Design Your Own Perfume Event: 30.1.10 - "Charleston" and "Voodoo"

In my excitement over the Ivana scent sighting, I omitted to update readers on Thursday's pointy stick procedure. Although painful, it was a rip-roaring success - "roaring" being the operative word - for the world seems eerily noisy now. The keystrokes on my PC sound like castanets and the traffic outside my window is frankly deafening. Additionally, my sense of smell has been fully restored to its previous sketchy levels, so yesterday afternoon Mr Bonkers' mate Beet (sic) and I set off in good heart for our perfume workshop.

It was hosted by a lady called Vicky, who is a franchisee of a company called The Perfume Studio. As well as offering small, private consultations such as ours, she organises larger parties, including corporate events. We sat at a huge table in her dining room, which was covered in a feathery white cloth, immediately creating a relaxing, spa-like ambience. Her supplies were stored in a white concertina-style chest of drawers, and the 18 blends we were about to try were placed at the head of the table.

Taking the blends (or accords) in turn - and starting with those which were options for the top notes before moving on to the heart and base - she handed us freshly dipped paper strips for each one, asking us to sniff them one at a time and tell her what scenes or memories they evoked for us, ideally without looking at the name printed on the reverse!

The six top note blends were: CITRUS, GREEN, AMBER, ALDEHYDIC, HERBAL and FRUITY.

The eight heart note blends were: GENTLE FLORAL, HEADY FLORAL, FRESH FLORAL, FLORAL FLORAL, ROSE FLORAL, TONIC SPORT, SPICY and OZONIC.

The four base note blends were: MUSKY, WOODY, BALSAMIC and MOSSY.

We both found it harder than we thought to identify notes in each blend, and despite the fact that I sniff perfumes every day for fun, I dropped some real clangers... In the case of Citrus (the very first blend we smelt), I detected lime, whereas it turned out there was pretty much every citrus fruit BUT lime in it. : - ) In the case of the Green blend, I envisioned a walled kitchen garden, and Beet got a wood or an orchard, so we weren't too far off conceptually there at least, but we had no clue what was in it. I was on the ball with the Gentle Floral accord though, detecting freesias straight off, and my finest moment was spotting tonka bean in the Balsamic blend - the first client ever to do so, apparently!

I also insisted that the Spicy blend smelt "just of flowers", which foxed our hostess for a moment until it was established that she had given us the wrong touche by mistake. But, these small flashes of accuracy notwithstanding, overall I was pretty rubbish at the note-guessing game, considering how much of a workout I give my nose, and was scarcely more accurate than Beet, who just splashes on cologne occasionally like a normal person. It was tremendous fun though. As we completed our sniffing in each of the three main groups (ie top, heart and base), we discarded the strips we didn't care for so that by the end of the exercise, we had a more manageable number of blends from which to compose our masterpieces...

Between us, we used 12 of the total of 18, deffing out FRUITY, FLORAL FLORAL, FRESH FLORAL, ROSE FLORAL, OZONIC and MOSSY. The Mossy one comprised patchouli, oakmoss and a few other interesting bits and bobs, and if I had just had the courage to blend it with the musky-woody Musky blend and the vanilla-containing Balsamic one I might have ended up with my very own knock off of PG L'Ombre Fauve, but I bottled it - in the sense of chickened out, that is - for it struck me as too high risk a strategy. Added to which the deal was that we should pick at least ONE blend from each group, with no limit to the maximum you could have, so my L'Ombre Fauve pretender would have required a distinct bending of the rules.

