Perfume, Marketing, and Feminist Aesthetics: Kate Walsh's Boyfriend

Boyfriend.

So many things to say. So few of them good.

Let’s start with my Boyfriend-related SA encounter. I dropped by my local Sephora for the sole purpose of trying Kate Walsh's Boyfriend. I asked the super attentive SA where it was, and she led me over to the display, which I’d manage to miss completely.

Grabbing the bottle and a scent strip, she turned to me while spraying. “People either love it or hate it,” she said wafting the strip and handing it to me. As I sprayed a little on me, she continued. “Personally, I don’t like it. But it’s mostly the story about it, you know?”

Store Display.

I nodded. I did know. The story is so well known, it is part of the formal marketing campaign for the scent:

 For Kate, that story involves a breakup five years ago, after which she realized how much she missed his scent. "So I went to a fragrance counter and bought a men's fragrance and went, 'Wait a minute, you don’t need a boyfriend to have a Boyfriend! Ding ding ding!' FN1.

The SA wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. It shouldn’t be called Boyfriend. It should be called Stalker.” And then we laughed. Mostly to keep from crying, I think. Which gets me to my biggest beef with Boyfriend.

Let’s look at the marketing language proffered by Sephora to attract buyers toward Boyfriend:

You don't need a boyfriend to have Boyfriend, the new fragrance created by "Private Practice" star Kate Walsh. Inspired by the longing felt for her boyfriend's warm scent, Boyfriend combines muguet, dark plum, myrrh, and night blooming jasmine to create a seductive floral fragrance. Topped off with amber and woody musk, this intoxicating scent includes all the notes that make your eyes roll—just like him.

Does Kate Walsh realize that she is, in fact, implying that you need a boyfriend – some kind of boyfriend? Because obviously you can’t break up with a guy because the relationship was bad and you didn’t really love each other and still be a whole person! You MUST have a man substitute. Like say, one of these. Also, I love how the ad copy downplays the “we just broke up” aspect of the story, which actually makes the ad copy worse. Because even when you have a boyfriend, you might need a temporary substitute for the rare seconds you are left to your tender, desperate, vulnerable feminine lonesome.

"The Boyfriend Kit"

And we MUST talk about the matching product kit and the fake message contained therein. There is a message from your fake, substitute, Boyfriend-scented, paramour-apparition that says: “See you tonight wear the red dress! <3 BF.” Because it isn’t bad enough that you either (a) have a boyfriend and must have some representation of him with you at all times or (b) don’t have a boyfriend but still cling to the shards of your last failed attempt at fairytale bliss to the point that you carry a bottle of scent around as a substitute. You also need fake love notes. That’s the level of self-esteem we’re aiming for here –  generically produced fake love notes, because a woman alone certainly cannot be fulfilled. In fact, she might as well be simply dead. And hey! They can bury her in the red dress her fake Boyfriend loved so much, right next to her dignity, pride, self-esteem, and personal achievements.

 And the names on the bottle and the bag. OMG, the bottle. All those dude names. Why? And they are so generic. (Not unlike the scent itself. More on that to follow.) And let’s just face it people – white. With the exception of Pablo, this is some primarily anglo name mess going on. Because our fake ideal Boyfriend isn’t just boring and average, he’s also white. FN2.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why I have basically flipped out at what is more or less simply a failed marketing attempt. I’ll tell you why. Messages that a woman is not whole without a man are a societal disease, underpinning a violent epidemic. And I’m not speaking in hyperbole:

• One in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime.FN3
• While women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are 5 to 8 times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner. FN4
• Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend each year to 4 million women who are physically abused by their husbands or live-in partners each year. FN4
• The health-related costs of intimate partner violence exceed $5.8 billion each year. Of that amount, nearly $4.1 billion are for direct medical and mental health care services, and nearly $1.8 billion are for the indirect costs of lost productivity or wages. FN5
• On average, more than three women and one man are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day. FN6

That means that every day while I’m a work, a woman in America dies at the hands of someone who is or was her Boyfriend. Every night, while I’m sleeping, another woman dies at the hands of someone who is or was her Boyfriend. And while I’m going to Starbucks and watching television and having dinner and seeing my friends, another woman will die, thanks to her Boyfriend. She is probably dying right now, while I am writing this to you.

