Monthly Spin: Fitz & the Tantrums - Self-Titled

The Monthly Spin is a recurring feature on Feminine Things wherein I talked about an album I'm loving and the perfumes I think go with it.

This 2010 full length album debut is absolutely fantastic. I know that "Money Grabber" has been playing here in Rose City for a while, and other tracks are now trickling in as well. If you ever wanted to buy an album that encompasses every emotion that comes with a love gone wrong -- bitterness, sadness, anger, regret, desperation, jealousy, rejection, loneliness -- this is the albums. songs about being deceived, about leaving, about wishing you'd done better, about hating the person you used to love has now become, the list goes on and on. And while I am not now and hope to never be again in the throes of a break-up, I can still relate to this immensely emotionally charged, soulful album.

Recommended if you like:The Black Keys, Muddy Waters, The Heavy

While spinning, wear: Scents soaked in anger, resentment, and regret of what the heart has lost, and both loathes and yearns for. For me? Ava Luxe Film Noir, slumberhouse Kote, By Kilian Love and Tears, Etat Libre d'Orange Jasmin et Cigarettes.

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

A little grin, a little groan, oh baby...

Etat Libre d'Orange Antihéros

So it's one week until All Hallow's Eve.  Is everyone else as excited as I am?  I doubt it.  I have a good costume this year, which I promise to post you pix of next week, and I am going to a party this year, so I actually have somewhere to where it other than the 24-hour pie house I always seem to end up at on Halloween.  It's weird, but true  Every freaking year.

But we're here to talk about perfume...

Etat Libre d'Orange describes Antihéros as follows:

Take me as I am » seems to say this fake Mr Everybody. An anti-hero never lies about who he is, hence the seeming simplicity of this hedonistic and sun-drenched creation, entirely centered on lavender flower. This hero of everyday life fights very ordinary battles at work, when driving, at home without every taking anything too seriously. His innate modesty is extremely appealing and he knows it. He cultivates his imperfections with wit and with natural unconventional elegance. With his tousled hair and look, this somewhat unexpected superman catches the eye and still cannot believe it – that’s why we adore him.

Composition: lavender, musk, wood...

The lavender and wood combines for a clean smell, so the initial impression is a light, almost lemon or lime wood scent, after a few minutes, though, it arms up as it sweetens and deepens.  The lavender is really dominate at this point, and reminds me of the lavender cupcakes my friend Jill made for my friend Tiff's birthday.  The wood feels less like a base thank a kind of side note afterthought  The musk is almost no where to be found, leaving the combination with a sort of tea like feeling over all.

The words "innate modesty" are, I think, a fitting way to describe it.  It feels like a masculine to me in a Chuck Bass sort of way, but it also makes for a nicely cozy winter scent.  Personally, I prefer L'Artisan's Tea for Two, but if that's to spicy for you and you'd like a scent that is a little more toward the floral tea side, you might really like this one.

You can buy Antihéros in 50ml and 100ml bottles, as well as get samples, from LuckyScent or direct from the perfumer.


"If I could just turn back the clock and hear you hum along again
I'd give up all this tea I bought hoping you'd stop by.
At least a case of Orange Spice. 
Now tea is something I don't like.
I like coffee. I like it dark.
It's not for wimps.
You're not a wimp, but you're a Buddist.
That's like..voodoo.
Tea tastes like doodoo.
But for you I'd buy tea
just to have you hum along."
- "Just to Have You Hum Along," Betty Elders


Want more?  try....
~ a review from Fragantica
~ a review from A Minx by Any Other Name
~ a review from Aromascope
~ a review from One Thousand Scents
~ a review from Antihéros

Do our gay ballet on ice, bluebirds on our shoulders...

Etat Libre d'Orange Don't Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don't Swallow

I'm back from my anniversary trip. We had a lovely weekend that went by, in my opinion, far too quickly. Since the 5th anniversary is "wood" and David, very sweetly, always buys me something along the anniversary theme, he bought me a very nice wooden box, a wooden book mark, two wooden magnets, and even a card made of wood from my favorite stationery store in town, oblations papers.

