Illuminum White Gardenia Petals Review - A Demure White Floral In A Veil

UPDATE: The following review is based on a sample of Illuminum White Gardenia Petals supplied to me by Roullier White shortly after the Royal Wedding. It now transpires that this was not the correct version of The Duchess of Cambridge's wedding scent. For further clarification and a review of the official White Gardenia Petals fragrance, please see my latest post here.

Today the mainstream press caught up with the news about White Gardenia Petals, with features in the Daily Mail, London's Metro magazine and Marie Claire - indeed there are now articles about the Illuminum scent everywhere you turn! I spoke to the staff at the Roullier White store on Monday and they said they were trying to gear up for future demand, but that it was very hard for them to gauge it, given the massive exposure the perfume is having - first on beauty and perfume blogs - and now, as I say, across the media. Their initial stock of 50 bottles flew out the door apparently, and there is a 10 day delivery delay on the 50ml size, though none on the larger 100ml bottle if any blind buyers are feeling particularly bullish! As the only stockist in the UK, Roullier White is clearly thrilled to be the focus of such a feverish global buying spree on the part of perfumistas and the general public alike.

I note too that Luckyscent has now got some White Gardenia Petals in (good move!), and I would expect The Perfumed Court to follow suit if they haven't already done so. A friend of mine has signed up to a split of this scent (unsniffed), so overall it seems as though perfume fans are setting about acquiring it by every means available.

Now we may not want to marry into the Royal Family particularly, or become a housewife on the isle of Anglesey - I don't know if it is the remoteness of the place or the lack of night life which drives them to it, but as far as I knew Anglesey is most famous for the jumpers off the Menai Bridge (the Golden Gate of North Wales, if you will). Oh, and not forgetting the hell hole that is Holyhead, where those living up the West Coast line may well end up if they are foolish enough to nod off on the train home from London. But notwithstanding all of that, some of us wouldn't mind smelling a bit like the new Duchess, as though that might miraculously confer upon us her nipped in waist, even white smile and perfect smokey eye.

And then today I received my pack of samples from the Roullier White store, comprising White Gardenia Petals and two other scents from Illuminum's quite extensive range; they sound right up my street, just going off the names, though I haven't had a chance to try them yet: Ginger Pear and Bergamot Blossom.

So how does White Gardenia Petals smell, I know you are all wondering...?

Well, it's very pretty, soft and faintly powdery (unless that is the vestiges of yesterday's decanting, but on balance probably not). It is delicate and feminine, not sweet, not particularly coconutty, but rather like a very diaphanous white floral blend that has been slightly "muzzified" by a wispy veil - like Catherine's veil of silk tulle, indeed! And though there's gardenia, ylang ylang and jasmine in there apparently, White Gardenia Petals is not at all heady. I'd go so far as to call it demure and ladylike, with a slight hint of danger. Slightly more dangerous than Serge Lutens' Un Lys, say. On the "louche-o-meter", where 10 is an out and out slutfest, I'd call Un Lys a 2 and this a 3. Maybe a 3.5 if you really sloshed it on. That is the sort of vibe, yes.

And then I can't quite decide whether I detected a slightly plasticky note when I first applied it - like the opening of Iris Ukiyoe or Kenzo Amour L'Eau Florale, especially the latter if anyone is familiar with it. However, it doesn't detract unduly and dissipates after a few minutes, as the white floral bouquet starts to cloak itself in the muting, fuzzy sea of tulle...

Update: eight hours in I can report that the longevity is good - there is additionally a sultry, tangy bite now to the powdery, musky drydown, which I guess must be the ylang ylang's last stand.

So....setting aside the HUGE "Duchess in the room" factor - to the best of my ability, at least - I will say on record that if I had bought a bottle of White Gardenia Petals unsniffed (as so many will have done), I wouldn't regret it...





Photo of the Duchess of Cambridge from herroyalhighnessprincesscatherine.com, photo of the Menai bridge from gallery.hd.org, photo of a gardenia from greatgardensecrets.com, photo of the Duchess waving from vendo-me.com, photo of White Gardenia Petals from the Roullier White website.

Düsseldorf Sniffathon: Schnitzler, Beauty Affair, & An Olfactory Tardis

My post on Kate Middleton's wedding scent is still attracting a phenomenal amount of interest - over 1500 new visitors since Saturday, and counting... It has popped up in the forum of the Czech equivalent of Basenotes, been translated into Romanian, and syndicated as far away as Florida and India. The vast majority of people who found their way to Bonkers over the weekend did so with predictable permutations of keywords such as "Kate Middleton perfume" or "What scent did Kate Middleton wear on her wedding day?", though intriguingly two new visitors were routed here by putting in the search terms: "slime" and "Diane Kruger naked". The buzz around the royal nuptials rather eclipsed the account of my Berlin sniffathon - though interestingly, there is a district in central Berlin called "Wedding"... But the precise identity of Kate's wedding fragrance was a matter of such public interest that I was more than happy to disrupt the flow of my German sniffing reports with coverage of this important news item!

