There's something deep inside of me; there's someone else I've got to be...

Monday, 2/21/11 - Friday, 2/25/11

 I went to the coast this past weekend and it was deserted because of the cold, but so beautiful. The tide was so high when I got there the beach was basically nonexistence There is nothing quite like staring out at the sea to make one feel contemplative, which is what I felt.

Monday: I'm taking a personal pass today because I got "a wild hair" as my father would say and, as I was running out the door this morning, layered Origins Ginger Essence with Bath & Body Works Wild Honeysuckle, which has resulted in a spicy top note with a soapy dry sweetness underneath. I have no idea what made me pair the two or motivated me to layer this morning, I just did. But it turned out nice.

Tuesday: L'Artisan Al Oudh - Notes: Cumin, cardamom, pink pepper, Neroli, rose, castoreum, civet, leather, musk,Oud, sandalwood, Atlas cedar, patchouli, myrrh, incense, vanilla, tonka bean OMG! So good! I haven't tried a lot of Ouds yet but I'm ready to start. It's a dry, warm, and mix of wood, moss, and peat. It's smoky. It's slightly medicinal. It reminds me of walking in the woods after a rain in the summer. It's a very different green outdoor scent than, say, CB I Hate Perfume Black March. It's an intense scent, and feels very close. I don't know how else to explain it. Some scents are light and airy and spacious; this scent feel like this moment from George Michaels' "Freedom! '90" video. FN1 Right around the 5:45 mark, one of the models pulls her entire head inside a black wool sweater and they shoot her singing inside this kind of...cocoon. Al Oudh does that. It cocoons you. The sillage is wide, so beware. Don't get over zealous with spraying if you can't take/don't want them to smell you coming. If you do, though, it's a wonderful way to go. 5 of 5 nods.

Wednesday: Pacifica Indian Coconut Nectar solid perfume - Notes include: vanilla, coconut, vetiver This starts off a a very gourmand vanilla and coconut mixture, not unlike taking a large tablespoon of sweetened flaked coconut and holding it in your mouth. After about an hour, the sweetness fades and a creamy vetiver base comes forward mingling with the coconut. It's so sweet I don't know if it would work as a spray, but it's a great solid perfume. It's just lovely and would be a great summer scent. My only complaint is that it only lasts two hours before it disappears. Luckily I can carry the little solid perfume tin in my purse for mid evening reapplications. 3.5 of 5 nods.

Thursday: Dawn Spencer Horwitz (DHS) Perfumes Nourouz (Tamarind / Paprika - Holiday Edition - Natural) - Notes include: Black Pomegranate (accord), Paprika, Tamarind, Bulgarian Rose Otto, Orris, Osmanthus, Oppopanax, Red Wine notes, Tobacco Absolute, Vanilla Absolute

 Nourouz, also known as "Tamarind / Paprika" is a limited edition holiday scent. It's a lovely scent with a boozy edge that blooms into a nice,dry warmly herbal scent. I find it to be sort of black tea like, with a touch of cream and a smidgen of sugar. I enjoy it because it's slightly sweet without being gourmand or floral. Truly lovely and delicious, great on a man or woman. 5 of 5 nods.

Friday: Annick Goutal Gardenia Passion - Notes: gardenia, orange blossom, tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, vanilla, patchouli and oakmoss Wow. I have not encountered such a gritty gardenia before. Really! I feel like this is a scented caste iron gardenia, a gardenia made of glass and spun, still not, in gun powder. It's edgy in a way that florals aren't usually, which makes it a very sexy gardenia, but in completely different way from other gardenias. The tuberose is nice but the sharper notes are what really wow me here, because it is so different from Robert Piguet Fracas but yet just as fabulous and strong. Love, love, love. 5 of 5 nods.

Winner of the week: What a great week of scents!  I honestly cannot choose this week -- love'em all and can't wait to have them.
"All we have to do now
is take these lies and make them true somehow.
All we have to see
is that I don't belong to you
and you don't belong to me.
Freedom...."
~ "Freedom '90," George Michael

Also it's that time again, readers.  It's time for our monthly mixed CD and sample drawing!  Three or four samples of my choice plus a mix CD of the variety given by significant others in high school, complete with handmade cover art by moi.  And as a teaser -- the mix has got a little bit of everything, from artists like Best Coast and Be Your Own Pet to Wanda Jackson and The Ronettes, with a little Decemberists and Black Keys in between. 


Leave me a comment to enter, telling me either (a) the Oud you recommend I try next or (b) how you think Oscars went.  Or (c) anything you want to tell me, really.  Open to all readers regardless of residence. Comment by 11:59 PM, Pacific Standard time, Saturday March 5, 2011 to enter.

Mix title: This Gun Don't Care Who It Shoots.

_________________________________________________
FN1. Video below. WARNING: NSFW depending on your work.

Oscar Musings: What Does a "Best Picture" Smell Like?

Further thoughts on the Oscars... See my guest post at Now Smell This! for more.

There is very little in the world as satisfying as a well-told story.

A truly good story is one that is an immersive experience. It takes the voyeur into itself, immersing you in the sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste of the moment. When any piece of art does this, we like to honor it. For perfume, we have Prix International du Parfum, the Fifis, Grand Prix du Parfum, and so forth. When it comes to motion pictures, two annual judgments tend to reign supreme: Cannes and the Academy Awards.