 Not just any wooden box, though. He got it for me specifically to hold perfume! That's right, perfumistas. It is exactly the right height to hold all of my decants, which were falling out of the sides of the wire basket I had them in previously. See the picture (to your right)?  They fit so perfectly!  And the box also fits great inside my cabinet. So now my unboxed scents are in the basket and the decants are in the box, and he even offered to buy me more boxes for my 1 and 1.5 ml want samples if it would help me store them properly.

I swear to you, if I weren't already in love, that would have won me over right there.

But enough gushing. Let's get back to perfume reviews, shall we?

First up for review this week is Etat Libre d'Orange's Don't Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don't Swallow.

It all starts with a hand on the nape of a neck. The hand of a man familiar with the practice of attracting young women, accustomed to crumpling their sleek hair and to getting the better of their well-behaved manners. This is the story of a man in a car at night, of a manly hand that draws a perfectly fresh face towards him - expressed at the start by a bouquet of white flowers: lily of the valley, jasmine and orange blossom –, and who anticipates the chocolaty taste and tenderness of a mouth. It is also the story of a woman who at first resists and finally goes down on him. The art of the “American kiss” unfurls on accords of ambre solaire, almond, sugar cane and marsh mallow. The man will discover everything there is to know about her: the warm roughness of her tongue, the rousing sensation of her back and forth. All there is to know and no more than that! The appetizer ends in a whisper: “Don’t get me wrong baby, I don’t swallow”.

Notes: jasmine, aldehydes, lily of the valley, orange blossom, solar amberey accord, patchouli, cacao, musk, and guimauve.

Don't Swallow, as I internally think of it, is so sweet and innocent it's hard for me to reconcile the naughty name with what's going on under my nose. I get the cacao and amber a bit right up front, which combine with the jasmine and lily of the valley to create a sort of bubblegummy sweetness. It's strangely delicate, though, and pretty soon just devolves into a light floral. It's a strange juxtaposition against the name, which I would expect to have a harder, edgier scent that was defiantly sexual. But maybe its just the shock value that makes me read it wrong. Maybe I'm supposed to encounter it as the gentle tease it reads as, like what one imagines occuring after they cut away from passionate bedroom embraces in films from the 1950s. It's a nice enough scent, which gets a bit musky and warm on its way through the dry down, but it reminds me of L'Artisan Mûre et Musc because I just find it too nice to wear.

I'm never gonna be a white lace dress with wrist-length gloves and a lavender satin ribbon around my waist. At my wedding I wore a dress with red bordering the bottom and corseting down my back and ending in a long blood red trailing bow. I wore nail polish called "I'm Not Really A Waitress" and bright red lipstick. Plus, I got married in the attic of a historic power station house on an old poor farm that has been converted to a pub and hotel with a bar two floors below me. I'm not really a sweetly demure, eye lash fluttering, bubblegum pink type. In musical theatre terms, I am not and have never been Sandy; I'm Rizzo, right down to the bad reputation.

That said, if you like the idea of flirting in too tight sweaters and pencil skirts while wearing thigh highs with seams up the back like a character from Mad Men, you might just love this scent. I can think of at least one friend I'd spray it on before we went out to bar hop, me in ballet flats, chucky jewelry, and heavy eye make up and her in tea length dresses and pearls. If that sounds like you, or at least someone you like to be on the weekends, check this one out.

You can get samples of Don't Get Me Wrong Baby, I Don't Swallow from direct from the perfumer.

"Stay out super late tonight
picking apples, making pies.
Put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us.
We're half awake in a fake empire."
- "Fake Empire," The National

Want more? Try...
~ a review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ a review from The Scented Salamder
~ a review of the line from Bois de Jasmin

I love you when you give me things.

Etat Libre d'Orange Tilda Swinton Like This

"The real science is discovery, Charles, not invention. The truths are there, whether we find them, or not." - Peter MacNicol as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, NUMB3RS

I heard this said on a tv show I watch recently, and of course, like everything else, it made me think of perfume. Do we ever ‘create’ scent, really? Or is the creation of perfume really just a matter of discovery? Out there lays a vast ocean of scent, and we just wander around in it, waiting to happen upon a new sensation or old memory. So when it comes to the new Etat Libre d'Orange scent, Tilda Swinton Like This, I have some discovery related intrepidation. You see, the Rumi poem that supposedly inspired the scent? Also the poem from whence my husband’s wedding vows to me came from.

Yep.

