My Funny Valentine: 10 Blessings And A Boyfriend

Now I know Valentine's Day was yesterday, but Bonkers is no stranger to retrospectives, and by the same token this is my 301st post, so as well be hanged for two delays as one, I say. I couldn't feasibly combine the giveaway with my Nanoblur post because the titles of cosmetic features are always so darn long. And I hadn't planned to do a Valentine's post at all in fact, but was moved to merge the celebratory draw one with a sort of a Valentine's post, simply because of the funny and heartwarming items I received in the post on that day.

For starters there were TEN sample vials of Belinda Brown's EDP version of her bespoke perfume Blessings, which I reviewed here in one of my recent Knightsbridge sniffing posts. I had sent an email to Belinda via her website, and was surprised at the generous quantity of samples that tumbled out of the Jiffy bag. The name of this perfume will always remind me of an expression used by a Pentecostal minister who was trying to encourage one of his congregation to look on the bright side and be grateful for the good things he had:

"You are not broke. You are just in between blessings."

This quote may be a little twee for my hardboiled sensibilities, but it makes me smile all the same, so when these 10 vials landed on the doormat I couldn't help but think: "Well, if I have been in between blessings lately, I am flush with the things now, that's for sure!

Right after I acknowledged receipt of the package, I had a surprise phone call from Belinda herself, who told me a bit more about the process by which she came to have her custom scent created by Roja Dove, and how it was gradually rolled out on a wider basis. For Belinda, Blessings (in its parfum version, certainly) conjures up the image of someone lazing on a yacht, and she also likened the scent to "a good bag" - in metaphorical essence that is, rather than smell as such.

The pomade which was the original inspiration for her scent was a bit like Vaseline in its consistency, but comprised a bewitching concoction of jasmine and vanilla that apparently made every other girl within nostril shot want to be her friend! I compared the EDP launch to a high street garment whose design has trickled down from the catwalks, and Belinda agreed that her scent had followed a similar path. Tara and I definitely smelt the extrait in Harrods; the EDP does smell unequivocably like a mainstream scent, ie less lush and tropical and more delicately floral, but it is still perfectly pleasant. Quite lemony to my nose in fact.

Here are the notes again:

Top Notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Mandarin
Heart Notes: Jamine de Grasse, Rose De Mai
Base Notes: Cedar, Sandalwood, Tonka, Vanilla

In overall quality and vibe - and even juice colour! - I was reminded of CK Beauty (which I note also has jasmine and cedar), but Blessings is more citrusy. I suppose I have only ever associated Roja Dove with niche/luxe releases up to now, but many other perfumers are known for a mix of niche and mainstream creations. So it is feminine and pretty, but not remotely luxurious in feel - which at a tenth of the price of the extrait you can hardly expect.

So that was a happy turn of events, and then my package from Ari of Scents of Self arrived, containing a purse spray of Kate Walsh Boyfriend which she had kindly custom purchased for me. How apt is that on such a day? There was also a decant of Un Bois Vanille I had bought to help swell her Valentine's fund - check out that funky insulation tape - the devil (or a sprinkling of scary skulls at any rate) really is in the detail!

Boyfriend is a unisex scent I have not yet seen in the shops in Europe, and that I have been wanting to try for ages. Some time ago now I remembered hearing positive reports about this scent, which is supposed to combine aspects of Kate Walsh's ex-boyfriend's cologne (they had split up, and she missed it) with floral notes more squarely aimed at a female wearer. I had a hunch that this was one of those quiet scents that are very "me", and that I wouldn't regret a blind buy, and so it has proved.

Notes via EauMg's review: dark plum, myrrh, night blooming jasmine, benzoin tears, skin musk, golden amber, vanilla woods

So I immediately applied it on both wrists and my first thought was: "Oooh, an oily Eau Duelle!" Yes, the rather sweet, oily, anisic, borderline boozy top note took me back a bit initially. My recent wrestling with Myrrhiad sprang to mind, for example, along with a jumble of unhappy memories of Lolita Lempicka and Kenzo Jungle L'Eléphant. This note faded somewhat after a bit and didn't even trouble me unduly at the outset. Maybe I am on the cusp of becoming a born again liquor and licorice fan.

My overall impression of Boyfriend is of a sheer "woody amber vanilla" skin scent, quite heavy on the vanilla, which is rarely a bad thing in my book, and with this background note of licorice or something of that aniseedy ilk. The amber emits a warm radiant hum or glow, like a one bar heater in a big room, and the texture is not at all powdery or fuzzy like L'Eau Ambrée, for example, another office-appropriate scent. Texturally it is more like regular Prada, indeed notewise I can see similarities in the anisic woodiness. As the vanilla asserted itself more and more, I was also reminded of Lacoste pour Femme, though the Lacoste is sweeter and more feminine:

Notes: Jamaican pepper and purple freesia; middle notes of white heliotrope, Iranian jasmine, hibiscus, Bulgarian rose absolute and ambrette seed absolute Himalayan cedarwood, sandalwood and incense

And finally, the plum note dimly recalled D & G L'Eau The One, though L'Eau The One had a darker fruitiness to it I think, and I gave my sample away in the end, so I don't want to overplay that particular comparison.

Notes: Bergamot, Mandarin, Lychee, Peach, Plum, Floral Muguet, Jasmine, Madonna Lily, Amber, Musk, Moss, Vanilla, Vetyver

Ah, but hold on a moment: "Floral Muguet", eh? Well, oddly enough, in the marketing blurb about Boyfriend reproduced on Now Smell This, there is a reference to "muguet floralcy". That involves both a bizarre word and a bizarre concept. What other kind of muguet might there be than a floral one, I wonder?