So to resume where I left off, after my stay in Berlin and a brief stopover in Hamburg, I met up with fellow blogger mybeautyblog.de in her home town of Lüneburg, about an hour's train ride north of Hannover. I met her fiancé and her fiancé's best man elect(!), and we sat in a shady courtyard sipping long drinks before installing ourselves at an Italian restaurant in a prime riverside spot (see photo). We whiled away the afternoon enjoying a long, lazy lunch, to which my friend kindly treated me. I must say the pumpkin ravioli with sage was the finest I had ever tasted!

Now it so happened that the day we met up was Good Friday, so we could only press our noses against the windows of the small perfumeries in mybeautyblog.de's town. This was probably a good thing, however, as the boys in our party had "normal" levels of interest in men's fragrance, and as it was, mybeautyblog.de and I couldn't stop ourselves from nattering away at least 40% of the time about recent fragrance launches, our current lemmings, respective approaches to blogging, and of course the all-important question of what scent my friend was thinking of wearing on HER big day.

This will be in December, so there is still plenty of time to wrist test scent candidates. The current front runner is Parfum d'Empire Eau Suave, in case anyone is curious: a green rose scent with fruity and spicy notes. And in amongst our snatched conversations about perfume, mybeautyblog.de recommended that I take advantage of the shops being open on Easter Saturday to visit Beauty Affair and Schnitzler in Düsseldorf, which she said had a particularly fine selection of niche brands...and so it proved.

I made it to the Königsallee, Düsseldorf's main shopping artery, at about 4pm on that hot spring afternoon (it was at least 25 C!). On my way to Beauty Affair I came across a different - and smaller - branch of Schnitzler than the one for which I had an address (Breidenbacher Hof, at Königsallee 11 instead of 56), but I didn't notice my error at the time! No 11 still carried a large selection of beauty brands and niche fragrances (including a mini-Guerlain concession with the L'Art et la Matière range and other limited distribution scents such as La Petite Robe Noire, plus lines such as Maison Kurkdjian, Juliette Has A Gun, Piguet, Lalique, Ligne St Barth, Bond No 9, Parfumerie Générale, Keiko Mecheri, Etro, Bois 1920, Sisley, Caron, E Coudray, M Micallef, Montale, Czech & Speake, Amouage, Annick Goutal, Nasomatto, and a whole clatter of brands with "Profum-" in their name: Il Profvmo, Profumi del Forte, Profumo die Firenze...and so on!

I sniffed my way through a few JHAGs, and reconfirmed my preference for Lady Vengeance: Calamity Jane was well done, but too lavender-y, while Citizen Queen was too full-on and gourmand - what the Germans might refer to as "üppig", as in a "lush" or "big bosomy" style of scent. I also sampled Maison Kurkdjian's Lumière Noire pour Femme, which was a rather sultry rose-patch number, even on card. I am writing this 10 days after the event and the card still smells unmistakably of the scent in question; I feel moved to mention this as it is so rarely the case, especially after the smelling strips have all mulched down in my handbag. Now I am sure I sampled Lumière Noire pour Femme on skin once and was not especially taken with it, but maybe it is one of those fragrances that takes a bit of a run up. I couldn't top Denyse's description of this one on Grain de Musc, so here are some choice highlights:

"...a courtesan trussed in velvet the colour of drying blood trimmed with jet beads, hair tumbling down her back as she downs a flute of champagne. Her shawl carries the smell of the patchouli leaves it was packed with to repel the moths on its way from India. A bunch of jasmine exhales its dying breath between her breasts. A sweaty tendril of cumin rises from her corset…"

What else? I had a sniff of Kimono Rose by Bois 1920, which was a powdery rose with a pretty name, and that is about as much as I can recall about it. I also tried in vain to blag some more Lalique samples. I was seriously contemplating a purchase of White at the time, and would definitely have copped for a 50ml bottle of Piguet Calypso, but they didn't have it in; from the dismissive way in which the male sales assistant - who had the haughty bearing of a flamenco dancer - informed me of this fact, you would think I had been asking for Britney Spears' Midnight Fantasy.

So I hotfooted it out of there and was soon in the oasis of customer care that is Beauty Affair, a tiny jewel of a store set back from the Königsallee in a courtyard area within an exclusive mall. I spent a good 40 minutes shooting the breeze with the assistant manager, Marita Berchem - in between customers, I hasten to add - she did a brisk trade during my visit. The store is hands down the best stocked niche perfumery I have ever set foot in.

It was neither as happily higgledy-piggledy as Fascination in Lytham nor as stylishly sparse as Les Senteurs. It was rather the merchandising equivalent of high rise living in Hong Kong or Tokyo. It was a Tardis, a Sprite towing caravan with every inch of living space cunnily maximised. I could have spent an hour looking at two square feet of fixture, there was so much going on in such a compact area. Other high end perfumeries with average numbers of niche brands, averagely merchandised, will now forever look to me as though they are having a closing down sale...! I wish to goodness I had remembered to bring my camera on this trip, so I could offer photographic proof - but sadly I forgot.

