Perfumista lifestyle markers: the owning - and 'dishing out' - of tea towels

Sorry - some of these were fished out of the ironing basket...

This week marks the sixth anniversary of my being struck down by sudden onset perfume mania. Ever since I started reading Basenotes and perfume blogs back in early 2008, I have periodically come across discussions about which other tastes and interests people who love perfume also have in common.  Cats are one of the most frequently quoted examples, as comprehensively documented in Ari's famous perfume blogger pet post.  A love of fine wines, soft furnishings, greyhounds, cheese, books, fine art, music, posh chocolate, fancy teas, aromatherapy oils and sundry other lifestyle 'markers' have also been cited as evidence of an approach to life that is at once intellectually curious and keenly attuned to sybaritic pleasure.

Then the other day, in her account of a meeting in Vienna with APJ blogger Portia, Olfactoria happened to mention a gift of tea towels from the ebullient drag queen from Down Under to Sandra and her.  For anyone interested in chapter and verse, Birgit's had a map of Cairns on it, for example.

Example of a Cairns tea towel ~ Source: ebay.au

So then, in a remarkable turn of events, this innocent logging of a moderately utilitarian present sparked a lively debate in the comments to that post about the aptness or otherwise of such a gift - and before you could say 'Irish linen', a whole slew of tea towel aficionados was winkled out of the woodwork.  Okay, so by 'slew' I may mostly mean Anne-Marie (also from Australia, rather fittingly), who spoke of her ingenious habit of scenting tea towels with lemongrass - a nugget of housewife lore learnt at her mother's knee.

"But my idea is to choose something strident enough to cut through the scungy smell that tea towels tend to get no matter often they get washed and line dried. I know that smell well. My mother was both fastidious and frugal. She cleaned everything that didn’t move but she would wear the tea towels down to threads before replacing them. Urk."

*Not* a tea towel - a 'damp cloth' wholly dedicated to ironing duties

'Scungy' - I have not heard that word before, but it sounds like a malodorous fusion of 'scuzzy', 'scummy', 'gungy' and 'pongy'.  And another interesting thing...my mother was from Australia, and - possibly due to my father's extremely tight rein on the housekeeping (perversely, she didn't get a washing machine till we children had long since left home) - also kept tea towels till they were threadbare and beyond.  I have a number which I inherited from her which are even more rag-like now, but of sentimental value, obviously.  I don't scent them with anything, but they do get washed.  There seems to be an indelible mark on the one pictured.  In my defence, everybody needs a tatty tea towel to use to damp iron delicate clothes - that way if you accidentally burn it, it is no great loss.

Since reading this post, my mind hasn't stopped whirring and making connections between perfumistas and deeds involving the stockpiling - or giving - of tea towels. (Yay!  I managed to avoid saying 'gifting'!) Some readers may know these rectangular textiles by a slightly different name, but they are the towels you dry your dishes with, not your hands or other body parts.  And you wouldn't wipe kitchen surfaces with them either - that way lie dish cloths, J-cloths, sponge scrubbers, and - in my own case - lashings and lashings of kitchen roll.

At the top of the post is a shot of my tea towel collection when I first moved into the new house - the ones on the left were ALL moving in presents from a neighbour - how wet does she think my crockery is? ;)  The ones on the right are the legacy from my mother, barring the really frayed one, which deserved a shot on its own.

Supersized Danish tea towels!

I have since acquired two very large and stylish tea towels - also as a housewarming present - from a reader in Denmark. They are so generously sized that they have overshot tray cloths and are well on their way to being small tablecloths or picnic rugs.