Boyfriend, the offensive bottle.

So I have a problem with messages that tell women they can’t make it without a man. They must have a boyfriend. They will be incomplete. They will not be whole. Because these same messages are the ones that help keep women in bad relationships, that discouraging them from leaving before the cycle of violence escalates, that makes us, as a society, blind to seeing her and helping her. Think of what we as a country could do with $5.8 billion if we didn’t need to spend it on heathcare for DV victims. Think of how much more these victims could do if they didn’t lose $1.8 billion annually in lost productivity and wages. For one, they might have the financial means to escape their abusers.

All of this makes me feel rageful toward this insipid fragrance, which I might add only smells like a light and generally unimpressive take of an Oriental of the Shalimar-flavoring. FN7.  The scent itself is sort of boring.  It's generally kind of sweet, meaning all I got from it was the vanilla and amber (which I normally like), but it had a weird smell underneath that was supposed to be wood, and on me came across like shoving your face into a bucket of used, scentless dryer sheets.  It was a static-y buzz that was supposed to be the masculine aspect, I think, but on me the scent came off as generic and cloying, and it lasted like that for about four hours.  It's not quite what I'd expect from, say, a Bath & Body Works scent (in the way that there seems to be no subtly or balance, but rather all sirens and air horns, in their creations) but it is only a step above that, which makes it a not-great scent with an incredibly unfortunate presentation. Additionally, it does not smell particularly ‘masculine,’ in the way that scents are generally directed toward male-identified people or female-identified people.

And that’s before I get to the fact the entire Boyfriend marketing scheme is incredibly heterosexist and ignores the fact that men have Boyfriends whose scent they might miss or that women might miss the scent of the women they date. But in Kate Walsh’s world, I guess this isn’t a problem, since you know, only women can shop on the women’s side of Sephora and only men can shop on the men’s side; consequently I guess if you miss your same-sex partner you can just, I don’t know, buy the scent they actually wore.

And that brings me to my last point: as both a person who aspires to a world unlimited by gender expression, and as a person who just spent about $100 buying a bunch of lovely cheap thrill type scents made and marketed for men, it offends me to think I can’t just go buy and wear whatever scent I love, for whatever reason. Will my credit card be rejected by the Sephora SA if I’m like, “I’m here to buy a bottle of Ralph Lauren Polo for myself, because I like it and it reminds me of my brother who is currently stationed in Iraq?” No. And if I buy a bottle of L'Artisan Timbuktu because it reminds me of my grandfather, who died in 1998, I don’t think the perfume police are going to show up and take my bottle away. Scents matter. Scent memory is an important part of how we experience the world. And when we love a scent for some deeply personal and emotional reason, a generic substitutional icon is not going to meet those needs.

At the end of the day, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Or, to put it another way, a woman, or anyone else for that matter, has as little need of Boyfriend as my kittens need of a lawn mower.

P.S. Memo to Kate Walsh – fire your publicist. FN8. FN9.

For other posts related to perfume, marketing, and gender, see:
~ Gender, Language, and Scent
~ Perfume Marketing and Feminist Aesthetics, Pt. 1: Perfume, Advertising, And the Male Gaze
~ Some More Thoughts on "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" and Advertising of Scents for 'Men'
~ Perfume Marketing and Feminist Aesthetics, Pt. 2: Sex/Erotica and the Male Gaze in Perfume Advertising
~ Perfume Marketing and Feminist Aesthetics, Pt. 3: The Exotic and how it relates to the Male Gaze and Majority View in Perfume Advertising
~ Advertising Critique: Prada Infusion d'Iris

_____________________
FN1. From this article at BellaSugar.

FN2.The SA and I actually joked that perhaps this lost Boyfriend of Walsh's was gay, given the overall feminine presentation of the scent, and that perhaps Pablo was the man Boyfriend left her for, giving him bottle naming rights despite his potentially non-Anglo heritage.