Now I could not do justice to Beauty Affair by attempting to reconstruct a definitive list of the brands it carried, so I will just list some of the highlights:

Frédéric Malle! (in a cute little fridge like a supermarket ice cream cabinet), Puredistance!, Atelier Colognes!, Huitième Art Parfums!, Yosh, Heeley, By Kilian, Parfums 06130, L'Etat Libre d'Orange, Les Parfums MDCI, Miller & Bertaux, Frapin, Ineke, Biehl.parfumkunstwerke and gazillions more...

I was also astonished to see the Designer Shaik range: a musician friend of Mr Bonkers owns Opulent Shaik No. 77 and I have marvelled at the wacky hard shell case in a vivid shade of cobalt blue when he has come to stay, but never encountered the range in store. Now he won't need to go all the way to Dubai when his (admittedly humungous) bottle eventually runs out.

Realising that with such a wealth of options before me, option anxiety - or "die Qual der Wahl" as the Germans so charmingly term it - was rapidly setting in, I decided to focus my sniffing on the Huitième Art Parfums range, and tried all of them on card. I knew a little bit about the creative background to these scents, thanks to an interview by Michelyn Camen with Pierre Guillaume here. They are, for example, minimalist fragrances, which depart from the traditional pyramid structure, as PG explains:

"...in terms of their different structure I want to simplify the analytical approach… these fragrances are created on the basis of two or three accords or original materials; they need to be experienced in their entirety."

I have not bottomed out the ins and outs of "phyto-perfumery", and PG's methods of creating odorant molecules from plants, but I gather that the whole idea is to get even closer to the authentic scent of materials, some of which - like pear tree wood - are quite new in perfumery.

So...Sucre d'Ebène, Fareb and Ambre Céruléen all got the thumbs down (too gourmand, or resinous or spicy or leathery - or some unhappy combination of the foregoing), however, I was very favourably struck by Aube Pashmina, Naїviris, Vohina, Ciel d'Airan and Manguier Métisse. With the exception of Manguier Métisse, which I liked because of its Dolby surround sound ripe mango note - something I have never smelt in a perfume before - the others are all delicate, airy, pared back compositions that are very much in the subtle vein I favour. Frau Berchem broadly shared my preferences, though she said she also liked Fareb in cooler weather.

Unfortunately, the scent strips of all the ones I liked don't smell of anything anymore(!), and I am blowed if I can remember much about them individually. I did remark to Frau Berchem that Aube Pashmina reminded me of Diptyque's L'Ombre dans L'Eau, whereupon she promptly nipped out back and returned with a tester of the Diptyque so we could conduct a side-by-side comparison. She could see where I was going with the sappy green note they shared, but pointed out that L'Ombre dans L'Eau had more rose in it - and so it did!

I think I will have to get hold of a sample set of these and retest them at my leisure, preferably on skin. Meanwhile, I will direct you to this press release on Now Smell This, where there is a blurb about each scent. Even having read these back, I can't truthfully say that any of the descriptions of the scents I liked rings a bell with me, except for the mango one, which was particularly distinctive.

Woolly and feeble as that "review" may have been, I did come away with samples of three other scents, which I have been able to test in a leisurely manner on skin since my return. These were two unisex fragrances from the Barcelona fragrance house Carner - D600 and TARDES - plus Truly Madly Deeply by Stephen Burlingham for Tiffany. Two of the three were so impressive that they warrant separate reviews.

Special mention also goes to Frau Berchem for the generous and no-nonsense manner in which she decanted a sample of Truly Madly Deeply into a plastic atomiser for me - of the very sort I carry around with me on spec but am usually too shy to deploy!


To be continued...


Photos of the Kö and Lüneburg from tripadvisor, photo of Guerlain corner from Schnitzler's website, other store photo of Schnitzler from kaestner-consulting.de, photos of the Beauty Affair store, Huitième Art range and Frau Berchem from the Beauty Affair website, photo of caravan from outandaboutlive.co.uk, photo of Opulent Shaik No 77 from cafleurebon.com

Kate Middleton's Wedding Perfume: The Stopper's Out Of The Bottle...

Well, as my Facebook friends will know, I enjoyed the coverage of the Royal Wedding today enormously. Mrs Bonkers Senior and I celebrated in style by drinking Kusmi leaf tea out of proper china cups, Charlie Bonkers the cat had two helpings of festive turkey leftovers, while Mr Bonkers sat on the sofa furthest away from the TV pretending (with an unconvincing display of bluster) not to watch. I wore Floris Wedding Bouquet (which I recently reviewed here on Ça Fleure Bon) because it is pretty and weddingy, and I just thought someone ought to. I cried loads, laughed at "for richer, for poorer" in the vows, and scoffed at Princess Beatrice's ghoulish make up and outlandish cookie cutter fascinator, which I also heard compared to antlers, and even explained away as an integral part of her head. It was in fact yet another Philip Treacy hat, which - according to one rather generous commentator - "rose like a modernist building from her hair".

Then I looked in vain for evidence of bra straps under Kate's lace bodice, while others marvelled at the seamless contours of her sister Pippa's frock, fuelling mischievous speculation that she may have gone commando and/or have copped off with Harry by the end of the night. A Facebook page has even sprung up today, devoted specifically to the appreciation of Pippa's shapely rear. Oh, and there was also that funny moment when the little flower girl on the royal balcony put her hands over her ears to block out the noise of passing tornadoes.