"In the fragrance creation process, Kate was inspired by the scent of a 'guy on a girl', and combined notes of amber and woods, with a bright floral scent that women love. The fragrance has a bright muguet floralcy with dark plum and myrrh on top, with night blooming jasmine."

So in summary, Kate Walsh Boyfriend is a radiant ambery, woody, incensey vanilla, warm, comforting, glowing thing. If you fell hard recently for Myrrhiad and it is out of your league pricewise, this might be worth checking out, strange as that may sound. And I don't know who Kate was dating before, but am confident this scent will make a decent substitute.


Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers of Bonkers about Perfume: regular, occasional, brand new and lapsed(!), for having read my blog in the past two and a bit years. I know a lot of people lurk here - though a few have de-lurked lately, also back channel, which was lovely - but anyone reading is welcome, including the vast majority who land here by mistake while looking for guacamole recipes or swingers' clubs in Cleveland.


Photo of white ghost and heart box from annethelibrarian via Flickr CC, photo of Boyfriend T-shirt from blogefl via Flickr CC, photo of mask from MadEmoiselle Sugar via Flickr CC, other photos my own

"If I Could Blur Back Time": Review Of Indeed Laboratories Nanoblur Anti-Aging "Not A Cream" Advanced Optical Cream

It has been quite a week. I just passed the 100th follower mark (thanks, followers No 100 - 104!), and this is my 300th post. (Celebratory giveaway coming up next time...) And then there was my guest post on Now Smell This on the subject of perfume blogging, during which I set myself the challenge of being not once, twice, but "three times an American", by trying to stay up through all the time zones to respond to readers' comments. I gave up at about 7pm PST on the day my piece went up, but had fun trying! In the introduction to that post, I describe myself as having the apparent dermatological oxymoron of "problem mature skin", a reference to my ongoing rosacea, though it is a lot better at the moment. And to be honest, some might consider the mere fact of having "mature skin" a problem in itself, unless you are have the self-confidence to roll with the punches of the aging process - and the morning quilt face, crow's feet and lip lines they leave behind.

I am a bit on the fence with the whole business of skin care. Having abused my skin in my 20s and 30s through chronic sunworshipping, when I finally started an active moisturising regime in my 40s - and all but gave up sunbathing through circumstance as much as anything - part of me thought it was all rather like shutting the stable door after the collagen had bolted... I persist with my efforts even so, like smokers who give up in their 50s, hoping for health benefits from that point onwards.

Now when I say "regime" that is perhaps overstating things: mostly I just slap on whatever kind of day or night cream I happen to have to hand, and just occasionally I investigate products with more tantalising claims, such as the Avon Anew Ultimate (Day) Cream I featured a while back on Bonkers, which had the unfortunate side effect of stinging and smelling of burning flesh.

Then recently - partly mindful of the fact that I now have an unintentional Wikio Beauty Blog ranking to maintain ; - ) - I have been dabbling with Indeed Laboratories' Nanoblur, available from Boot's in the UK for £19.99. Indeed Laboratories Inc is based outside Toronto, and Nanoblur is on sale via specific retailers in Canada and a handful of other countries; it can also be ordered online. The name Nanoblur was an immediate draw to me, because of course the prefix "Nano-" is such a Zeitgeist-y word, along with "offset mortgage", "carbon trading", "bluetooth" (also as a verb!) and "vuvuzela". "Nano-" takes me right back to a company I interviewed in California in 2010, which made an array of products, including actual "arrays"(!), fashioned out of epitaxially grown silicon wafers (I believe). I strongly suspect nanotechnology was involved somewhere along the line...

I have just Wiki-ed the term and it means "the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale". So what is this cream then, and why is it on nodding terms with atomic and molecular matter, if it is indeed? "Indeed" being of course the operative brand name!

"Our promise: look 10 years or more younger in 40 seconds or less."

That is not the happiest of grammatical constructions, but we will overlook it, given the generous nature of the promise and its super speedy delivery.

"This product is based on advanced optics technology and is not makeup."

The packaging then refers you to the company's website for more information, where I firstly learnt the rationale for developing this product, namely to make people look better on TV.

"Since the advent of high-definition technology, skin imperfections have become far more apparent on camera and Nanoblur was created so that celebrities could 'blur' out imperfections that were previously not visible with traditional cameras."

And the most meaty additional information I could glean on the website is as follows:

"It is not a cream. It is a suspension of millions and millions of particles that reflect light perfectly in billions of directions to make the skin’s surface appear completely flawless. Within seconds, pores appear to disappear. Fine lines appear to vanish. The skin texture appears nearly perfect. With one application on any skin surface (even on your hands), you will be convinced that Nanoblur will make you look up to 10 years younger in a matter of seconds. It’s just that simple."

Not a cream? Yet it is described as an "advanced optical cream" on the packet. Moving on...

That is a very big claim, especially the 10 years younger bit. I will see if I have a photo of me when I was 10 years younger, so you can use it as a point of reference. Okay, here is my current passport photo, which is 9 years old...let's not set the bar too high. : - ) Actually, I am not sorry to have lost the hair and glasses, though I think the grooves either side of my mouth were less pronounced back then.

Oddly, the accompanying before and after photos on the website (completely untouched, and of the subjects' naked faces) look quite honest to me - but there again I don't see a whole lot of improvement either!

Further research on the Interwebs unearthed the fact that at only 700 nanometres (sounds big, but clearly isn't!) the "nanoparticles" in Nanoblur are smaller than the ones used in YSL's iconic product Touch Eclat, for example. This means they do a better job of diffusing the light in a flattering manner, like looking at skin through the soft focus medium of frosted glass. They are, however, too big to be absorbed by skin, which people may be glad to know.

