Clove at first sniff: Tom Ford Private Blend Atelier d'Orient Shanghai Lily review

Source: 2010amovieaday.wordpress.com

There appear to be two main schools of thought about Tom Ford Private Blend Atelier d'Orient Shanghai Lily, to be referred to henceforward in this review as 'Shanghai Lily', 'it' or 'this one'.  One school sees Shanghai Lily as breathtakingly beautiful and/or the sort of perfume you might instinctively reach for on any given day in the absence of specific scent-wearing plans eg Victoria of Bois de Jasmin, Patty of Perfume Posse and Thomas of The Candy Perfume Boy.  Another school considers it to be one or more of the following things: unimpressive on card, pretty on skin if overly clove-y, and with an anti-climactic - to the point of totally absent - drydown eg Robin of Now Smell This and Victoria of EauMG.

I was really interested to read these two takes on Shanghai Lily, because I am both soldiers!  I first tried it in a big Tom Ford sniffing blitz in Paris last June.  As you can see from my scribbled notes, I thought Plum Japonais was a dead ringer for Shiseido's Femininité du Bois, I mistakenly thought there was grapefruit in Rive d'Ambre, and the most salient fact I jotted down about Shanghai Lily was that it was 'épicé' ie 'spicy'. (I assume I was taking dictation rather fast from the sales assistant at this point - I am not given to writing notes to myself in a foreign language. ;) )  Here I clearly fell into the same trap as Robin, because the card amped up the spicy facet at the expense of the floral, and I quickly moved on to other Tom Fords that were also new to me, such as Lys Fumé, Jonquille de Nuit, Ombre de Hyacinth etc.  It was Jonquille de Nuit in fact of which I ended up getting a sample from the lovely SA, who was actually called Tom Ford!

Fast foward eight months and I found myself unexpectedly bewitched by the Candy Perfume Boy's sillage when he and his soon-to-be-husband Nigel hopped onto the same train as me, bound for London and the international blogger meet up documented here. Shanghai Lily smelt so seductive on Thomas that, as you may recall, I even offered to marry him.

So on my return from London I was predictably haunted by the memory of Thomas's enchanting aura, and started to stalk eBay with a view to buying a sample of Shanghai Lily, which retails for a whopping £140 for 50ml.  In the end I decided to throw myself on the mercy of the manager of the Tom Ford concession at Harvey Nichols in London, playing the 'I don't live anywhere near a major conurbation with a Harvey Nicks in it, so would you be kind enough to send me a sample - I would be happy to pay for your trouble, thank you very much' card, which worked a treat.  I deliberately did not play the 'I'm a blogger, gimme swag' card, a) because there was a very real chance that that tactic might backfire and b) because I genuinely wanted to see how they would respond to me in my capacity as a regular punter.

Well, I say it worked a treat...initially the manager demurred, and said that they only usually send out samples as gifts with purchase 'for security reasons' - that old illogical chestnut - but that as an exception, they would oblige me if I would cover the postage costs of £6.

You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when I received another of those bombastically big boxes (pictured above).  See if you can spot the perfume samples nestling somewhere in amongst the packing peanuts!  But I am not complaining, because the samples comprised 8ml, which by my reckoning - on a pro rata basis - are worth a staggering £22.40.  So I am already quids in here without having even sniffed the thing again (I mean 'this one'.)

But very soon I did, and can report that on each occasion I still got the initial whoosh of clove of which Robin speaks.  Well, 'carnation' was what flitted through my mind, ie something spicy and sharp and a bit medicinal.  Crucially not old-fashioned, though, as in Caron Bellodgia, say.

During the opening phase, the clove acted almost like prison bars, behind which I could just glimpse this drop dead gorgeous, sultry, feminine floral with a twist. A bit like spying a beautiful dental hygienist out of the corner of your eye while you are trapped in the dentist's chair, tholing the administration of all manner of clove-based injectables. Then I would never have guessed Shanghai Lily had orange in it, as I now know from the notes, although there was a tangy facet I couldn't quite put my finger on, which may have been that.  In fact, true to form I really don't know what I was smelling, and can only begin to convey my overall impression of a teasing, coquettish scent - not unduly youthful, mind, yet gentle and tender - one that is soft and powdery, sherbety and sweet, ingenuous and devious, light and dark...er, all at the same time.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (via Gaius Cornelius)

Yes, the scent which eventually emerges from behind the clove is full of contradictions, and may be one of the most beautiful things I have ever smelt, even though I am quite at a loss to describe it.  For that there are the reviews above, of course. Then I found this entertaining description on Luckyscent, which explains how Shanghai Lily was inspired by the character played by Marlene Dietrich in the film Shanghai Express, who is euphemistically described as: 'a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast'.  At the same time, Tom Ford meant Shanghai Lily to evoke: 'caravans piled high with treasures, surrounded by a multi-sensorial abundance of opulence'.  Hmm, that might sound like a big ask of a perfume, and I wouldn't personally describe Shanghai Lily as 'opulent' in the way that Patou Joy or Amouage Gold or YSL Opium might be said to be so. It is spicy, like Opium, but in a softer and much less emphatic style. And is not fat or unctuous like those three either. Shanghai Lily is more in the register of a seriously roughed up L'Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons, say.

I then had recourse to the complete note list to see if that helped me unpack the perfume's progression at all, even in hindsight, and I can honestly say not really!  I do love labdanum, rose, pepper, vanilla, incense and gaiac wood, so I am not surprised I have fallen hard for Shanghai Lily. Actually though, I think it is a perfect fusion of sensual lily scents (which feature disproportionately in my collection - eg Serge Lutens Un Lys, DKNY Gold and Penhaligon's Lily & Spice) with the woody / balsamic orientals that are my overall favourite fragrance family (Diptyque Eau Duelle, Kenzo Flower Oriental and Bvlgari Black to name but a few).