But at the back of every perfumista's mind was the burning question of what perfume Kate Middleton ended up wearing on her big day. It now turns out that it wasn't Wedding Bouquet or Grossmith Betrothal, or a specially engraved Clive Christian, or even the His and Hers duo of scents from the Hamburg perfumer Kim Weisswange, which she claimed had been specially commissioned by the palace for the occasion.

No, I have it on good authority from British Beauty Blogger that Kate - or the Duchess of Cambridge as we must learn to call her now - actually wore:

WHITE GARDENIA PETALS BY ILLUMINUM

On Illuminum's website, there is a description of this scent:

"As fragrant as a vase of white flowers quivering in the breeze by an open window, this is a delicate and nuanced scent. The top note of coconut evokes a seaside location, while heart notes of muguet, ylang ylang and jasmine breeze bring a trio of white flowers into play. Amber wood underscores this capricious and light bouquet."

Okay, so that all sounds very summery and lovely, though I am not sure that a "capricious" scent is an ideal choice for a bride... After all, Kate didn't just promise to have and to hold Prince William until a better idea strikes her. But other than that it sounds perfect. And well, she certainly slipped that one past us, for I had never heard of the brand, never mind the scent itself. It is available only from Roullier White in London.

Here's the full article from British Beauty Blogger, a respected industry insider, so I am going with her version of events. I would also be interested to know what Kate's lip gloss and eyeshadow were, come to think of it. And I wouldn't mind her teeth and eyebrows either. Damn it - I just wish I looked like her altogether. But meanwhile, I'll see if Luckyscent has got any samples of this in yet...



Photo of Illuminum perfume from beauty.lovelyish.com, photo of "hat" from anorak.co.uk, photo of wedding car from zimbio.com

Berlin Sniffathon: Galeries Lafayette, KaDeWe, And Our Man From Havana

I have been to Berlin about five times in as many years and I always find it an exciting, energising city to visit. It is young, hip and edgy, radical, grungy and a bit dark. Don't ask me what exactly I mean by "dark", but I know it is the right word. It may be a reference to people hanging out in underground clubs or the graffiti-defaced courtyards of tenement buildings till very late at night. It may be a way to describe the austerity and bleakness of some of the buildings, especially the derelict ones - or the patches of waste ground, piles of rubble and random artefacts you come across here and there.

Between my hotel and the train station, for example, was a grassy area where someone had "installed"/abandoned?? a long length of old gas pipework that had been painted a hot pink with a cartoon picture of a sperm swimming up it. The pipework was still there from my last visit in September, though there was less of it now and some of the paint had flaked off since the photo below was taken. This suggests to me that no one in the Stadtwerke had seen fit to dispose of it in the meantime, possibly because it was in fact not detritus - not even facetious detritus - but rather street art, which, given what else passes for art in Berlin, seems eminently plausible.

But Berlin is not just about grunge and dereliction - it is about regeneration, as exemplified by the gleaming glass facades of the Reichstag cupola. It also boasts several major department stores, notably Quartier 206, Galeries Lafayette and KaDeWe (short for Kaufhaus des Westens). Now, just as the remnants of the Berlin Wall are a palimpsest of torn posters and graffiti, so it is that I merely scratched the surface of the fragrance offering of these stores - and only found the perfume department in two of them! But in my defence, I shoehorned my visits in at the end of the day, and even so managed to more than sniff my socks off, such that I probably couldn't have faced an even larger selection of brands than I came across in the course of my random wanderings.

First up was the über-chic Quartier 206 in the Friedrichstrasse (thanks are due to Lady Jane Grey for the tip off!). With its graceful spiral staircases, black and white Italianate tiles and elegant armchairs, it oozed sophistication and luxury. I am sorry to say that despite repeated inquiries no one was able to direct me to a perfumery department or individual perfume shop within Quartier 206 - which appeared to be a collection of designer boutiques rather than a department store in the normal sense of the term. Instead I was despatched next door to Galeries Lafayette, where I spent most of my time in the concession of Sahling best of beauty, a chain specialising in an intentionally small selection of high end cosmetics and niche fragrances. These included Penhaligon's, Floris, Lalique, Annick Goutal, Costume National, Caron, Comptoir Sud Pacifique and Amouage. From the off I was captivated by the enthusiasm of the sales assistant, a lissom young man from Cuba called Alain.

Well, Alain was from Cuba to start with, certainly (I don't know if it was Havana specifically, but you can always rely on me to stretch a point in pursuit of a good pun!). His mother was a chemist and wore Hermès 24 Faubourg, of which he has fond memories. She instilled an appreciation of fine fragrance in her son at an early age, explaining that perfume is not just a luxury item, but that there is a secret behind each scent for the wearer to unravel... Then, when Alain was 10 his family relocated to Sweden, where he lived up until five years ago (so for at least 10 years, at a guess - maybe 15!). He learnt Swedish (no small feat) and worked as a fragrance SA in Åhlens, the mid-range department store chain, before moving to Germany about five years ago. "Right, so that is Spanish, Swedish and German you speak", I remarked admiringly. "And do you speak any English with that?" "But of course!" he replied in English, grinning broadly.