And at New Year, Tara gave me a much longed for spaghetti server - no, really, it was! - and two festive tea towels, which of course I shan't broach till next Christmas:

Pretty Christmas tea towel duo

Hmm, now that I think of it, when I last met up with Katie Puckrik in November, and we spent an afternoon poking round the vintage shops of Notting Hill, the subject of tea towels came up quite spontaneously - which on the face of it might seem strange.  We were browsing in a general store, where Katie was after a sturdy, foldaway carrier bag.  There were some tea towels on display and she volunteered the fact that she liked to buy them as souvenirs from her travels.  I quizzed her on her aesthetic standards in this regard, and she explained that she was comfortable with 'touristy', and even slightly kitsch, as long as the design didn't tip over into completely tacky.  I am not sure I am sufficiently familiar with the complete gamut of household linen to envision a truly gross specimen, but if you know of any, please describe it in the comments in as lurid detail as necessary.

Oh, since I published this post, Katie has come back to me with her definitive preferences in the tea towel department, which are along the lines I remembered:

"Tea towels are my favorite souvenirs of travel and adventure - better than post cards and snow globes and t-shirts. I love them because they remind me of road trips and capers, while being a constant ally in the kitchen, where I use them daily for scores of different things.

My preferred tea towel graphic is a hokey 'sights of the city' panorama. I've got a bunch from London, and some from California and Brussels. An odd one was my 'Gentlemen's Clubs of London', which I found in an LA flea market. And a great one was my 'British Men' tea towel: a 60's-era survey of working men, including a bobby, a fishmonger, a cabby, a vicar, and a bowler-hatted city gent. I used both of those into rags.

I still have my Charles and Di tea towel celebrating their 1981 wedding. It's now retired from service, much faded but intact."

So there you have it - I think the perfumista/tea towel correlation is looking quite strong...;) And please do let us know where you stand in terms of your own propensity to collect or give away tea towels of any description.

Oh, I nearly forgot the one I bought myself for Christmas!

Il Profvmo Nuda: A Birthday Bottle In Its (Almost) Birthday Suit!

I wasn't expecting any gifts of perfume for my birthday this week, just as I didn't expect any at Christmas. Most of my friends and family are bemused at my 70+ strong full bottle collection, and don't think I should be encouraged to acquire any more - or not until there have been significant advances in cryogenics - and they are of course right. So thank goodness for enablers, I say! My Queen of Enablers down the years has been the very generous Lovethescents, who this year sent me a nearly full bottle of Il Profvmo Nuda for my birthday.

Nuda is a fragrance I sniffed for the first time last summer with Olfactoria in Vienna, when I described it as "a 'cold cream' skin scent – like a more refined version of Clinique Simply crossed with a de-floraled Dior New Look 1947, if that makes any sense at all to anyone".

Then in April this year I came across Nuda by chance again in Stuttgart, managing to resist the half price bottle on sale in Mußler Beauty. Not long after that trip to Germany, as I was still toying with the idea of buying the bargain bottle by mail order, Lovethescents dropped me a line, urging me not to bother because Nuda was "horrible". I can't locate the original email, but that was the general gist.

I remember thinking at the time that that was an odd remark, as it was Lovethescents who had originally alerted me to this scent and who was also a big fan - or so I thought. I chose to disregard her apparent volte-face, for having tested Nuda twice myself I was pretty sure I liked it well enough. It ticks that box of an easy to wear, calming, silky soft skin scent. And now with the benefit of hindsight I can see that this was merely a cunning ruse on my friend's part to stop me buying a bottle myself, as she had presumably already snagged it for me. : - )

Yes, notwithstanding the fictitious bad press which had preceded its arrival, my "naked joy" was unalloyed as I unwrapped the parcel to find the super securely-taped bottle of Nuda inside. I have stringent wrapping standards myself, as regular readers know - Diana of Feminine Things recently paid tribute to the quality of my bubble wrapping of a large bottle of Marc Jacobs I sent her. And I have previously devoted entire posts to the subject of packing materials, including the all-important electrical tape which plays such a key role in pre-empting perfume leakage en route.

Yes, I may have high personal standards when it comes to tape, but Lovethescents exceeded them all with this impressive triangular construction in a cheery shade of yellow. It reminded me of those Unidentified Large Industrial Objects - at the more obscure end of the "abnormal load" spectrum - which are transported on equally abnormally wide vehicles, lashed securely in place with a scaffolding of radiating ropes.

