Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful?

Review of Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower

Wow, have I had a full weekend, my lovely readers! My best friend, Kate, was here for work this week, and we hung out this weekend when she wasn't trying to squeeze in visits to all the other people who love her like I, and it was great. Drinks and more drinks and fabulous company and food, oh my!

I also managed to make it out to the coast very briefly, which was so sunny and beautiful, and something I have been wanting to do for three weeks. It was a little crowded so I didn't stay long, but sometimes just long drives along winding tree-lined highways with lots of good music and room to think out loud can be deeply restorative.

The weather here has gone warm and the flowers are a'blooming. Oh, May flowers, your heady blooms are worthy of the stories told in your name. Speaking of flowers, you know what I recently discovered? Contrary to popular belief, it is not illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas, though apparently lots of people, including some state troopers, will tell you otherwise. Take that, you unknown state trooper who once made me cry when you yelled at my parents because I had picked some at a rest stop. Take your made up laws and...stuff them in a decorative vase.

Which brings me to a question: anyone know where I can get a bluebonnet perfume? After reading this piece on the smell of bluebonnets, and seeing it described as “[f]resh air, rain, dirt, and the country[, …] like when you pull towels out of the dryer and stick your face in them,” I now really want to try one. I couldn't find anything but oils online. Anyone have any ideas?

While I wait for your bluebonnet suggestions, let's talk about a floral perfume I did give some wear this week, Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower. One of the most widely reviewed and much lauded of your tuberose options, Carnal Flower is described as follows by the Frédéric Malle's site:

With tuberose, nature offers her own take on dramatic olfactive clashes. These pretty flowers exude a mixture of flower shop freshness and carnal opulence. This natural contradiction has fascinated generations of perfumers including Dominique Ropion. He started to compose his interpretation of the mysterious flower from the latest high-tech analysis of its evaporation. To remain as close to nature as possible, he decided to use a mix of the best natural extractions and high-tech ingredients. Finally, to generate a link between this flower’s scent and the wearer's skin he exaggerated some aspects already existing in the scent of natural tuberose, such as coconut and salycilates, and added a trace of musk. 18 months were necessary to find the perfect balance.

The base encompasses: tuberose absolute, orange blossom absolute, coconut and musk.

There are a lot of reviews of Carnal Flower in part, I think, because it was released at the moment perfume blogging hit its first big wave back around 2005. Another piece of its frequent online inclusion on “must try" lists is attributable to it's unique approach to tuberose. Carnal Flower is a terrific scent, so the quality of the juice combined with the timing makes it a big hit with modern fumies. I suppose I'll add my opinion to the general pro-CF din. Is it good? Yes. But the more interesting question, I think is how does it stand up among the other tuberose scents available, particularly give Carnal Flower's hefty price tag.

The opening of Carnal Flower is greener and more evocative of stem sap than the bright heady florals of Robert Piguet Fracas. There is little of the medicinal note often associated with Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle, and the vaguely hairspray aspects of musk and dryness you find with By Kilian Beyond Love are entirely absent. Instead, Carnal Flower has a barely there coconut undertone that moves the overall effect slightly, and simultaneously, toward both warm tropical beach and tropical foodie for me. I get next to no musk or orange blossom out of the experience, to the point that I would not have thought to include them in the note list.

I agree with Robin at Now Smell This!, who described Carnal Flower as quiet as tuberose scents go. In a wrist by wrist comparison, it is quieter than both Fracas and Beyond Love. That shouldn't take anything away from Carnal Flower. In fact, making a quiet tuberose is something of a feat in itself. It's nice to wear a tuberose that isn't going to knock someone down fifty feet away from me. Carnal Flower may be the tuberose that many people who don't usually go for big white flowers will truly love.

I think for me one of the stumbling blocks is the name. Flower? Yes. Carnal? Well...not in my mind, but hey—who am I to say what might turn you on? To me it's too quiet and pretty to be sexy. I find Fracas and Beyond Love more overtly sexual. This carnal reads more to me like the shock of a Victorian woman confronted by an uncovered piano leg! The horror!

Then there's the price. A 50ml spray of Carnal Flower is a whooping $240, so make sure to try before you buy. If this is your tuberose holy grail, more power to you. I'll sit here with my pure parfum Fracas, which I bought for considerably less, and watch the world go by.

Want more? Try...
~ a review from The Non-Blonde
~ a review from Perfume Shrine
~ a review from Bois de Jasmin
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Olfactoria's Travels
~ a review from Eiderdown Press
~ a review from Katie Puckrik Smells
~ a review from For the Love of Perfume
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes
~ a review from Sweet Diva
~ a review from The Scented Salamander
~ a review from Scentsate
~ a review from SmellyThoughts
~ a review from PereDePierre
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes

Will you still love me when I got nothing
but my aching soul?
I know you will, I know you will...
I know that you will.
~ “Young and Beautiful,” Lana Del Rey


Photo of bluebonnet - some rights reserved by longhorndave

Too Much Love Will Kill You.

