Hidden gem, aka a corundum conundrum: Puredistance RUBIKONA review (eventually!)

Source: Puredistance

Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved secret things. I don't mean secrets as such, though goodness knows I have kept a few of those down the years(!), but things in secret places...usually, but not always small things. The miniaturisation aspect contributes greatly to the objects' sweetness, it always seemed to me. But I also mean something observed from afar, so it appears mysterious or elusive. Take the puppets you watch longways in a shoebox theatre, for instance. Then on childhood holidays in Ireland on the way to our seaside caravan, we would pass a house at the end of a long drive. It had a wrought iron gate which was overgrown with creeper, and the drive itself was more like a tunnel due to the intertwined branches of trees on either side. You could just about spy a glimpse of the house itself in the distance, which massively piqued my brother's and my curiosity...A good everyday example of 'small secret things' might be an advent calendar. (It's nearly that time!) I haven't had one since I was a kid, but I can imagine I'd still get the same frisson of excitement on opening each little door and viewing the picture behind. Or finding the piece of chocolate, to which the secret may well have upgraded these days. Not forgetting nests of Russian dolls - the littlest one in the set was impossibly sweet! - and roos in kangaroo's pouches.

Source: Amazon

One of the most memorable illustrations of this principle was a plastic souvenir altar my father brought back from his travels to Spain or Italy, which stood on the mantlepiece of his study. Despite its being unashamedly cheap and kitsch, I derived endless fun from opening the little door in the centre of the altar to reveal a tiny gold chalice - in my memory it is against a red background and backlit, but that is perhaps the embellishment of my imagination. I may be getting muddled with this votive candle I lit in St Therese's basilica in Lisieux last year. The candles in the photo are actually a bit blurry, but that serves my purpose in fact, as will become clear. But you can tell a red theme is at least forming, with a side of religious imagery that may also prove significant in these meandering musings. I thought I might be able to play on the perfume's namesake of the Rubicon river and its wandering course, but having consulted a map I see that the river believed to have been the ancient waterway so famously and irreversibly crossed by Julius Caesar is in fact shortish and disappointingly straight.

Here is the altar, or one just like it, which does indeed have a red back panel. This is from a Worthpoint auction site, so it may have been worth a bob or two, had we known!

And lastly there is the miniature cargo that came with one of my favourite childhood boardgames, Buccaneer. How adorable are those gemstones and little ingots and barrels of rum! How many attractive combinations there are to play around with of boat colour and pirate swag. ;) These little plastic replicas still thrill and excite me, like the chalice in its niche. Check out those tiny rubies...

Source: Shpock

And now - rather circuitously - we have at last come to the gemstone itself which inspired the creation of Puredistance's latest release, RUBIKONA.

I do actually have some professional experience of the jewellery business, having worked all over America for De Beers on a project mapping the supply pipeline for diamonds. Coloured stones were mentioned in passing, but diamonds were the main focus. A quick google of industry websites has confirmed that the market for rubies, like diamonds, is every bit as arcane and insiderish, with its own impenetrable jargon. ;) Here are a couple of fun facts I gleaned:

1) Burmese rubies are the most prized of all. The Prince of Burma weighs in in its raw state at 950 carats. If it were cut, it would produce a stone of 300 carats, which the jeweller from whose website I learnt this staggering nugget, wrily observed is: 'possibly not realistic for a stud earring'.

2) The most desirable colour for rubies is 'pigeon blood red', which is a very deep shade, though I have not dissected a frog in biology class, never mind a pigeon. Interestingly, if you google 'pigeon blood red' you get a whole slew of pictures of rubies - loose and set in rings etc - and absolutely nary a one of pigeons, wounded or otherwise. Oddly, there are pictures of fish, which appear to have annexed the name. Then some rubies have their colour enhanced through heat treatment, which arguably involves the same cheat factor as acquiring your sunkissed look in a tanning salon.

The 25.59 carat Sunrise Ruby, via Wikiwand

And now on to some specialist terms from minerals.net and the GIA website, which are every bit as eclectic as in the diamond world, and which I see include the term 'inclusions', meaning anything naturally occurring which gets trapped inside a mineral as it forms:

3) Rubies and sapphires are the same mineral, known as 'corundum' - they just differ in colour. And there's more...