When we had selected our shortlist, Vicky went away and made our chosen blends up into the finished perfume, in more or less equal ratios (the blends already included the correct ratio of alcohol). I chose seven: two top note, two heart and three base note, whereas Beet went for nine in total in a three, three, three formation. Had either of us been football fans, we might of course have been tempted to go for a more familiar four-four-two formation. : - )

I got to choose one of a range of prettily coloured metal atomisers (I picked apple green), while Beet was assigned a very manly atomiser in graphite grey. Men get 30ml, women 20ml, because the women's fragrance is EDP versus the men's EDT. Inside the presentation box was included a white feather, spritzed with our new creation. Oh, and we had to name them ourselves: I chose "Charleston", which I associate with secret walled gardens glimpsed through wrought iron gates, while Beet called his cologne "Voodoo", on account of the remarkable black art by which he had arrived at it.

Here are our basic compositions - for mine I took more complete notes on the precise components of each accord:

CHARLESTON

Top

CITRUS (bergamot, lemon, grapefruit, mandarin)
GREEN (hyacinth, green lemon, petitgrain, green teas, boronia)

Heart

GENTLE FLORAL (white and red freesias, black and green teas, cyclamen)
HEADY FLORAL (gardenia, ylang, orange, carnation, tuberose)

Base

MUSKY (sandalwood, musk)
WOODY (sandalwood)
BALSAMIC (vanilla, tonka bean, can't remember what else!)

Now I know that that looks like an awful lot of separate notes, but it doesn't smell anywhere near as busy as it reads on paper! I would characterise Charleston as a soft, green floral, a sort of hybrid of Diptyque's Ofresia and AG Eau de Camille or Chanel Bel Respiro, if that doesn't sound too grandiose a comparison. Just as Eau de Camille has syringa and greenery, and Bel Respiro has hyacinth and greenery, so this Green blend - which sets the tone for my composition - has hyacinth and greenery too (well, green things, anyway, to use the term "greenery" in its broadest sense). It is a flat but decisive "greenness". Modern and stylised as opposed to the life-like thicket that is MH Fleurs de Bois. Other green scents which flitted into my mind as having a similar modern feel to their greenness - though not the same notes - are: DSH Cyan or Celadon, and CdG Calamus. Oh, and there is a shedload of tea in my scent, as you can see....much of it green, indeed.

VOODOO

Top

ALDEHYDIC (rose, jasmine, aldehydes)
HERBAL (don't know, but think Eau de Sisley No 1 - juniper etc?)
AMBER (with hint of leather?)

Heart

HEADY FLORAL (as above)
SPICY (the full Christmas pudding - opoponax, clove, you name it)
TONIC SPORT (another herbal, astringent, "male cologne" accord - with ginger?)

Base

MUSKY (as above)
WOODY (as above)
BALSAMIC (as above)

Beet's smelt like a more feminine version of Habit Rouge EDC, ie more floral - but also more herbal - though still very classic. It did not smell like a designer men's cologne at all, but instead it came off as positively Guerlainesque or Caron-like, which I attribute to his cunning choice of ALDEHYDIC. He was more daring than me in his combination of blends, and is the hands down winner in the originality stakes!

Beet's scent has also set me thinking how mine might have smelt if I had substituted the Aldehydic blend for the Green. Rose, jasmine, citrus, gentle and heady florals, balsamic woody base....I might have come up with my own take on my all-time favourite, Guerlain Plus Que Jamais. Mind you, at the time of the workshop, I had discounted the Aldehydic blend because it smelt quite potently fizzy on the touche, however, as Beet demonstrated in his composition, sometimes an ingredient that isn't terribly compelling in isolation can add something really special to the overall result. Like an egg in a cake.

In hindsight, perhaps a refinement of the creation process might be to make small samples of a shortlist of compositions - what I believe are known in professional perfume circles as "iterations" : - ). I guess the hostess would have to limit clients to one or two options tops, or the process could get totally out of hand with people failing to make up their minds. After all, I am called Flittersniffer for a reason.

As things stand, it is quite a leap of the imagination for the average participant to go from half a dozen scent strips to the finished article, whereas when planning a fragrance purchase one would live with a sample for a while before buying a full bottle - in theory, anyway. So this is a bit of a blind "buy" in that sense, though the uncertainty as to how the end product will turn out is also a huge part of the fun, so I am undecided on this point. And any provision for intermediate samples would need to be carefully managed so the whole process wasn't hopelessly derailed.