Source: Luckyscent

SHANGHAI LILY

Notes: bitter orange, pink peppercorn, black pepper, clove, jasmine, rose, tuberose, vetiver, cashmeran, benzoin, castoreum, cistus labdanum, gaiac wood, vanilla and frankincense

Although like Robin, I was slow to come round to Shanghai Lily, we part company over the later stages of its development which do not feel 'a bit flat' to me.  Robin goes on to say: 'The clove lingers far into the dry down, but the florals fade far too quickly; what's left is basically a rather mild spiced wood.'.  On my skin, by contrast, at the drydown stage the clove has long since vanished and I get a sweetly vanillic, slightly smoky, yet still markedly floral finish.

Ludicrous layering experiment

Then on a whim the other night, I decided to see if I could recreate Shanghai Lily by layering Penhaligon's Lily & Spice over Cartier's Baiser Volé.  It was a car crash, basically.  Lily & Spice has lily, clove and vanilla in it, and the requisite dark aspect - it is borderline indolic in fact.  The darkness is marred, however, by its pellucid, almost aquatic feel - a bit like CK Truth, say.  Baiser Volé, meanwhile, has a similar snuffed out, pollen-y, sweet, sherbety quality to the Tom Ford, but smells more mainstream and Betty Boo-like.  It is very bright and in your face and brash by comparison, at least in the opening stages.  Yes, Shanghai Lily is not as girlish and fluffy as the Cartier, but nor is it as mature and diva-ish as Marlene Dietrich.  If it is suited to a woman who lives by her wits, I'd like to think this wasn't on an...ahem...professional basis.  But it most certainly has a lttle sultry kick, suspended somewhere between innocence and sensuality.  In my comment on Tara's evocative review on Olfactoria's Travels, I said Shanghai Lily might suit a 30-something on a mission.  Or a 50-something woman trying to recapture her youth...

Funnily enough, I do have a dress that might suit. ;)

Hmm...I haven't worn it since I was a 30-something, though!

'Oh Sienna!' Lidl Suddenly Diamonds review: a BOSS Orange dupe for a Paltrow sum

Regular readers will know that I have been a bit of a champion down the years of the discount grocery chain Lidl's perfume range - I have featured three so far on Bonkers: Suddenly d'Or (a close match of Ghost Luminous), Suddenly Madame Glamour (a masterly copy of Coco Mademoiselle), and in the men's arena, G Bellini X-Bolt (a convincing dupe of Hugo BOSS Bottled). Some people might have moral reservations about such parasitical copying of designer fragrances, though the whole concept of supermarket 'own label' products is predicated on the imitation of their more expensive brand equivalents - to varying degrees of flagrancy.  So speaking for myself - and coming from a food marketing background where I once presided over £11m's worth of own label coleslaw(!) - it is a commercial strategy to which I am pretty immune.  Moreover, the Lidl perfumes are such remarkable copies that I feel somewhat in awe of the perfumer responsible, assuming it is just the one.  All I know is that the range is made in Switzerland, and it took me forever to ascertain even that.

So anyway, I was in Lidl at the weekend buying pork medaillons and whatever else caught my fancy, whilst trying very hard to resist the domestic security alarms, walnut veneer-lookalike coffee tables, home gyms, twin packs of shocking pink vests (more shocking than they look in this photo, trust me), cosy 'leisure suits' (size 16 only), remaindered Valentine's baking moulds and Dumbo books - when I spied the latest Lidl perfume release - Suddenly Diamonds - another women's fragrance this time.

The first thing that struck me was that they had changed the bottle design - it was a chunky rectangular bottle this time rather than the cheap, plasticky teardrop-shaped one used for the previous two Suddenly scents. It was reminiscent in fact of the bottle style of a number of designer and even niche perfumes, so that was an improvement right off the bat.

The name 'Diamonds' proved to be a bit of a misnomer, mind - well, in fairness ALL the Lidl scent names to date have been misnomers(!) in the sense that they are not remotely suggestive of the perfumes they are copying.  Suddenly Diamonds is not an imitation of Emporio Armani Diamonds, for example, but the orange writing on the bottle pointed instantly to BOSS Orange.  After all, G Bellini X-Bolt was a dupe of a BOSS scent last time, so maybe the marketing people at Lidl thought they were on a roll with poor Hugo!

BOSS Orange edt and edp in Boots

But Boss Orange??  That would not be my pick, unless it is in fact a runaway bestseller and I simply had no idea. Admittedly, Coco Mademoiselle was always going to be a hard act to follow - Chanel No 5?  Marc Jacobs Daisy?  Lady Million? One of those annoying Be Delicious scents? - I don't actually know what the best sellers in the market are these days.  It would probably upset me if I did.  Maybe BOSS Orange is particularly easy to copy, because having got hold of a sample of it and the Lidl I am very impressed at the likeness.  More between the BOSS Orange edt and Suddenly Diamonds than the smoother, more rounded edp.  Hey, I didn't even know there were two!  Both the BOSS Orange edt and Suddenly Diamonds have that bright citrus opening, followed by a syrupy orange-y cotton candy, musky drydown, which kicks in pretty soon in fact. The Lidl scent is in a slightly 'deeper register', if that makes sense, ie is slightly less fruity and bright and kind of 'flatter' and more musky maybe, but I am splitting hairs really, as the resemblance is compelling.