Having tried Nanoblur a few times - and arguably you are only supposed to need to try it once for 40 seconds to see the years roll back.... - I will say that my vertical lip lines looked fainter, no question. Downside was that my top lip was slightly pushed out and appeared thinner, which it can ill afford to do. Though at the same my cupid's bow appeared more prominent, which I was quite pleased about. There is a pleasant sensation of tautness and no disagreeable smell, as with the Avon product.

BEFORE (SOME MONTHS BEFORE, BUT NOT TO WORRY)

ME MINUTES AFTER APPLICATION

ME SLIGHTLY MORE FACE-ON, THOUGH I DON'T THINK IT MAKES MUCH DIFFERENCE

The "not a cream" - or "advanced optical cream" as you prefer - had its work cut out with the long lines either side of my mouth, which have rather disconcertingly started to sprout tributaries lately at the ends - they also remind me a little of a snake's forked tongue... I would say that the effect there was of a slight plumping out and softening and then over time I thought I might even have detected a slight flattening of the grooves. However, I wouldn't say they vanished, or even appeared to vanish. Probably because they weren't "fine" lines to start with. The lip lines (which I would call "fine") do appear visibly reduced in photos and in the mirror. The effects also seemed to last till the following day, which may say more about the sloppiness of my so-called skincare regime than any inherent merit of the product. : - )

The members of Makeupalley rated this product 3.1 out of 5, which isn't a great score. Anything under 4.0 counts as a lukewarm response over there, I'd say. Some people found it didn't work well OVER foundation, the recommended method of application - or even UNDER it, for those who like me decided to flaunt the instructions - and I would agree with that. So that could be a stumbling block right there for anyone who usually wears full coverage foundation. People who had a good experience with the product talked of its "smoothing" and "mattifying" effect, which was the finding of my next-door-neighbour, who also bought herself a tube.

So I get the feeling that Nanoblur is a product that works best for obscuring fine lines (and possibly large pores or bits of unwanted pigmentation, though I wasn't trying it out for that). I would recommend it in a guarded way, as I think different people may get different results. As for the taking off ten years, I don't think so. Up to ten years - well, that's a more forgiving timespan.

And according to the website, Nanoblur comes with a customer satisfaction guarantee, so if you find you can't blur back time, you can get your money back at least...

Guest Post On Now Smell This - The Sequel: 5 Things I Have Learnt From Perfume Blogging

Yesterday Now Smell This published a guest post by me entitled: “5 things to think about before you start a perfume blog”. I am following it up here on Bonkers today with a companion post, covering another five learning points / discoveries from my first two years of blogging.

I should have gone with Wordpress…

When I started Bonkers about Perfume, I gave almost no thought to the question of which free blogging software to use. A number of perfume sites I followed at the time had opted for Blogspot, the free domain service provider of Google-owned Blogger. It looked easy to set up, even for a technical numpty like me, so I just went with that, without making any inquiries such as consulting review sites etc. For someone who is a researcher by profession that was most out of character. And now, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had chosen the other main free publishing platform, Wordpress. It has a much wider selection of templates, with a cleaner, clearer look and richer functionality, including threaded comments – though Blogger has just introduced its own basic version of this facility. Overall, I’d say that Wordpress is aesthetically superior, more robust/bugproof, and easier to interact with for both blog owner and reader alike.

Duplication is inevitable

By this I mean duplication of any kind: for example, reviewing the same scent as another blogger – quite possibly in the same week even, if there is a new release with a buzz around it. But as I mention in Point 4 of my previous post over on Now Smell This, I think multiple reviews are a good thing. And if you know you are not the first person to write about a given subject (which will mostly be the case), a nodding reference to the fact that others have trod this posting path before you never goes amiss (in the spirit of “playing nicely with others” – Point 5 of my NST post).

Now, although I said earlier that Wordpress has a wider choice of themes than Blogger, with any blogging platform you run the risk of picking the same layouts, colour schemes and fonts as someone else. For a long time I was concerned that my choice of a battleship grey background might be seen as copying I Smell Therefore I Am, and I also had a bit of a wobble on hearing that my travel theme was in use by a Canadian perfume blogger. He didn’t post all that often though, so after toying with a few alternatives I reverted to my original selection, on the basis that when it comes to choosing a design template, I had as much right to run with my favourite as the next fumehead!

A blog is a platform for showcasing underdogs

At the other end of the scale from featuring scents that are very topical, as a blogger you can decide to write about a little known perfume you feel deserves more attention. My most read posts of all time concern a £3.99 dupe of Coco Mademoiselle from the European discount grocery chain, Lidl (see the "Popular Posts" sidebar). I didn’t consciously set out to write about it because I reckoned it would unleash a stampede to my blog, but simply considered it well made for the ridiculously small outlay, and wanted to get the word out to European readers. On the other hand, just because you are the only person writing about a scent doesn’t mean that you will attract lots of traffic – far from it. You might not get a soul reading your post, precisely because no one has heard of the fragrance in question! I am sure that has happened to me quite a lot, and I know I have clicked on and off other people’s sites pretty smartish if I don’t recognise a scent, or have no curiosity about it (sorry!). Which goes back to my point about choosing to write about things for your own reasons, whether you are the only one to do so, or one of many. Write as the spirit moves you, and let the chips – and the readers – fall where they may.

Popularity is governed by strange algorithms

And whatever your reasons for taking up blogging in the first place, it is only human nature to be just a little bit interested in how well your blog is doing. When I started out, I made the mistake of listing Bonkers in the general section of Wikio rather than the perfume category – well, I couldn’t find it, to be honest – and have reconciled myself to being 2741 in their overall rankings (at the time of writing). Bizarrely though, Wikio (recently renamed “Ebuzzing”) has pronounced me No 70 in its list of Beauty Blogs, in which I didn’t even ask to be listed! The other curious thing that happens automatically is that you get picked up by various “aggregator sites” - repositories of online content with names as random as a box of frogs: “Pharmacy Degrees”, “Soccer News”, “India Times”, “Plastic Surgery Face Lifts” and so on.

