Forest green corset: Puredistance WARSZAWA review

I have been deferring writing this post until I had mastered the spelling of the latest addition to Puredistance's carefully curated stable, the fully capitalised WARSZAWA, and I reckon I have cracked it now. The secret turned out to be splitting the word into two parts: 'Wars' (to which sadly Warsaw is no stranger), and 'zawa', which despite appearances is not a fast moving Polish fashion chain. Though I have no excuse really for not being able to spell 'Warszawa', having lovingly kept a sewing kit from the Hotel Forum there for the past 21 years (which I note has since morphed into a Novotel). Yes, 1996 saw my first visit to the country, and I have been going there on and off for work ever since, my last trip being 2011, when I drove my Mini all the way from the Polish border to the Belgian coast in one go, pausing only briefly in Duisburg to break my front tooth in two places on a banana chip. (Or a chip bananowy, that would be.) But more of my associations with Poland in a bit.

Hotel Forum, as was. Source: Wikimapia

First I would like to pay tribute as ever to the superlative packaging in which samples of the new Puredistance releases are sent out. The company truly understands the sensuous power of the pretty parcel. Actually, my eye was drawn to this latest shipment before I even opened the cardboard outer, on account of the fact that it was addressed to 'Bonkers about PE'. However did the PR folk at Puredistance know that I am currently on a major exercise kick? ;)

Then inside was the by now customary hard shell white presentation box, swathed in bubble wrap. My eye went straight to the latter, but that is material - quite literally - for a whole other post... And there was the usual slinky ribbon, forest green this time. I am careful not to call it 'bottle', for fear of evoking unhappy memories of my school uniform. The sample itself was in the familiar black satin drawstring bag, laid on a rich backdrop of forest green velvet. Already, without even smelling the perfume itself, I had a good idea of how it was likely to smell from such opulent trappings. Something rich and luxurious, a special occasion scent to be worn in a grand setting.

The PR blurb inside the lid of the box, together with a fetching illustration of a lady in a coordinating green corset holding back heavy green curtains, left me in no doubt at all as to the creative inspiration and style of WARSZAWA:

"Inspired by the class and elegance of Polish women and the rich history of the city of Warsaw. WARSZAWA evokes the grandeur of the golden days of Fashion and Perfume. The perfume has style, warmth - great depth of character - and will make you feel beautiful in a lush way. If you care for classic feminine beauty, Puredistance WARSZAWA will unveil a dreamy world of old-time chic."

Before coming on to my own testing of WARSZAWA, I have to say right off the bat that the scent was always going to have to work hard to conjure up this romantic world, which is entirely outside my ken - and my era, obviously! Working in the field of industrial market research, I inevitably end up seeing a completely different side of the country, one far removed from the glamorous milieu conjured up by the press release.

By way of illustration, I have many memories to draw on from my various road trips in Poland. I have driven all over the country, and much of my Polish vocabulary is based around traffic signs warning of road surface deformities, the king of which is the dreaded 'koleiny'.

Source: Nonsensopedia

What I really like about Poland - due in part to my inability to speak the language - is its unstinting ability to surprise, wrongfoot, and disarm the traveller. Or me, anyway. Here are a few highlights:

- The time I bought postcards and was given a stock cube in with my change.

- Finding a shop entirely by mime that would photocopy questionnaires. (I drove to Poland specially, as Germany was having one of its many public holidays!)

- Staying in a discotheque with rooms, decorated from top to bottom in silver. 

- Walking into the men's showers at a swimming pool (related to the point above about my limited vocabulary).

- A taxi driver in Krakow, who was a complete and utter star and lent me fifty quid's worth of zlotys so I could take the next train to Kielce and rescue a colleague bound for her first solo assigment, who had thrown up on the train and fainted. (This was before the days of cashpoint machines and the banks hadn't yet opened.)

- On that note, having a respondent suddenly abort a meeting, saying (via an interpreter) that he had to go to the bank. By way of apology, as he got up to leave he wordlessly handed me a set of highlighter pens, a large plastic bulldog clip, and a box of chocolates.