BOSS Orange edt

Top notes: red apples 
Middle notes: white flowers, African orange flower
Base notes: sandalwood, olive tree, vanilla

BOSS Orange edt and edp testers cosying up in Boots

If BOSS Orange is your thing, for £3.99 you really can't go wrong.  It will cost you about eight times as much in Boots, say. Oh, and the 'Paltrow sum' of the title is a bit of artistic licence, for Gwyneth is of course the face of BOSS Nuit pour Femme, while Sienna Miller features in the BOSS Orange campaign. But they are both Boss girls, so obviously I couldn't resist it.

Now I absolutely hated BOSS Orange when it first came out - in fact the musks gave me an instant headache.  When I tried it again in the interests of this scientific inquiry it wasn't as bad as I remember, though absolutely not what I would wish to wear.  I don't hold with assigning demographic parameters to fragrance as a rule, but this does smell 'young'.  Younger than Sienna, even, and she is just the wrong side of 30, I see.

I must say I am rather disappointed by Lidl's rather lacklustre choice of BOSS Orange after the completely brilliant coup of choosing Coco Mademoiselle, and it has got me wondering about what scent I would like them to imitate in future. Well, I'd be interested to see what kind of a job they made of No 5 at that price point, hehe, though my guess is that it's more likely to be another ho-hum designer scent again... ;-(

In closing, I would like to pay a special tribute to the BOSS Orange bottle, which would cost a bob or two to replicate, even if the Lidl folk were that bold, and I am sure they wouldn't be.  It reminds me of those lovely nobbly glass bricks you get in hotel bathrooms.

Source: antrad.net

Sniffing by numbers: Fragrance Republ!c FR! 01 / 04 review

Argentina tango ~ Source: artdigitalpaintings.deviantart.com

A number of reviews have been appearing lately of the new line of perfumes from Fragrance Republ!c (note odd use of an exclamation mark where an 'i' should be), which is described as:

"A new club of fragrance enthusiasts that gives exclusive access to original fine fragrances as created by world class perfumers.  Every month our members receive an exclusive fragrance straight from our lab to their door."

The difference between working for Fragrance Republ!c and a conventional perfume house is that their perfumers are allowed free rein to create whatever takes their fancy.

I was contacted by a PR person for the brand back in December and have since been sent two perfumes from the line, FR! 01/ No 3 and FR! 01 / No 4.  Oh look, even the initials are exclamatory!  I haven't tried the first two releases, but here are a couple of reviews: of FR! 01 / No 1 on Chemist in the Bottle, and of FR! 01 / No 2 on Another Perfume Blog.

FR! 01 / No 3 is a brisk, slightly masculine-leaning ode to the Mojito, and I have nothing to add to Val the Cookie Queen's review here.  FR! 01 / 03 would make an excellent choice for a buff, sporty young man like Val's son, who has apparently pretty much adopted it as his signature scent.

This week I have been wearing FR! 01 / 04 by Amélie Bourgeois for three days straight, but my decision to write about it today was in fact prompted by Sandra's post on Olfactoria's Travels about the latest Hermessences scent, Epice Marine, in which she detects a 'toasted cumin' note.

Do those stitches remind you even a teeny bit of sesame seeds?

Now as it happens, the most salient note for me in FR! 01 / 04 is the rather offbeat use of sesame. When first applied on my skin, I am strongly reminded of stir fry oil, both in physical texture and scent. Having now had a good old sniff of the bottle of stir fry oil I currently have on the go, I can confirm that this impression is entirely erroneous.  My cooking oil smells sharper and more lemongrass- and ginger-y.  But I still have a vivid mental picture of anointing myself in cooking oil which refuses to go away.  As well as the strongest nutty note I have ever smelt in a perfume - and it could be that I have nut-amplifying skin - there is a slightly camphoraceous quality to the opening.  We are almost in lighter / barbecue fuel territory, but happily not quite.

Now I don't mean to put people off this scent, for this singular opening soon mutes down into a rich and smooth - albeit still slightly oil-reminiscent - floral accord.  But before I leave the oil facet, I must relate my interesting discovery about Bourgeois' inspiration for this scent.  For she grew up in an area of the SW of France called Les Landes, which is noted for its long sandy beaches fringed by pine forests.  And apparently 'hot sand' and 'sunscreen' were very much in her mind at the inception of this perfume, though after thinking long and hard about which direction it was going to develop in, she settled on a floral note - namely magnolia - as the main turn in her composition, with its evocation of 'sensual dance' and 'hotness'. By a curious chance we are back in Zelda territory again and my own associations of that perfume with a languid and sultry weekend in Charleston!

Those really are naked people swimming, but this is a family blog

So the mental leap from sunscreen to stir fry oil is perhaps not too extreme after all.  I have a bit of a soft spot for Les Landes as it happens, which was kindled by my voracious reading of the rather gothic works of Francois Mauriac at school. I have also visited the region for work a few times, but my most abiding memories of the coast are of accidentally spending two weeks in a naturist camp in Montalivet-les-Bains in 1983. The first few hours were excruciatingly awkward, but it is surprising how quickly you become accustomed to the naked human form in all its myriad variants.  So, you know, a disproportionate amount of sunscreen will have been deployed on that holiday all right...;)

Our cabin in the forest - mosquitoes had never had it so good!

But that is enough about the germ of the olfactory idea for this scent, for Bourgeois's final composition is not about France, but Argentina, where I have never been, though I have eaten a few tins of corned beef in my time.  The description inside the lid of the box the perfume came in states:

"I wanted FR! 01/04 to be as bright and exhilarating as a weekend getaway to Argentina, while also recalling the sensuality and tempo of the tango.  Conceived as two bodies dancing, its structure evokes the tango's abrazo, as an intense floral with magnolia and cassie flower, and an enchanting woody note embrace with passion and grace."