Or there again, it has a bit of a look of a maypole about it, for example on young Sydney's cake below.

Photo of maypole cake from blog.craftyribbons.typepad.com, other photos my own

A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: No 3 (Austria & The Czech Republic) - Meeting The Olfactorias And "A Puffa Of Perfumistas"

Back in the summer, I was lucky enough to be working in Austria and met Olfactoria (aka Birgit) for the first time, in her home town of Vienna. We spent a very enjoyable afternoon in several high end perfumeries, sniffing the latest releases and generally chewing the cud about matters scent-related. Fast forward four months and I found myself back in the area, this time not far from the country bolthole where Olfactoria and her family spend most weekends.

And so it was that we arranged to meet again on the Saturday before Christmas in Sankt Pölten, which turned out to be Mr O's home town, and was fairly close to their cottage. The contrast between the weather this time and in August could not have been more stark: 35C plays -2C. In the summer I had been concerned about my sticky, creased skirt and glistening forehead, whereas the main priority on this occasion was to retain a full complement of fingers by the end of the morning.

I had had the foresight to bring along my good coat - which is lightweight, but as warm as one of those high tech sleeping bags favoured by bivouacing climbers. The Olfactorias were all similarly swaddled in down coats: Birgit's was a very stylish fitted design in matt black (photo is approximate), cinched in at the waist by an integral belt, while the children had anoraks with fur trimmed hoods. There should be a collective noun really for a gathering of quilted outerwear on this scale - a "wadding" perhaps? A "padding"? Or a "puffa"?

So having rendez-vous'ed at the train station, our puffa party set off in search of a cafe for elevenses. Olfactoria's younger son, Niki, who has just turned two I believe!, had a push chair at his disposal but preferred to toddle on ahead, pausing every few yards to hurl himself on the ground, much like a rock star stage-diving or a stuntman perfecting his "freshly-shot-in-the-chest" manoeuvre. Even though we attracted a few concerned glances from members of the public, Olfactoria and her husband remained calm and unfazed, for they knew that Niki would get up from his prone position moments later, only to start his toddle and deck-hitting routine all over again a few yards further on.

We had some difficulty finding a tea room with enough space to accommodate our party, but following a tip off from a passing relative of Mr O, finally secured a large table in a basement cafe in Sankt Pölten's main shopping plaza. Once we were all sitting down, I presented the boys with some chocolate money and a couple of soft toys (a German-speaking chicken and a teddy in a skiing outfit from Utah). I explained that both toys were unhappy in England, and had heard that there were two nice little boys in Austria who might consider giving them a home. I am not sure that Pauli, the elder son, bought this anthropomorphic emigration line I was spinning for one minute, but he graciously accepted the bear, while Niki took custody of the chicken - or he may do in a year or so when he has outgrown the potential hazards of the bird's beady eyes. : - )

Once all our drinks had arrived, Olfactoria and I discreetly exchanged perfume swap parcels, the focal point of which was a small decant of the discontinued Guerlain Plus Que Jamais (for B) in return for a large one(!) of Après l'Ondée for me. Additionally, I received a "starter kit" of Mono di Orio scents, while I introduced Birgit to Roja Dove Scandal and Damien Bash Lucifer #3, as well as rehoming a dirty amber. I also sniffed Olfactoria wearing her new love of Angélique Noir, which Lady Jane Grey had given her when they met up earlier that week. Now, I tried Angélique Noir in 2008 or so and remember it as being a hot, treacly mess on me, while it was spectacular on Birgit. At this point, Mr O leaned in and announced portentously: "Ah, but of course Birgit has 'magic skin'".





Now if Birgit has magic skin, young Niki would appear to have a magic gullet, for in addition to pavement-diving, he showed us his special party trick of finishing not just his own drink (like the well behaved little boy that he is), but also everyone else's. With such a prodigious capacity for fluid consumption, I could see him downing a yard of ale in one well before he is of school age.