And gradually, this baffling and arcane accretion of links will lead to a page ranking in the eyes of Google on a scale of 0 to 10, where – to give you an idea - Now Smell This is a 6 and the actual CNN website (to which I likened NST in my guest post) is a 9. To complicate matters further, there is the Alexa ranking system, measuring traffic from sites that have installed the Alexa toolbar, for reasons that completely pass me by. It is in fact quite possible to have a lot of visitors according to Alexa (where a low number is good), yet be a 0 in Google’s backlink-based system (where a low number is bad). Which goes back once more to my point about keeping everything in perspective. Yes, try not to fret about page views and unique visitors, referring sites and “bounce rates” – because if you do, you’ll surely go mad!

Random traffic patterns are endlessly fascinating

And finally, the market researcher in me finds the visitor stats to my blog quite riveting. You don’t know the identity of your readers, just their location and the name of their Internet Service Provider. Yet some of these ISPs are intriguing in themselves, especially the private networks that bear the name of the organisation using them: an oil company in the Middle East, a hospital in the Maldives, a steel parts distributor in Georgia, a lawyer’s office in LA. Now it is a fact of blogging that 90% or more of your visitors are “lurkers”, who read and move on, never leaving a comment. Given this lack of direct contact between reader and blog owner, you can have a field day imagining a backstory for the bedridden patient in the Maldives who is looking at your review of Jennifer Lopez Glow, including how they ended up in hospital in the first place. Was it perhaps a jet skiing accident? A nasty jellyfish sting? Or might it just be a member of hospital staff idling googling in their break, and not a tourist at all?

And then there was the day when 90 Norwegians looked at a post I had written on an obscure Damien Bash scent. If it had been a class project at a school or college, you would have expected all the readers to be in the same town at least - but no, they were literally all over the country. There was no obvious link to a forum or Norwegian website, so to this day the trigger for this sudden mass national interest in my review remains a mystery. And the other important point to mention – and the final reason for keeping a sense of perspective - is that, crucially, many of your readers will land on your blog by mistake… Some of the more peculiar search terms that have directed people to Bonkers include: “leopard fantasy”, “Bo Derek naked”, “Anne Hathaway’s cottage opal flash parfum”, “Slovakian hobbits biscuits”, “swingos hotel Cleveland”, “card nuisance call boss telling her to do some work”, “kidnapping lillies”, “what is the landform of Ohio”, “avocado” and “slime”.

Yes, any time I catch myself thinking that Bonkers is going places, and that I am starting to make my mark as a fragrance blogger, a quick scroll through the keywords used by recent visitors brings me right back down to earth again…!



Photo of lady blogger in top image from Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr CC, photo of blogging tips book from Search Engine People Blog via Flickr CC, photo of second lady blogger from Foxtongue via Flickr CC, photo of Maldives from Shayan (USA) vis Flickr CC, photo of avocados from nate steiner via Flickr CC, other photos my own

Guest Post On Now Smell This: 5 Things To Think About Before You Start A Perfume Blog

A while back, Robin of Now Smell This kindly invited would-be contributors to submit ideas for guest posts. I sent in a few suggestions, and one topic in particular caught Robin’s interest, prompting her to contact me and ask if I would like to cover it for them.

The first part of this post is up now on NST here, with the sequel to follow on Bonkers about Perfume tomorrow…!

Image is of Suzanne Valadon Blogging, after Lautrec [cropped] by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com at flickr; some rights reserved.

A Knightsbridge Sniffing Blitz With Tara Of Olfactorias Travels: Part Two - Harrods Perfume Hall & Harvey Nichols

Following our thoroughly enjoyable session at the Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie, sniffing obscure, expensive and variously bejewelled fragrances, Tara and I made our way down the preposterously opulent escalator to the main perfume hall of Harrods on the ground floor. We were chatting animatedly at this point about our respective personal lives and as a result got ourselves thoroughly lost in the handbag department, which is preferable to losing one's handbag, I suppose.

When we finally found the perfume hall, there were a number of tester-toting promotions girls loitering with intent in the main walkways, but we managed to dodge all their proferred blotters and homed in on a few specific brands of interest: Guerlain, Cartier & Dior, as well as checking out the new exclusive range of Dolce & Gabbanas which Marcel had mentioned, and - despite all our best intentions - getting waylaid by a limpet-like sales lady at the Bond No 9 counter.

Once again, please take all these observations as broadly indicative at best, as they are based on fast dwindling recall and faded smelling strips...

GUERLAIN

I was keen to try Angélique Noire from the L'Art et la Matière range on skin, having famously smelt it on Birgit in Austria in December, and been struck by how glorious it was on her. The notes look deceptively simple - angelica, bergamot, vanilla - yet the overall effect is complex and I'd almost say "rich". I liked the opening of Angélique Noire best - it struck a nice balance between the flinty greenness of the angelica and the creamy warmth of the base, but as the scent wore on it got just a tad boozier than I would have liked, as if someone had slipped a bit of Spiritueuse Double Vanille in there while my back was turned. Tara, meanwhile, sprayed SDV on her own arm and it was quite pleasant on her, especially the later stages, but still too boozy for my taste. We also tried Oriental Brûlant from the Elixirs Charnels range on card, which I can't remember clearly except that it wasn't on fire or in any sense as full-on as you might think, and I would like to try it properly some time. I have now clocked the notes and am not surprised I liked it, notwithstanding the presence of styrax, which I associate with some fierce scents - here it is muffled in fluffy dessert ingredients. (I keep coming back to vanilla fragrances...!)