"Typical ruby clarity characteristics include thin mineral inclusions called needles. When the mineral is rutile and needles are present in intersecting groups, it is called silk...Some inclusions can actually contribute positively to a gem’s appearance. The presence of rutile silk causes light to scatter across facets that might otherwise be too dark. This adds softness to the color and spreads the color more evenly across the ruby’s crown."

I will spare you asterisms, cabochon cuts and pleochroism(!), about which the article goes on talk, or we really would be here all day.

But hey, 'rutile silk' - wasn't the detour worth it for that gem of a term!?

There is much more on this mineral phenomenon here, in which the author - amongst other gloriously offbeat revelations about the formation of silk inclusions - quotes Joni Mitchell, and also likens these 'daggers of rutile' to a 'beguiling silk lattice'; meanwhile The Natural Ruby Company speaks of the 'sleepy transparency' conferred to rubies by the little needles. 

Source: Lotus Gemology

EDITOR'S NOTE: REVIEW PROPER STARTS HERE!

I apologise for that monster preamble before getting down to the nitty gritty of what RUBIKONA is like. But I would make a case for all the foregoing being relevant, for one of the key powers of scent is to trigger memories, and as you can see, that has happened to me in spades here! And there is also the alchemy of how RUBIKONA conjures the impression of this red jewel in olfactory terms. Where is it in the composition, when does it emerge? As the fragrance unfolds, there is a secret, hidden, trompe-nez of a gem, glimpsed from afar - and occasionally close up - which teases and fascinates my nose in equal measure.

The first thing to clear up is the actual inspiration for RUBIKONA, as oppposed to my own gemological and other riffings. 

"The creation of this perfume started with the word RUBIKONA that combines the deep and warm colour red of a RUBY with the timeless beauty of an ICON...RUBIKONA is 'Chic inside Out'".

The word 'icon' is meant here in a couture sense, rather than my religious take on it, but Jan Ewoud Vos, Puredistance's founder, is not the sort to mind where the mind takes the wearer of one of their fragrances. Though this post may test him to the max(!).

Source: Puredistance

I say, does this dress look like rutile silk to you? ;)

The perfumer behind RUBIKONA is Cecile Zarokian, who created SHEIDUNA for Puredistance.  As ever, the fragrance is extrait strength, at 28%.

Notes

Top notes: Grapefruit, bergamot, mandarin

Middle notes: Rose, iris, ylang, clove, orange blossom, creamy notes

Base notes: Patchouli, cedarwood, vanilla, solar notes, musk

When I heard the name of the new scent, I wondered if it might be diva-esque like Vero Kern's Rubj, with its vampish teaming of narcotic white flowers and an exotic fruit bowl. It isn't, and doesn't smell remotely like Rubj, which I do like, but which is quite full on. I note that Vero Kern's scent also has bergamot, mandarin, orange flower, cedar and musk, which information I will park for now and possibly feed into my 'ruby detection matrix' by and by.

A perfume I thought of fleetingly when I first sniffed RUBIKONA was Guerlain Shalimar Parfum Initial. Here there are seven crossover notes: bergamot, orange, rose, iris, patchouli, vanilla and musk. The only similarity that struck me though was its patchouli-forwardness, notwithstanding the many notes in common. The vetiver and green notes - and possibly what Robin of NST cleverly identifies as its "flat" feel and "ever so slightly almond-y" facet - take Parfum Initial in a dull, vegetal and relentlessly patchouli-driven direction. I am so with Robin when she says: "It's something else entirely, and whatever that something else is, I don't find it all that compelling."

No, I think the stylistic register to compare RUBIKONA to might be Penhaligon's Iris Prima, which I included in my 'Careful Whispers' series. It has the same 'diffusive, indistinct' quality, which makes it so hard to parse. Funnily enough, I originally thought of dropping RUBIKONA into that series, before I even spotted the atmospheric likeness between the two scents, but what a waste of a good title that would have been...! ;)