During the 40 minutes or so we spent chatting, Alain introduced me to a couple of Laliques I hadn't smelt, namely Equus and White. I particularly liked White, a light, peppery citrus, of which he gave me a sample. I also retested Fleur de Cristal, a pretty, powdery lily scent, and although he didn't stock it, Alain recommended I hunt down Flora Bella, created in 2005 by Bertrand Duchafour, and which he described as a hauntingly beautiful tropical floral with heady flowers like frangipani and tiare combined with a cold, salty vibe. Alain said that for him this scent conjured up a mysterious recurring dream set on a remote island paradise. It involved a surfer with long black hair and violet eyes whom - even in the dream, never mind in reality - he is not quite sure if has actually met... At least I think that is what he said: my German was starting to wilt a bit by that stage. : - )

Anyway, I ended up being completely caught up in the hypnotic effect that Flora Bella exerts on Alain, and on a whim tonight I went and bought it unsniffed from Cheapsmells! Haven't done such an impulsive thing in a long while... It was a snip (Schnäppchen) at £16.95 - and I'd say it will be well worth seventeen quid just to find out why the man is so bewitched. And if he loves Lalique White too, as I do now myself, the odds are surely good that I will like Flora Bella. And it is a Bertrand Duchaufour... Interestingly, 80% of Alain's scent collection are feminines. He suggested I try Bazar pour Femme from Lacroix, jointly created in 2002 by Jean-Claude Ellena, Bertrand Duchaufour and Emile Copperman. Well, if two of my favourite perfumers had a hand in it, how bad can that one be either?

This talk of Bertrand Duchaufour and Jean-Claude Ellena led on to a review of our all-time favourite perfumers. The others Alain particularly admires are Francis Kurkdjian, Christine Nagel of Encre Noir fame ("soft but present" was his summary of it), and Karine Vinchon Spehner, who wasn't on my radar at all, but turns out to be the nose behind Amouage Memoir Man, Opus III and L'Artisan's Coeur de Vétiver Sacré and L'Eau de Jatamansi. I have found a photo of her on the L'Artisan website, and as you can see, she doesn't look old enough to have even one perfume creation under her belt, never mind a handful!

What else? Well, I tried Annick Goutal's Le Mimosa which had been recommended to me - and it was quite pleasant, with an adorable polka dot bow, but it was not love: a sort of fruity, warm, woody, powdery floral - not as bright and sherbety as L'Artisan Mimosa pour Moi - and veering a little to the oriental richness of YSL Cinéma, the EDT version of which also features mimosa, come to think of it.

We also discussed the recent launches from Penhaligon's with Bertrand Duchaufour at the creative helm, and the way the brand is reinventing itself and moving away from its "traditional English" image in new and interesting directions. I tried Castile for the first time, a neroli scent of which I had read good things in a recent post on Katie Puckrik's blog, and found it fresh and soothing in a high quality soap kind of a way.

We also chatted about the imminent Royal Wedding, and agreed that on her big day Kate Middleton should go ahead and wear whatever perfume she feels good in, for example one that brings back memories of happy times spent with William. The olfactory equivalent of "our tune", if you will. I don't believe I asked Alain what his all-time favourite scent was - maybe it is Flora Bella - and, given our mutual appreciation of Bertrand Duchaufour, it was remiss of me not to ask if he likes Havana Vanille!

From Sahling best of beauty I popped next door to the concession of Intertrade Europe, which had a rather unusual selection of brands, including the more familiar Piguet and Miller Harris, but also Memo, Nez à Nez, Profumi del Forte and Ruinart, more famous for its champagne. I tested both the EDP fragrances in the Memo line and their selection of room scents (or "scented sprays", as they are known on the website). These were presented in regular perfume bottles and boasted whimsical travel-themed names ("I Miss Miami", "Ibiza Buzz", "Paris Passion" - and my personal favourite, "Kinky Kyoto"). Memo scents also come with helpful listings of the main notes on the bottle. I couldn't tell you which ones I liked best now, though I do remember a few scrubbers amongst the room scents: "Mad about Gstaad" (too piney?), "Back to Dubai Amber Ambush" (self-explanatory!), and the tuberose bombshell "Sexy St Tropez".

The Memo range, though extensive, doesn't have a scent set in Berlin. Elsewhere on the same floor, however, there was a display of Majathi "His and Hers" Berlin fragrances. The blurb on the back of the scent strip read:

"Open-minded like Berlin both fragrances start with fresh citrus notes. Berlin's variety and change are reflected in the fragrances after short time, too: the scent for women becomes sensual-feminine (eg vanilla, white musk, pimento), the scent for men aromatic-woody (eg sandelwood, lavender, thyme)."

I am sorry to report that the women's version of Berlin was crashingly generic and non-descript, and as ill suited to summing up the city as Swiss Army Perfume was to conveying the steeliness of a knife!