Top notes: yellow Italian mandarin, sweet orange
Middle notes: jasmine, fleur de cassie, mimosa Maroc, magnolia
Base notes: sesame, tonka bean, white musks

Once the oily effect dissipates, I'd say the dance is rather between a very juicy fruity blend - reminiscent in intensity of Atelier Cologne's Orange Sanguine and Aftelier Secret Garden, also a little of Vero Profumo Rubj maybe, as well as a rather obscure orange-forward scent by Ajne called Bloom de Nuit - and an intense floral hit of magnolia, flanked by sweet and sherbety mimosa.  FR! 01 /04 is bombastic all right, a showgirl scent, with the intensity and unctuousness of Zelda but none of the latter's zesty greenness.  I would personally lose the sesame note altogether, because it plays up way too much on my skin and fractionally tips the fragrance into 'odd' territory, although it is Bourgeois's stated aim that it should appeal to as many club members as possible.  I have never smelt anything like it, though, I'll give it that - and the sesame note may be the reason.

Source of the stir fry oil chimera

What else is there to say about this scent or the range in general?  Well, for one, it is commendable that the Fragrance Republ!c perfumers have unlimited creative freedom in this way.  The release of perfumes in just 15 ml bottles is also greatly to be encouraged - and hopefully a trend that will gather momentum in more orthodox quarters of the industry.

As for the clinical packaging and the numerical names, I am not so keen on that.  I am working up to doing a post on Biehl Kunstwerke, in which I shall doubtless also have a pop at this 'sniffing by numbers' approach. Overall though, I think it is an exciting new business model, and I look forward to catching up with the other numbers in the range - both the earlier ones I missed and the ones (or rather 05 'and higher', as the flight attendants say) yet to come.

Special credit is also due to the nifty cut out foam in which my bottles were most securely shipped from France.  I do like a bit of avant-garde packaging, as long as - as in the present case - it is commensurate with the item housed within.

If you have tried FR! 01 / 04 already, I would be most interested to know what you made of it, and how prominent the nutty note was on your skin.

And if anyone has any more creative names for a 'big juicy fruity magnolia scent with Latin American connotations', I would love to hear your suggestions.  

Not sure about 'Evita', no...

A fishy fumehead encounter, featuring Val the Cookie Queen and Portia Turbot-Gear

Val and Thomas at Bloom, with Michael and half of Nigel in the background

Readers may well have been following the adventures of irrepressible Antipodean drag queen Portia of APJ and her urbane fellow contributor Michael as they have been on a bit of a world tour in recent weeks. This has taken in Austria, Germany and France, to name just the countries I have clocked in blog posts and Facebook updates.  In the final leg of her travels, Portia blew into London the other day, as did another member of the APJ crew, Val the Cookie Queen, accompanied by her daughter.  Portia and Michael had already visited Val and family in Austria, as well as hooking up with Birgit and Sandra of Olfactoria's Travels in Vienna for - amongst other things - that all-important tea towel handover. Yesterday, a group of about ten perfumistas (mostly bloggers, in the event) foregathered in the Spitalfields district of London for a mini-perfumery crawl and hearty fish and chip lunch.  Which doesn't have quite the same ring to it as 'fish and chip supper', but there you go.

I say 'blew in', not just because both Portia and Val are live wires, which they are in spades (do spades have wires? Of course they do!), but because it was unfeasibly windy that day.  Umbrella-thrapingly so, if I had had the foresight to bring one with me, topped off with a side order of cold lashing rain.  Now we have had gales all last week where I live, but I don't expect such dismal weather when I come down to London. Why, London is practically in the tropics as far as I am concerned, and I expect my full thermal value - I had even doffed my winter vest in anticipation! - but it was signally lacking yesterday.

Spillover clothing crisis in the office

I don't know if the weather had anything to do with it, but I nearly missed my train in the morning, owing to a clothing crisis of unprecedented proportions that lasted a full hour and laid waste to several rooms (by no means all of them bedrooms).   It seemed impossible to pick out a single outfit that went even some way towards a harmonious union of colour, shoe comfort, fabric type (including any day/night connotations), trouser length, weatherproofing, warmth, and flexibility of warmth.Trying to add a fashionable element into the mix would have tipped me into complete meltdown, if indeed I had owned garments that nodded in that direction. But eventually, reason prevailed and I settled on a tunic top and suit trousers, flat shoes - and no vest!

Epicentre of the clothing carnage

When the train reached Milton Keynes, I hooked up with Thomas, The Candy Perfume Boy, and his soon-to-be-husband Nigel, though not before I had sewn up not one but two knitted hats!  Nothing like a wifi coldspot for prompting the completion of an abandoned crafting project.  The three of us made our way to Aldgate East tube station, where we had arranged to meet Tara.  There we spent the obligatory ten minutes being royally flummoxed by 'multiple exit syndrome', before fortuitously popping up at Exit 3, where Tara was waiting for us, looking serene and lovely as ever - and not the least bit buffeted or rainswept.

We struck out intially in the wrong direction, but Thomas quickly google mapped us back on track, and we wove our way deftly through the narrow streets around Brick Lane.  I stuck closely to him, not least because he was emitting beguiling whiffs of Tom Ford Shanghai Lily, which I had briefly sampled in Paris in June, yet somehow its spicy floral glory had failed to woo me till now.  I may have offered to marry Thomas at one point, possibly within earshot of Nigel.