Source: Puredistance

It is hard to parse, as I say, but here goes anyway...RUBIKONA opens with a noticeable showing of patchouli, but the earthy salvo is held in check by a wistful posse of powdery iris, sensual florals, and a creamy musky trail that persists throughout. It is not chilly or austere as some iris-containing scents can be, and strikes me as neither vintage nor especially modern. This is despite the mention of 'solar notes', which I first came across as a term in Guerlain's Lys Soleia, and which I associate with contemporary scents, even though I gather they have been used in perfumery in one guise or another for a long time. Here I am guessing they infuse the composition with a sunny radiance that helps connote the idea of a ruby catching the light. I am not really aware of any overt citrus element at any point in the fragrance's development, but I expect the rose (betcha they were red!) - and the various orange notes (as in Rubj) - together suggest the warmth and depth of a ruby. Of the requisite pigeon blood shade no less. Now RUBIKONA is not a dark scent, for it is of course refracted by our rutile silk inclusions(!), but it is 'darker' and more grown up than Iris Prima, while remaining resolutely subtle and staying close to the skin. Over time, RUBIKONA becomes a gentle, attenuated version of the aforementioned wistful posse, their having by now wrangled the patchouli into submission in fairly short order, not that it was ever loud to begin with.

So did I find the ruby in the composition? I am going with a combination of patchouli, orange, rose and solar note facets (see what I did there?)...final answer!

To sum up, I am a big fan of Puredistance 1, and BLACK, and GOLD in particular. Puredistance 1 reminds me nostalgically of the early days of my perfume hobby, coming out just a year before I fell down the rabbit hole; BLACK I associate with happy times touring with the band; GOLD makes me think of my work trips abroad, which once even took me to the HQ of Puredistance itself.

 And now the understated, hidden gem in the Puredistance stable that is RUBIKONA is definitely up in my top two or three of the eleven releases so far. It reminds me of so many things as you can see! Which may go a long way to explaining why I feel such a visceral connection to the Puredistance brand. Their scents are elegant, singular, wearable, and made from high quality materials, with exquisite packaging. And to be fair, prices to match - though as Undina points out in her post (see link below), considering the perfumes are extrait the price per ml is in fact very reasonable. And crucially they are also evocative - and as I said above in mitigation for my meandering memories - for me that is what the best perfumery is all about...

The Graff ring via truefacet.com

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Source: Wikipedia

NB Note the Rubicon river above - a lot less wiggly than my review, as you can see - but if you have got this far, it is TOO LATE NOW! The die is cast, and the post is read...

er...not quite!

The forgotten anniversary

For it is only now that it has suddenly occurred to me that it might be my 11th blogging anniversary around about this time of year, and it turns out that it is in fact today. ;) Well, there is no point writing a separate post to mark that milestone, but I can think of no more fitting brand to devote this post to instead. I will celebrate with a virtual Ruby Red Buttercream cake. (Photo via Liggys Cake Co.)

JUST ADD 11 CANDLES!

Guerlain Après L’Ondée and Virginia Woolf: who’s afraid of melancholy scents?

Source: Wikimedia Commons ~ Christian Tonnis

The other day while messing about on Facebook I chanced across a link (see below) posted by Cheryl of Perfumed Letters to a little known recording of Virginia Woolf from 1937. In it the author speaks in the clipped, genteel tones you would associate with a member of The Bloomsbury Group about the mysterious mechanics of language and creative writing. I recommend in particular the section from about 4 minutes in, where Woolf describes words as 'irreclaimable vagabonds', and the mind as a 'fitfully illuminated cavern' in which they live. This discovery, coupled with my recent preoccupation with bathrooms(!), prompted me to feature this (slightly edited) post - which was originally published on Cafleurebon on 27.1.11 - on Bonkers. For anyone who remembers it from back then, some of the photos are also different(!), and there is the YouTube clip to enjoy. ;)

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Some people believe in love at first sight.  I wouldn’t say I don’t believe in it exactly, but it has never happened to me.  In the context of fragrance, you occasionally hear of perfumistas having experienced a similar sort of 'coup de foudre' with a particular scent, changing forever the way they view perfume and incorporate it into their life.  Overnight fragrance goes from being a casual accessory to a second skin – or a third, fourth or even a  fifty-seventh skin, for those with large collections. 

I also experienced 'sudden onset perfume mania', but for me it was not so much a fragrance which triggered this epiphany, as a review of a fragrance, namely Hannah Betts’ 2005 article for The Times on 'glacial perfumes'.  She starts by quoting former French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck’s comment about her heightened emotional response to narcissus absolute.

'Just a drop on each wrist and two in the bath were enough to send silver running down the walls. It set the world throbbing out of control when I wore it. I became a little weird.'