Notes: tonka bean, almond, vanilla, styrax, clementine

CARTIER

Next, Tara and I were keen to do a systematic sampling of the Les Heures scents, as we had each smelt some - though not the same ones. To this end, a flower-shaped Baiser Volé blotter (aka "Cart-ier Wheel") was pressed into service - now that I am aware of there being more elaborate styles of perfume cards, I have started to see them all over the place... : - ) We managed to spray a different scent on each of the six tips of the flower's petals, for which it was ideally designed! My memory is very hazy of this range, except to say that L'Heure Convoitée was a definite no-no for both of us on account of its pronounced carnation note, while L'Heure Défendue was a double thumbs up on account of its chocolate note, something of a "Must-have" in any Cartier scent collection...

Tara has just been in touch with some more thoughts on the range:

"I already liked L'Heure Fougeuse and L'Heure Brilliante (the gin one)... We didn't care for the lychee one (L'Heure Diaphane) or the new carnation one. The Mysterious one didn't come across on paper, but I understand it's incense so should try it again. The 13th hour was just birch tar and not much else."

Aha - I had forgotten the gin one - I feel sure I must have liked it though! : - )

DIOR

It was at the Dior counter that Tara's effortlessly nonchalant sample-scoring skills were deployed to great effect, for she managed to procure us each two large sample pots: Ambre Nuit and Milly-la-Forêt in my case, and Milly-la-Foret and Eau Noire in Tara's. I wasn't particularly bothered about trying Milly-la-Forêt, but the SA seemed keen to further its cause, and having tried it, I can see that it needs all the help it can get. Am retesting Milly-la-Forêt as I type, and it is a quiet inoffensive floral with a pronounced citrus opening, which could easily be a designer release - very nondescript!

Then I wore Ambre Nuit all day yesterday, and have decided that I like it as much as New Look 1947. It is an understated blend of soft amber, rose, wood, and a light dusting of spice. For occasions where L'Air du Désert Marocain or OJ Ta'if might feel a little "out there", I can imaging that Ambre Nuit would make a great substitute.

D & G Velvet Collection

Tara and I couldn't quite remember which of this new range Marcel had asked us to look out for, but I thought it was the patchouli and vetiver ones, while Tara thought it was one of the florals, so we tried the lot anyway just to be sure. They all struck me as well made, and with the exception of Velvet Patchouli I didn't dislike any of them, and would happily try the whole lot again in a more leisurely fashion. It is true that by this point in the afternoon our noses were feeling a bit jaded to say the least, and we hadn't even been to Harvey Nicks yet! I think I liked the florals Velvet Love and Desire best, followed by the orange-y Sublime and the woody Wood(!).

Here is a link to an overview of the range (with note listings) from NST. They definitely felt of a higher quality to my nose than that numbered collection, that has always struck me as a poor man's version of the Chanel Exclusifs.

Bond No 9

So as I explained above, Tara and I were reeled in by the Bond No 9 SA, who seemed hell-bent on finding a fragrance from the line for each of us to love, even though we were privately convinced that if it hadn't happened yet it probably wasn't going to happen. In fast and furious succession we were given at least seven scents to try - I am confident of that number, as I have the frisbee cards to prove it. It doesn't really matter now what we tried (though I think Chelsea Flowers was deemed to be the "least worst", and the Harrods amber one that smells like hot and sour soup was in there too). The best thing I can think to say about the range is that the blotters would double up as serviceable emergency coasters. And also perhaps serve as a desktop model of Swindon's notorious "Magic Roundabout", teaching learner drivers the correct way to negotiate its convoluted series of wheels within wheels. I speak from experience, having passed my test there myself!

TOM FORD COSMETICS & BURBERRY BEAUTY

The other thing Tara and I did in Harrods is a considerable amount of ogling of high end make up. More than ogling in fact, because at the Tom Ford counter I volunteered my services as an eyebrow model, so Tara could see the effect of brow pencils in different shades, with a view to getting one for her mother. She chose one called Espresso in the end, which was pronounced the closest to her mum's hair colour. It had all sorts of ingenious compartments, integral sharpeners and general built-in wizardry. Which is the least you would expect for what is clearly the Rolls-Royce of brow shaping tools.

And Tara and I also lingered for a long time at the Burberry Beauty section, to whose quirkily textured bullet lipsticks I had been alerted by a post on Katie Puckrik Smells. We lingered so long in fact, and looked so simultaneously eager and forlorn - for Burberry lipsticks comfortably bust the twenty quid barrier, costing nearly twice as much as I have ever paid for a lippie - that the very kind SA gave us not one but a total of three sample sets between us, comprising four different shades each! Three because the unstintingly gallant Tara scored me a second one with yet another disarmingly casual point-blank request, along the lines of: "So would you have another of the cards with Rosewood on it for my friend to try, because it isn't on the one you just gave her."

But the time and the free samples will not have been in vain. I have been conscientiously auditioning all eight of my own samples, and feel I am definitely moving towards a purchase - and possibly falling down the rabbit hole of luxury make up more comprehensively. Have got my eye on some Nars, Chanel and Sunday Riley eyeshadows as well...

After Harrods, Tara and I had tea (and in my case a bowl of very thick onion soup) in the Harvey Nichols cafe. We exchanged sample packages, and I was blown away when Tara also pressed upon me her cast off bottle of Tom Ford Voile de Fleur! Restored by the pitstop, we did a desultory scope of the downstairs perfume hall, securing a couple of By Kilian samples (including the lovely Rose Oud), and inadvertently nicking the SA's pen, which we duly returned on the way out.