He took it from an illustrated book of Rumi poetry I gave him early in our courtship.  So, basically this scent had a lot of very specific things it had to live up to in order to please me.

According to Etat Libre d'Orange , the scent came about like this:

I have never been a one for scents in bottles.

I have always located my favourite fragrances at the doorways of kitchens, in the heart of a greenhouse, at the bottom of a garden. Scent means place to me: place and state of mind – even state of grace. Certainly state of ease.

My favourite smells are the smells of home, the experience of the reliable recognizable after the exotic adventure: the regular – natural – turn of the seasons, simplicity and softness after the duck and dive of definition in the wide, wide world.

When Mathilde Bijaoui first asked me what my own favorite scent in a bottle might contain, I described a magic potion that I could carry with me wherever I went that would hold for me the fragrance – the spirit – of home.

The warm ginger of new baking on a wood table, the immortelle of a fresh spring afternoon, the lazy sunshine of my grandfather’s summer greenhouse, woodsmoke and the whisky peat of the Scottish Highlands after rain.

I told her about a bottle of spirit, something very simple, to me: something almost indescribable, so personal it should be.

The miracle is that Mathilde made it.

The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote:

If anyone wants to know what “spirit” is,
or what “God’s fragrance” means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.

This is possibly my favourite poem of all time. It restores me like the smoke/rain/gingerbread/greenhouse my scent-sense is fed by. It is a poem about simplicity, about human-scaled miracles. About trust. About home.

In my fantasy there is a lost chapter of Alice in Wonderland – after the drink saying Drink Me, after the cake pleading Eat Me – where the adventuring, alien, Alice, way down the rabbit hole, far fro m the familiar and maybe somewhat homesick – comes upon a modest glass with a ginger stem reaching down into a pale golden scent that humbly suggests: Like This…

My goodness! She does go on, doesn’t she? Well at least she had some ideas about what kind of scent she wanted her name on, distinguishing her from a lot of celebrities.

The purported notes are “yellow mandarin, ginger, pumpkin, immortelle, neroli, rose, vetiver, heliotrope and musk.“ Other reviewers have described it as a non-foodie pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, etc. scent. Me? Here are, unedited, my immediate stream of consciousness reactions:

Wow. This is weird. What the hell do I smell? Celery smoothie, a fresh box of crayons, cantaloupe juice spilled on a silk tie, and day old instant coffee all at once. Or...pumpkin bread with an overwhelming dose of coriander, if it were left in the sun on the sidewalk for three days in a plastic baggie and is now covered in that whitish mold. And then taken and covered in maple syrup and served for Sunday brunch. Or maybe someone made you a pumpkin latte with soy milk but the flavor syrup they used was cantaloupe?

Despite all those food words I just used, I agree with everyone who said it isn’t foodie. The scents I can think of that Like This reminds me of are SJP Covet and Bvlgari BLV Pour Homme. I tried all three together after my first go with Like This on it's own so that, like the bear who went over the mountain, I could see what I could see.

Like This is a more muted version of both, making it better than Covet (which is the weakest of the three) and making it less rich than BLV Pour Homme. While Covet is sharp like astringent, BLV Pour Homme is savory like a main course and Like This is sweet like a fancy dessert of fresh fruit poached in dessert wine. At this point, about 30 minutes in, Like This is the best of the three if you're trying to find a feminine in this vein. Around the two and a half hour mark Like This and Covet are completely indistinguishable on me, and neither is a particularly likable experience.

And I hate that. I do. I hate it when a scent everyone else seems to love just fizzles on me. And I really can't believe no one else noticed the similarity to Covet, as far as I can tell.  Of the three, I'd be most inclined to buy the muscular BLV Pour Homme for about a fifth of the price of Like This instead. But when I think of the Rumi poem, this is, in no world of mine, what it smells like. Ah, well. On to the next scent.

And with that, I leave you with this: The song David and I had our first dance to, five years ago this October.

"The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we're all too young to know but
I...
I love it when you give me things and
You...
You ought to give me wedding rings."
- "The Book of Love," Magnetic Fields (You can listen to the song here)

You can buy Tilda Swinton Like this in 50ml for $99 from Luckyscent. However, I strongly recommend trying before buying on this one. You can get samples from either Luckyscent or The Perfumed Court.