Photo courtesy of Linda Svendsen

Betts point outs that the sense of silver trickling down bathroom walls is all the more pronounced if the perfume already smells of silver – 'then walls course all the sooner'.  This leads her neatly into a discussion of her own favourite cool, metallic scents, namely Après L’Ondée and Hiris by Hermès, and how this effect is created by the use of orris butter, one of the most expensive perfumery materials of all, a creamy paste derived from the iris root.

Captivated by her review, I set about acquiring a sample of the first scent Betts had mentioned.   Après L’Ondée was created by Jacques Guerlain and released in 1906, with notes (from Now Smell This) of 'bergamot, neroli, aniseed, hawthorn, violet, heliotrope, iris and musk; there may also be carnation, rose, jasmine, vetiver and sandalwood.'

When I first smelt Après L’Ondée (just the EDT in case anyone is wondering), it exerted the same visceral pull as the description in Betts’ review.  It struck me as a dark, mournful, conflicted scent.  There is simultaneously an airy, damp freshness and an earthy dryness.  It is like rain that has been dragged through a hedge backwards.  Yes, that is it – elemental violence has been done to vegetation.  Broken boughs lie strewn in the long wet grass.  And what of the powderiness - the anisic heliotrope sweetness?  Well, it gives the fragrance a very retro, feminine quality, but this is no 'come hither' boudoir powderiness.  It is the scent of a woman with a wan complexion and a broken spirit. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

So Après L’Ondée, this wistful, silver beauty, was the first scent I fell in love with after the mania took hold.  But metal is hard, and this scent should not be worn if you are feeling the least bit emotionally fragile, as I learnt to my cost.  Back in 2010 I was engaged in a difficult work project in California, and one bright and chilly morning unthinkingly spritzed on Après L’Ondée instead of a cosy musk or soothing sandalwood.  I had two appointments that day, but the first person wasn’t there, and the second person was wrong.  Aborting the meeting, I retreated to a nearby mall** to lick my wounds, cruise the perfume aisles of an outlet store and stock up on leisure wear in Gap.

It was a vexing day, and Après L’Ondée merely amplified my feelings of failure and frustration.  In short, my epiphany scent, the catalyst which had catapulted me full tilt into this all-consuming hobby, was making things worse...

This unexpected fragrant downer got me wondering who would have worn Après L’Ondée at the turn of the 20^th century when it was launched, bearing in mind that there would have been far fewer scents on the market in those days.  My mind instantly lit upon Virginia Woolf, who was a few years older than me when she walked into a river with her pockets full of stones some 70 odd years ago.  But when Après L’Ondée was released she would only have been 24, and its melancholy quality would have chimed perfectly with her intermittently depressive character.  At least I hope it would have stopped there – at chiming, I mean – and wasn’t a contributing factor to the final bout of depression that prompted her to take her own life. 

Source: Fragrantica

Now hold on a minute – I don’t know that Virginia Woolf wore Après L’Ondée – or any perfume, indeed.

As it happens, I have always admired Woolf’s writing. I haven’t read any of it, mind - it is all a bit too 'stream of consciousness' for me - though I did sit down for a good 15 minutes with 'To The Lighthouse' once.  But seriously, I recognize that she is a literary giant of the 20^th century – a modernist who has been hailed as the greatest lyrical novelist in the English language.  And an early feminist to boot.  So Après L’Ondée – with its haunting sadness and restless soul  – seems a fitting choice of hypothetical signature scent for someone who wrote a novel called 'The Waves' and met a watery end.

I tucked this idea away in my mind until I bumped into an unknown relative on Ancestry.co.uk one day - we were researching different parts of our family tree and eventually collided into each other at the intersection of our efforts, a mutual ancestor with the singular name of Edward Samuel Boys-Tombs.  I sent this distant cousin an email asking if she would like to pool findings, and the following day we had a long chat on the phone.  After bottoming out our own tenuous and convoluted relationship to each other, my new cousin made me a surprising offer. 

Source: ats.coloradocollege.edu

'Would you like to be related to Virginia Woolf and Charles Darwin?' she inquired brightly, as if they were the ancestral equivalent of a banded pack promotion.

My ears pricked up.  'Are you offering?'

'I can trace you back to both of them in - hold on a tick – 17 steps to Virginia Woolf and 19 to Charles Darwin - where a step is going up, down or sideways on the tree via a parent, spouse, sibling or child.'