My new scent squeeze ~ Source: harveynichols.com

When we arrived at Bloom in Spitalfields, it was already packed out with a lively throng of fumeheads in full sniffing mode, including Val and Portia, Michael, Nick Gilbert (Fragrant Reviews) and Joshua Ang (The Smelly Vagabond). Freddie Albrighton (Smellythoughts), whose train had been delayed, joined us shortly afterwards.)  Introductions over, a small flurry of mutual present giving ensued.  I gave Val a poster of The Monochrome Set and a purse for keeping samples in; she gave me cookies of her own manufacture (yay!) and an antique silver button hook, which belonged to her grandmother.  Tara copped for a hat(!) - my hat knitting compulsion having lately escalated to the point where I have exhausted the pool of potential recipients in Stafford - while Portia took custody of a pair of minuscule notebooks and a slightly broached box of fudge that was briefly pre-owned - or at the very least funded - by Tom Cruise. Thereby hangs a tale which will feature in Bonkers in due course, along with its Portia-enabled sequel...

Nick in classic raised forearm pose, with mischievous grin (not pictured)

Oh, and I did remember to do a bit of sniffing, but only a couple of things.  For example, I finally caught up with the new rose release from Parfumerie Generale - No 26 Isparta.  When Pierre Guillaume kissed me(!) after the talk at Les Senteurs in 2012, he also whispered in my ear that he was working on a rose scent. Well, all I can say is that it's been a long time coming, and as Nick pointed out, it does smell somewhat similar to Portrait of a Lady - you might be forgiven for thinking that in the space of two years PG might have taken his composition in a more original direction, but apparently not.  So no new lemming there, thankfully.

The lovely Tara, pictured with her 'To Sniff' list?

Soon it was time to repair next door to Poppies, a retro diner famous for its prize-winning fish and chips. The table assigned to us wasn't quite big enough, but by sheer force of numbers and a bit of strategic staring we quickly saw off the two couples at adjacent tables, and suddenly had ample room to accommodate our own substantial party.

Nick, Freddie, Portia Turbot-Gear (sic!) and Michael

Inevitably, we couldn't stop passing round bottles and samples for one another to sniff, and I got to try the new Dita Von Teese Erotique - which was exactly the 'teesingly' spicy, sandalwoody number Thomas had described in his review - also Vero Profumo Mito Voile d'Extrait, which is less acerbic and more floral than the original EDP, thanks to the addition of tuberose.  I sprayed it liberally on my front, then later wiped the overspray from my Zelda bottle (from when I was making samples for other people) on the back of my neck.  I felt like a scented version of Janus!

Tara, Joshua and Nigel

Our food came pretty quickly, so we had to clear away some of our perfume tackle to make way for huge plates of fish and bottles of condiments.  Not only was its flesh as white as a Hollywood smile, but my haddock was intriguingly upended on its side, though I had to knock it over in order to set about eating it. Sarah, another perfumista who joined us at the restaurant, also had vertical fish, which is not a style of presentation I had previously encountered.

Sarah's fish standing to attention

Replete from our big meals, our slightly bedraggled gaggle braved the weather again to make our way to - no, not Angela Flounders as you might very well imagine, with it being in the immediate vicinity - but Les Senteurs in Seymour Place. As we walked I chatted to Portia a bit about his time in London some 20 years ago, and mentioned that I had also been to Sydney and owned a koala called Mosman.  Only a toy, obviously, but the real things are, after all, not markedly more lively.  Or not the ones living in Canberra Zoo in late 1993.  Portia endeared himself to me by guessing that he was the eldest in our group, when he is fact nine years my - and Val's - junior.  Also by describing me as 'glamorous', which I mistakenly heard as 'cadaverous', to people's amusement.

The By Kilian invasion

Since my last visit, Les Senteurs had been rather taken over by By Kilian, to which an entire wall had been devoted. I ignored the whole fixture and instead made a beeline for the opposite, more diversely stocked wall, where I tried Atelier Cologne's Silver Iris.  It was every bit as likable as the reviews had suggested, and - like The Monochrome Set's penultimate album - its shiny silver surface could have doubled up in a pinch as an emergency compact mirror, however, I think I have enough irises in my collection.

Val, 'valiantly' keeping the FM red lippie theme going

I also tried Sybarite by Cloon Keen Atelier - the Ateliers were out in force yesterday, as you can tell - but couldn't place the scent and it registered as neither overtly pleasant or otherwise.  A little bit like YSL Nu EDT, if I had to think of any remote point of comparison.  Major props for the name though - I love the word 'sybarite' in all its variants. Maybe I should have tried it on skin, as the composition sounds much more congenial than I remember it smelling.  The top notes of incense and bergamot may not have worked for me, though.

Michael and Freddie at Les Senteurs

Then Freddie drew my attention to Mona di Orio's Eau Absolue, an unusual citrus and honey scent with an animalic base.  It grabbed my attention much more, even on card, and we both agreed that this was a treatment of honey that was more to our liking than Viktoria Minya's Hedonist.  Portia had meanwhile ensconced herself at the back of the shop, looking rather grandee-like amongst the rococo furniture and gilt mirrors.  As well as describing me as glamorous, he told Tara she had great legs, prompting me to call him a 'caution', prompting me in turn to explain what this peculiarly British term means.  I just looked it up and it is classified as 'informal' and 'dated', with a meaning of 'amusing' and 'surprising'.  Well, Portia's sense of humour is certainly both of those! ;-)

Portia striking a pose, possibly involving the sniffing of a mobile phone

All too soon it was time to make tracks and catch my train back.  Thomas and Nigel set off for Euston with me, but we had to part company at the tube station when Nigel got his ticket stuck in the lining of his jacket. ;-)  Before I knew it I was speeding north and back to normal life - the excitement of the day's events had assumed an almost dreamlike quality.  Though the two cookies Val had given me - which didn't make it past Watford Junction - said otherwise...