FN3. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The National Institute of Justice, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, July 2000. The Commonwealth Fund, Health Concerns Across a Woman’s Lifespan: 1998 Survey of Women’s Health, 1999.

FN4. Violence by Intimates: Analysis of Data on Crimes by Current or Former Spouses, Boyfriends, and Girlfriends, U.S. Department of Justice, March, 1998.

FN5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States, April 2003.

FN6. Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S. 1993-2004, 2006.

FN7. This comparison is actually an insult to Shalimar.

FN8. I generally like you and think you are a talented actress. No one paid to protect your image should have let you do this to yourself.

FN9. P.S. I know you think this is all about women's empower, like "Yeah! We don't need you, men! We have this bottle of scent we bought with our own money to replace you." That is not, in fact, radical or empowering.  It says that there's still a hole that needs filling, which is the message that causes problems in the first place.  It's approximately as feminist as the concept of a momma grizzly.

Candy, I call my sugar Candy...

Aqaba Midnight Sun EdP

So here’s a confession. I’m a twilight fan. Yeah, I know. I’m 31. I’m a feminist. I have no real excuse for loving these chaste preteen romance novels.

And yet…

When I reflect on what it was like to be confused by the actions and statements of the opposite sex, when I think about how first love felt, so all consuming, so sure, and when I consider how total the pain of losing such a love was, I have to say the series, particularly the first two books, feels so accurate, so real.

So I admit it. I own all four books, in hardback no less. I’ve read them, several times. I’ve seen the movies. I have the soundtracks. I’ve always been a sucker for stories about the supernatural, and these completely hooked me. Now, like the little twifans spoofed on SNL last week, I see twilight everywhere. So when I first picked up Aqaba Midnight Sun, the name reminded me of the book names, and the first thing I thought was, “Is this scent Bella would wear? Is this a scent a vampire would enjoy?”

Silly. I know. But there it is.

According to Aqaba,

This velvety floral is full of deep purple shadows and glimmers of gemstones. A lovely bouquet of gardenia, tuberose, freesia and sweet orange blossom rests on a warm and plushy bed of white musk and sandalwood. A tryst in a royal garden -- the night air is still and heavy from the heat of the day as the blooms release their most intoxicating scents like a sigh. There is a rustle of silk and murmured endearments. A romantic fragrance that speaks in a hushed voice, with a gentle, spicy sweetness. Notes: gardenia, freesia, rose damask, orange flower, rose, Indian sandalwood, white musk, tuberose

Is it weird to say that the application on me is like flowers and sweet tarts? I definitely get sandalwood and some white musk, but the flowers in this combine to smell like a strange indistinguishable mix placed in a vase, and that vase has been placed inside a larger one, and the spaces in between have been filled with Sweet Tarts. Or maybe it’s grape kool-aid? Perhaps that’s what feeds this eclectic bouquet inside of water? A bit further in I get buts of cinnamon and even a tiny animalistic something that comes off like hot skin, warm asphalt, or melting rubber. But that nice weirdness is buried so deep inside the candy flower mess that I can’t get to the interesting part with any consistency; I burn my nose out, inhaling the strong part over and over, in the effort.

I’d say that this might be perfect for a fifteen year old if the sillage weren’t quite so large. I can’t imagine winning over anyone hundred year old vampires with this one; the sheer volume of it would drive away such sensitive noses. It’s not a bad scent, but I can’t say it’s good either. My biggest difficulty is that I cannot imagine who would wear it. So often I smell a scent and even if I don’t want to buy it for myself to wear, but I can easily picture a snapshot of the person who would wear it. But with this one, it’s so many things that could be great wrapped in cellophane, dipped into wax candy, and heated by a hairdryer held waaaay to close to the mixture that I can’t even get a handle on the sort of animal, vegetable, or mineral that might choose this one.

