If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Perfume and the Inner Critic

Dear reader:

Moving is exhausting!

I am about to make an entirely obvious statement: moving sucks. Yes, moving is a pain, particularly when you are a perfumie, and you collect something expensive and fragile that is both heat and light sensitive. David and I have recently left our apartment of ten years and are currently in transition housing pending the end of his position as a live-in college administrator in July. FN1. This means I will be living out of boxes for six week as I wait for move two to begin. David is headed for law school this fall, so we are currently house hunting while he finishes up at work, I'm working full-time, and writing on top of that.

It's been a busy two months, and the next one looks similarly hectic.

Temp perfume storage
Pt. 1....

Anyway, this extended moving period has led to a lot of me looking at my perfume collection. Carefully putting things into boxes, wrapping with bubble wrap, examining storage methods, realizing I need more rifle shell boxes, etc. FN2.

Part of moving means looking really thoroughly at my perfume collection as I pack and unpack it. As I went through it this time, I found myself feeling strangely judgmental about my own collection. “Not enough classics, not enough high end; too many small or inexpensive scents; too much breadth in some houses; not enough in others.” Over all, my snap judgment? “Not a serious collection.”

This kitten has judged your perfume
collection....insufficient.

It was that last thought that finally tripped me up. Really? Not a serious collection?  My perfume collection is worth more than my car. Hell, it might be worth more than my car and David’s combined. I have major and minor houses, classics and cutting edge indies, department store sprays and only-heard-of-it-if-you’re-into-perfume scents. If I don't have a serious collection, who the hell does?

When did I become so snobby about perfume? When did it become about status and not about smelling good? And why do I care? Who is this person who has set up shop in my head and judges my tastes as narrow or ignorant or pedestrian? This person who thinks this even as I reach forgotten corners of my collection and discover scents I love all over again? I have smelled so good all week, and yet couldn’t bring myself to tell you about it because I’m having weird perfume shame.

Temp perfume storage
Pt 2... & counting....

Well shame be damned, I say. I will recommit to telling you what’s awesome that has passed beneath my nose, which this week has included: a preview of slumberhouse’s pending fall release, Tunis Mills, which smells like the smell of fireplace smoke and sweet cider and warm coffee and about a half dozen other aspects of the best warm things fall has to offer (went immediately onto my 'definitely buy' list); Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Jazz Funeral, which is a warm sultry homage to the NOLA tradition that celebrates a transition into that sweet bye and bye with rum, magnolias, funeral garlands, dirt, and moss; and a layering experiment that yielded awesome sticky sweet and salty results of awesomeness, CB I Hate Perfumes Smokey Tobacco Accord with Demeter Fragrance Library’s Salt Air. Every single scent (or combo) made me happy as hell to be a perfume collector, and not one thing I wore broke the $60 mark.

And you know what this experience has (re)taught me? If loving low or common or less well-known or less prestigious or less established scents/houses is wrong, dear reader, I don’t wanna be right.  I smell great, I'm happy about it, and I will now gleefully share my perfume joy with you all, come what may.

More to come.

Love,

Diana

______________________________________
FN1. To be fair, it was always his apartment. I've lived other places during the last decade, but let's be honest: I always thought of it as my house, too.

FN2. For those of you unfamiliar with perfume sample storage, let's just say I end up on a lot of weird NRA-related mailing lists trying to find good upright storage for samples.

Saved by Steampunk: BPAL The Obsidian Widow

Yesterday I walked into the student lounge outside my apartment and was immediately taken with the scent roses, patchouli, and tobacco smoke. "Who smells so good?" I wondered. Turned out my friend Hilary was there, looking all awesomely steampunk and smelling terrific. FN1. "What are you wearing?," I asked/demanded.

What was she wearing? Dare I tell you? Something steampunk, of course! It was Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab The Obsidian Widow. The scent is described as follows:

 

Tinkling tiny feet scuttle across a massive oak desk, navigating through a flurry of papers and a maze of discarded books, wires, and bolts. Glistening green venom beads at its chelicerae, and a ruby hourglass flashes from the creature's underbelly as it begins to weave.  

Notes: Pinot noir, dark myrrh, red sandalwood, black patchouli, night-blooming jasmine, and attar of rose.

The scent is terrific, a total knock out. All night long I kept sniffing at her and sighing. The Black Widow was a strong smooth patchouli rose with strong jasmine and sandalwood notes. I don't own it, or have a sample, so I can't tell you how it stacks up against other scents with similar notes like L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses, Juliette Has a Gun Lady Vengeance, or Frederic Malle Une Rose. All I can tell you is that the smell of it was pretty and it made me happy.