Tomorrow the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will hand out the coveted statuettes for the 83rd time. First held May 16, 1929 to celebrate outstanding film achievements for 1927 and 1928, the “Oscars” are now shown annually in over 200 countries. So it’s safe to say that, unless you live under a rock or on Mars, you’ve heard about the little golden statute and all the pomp and circumstance that goes with it. While there are a lot of awards for various aspects – costuming, screen writing, score – the most sought after award, year after year, is Best Motion Picture. This year ten films will duke it out to be named story of the year.

When faced with contenders as varied as Toy Story 3, Black Swan, The Kids Are Alright, and Inception, how does one choose the “best”?

As perfume obsessed as I am, it tends to invade all aspects of my life, including my other obsessions. When I smell perfume, I hear music, and vice versa. When I encounter a truly beautiful photograph or painting, sometimes I have an immediate scent association. So of course, as I sit around watching movies, I think about perfume. What’s interesting is I don’t often find myself thinking about what a particular character would wear so much as I find myself wondering what scent could capture the overall feeling of the story I’m seeing.

I wonder, if this film was a perfume, what would it smell like?

So, dear readers, my challenge to you, on this Oscar-eve, is this: Think of the movies nominated for best picture this year. If you were asked to attempt to explain to someone who had not seen them what the essence of their stories were through scent alone, what would you choose?

Today is the day, darling readers....

...the day I cross the Rubicon and guest post for Now Smell This!

This is like climbing the Everest of Perfume Blogging, and I am super grateful to Robin for letting me blather on about two things I love -- movies and perfume.

My post, A brush with fame: perfume at the Oscars,  is posted.  Come on over and talk to me.


 Photo taken from J Chau at flickr; all rights reserved by J Chau.

Scent that Book!: Beautiful Creatures & Beautiful Darkness

Scent That Book! is a new, reoccurring feature here at Feminine Things. It is premised on the idea that even books require perfuming, whether the authors realize that or not.

Reading is sexy!

Dear reader, do you read a lot? I read…a lot. I’ve always been a big reader. I was the kid who always carried around a book like a safety blanket; I was like the Rory Gilmore of my Houston suburb. My reading slowed to a trickle during college and then law school. In the last year, though, I’ve returned to fiction with ferocity. I read two to three books a week, usually in the two hundred to five hundred page range.

Something I’ve been noticing. These books will have passages that describe scents, usually the specific way a person smells, and my little sniffa brain immediately begins distracting me with an internal hunt to place the scent in the panoply of perfumes I know. Then I thought – why play a game alone that could be so much more fun with friends?

Thus here we are, the first in a new series I’m calling Scent that Book. I’ll give you a passage from a book with some scent related items mentioned. You help me figure out what perfume you think might be similar.

First up:  Beautiful Creatures, and its sequel, Beautiful Darkness, also known as the first two novels in  The Caster Chronicles, are books by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia. Beautiful Creatures was named it one of the top ten books of 2009 and the top pick for best teen book by Amazon.com. Here's a brief description:

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small southern town of Gatlin has ever seen. Lena has wavy black hair with large green eyes. She wears a necklace made of pieces of junk and carries around a tattered journal. She is gossiped about, picked on and neglected because of the fact that she is the niece of Macon Melchizedek Ravenwood (Otherwise known as Old Man Ravenwood), the town's shut in. Lena is struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten south, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Lawson Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape Gatlin, is haunted by dreams in which he is trying to save a beautiful girl he has never met. He has brown hair and blue eyes and lives with his care taker and house keeper Amarie "Amma" Treadeau and his depressed father who has shut himself in his study since his wife's death. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

Without giving away too much detail, here are two snippets of scent description from Beautiful Darkness:

I was caught in her drag, struck by the current that bound us together and kept us apart. I leaned in to kiss her mouth, sand she held the lemon in front of my nose, teasing. "Smell." "Smells like you." Like lemon and rosemary, the scent that had drawn me to Lena when we first met. (pg. 32) 

Lemon and rosemary, Lena Duchannes' signature scent. So what do you think, dear reader? What scent might capture all the magical turmoil of Lena Duchannes (rhymes with "rain") and her star-crossed love affair with Ethan Wate in tiny Gatlin? I was thinking maybe Guerlain Jicky at first because Lena's power is supposed to go back generations, but now I'm thinking Miller Harris Le Petit Grain, the oak-moss, vetiver, and patchouli leaves at the base reflect some of the story elements that I'll let you discover on your own.

Ah, yes, but as all star-crossed stories go, Lena and Ethan struggle with forces working against their love, and teenage temptation rears its head. Enter Liv, who is described below.

But I didn't answer her. I pushed her shiny blonde hair away from her face and leaned down, our faces only inches apart. She inhaled softly, our lips so close I could feel her breath and the scent of her skin, like honeysuckle in springtime. She smelled like sweet tea and old books, like she had always been here. (p. 211)

Honeysuckle, sweet tea, old books. Like a cross between CB I Hate Perfume In the Library and Jo Malone Honeysuckle & Jasmine, or better yet DSH Perfumes Wild Honeysuckle? Though that, sadly, misses the sweet tea aspect, which if you're from any part of the South, you know won't do a'tall. I've never tried elizabethW Sweet Tea but maybe that would do. I dunno. It's stumper, Liv, the English would-be librarian.

So now its your turn. You've got a few words about the universe, the characters, and some notes. What do you think?

You can read more about Beautiful Creatures and Beautiful Darkness here.

Random Film Thought of the Day

InStyle did a piece recently on the 10 most iconic movie kisses...

Sam & Jake in Sixteen Candles

....and this one WAS NOT on the list.

Fools.