Nothing much to report from this last stop on our itinerary, for we were both starting to flag now. As per Marcel's instruction, we sniffed Van Cleef & Arpels Precious Oud - which had just come in that day - and whipped through some Piguets that were unknown to us both, including Douglas Hannant (not a men's scent, as the name might imply), which Robin of NST has aptly termed a "diet Fracas".

And by then it was 7pm and I had to head back to Euston, so we parted at the barrier in Knightsbridge tube station - at the barrier rather than downstairs between the platforms, because the turnstile rejected my Oyster card! A small technical hitch at the end of a very full and fun afternoon with Tara. And with my Oyster card now flush with credit, I look forward to doing it all again sometime!


Photo of Harrods from Wikimedia Commons, photo of Angélique Noire from laroshe.ru, photo of D & G Velvet perfume from fragrantica, other photos my own

A Knightsbridge Sniffing Blitz With Tara Of Olfactorias Travels: Part One - Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie At Harrods

Following my visit to Les Senteurs, I jumped on a tube to Knightsbridge to meet up with Tara, regular contributor to Olfactorias Travels, loyal reader of numerous perfume blogs (including Bonkers!), and all-round good egg. I was very much looking forward to meeting Tara, because we had both separately met her co-blogger Birgit in person, and by the two of us meeting we were "completing the perfumista triangle", so to speak. As in drawing in its hypotenuse, type of thing. And I also wanted to thank Tara in person for the spontaneous gifts of perfume she has sent me over the past year. So did I actually thank her? Oh shoot, I don't remember! Tara, thank you for the Tauer and Dior samples!

We had agreed to meet at the side entrance of Harrods: I said I would be wearing my "good" ie sample-scoring coat, while Tara said she would be in a "dark grey wool" coat. In the heat of the moment, I forgot the words "dark" and "wool", and was flummoxed to find an assortment of 30-something women loitering by the tube entrance, all dressed in grey coats of various styles. It was Tara who spotted me in the end, and in my defence her coat was at the darker end of the grey spectrum, so we agreed to call it quits, and the coat "charcoal".

Tara is even more striking in person than in her avatar on Facebook, and having recently discovered the "Auto-Enhance" feature on my iPhone, which confers a lovely golden tinge on images and makes people's eyes look darker and more expressive, I can confirm that Tara is in fact an "Auto-Enhanced" version of Julia Roberts.

ROJA DOVE HAUTE PARFUMERIE

Introductions over, we decided to head up to the Haute Parfumerie on the fifth floor without further ado, following that tried and tested perfumista strategy of NOT leaving the best till last, for your nose will invariably have given up the ghost by the time you make it to the last stop on your itinerary. We spent a good while in Roja Dove's - "store" doesn't do the place justice - more like "boudoir" or "plush yurt", thinking especially of the inner sanctum area festooned with banks of plump cushions in jewel colours.

We browsed on our own for a bit, starting with Vero Kern's trio of scents: Tara knew I was keen to try these after reading glowing reviews of the line by Birgit. My expectations were quite low, not because I doubted that these would be exceptional creations - for everything I had read pointed to that - but because I felt they simply might not be my style of scent.

Well, I was most pleasantly surprised as it turned out - by ONDA in particular. It was predictably retro in feel, but I couldn't get over how smoothly blended it was - it didn't have the excessively powdery aldehydes that keep some classic chypres firmly anchored in the past. Rather, ONDA had the fluid texture of slippery olive silk, and reminded me of a "thinner gauge", less fruity version of Puredistance Antonia. ONDA definitely had at least one foot in the here and now, and if I had a sample, I would wear it.

RUBJ was more or less what I expected, and if anything even brighter and juicier. It was an exuberant, tuberose-forward, fruity white floral scent, if such a category exists. It was a little bit like a skankless Roja Dove Scandal crossed with Atelier Colognes Orange Sanguine. On balance, I don't think I would wear it - I might dare to do big florals, but probably not big fruit.

KIKI we more or less glossed over, because we both found the lavender note offputting, but I wondered if it might have had the potential to be a lavender-y Onda.

Next up, Tara was curious to take a sniff of IRISSS by XERJOFF, another rather pricy brand. Now you might think that a perfume with such a contrived collection of sibilant consonants doesn't deserve to be tested, but Tara is a big fan of iris, so we decided to overlook the self-conscious name. The opening of IRISSS was promising, then Tara had some concerns about the level of musk that seemed to be coming through, and I can't recall what her final verdict on this one was.

After a while, we were joined by Marcel, the SA in attendance that day. He took us through the latest Roja Dove releases (DANGER, RECKLESS, INNUENDO & AOUD) and drew our attention to another notable fragrance we might have overlooked on our own - BLESSINGS. Blessings is an exotic floral (more tropical-smelling than those notes suggest), originally created as a bespoke scent for a client called Belinda Brown. It was inspired by her childhood memories of Nigeria, notably a body cream called Stella Pomade. So delighted was she with Roja Dove's custom creation, that she felt it was too good to be reserved for her sole use, and asked him to produce Blessings as a limited edition parfum for her friends. Some time later, she collaborated with Roja Dove on the commercial release of an EDP version, which retails at the very reasonable price point of £75 per 100ml (vs £675 for 100ml of the LE parfum!). Blessings is well worth a sniff for fans of big white florals, and a trace of it still smells pretty on card, over a week later...

Top: Bergamot, Lemon, Mandarin
Heart: Jasmine de Grasse, Rose De Mai
Base: Cedar, Sandalwood, Tonka, Vanilla

Next up, Tara and I chuckled to ourselves as Marcel demonstrated the four new Roja Dove fragrances by lifting the chunky lids of each bottle and inviting us to sniff the insides. For here was yet another "perfume delivery system", to add to the list I compiled with the help of readers in a recent post.