After our pitstop in the shopping plaza, Mr O kindly took the children off to look round the Christmas market, giving Olfactoria and me an hour to ourselves. We spent it notionally sniffing in the Sankt Pölten branch of the beauty salon and perfumery chain, Nägele & Strubell. To be truthful, the store's name is the best thing about it, for the selection of niche brands there was quite limited; though I am sure they were more, I can only actually recall Annick Goutal and Ligne St Barth. Birgit introduced me to the Annick Goutal room spray range, notably the seasonal scent Noël, and I enjoyed walking into a generous ambient spritz of that.

Notes: lemon, bitter orange, mandarin and Siberian pine

You know, it truly didn't matter that Olfactoria and I spent as long as we did standing in front of the fixture without spotting anything worthy of our attention. Speaking for myself, we could have stood at a shelf of hosiery, hardware or baby food, and I feel sure the conversation would still have flowed. Perfume was never far from our minds, and yet it seemed less of a lynchpin in our budding acquaintance than at our first meeting.

Soon it was time to rejoin the rest of the family, and head over to a Japanese restaurant for a buffet lunch, to which the Olfactorias kindly insisted on treating me. For one so young, I was impressed at Pauli's adventurous taste in food: he cheerfully despatched dim sum and sushi with equal gusto. Niki slept through lunch in his buggy, flaked out after his earlier exertions, and thereby missing the opportunity to minesweep the last few mouthfuls of his mother's Diet Coke and my own "Apfelsaft, gespritzt", as I learnt to call the Austrian version of sparkling apple juice.

Lunch over, it was the parting of the ways, as the Olfactorias went off in search of a live Christmas tree to serve as a festive backdrop to their al fresco barbecue that night. "Very fresco", I hear you say. They'll be needing their padded coats, that's for sure...!

I wandered meanwhile round the shops a bit more, before ambling back to my hotel. Well, I say "ambling" - it was more of a limp actually, for five minutes after the Olfactorias had gone, I was suddenly aware of a pricking sensation in one of my feet, and discovered a nail protruding inside the lining of one shoe - it was the first time I had worn them since having them resoled. There was a splodge of blood in the shoe and another one staining my sock.

So there you have it - the ultimate sign of a good time with a fellow perfumista is immunity from pain....in one foot at least. Had I been bleeding from both feet I might just have noticed, however much fun we were having... : - )




Photos of Sankt Pölten from pbase.com (Tibor Pospisil), photo of coat from moncler-jackets-uk-sale.co.uk, pefume shop logo from the company's website, other photos my own

A Bonkers Grand Tour: Travels TO Olfactoria And A Viennese Sniffing Whirl

Regular readers of Bonkers may get the impression that I am perfectly self-contained on my business trips, and don’t really need company. It is true that I am rarely lonely, but that doesn’t mean I am not very glad to meet people on my travels, especially likeminded fellow perfumistas. Indeed I positively light up - head permitting! - when I have a blind sniffing date with a virtual friend from the blogosphere, and so it proved yesterday when I travelled to Olfactoria, of Olfactoria's Travels.

We agreed to meet at 1.30pm at a tube station right by the cathedral in the city centre. I arrived ten minutes early, and dived into a branch of the perfumery Marionnaud to kill a few minutes in the welcome air conditioned interior (it was in the mid 30s C that day). Olfactoria (aka Birgit!) was not far behind me and texted to say she was in position at our agreed meeting point of the Graben exit. I recognised her instantly from her avatar. Even in the extreme heat, Olfactoria was every inch the poised, pale-skinned beauty she appears in her photo.

Throughout our sniffathon, I felt very welcome and “gut aufgehoben” in Olfactoria’s company – an expressive German phrase that loosely translates as “well looked after”. Oh by the way, we slipped into English from the off, only dipping into German occasionally in the various stores. This is because Olfactoria’s English knocks my German into a cocked hat, even though – as I learnt to my astonishment – she has never lived in an English-speaking country. Nor does she appear to have an English parent tucked away anywhere, though I did inquire. : - ) My German is “fit for purpose”, but that purpose is always in a resolutely business context. Why, I am at a bit of a loss when it comes to articulating my thoughts about perfumes in English, never mind in German!