Perhaps it is meant for more discerning noses than mine. If you’ve tried it, can you tell me what you think?

Midnight Sun is available in 30ml, 50ml, and 100ml through Luckyscent and the perfumer. Samples available through Luckyscent or direct from the perfumer.

“He has taken my complete heart.
Got a sweet tooth for my sweetheart.
Candy, it's gonna be just dandy,
the day I take my Candy
And make him mine, all mine.”
- “Candy,” Johnny Mercer

Want more? Try…
~ a review from A Mix By Any Other Name

I Want Candy!

It has come to my attention that I have been remiss in posting about my thoughts on scents for a lovely Fall day. It seems I’m perpetually behind on these things, but in this case I have a pretty good defense. It’s hard to think of fabulous fall scents when you are stuck in a place where Fall never comes. The leaves don’t turn. The temperature is in the mid-90s. Everyone is still wearing shorts. Witherist thou Fall scent post?, you ask. Whitherist my Fall weather?, I reply.

Don’t worry. In approximately five days I will be back in my beloved Pacific Northwest where the cold winds blow, the rain is ever present, and the leaves definitely undergo a fall time transformation. I’m sure the cool weather will inspire me. Until then, you’ll have to wait out my time in the endless summer purgatory with me.

Les Nereides Douceur de Vanille

I love vanillas, bit vanillas have a risk, at times, of having an initial scent that hits your nose with an all too familiar note. You lean in looking for heaven and come back up with a nose full of Play-doh. In my mind this play-doh is always that neon red-orange color I associate with fallout shelter warnings, but hey, chose your own color to suit. While reviews on Luckyscent warned of a “baby powder” possibility, which I can see a little off, I definitely got play-doh instead.

With Les Nereides Douceur de Vanille, it’s the play-doh note on application. According to LuckyScent, Douceur de Vanille’s notes are “bourbon vanilla, almond, cocoa, white rose, star aniseed” and it is described as

The softest, milkiest vanilla we've ever found. This evokes the pure, delicate sweetness of the icy crystals on top of homemade ice cream. Incomparable bourbon vanilla is caressed with almond and cocoa and freshened with white rose. Opening with a burst of innocence and powder, Douceur de Vanille mellows into a gentle, creamy skin scent that seems more like a delectable aura than a perfume – as if you just happen to have naturally delicious skin. The perfect warm weather vanilla. Heavenly.

I don’t know where the “softest and sweetest” is coming from on this one. It’s so play-doh-y on me that, even fifteen minutes in, it feels like it will melt my eyes. It is so cloying. A lot of the Luckyscent reviews also mentioned this being a “light” scent. I took two swipes out of a 1ml wand sample and OHHOLYMARYMOTHEROFGOD, light was NOT a word I’d associate here.

This is a borderline scrubber for me, something that I say very rarely. An hour in and I still feel it rising off skin like some ghost of vanilla past come back to life to haunt me for all those times I said that I couldn’t get enough vanilla. I think it’s the aniseed and rose coming through super strong so that it’s equal parts those two and vanilla, and it just one hot salty sugary mess. I love vanillas. Hell, I love big vanillas, cheap vanillas, one note vanillas, all kinds of vanillas. But this one is just way too much vanilla for me. And that, my friends, is saying something. It you’re looking for your vanilla and salt, stingy scent, trust me when I saw that going with Annick Goutal Vanille is probably a better bet.

Montale Vanille Absolu

On the other hand, literally, we have Montale Vanille Absolu. Luckyscent describes Vanille Absolu as

Smooth and sweet, silky and enveloping, Vanille Absolu is everything you could ever desire in an upscale vanilla: swirly folds of boozy vanilla are set off and enhanced by soft woods and a touch of cinnamon and clove. It’s more like the pure distilled essence of a true vanilla bean pod than the wafer cookie vanillas that have flooded the market in the last few years, but make no mistake: this beauty flaunts its sweet depths with wild abandon and really doesn’t care who’s looking. A refined vanilla without being snooty, we can think of several perfumes that trumpet “vanilla” in their name then try to bury the note under a pile of florals or other notes in an effort to be “classy.” Montale got it right – there’s a reason so many of us love the smell of vanilla, and Vanille Absolu is it. It’s one of the best pure, elegant vanillas on the market. Period.