But if I cannot contain my curiosity, I can always purchase another voucher so I can go back and make the "Guerlain that got away"...

Olfactory Bling - Subliminal Scent Sighting Of Ivana Trump With Ferre Rose EDP

In the Venn diagram of fumeheads (Blob A) and fans of our UK Celebrity Big Brother (Blob B - or should that be BB? or CBB?), the infinitesimally small intersection may well have been as exercised as me last night by the perfume Ivana Trump was liberally spraying on just before her eviction. It was a pretty subliminal shot, mind, but the low slung rectangular bottle, the pink juice and the distinctive chunky, squared off top made me think that it had to be Ferre Rose EDP by Gianfranco Ferre. I briefly touched on this scent in my Choco Chanel post last December, describing it as a "foghorn rose", if my memory serves me. Ferre Rose is the epitome of obvious femininity, which kind of fits the persona Ivana presents.

However, given her location in New York with its myriad upscale shopping outlets - not forgetting her squillion dollar fortune - a bottle of Ferre doesn't quite fit the cost profile somehow, even if it DOES fit a plausible scent profile. But I don't know another bottle out there with exactly that top. I just googled "Ivana Trump perfume" and fetched up her own fragrance line called "Haute Couture", however, none of those bottles look like the one on Big Brother!

Perhaps Ivana chose to take the Ferre Rose into the house rather than risk travelling with a more prestigious / expensive scent from her personal collection (her own range appears to retail for c$30 a pop)? I mean, look what Stephanie Beacham did to that vase Ivana won in the spoof Scandinavian awards ceremony? Dropped it on the floor and smashed it to smithereens, no less, for those who haven't seen the show, never mind that it was made of sugarglass and the ceremony was fake. Imagine how much more damage you could inflict in a butterfingers environment with 50ml of sticky pink juice? No, perhaps Ivana deliberately selected the most cheap and cheerful scent she owned, knowing that it would have to take its chances in the communal bedroom which she shared with muscle-bound hard man Vinnie Jones and cross dressing cage fighter Alex Reid (to name but two of her house mates).

The notes (in case anyone is interested) are:

Top notes: peach, mandarin, pomegranate and watermelon.
Heart notes: Rose, freesia, Japanese gardenia, orange blossom, hyacinth.
Base notes: cedar wood, amber, vanilla and sandalwood.

My, what about that fruit salad opening! And the tricky, potentially sickly trio of freesia, gardenia AND hyacinth (on top of the rose). Hyacinth needs a lot of greenery if it is not to act as fragrant chloroform, but foliage couldn't have been further from the perfumer's mind. Just checked - the noses were Alexandra Jouet and Francis Kurkdjian. Alexandra Jouet is noted for Chopard Wish Pink Diamond, which is all you need to know about her part in this really. As for Francis Kurkdjian... well, it is to be hoped that he was on his lunch break during most of the creative process.

I plan to do a post sometime about the scents celebrities really wear, but for now, I will leave it there. I may or may not be right about my hunch, but regardless of what perfume Ivana Trump was wearing on eviction night, I would just like to say that she was a gracious and dignified participant, and all round good egg. Even if she does wear sunglasses indoors.

Ormonde Jayne Tiare - Small SPLAT Review

Well, after pleading extreme fed upness and a chronically dismal quality of life, I managed to convince the doctor this morning to make me a pointy stick appointment tomorrow, even though he had no slots free for the foreseeable future. My glum faced look must be more compelling than I realised.

So from tomorrow, we hope that my sniffing faculties will be restored, in all their delineated, differentiated and nuanced glory (well, back to what they were, anyway). But today my sample of Tiare arrived from those nice people at Ormonde Jayne and I couldn't wait to try it. The girls had run out of official samples but agreed to my offer to send them an empty 1ml vial and a funnel, so now at last I am able to test this major lemming, belatedly and in my own impressionistic and extra blurry way.