I've been struggling for a while now. I keep smelling good things but I am having a hard time finding new words to describe them. New ways to explain to you the happiness I feel with I ind a particularly nice scent, even when I don't have new words to describe it. I kept trying to talk to you, and feeling like what I have to say is not good enough. I kept starting and never finishing, doubt defeating my feeble words and dumb, numb fingers over and over. I think I'm done with that, now. I never thought I'd say these words (outside of some piece of fiction, anyway) but The Black Widow freed me. So I'm going to tell you what I can about what I'm smelling and what I like and how pretty it is in the best way I know how, and you'll have to take what I have to say with all the authority I have ever had: none whatsoever, sans my own perfumey wanderings.

Yep. I'm back, friends. Thanks for waiting for me.

The Obsidian Widow is a perfume oil, and is available in a 5ml bottle for a mere $17.50, available direct from the perfumer here. The stuff is very strong, so a little goes a long way. In gratitude for to BPAL and The Black Widow, I'm thinking of buying some myself.
_______________________

FN1. Seriously, she looks camera ready for a spontaneous photo shoot all! the! time! -- I'm convinced she probably even looks awesome when sleeping. Two days ago she was rocking a purple hat with a giant white and purple plume on it, and she did not look ridiculous, she looked awesome!

Who can do that? Not me, let me tell you. But Hilary? She looks kind of like this girl on the right every single day. She wears pirate boots without irony, works them like she's working a catwalk, and then pulls her keys or a knife from them at convenient moments, for like cutting up an apple or opening a door. She's more like a comic book superhero than the college student she masquerades as.

In fact, maybe she is.

Images from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Pegasus Inn, respectively.

Love is not love until love's vulnerable.

Love.

It is the worst good thing that ever happens to a body. You don't have to take my word for it. Literature is riff with examples. Shakespeare said it best: "For never was a story of more woe than this..." Or, to put it in a more modern way: "To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be destroyed." Thanks Cassandra Clare.

Then there's poetry. T.S. Eliot: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me." Or Auden: "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong." Or John Donne: "My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, but after one such love, can love no more."

Oh! I forgot the movies... Lloyd Dobler said it beautifully: "Maybe I want to get hurt!"

And then there's the music. I could go on and on about the music, but you get the point. Being in love means being vulnerable. It means being to willing to get hurt. And even when it goes well, trust me when I tell you it still sometimes hurts.

What makes me say these things in this holy sanctified Hallmark season of Love? Well for one, I finished reading Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's third book in the caster chronicles series, Beautiful Chaos, where upon I bawled my eyes out.

Also, David and I usually don't celebrate Valentine's Day. We usually celebrate Not-Valentine's, picking some other less commerically busy and more personally happy day to say, "I love you." But because lots of people do celebrate Valentine's Day, I thought I'd provide some shopping-related thoughts.

Envoyage Perfumes Carmel Bohême is a lovely Valentine's option. Inspired by the French novelist and poet Henri Murger: “Bohemia is a display of exuberance set against dark, silent edges; a glass house of exotic orchids”, this amber floral has notes of "Sweet Orange, Plum, Muguet, Enfleurages of Gardenia and Tuberose, French Jasmine, Honey, Patchouli, Frankincense, Labdanum, Amber, Sandalwood." It is described as "colorful, unpredictable, original, outrageous, edgy, tumultuous."

Personally, I find Carmel Bohême full of wildly delicious white flowers, a warm, lush, lovely scent. It is a wonderful blend of gardenias and tuberoses and jasmine, sweet and soapy and a little tart. Sure, you could buy your loved one a bouquet of real white florals, but trust me when I tell you this is just as beautiful and will last long after the buds are moldering in the bin. It has great longevity, and after four hours, it turns into a honey/amber/sandalwood sweetness that rides close to the skin. Truly lovely, and worth checking out even if you aren't in the market for a Valentine's scent.

Not super excited about white floral bouquets? No problem. Jo Malone is happy to supply you, not only with a bottle of beautiful Red Roses, but with a whole Red Roses Fragrance Chronicle for V-Day. You get a bottle of Red Roses, plus three accords to layer with it: "Sweet Lemon brings tantalising transparency; Scarlet Velvet Rose adds richness; and Honeycomb, a nectar-like warmth." I like the Jo Malone layering system, which in this case allows me to make seven different roses, plus several other scents that don't include the Red Roses center piece. In addition, there are always bonus gifts when it comes to Jo Malone, so when I ordered my set, I got a free 9ml of Grapefruit, which I don't own, to boot. That's a gift that stays beautiful for much longer than thorny reality of the flowers themselves. The collection is a limited edition offering, so if you like Red Roses, you may have to pretend some Valentine-y love to get it.