The notes: vanilla, cinnamon, clove, woods.

There is nothing play-doh-y about this one. Instead it comes on hot and heavy and cotton candy heaven. If you like candyfloss scents, this is going to rock your socks. The clove comes through initially in a weird musky almost fake way, but after about an hour the whole mixture clams down into a really lovely candied vanilla and spice mix. It’s like smearing yourself in coating made of melted caramels, condensed sweetened milk, cinnamon and cloves. Of if someone who smoked lovely clove ciagarettes and wore really strongly vanilla flavored lip gloss gave you a kiss deep enough to knock you on your ass. Either way, a lovely experience, but a little goes a long way. Personally the longer I had it on the more I loved it, but don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Definitely not for the foodie/candy floss faint of heart, but if you are already into these scents, you might like this. It’s more candy than some of the other foodie vanillas I love, like Memoire Liquide Creme de Vanille #204 or Il Profumo Vanille Bourbon, but more complex and interesting than Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Abricot, another candy floss that I love. Where as Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Abricot is a sweet fruity youthful nights on the boardwalk kind of scent, Montale Vanille Absolu is like an adult cotton candy...perhaps one that goes with waking up in the sand, under the boardwalk the morning after.

Also, can I just take a moment to lament the packaging on both of these? Those angels on the label of the Les Nereides label make me feel vomitous. Was Les Nereides intending to market for six year old girls? And Montale -- why take all that lovely scent and put it into something that looks like an aluminun water bottle bike fanatics use? What's wrong with a nice clean looking glass bottle? Oh happy medium, where have you gone...

Les Nereides Douceur de Vanille, clearly loved by others far more than me, is currently on backorder at Luckyscent, is available in 100ml for $65. Montale Vanille Absolu is available in 50ml for $95 and 100ml for $135. The 100ml of Vanille Absolu is on backorder until November, though, so it might be worth looking around if you want to buy either sooner.

"Candy on the beach, there's nothing better!
But I like candy when it's wrapped in a sweater.
Some day soon I'll make you mine,
Then I'll have candy all the time..."
- "I Want Candy," Bow Wow Wow

I couldn’t find any reviews of Les Nereides Douceur de Vanille, though I feel the user reviews on Luckyscent cover a lot of ground. For reviews of Montale Vanille Absolu, try….
~ A review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ A review from 1000 Scents.

Images from Luckyscent, TravelMuse, and EmmaGem.

Some were spellbound; some were hellbound...

Avon U by Ungaro For Her & Bond Girl 007 Forever

Today we reach the end of my foray into Avon samples, though not the end of our week of affordable scents. But take heart, dear reader, there are more affordable scents on the docket for Friday and Saturday.

According to Avon, U by Ungaro For Her is

a fresh, woody floral fragrance which features notes of bergamot blossom, freesia and pepper blossom in the top, acacia, living lotus flower, and osmanthus in the heart, and orris, sandalwood and musk in the base.
Notes: bergamot blossom, freesia, pepper blossom, acacia aura, lotus flower, osmanthus, iris, sandalwood and musk

The first thing I think when I try U by Ungaro is that the scent is trying, on application, to be too many things at once, practically knocking me down with its enthusiasm. Then, almost instantly, it goes flat, puffing up iris and sandalwood at me like the weak smell of 1950s face powder. Had the opening happened slowly, playing out the notes over time, I think it might have been great. Truthfully, there is just too much happening that disappears too fast for me to even be able to tell you what all is happening there. It's sweet, it's spicy, it's floral, it's...trying to hard.