- The chipboard factory with a hotel attached, where almost everything in the hotel was also made of chipboard: the ultimate showcase - nay temple - to this versatile material.

- The incomparable splendour of Malbork Castle, with its atmospheric en suite amber museum.

- The scantily clad women standing at the edge of country roads, who I eventually 'twigged' were not in fact part of a Forestry Commission car pool.

- The beetroot at every turn. Which luckily I love!

- The plethora of 'stomatolog's, who - most counterintuitively - have nothing whatsoever to do with stomachs. (If Margo Kubiscik is reading, I do know that is not the correct Polish plural. ;) )

Malbork Castle ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons (via DerHexer)

So there you have a snapshot of my impressions of Poland, a country to which I would gladly return, though preferably with a phrase book, and not in winter. Apart from the castle in Malbork, I have not yet had the opportunity to play the tourist, not even in Krakow, which is a real shame. So given that I have no imminent plans to go back to Poland, I turned to WARSZAWA the perfume to transport me there...

Here without further ado are the notes, which I have taken the liberty of 'de-capitalising':

Notes: galbanum, grapefruit, violet leaf, jasmin absolute, broom absolute, orris butter, patchouli, vetiver and styrax

The first time I tried WARSZAWA was just before attending a hospital appointment with an elderly friend. Now bear in mind that by definition, a person at a hospital is not going to be on perfect form, which was also the case with my friend. Undeterred, I proffered my wrist for her to smell:

"It's soapy."
"Okay...anything else?"

After a pause:

"It's very strong. Could you sit further away?"

Unfortunately, to my left was a thicket of wheelchairs, their brakes locked, so it was not practical to distance myself from her sensitive nose.

So that was the first learning point: WARSZAWA is without question a big production scent, a bosomy, womanly, all-enveloping kind of perfume. What Odiferess in her recent review calls a 'proper perfume' and a style which I am wont to describe as a 'perfumey perfume'. Apply sparingly to start with (I had doused myself rather liberally for the hospital run), and see how you go. Being pure perfume extrait @ 25%, WARSZAWA already packs a punch in terms of its concentration.

Thanks to the violet, WARSZAWA starts out as a sweetish floral; big as it is, it is also characterised by an airy feel, with a faint hint of powder. A scent that it reminds me of from the era which inspired it is vintage Bourjois Soir de Paris - aka Evening in Paris for non-French speakers - created by Ernest Beaux (the nose behind Chanel No 5, no less) in 1928. The original formulation of Soir de Paris, which was discontinued in 1969, was markedly sweeter than WARSZAWA to my nose, and made to a price point using far less luxurious ingredients, but I was nevertheless struck by a certain similarity in vibe, though I wouldn't wish to overplay it. There is some interesting note crossover too, of violet, jasmine, vetiver and styrax. Both Soir de Paris and Warszawa are what the French call 'capiteux' or 'heady' scents, and if you were feeling at all delicate like my friend, it would perhaps be better to desist from wearing this - and probably any perfume, to be fair.

My vintage mini, now irrevocably congealed

And while the opening of WARSZAWA is sumptuous and full on (in a paradoxically airy way!), the drydown is in a quieter register. The cloudy sensation burns off, leaving a sensual concoction I would be at a loss to parse. I suspect the combination of galbanum and broom keep the composition from veering into cloying territory. Soir de Paris rather lent that way, owing to the inclusion of violet AND lilac - but with WARSZAWA we are talking a cleaner, greener 'direction of travel' (did I really just say that??!!), especially in the later stages. It is positively juicy and sappy, and becomes progressively smoother in feel, with a tantalising hint of sherbet in the far drydown. The galbanum fades to a warm hum in the end, and there are echoes of Antonia, which Jan Ewoud Vos famously said I was 'too fragile' to carry off in terms of my build. (This was the time I met the team while on a big road trip in 2011 that took me to Groningen - and also to Poland indeed!) I sense I may well be physiologically unsuited to WARSZAWA too...more on that anon.