It took some time for this information to sink in.  Now they do say that we are all related to everyone, however famous, in just six degrees of separation, and that may very well be so, but the flaw with this theory is that we don’t generally know what the six degrees are.   And here was my x-th cousin y-th removed handing me a couple of dead cert celebrity rellies (dead dead certs, admittedly) in under 20 steps!  Okay, as blood connections go, it was very, very thin – several intervening marriages meant that we are talking positively homeopathic levels of dilution – but no matter.  Even wafer-thin blood is thicker than water...;)

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Prior to this discovery, the only time my path had remotely crossed that of Virginia Woolf was during a research project for The National Trust (a charity that protects historic houses and monuments).  I stayed at Sissinghurst, an Elizabethan castle in Kent with gardens designed by Virginia Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West.

And now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can speculate whether my exceedingly 'watered down' genetic connection with this fey novelist has something to do with my attraction to a scent that I had independently associated with her, even if that association has no basis in fact.  I was telling the wife of a much closer cousin(!) about the news, knowing her equally keen interest in family history, when she suddenly dropped a genealogical bombshell of her own:  'Well you know, don’t you, that my mother is related to the Sackville-Wests?'  I didn’t, but my mind suddenly went into overdrive, recalling Virginia Woolf’s unconventional relationship with Vita Sackville-West, before applying this extra twist.  'I know what you are thinking', replied my cousin-in-law, 'but just think how many steps that would be from Virginia to Vita, if it is already 17 from Virginia to you.  That’s hardly incestuous, now is it?'

Source: Amazon

'Wouldn’t it be funny if it was 39 steps', I replied, thinking to myself: “Now there’s a book I can get my head around.'

**Editor's note: I later learnt that this mall was only a short hop from where Undina lives, however, at the time I had yet to 'meet' her properly on the blogs. Which is a shame, as I am sure she could have cheered me up no end!

Papillon Perfumery Angélique: reprising the notions of the 'suggestible schnoz' and 'unrepresentative squirt'

An animal-loving perfumer piqued the toys' interest

This is not the post I had planned to write next. It is not even the one after that, or the one after that again - in fact I never intended to write about Papillon Perfumery's Angélique at all. And maybe I still won't, or not very much.  There are numerous bloggers who have done far more eloquent justice to this softly elegant scent than me. I am, however, conducting an interesting experiment with two samples of Angélique right now, so I feel I should log my thoughts more or less as they occur.

But first a few words about Liz Moores herself, starting with the fact that it takes some considerable discipline to remember to put the 's' at the end of her name.

So yes, Papillon Perfumery was launched just the other week, with Liz Moores' (note careful placing of apostrophe) trio of scents - Tobacco Rose, Anubis and Angélique - available exclusively in Les Senteurs (in the UK) and Indigo Perfumery in Cleveland, Ohio. Liz has, however, been gradually building up a following in the perfume community on social media networks in the run up to the launch, engaging (sorry, that most annoying of words just slipped out!) in a completely natural and 'regular' way with bloggers and perfumistas. This is in stark contrast to the more pointed tactics of some PR people, who bluntly ask you to collaborate with the companies they represent, or who send you a Facebook friend request, only to fire off an invitation to 'like' a brand's page about two milliseconds after your acceptance. Even though I have often never heard of the fragrance house / distributor / pop-up shop / trade fair / bar of artisanal soap with trailing olive foliage motif in question. Nooo.... Meanwhile Liz is more likely to chat to you about mowing the lawn or the fact that the bananas are on the turn in the village shop. So refreshingly organic was Liz's approach to creating interest in her upcoming fragrance line that Nick Gilbert felt moved to devote a whole post to the success of her marketing approach.

'Would you like some Mr Muscle with those?'

Moreover, Liz is what my late mother would have termed "an absolute hoot". She is charmingly unstuffy and informal, glamorous and flamboyant, with boundless energy, a supreme ability to multitask, and a bee-stung pout to die for. She operates her perfume company from her "open house" home in the depths of The New Forest, a location so remote that you are lucky to have Internet access a couple of hours a day, and where it is a matter of conjecture whether the aforementioned village shop will actually stock the item of which you have just run out. You know you live in a far flung spot when you instinctively check the best before dates on staples such as pasta and tinned food. I should also mention that Liz has five children, including a floating graduate daughter and a baby (for a while I seemed to be continually stumbling across additional offspring on Facebook - typically pictured holding pets or interfering with the printer - but I think I have logged them all now). It is worth noting that all the children are commendably named after flowers and trees.