Reese Witherspoon is fronting for this one, and I love her and think she is immensely talented, but when I smell U by Ungaro, the immediate mental image I get is of Tracy Flick, the toxically perky high school overachiever. She's like Paris Geller, if Paris had no conscience.

Last up is Bond Girl 007 Forever. The ad copy hilariously reads, "A sultry cocktail of dangerous seduction blending sleek citrus fruits and black pepper with sexy jasmine florals and smoky woods. Forever Irresistible. Forever Bond." The notes include pink pepper, rose, neroli, violet, muguet, amber, incense and cedar.

This was by far the best of the Avon scents I tried. On me, it is an aromatic citrus, all citrus and spice with a hint of amber-y sweetness. It’s a lovely scent, light and fun. It reminds me of CK One, but sweeter and more feminine. That said, I think it could make a nice masculine scent as well.

Bond Girl 007 Forever retails in a cute 50ml bottle for $30 but is currently on sale through Avon for a mere $25. As scents bought smell unsniffed go, not a bad price point. However if you know someone who sells Avon you can, and should, get your hands on a sample.

I'm sure any of you that have looked in the general direction of any news source this week know that L.A. is experiencing some pretty serious wild fire right now -- over 140,000 acres and counting. The area I'm in is fine, but it's a pretty terrifying experience to look up into the sky and see haze from the massive smoke, not to mention the homes burned and the people injured and killed, plus the thousands more at risk. So cross your fingers and toes that we get some relief down here. Living here right now, between the temperature and the fires, more or less resembles living on the surface of the sun.

"So don't delay. Act now. Supplies are running out.
Allow, if you're still alive, six to eight years to arrive.
And if you follow, there may be a tomorrow.
But if the offer's shunned,
you might as well be walkin' on the sun..."
- "Walking on the Sun," Smash Mouth

With Every Trace Of Life, It Seems, Confined Within A Frame

Avon Christian Lacroix Rouge & Christian Lacroix Absynthe

The recent death of John Hughes and some writing I’ve been doing about the influence of Madonna in my life has got me thinking about the value of nonconformity lately.

I, like every other teenager in the history of time, once believed I was a unique and beautiful snow flake and felt the need to express that though the archetypical fashion choices denoting rebellion at that particular moment in suburban America. This, for me, meant flannel shirts over thermal underwear (in the Texas heat, mind you), long flower skirts, and big stompy boots. Also, lots of black. So much black, in fact, that my grandmother cut me off, wardrobe-wise, until I promised to buy something, *anything*, not black.

But underneath all this conforming nonconformity was a heart yearning to find originality and self-expression amongst the cookie cutter tract homes of my world. That part of me – the self-obsessive, introspective, navel gazing, artist-type – has never died. Though submerged by an even greater desperation to survive, she’s in there, still raging against the machine, whatever the machine might be. I like to think she does it with more effectiveness and grace now, or at least better clothes, but who can really tell about these things?

Anyway, this sharded self who must.be.different. above all things really values the occasional waft of a scent she’s never seen before. If it’s weird, difficult to love, or vaguely offensive in an artistic way, this is the part of me that screams, “YES!” and beings the frantic scramble for the credit card. Given my incredible brokenness and the high costs of moving and setting up life all over again, this is the part of my inner perfumista who is the least happy with me right now.

My Avon week is not really helping.

Today I tried two more Avon scents, Christian Lacroix Rouge and Christian Lacroix Absynthe. Like most Avon scents I was hunting all over the internet trying to find more than a meager one line description and a few notes as a starting point. (Not that ad/marketing copy ever really reflects the experience, but hey, it’s nice to start somewhere.) Thanks to Robin’s exceptional thoroughness at posting “New Scent” posts on Now Smell This!, I did find a few little blurbs.

Christian Lacroix Rouge is described by Avon as a “burst of citrus and spices [that] unveils a floral heart wrapped in the most sensual cashmere woods.” Robin adds that Rouge is a “‘floral chypre’ developed by perfumers Laurent Le Guernec and Carlos Benaim and includes notes of white pepper, orange, red peony; osmanthus flower, plum blossom, water lily, cashmere woods, patchouli and musk.”