Going back to Soir de Paris, it was interesting to me to read what Victoria of Bois de Jasmin had to say about Ernest Beaux and this classic fragrance, for I feel the same could be said of WARSZAWA and its creator, Antoine Lie, also in the fact that WARSZAWA presents different facets - and different atmospheres/textures - as it develops.

"His style is elegant and graceful, but with a strong character. Soir de Paris, a fragrance he created for Bourjois, doesn’t just skip from one note to another; it shimmers, revealing in one moment a peppery citrus and green leaves, and in another a velvety rose and wood shavings."

So have Puredistance delivered their brief of 'a dreamy world of old-time chic? Absolutely they have. WARSZAWA is dreamy in the same way that Opardu is, without having the extra dimension of muskiness in that scent. In its unashamed, blowsy femininity, WARSZAWA seems the anthithesis of perfumes made today - or since the 80s, perhaps. Sarah spotted some kinship with the 'shoulder pad' style of fragrances from that decade, and I see where she is coming from. A few scents from that period also create this airy, 'big cloud' sensation that WARSZAWA does, initially at least. I also detect a mossy rasp - that catches in the nostrils slightly, and reminds me of chypres from that period or even earlier, at different points along the austerity spectrum. I couldn't probably name one though. A Givenchy, maybe? But for all that I am (half!) reminded of other fragrances from down the decades, WARSZAWA is an original and striking creation in itself. It is no shrinking violet, and neither will its wearers be at a guess. I'd liken it to the olfactory representation of a forest green corset - sexy in a refined way, like Ava Gardner, say. Very much an off the shoulder number, with no padding required elsewhere by the looks of it! (Now you see why on balance I feel physiologically unsuited to this scent. ;) )

"What is that scent she is wearing?" Source: Wikimedia Commons

To close, even if my own experience of Poland is a far cry from gas lamps, carriages to the opera and cobblestoned streets - though as I say I can certainly relate to rugged road surfaces of every stripe - I can well believe that WARSZAWA captures the essence of this bygone era, when even the Hotel Forum would have been a twinkle in a town planner's eye.

Guardian angel: how Truffle - and my stress levels - went through the (curate's garage) roof (twice!)

Source: Ebay

Back in January, at the height of the bathroom leaks and 'Crack-ageddon', I distinctly remember avoiding any further testing of the samples Mandy Aftel had sent me, including Vanilla Smoke and Amber Tapestry, for fear of imprinting them with bad memories. In an exchange after the event, Mandy agreed that "aromas get tinged with memory in both good and bad ways and are almost impossible to disentangle", adding that she appreciated my careful approach.

Now that is all very well if you happen to know in advance that you are going to have a bad day, but sometimes the crises - like my cracks when they first kicked off - come at you out of nowhere. By this time you may already be wearing your chosen SOTD, which, perforce, becomes caught up in the 'horror and terror of the first water' (to borrow my father's phrase) that subsequently unfolds.

Which is something that so easily could have happened with a bunch of Puredistance scents the other day. I was testing four of them at once to determine my favourite, progressively narrowing the field over the course of the weekend to WHITE and SHEIDUNA. (I am still struggling with the whole capitalisation issue, though writing the word 'capitalisation' in lower case is helping a bit.) And in a final wrist-to-wrist play off, my overall favourite emerged, as...but I will save that titbit for later. ;)

So yes, last Thursday I was engrossed in the fairly thankless business of cleaning windows. Oh my word, what a rich seam for a blog post window cleaning techniques that actually work would be. In my desperation, I tried Mr Muscle, vinegar, and an E-cloth and water - sometimes all on the same window, endlessly rotated until the smears looked marginally less noticeable through half closed eyes and with the roller blind pulled down a few inches - and am now that sad soldier who is actually lusting after a Karcher Vac. But the point about the window cleaning is that I was somewhat distracted, though on and off during the day I had wondered why Truffle had not come back in since breakfast...It was mild weather, so I tried to convince myself she had just wandered a bit further and was enjoying herself in the uncharacteristic sunshine, even though I knew deep down that that wasn't her usual MO.

