Swoon Bloom: Anya's Garden Strange Magic perfume review

Earlier this month, during the very hottest weather of all the hot weather we have had lately, I drained my sample of Strange Invisible Perfumes L'Invisible, a juicy marvel which for no good reason had been languishing in one of my sample bags for years. I recall popping into the Strange Invisible Perfumes store in Venice, LA, on a work trip in 2010, but having checked the relevant blog post I note that I didn't get round to trying L'Invisible on that occasion, and have no idea how or why I acquired this sample.

Notes: Sicilian lemon, bergamot, mandarin, ylang-ylang, hibiscus, Moroccan red rose, jasmine, vanilla, amber, oakmoss

Ooh, am I sorry to have finished the vial. L'Invisible is a really cheerful, tangy scent with a luscious citrus and ylang-ylang opening, seguing into a cosseting drydown of amber and vanilla, that is perfect as the temperature drops on a summer evening - I don't pick up much moss. Invisible it is not. So L'Invisible had 'strange' in the brand name and was orange in colour, a combination to which I was now very favourably disposed. Such that when natural perfumer Anya McCoy kindly offered to send me a sample of her latest creation, Strange Magic perfume, "made of 95% handmade tinctures of flowers from my Miami garden", I jumped at the chance. Anya went on to explain: "I believe it's the first perfume to be made mainly of tinctures, with just a few essential oils and absolutes added where necessary."

Source: Anya's Garden

It wasn't so much the fact that this perfume is made of tinctures per se that got me excited, but rather its enticing name (no pun intended - Anya's last release was called Entice), and the fact that the blooms of flowers used in the making of Strange Magic had changed colour in the process. I was already in the mood for an orange perfume, while this one was reportedly dark red. I also read this blog post of Anya's with interest, which documents her decades-long tincturing experience generally, and how she noticed a few years back that the flowers of Michelia alba (white champaca) went radically different colours when in contact with the 190 proof alcohol she uses to make her tinctures, beginning with pink and ending up a deep burgundy, the more flowers she added.

Oh, I do love things like that which appear to be magic! I was given some Portuguese gin at Christmas which is a violent purple in colour like meths, and is meant to turn pink when you add tonic. That unfortunately proved to be mere advertising puffery, for the gin actually goes pale mauve instead, just as you would expect. Then there was the wonder in chemistry classes at school of copper sulphate solution, whose bright blue hue - a small miracle in itself! - would go mysteriously white when heated. I find such things endlessly fascinating, and couldn't wait to try this particular instance of 'strange magic' in perfumery.

But before I come onto the fragrance itself, as I so often do on Bonkers I must pay tribute once again to the exquisite packaging in which the sample arrived. I love the bold combination of orange and purple - even if it reminds me vividly of Loyalist marches in my home town of Belfast. I have already bestowed the accolade of 'packaging highlight of 2015' on what I dubbed Anya's 'bias-beribboned box' in this New Year's round up post. That had contained her Ylang-Ylang tincture, which I remember enjoying wearing that summer, but as it was sadly stolen along with my luggage I never felt able to review it.

I took an even closer look at the box this time round and could see that it was recycled. Very commendable. There was the telltale haphazard fibre pattern you get with OSB (oriented strand board aka Sterling board), a material on which I have done multiple pan-European studies (which may come as no surprise to you). Here is the very same stuff being used to line the bar in a quirky cafe called Spout in Leek.

Source: Tripadvisor

And finally, on to the sample of Strange Magic...which is indeed dark red as billed, veering to reddish brown. It stays brown on paper but goes on clear on skin. Maybe that's because I am a bit tanned at the moment, but no, I really think it is colourless on skin - that's another aspect of its magic, then. ;)

And as you can see from the extensive (but still deliberately not comprehensive for perfumer as magician reasons!) note list below (plucked from Cafleurebon), the fragrance comprises a whole host of tinctures of different flowers.