Is there such a thing as “too much of a good thing”?

Sure there is. I myself have eaten that last sushi roll or that last inch of sour patch rope, and thought, “I chose…poorly.” I’ve decided to stay in bed those last few minutes that move you from “barely on time” to “definitely late for work.” I’ve stayed in the shower those extra ten minutes, running the hot water just enough that you run out at the last minute and are freezing and tense instead of relaxed when you cut the water off and get out. I’ve taken on too many good opportunities at once until I didn’t have the time and energy for any of them. I’ve gone for that final third round on Space Mountain that moves your slightly tipsy disco ball delight to oh-lord-why-did-I-have-that-fourth-tequila-shot?

In short, I’ve done excess and known the regret of it. And that is what I think of, every time I see someone posting about “pairing down their collection” or “giving up all but their favorites” or “cleaning out their perfume cabinet.”

Have I got too much perfume? Have I gone too far? Do I really appreciate the perfume I have? Do I really want or need more? FN1. Would some of it be better off in someone else’s hands, someone else’s home, where it might be better appreciated? That is the sentiment that stayed my hand Saturday night when I looked at my bank account, looked at my computer, and then thought, “Okay, let’s go shopping!” As I began looking through my options – limited editions here, sales over there, decants verses bottles, samples verses either, the list of things I thought I wanted, the list of things I’ve got – I was haunted by the thought that maybe I had enough already.

Tonight in the car Rafaela, who has never been subjected to a stroll through Diana’s perfume collection, asked me how many bottles I had. I don’t know, I responded immediately. But you must have some idea, she pressed. You were just telling me that you redid your inventory spreadsheet today.

Truthfully, though, I didn’t know. I hadn’t bothered to look. Hell, I hadn’t even finished updating my excel file. I’d only made it through bottles, not decants or minis, and certainly not through samples, which remains untackled. Somewhere, somehow, I genuinely lost count of my perfume.

So tonight, I counted.

85 bottles. EIGHTY-FIVE. And this is genuine “this is not our sample size, you are buying some larger quantity of this perfume” bottles, which does not even include Demeters. Minis and decants? Another seventy-four. Samples? Back in September it was over 500, and I know that number is a measurable quantity larger now, but my recatalogue is not yet complete. This doesn’t count the two bottles or handful of samples I did finally order Saturday night, or the samples headed my way for review, or the bottle I gave away to LillieMae just because she liked it and I had more than enough. FN2.

Yet, I feel like I’ve only dipped a toe into the wide world of beautiful perfumes out there to smell. For example, I haven’t ever smelled Chanel No. 19. I think I’ve tried maybe three Le Labos, and none of them were the location restricted ones. My familiarity with Creed and Serge Lutens is (in my opinion) wafer thin. For every Caron or Goutal or Worth or Guerlain I have tried, there are four or five I haven’t. I haven’t tried nearly enough from Aftelier Perfumes or Frederic Malle or so many others I can’t think of right now.

But looking at my collection, I couldn’t deny it. I have a ton of perfume, and yet, I feel I owe it to myself to keep trying all the beautiful scents out there to try. But I knew I crossed a certain perfumey line when LillieMae was loving a particular perfume and, without hesitating, I gave her the bottle. I remembered the day Angela from Now Smell This! did the same things for me, handing off a bottle of S-Perfume %100 Love without batting an eyelash. She knew I’d get more out of it, and I did. I have almost finished the bottle. So maybe this is also the beginning of a new phase, a phase where I not only continue to explore perfume, but start to focus my collection, creating something that isn’t just a bunch of random perfume, but a beautiful wardrobe and art collection, so that I better appreciate what I have and some lovely perfume gets a more appreciative home.

So welcome to our season of spring discernment at Feminine Things, both perfume related and more broadly. I feel strangely excited about it. I hope you do, too.

___________________________
FN1. Okay, I always want more. Instead it’s a question of whether I should buy more and do I already have more than I know what to do with.

FN2. Because I know you people: I bought samples from DSH Perfumes and JoAnne Bassett. I would have bought some from Ayala Moriel Natural Perfumes but the site order system wasn’t cooperating; I bought a bottle of L’Artisan Dzongkha from the sale; and slumberhouse Mur from IndieScents because I am apparently probably their biggest fan, and I bought it in anticipation of warmer days ahead.