Truffle on the roof of the shed next to the garage....

First thing the next morning, 24 hours after Truffle had been gone, and following a completely sleepless night, I could no longer think of her as merely being 'out', and reported her as missing to the vet, an animal search charity that also had some useful online tips, and the insurance company - just in case you have to notify a missing pet the way I had to get a crime reference number off the police that time my luggage was stolen(!).

I also downloaded a 'lost cat' poster template, and was faffing about trying to resize photos when a friend messaged me from a train - having seen my Facebook status about Truffle's disappearance - and kindly offered to do the artwork for a poster. I explained that I was in fact nearly there with that, but he was able to combine two photos and make them fit the template, so his intervention was most timely. Not that I needed the posters in the end, as you will see!

Next up, I did some reading on the Interwebs, and learnt that for an 'outdoor access' cat like Truffle, the most likely outcome was that she had become trapped, probably within a short distance from home. The site recommended conducting an 'aggressive physical search' of her primary territory, comprising a five-house radius. It so happens that I am adjacent not only to five houses, but also to 33 lock up garages(!). I had already been round these a couple of times, calling Truffle's name and trying to listen out for any sound, which was tricky, given the ambient traffic noise.

View from the neighbour's garden

Then on a third circuit later that morning, I was passing the garage nearest to my house, which belongs to people in the next street, when I heard a cat crying. I also felt a paw underneath the garage door, though a short while after, the crying stopped and the paw was withdrawn. I still had proof that a cat was in there, even if it didn't turn out to be mine....

BUT I didn't know who the owners of the house were, so I loitered in that street for a few minutes and chanced upon a man unloading his shopping. I asked him if he knew the names / jobs / routines of the home owners. He told me that the wife was a part-time curate at the local church, so I jogged over there at the double, disturbed the vicar's wife, who was in bed, ill!, but gamely staggered downstairs because I had kept knocking. She texted the curate, asking her to ring me, and staggered back to bed, though not before letting slip that the curate's husband was a GP in the next county. And that the couple mostly lived there, only occasionally coming to Stafford.

Well ventilated garage of doom

There was no response from the curate, and of course I was frantic by now, as Truffle had been shut in the garage for nearly 30 hours already with no food and water. I know animals can survive for much longer, but obviously you don't want your pet to suffer for a moment, never mind a day and a half. So I promptly googled all the GP surgeries in and around the town the vicar's wife had mentioned, and found a doctor with a surname matching the curate's. Bingo! I rang the surgery, only to be told it was his day off. I asked the receptionist to try to reach him on his mobile and explain the urgency of the situation.

And thus it was that two hours later, the husband duly arrived and opened up the garage. Even on those odd times the couple come to Stafford, they hardly ever use it apparently! Moments before, my friend, Jim - he of the fine quips in my shortlisted entry for the 2015 Jasmine Awards - had turned up unprompted with a length of rope and a general air of reassurance. I stood outside to catch the cat if she ran out, and it was Jim who found Truffle cowering in a corner - collarless, filthy, frightened, and smelling of 'old stuff in garages' and p*ss. And no, that isn't 'puss', though she was back to her normal smell after a few (self-administered) washes. ;)

This is so going on her next collar...

That evening, I went round to thank the vicar's wife and the man who had been unloading his shopping, both of whom had given me such crucial pieces of information that led to Truffle's successful release. Well, I put a card through the door of The Rectory, knowing the wife was poorly, and the following morning, had a hand delivered letter back from her!

"I'm so pleased that you got your cat back. You wouldn't know how much your thank you card meant. I was feeling low after being in bed for the majority of the day. My husband came and gave me your card. It made me smile."

Oh, I don't feel so bad for getting her out of bed now. ;) Plus it sounds as though she is on her feet again. Unless the vicar played postman?

Then on the vet's advice I kept Truffle more or less indoors over the weekend, just letting her out briefly and under my watchful eye, but by Sunday she was feeling a lot more adventurous and events took another disastrous turn.