Notes: Chinese Perfume Tree: yellow flowers (Dark amber tincture), Orris: pale white rhizome (Bright coral, orange tincture), Chamomiles: white flowers (Blue oils when distilled), Gardenias: white flowers (Dark amber tincture), Jasmines: white flowers (Deep amber tincture (some, not all), White Champaca: white flowers (Crimson red to dark red tincture),  Ylang ylang: yellow flowers (Olive green to dark green tincture),  Cashmere Bouquet: white flowers (Deep red tincture), Vintage white ambergris from Vanuatu (Orange tincture)

When I first smelt Strange Magic I was instantly reminded of my dabbling in natural perfumes at the start of my hobby - in a purely sampling sense, I mean. I was very taken with the range by Ajne of Carmel, to which I was introduced by Michelyn Camen of Cafleurebon, as it happens, and over time I acquired samples of Printemps, Desire, Bloom, Divine, Lakshmi, Om, Fleur Blanche, Vanille and Aphrodite, and even went on to own a small bottle of the frangipani and jasmine beauty that is Calypso, reviewed here. My Calypso is also orange now and very aged, but still not off I wouldn't say! The sheer intensity and Dolby Surround Smell effect of natural perfumes is hard to describe, but it is like sniffing something in HD, where the florals are incredibly present, whilst sometimes seeming to be showcased against a darker, murkier, slightly treacly base (in a good way!). If you put L'Invisible in a cave you might get a sense of what I mean, though there again probably not. I pick up on a heady bouquet in which I can detect ylang-ylang and a sensual blur of other sweet and narcotic flowers, but I would be lying if I said could make out anything else distinctly. But that truly doesn't matter: suffice to say that Strange Magic does indeed cast a spell over me, and as I say is extremely evocative of those equally heady early years of experimentation and discovery when I first fell down the rabbit hole.

Circe, by John William Waterhouse ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons

The only downside to mention is that as with magic tricks, so with Strange Magic the perfume, it is rather a case of 'Now you sniff it, now you don't' ie Strange Magic doesn't last very long on me, and mutes down to a whispery trace within a few hours. I would like to say that its ephemeral nature is part of its mystique, but we are talking a scent that, due to its handcrafted and natural provenance, is necessarily a high end item - it costs $125 for 15ml. That said, I see my Calypso from Ajne is now $195 for 15ml, so by that yardstick Strange Magic is a relative bargain, longevity aside! And if you are someone who pays most attention to how a perfume smells in the first few hours anyway, that might not be an issue. Assuming you even had the same experience as me of its being somewhat fleeting. I note that Mark Behnke of Colognoisseur got 6-8 hours wear from Strange Magic, so maybe I am the one with 'strange' skin in that regard!       

In closing I will just say that I wish the things in my garden smelt anywhere near as nice as the flowers in Anya's. Currently there is only scorched yellow grass and some tall white daisies that are keeling over and turning brown prior to giving up the ghost completely. Oh, and one unnaturally tall peach rose, so much so that I hadn't even noticed it was in bloom. But I doubt I have anything like the wherewithal to make a tincture...so will gladly leave that to professional perfumers in more tropical climes.

Dreams are made of this: Annick Goutal Songes review

Songes having a nice little lie down

I spent large tracts of the Easter Weekend asleep. There were no family gatherings featuring rack of lamb, Simnel cake, or egg hunts in the garden; no invigorating walks in bluebell woods, pub meals, or even chocolate binges - though I had a full complement of Lindt bunnies in the house, so goodness knows the opportunity was there. I did demolish a tottering heap of ironing, finally read papers from as far back as last Tuesday week, and appeal a parking ticket on behalf of an elderly friend, so the holiday was not wholly without accomplishment. But mostly I slept - and dreamt - and felt a curious yet languorous sense of disconnection from the world, which I sense is an inevitable part of the 'single household condition' (to come over all Camusian for a moment).

Token Easter concession of hot cross bun, plus mini-tsunduko of Ian McEwans

In one of the dreams, The Monochrome Set (my recent travels with whom were evidently still fresh in my mind!) were supposed to be playing a late night gig outside a ruined castle on top of a mountain. The craggy topography was positively Transylvanian in appearance, belying the Tewkesbury postcode on the band's itinerary sheet. The 'get in' - or 'get up', rather, in view of the vertiginous terrain - was hard going, on slippery ground and along unlit paths. I am not sure the band ever made it to the summit - I was onto the next dream by then anyway, about a defective glide rail in the cupboard under my cooker.