For reference, here are the notes:

TIARE

Top: Mandarin, Orange Flower and Sicilian Lime
Heart: Tiare, Freesia, Water Lilies, Jasmine, Orris and Ylang
Base: Cedar, Vetiver, Sandalwood, Patchouli, Moss and Musk

When I first heard about the impending release of Tiare, I focused completely in my mind on the Tahitian gardenia note, imagining it to be how I hoped Un Matin d'Orage would smell, ie a watery, sheer, green tropical floral reminiscent of a hothouse in a botanical garden. Un Matin d'Orage started out promisingly, not unlike the gardenia equivalent of Carnal Flower, but became sharply sour and indolic on the drydown, rendering it sadly unwearable. And as it turns out, Tiare is like neither my imagined nor the real version of Un Matin d'Orage...

Tiare is still sheer, but not remotely tropical to my nose - or so ethereally so as not to register on a catarrh-compromised nose. The citrussy opening flows into a light, refined, green floral, anchored by a whisper of moss. It is elegant without being standoffish, and could be worn on pretty much any occasion other than "downright scuzzy" or "on the pull". Comparing it to the other exotic florals in the OJ line - such as Sampaquita and Frangipani - I'd say it was much more "intellectual", thanks to the moss. Moss is a jolly severe note, I have decided. If I had to pick one look to epitomise the person wearing this scent, it would be geek glasses and a pencil skirt, so we are clearly a million miles away from Polynesian flower garlands. I realise now that Tiare ACTUALLY smells exactly as I hoped EL PC Jasmine White Moss would, however, JWM was way too mossy for me, even more mossy than Cristalle, with which I have also seen this scent compared. A comparison of notes shows Tiare to have SEVEN notes in common with JWM (if orange flower equates to blossom, which I don't see why it wouldn't).

ESTEE LAUDER PRIVATE COLLECTION JASMINE WHITE MOSS

Top: Mandarin, blackcurrant buds absolute, Sambac jasmine absolute, bergamot, galbanum
Heart: Indian jasmine absolute, orange blossom, ylang-ylang
Base: Patchouli, white moss mist and vetiver.

If you were to liken Tiare and JWM to those novelty Bavarian weather houses, JCW would be the man and Tiare the woman, for there is a definite "his" and "hers" quality to the duo. By a weird coincidence, I sprayed Stella Nude on my wrist in town today, just below the Tiare test area. Back home, I was googling the notes of Stella Nude and found a review of it by Robin of NSTperfume, directly under her review of Tiare. (Twilight Zone!!). Stella Nude starts out as grapefruit soap, but quickly goes splat and ends up as a soft, faintly soapy skin scent, and the FEEL of it (not the smell, before anyone throws their copy of Perfumes: The Guide directly at my head) is similar to Tiare - ultra smooth and silky, like a satin slip shimmying off a well moisturised thigh.

Patty, in her review on Perfume Posse, states that she is "not the queen of the mossy greens", and likes, but doesn't love Tiare. D'you know, I think I could grow to love this, because the moss is so beautifully soft and unobtrusive.

And I bet you are all curious to learn Mr Bonkers' verdict...

When first applied: "Extreme craft shop!"
After an hour: "Like the bowl of pot pourri half way down the craft shop behind the didgeridoos."

Well, we can completely disregard that, I think. He is clearly playing to the gallery. Oh, and his view on Stella Nude? "Better, because you can't smell it so much." I despair.

I will end with this fascinating titbit from "The Tahiti Traveler" website on the ways to wear a Tiare flower in your hair, and what each position signifies:

"Worn behind your right ear, it means you are single, available.
Worn behind your left ear : you are married, engaged or otherwise taken.
Worn behind both ears : you are married but still available.
Worn backward behind your ear : you are available immediately."

I like the sound of Nos 3 and 4! Maybe "on the pull" is a possible scent occasion after all...