And yes, let's not forget the pets...there's a tabby cat called Jicky, a pure white cat called Miss Golly Gosh, and a visiting cat called Hero (at the time of writing); there are two retrievers, umpteen "snakelings" (Liz's word) - including a fat pink "ivory morph", which looks like a disconcerting cross between chicken fillets and a Pirelli tyre, or an extruded frankfurter that went a bit wrong. Oh, and not forgetting two tawny owls, one of them called Freckle. As Liz explains:

"If you've never taken a selfie with an owl, you haven't lived."  

Then there are horses, though not in the house, as far as I could gather. There used to be chickens, which mostly succumbed to a fox, while the remaining one, Cherry, died a while later of natural causes. In short, Liz presides over a vibrant, tumbling, Noah's ark of a household, and how she manages to run a business at the same time is a minor miracle. Well, the children do their bit, to be fair. Her little boy has been pressed into service tidying up her studio and doing a spot of clerical work. If you ask me, positioning chores as fun is absolutely the way to go in modern parenting.

But back to the experiment...this involves a vial which Liz Moores sent me a month or two ago, and one which arrived  the other day, to help me check out my theory that different samples of Angélique may smell different. This whole notion was prompted by my experience in store at Les Senteurs the other day, when I sprayed my skin from the tester of Angélique and (at last) found the opening to be more iris-y - in line with what I took to be the general view - and less aquatic-metallic-angelica-y than on my very first trial from the original vial I received. Though this watery opening chimes with Tara's finding in her review on OT:

"There's a gorgeous spring-like, dewy freshness at this opening stage that is no doubt due to the champaca." Tara goes on to note - of the perfume's later stages, I infer - that "there's a feeling of melancholia about it too. It's bittersweet, like a smile tinged with sadness."

Strips of candied angelica ~ Source: redmoor.net

To recap, in my initial sprays from the first vial - and without any reference to the notes - I thought I was dealing with a sparkling bright floral, but one which was blended with a flinty, watery facet that smelt like angelica. Angelica is a note with a slightly offbeat, spiky quality, so I seem to have got Tara's melancholic vibe from the outset.  Whereas in Les Senteurs my first spray from the tester went straight into the fuzzy, powdery iris and mimosa accord, which is what triggered the idea of conducting a side-by-side sample test back home.

I can now report that the new sample smells just like the tester ie quite intense, soft, powdery, and noticeably iris-y from the off.  It has the wistful quality of an Après L'Ondée - or a L'Heure Bleue that has thankfully gone easy on the heliotrope. What is more interesting though is that I have now sprayed the first vial on several further occasions, and each time it gets more and more like the tester in store and Sample 2 and less like my intial impression of angelica rather than iris.

Following repeated testings of Sample 1, the difference between its successive openings has now progressively morphed (not unlike the Moores snake) from "90% more like angelica vs iris" to 40% to its current (comically low!) level of around 10-20%.  I am now so befuddled by the whole business that I have got to the point where I don't even understand my own percentages, so please don't ask me to clarify. When I compare it with Sample 2, I do still detect a slight difference between the vials even now, though it is becoming harder and harder to put my finger on. A less fuzzy, more lucid aspect maybe?

Source: muminboden.se

But what of those early sprays from Sample 1, which had reminded me a little of my first exposure to an angelica note, in FM Angéliques sous la Pluie? That also has cedarwood in it, but is more manly and plangent - I'd go so far as to liken it to the olfactory equivalent of the Moomin Groke, a big lumpen grey gloomy hulk, but in a good way - you know, like rolling fog in Northern California on a November morning. I really don't wish to overplay the FM analogy though, for while Papillon Angélique also has a poignant facet due to the angelica and cedarwood, the mimosa mitigates it with a much more cheerful, springlike vibe.  And though I can't actually pick out the osmanthus, it is doubtless contributing to the warmer, more gourmand character overall - at no point does Angélique stray into full-on funereal, cryogenic or overly carroty territory like some other famous iris scents.