Christian Lacroix Absynthe, per Avon, is supposed to be “[a] mysterious potion of sexy florals and rich woods inspired by the magic of absynthe.” Thanks to Robin, the fragrance notes are supposed to “include absinthe, freesia, green anise, orchid, saffron, narcissus, ancient woods, ebony, musk, myrrh and amber.” Supposed, Christian Lacroix himself had this to say about Absynthe:

Absynthe, a mysteriously mesmerizing 19th century potion known as the green fairy, is still one of the world's most seductive mysteries. Irresistibly inviting, dangerously captivating - a great inspiration to my fashion and newest fragrance.

On me, at first, both Rouge and Absynthe were fantastic and unique. Rouge was a delicious warm, sticky carmel apple concoction; Absynthe started out a weird balance of black liquorice, amber, limes, and cocoa powder. But almost immediately this strangeness burns off, as both collapse into a fizzy sweetness that reminds me of getting soda foam up my nose. An hour in, while Rouge tips toward the warm and sweet and Absynthe tips toward the aquatic and citrus, the mildly spicy bases were virtually identical. Both seemed flankers of a missing center pole, and without that center, neither really hold. And it makes me sad, too, because I tried both three times and each time the nonconformist in me wailed as the immediate singularly sensational impressions dissolved, crying, “Wait! That was lovely! Where did it go!?!”

I miss the weird. I like the weird. Absynthe could have stayed a mildly sweet, peppery, tangy citrus mix. Rouge could have stayed warm and supple and so sweet it reminds me of Starbucks Carmel Apple Spice. I’m sure neither would possess a huge audience, but it would have been so much better than the completely boring, mild and non-descript fragrance each becomes. As they are, neither were meant for me; they are not unpleasant, just ho-hum. And the little rebel within simply won’t have that.

“I feel like this could all come to no good.
The kids who populate these cul-de-sacs
will never know what stood
beneath those cookie cutter houses:
fields and streams and woods.
They'll sit in cars and wait for mom to drive them
out of this boring neighborhood.”
- “Oh, Susquehanna!,” Defiance, Ohio

Christian Lacroix Rouge & Christian Lacroix Absynthe are both available for purchase direct from Avon.

New year, new fragrances.

I know it's been a while since I posted. I'm making up for it by offering you three very different fragrance reviews at once.

Tauer Perfumes L'Air du desert marocain

The first new fragrance I sampled of '09: Andy Tauer's L'Air du desert marocain.

According to LuckyScent,

L'Air du Desert Marocain is the scent of desire, inspired by the fragrant world of the Maghreb desert, powerful, sensual and pure. It's a dry, resinous cedar scent, rounded out with rock rose and jasmine, and hints of typical Moroccan spices such as coriander, cumin and petitgrain. A unisex scent, the cedar and vetiver base notes hover over a fine amber background.

L'Air du desert marocain notes: Coriander, Petitgrain (Bitter orange), Lemon, Bergamot, Jasmin, Cistus, Bourbon, Geranium, Cedarwood, Vetiver, Vanille, Patchouli and Ambergris

When I first put it on out of a tiny one mil sampler with a wand, my initial thought was "Wow! I will never be brave enough to wear a full spray of this." Even after wearing it, I can't believe I started 2009 off with L'Air du desert marocain. The reason it shocked me was because I told a fellow perfumista that I could not even imagine purchasing L'Air du desert marocain because it was just so BIG. On me the spice notes initially overwhelm the cedar and vetiver notes, but on dry down the base notes come forward equally powerfully. L'Air du desert marocain is this audacious fragrance that enters a room about five full minutes before you do. It doesn't just hint that you might be worth looking it, it rolls in with the wearer under a full tilt spotlight, chorus line kicking back-up, belting out "Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