Scents Going SPLAT! - A Temporary Phenomenon?

Since Christmas Day I have been suffering from blocked ears and sinuses. One ear is so bad that it constantly booms, and when I eat, it sounds like a ballet of twelve JCBs in my mouth, which as anyone from round here knows, has actually been performed. On Wednesday, heartily fed up and having tried a futile and mimsy succession of remedies involving drops of one sort or another, I am seeing the doctor again. It is my intention to lie on his couch and not budge until he has done his worst with A Very Pointy Instrument.

During this time, I have also noticed that perfumes are behaving oddly on me - they are not mutating through the usual sequence of top, heart and base notes in the expected time frame of 20 mins, 2 hours and up to 8 hours respectively. Instead, right after I have applied them on skin, all scents are going SPLODGE SPLAT, before dissipating within a few minutes into an indeterminate blur, which is more akin to the scent's drydown if I had to place this mess.

I am quite chagrined at the turn scent events are taking. Suppose you went to see a play and instead of a Prologue and Four Acts, for the same ticket price you just got the last half hour of Act Four. You would be confused, wouldn't you? - and struggle to pick up the plot. And you would probably want your money back.

Now, I cannot say whether this disappointing telescoping of scent development is attributable to my present ear problems or not. I think I can still smell - but maybe I can't. After the doctor has done his worst, I should be in a better position to say, one way or the other.

But what is slightly troubling is the thought that this SPLAT business may in fact be a permanent shift due to my changing hormones. I do have an acquaintance who is roughly the same age as me, about whose Venus Fly Trap skin I have often joked, without it ever occurring to me that I might be like her down the line. For this lady's skin used to grab the top and heart notes sharply by both lapels and ingest them instantly, before allowing the base of a scent to linger a while in a somewhat dazed and confused state. Much like this Ferre by Ferre EDP I am currently wearing, in fact. Two minutes after application, it is anybody's guess what is in it, though I know for a fact that iris is a key note somewhere, leading some people (though not me, even with my previously intact faculties) to dub this the Poor Man's Iris Poudre.

This possible association with the menopause is rather worrying, for it is a process that may take some time to run its course - 10 years or more, according to people I have spoken to - and I am just off the starting blocks. My extensive reading on the subject has uncovered a plethora of unpleasant symptoms, most of which I have experienced, but there doesn't seem to be an official listing for "Perfume will become prematurely indistinct on skin", which to any perfumista is of equal if not greater concern than the flushes, insomnia, mood swings and dry skin.

I simply couldn't be doing with this SPLAT business for the rest of my 50s or even beyond, so for now I am putting all my hopes in the doctor's pointy stick.

Of Mice And Men...

In my local paper last week my eye was caught by a startling headline:

"NOSES MAY HOLD CLUE TO DEMENTIA"

"Loss of smell may be an early indication of Alzheimer's disease, research suggests.

Scientists found that changes linked to the most common form of dementia begin in mice in an area of the brain responsible for recognising smells.

The physical symptoms coincided with impaired olfactory, or smell, function. Affected animals had to sniff odours for longer to remember them than healthy mice. They also had problems differentiating between smells....

...Reduced smelling ability in the mice was linked to the appearance of amyloid plaques - sticky lumps of protein in the brain. Daniel Wesson, from the New York University School of Medicine, said: 'What is striking in our study was that performance of the mouse in the olfactory behaviour test was sensitive to even the smallest amount of amyloid presence in the brain.'"

I have to say that this article rang immediate alarm bells with me. For Mr Bonkers has a very rudimentary sense of smell, and has HUGE difficulties distinguishing between different scents. Hence his dismissal of 90% of the perfumes to which I expose him as smelling generically of "craft shop" (meaning that vague scented candle/pot pourri/room fragrance smell you find in shops that sell jewellery, homewares, teddy bears and general fripperies aka "stuff"). The very few variations on this broad category are: "fly spray" (Jasper Conran Mister), "nice soap!" (SJP Lovely), "craft shop with the window open" (some very attenuated Giacobetti number) or "the garden at the back of the craft shop" (MH Fleurs de Bois).