Source: Pixabay

Yes...it appears that while dogs have a short term memory span of five minutes, cats have a whopping 16 hours! But I am afraid that is nowhere near enough. For notwithstanding her earlier ordeal, Truffle managed to fall in the hole all over again! Even though I had already spent an hour supervising her outdoor access without incident, suddenly she leapt up onto the garden wall, and from there it was a mere hop, skip and a jump to the garage with the holey roof. Down which she promptly fell. The roof is made of full asbestos(!) and is really friable and crumbly as you will see, but I am running ahead of myself.

As the hideous and distinctly Groundhog Day-ish news sank in, one of the lodgers who lives next door (I'll call him 'L' - not his real initial  ;) ), and who happened to be loitering in the service road, offered to take a look at the hole. 'I'm only small', he said, 'I could probably get down there' - which despite his slight physique I privately thought unlikely. In a flash, L had shinned up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe, and before he could get anywhere near the hole, he suddenly created a much bigger one of his own...'Er...now I've done that, I might as well go and get the cat?' he volunteered, with an uneasy smile. A second later there was a sickening thud as L jumped to the concrete floor some six foot or so below. He promptly opened the garage door before I could tell him not to and Truffle shot under it like the proverbial bat out of hell! Luckily, she darted back home while the pair of us set about clearing up the bits of asbestos on the floor.

Sun glinting on the polythene sheet

In vain did I try to persuade L to use gloves like me. 'I'm 45, I've had a good innings', he said phlegmatically. Well, I for one would like to live long enough to see Truffle wear out / lose the three replacement collars I had just bought her. ;) Oh, make that four, as I later found the one she lost under a tree. Anyway, after sweeping up the debris, L and I managed to do our own rather nifty roofing job, though I say it myself, involving 'found' things from my own garage - two bits of board from picture frames, a huge piece of plastic groundsheet folded in half, and my old airing cupboard door to weight the whole lot down! I had kept it because it was too big to fit in my car to take to the tip - never thinking it might actually come in handy one day.

Our improvised roof covering in place, I rang the owners to confess what we had done, lump in throat. Luckily they weren't at all mad at us for technically trespassing and damaging their property, and have said that this second incident - which is fast turning into that lost parent business in The Importance of Being Earnest(!) - will galvanise them to get the roof fixed properly as a priority.

So there you have it. In the space of four days, Truffle and I lost at least two lives apiece, and I also learnt that herding cats is an utterly doomed venture. And was also touched by the tremendous support I received on- and offline from concerned friends, as well as the community spirit on the ground that led to both the happy outcomes.

Home Sweet Home

Now I had carried on testing the Puredistance samples meanwhile - well, applying them at least, and occasionally remembering to sniff them. I figured that if they had been tainted by Truffle's first fall through the roof, that feeling wasn't going to get any worse from this point on, besides which, she had been repeatedly rescued!, neatly cancelling out the bad associations from before.

And unexpectedly, Truffle and I seem to have a much closer bond now, I would say - or I do to her at least. Presumably she has no memory of either incident by now, hehe. She has slept on my bed for a total of five nights so far, without spending half of it jumping on my head, as happened the last few times we attempted - and quickly aborted - a 'co-sleeping' arrangement. If she continues to be so well behaved, we might even be able to entertain this cosy regime on a more regular footing.

Then Monday was happily uneventful...Truffle went in and out of the garden unsupervised numerous times, and I have almost stopped worrying that she won't come back...

Oh, and the favourite Puredistance? - the one that really 'went the distance' during this strange r*****coaster of a long weekend, and which not only came out the other side unscathed, but had the power to subliminally comfort and shore up my fragile mood? It was that creamy, fruity, at times discordant, yet mesmerisingly fizzy amber and myrrh-fest that is - SHEIDUNA.

PS Proper perfume posting resumes shortly...