First stop on our sniffing tour was Le Parfum, Vienna’s equivalent of Les Senteurs. It probably stocks more niche brands than its London counterpart, thinking about it. Olfactoria encouraged me to try the By Kilian oud range (Incense Oud, Rose Oud, Pure Oud), and I was pleasantly surprised by all three, not being a lover of the note as a rule. I caught up with the relatively new releases Parfumerie Générale Praliné de Santal and Tonkamande – the former reminded me of Womanity or that Thierry Mugler Miroir scent that has a popcorn note – Miroir des Envies, that’s it – while the latter smelt like furniture polish on the blotter. Olfactoria explained that Tonkamande is a lot better on skin, but I wasn’t prepared to spare any more at that point, having already wasted a spot on our popcorn friend. We agreed that Praliné de Santal was rather like SL Jeux de Peau, which I had tried with ScentScelf in Chicago and not liked either. Don’t get me wrong – I can happily scoff a 150g bag of Butterkist in one sitting as well as the next man, but I just don’t want to smell OF the stuff.

Now we did both spray PG Indochine on skin – or more exactly, my forearm was caught in crossfire when Olfactoria was applying it on her own - but I was perfectly fine with a spot of collateral sillage! It was a gourmand woody oriental on her, and disappeared rather quickly on me, sadly, but was interesting while it lasted – softly spicy and slightly foody.

Speaking of gourmands, Olfactoria introduced me to Lira, her favourite of the Casamorati 1888 range from Xerjoff (the ones in those ghastly plastic bottles). Lira was a rich, creamy gourmand – like Teo Cabanel Alahine but more so. It was rather too rich and sickly initially for my taste, but I liked its later stages.

We also dabbled in the Armani Privés (to wit, Ambre Orient), Mark Buxton (English Breakfast - or at least the orange juice starter), and the Huitième Art range, which I had systematically tested in Düsseldorf in April, and was happy to revisit. But, as the Germans would say, "das absolute Highlight" for me in Le Parfum has to be Nuda from Il Profumo, a “cold cream” skin scent – like a more refined version of Clinique Simply crossed with a de-floraled Dior New Look 1947, if that makes any sense at all to anyone.

Whilst looking in vain for a note listing, I have since read Marina’s review on PST, in which she likens this scent to “that special place on a small child's neck, right under the plump little chin- the sweetest place to smell and to kiss”, and I would totally agree with this. Apparently, though, Nuda is meant to evoke the scent of a woman in the throes of ecstasy, which is clearly complete tosh.

A short stroll from Le Parfum is Pure Day Spa, which stocks beauty products and scents as well as offering spa treatments. The four main brands stocked are Frédéric Malle, Floris, Lalique and Annick Goutal. I was pretty up to speed with FM, but had a sniff of French Lover on card and retested Le Parfum de Thérèse. French Lover was too butch for me and Le Parfum de Thérèse by no means as civetty as I remembered, but still not really my style. Olfactoria, however, seemed to be having a bit of an epiphany with it and would gladly have taken away a sample to test at leisure, but they only had Lipstick Rose left. I can well imagine why, haha...

The languidly beautiful sales assistant then suggested a few Annick Goutals for us to try, including Songes (the jasmine indole-fest I remembered) and Duel, which was new to me. Duel was a woody citrus number, featuring notes of “Green Maté absolute, Paraguay petitgrain, iris root, absinth, gaiac wood, leather and musk”. I thought I really liked it at the time, but later changed my mind - on balance, I felt it was just too masculine. We also had a sniff of original Lalique by Lalique on card, which was an unashamed white floral of some kind – quite pleasant, but not as intriguing as Flora Bella.