I cannot truthfully remember much about the new Roja Doves, though the Aoud one was refined and elegant, and a far cry from the jarring medicinal quality of some of the bolder Montales. Aoud is the top selling perfume in the whole of Harrods apparently - I suspect by value. For the unit price of the Swarowski crystal-bedecked parfum strength bottle costs just shy of £500 - you would only have to sell one of those for every TEN bottles of a bog standard Versace or Gucci downstairs in the main perfume hall.

The AOUD only seems to be available in the parfum version, giving it an instantly exclusive feel, reinforced by the glitzy presentation. DANGER, RECKLESS & INNUENDO meanwhile (where does he get these names from? Answer: Thesaurus entries for RISKY or LIAISON?) are £295 for 50ml of the parfum and a whopping £195 for 100ml of the EDP. That is an increase of over 100% compared with the £95 I paid for my bottle of SCANDAL in 2008! Now I have heard of charging "what the market will bear", but - unless there has been a calamitous jasmine harvest or something in the meantime - that price hike does seem a little scandalous...

Although my impressions of the new Roja Doves are too jumbled to record, I will just list the notes for each, with snippets from the website description, because I know Tara and I did rather fancy at least a couple of them - though I think maybe not the one with the aldehydes, which was a bit more retro in the way I describe above. I have scribbled a note to myself to the effect that DANGER reminded me of MCDI Parfums Promesse de L'Aube (we also had a quick whip through that range!), but based on the notes I don't suppose it should really.

DANGER (rich, soft oriental - fresh, sweet, warm, and sensual)

Notes: jasmine, violet, orris

RECKLESS (sweet floral - sparkling, fresh, warm and sensual)

Notes: aldehydes, rose, amaryllis

INNUENDO (sweet floral - fresh, warm, powdery, and soft)

Notes: violet, orris, musk

If my beloved Guerlain Plus Que Jamais is no more, there may be comfort to be had in one of these, but a retrial on skin is called for rather than the ephemeral impression conveyed by "in-lid sniffing", or even testing on card.

I also introduced Tara to TRULY by Stephen Burlingham, which I had come across in Germany last year. Tara liked its cool greenness too, and (somewhat foolishly) I even got as far as inquiring again about the price of the different sizes. This is because Marcel told us Truly may not be long for this world, possibly because the other two scents in the trilogy (MADLY and DEEPLY) never saw the light of day, and Truly now looks a bit silly on its own. The dull chunky refill bottle seemed the most cost-effective option, which struck me as rather a sad state of affairs. For that is the thing about a visit to the Haute Parfumerie - you have to steel yourself to the fact that many of the perfumes you are likely to covet will forever remain an unobtainable dream - or at best, a glint in The Perfume Court's eye...

We ended up shooting the breeze with Marcel about our fragrance preferences generally, and he encouraged us to try a couple of the new D & Gs and Van Cleef & Arpels Precious Oud downstairs, which struck me as refreshingly impartial of him. We explained that we were both bloggers, and the name "Olfactorias Travels" seemed to ring a bell in Marcel's mind. He thought he recalled a lady called Birgit who had brought a party of people to the Haute Parfumerie, as part of an escorted tour of some top London sights. "She's a travel agent, right?" he inquired. Well, Birgit has many roles: wife, mother, blogger, budding author, resting pyschotherapist etc, but Tara and I were pretty certain that Birgit was not also a travel agent on the quiet, and put him straight on this point. Then we got to chatting about Twitter, which Marcel was quite keen to investigate, and as we said our warm goodbyes, I said I would look out for him on there.

Hmm, I have just had a look and there is a person on Twitter with the same name. However, judging by his hair colour and byline, which references fast food and alcohol (though not in a perfumery context...), something tells me it probably isn't the same chap. But I will keep checking in!

In Part 2: Tara and I go downstairs, brave the tester-toting SAs in the main perfume hall of Harrods, and do more than ogle the high end makeup...


Photo of Harrods from psigrist on Flickr, photo of Vero Profumo range from iiiparfum.com, photo of Blessings from blessings-perfume.com, photo of Roja Dove Danger from harrods.com, photo of Truly from Beauty Affair, photo of escalator from rjhuttondfw on Flickr, photo of Tara my own

Doorstepping Nick Gilbert At The New Les Senteurs Store, And My Mona Di Orio Epiphany

The morning after the Perfume Lovers London event covered in my last post - well, more like lunchtime in fact by the time I had got my arse into gear - I doorstepped Nick briefly at the new branch of Les Senteurs. I have "previous" for doorstepping perfume people: there was that time with MyBeautyBlog in November, for example. Though in fairness Nick was half expecting me to turn up at some point.

The new branch of Les Senteurs is in a quiet Georgian street just a hop and a skip from Marble Arch tube station. It looks almost identical from the outside to the store in Belgravia on account of its regulation "Les Senteurs Blue" paint and potted bay trees. The colour is a rich petrol blue / teal, a few pantones down from Barclays Blue. Come to think of it, I have never seen petrol or the duck in question in that exact shade, but no matter.

Nick had a client with him for the first part of my visit, so I hovered on the sidelines for a while, before it became apparent that this gentleman was a regular customer, who was quite happy to chat and even allow himself to be sniffed at one point, while wearing PG Eau Guerrière.

First off I bought a bottle of Fracas for a friend with an upcoming milestone birthday, which I was glad to do, for my high ratio of sniffing to actual shopping does trouble me periodically. Business out of the way, I got down to a bit of sniffing, though I was mindful that I needed to leave some nostril capacity free for my Big Harrods Blitz with Tara straight afterwards, so I didn't go overboard.