Val in the garden of the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis

I have waited till this post to mention it, but along with Naja, there is one other scent that is inextricably bound up with meeting Val and Chris in Augsburg. For on the Sunday I wore a sample of Songes edt - the conscious creation of happy associations with perfumes being a thing I increasingly do, rather than noticing after the fact that random fragrance X (not to be confused with the online retailer of the same name ;) ) happens to remind you of good time Y. In my book, deliberately orchestrating scent memories is just a logical extension of outfit planning, and it worked like a charm with Songes. So much so that on my return to England I felt I had to own it, notwithstanding the substantial size of my existing perfume collection!

Notes: frangipani, tiare, jasmine, incense, vanilla, copahu balm, pepper, ylang-ylang, vetiver, sandalwood, amber, styrax

I have been wearing Songes a lot in the last two weeks. During a recent visit, my brother asked me what my favourite perfume was, which I obviously batted off as a preposterous question to put to a diehard fumehead. ;)  Yet the more thought I have given it since, the more I have come round to the possibility of only having TWO perfumes, and of Songes being one of them...! For while there is amber and styrax in the base, which one could consider 'winter perfume' notes, the composition overall sits squarely in the 'sultry tropical floral' category, which is not exactly the genre for which one reaches on a dreich and drizzling day in February. That said, I would not restrict Songes to high summer and exotic holiday locations, and I don't say that just because we don't really have a summer here and I don't go anywhere remotely exotic. Okay, not the beachy, Bounty bar kind of exotic, say. Some might say a residential container park in Stuttgart is a bit 'outside the box' as destinations go. Or 'inside the box', even. Sorry, I digress...but yes, I reckon Songes also works nicely in spring: like a cuckoo pint it is buttressed by a curling sheath of greenery - a compelling blend of vetiver and what I can best describe as 'a jasmine note in tuberose's clothing', most notably in the opening. For I detect a dewy, faintly medicinal** otherworldliness that reminds me of Carnal Flower, which I also see as having wider seasonal currency than its name might suggest.

**(or more exactly, a scent that is somewhere between grass, Germolene, menthol, and bubblegum, and I really do mean that in the best possible way)

Oops, we are tired again!

As Songes wears on, the narcotic and sensual bouquet of frangipani, tiare and ylang-ylang starts to bloom on a pneumatic bed of vanilla spiked with just enough pepper and incense to keep things from ever drifting into apocalyptic Loulou territory. Rather, this is a sort of 'sexed - and slightly weirded - up' La Chasse aux Papillons crossed with Ormonde Jayne Frangipani, featuring echoes of Amaranthine's creamily indolic milk pudding. There is an air of innocence about Songes, but if you were to tear away the soft focus veil like a tangle of so much diaphanous clothing, you would eventually uncover its carnal core. You might well have got fed up with the tangle wrangling long before, mind! If Songes were a film it would perhaps be a more grown up version of Bilitis, that stylish and moody 'coming of age' flick, of which my memory, like the cinematography, is hazy, but as a geeky and thoroughly unracy teenager I do remember it as an aspirationally risque cult classic. Even the theme tune is seductively soporific, in a slightly annoying synthesised Vangelis kind of a way! ;)

The most respectable still I could find! Source: Abe Books

Actually, park Bilitis with its youthful lesbian overtones - seductively soporific is really where it's at in a nutshell. Songes could be the signature scent of the Lotos-Eaters (aka the gloriously named 'lotophagi' or 'lotophages') as they munched on their lotus fruits and flowers, causing them to 'sleep in peaceful apathy'. Here is an extract from the eponymous poem by Tennyson:

"Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory"

Source: Wikipedia

And that brings me back to another aspect of my association with Songes: if Bilitis is its gawky and not quite suitable film equivalent, 'On My Balcony' from the band's Platinum Coils album, would be Songes in a song to a 't' - or an 's'! The track takes as its theme singer Bid's stay in hospital, recovering from surgery following a brain aneurysm:

"Through the perfume of sweet velvet sleep

I glide into the afternoon"

As I mention in this early tour post, when quizzed about the lyric, Bid explained that his choice of the word 'perfume' was quite arbitrary, and he probably just liked the way the word sounded. Even so, the woozy cadence of the lines nicely evokes a state of dreamy torpor, scented or otherwise. There is about a 30 second clip here, which gives you an idea of the track's languid charm - not unlike early Genesis indeed.