Not into flowers? Then go with food!  Ayala Moriel Natural Perfumes makes one of the all time best foodie scents in Immortelle l'Amour. Chocolate, vanilla, liquor, maple syrup, waffles all in one, it is a top grade, incredibly lickable scent that can bring happiness even to a wounded heart. She also makes teas and truffles, so it's a one-stop, deliciously aromatic shop to make all your edible love-themed purchases. Prefer jewelry?  You can get solids in compacts and poison rings, so your gift will be both visually and olfactorially beautiful.

Can't stand anything too edibly sweet? Well, here's a scent that you can love even when love itself turns sour. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's (The Maglignant Dreams of) Cthulhu in Love is "an amorphous mixture of incense, sea weed, sea salt, sticky dark ocean plants and chocolate." Dry chocolate and sweet dry herbs, it is a surprisingly love and high quality scent for the BPAL price point. It was a random-no-special-occasion-just-because-he-loved-me gift from David, and appears, now that I write this, to be sadly discontinued. Just like slumberhouse Ore which I also have a tiny, precious vial of. Chocolate scents are lovely, but apparently not all that long for this scented world...much like real chocolate is in my house. If you can find Cthulhu in Love, give is a whirl. It's delightful.


Speaking slumberhouse, I'll add Grev  to the mix, though I am probably the only person who will ever put this on a Valentine's list. But then, I'm not like anyone else in most other respects, so here it is. Grev is made of "copaiba, fir balsams, clove, birch, orris, and cedar" and is meant to be a marketed as a masculine, but I think it is a warm, sexy scent for a woman. It's unique, it's unusual, and it is decidedly unexpected. If you're the sort of person who gets married in a dress with blood red corset back and trim at a historic poor farm turned local brewery, then this might be your idea of sexy, too. It reminds me of waking up next with someone you love on one side and on the other, open windows of streaming sunshine and the wet, green smell of fir trees. It's a smell I associate with falling in love.

Which brings me around to my last thematic recommendation: take the ultra-realistic approach. If your love is associated with the smell of new fallen snow, try CB I Hate Perfume Walking in the Air. Working together in a garden? How about CB I Hate Perfume In the Summer Kitchen or Memory of Kindness? Find you love in a library? CB I Hate Perfume In the Library.

Alternately, you could go the Demeter Fragrance Library route, and buy a handful of large minis to create a unique perfume bouquet that hits the high notes of your romance: Vanilla Cake Batter for the birthday cake he made you, White Russian for the drink you shared on your first date, Beeswax for the homemade honey you bought on your first weekend away or the smell of the wax seal on the back of a handwritten love letter, Mistletoe for your first drunken kiss at the company Christmas party. Whatever your memory is, one of these companies probably has a scent that could represent it and give you a way to show that you remember, in a visceral way, the moment you knew you were in love.

And if all else fails, you could always go with the classic, old school approach: say it with love. S-Perfumes 100% Love or Creed Love in Black or Creed Love in White, or any of the By Kilian l'amour-themed scents (Love, Beyond Love, Taste of Heaven, Straight to Heaven, or for those of a more cynical, Amy Winehouse-bent, Back to Black and Love and Tears) are all beautiful scents, and nothing says love like L-O-V-E.

Yes, it's also a CD case!

What about you, dear reader?  Have I told you lately that I love you? Well, if you feel I haven't, then let me make it up to you with this awesome V-Day drawing. Included for one lucky winner will be the fabulously tacky fuzzy pink CD holder with a couple differently themed, love-related mix CDs made and decorated by your truly, PLUS some candy and some lovely samples that will include, but are not limited to S-Perfumes 100% Love, By Kilian Straight to Heaven, Cthulhu in Love, slumberhouse Grev and some other things not listed above.  But yes! At least five samples! Plus music! Candy! A giant pink fuzzy heart CD case! (Don't lie, you know you want its garish wonderfulness.)


POST A COMMENT BELOW talking about perfume!, love, romance, the death thereof, music, movies, perfume!, poetry, books, perfume!, whathaveyou on or before 11:59pm PST on Monday, February 13, 2012.  Will ship internationally. Winner to be announced on V-day.