Perfumista lifestyle markers: the owning - and 'dishing out' - of tea towels

Sorry - some of these were fished out of the ironing basket...

This week marks the sixth anniversary of my being struck down by sudden onset perfume mania. Ever since I started reading Basenotes and perfume blogs back in early 2008, I have periodically come across discussions about which other tastes and interests people who love perfume also have in common.  Cats are one of the most frequently quoted examples, as comprehensively documented in Ari's famous perfume blogger pet post.  A love of fine wines, soft furnishings, greyhounds, cheese, books, fine art, music, posh chocolate, fancy teas, aromatherapy oils and sundry other lifestyle 'markers' have also been cited as evidence of an approach to life that is at once intellectually curious and keenly attuned to sybaritic pleasure.

Then the other day, in her account of a meeting in Vienna with APJ blogger Portia, Olfactoria happened to mention a gift of tea towels from the ebullient drag queen from Down Under to Sandra and her.  For anyone interested in chapter and verse, Birgit's had a map of Cairns on it, for example.

Example of a Cairns tea towel ~ Source: ebay.au

So then, in a remarkable turn of events, this innocent logging of a moderately utilitarian present sparked a lively debate in the comments to that post about the aptness or otherwise of such a gift - and before you could say 'Irish linen', a whole slew of tea towel aficionados was winkled out of the woodwork.  Okay, so by 'slew' I may mostly mean Anne-Marie (also from Australia, rather fittingly), who spoke of her ingenious habit of scenting tea towels with lemongrass - a nugget of housewife lore learnt at her mother's knee.

"But my idea is to choose something strident enough to cut through the scungy smell that tea towels tend to get no matter often they get washed and line dried. I know that smell well. My mother was both fastidious and frugal. She cleaned everything that didn’t move but she would wear the tea towels down to threads before replacing them. Urk."

*Not* a tea towel - a 'damp cloth' wholly dedicated to ironing duties

'Scungy' - I have not heard that word before, but it sounds like a malodorous fusion of 'scuzzy', 'scummy', 'gungy' and 'pongy'.  And another interesting thing...my mother was from Australia, and - possibly due to my father's extremely tight rein on the housekeeping (perversely, she didn't get a washing machine till we children had long since left home) - also kept tea towels till they were threadbare and beyond.  I have a number which I inherited from her which are even more rag-like now, but of sentimental value, obviously.  I don't scent them with anything, but they do get washed.  There seems to be an indelible mark on the one pictured.  In my defence, everybody needs a tatty tea towel to use to damp iron delicate clothes - that way if you accidentally burn it, it is no great loss.

Since reading this post, my mind hasn't stopped whirring and making connections between perfumistas and deeds involving the stockpiling - or giving - of tea towels. (Yay!  I managed to avoid saying 'gifting'!) Some readers may know these rectangular textiles by a slightly different name, but they are the towels you dry your dishes with, not your hands or other body parts.  And you wouldn't wipe kitchen surfaces with them either - that way lie dish cloths, J-cloths, sponge scrubbers, and - in my own case - lashings and lashings of kitchen roll.

At the top of the post is a shot of my tea towel collection when I first moved into the new house - the ones on the left were ALL moving in presents from a neighbour - how wet does she think my crockery is? ;)  The ones on the right are the legacy from my mother, barring the really frayed one, which deserved a shot on its own.

Supersized Danish tea towels!

I have since acquired two very large and stylish tea towels - also as a housewarming present - from a reader in Denmark. They are so generously sized that they have overshot tray cloths and are well on their way to being small tablecloths or picnic rugs.

And at New Year, Tara gave me a much longed for spaghetti server - no, really, it was! - and two festive tea towels, which of course I shan't broach till next Christmas:

Pretty Christmas tea towel duo

Hmm, now that I think of it, when I last met up with Katie Puckrik in November, and we spent an afternoon poking round the vintage shops of Notting Hill, the subject of tea towels came up quite spontaneously - which on the face of it might seem strange.  We were browsing in a general store, where Katie was after a sturdy, foldaway carrier bag.  There were some tea towels on display and she volunteered the fact that she liked to buy them as souvenirs from her travels.  I quizzed her on her aesthetic standards in this regard, and she explained that she was comfortable with 'touristy', and even slightly kitsch, as long as the design didn't tip over into completely tacky.  I am not sure I am sufficiently familiar with the complete gamut of household linen to envision a truly gross specimen, but if you know of any, please describe it in the comments in as lurid detail as necessary.

Oh, since I published this post, Katie has come back to me with her definitive preferences in the tea towel department, which are along the lines I remembered:

"Tea towels are my favorite souvenirs of travel and adventure - better than post cards and snow globes and t-shirts. I love them because they remind me of road trips and capers, while being a constant ally in the kitchen, where I use them daily for scores of different things.

My preferred tea towel graphic is a hokey 'sights of the city' panorama. I've got a bunch from London, and some from California and Brussels. An odd one was my 'Gentlemen's Clubs of London', which I found in an LA flea market. And a great one was my 'British Men' tea towel: a 60's-era survey of working men, including a bobby, a fishmonger, a cabby, a vicar, and a bowler-hatted city gent. I used both of those into rags.

I still have my Charles and Di tea towel celebrating their 1981 wedding. It's now retired from service, much faded but intact."

So there you have it - I think the perfumista/tea towel correlation is looking quite strong...;) And please do let us know where you stand in terms of your own propensity to collect or give away tea towels of any description.