Anyway, to answer that question I dived back into a post of mine from 2009 that few if any readers will remember, I don't suppose, entitled "A Probably Preposterous Notion - The Unrepresentative Squirt" (I was big on capitals back then).  In it I puzzle over why I initially thought Guerlain Idylle a run-of-the-mill fruity floral, only to later discern its pretty rosy musk accord and see resemblances to Narciso Rodriguez for Her and JHAG Lady Vengeance. Having given the matter due consideration, in that post I dismiss the notion of suggestibility, ie that I might have been influenced by the opinion of other bloggers who had drawn this comparison with NR for Her et al - because I was aware of that view at the start when it came off to my nose as a more indifferent mainstream scent. So in the absence of any other theories, I defaulted on that occasion to the apparently preposterous notion of the 'unrepresentative squirt' - check out the post itself for further specifics and some rather silly imagery about pooling musk molecules and bottom feeders in vintage scents.

So in that case I knew of the generally received comparison with those other musky scents from the outset, but couldn't see it at first. Here, I had an open mind to start with, but by the time I got to London, I was aware of 'the iris opening faction', as it were.

'Those are LIME NUTS, obviously' ~ Source: ocado.com

Now even if peer influences were not at work in the Idylle instance, I do have previous for being easily led. Witness, for example, the 'shamelessly suggestible schnoz' incident with the Le Labo City Exclusive Baie Rose 26, which the SA mistakenly told me was Tubereuse 40. And for a few moments, white floral overload is what I smelt!  Or the time as a kid when my father swore blind that my pistachio ice cream was in fact lime, because he knew I hated pistachio as much as he abhorred waste.

And then, just to complicate matters, Liz messaged me to say I hadn't dreamt the angelica note after all!:

"You're not imagining the Angelica note, it's definitely there, but I didn't use Angelica to achieve it", later adding: "I always get Angelica in the top notes."
It is kind of Liz to give me the credit for detecting the angelica note, but even now that I know angelica to be officially in the composition, I may still have been imagining it, simply because the name Angélique sounds like angelica. In other words, I may have been smelling with my brain rather than my nose. Which adds another layer of suggestibility to proceedings, this time for the angelica note itself!

More toys get wind of this perfumer-cum-animal whisperer

So suggestibility remains a possible explanation for these variations along the 'iris-angelica' axis. But there is another possibility which may shed light on the 'unrepresentative squirt' conundrum and blow out? / confirm? my molecule-clumping hypothesis. It turns out I may not be going mad by getting different notes coming to the fore in successive sprays, for in our most recent exchange Liz alludes to the fact that Angélique may be a bit of a shape shifter in itself anyway...

"It changes more than any perfume I know. I literally smell different aspects on different days. One day the orris note is more pronounced and another day it's the cedarwood. A few days ago I wore it and the osmanthus was huge. It's a weird one but I liked it for its weirdness!"

So who knows what exactly is going on here?  Personally, I'd like to run with Liz's kaleidoscopic take on Angélique, which makes me feel no more bonkers than usual. And however Angélique presents to your nose, if you are after something in the general territory of 'pale and interesting angelica-cum-iris with a powdery, faintly fruity vibe and a tendency to toggle between facets with no prior warning', look no further. You're guaranteed hours of entertainment trying to figure out what you are smelling, and a lot of pleasure in the attempt. And I may yet have my own osmanthus moment.

Oh, and a quick PS about the name of Liz Moores' perfumery. Speaking as someone called after a genus of brush-footed butterflies, and whose blog handle is flittersniffer, I was always going to have a soft spot for a brand called Papillon! ;)


Have you ever experienced variations in how a perfume smells from spray to spray, and if so, how have you explained this phenomenon? Nasal suggestibility, an inherently shape shifting scent, or a 'shake before use' malfunction, which may or may not be related to point 2?

And can anyone tell me if I have missed any of the Moores family pets?  I feel sure there must be a brace of gerbils tucked away somewhere, and possibly also a pet bat, rat or wombat.