Puredistance WHITE review: honky-tonka yellows and lazy hazy daisies

'Tonka beans blogger's own'

I seem to start every review of a Puredistance scent by saying what a fan I am of the house: their friendly people, their relaxed PR style and unstuffy approach to the very concept of luxury products which is the backbone of the brand. It may not be the case anymore, but for a while there I was the only blogger to have made the trip to their offices, tucked away in a lofty converted church in Groningen, where I  (very loosely) interviewed Jan Ewoud Vos over tea and apple cake. Of the six perfumes they have launched to date, I was very taken with Puredistance 1 and the startlingly upper case BLACK, but didn't get on so well with Opardu, much to my chagrin, as everything about its concept and composition should have appealed. And it wasn't just me - two fellow bloggers have sniffed me wearing it, and pronounced it to be pleasant, but not spectacular - and not to smell of very much beyond a veil of white musk. But more of that anon....my subsequent volte-face on this wistful lilac beauty deserves a post of its own, I sense.

So nowithstanding my underwhelmed reaction to Opardu, I was very excited about the release of WHITE, the capitalised counterpart to BLACK, one infers. It is a tribute to the palpable enthusiasm and verve of the staff at Puredistance that they can still whip me into a fervour of anticipation at this semi-jaded plateau stage in my hobby. I must admit that some of that excitement is due to the exquisite way in which they present their press packs. Well, I wasn't so keen on Opardu on that score actually, as the sample vial arrived in a clunky big black lacquer box, which frankly seemed like overkill, also on the postage front. But my sample of WHITE arrived in a flattish white box, which opened to form a sort of 3D picture frame-stroke-diarama, in tones of white and gold / cornfield yellow, featuring a white silk lining - and oh joy! - an actual dried daisy!

Readers, I inspected this flower very thoroughly, and its very fragility (I accidentally dropped it twice on the floor) tends to confirm that it is REAL. That fact is worthy of upper case letters, I feel. It instantly took me back to my childhood, when I used to make collages of 'found things', as well as pressing the coloured foil wrappers of sweets between the leaves of weighty novels - or flowers (and once infamously, a roadkill lizard!) in the pages of a beloved scrapbook. The whole pack had a lovely aura of an adorable interactive educational toy-cum-ornament-cum-picture. The company had also generously enclosed a coffret of all the Puredistance scents, which is a great aide-memoire, not least because I had drained my vial of Opardu and was keen to try it again.  But I will save that story for another time, as I say...;)

Accompanying the box was a rather attractive flyer with a radiant sun design in this same buttery, muted yellow veering to old gold. It features a handwritten note from Puredistance's PR lady, plus sketches of the key ingredients in the new scent for handy identification! Who knew that vetiver looked like a shaving brush?! (Or it does when it is in a bundle, say, while patchouli looks surprisingly like vetch.) There is also an account of the inspiration behind the fragrance, and a list of its 'ingredients' (unexpectedly partly capitalised!) and their provenance, to wit:

"Rose de Mai from France, Tonka bean absolute from Venezuela, Orris absolute from Italy, Sandalwood from Mysore, Bergamot from Italy, Musk, Vetyver from Haiti and Patchouli from Indonesia."

I am not usually one for backstories - or let's say I approach them with a certain degree of caution - but I rather like the premise for WHITE. Here is an excerpt from the leaflet:

"The main idea behind the creation of Puredistance WHITE Perfume has been to create a perfume so beautiful and positive that it gives the wearer an instant flow of happiness. We asked Master Perfumer Antoine Lie (who also created Puredistance BLACK for us) to create a white and golden dream; an intimate escape from harsh reality....In this era of global negativity our aim is to give our customers a positive, mood transforming perfume. We hope WHITE will make many moments in your life a little bit more beautiful and colour your world in shades of serene white and warm gold - instead of grey. ;)"

My bedroom: fortuitously in this exact colour scheme!

I like the addition of the smiley face - possibly also a reference to a certain film doing the rounds at the moment, hehe...? ;) But anyway, I like the concept - I have blogged myself recently on the subject of bad stuff in the news and the current, rather downbeat Zeitgeist - so it is a nice thought that Puredistance are seeking to yank people out of that slough of despond, and neatly bridge the gap between winter and spring with WHITE's combination of white and gold tones. For this perfume doesn't evoke simply white to me - it is richer than that. A fitting crossover scent for the chilly yet sunny days of early March we are experiencing at the moment...there are some yellow coloured flowers in gardens - daffodils, crocuses, tulips - but it could just as easily hail at any moment, and did do on Sunday! So the timing for a fragrance launch with that message - both weatherwise and in terms of counteracting negative events in the media - is spot on.