So I am not saying that Mr Bonkers has no sense of smell at all, just that it is - in the vast majority of cases - a bit of a blunt instrument. So on the basis of Mr B's results in my own "olfactory behaviour tests", it might not be a bad idea to get him some puzzle books and flaxseed oil in the first instance. If he persists in rudely dissing everything from Chanel to Ormonde Jayne and Penhaligons to Parfumerie Generale as "craft shop", I may reserve the right to check out the EMI units in our area. : - )

Mr Bonkers? Not yet, I hope! Though the words "petard" and "hoist" spring worryingly to mind...

The Scent Crimes Series: No 7 - "Binning" The Classics

The other day I helped a fellow shopper in Asda to find a packet of polenta, and thought as I did so how much our small market town had come on in recent years in terms of the range and quality of food items available. You can now also get Dr Karg crispbreads from Germany, which are not just sprinkled with pumpkin seeds, but have molten Emmental drizzled on top. Our Marks & Spencer does a nice line in Gastropub meals, which you could almost pass off as your own, and the new deli in town stocks every kind of arcane condiment you will ever need - and many you won't.

All of which scene-setting helps to explain why I was so disappointed with the response of my local department store to a question about Guerlain posed by a friend of mine. The store has a sleepy, oldfashioned air about it, admittedly, but stocks a wide range of designer fragrances, so when she reported the following exchange it came as a bit of a shock.

Friend: "Hello there - I am looking for a bottle of Mitsouko."

SA: "Mitsouko?"

Friend: "That's right - by Guerlain (pronounced in a perfect French accent). Do you have their range?"

SA: "Oh, you mean Gear-LANG (with the emphasis on the second syllable). No, no, we don't - that stuff is like...really...OLD."

Friend: "Er??" (stunned mumble)

SA: "Right. I mean, you could try that discount chemist further down the high street - they have bargain dump bins by the till with remaindered and old stuff in them. And it is quite cheap too. That's the only place I can think of."

The chemist in question did indeed have such a bin, containing dusty minis of Joop! and Calvin Klein, boxed sets of Coty L'Aimant, Elizabeth Taylor White Diamonds, Elizabeth Arden Red Door and Sunflowers, all nestling amongst bumper packs of tissue and facial wipes.

Strangely, no Guerlain.

I don't know why, relatively speaking, the supermarkets in our town should be so gastronomically advanced, while our department store is such a backwater on the perfume front. Actually, it is a backwater on EVERY front, so I can kind of see why Guerlain might not consider such a store to be a "good fit" for its portfolio.

I think, though, that the house veers too much the other way ie towards exclusivity. Even the largest and most prestigious department stores in the UK do not stock anything more exotic than the likes of Apres L'Ondee and Chamade. You have to go to Paris or North America to find the full range, including my favourite scent of all, Plus Que Jamais. The shipping rates from France are punitive, mind, as I have inquired.

So yes, the most important message in this post turns out to be that Guerlain should be more widely stocked. Not necessarily in my town - but a few major cities in Britain would be a start...

The Top Sniffs - And Nasty Niffs! - Of 2009

Yes, I know that is an appallingly tabloid-esque headline, but as I am very late to the party with my 2009 scent round up, I figured I needed to go with an attention-grabbing headline. There again, regular readers of Bonkers about Perfume will know full well by now that they are not automatically going to get a considered and impeccably researched review of the latest releases, whether at the time of the launch or indeed ever. What they can count on is a lucky dip, a potluck supper - albeit one made with a packet sauce. For I am arguably the convenience food equivalent of the perfume blogs, the redtop newspaper - with apologies to Ines and her "All I Am - A Redhead" blog!