And here are a couple of reviews, which serve to confirm me in my linkage of Songes to song!

"The tempo slows in 'On My Balcony', a ballad that feels like drifting down a tributary of oblivion." - From a High Horse

"One is lifted up to the gentle heights of On My Balcony, where, weightless, surrounded by a golden luminous haze, the concerns of the world float far below." - God is in the TV

And as it happens, at that eclectic asylum seekers' hostel-cum-hotel that was our base in Augsburg, my room had its own balcony! As did most of them to be fair, haha. Okay, and not strictly my own balcony - more like my own section of a communal balcony that ran the whole width of the building. But the decor of all the rooms - which were individually designed by an assortment of avant-garde artists - was very Lotos-Eaterish, come to think of it, in the sense of minimalist and surreal, and conducive to a state of peaceful apathy! Good job I managed to stir myself in time to meet Val on the Saturday night - you could easily sleep your stay away, which would be rather a waste of a visit to such a picturesque spot, though you would feel jolly rested at the end of it.

I will close this free association 'spacy review oddity' with some photos of the other rooms I find most Songes-like at the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis, starting with the one I was meant to have, Grande Dame. (All photos sourced from the hotel website.)

Things start to get more diaphanous with Innen / Aussen:

My own room, 4 null 5, also gives good gauze:

Before taking a fluffy turn with Zauberwald (note also fluffy bedknob):

And here is Maskerade des Lebens - complete with balcony and trippy mural:

So there you have it - Songes edt, the scent of an asylum seekers hostel / hotel, a fabulous fumehead meet up, a hospital in Tooting, a dodgy 70s film, and those legendary lolling sybarites, the Lotos-Eaters:

"To muse and brood and live again in memory"

Are you asleep yet...? ;)

Tauer Carillon Pour Un Ange: Galvanising The Lily

I like Switzerland. I go there quite often for work. Why, I even have an expired 2010 vignette on my car, which permitted me to make unlimited use of the country's scenic and densely betunnelled motorway network last year. I also like Andy Tauer, who is THE perfumer everyone associates with Switzerland. Following a tip off from Wordbird, I have visited the Aladdin's Cave of a little bookshop run by his friend in the Spiegelgasse in Zurich. It famously inspired the creation of Le Maroc pour Elle, and cheek by jowl with the books and art cards, the full range of Tauer scents is displayed in the doorway, bizarrely suspended on pieces of string.

Now I have never met the man himself, but there are quite a few of us out in the blogosphere with his handwritten compliments slips, which we have squirrelled away with other fragrance keepsakes, or - in my own case - stuck up on my office pinboard next to the business cards of a couple of other olfactory benefactors. This perfumer is not only very generous with his prize draws - I won a set of samples during the Advent series of 2008 - but he does his own mail outs. Yes, on the basis of these little notes and his blog, Andy Tauer comes across as friendly and approachable. He hikes, he cooks, he is like one of us! Well, except for the hiking, the cooking and the famous and talented nose part. Speaking for myself, anyway. And if I ever were to meet him, I could speak to him in German! Though not his native Swiss German - goodness me, no.

So given the fact that I have always warmed to Andy Tauer as a person, it has been a source of regret to me over the past three years of this hobby that I haven't had a very good "strike rate" with his perfumes, by which I mean I have only liked a small proportion of the total line. Well, pretty much only L'Air du Désert Marocain up to this point, which continues to exert a visceral pull with its haunting blend of rock rose, bone dry cedar and dusty spices, warmed by a soft amber base. The image conjured up by this scent is perfectly summed up by its creator:

'Imagine finding peace in a room, lying on the bed, exhausted from the heat of the day, with the window open, letting the cool air in which still is very dry and filled with the scents from the near desert and overlayed with the spicy scents of the streets below.'