I have a hard time imaging buying a full bottle of L'Air du desert marocain because I don’t think I’d be in the mood to wear it often enough, though I might be willing to buy a decant or go in on a bottle split. But what a compliment to Taurer perfumes that they have made something that is clearly and unavoidably beautiful and almost overwhelming in its artfulness. Truly one of the loveliest fragrances I’ve smelled, even if it isn’t for me. Andy Tauer described it this way, “Imagine finding peace in a room, lying on the bed, exhausted from the heat of the day, with the window open, letting the cool air in which still is very dry and filled with the scents from the near desert and overlayed with the spicy scents of the streets below.” That must be one helluva street, Andy.

For additional L'Air du desert marocain reviews, see Scentzilla,
The Non-Blonde, and The Scented Life.

Cumming the Fragrance

According to the fragrance site,

CUMMING is different on everyone, for like every great fragrance, it changes on your skin over time. The longer you wear it and the more you sweat, Cumming gets deeper and sexier.

Base notes of leather, peat fire, highland mud, burnt rubber and white truffle ground the scent with rugged sensuality, while the core notes of cigar, heather, Douglas fir and rubber contribute to its sharpness. The fragrance is completed with spicy top notes of bergamot, black pepper, Scotch pine and whiskey.

I picked up Cumming in the “boozy scents” sampler over at The Perfumed Court. The TPC ladies noted “whiskey” next to Cumming, and I’ll give them alcohol-y, but not whiskey. I’m a whiskey drinker by choice, and really drink very little besides the hard alcohol (hey, I know what I like!), but even the beer I like tends to be aged in whiskey barrels, that’s how much I love whiskey. And I just don’t smell whiskey here, though there is something alcohol-y about it. I definitely smell the leather, fir, and tobacco notes on me, but with something biting enough that makes it something you imagine it smoothly burning on the way down. Truly lovely and totally worth a purchase.

For more reviews of Cumming the Fragrance, see Perfume Smellin' Things and Now Smell This!.

Michele Bergman Black Gardenia parfum oil

Like floating in and out of a dream. The blossom may be snow-blind white, but there is something deeply mysterious in the soul of gardenia and this silken oil blend captures it. Initially intense, Black Gardenia softens and becomes exquisitely fresh as it warms on your skin. The beguiling heady sweetness of the beloved flower is rendered with a haunting delicacy and touched with the barest whisper of dark intentions. Like the lilt of the sirens song or the fragile glow of a will o’ the wisp, this fragrance reminds us that something extremely beautiful can also be extremely dangerous. Mesmerizing.

The initial impression that Michele Bergman Black Gardenia parfum oil’s makes the mishmash fruit smell of candy necklaces and braclets. On me it just reads as sort of sickeningly sweet, less flowers and more thick sweet ooze, like the cross between a candy store and a Yankee Candle store, if Yankee Candle only made sweet floral and food scents. On the dry down the floral notes strengthen and the candy begins to recede, but it remains a mishmashy one note song, like strongly smelling cotton candy. While Luckyscent lists “Halle Berry, Rosanna and Patricia Arquette, Shiva Rose, Stevie Nicks, Rebecca Romaijn, Janice Dickenson” as “in the know” on this one, and they can keep it, because it clearly wasn’t meant for me.

For additional thoughts on Black Gardenia , see the Luckyscent customer comments.

Photos from Luckyscent and the Cumming fragrance site.

Review: Bond no. 9 Little Italy

Bond no. 9 describes Little Italy as follows:

Citrus-flavored melt-in-your-mouth gelato in spray form.
Top Notes: Clementine, Grapefruit, Mandarin. Middle Notes: Tangerine, Jasmine. Base Notes: Sheer Musk.

Gelato? I think not. On me, this reads as more in line with orange sweettarts or smarties. It's both too sweet and citrus-y alright, but it completely lacks depth. And there is sharpness to the citrus tang that I found unpleasant, in a not really citrus but more what faux citrus flavoring tastes like way. Might make a better car freshener, but not a great perfume.