Time was running out by now, so I hared across to KaDeWe in Tauentzienstrasse for a quick whizz round their very well stocked perfume hall. There were too many brands to mention, including Les Parfums MDCI, which I had never seen in-store before. I was able to try La Belle Hélène at last, and gave it a resounding thumbs down - two treacly, I am afraid. Well, I am not even afraid, as MDCI are of course notoriously expensive. Then I tried Ananda and Black Ananda by Micallef, a duo of rich, fuzzy vanilla orientals that I didn't care for especially, also Clair Matin by Les Parfums de Rosine, a fruity rose floral I can't really bring to mind now, ditto Julia by Teo Cabanel. Finally, I scored a carded sample of Vivienne Westwood Naughty Alice (the peppery rose violet scent to which I am currently quite partial, and the only other sample of the day apart from Lalique White!).

So, if there isn't a Memo scent for Berlin, and the Majathi range is a poor attempt at civic branding, how would I describe my own scent associations with the city? Well, I will give that some more considered thought, but on the day itself I did so much sampling that I was a veritable patchwork quilt of perfumes as I headed back to my hotel. Indeed I was pretty much a scented version of this...





Photo of Berlin tenements from redbubble.com, photo of sperm pipeline from jamesberlin-whatintheworld.blogspot.com, photo of Quartier 206 from flickr.com, photo of Havana from studylanguages.org, photo of Flora Bella from parfumsdascher.com, photo of White from perfumezilla.com, photo of Karine Vinchon Spehner from artisanparfumeur.com, photo of Castile from luckyscent.com, photo of Memo Kinky Kyoto from ameblo.jp, photo of Majathi perfumes from ausberlin.de, photo of Berlin doorway from stamping-art.typepad.com

Up Against A Tauer Of Strength: Can Swiss Army Perfume Cut It?

I don’t know why it should occur to me to write about a Swiss perfume just as I was getting ready to go to Germany, but for some reason one popped into my head the other day. It is a sample I received from Wordbird during our four handed fumehead meet in Basel in March of last year. Or four headed fumehead meet, perhaps that should be. It is distinctive because it is in a little pillow pack packaging, like one of these bulky padded cases Swiss army knives come in – or Mr Bonkers’ knock off version does, anyway. I have had this sample for a full year without testing it, because I couldn’t bring myself to rip open the packaging and deflate the pillow, as it were.

But I was in one of those decisive moods on that particular morning, having a good old rummage in the paper horse’s nose bag that originally contained all my Gorilla perfume samples – and still does in fact, along with various waif and stray extras from swaps - when my hand pulled out this Swiss Army perfume and I decided that that was the day it would go pop! Obviously I had the foresight to photograph it first...

I guess part of my hesitation prior to trying this scent has to do with a fear of disappointment. I may be completely misguided in this belief, but apart from Andy Tauer’s line and my oddball love, Shared Water by Michel Comté – the subject of a post I wrote a while back on squirrelling away back up bottles – I don’t really associate Switzerland with iconic perfumes – what the French might term “parfums de grand standing”, but almost certainly don’t. If Potiron happens upon this, she will doubtless be able to put me straight on whether I am in fact overlooking some other famous Swiss brands.

And even Andy Tauer, who just the other week won a UK FiFi award for Orange Star, and who is something of a national – and international – treasure as perfumers go, mostly creates scents that aren’t up my alley, if I am honest, owing to my shifting but largely troubled relationship with Tauerade. That said, I love L’Air du Désert Marocain and actively like Carillon pour un Ange, to which Bloody Frida recently introduced me. So just based on those two scents, Tauer would be a tough act for another perfume house to top or even half way respectably follow (the keen-eyed reader may detect some German sentence construction creeping in here as I get linguistically into the zone…).

And what scent do we have in the ring pitting its mainstream molehill against the mighty Matterhorn that is the house of Tauer?

Answer: “a fresh, floral fragrance for active, contemporary ladies. Charismatic, inviting & sensual” according to one e-tailer, while another site describes this scent as “dedicated to female adventurers” – why, that would be me! (Not in a Gorillas in the Mist-Ellen MacArthur sailing single-handed round the world kind of a way… no, more your female adventurer taking a chance on a motel that – let’s just say – doesn’t have the most twinkly star rating in the hotels.com galaxy.) Oh, and the same website describes Swiss Army perfume as “an ode to the lofty Swiss Alps”.

Well, that sounds fairly promising, given that I like Shared Water, which has a tranquil mountain stream and small alpine flower vibe, plus an intriguing if slightly incongruous steamed rice note. The note list for Swiss Army Perfume is in vaguely similar territory, though on the face of it mandarins don’t sound quintessentially Alpine. No, I have just checked, and the top three producers of tangerines, mandarins and clementines collectively (sorry that I couldn't find any more cultivar-specific stats) are in fact China, Spain, Brazil, Japan and Morocco.

Notes: edelweiss, blue buttercup, mountain daffodil, muguet, organic ginger root, crisp green watermint and fresh mandarin, with sheer woods.

Now I do worry when I see a muguet note listed, because it is one of those tricky customers which, when done cheaply or just badly, can be very bad indeed, and sure enough it wasn’t great in this scent.