Oh, I nearly forgot the one I bought myself for Christmas!

The Scent Crimes Series: No 12 - Impregnable perfume miniatures

I had my friend Sharon to stay this weekend.  Readers may remember her as the born again Roja Dove Scandal and Fracas fan featured in a couple of earlier posts here and here - I guess I could consider her as another 'protégé'  - one whose scented explorations I have been documenting as I go along here. Anyway, Sharon is sufficiently keen to continue her perfume j***ney that every time we meet she always asks me to bring some new things for her to try, or - if she comes to my house, as on this occasion - to get my stash out for her to have another delve into.

Today she had a very specific request, namely to sample whatever I could lay my hands on by Bvlgari, a brand recommended to her by a friend.  Bvlgari also happens to be one of my favourite brands in the mainstream/designer sphere, along with Kenzo and Prada.   So I fished out my one bottle (Black), a large and disastrously leaky decant of Rose Essentielle, and samples of Femme, Mon Jasmin Noir and Voile de Jasmin. Unfortunately for my friend, I had already sold my bottle of Omnia Crystalline in last year's yard sale, and given away my bottle of Jasmin Noir to a neighbour who had fallen hard for it at the time (a well-intentioned impulse I now regret).  I was pretty sure I also had a sample of Omnia Coral, but I had found it so insipidly fruitily inconsequential that it - and the rest of my 'bag of hell' - had been banished to the outer darkness (quite literally!) of the garage.  Underbed storage had failed to put enough physical distance between me and the offending items, you see, despite my general success rate in life with the 'spider under the bed' principle...

As it turned out, Mon Jasmin Noir was the only one of my patchy Bvlgari collection that Sharon cared for, when I suddenly I remembered that I also owned a miniature of Omnia Green Jade, and managed to extract this last example of the brand from the not inconsiderable coat chaos of the cupboard under the stairs where my perfumes now reside.

Before I come onto the specifics of the Omnia Jade mini, here is a 'class photo' of my miniature collection, with twins standing next to each other and small ones at the front, as is customary.  Okay, with regard to the Micallefs, one is the younger sibling of the other one, as you may infer from their differential height/size.

Two sets of twins, one other sibling set...;)

Out of all these perfumes, only TWO have a spray mechanism - can you guess which? The rest have tiny holes, and you have to upend the bottle and dab as best as gravity and a pinpoint aperture permit.

In terms of the cap mechanism, my experience with minis is mainly of the 'yank off sharply' variety, with some screw tops in the mix, plus a few obdurate bottles that require the 'combination method' of yanking AND unscrewing.  It can be quite a fiddly exercise, comparable to the difficulty level of unstoppering those tiny plastic wands from the smallest size of glass vial, which readers intermittently write to me to complain about.

And then...then there is Bvlgari Omnia Jade, verily the Rubik's Cube of perfume miniatures.  Well, I use the word 'cube' advisedly, as it is more of a figure of eight really, like two thick silver coins getting it on.

And could Sharon and I figure out how to take the top off?  Could we hell as like!  We alternated at having a go, but no amount of pulling, pressing or prising seemed to do the trick.  Twisting, turning and tugging were equally fruitless.  'Okay', said Sharon calmly, 'let's figure this out from first principles.' (I should point out that my friend is a Project Manager, supervising the complex build of fighter aircraft no less, a logical thinker and 'critical path'-follower to her fingertips.)

'It must HAVE a top, surely?' I volunteered lamely, when suddenly a piece of green plastic trim flirted off and fell on the floor, revealing an impenetrable metal casing within.

'Yes, but where?' replied Sharon, as we both simultaneously experienced flashbacks of that classically pesky 'Where's the end of the Sellotape?' variety.

So we spent a few more minutes scrutinising the housing of the mini, looking for even the slightest hairline crack, that might possibly be suggestive of a demarcation between bottom and top.  Then, her frustration mounting, Sharon took one last enormous - and completely random! - tug to the bottle, when to our surprise not so much 'the top' as 'the most of it' came off!

Then we dabbed a bit of Omnia Jade on - in our all-consuming bid to 'crack the cube', as it were, we had all but forgotten our original interest in sniffing the perfume enclosed within - and pronounced it to be quite pleasant and refreshing, in a limpidly nutty, faintly green kind of a way - though we may have been subliminally influenced by the colour of the box or bottle...  Or the name indeed.  Speaking of the box, as Sharon was casually lifting it up to check the name of the perfume again, she spied a little diagram inside the lid...

'Oh look, this tells you how to open it!'  Typical women, we had just dived straight in there without reading the instructions first. ;-) But there again, who would have thought a perfume bottle would come with instructions about how to take its top off...?

So have you ever seen such a diagram?  And have you experienced problems opening minis in particular, or figuring out how to get tops of full-sized bottles?

I do remember puzzling for ages over the location of the Prada Candy spray nozzle (which of course had been cunningly integrated into its Cadbury smash robot head - or half head, to be anatomically correct about it).

Source: sephora.com

Whole-headed Cadbury Smash robots ~ Source: youtube.com

Here are the surprisingly eclectic notes of Omnia Green Jade, should anyone be curious:

Notes: spring water, green mandarin, white peony, nasturtium, pear tree flower, jasmine petals, fresh pistachio, white woods, musk

Finally, I must just mention that as I was gathering my minis together for this group shot, I nearly included the one pictured below...which turned out to be the top of my full-sized Cuir de Lancome bottle, which - as any readers who own one will know - is chronically prone to toppling off at the drop of a hat, and looking rather like a miniature when it does.  Somewhere on the Interwebs I am sure I read about a clever fix to make this top fit snugly again, but I can't remember where now...