Most scents were tested on card (where the usual massive caveats apply, especially following the incident with Dior Bois d'Argent, which turned out to be a totally different animal on skin vs card), but Nick kindly gave me samples of Mona di Orio Ambre and Tubéreuse to test at my leisure, along with Huitième Art Myrrhiad.

Right, so for what it is worth here is the low-down from my whistlestop testing:

Andy Tauer Pentachords

I didn't expect to get on with these at all for some reason, and in the event I didn't dislike them, but - a bit like the Andrea Maack range I tested in Basel - they were curious without striking me as being something I would want to wear. They don't have the trademark "Tauerade" medicinal wire wool vibe going on, so from that standpoint alone they were off to a flying start. I remember Verdant as unexpectedly minty, and Auburn as an offbeat spicy number, which put me vaguely in mind of DSH Nouroz (the Scent Formerly Known As Tamarind Paprika), and then White I can't bring to mind at all. Sorry - complete "white out". The fragrance strip smells sort of gourmand and reminiscent of JM Blue Agava & Cacao, but that could be the high quality paper used by Parfumerie Générale (to avert any confusion, I am not slavish about coordinating my blotter brands with the scent being tested!)

So those impressions - I won't even dignify them with the term mini-reviews - are highly suspect, but the non-Tauerade aspect should encourage anyone to try them who is not a fan of the usual Tauer style.

Then I had quite a strong reaction to the nozzles of a couple of scents, which I am sure would have been confirmed by a skin trial.

Les Parfums d'Empire Fougère Bengale - urinous curried straw (sorry, Dee, I know you rock this one, so you may have even more magic skin than Birgit, which is saying something!)

Mona di Orio Cuir - like the inside flap of a cheap leather satchel, only much worse

But hold on a minute, I said this post was about my Mona di Orio epiphany, right? Epiphanies are not supposed to be bad. Well indeed, and my 180 on this line - coming to appreciate it now that the post-traumatic stress of my Nuit Noire necklacing assault in Paris has at last subsided - started well before my visit to Les Senteurs in fact. For Birgit of Olfactorias Travels had given me a starter kit with several samples from Les Nombres d'Or, and I was already very taken with Musc. Then Nick sent me some more samples in January, including Vanille and Oud. The former struck me as a "true" vanilla ie with a slightly granular, burnt sugar smell, but not cloyingly so, while the latter was a wonderfully ethereal oud, perfect for someone as rampantly oud-averse as I am. The L'Artisan Timbuktu of ouds, if you will.

And now, with my sampling of Ambre and Tubéreuse - partly in store and later at home - the epiphany was confirmed and complete. I now LOVE five of the seven scents in the Les Nombres d'Or range. The vetiver one is also fine as it goes, but I am just not big on the note.

Mona di Orio Ambre

Like Oud, Ambre is a minimalist scent: a creamy woody amber with faintly spicy notes. The opening was a little potent, mind, and almost leathery to my nose, which broadsided me a little! In fact the amber note isn't very pronounced at all, not if your yardstick is Ambre Sultan or Ambre Russe. It is more in the ballpark of a very quiet Guerlain Bois d'Arménie - which I love, yet which seems quite rough and loud by comparison. Hmm, maybe the love child of Bois d'Arménie and Marc Jacobs Amber Splash, then diluted loads more and dusted with spice. The mental images I have of this scent is of the sun streaming into a room full of dusty wooden furniture and of a lump of mica glinting in the sun.

Notes: cedar, ylang ylang, benzoin, tolu, vanilla

Mona di Orio Tubéreuse

Dewy, fresh and green like Carnal Flower, but more citrus-y and with none of the oppressiveness that I get with that scent - and which I get in an even more marked way with By Kilian Beyond Love. I find Beyond Love positively suffocating (the tuberose knocks you out and as you sit there stunned, someone finishes you off by whacking you over the head with a coconut). Tubéreuse, meanwhile, could turn out to be my Holy Grail tuberose scent, and I never thought I would ever want one, never mind find one. So yes, I think I may be having a bit of a tuberose epiphany along the way as well, notwithstanding the heliotrope note I have just noticed in the list! Who'd have thought that Mona di Orio would be the perfumer to bring about such a transformation in my tastes? And it sounds as though Olfactoria did a bit of a U-turn of her own as a result of smelling Mona's collection - or was nudged a bit further in this new direction, say.

Notes: Pink Peppercorn, Bergamot, Absolute Tubéreuse from India, Benzoin, Casmeran, Heliotrope

I did smell one or two other scents briefly (nozzle or card), including a couple of bracing Heeleys (Verveine & Sel Marin), the new Glam Rose from Les Parfums de Rosine (not unlike Lipstick Rose), and PG Tonkamande (not a whole lot going on with this one - it was the tonka equivalent of those high pitched whistles only Alsatians and teenagers can hear).

Huitième Art Myrrhiad

I also tried Huitième Art Myrrhiad on a blotter in store and later on skin, and it is louder on my skin: licorice-y vanilla, reminiscent of Lolita Lempicka and Diptyque Eau Duelle with added licorice - or maybe even a toned down, much more minimalist version of Kenzo Jungle L'Eléphant. Myrrhiad was quite pleasant, but I kept wishing there was less licorice in there (or none, preferably). Let's just say that this is as nice as a perfume can smell with licorice in it!

I have only just googled the notes, and am pleased to confirm that my nose is on the right track - that really was licorice - ha!

Notes: myrrh, leather, black tea, vanilla and licorice

And then before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye to Nick till the next Perfume Lovers London event later this month, and head off to Harrods to meet Tara, where we embarked on a sniffing and makeup-ogling session of epic proportions...



Photo of Mona di Orio Ambre from cafleurebon.com, photo of Mona di Orio from basenotes.net, other photos my own