Right, so where was I? Hopefully off the hook now for posting this on 18th January. Nor is it probably necessary to go into much detail about most of the scents I have chosen, for they have been extensively covered by people with better noses and a more felicitous turn of phrase than me. So here goes, and I reserve the right to toss in a few sub-categories along the way as the mood takes me.

OVERALL TOP SNIFF OF 2009

Penhaligon's Amaranthine

I am probably the last to include Amaranthine in my top ten of last year, though I was one of its "early adopters" back in August when I first smelt it, and I have been doing my darndest to spread the word ever since! A lush tropical floral which manages to be simultaneously green and sheer; comfortingly milky, but with a dark side.

TOP TEN SNIFFS OF 2009 (in approximate order of preference)

Penhaligons Amaranthine
Hermessence Vanille Galante
Jo Malone Vanilla & Anise
Tom Ford White Suede
Prada L'Eau Ambree
Kenzo Eau de Fleur de Magnolia
Miller Harris Fleurs de Bois
Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinaire: Muguet Blanc
Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinaire: Bois d'Iris
Natori EDP by Natori

RUNNERS UP

Guerlain Idylle
Versace Versense
Issey Miyake A Scent
Acqua di Parma Magnolia Nobile
Eau de Sisley (2 & 3)
Helena Rubinstein Wanted (surprise, slightly naff pick!)

Well, what do the scents in these winning categories reveal about my taste, I wondered to myself? With the exception of Amaranthine, they are all pretty polite fragrances, I suppose - several I would even go so far as to describe as "skin scents". I would also observe that I seem to like vanilla and musk notes, also lilies, ylang ylang and magnolia. Citrus should be light and not too astringent. And I like my amber to be a quiet purr at most.

OUTRIGHT NASTY NIFFS OF 2009

Boss Orange (furry orange squash/cordial)
Prada Infusion de Fleur d'Oranger (as above)
Gucci Flora (this should have been light and inoffensive throughout, but the whole thing got hijacked by an unpleasant earthy patchouli note about half way through)
Comme des Garcons Daphne (an unpleasant woody spicy accord)
Armani Idole (headache-inducing pear drop note!)
Viktor & Rolf Eau Mega (as above)
Marc Jacobs Lola ("not good", but my mind has blocked out the reasons why, suggesting it really wasn't very nice at all)

RELEASES I DID NOT CARE FOR PARTICULARLY

Here are some of the (mostly niche) releases from 2009 that were too "difficult" or just not my style. The list also includes a number of scents which I expected to like but didn't, on each of which I have included an explanatory note.

DelRae Mythique
Amouage Epic Woman
Amouage Ubar (re-release)
SL Fille en Aiguilles
AG Mandragore Pourpre
Parfums d'Empire Wazamba
Byredo Baudelaire
Hermes Eau de Pamplemousse Rose
Hermes Eau de Gentiane Blanche (flat, cold, depressing, blue-grey musk)
EL PC Jasmine White Moss (I think I am fundamentally not a moss lover, Cristalle aside, though I had high hopes of this one)
AG Un Matin d'Orage (spoilt by the indolic ending, otherwise it would have had my name on it)
Chanel Cristalle Eau Verte (way too sharp and acidic)
Miss Dior Cherie L'Eau (green colour gave me heart, but it too was overly shrill and tart)
YSL Parisienne (disgruntled purple talc)

SCENTS I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE TRIED BUT DIDN'T

Ormonde Jayne Tiare (current top sniff list lemming! This sounds like my sort of thing...)
Van Cleef & Arpels Collection Extraordinaire (ie the others in the line)
L'Artisan Havana Vanille (mainly because it is by BD!)
Maison Kurkdjian range (especially APOM and Lumiere Noire pour femme, because of good reports from the Basenotes event with FK that I missed)
Ineke Field Notes From Paris (because of Robin's recommendation on NST)
The Different Company Oriental Lounge (because of the name really : - ) )

I am quite pleased that the "missed" list is as short as it is. This is either because my frenetic interest in sampling is finally starting to plateau or because of a faulty memory, or a bit of both.