'Perfumista protégé' progress reports: No 1 - Sheila, English teacher turned artist

'Listening to the plants grow' - Sheila's painting of 'a sybaritic bathroom' 

During the past six years since I 'got perfume', my passion for the subject has spilled over into a kind of missionary zeal, prompting me to gently steer friends, family and neighbours in the direction of a wider selection of perfumes than they had previously tried or considered.  In some cases I have even managed to convert non-wearers of fragrance to wearing it at all!  I have been plying away at my campaign of perfume proselytising for a good while now, and decided that enough time had elapsed to take stock of how some of my 'protégés' were faring, and how their perfume repertoire - and attitude towards fragance - had changed under my influence.

So I sent a bunch of these people the same three questions about their own 'perfume j***neys', and here is the first response from Sheila (preceded by a bit of background on the origins of our friendship):


SHEILA

Sheila was my English teacher when I was in the sixth form studying for A-Levels. When she joined the school as a newly qualified member of staff she was only 21 herself, which sounds so very young now, though she seemed perfectly grown up to my 16 year old self!  She was an inspirational teacher and the epitome of 70s style and cool - arguably a contradiction in terms in this, the heyday of Noel Edmonds, Supertramp and unfeasibly tall platfom shoes.  Sheila opted for a more toned down interpretation of the fashion of the times, however, including swingy corduroy pinafore dresses in sludgy shades of blue and grey, teamed with suede wedges and a selection of long silky scarves.  Although I was pretty tuned out to perfume at that age, I do remember catching an occasional whiff of her signature scent, Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass. One night a few years back while watching footage of an old Queen concert from 1975, I was overcome by an impulse to connect with my youth and made this purchase of a vintage bottle from around that time (full story here)!

Anyway, I kept in touch with Sheila down the years: I knitted her oldest son a tortoise (complete with properly frilly shell and jaunty mob cap!), and my never-to-be-repeated attempt at baby sitting her middle son gets a mention here.  Sheila has recently retired from teaching and is pursuing art in her free time, producing some quirky and ethereal mixed media paintings, some of which she also sells in greeting card form. She has also taken a lively interest in my perfume hobby - to the point where, during a visit a couple of summers ago, I handed over a bunch of samples I had picked out for her to try, in a bid to identify fragrance styles towards which she had a leaning.  Sheila soon got stuck in, systematically sampling each and making notes on her impressions, which is how it all started...

So without further ado, here are her answers to my three questions:

My perfume collection before  

"I love catching the whiff of a good perfume in someone else’s wake, so I have always owned a bottle - but it was something to use mainly on special occasions. So my ‘collection’ typically comprised one bottle that took up to a year to finish. I was using Calvin Klein ‘Eternity’ for a few years and then Estee Lauder’s ‘Pleasures’. The tendency to stick with what I knew was compounded by my sons checking what I was using and then duplicating it for Christmas and birthday presents. It hadn’t occurred to me to own more than one scent."

What do I own now?

"I now have a proper collection which appeals to me visually as well as for its potential for creating a tiny moment of pleasure to start each day selecting what to wear. I have Narciso Rodriguez ‘For Her’ – a particular favourite, Hermes ‘Vetiver Tonka’ which I like for evenings or special day occasions, White Company ‘Noir’, Penhaligon’s ‘Quercus’, Jo Malone ‘Pomegranate Noir’, Agent Provocateur ‘Eau Eursticielle’ (? Can’t read this on the bottle…)**, Guerlain ‘Vetiver’ in a beautiful vintage tiny green box, Lidl’s ‘Suddenly Madame Glamour’ – which I love even for its name as it does add a sudden whiff of glamour, but I would also like to get Coco Mademoiselle which inspired this copy."

Source: gammaparfum.ru

How have my feelings about fragrance changed?

"As I listed the current perfumes in my collection, I realised that I now have a much more subtle interpretation of scents since you first enticed me by spreading a number of little vials on my kitchen table and encouraging me to try to identify the notes which appealed to me. I must say I am attracted to the actual little bottles and the alchemy of capturing a smell in them. I now regard perfume as something that can be worn every day if done with care.

As I got more interested in scent I realised I like being in shops which are a nice smell – such as The White Company, which always smells as though it has just come out of the wash, and Noa Noa in Brighton which uses a Neal’s Yard ‘Women’s Balance’ oil burner. So I suppose my view of perfume has shifted from something of a luxury reserved for special occasions, to something which can be a little bit life-enhancing on an everyday basis. In shopping terms, just as I would never just casually buy books at the airport to read on holiday, now I don’t view perfume as just for birthday and Christmas presents. 

I expect that has something to do with how the perception and marketing of perfume has changed generally, and not just to a change in my thinking. My mother, when she died in 1982, left a full bottle of Chanel No 5. I cherished it – for years – never opening it, as I knew that she would not have used it except for very special occasions and so I didn’t want to ‘waste’ it. When I finally opened it after many years, I decided – probably quite wrongly – that it had gone off, and threw it out! The experience has served as a metaphor for me ever since."

Source: eBay

'Perfume is for life, not just for Christmas', as the bumper sticker goes - that is such good advice, especially to those of us who are sitting on crazy big collections.  Or 'use it or lose it' might be another one, even if we will never know if Sheila's mother's bottle was off, or just in the process of aging gracefully, much like Catherine Deneuve, the face of No 5 advertising of...coincidentally...1975. ;)

Source: eBay

PS If you would like to see more of Sheila's work, visit her Flickr site here:

** Editor's note: am betting this will be AP Eau Emotionnelle. ;)