My first impressions of Swiss Army perfume are of a fragrance totally at odds with any of the usual connotations of a knife, such as precision engineering, sharpness, rigour, cold metallic aloofness and so on. By contrast, this was a cheap smelling, chemically, fruity, ditzy fruity floral of the most forgettable kind. I guess I should be glad it is forgettable. If I had to choose between only wearing this perfume for ever and not wearing perfume at all, I would definitely go scentless...

So much for the massive build up as I deferred my testing of Swiss Army perfume for all that time. I can categorically state that it does not cut it vs Tauer’s range, though it did muster enough serration to burst the bubble of the pillow pack – and my expectations.


Photo of matterhorn from about.ch, photo of mandarins from ingredientrade.com, photo of Swiss army knife from vagabond journey.com, other photo my own

PS German sniffing report will be along shortly!

New Post On Ça Fleure Bon: Perfumes Fit For A Future King - And Queen - And The Sweet Smell Of Succession...

I am travelling in Germany at the moment - on a trip of such modest proportions and relative logistical ease that I felt it didn't warrant the designation "bonkers" this time. And meanwhile over on Ça Fleure Bon my latest post appeared yesterday, a day earlier than scheduled, but it happened to coincide with the Queen's actual birthday, if my memory serves me, which seems rather fitting. My royal-themed post is a bit of a monster this month word countwise, so you may wish to make a drink and a snack before sitting down to read it.

I am just off now to meet mybeautyblog.de in Lüneburg, so I daresay the subject of perfume will inevitably come up at some point...! And there will also be a sniffing report from Berlin's finest emporia when I get back, and possibly also one from Düsseldorf, asuming I make it down there tomorrow before the shops shut. : - )