Notes: Coriander, Petitgrain (Bitter orange), Lemon, Bergamot, Jasmin, Cistus, Bourbon, Geranium, Cedarwood, Vetiver, Vanille, Patchouli and Ambergris

L'Air du Désert Marocain is one of the most affecting perfumes I have ever smelt, which I wouldn't say of all the fragrances I am very drawn to or find easy to wear. I should perhaps add that I only love L'Air du Désert Marocain (henceforth LADDM for short) when it has been on for an hour or so, as it is a bit intense and raspy to start with. Which brings me on to the reason why I may have problems appreciating most of the other scents in the range, namely the Tauer "house accord" aka "Tauerade". This term, coined by Marina of Perfumesmellingthings in her review of Tauer's Orris, is the subject of a recent post by Josephine of Notes from Josephine, in which she wrestles with her nose's existential angst in relation to the Tauer line.

Marina reads this accord as a "sweetly-ambery, spicy-herbal, slightly leathery, woody SOMETHING", so no wonder she wanted to come up with a snappier name for it(!); Josephine, meanwhile, detects cough syrup. For myself, I do get a medicinal aspect, also a fuzzy, almost wire wool consistency. It was particularly noticeable in Incense Rosé, Une Rose Chyprée and Lonestar Memories, though there was a lot else going on in that last one, from lighter fluid to bacon, "fuelling" its oddity.

I persisted in this view of Tauers - accepting that LADDM would forever be the one scent from this particular stable on which I could happily ride off into the sunset - until I began to hear good things about the new release, Carillon pour un Ange. I heard it had ylang-ylang and lily of the valley, two favourite notes of mine, though the latter can be tricky and descend into soapy toiletry territory if you are not careful. I also heard that this scent wasn't like other Tauers in terms of the whole medicinal Brillo pad vibe. And though my hasty sniff of a tester nozzle in (the) Scent Bar wasn't too promising, I am three skin trials in now and enjoying the fragrance very much indeed.

For starters, Carillon pour un Ange has an unexpected luminosity for a Tauer - a radiant, almost irradiated quality. Bury it 200 foot underground and its bright heart would still beat, and its bells peal. It has the same intense and bright quality as Ajne Printemps or SIP Magazine Street or DelRae Début, which may partly be to do with the natural ingredients used, for it is mostly in scents with a high proportion of natural materials that I have experienced this "High Definition" phenomenon. The heady hint of lilac, the sensual oomph of jasmine and the tangy clang of ylang-ylang(!) help magnify this impression, aided and abetted by some miscellaneous greenery - none of it bitter like galbanum to my nose - but rather a bright, sherberty linden greenness (which Printemps and Début share, come to think of it, while the DelRae also has ylang-ylang).

Now, having said that I don't detect Tauerade, with its telltale wire woolliness, I DO detect metal all the same, at least in the opening. This may well be intentional, given that the name of the scent refers to a "stationary set of chromatically tuned bells in a tower, usually played from a keyboard" OR "a composition written or arranged for these bells". My first impression of Carillon pour un Ange (or CpuA for short - not to be confused with anything from the Periodic Table of Elements). was of a glade of lilies glimpsed through a wire fence.

Has anyone ever made a peephole theatre out of a shoe box? And if so, do you remember that deep sense of perspective due to the arrangement of different fixtures and fittings at staggered intervals along the box's length? Well, that is how I could best describe the sense of olfactory perspective I get with the accords in CpuA.

The metallic quality hangs around for a while in the foreground, and grounds the scent nicely, stopping it from coming over all Diorissimo. Now don't get me wrong - there is a place for that more feminine, "capering-on-hilltops-in-flouncy-petticoats"-style of springtime scent, though not on my skin particularly. But with CpuA, there's an edge, a metal-strip-in-a banknote bite to it. I may conceivably be chomping on the wire fence initially, as I survey the green dell beyond. Stranger things have been known. I am also reminded a little of the sensation of smelling Nahema, which was like sucking on powdered iron girders, but there the iron note was diffuse and powdery, whereas here the metal is whole and glinting - like sunbeams glancing off the bells in the tower. This is not a gilded lily, but a lily in an iron fist. The lily equivalent of "steel magnolias", if you will. : - )

Notes: lilac, rose, ylang-ylang, green lily of the valley accord, jasmine, leather, ambergris, moss and woods.