The 'Careful Whispers' series: No 1 - Penhaligon's Iris Prima review

Source: Wikimedia Commons ~ Noboyuki Kayahara

Undina of Undina's Looking Glass recently reported on the upcoming release of a new Puredistance scent, Black, which the company describes as a 'mysteriously charming perfume that is close to the wearer and releases sensual and elegant layers in a whispering way'. Well, as regular readers of Bonkers know, I love perfumes that are subtle, nuanced and quiet. Accordingly I left a comment after Undina's post, exclaiming: 'I clocked the elegant, mysterious and whispering (yay!)', triggering in turn this joky riposte from Undina:

'You and your “whispering” hang-up!  Are you sure you even need a perfume? No perfume would stay really close to skin, you know. '

This banter with Undina about my predilection for scents that are well-crafted but muted - aka 'careful whispers' (with apologies to George Michael) - has only gone and prompted me to start a mini-series on this fragrance style. ;-) I thought I'd kick off with the newest addition to the Penhaligon's range, Iris Prima, which is due to be released on September 9th.  In collaboration with leading members of the English National Ballet, perfumer Alberto Morillas set out to capture the spirit and grace of the dance in a perfume.

Notes: bergamot, pink pepper, iris, jasmine (hedione), leather, sandalwood, vetiver, amber, vanilla and benzoin

I hadn't actually clocked Iris Prima was by Morillas until I sat down to write this review.  In a past post on Estee Lauder Intuition I dubbed him the master of the 'fuzzy' scent, as in 'blurry and indistinc' (think Armani She White, Armani Sensi, Kenzo Flower Oriental and Bvlgari Omnia Crystalline), and Iris Prima is no exception. Occasionally, as with Intuition, Morillas's creations can be downright fuzzy in a textural way, and the leather note in Iris Prima gives it a bit of that suede undercurrent that characterises Bottega Veneta, for example (though Iris Prima is less sweet and not at all fruity like BV).

Source: Facebook

I get a hint of iris from the outset - and a hint is really quite enough for me - less than in Chanel La Pausa, say, with which it very much shares its indistinct DNA.  And much less so than in the more powdery and spiky iris of Bas de Soie, which in fairness is blended with some prickly hyacinth.

Of the three, Iris Prima is my clear favourite, though La Pausa smells fractionally more niche, possibly because the iris is more prominent, in an old school, melancholic Apres L'Ondee kind of a way.  In my book iris does equate with class to a degree (with a few notable exceptions such as Chanel Chance!), so the more muted the note the more a scent edges towards mainstream territory.  But then I like many high end designer scents and don't get on with a ton of niche stuff, so that in itself is not a black mark in my book.  

And Iris Prima does smell niche - this despite the stated inclusion of hedione, which might have put me off if I had known that nugget on first testing it - for I didn't get on with that particular aromachemical in Marc Jacobs Blush, where it is present in spades. Together with vetiver and amber, the hedione helps to give Iris Prima a warm, luminous, translucent quality.  This is overlaid by just a light dusting of powdery iris, conferring a tender, wistful facet that also keeps Iris Prima from feeling too modern.

Source: buro247.ru

My only quibble with Iris Prima, which perfectly lives up to the exquisite balletic imagery which has characterised the launch campaign, is that it doesn't last very long - and coming from me that is saying something!  After two hours it has started to fade, and after four I am struggling to detect it on my skin.  But if you don't mind regularly refreshing it, in terms of how Iris Prima smells I am a big fan.  This is dainty and easy to wear, an elfin slip of a scent.  A whisper that is just a tad too quiet indeed, which brings me to my audibility scale...  

Audibility rating (on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is hard to spot and 10 is foghorn loud): 3.5 

Well, Iris Prima starts out at 3.5, falling to a 1 within a relatively short space of time. And La Pausa is guilty of something similar, while Bas de Soie has more tenacity - those thorny hyacinth molecules don't give up without a fight.

Source: weheartit.com

For another - more detailed and beautifully nuanced - review, check out the Candy Perfume Boy's take on Iris Prima.  Whilst he concedes that this scent might be too understated for his tastes, I am surprised that a renowned Angel fan like Thomas does not also report issues with the scent's longevity / audibility rating! ;-) ;-)

PS If the spinning ballerina is inhibiting your ability to read this post, give me a shout and I will relocate her to the end, or - in extremis - despatch her to the wings!


Disclosure: a sample of Iris Prima was provided by Penhaligon's at my request.

Making Waves With Guerlain Après L’Ondée - New Post On Ça Fleure Bon

Head over to Ça Fleure Bon today for my latest post, on the subject of the turn of the century classic, Guerlain Après L’Ondée. It is entitled "Guerlain Après L’Ondée And Virginia Woolf: Who’s Afraid Of Melancholy Scents?" and features a surprising web of watery connections...

Photo of The Waves from bookbinding.co.uk