Going The Puredistance: A 200th Post Retrospective

This may technically be my 206th post on Bonkers about Perfume, but for logistical reasons the marking of my 200th post milestone was deferred until after my recent US trip. For my 100th post, as the odd reader may dimly recall, I chose to review Maison Kurkdjian's APOM pour Femme, which neatly symbolised how perfume now permeates every aspect of my life in a way I would never have imagined prior to being struck down with sudden onset perfume mania at the start of 2008. And now for my 200th post I have decided to write about a perfume which isn't totally "me" in the way A Piece Of Me is, but which is in all other respects pretty darn remarkable: Puredistance 1. This scent has already been extensively reviewed, but as with Nuit de Tubéreuse, which arguably didn't need another review from me by the time I eventually caught up with it, there are some perfumes which move me to write about them regardless of the risk of duplication / redundancy / "adding to the noise"... : - ) Let me say right off the bat that, like a number of my fellow bloggers, I was sent a 17.5 ml "test tube"-style vial by Puredistance. This niche house has its main offices in The Netherlands and an opulent showroom in Vienna, the famous Perfume Lounge, where the most expensive presentations of the range - in crystal column bottles - are put on pedestals (literally and metaphorically) and curated in glass cabinets. I have to say that my own "vial" already came in jolly luxurious packaging by my standards: a lavish white leatherette presentation box with magnetic flaps, all lined with padded white satin not unlike a top of the range coffin - not that I have ever seen one close up - oh, and for the record, when the day does come for me to pop my clogs (to stay with our Dutch theme), I would be quite happy with the "one up from least expensive" coffin, following the same principle I apply when ordering wine in restaurants. Inside the left hand panel, tucked into four satin hinges in a manner that reminded me vividly of my stamp collecting youth, is a Certificate of Authenticity, bearing the flamboyant signature of the Founder of Puredistance, Jan Ewoud Vos, and attesting to the fact that this is a genuine vial of Puredistance 1, with a concentration (that must be approaching parfum strength?) of 32%. I am intrigued by this reassurance of authenticity, because to be honest it would never have occurred to me that there might be fakes about. To my knowledge, the pirates and fraudsters on Ebay are still gainfully employed knocking off the entire Creed line and Coco Mademoiselle, but I may be behind the times. Now, no disrespect to The Netherlands, which is a fine country - if a trifle flat and with a surprisingly congested road network - and is where I spent New Year with friends this year - but it is not the first EU member you would perhaps associate with fragrance, any more than Cleveland springs to mind as an obvious tourist destination for British visitors to the States. Be that as it may, the Puredistance brand is headquartered in Groningen, a town noted for its prestigious university dating back to 1614, the second oldest after Leiden (of cumin seed-y cheese fame). Created by Anne Buzantian, the perfumer behind one of my favourite mainstream fragrances, Estée Lauder Sensuous, Puredistance 1 was originally intended to be her signature scent. However, when she chanced upon the first fragrance concept of Puredistance by Jan Ewoud Vos, which chimed exactly with the inspiration for her own perfume, happily for the rest of us she changed her mind and decided "to share her personal masterpiece with the world". Notes: tangerine blossom, cassis, neroli bigarade, magnolia, rose wardia, jasmine, mimosa, amber, vetiver and musk. Now when I first sprayed Puredistance 1, two other fragrances simultaneously came to mind, though I would like to stress that Puredistance 1 doesn't smell markedly like either and is very much its own scent. One is - now please don't shoot me - Hugo Boss Deep Red, in which I detect a similar fruity opening, plus they both also share an overtly musky base. HUGO BOSS DEEP RED Notes: tangerine, blackcurrant, blood orange, pear, ginger, freesia, hibiscus, sandalwood, cedar, vanilla and musk. Why, both have tangerine, blackcurrant and miscellaneous other orange! But, notwithstanding its musky base, Deep Red is shriller, thinner and unmistakably of its day - as in today - more or less, whereas Puredistance 1 is sumptuous, rich, and manages to feel both current and timeless. Of all the reviews I have read, I would align myself most closely with Patty White's assessment - for I also mean "lush" with my "sumptuous": “It’s stunning and beautiful - lush and rich without falling into the uber-rich notes that scream “expensive!”. Anyone not too shocked by my comparison with Deep Red to be curious about the second perfume which reminds me of Puredistance 1...well, it is Yves Rocher Voile d'Ambre. Here is a scent with comparable depth and heft: it covers off the amber aspect - at least I assume it does from the name alone - and its notes also include "green mandarin", echoing the vetiver in the Puredistance - or it does if you push the envelope of your fruit analogies as far as I do. YVES ROCHER VOILE D'AMBRE Notes: green mandarin, myrrh, incense, opoponax, vanilla, patchouli, sandalwood So these two scents share an aspect of Puredistance 1 (tangerine/blackcurrant/musky! / amber/green tangerine-equivalent!), but I wouldn't say that you would get anything approximating to it if you were foolhardy enough to layer them. I used to own the Yves Rocher as a matter of fact, but gave it away because the pronounced coumarin note bothered me. Forgetting the other scents for a moment, how does Puredistance 1 smell - and develop - in isolation? Well, the opening is very tangy and fruity, but just underneath it is a fresh, green accord which cuts through the fruit nicely, ensuring that the cassis in particular doesn't get too sweet and Ribena-y. Then beyond that I get a warm fuzzy, musky amber base that lasts for absolutely ages... Yes, this is a sumptuous and perfumey perfume, in the way Ormonde Jayne Tolu and Cartier Le Baiser du Dragon - and arguably Mary Greenwell Plum - are all "sumptuous and perfumey", with Plum being the most citrussy and the least sumptuous, and Tolu the other way about. I'd place Puredistance 1 between Plum and Le Baiser on the sumptuous spectrum - it has considerably more body than Plum on account of the amber. And there is something else I should mention about this scent, because it is remarkable - I did think of it independently, but note that other reviewers had the same impression - namely that Puredistance 1 is simultaneously sumptuous AND perfumey AND ozonic/airy. Now I am no perfumer, but this strikes me as a really hard stunt to pull off, and may explain why I like this scent as much as I do, because if it didn't have this airy wateriness it might all be a bit much, what with the juicy fruits and the amber and the musk, plus a bunch of florals I don't really smell at all, though the mimosa may be adding to both the "tangy fruity" and the "powdery fuzzy" vibe, because it has those two facets, strangely perhaps for a small yellow flower. Additionally, Puredistance 1 is an amber colour, and given my propensity to smell with my eyes, I might have picked up on the amber base disproportionately, were it not for the damp breeze mysteriously blowing through it - and who knows? - it might have gone the way of the Voile d'Ambre. As an example of how differently scents may behave on different people, Olfacta of Olfactarama, in her review of this scent here, describes it as "subtle" and lacking in "va-va-voom", whereas on me the opposite is true. Now "foghorn" sounds too derogatory a term, but to my nose this scent is a tad on the loud side. Let's call it an airy, ozonic foghorn, and I mean that in a good way - picture yourself standing in the bows of the ship, Kate Winslet in "Titanic"-style, and the ship's foghorn may be sounding behind you, but your arms are outstretched and the wind is in your hair... I would also like to say that when I first wore Puredistance 1, I was having a bad day, as in a really bad day. My Internet connection had crashed, and I spent 4-5 hours on the phone to India configuring a new router. About 4pm, in between engineers, something prompted me to take the test tube out of its "sumptuous" coffin and spray it on, and I felt immediately comforted by its rich, fruity warmth and muzzy musk. Putting on Puredistance 1 feels like a very deliberate act of applying perfume, unlike so many of the more understated scents I normally favour. In conclusion, whatever similarities I may have drawn between this and other scents, there is considerable distance between Puredistance 1 and other perfumes remotely like it. Moreover, whilst wearing it, I was also able to distance myself from the technical crisis that was raging at the time, thanks to its dreamy cocooning quality. A critic called Sands, whose name I don't recognise, feels Puredistance 1 has the makings of a successor to the iconic No 5, with which I would tend to agree. “If Puredistance was aiming for a sort of Chanel No. 5 classic, I think they have found it...” So all in all, a fitting choice to mark the distance I have come since my 100th post... UPDATE: Since writing this post, my work has taken me to Groningen, so I took the opportunity to call in at the Puredistance offices. The account of my visit, and my impromptu interview with Jan Ewoud Vos, is here.