After Pure Day Spa, we decided a pitstop was in order, and repaired to a favourite ice cream parlour of Olfactoria’s. At this stage in proceedings it was time for the mutual tipping out of perfumes on the table, as you do, including gift samples for each other. I felt totally spoilt by Olfactoria's goody bag for me: there were countless decants and samples, including a whopping one of Guerlain Cologne du 68 and…drum roll…Elie Saab! For Olfactoria had just that morning taken receipt of a big bottle, and found time to siphon off a full 30 ml before she left the house to meet me. Well, I didn’t know where to put myself….

I recounted to Olfactoria the story of how, just two days previously, I had had another go at scoring an Elie Saab sample in yet another branch of Müller, this time in Switzerland. The sales assistant had denied stocking it, only for me to find it immediately, at the other end of the fixture. I called her over and she picked up the tester bottle with a squeal of surprise, before proceeding to spray it copiously all over her décolleté and general head area, for all the world as though it were a can of Ellnett hairspray. “Oh fein, fein!” ("Oh nice, nice!" or possibly "Oh classy, classy!" - it's rather a multi-purpose word) she exclaimed, now thoroughly impregnated with the stuff herself, though this didn’t advance my sample gathering cause one jot. And as it turned out, she didn’t have any samples. The Ingolstadt branches must have got the sample allocation for the entire Müller chain...

After a good deal of highly unsystematic rummaging and sampling, we set about the business of eating our ice creams before they melted. Just then, Olfactoria spotted a local celebrity sitting a couple of tables away, tucking into a sundae of some kind. She looked like an aging Brigitte Bardot, and Olfactoria drew my attention to her “extensive hair”. We speculated as to whether her equally “extensive lips” might have had “work” done…

Having refuelled and cooled down a bit, we headed on to Duft und Kultur, the final stop on our sniffing tour, which was in fact only a couple of doors down. This was an Aladdin’s cave of a store, selling a vast selection of ethnic clothing and arts and crafts alongside perfume, room fragrances, soaps etc. It stocked L’Artisan Parfumeur, Diptyque and Les Parfums de Nicolai, along with some - arguably less common - brands such as Eau d’Italie, Teo Cabanel, Comptoir Sud Pacifique and Miller & Bertaux. Olfactoria was keen for me to try Jardin du Poète, which I sprayed on my upper arm, though not upper enough as it turned out, for it got mixed up with the remnants of Lira. I sprayed Eau d'Italie by Eau d’Italie on the other arm around the same latitude, and thought I liked it better initially. I don’t know if it was the power of suggestion, but Olfactoria’s prediction that a weird note would emerge and spoil the composition of Eau d’Italie came true, and as I resniffed the spot later that day, I no longer cared for it, though I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me.

Before we knew it our three hours were up and it was time for Olfactoria to go back and relieve the babysitter. We walked to the tube station together and parted company at the top of the stairs to my line. Back in my hotel room, the whole afternoon might have felt like a dream were it not for the Ormonde Jayne box bursting with samples (not OJ samples, in case anyone is wondering), a huge bag of Gummibears courtesy of Olfactoria’s boys(!), and some parcels that I promised to mail for her from a less robdog country than Austria – which we believe will be pretty much anywhere I happen to be passing through...

Yes, I enjoyed myself so much that I went back today and visited everywhere again. : - ) Only very briefly, mind: to retry Nuda and Indochine in Le Parfum, AG Duel in Pure Day Spa, and most importantly to pick up a favourite pen that I had left behind in Duft und Kultur, where it turned out that I had left a bottle of apple juice as well. “We haven’t had a slug out of it, honest!” the proprietor assured me. On my way out, I had a quick spritz of CSP Vanille Abricot, remembering that Katie Puckrik selected it for one of her TV chat show appearances – I think as a general “yummy come hither” scent, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it is certainly yummy – I walked out of the store smelling like one of those dainty Viennese pastries you could find at any of the smart cafes in the city. A fitting way to end my happy travels to Olfactoria.



PS Mindful of confusion in a previous post over the meaning of "Jammy Dodgers", it might be helpful to mention that Viennese Whirls are also a variety of biscuit / cookie! An oblique reference to the waltz may also be inferred... : - )



All photos my own