Now I see no mention of ferrous material in the note listing, so I am guessing that the metallic impression I get is coming from some combination of moss, leather and woods. Either that, or I am imagining it completely, like the phantom ylang-ylang I detect in Ajne Calypso. And as time goes on, the metal bite disappears, and the radiant piquancy is muted slightly by a musky-woody-leathery trail. It is as though the sun were veiled by a wisp of cloud, behind which it continues to burn brightly.

So there is a threefold learning from this latest scent trial:

1. I like anything Bloody Frida sends me
2. There are more Tauers out there to put a spring in my step and make my heart leap...
3. I like my lilies to be not so much giddy and girly as galvanised.

Yes, Andy Tauer has really "rung the changes" with this one...and I am very happy to have found it.




Photo of Easter card with angel from flickriver, photo of hotel in Marrakesh from concierge.com, photo of Carillon pour un Ange from ry7.ru, photo of brooch from collectibles-articles.com, photo of theatre in a box from papergoods.com, photo of angel from fast-autos-net, photo of galvanising process from bellespics.eu.

Slippery Snippet

So the new moisturising régime is going pretty well, I'd say. This week I squeezed the final dregs out of a tube of DKNY Gold body lotion (I had had it for some years, admittedly), and also finished a bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care Aloe Vera lotion that I bought as a cheap alternative to after-sun for our last foreign holiday. That would be 2007, then. Which all feels very satisfying - why, I am getting through my moisturiser collection faster than I can drain a 1ml vial of perfume...(separate post on that subject follows shortly.)

Then the other night I decided to do each leg in a different cream - just because I could. Now I may not use moisturisers very often, but I do like buying them - T K Maxx is an endless source of bargains, for example - though the two I applied on the occasion in question were both gifts:

Clarins Eau Ressourcante Crème Corps Veloutée

B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful Cocktail Body Lotion

Velouté? That's a word I associate with cooking sauces (the ones I don't make), and also mushroom soup, for some reason. Aha, that will be why. So the Clarins went on one leg and it was rich and luxurious and smelt of the sea and saunas. It just goes to show how long it is since Mr Bonkers and I had a bucket and spade holiday, because the cream contains Sarsaparilla, Hibiscus, Robinia and Longan, and apart from a vague notion that Hibiscus has red flowers and fetches up in most flavours of herbal tea, I can't visualise any of these ingredients. And I thought Sarsparilla was a place in Texas.

The Cocktail body lotion has ylang ylang in it, which I love, and a curious diesel/paraffin odour, which I don't. I have heard this note variously described as "germolene", "moth balls", and "chemicals". This may be why the pot is still almost full after a year, athough the purple label and lid coordinate nicely with my Roja Dove candle and the Paul Klee print on the bedroom wall.

Like the Clarins, Cocktail is sumptously thick, though it felt a bit drier on application than I remembered. Then to my surprise I found a Best Before date on the base - 25.10.10 - which is Monday! Well, I have never come across that before. I thought moisturisers were only unfit for use when they had separated into oily puddles, oozing brown fluid. And certainly when they start to grow fur.

There is no way I shall be able to use this 175g tub by Monday, though I will give it my best shot, diesel fumes or no. And even after that it is probably still fine - as in not posing a health hazard - it may just have less of a hydrating effect.

The next morning I asked Mr Bonkers to sniff each leg and tell me what he thought of their residual scents. He doesn't like bending at the best of times, but submitted to the task and pronounced both limbs to be perfume-free. "They smell a bit sweaty, mind."

So clearly I need to wash more, then moisturise some more. I am clearly getting the hang of this skin care lark.




Photo of octopus from Wikimedia Commons, photo of soup from diglounge.net, photo of Paul Klee print from Amazon, photo of Cocktail from company.co.uk