Want more reviews? Try...
~ a review from Angela at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Perfume-Smellin’ Things
~ a review from the Non-Blonde
~ a review from Perfume Posse
~ a review from The Scented Salamander
~ a review from 1000 Fragrances
~ a review from Perfume Shrine
~ a review from London Makeup Girl
~ a review from peredepierre

I know you're getting twisted and you can't calm down.

Etat Libre d'Orange Jasmin et Cigarettes

Still busy as a little tiny bee. Couldn't resist, though. Keep trying new things and wanting to talk to you about them, but I'm supposed to be studying the rule-making powers of the executive and fee simples and joint tenancy and adverse possession and the four corners test....etc. Lots of fancy law terms I might never use again. At this rate, I might not even use them next week -- I'd have to remember them first.

Speaking of foreign tongues and arcane vocabulary, unfortunately, I do not speak French, which is the only language Etat Libre d'Orange's website is available in. Consequently, I turned to Luckyscent for a description. They provided the following:

A tailored suit, a fedora, a blond bob, scarlet lips and a cigarette – that’s Jasmin et Cigarettes. Etat Libre d’Orange’s homage to femmes fatales of days past, this is a glamorous vamp of a perfume. Think Dietrich or Garbo. The jasmine note, sweetened by apricot and tonka bean, has a husky, honeyed quality akin to a sensual, throaty whisper. And just like Marlene and Greta, Jasmin et Cigarettes has a distinctly androgynous side that coexists so unexpectedly well with the obvious femininity of the blend. Tobacco, woods and musk represent the touch of masculinity that was the trademark of the two great divas. Fresh and sultry, transparent and smoky, Jasmin et Cigarettes is a stunning tribute to the allure of contrasts.
Notes: Jasmine absolute, tobacco, hay, apricot, tonka bean, turmeric, cedar, amber, musk

Up top I get mostly jasmine and with a hint of apricot and the hay, thought the dry, sweet hay smell is fleeting, and quickly replaced by cedar, amber, and tobacco. I really get a lot of apricot in the middle and less of the tobacco than I'd like, but the woody notes make up for that. It's a great apricot, too. Strong and a little jammy, but not at all fake. Is it possible this smells like a bar I'd really like to hang out in?Or maybe the lobby of a hotel I'd like to use for romantic rendezvous? The scent one might catch over one's should strolling through a garden around midnight, tipsy on liqueur? There's just something provocative and romantic about the mixture of polished wood and sweet tobacco and jammy fruit.

David and I, when we go on weekend getaways, tend to go to McMenamins, which is a chain of historic buildings retrofitted as pubs and hotels across the Pacific Northwest. It's the pub part that I'm reminded of here. We sleep late and have brunches in bars with lots of polished wood, eating fancy omelets and flaky biscuits covered in sweet jam. The scent of smoke from cigars and pipes of yesteryear seem to cling to these old rooms, and the fresh air wafting from a window in Spring or Summer wafts in the scent of newly blooming flowers. When I smell Jasmin et Cigarettes, I am reminded of such trips and their adventures into the small towns around the Northwest we've made, and I look both backward, savoring the memory, and forward, anticipating happy futures.

After all that, how can I not love it?

You can buy 50ml of Jasmin et Cigarettes for $69 from Luckyscent. You can get samples from Luckyscent and The Perfumed Court. Outside the US, I found it available through distributors as common as AmazonUK. Given the wide variety of responses I noted in reviews I definitely recommend trying it first, but I just love it.

"I see you under the midnight, all satins and bows.
High shoes with the cleats a-clickin'.
A tempermental glow, but then you let me go.
Oh, got a hold on you, got a hold on you, I got a hold on you, tonight.
Oh, oh, it's magic when I'm with you.
(Oh-o, it's magic!)
Oh oh it's magic, just a little magic.
(gotta be magic)
You know it's true I got a hold on you..."
- "Magic," The Cars (you can listen to the song here)

Want more reviews? Try...
~ A review from Bois de Jasmin
~ A review from I Smell Therefore I am
~ A review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ A review from Pere de Pierre
~ A review from Perfume Queen
~ A review from Aromascope

Postscript: Ines helpfully pointed out how to change the Et at Libre site to English. I love these people. They're so tawdry! I want to try them all now!