So how does WHITE smell?

Well, I have tried it three times now on consecutive days, with pretty consistent results, though I might get more or less of the floral notes poking through, like spring bulbs in our flowerbed analogy. My overriding sensation, however, is of a seamlessly blended nutty, woody, slightly peppery?, tonka-centric gourmand scent. The tonka itself has those characteristic overtones of coumarin and hay as well as vanilla, which lend it a slightly sterner, drier, more offbeat facet - possibly buttressed by the vetiver. Now I don't know what the scent of a daisy is exactly, but I imagine it might also be a bit austere and vegetal, so in that regard it is a fitting emblem to represent this scent, not least because of its teaming of these two signature colours within its own flower.

Then texturally - you know how big I am on texture ;) - WHITE is muzzy and musky - and warm in very much the style, if not the scent, of Puredistance 1. By the same token it is also quite tenacious. WHITE is 'thickish' and opaque rather than sheer, and although I did spot the odd appearance of iris, I can't say I detect rose at any stage. I should mention that my nose / skin tends to amplify anything on the tonka-heliotrope spectrum, and I see tonka as a halfway house towards heliotrope, although I may be completely wrong there. For me, tonka and heliotrope both hover around that vaguely almondy, milky foody territory, with just a hint of a bitter or anisic twist.

In terms of any other perfumes WHITE resembles, the only one that sprang to mind was PG Tonkamande, though it is a while since I sniffed that, and there is only partial crossover, notewise. On my skin, WHITE is so tonka-forward, at least initially, that it sets itself apart in that way. So overall I would say that I like WHITE quite  a lot; it does fit the brief of being warming and comforting in these troubled times. I particularly like its quieter phase about 1-2 hours in, when the coumarin-y aspect of the tonka has settled down, and the composition becomes a little sweeter and more floral (more the iris than the rose, in fairness). The feel of the scent on skin is also more silken and smooth than at the outset. This is when WHITE truly slips into its lazy, hazy, dreamy phase. And after my unexpected bonding with the later stages of MAAI, readers will not be surprised to hear that I am well up to a bit of waiting now when it comes to a perfume's development. ;) I can see myself progressively warming to WHITE, indeed. I would say that it is not an obvious perfume, but strikes me rather as something of a grower.

In the Puredistance literature, I note that the people on whom WHITE was tested 'immediately started to smile and then started to smell again, telling us WHITE filled them with happiness.' I would imagine they must be bigger fans of tonka bean than me. For that reason, I doubt that I will ever feel mad love for WHITE in its entirety, as I am not that keen on tonka bean when it's centre stage like this, and I think you really have to be to fully appreciate WHITE. But props to Puredistance for going a rather unconventional route with this latest release, nailing their white and yellow colours to the tonka mast!

Then on a whim, I googled the origin of 'Honky-tonk blues' which inspired the first part of my title. I knew it was a song, but didn't know what about. I learnt that 'honky-tonk' refers to both a style of country music and the rather rickety bars in which it was performed. 'Honky' on its own, meanwhile, appears to have been a pejorative nickname used for white people, possibly originating in Chicago's meatpacking plants. Well, we'll draw a veil over this nugget of info, as that way lies more gloom and negativity(!), except to say...how curious that 'honky' should mean white.  And of course WHITE is designed to drive away the blues, by suffusing the world in white and yellow. Of which it does a pretty good job, I'd say, all things considered.

Not the right yellow, but still ~ Source: ratemymusic.com

PS A props credit is due to Victoria Frolova of Boisdejasmin, who gave me the tonka beans when I visited Brussels in 2012. I knew they would come in handy one day!

My equally colour-coordinated bedroom wool stash!