably, an end-to-end fumehead-filled agenda could not be contrived.

The main sample coup from Nordstrom’s was a freshly made decant of Creed’s Sublime Vanille. It may have been our fulsome admiration of the presentation puffer bottle that prompted the SA to make so free with the tester bottle, but that was a definite result. Sublime Vanille reminded me a lot of the lighter versions of Shalimar, of Eau Duelle and also of Guerlain 180 Ans de Création – it had that same granular texture and comforting warmth.

After the perfume hall we made a detour to the hosiery department in Macy’s, as I wanted to buy some sheer brown tights to replace the hastily grabbed pairs of scarily pale ones I had brought with me. I agonised long and hard over deniers and degrees of sheerness, over stateside sizing systems and nuances of colour. ScentScelf launched herself into the hunt with me, and demonstrated infinite patience as I flitted from smoke to nude to barely mahogany and back again, settling in the end for a pair of Calvin Klein Cocoa in a size B. They were just the ticket and I wish I had cleared out their entire stock.

Exhausted by the tight-vetting episode, we repaired next to a cosy bakery-style café, where ScentScelf treated me to one of those soup and sandwich combos and a reassuringly hot – and tall! – tea. Which may actually mean “small”, but it looked plenty big enough to me. We chatted about perfume and blogging, and our families and work and goodness knows what else, and it became apparent to me that whether we made it to another perfume pitstop or just ended up here shooting the breeze till chucking out time, I was just enjoying the company of a likeminded, virtual friend who had just taken surprise corporeal form.

As it turned out, we were able to squeeze in another sniffing session that same day – in Barneys in downtown Chicago. ScentScelf was well aquainted with the SAs here, especially Lydia, who was manning the Frédéric Malle concession that afternoon and invited us to stick our heads in the perspex scent tubes (the one I tried had Portrait of a Lady). Lydia was wearing Portrait in fact, and had also – rather incongruously you might think in the case of a FM scent - gone clubbing with it on the night before, and garnered a lot of compliments, apparently. It smelt pretty good on her, I have to say, thought it is not a style I care for normally. Like Agent Provocateur, but more plank than rose. Lydia was very generous to us too in terms of samples: I scored “red cards” of Une Rose, L’Eau d’Hiver and Iris Poudre.

ScentScelf and I also chatted to a male SA who was hovering around Le Labo counter, but wasn’t attached to any particular house as far as I could tell. I smelt the Chicago exclusive, Baie Rose 26 (a peppery rose that was pleasant if not ground breaking). I also caught up with the rest of the Le Labo range that I had not had a chance to sample during my recent workshop in London. I was surprised to find myself quite liking another oud scent, Oud 27, which was soft and mild mannered, not at all the rasping bandaidfest I always dread.

Two lines we spent a fair bit of time testing were Yosh and Chantecaille, and ScentScelf made me a large sample of Ginger Ciao (a big white floral with a spicy kick), deploying the decanting kit she had had the foresight to bring with her (with prior clearance from staff, obviously). The only scent in the Yosh range I flat out disliked was Omniscent (too much of everything bar the kitchen sink!), and several of the others actively appealed, notably Sottile (tea rose and lily) and Stargazer (Kenya lily and ginger). The Chantecailles are a bit of a “girly floral” blur, but I do distinctly recall my reaction to Serge Lutens Jeux de Peau, namely that it was too overtly praliney for my taste, though much as I expected from the reviews I had read. Another SA tried most insistently to press me to a bottle of Clair de Musc, insisting that it was totally “me”, however, it went ultra soapy on my skin and a purchase couldn’t have been further from my mind. I am in fact quietly hankering after a bottle of Piguet’s Calypso, but Barneys did not carry the line, which is probably just as well.

And then before we knew it, it was chucking out time from Barney’s(!), and we headed to a Starbucks round the corner, where we holed up till it got dark, drinking tea - and a milky latte in ScentScelf’s case - if that is not tautology? And I may have misremembered anyway. At 7.30pm we called it a night – ScentScelf had a fair drive home, while I needed to do some preparations for the working week ahead. As luck would have it, another opportunity presented itself for a follow up meeting, namely a two hour window on the final day before I caught my return flight.

This time I had my own wheels, and drove to ScentScelf’s home, the very epi- and nerve centre of Notes from the Ledge operations – the Ledge itself, no less! I met a very affectionate dog and a rolypoly cat in a snowy shade of marmalade; I admired SS’s fridge magnets and eclectic set of candle snuffers; reader, I saw the dress in its entirety, and was also kept intrigued by a leafy leitmotiv in SS's soft furnishings. We had a delicious brunch of freshly baked banana bread, warm pains au chocolat, Greek yogurt and grapes, accompanied by a vanilla-flavoured tea (she has my number!). ScentScelf is quite the tea collector on the quiet, I can reveal...

And then…drum roll…I was introduced to her perfume collection, which was stashed in various locations around the house in a fascinating array of receptacles, which are properly documented here. I saw the egg cups and other "repurposed" items of pottery, the shoe boxes, a drawer full of exquisite minis, a secret bunker in an airing cupboard, a dresser top display and – most excitingly of all - the vintage lipstick holders! ScentScelf’s collection is more classic and retro than mine, with a significant vintage contingent, and a leaning towards the green, the chypre and the “complicated oriental”. I could have poked around and sniffed and rummaged all day, but I had to rip myself away in an untimely fashion from this Aladdin’s cave of scent, and head back to the airport, and home.

Within a matter of hours, I was back in England, and the only proof that I had actually met ScentScelf - let alone been in her home playing with her scent bottles - was the little rope handled bag of samples on my desk (look carefully to the left of the shot). I have had another rootle in it since my return, half expecting a pebble and a feather to fall out...

So what did I learn from my encounter with another fellow blogger? Well, perhaps this: that the shared interest is what brings you together, but what cements the friendship is all the other things that prompted you to share the interest in the first place. I would like to think that, were it not for the distance between us, I would be friends with ScentScelf without a love of perfume in common, and I am grateful to it for having been the catalyst.


In Parts 3 & 4 – meeting Beth of PST and the eponymous Bloody Frida!

PS I haven’t forgotten the 200th post giveaway – now something of a retrospective, admittedly - but circumstances require me to fudge the timeline!


Photo of Baie Rose 26 from secondcitystyle.typepad.com, photo of Wild Elixir from shopstyle.co.uk, photo of Union Station from flickr.com, photo of Sublime Vanille from fragrantica.com, photo of tights from sockshop.co.uk, photo of Barneys exterior from cheekychicago.com, photo of Starbucks from booked.net, photo of banana bread from homebakedmemories.com, other photos my own.

New Post On Ça Fleure Bon - Le Labo Synesthetic Workshop: Scent & The Sense Of Touch - Smelling Me Softly + Draw

Am just back - red eyed and not so bushy tailed - from the Bonkers Fly Drive Trip to the States (travel and scented dispatches to follow shortly!), but meanwhile here is my latest post on Ça Fleure Bon about the Le Labo sensory workshop I attended last month. I proved yet again that my spontaneous powers of scent recognition are woefully lacking, but I found a new perfume love, there was a surprise twist involving Mr Bonkers...and readers leaving a comment about their favourite Le Labo fragrance will be entered in a prize draw to win a discovery set of 3 x 5ml scents from the range (Labdanum 18, Neroli 36 and Rose 31)!

Photo of Le Labo store from marylebonevillage.com