So come on then: who wants to be my Valentine?

Like a wet log, I sang within a flame.
In that last while, eternity's confine,
I came to love, I came into my own.
~Theodore Roethke, from The Dream

And I'm not a failure, I swear.

Monday, 1/10/11, through Friday, 1/14/11

Good news, my pretties! Your humble blogstress has been invited to guest blog at the renown and laudable Now Smell This! in February. More details as they develop, but let me just say that I am excited and humbled by the opportunity. I will try to do my bloggy best and try not embarrass us all.

This week was interminable, and I was out a day and a half sick. But neither lack of snow day nor 100+ degree fever would keep my sniffer down. I'm feeling better now, which is good because I have a fabulous Washington roadtrip coming up at the end of the week in honor of my good friend Lillie's December graduation from our alma mater, Lewis & Clark College. Like me, Lillie aspires to graduate work of the double alumna variety. We will keep our fingers crossed for her admissions prospects. Expect roadtrip perfumey thoughts and pictures next week.

Now! Let's get to the reason you are all here.

Monday: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Depraved perfume oil - Light, earthy and minty, like moss rather than dirt or tea or even cooking herbs. It reminds me of the smell of an Oregon forest in summer after a warm rain. Nice in winter, but would be even nicer in summer, where the warm weather would make the scent even better, warming it against the skin. Someone described it as "old dust attic" which I can also see. On dry down it gets peachy in the way Guerlain Mitsouko is sweet and peachy. In fact, for people who really like this, I have a suggestion: Try Mitsouko! 3.5 of 5.

Tuesday: Chanel CoCo - Made in 1984, Coco smells sweet, sophisticated, and decidedly 1980s. I can tell this one was a big seller back then because it reeks of my childhood, like I have a hazy memories of women in shimmery '80s dresses hugging little girl me and smelling just like this. It's spicy and sultry and feels like a very glamorous night on the town in Houston during the 80s oil boom. Think Dallas. And hey, I hear they're rebooting Dallas, with Larry Hagman on board and everything. So maybe it's time for a Co-Co-comeback.

You see what I did there?  4 of 5.

Wednesday: Etat Libre d'Orange Delicious Closet Queen - Holy gift to my nose! This is a lovely scent so many awesome notes (Violet leaf, citrus, geranium, iris butter, cedar, patchouli, vetiver, strawberry, rose absolute, sandalwood, leather, tonka bean, benzoin, opoponax), and I feel like I'm getting the best of all of them. The open smells typically pretty stereotypically masculine, but it sweetens up considerably, so it walks this line between being almost, but not quite, too sweet to be unisex. 4.5 of 5.

Thursday: Nez A Nez L'Hetre Reve - This spicy sweet scent is great for the first thiry seconds but quickly becomes an powdery, ambery overload, blaring like someone laying on their horn through an intersection. It's got that pinchy edge to it that I can only describe as the way I imagine experiencing licking something sweet that is completely coated with rock salt. t took an hour to melt down to something wearable, like someone was cooking a lump of sugar in a spoon over a candle. It was nice then, but waaaay too much work to get there. Seriously, some six hours later it was still there, being all ambery. Balmain Ambre Gris was similar in this way, and a lot less expensive, so if you like this sort of thing, check that out too. 2 of 5.

Friday: Jo Malone Sweet Lime and Cedar - The open is very limey, then rolls into a sweet woodsy note. I feel like the two are fighting for prominence rather than blending together, which is too bad. Maybe if the lime had been sweeter and less tart it would have blended better. The lime ends up winning out for a while with the wood as the undernote. I think I'd like the opening better if the structure was reversed. By the middle it balances out between the citrus and the wood, but it a way that kind of runs against each other, chafing like joints of rough hewn wood on wood. Again, it got better about three-four hours in, and then by the eight hour mark was completely gone. And it bothered me, because I so wanted this to be good. I liked the concept and now I need someone to do it better so that I can buy it. You hear that perfume producer people? My checkbook awaits your efforts with baited inky breath. 3 of 5.

Favorite of the week: Ugh, so hard to choose this week.... either Chanel CoCo or Delicious Closet Queen. They're both on the big side and take up a lot of room, but I wouldn't mind having a bottle of both. I can't imagine wearing them more than a handful of times a year, but let's be honest -- when do I ever wear anything more often than that anymore?

"In my dreams
I see you asleep on a twin bed,
the covers pulled up over your head.
Am I asleep or awake?"
"My Slumbering Heart," Rilo Kiley