Editor's note: I got the loveliest follow-up email from Ayala herself, apologizing about the web difficulties and welcoming me back.  Not only was it the sweetest thing, it also completely underestimated my willingness to walk through fire for perfume as good as hers. :)

I'm gonna love you with my hands tied.

Perfume Challenge Week 34: Monday, 9/5/11, to Friday, 9/9/11

Criminy, dear reader! Why is it so fracking hot in the PNW? Seriously...it needs to stop. I honestly can't even sleep before one in the morning.

Quileute performers...

At least I was spared the brunt of the 96+ degrees of Portland this past weekend by heading up to the Olympic Peninsula with my friend Tiffani. What was I doing there, you ask? Engaging in some vampire-related shenanigans, which included a discussion session with Natalie Wilson, professor of literature and Women's studies and author of the ah-mazing feminist work in Seduced by Twilight, which is chock-o-block full of oppression and privilege critique of the book series.

I also got to shake my groove thing with Hilly and Hannah from The Hillywood Show, have a one-on-one chat with York Baur, director of Twilight in Forks, and, oh yeah, I got to meet Veronica Blake, who is SUPER NICE. One of the highlights had to be attending a performance of traditional dance and storytelling by tribal members of the Quileute Nation. And that's not counting the cool people from all over the country who showed up to hang out and do ridiculous things with us (hi peeps!).

So, you know, a typical weekend in the life of your intrepid blogger.

Monday: Penhaligon's Bluebell - Created in 1978, the pure and unadulterated distillation of the scent of bluebell woods. Notes: Citrus, Hyacinth, Lily of the Valley, Cyclamen, Jasmine, Rose, Galbanum, Clove, Cinnamon.

I'm trying this and tomorrow offering back to back because I picked them us specifically to try together. (Though Jessica at NST! already beat me to it.) Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, though, and great minds think alike, yada-yada-yada -- I'm doing it anyway. So here we go.

Olympic Forests.

Will you think I'm crazy if I tell you I've tried Penhaligon's Bluebell three times and I keep getting cinnamon and ground mustard? Or maybe it's mustard greens? I've tried it three full times to be sure. Whatever is happening here for me is a spicy foodie scent, more edible floral than decorative floral. Maybe it's because the opening is very green on me; this is one of the greenest flower scents I've tried. I also pick up a lot of crisp green apple, which must be the galbanum.

I admit to not having a huge amount of experience with bluebells, but I can't describe this as floral. It is all spices and greens on me. Now, having said that, the temperature here is (in my opinion) an inhuman very high eighties/mid-nineties this week, and this scent is excellent for hot weather. While it's pretty and interesting all the time, I took it camping with me this weekend and it bloomed beautifully on my warm skin. If I had a bottle this week I'd throw it in the freezer and spray it on lightly every time the heat was overwhelming.

Unfortunately, it's after about fifteen minutes that I hit a problem. The spicy edges I love up top give way to a gentle close-to-the-skin scent that compared the va-va-va-voom of the initial application seems wimpy by comparison. So much potential comes to nothing in the long run as the scent turns to this polite unassuming flutter. Still true, not overly sweet, but just too damn nice a follow-up to the beginning. 3.5 nods for the fall flat, which hurts after the superb opening.

Tuesday: Jo Malone Wild Bluebell - An imaginative scent, drenched in the delicate sweetness of sapphire blooms. And wild, because it's a pretty quirky take, inspired by a wickedly whimsical, contemporary fairytale starring Wild Bluebell herself. With persimmon, lily of the valley and eglantine, its lush transparency is decidedly naughty...but nice.

First Beach in La Push, WA

Now here is a floral bluebell, and one I would also recommend for particularly warm weather. The word whimsical is a good word -- strong, flirty, floral. Sweet in the floral way, there is nothing particularly spicy or foodie about this. The closest Wild Bluebell gets to foodie is the fruity persimmon notes rounding out the middle and end of the drydown. I know Jessica preferred the Penhaligon's and thought the Jo Malone was not all that distinctive, I really like it. As florals go, this is very pretty, without feeling youthful. 4 of 5 nods.

Wednesday: Parfums de Nicolai Fig Tea - Notes: figs, osmanthus, davana, tea.

Let's talk fig tea, shall we? I have never actually drank a fig tea. To be perfectly honest with you, reader, I'm a hard sell on the tea in general. I am by nature a multiple shots of espresso swilling fool, who is perfectly content to never understand the propriety or civility or comfort to be found in a 'nice cuppa tea.' I have, however, a soft spot in my olfactory heart for tea scents, which I enjoy sniffing significantly more than the prospect of consuming tea. The tea part of Fig-Tea is pret-tay nice.

But is it figgy? (Which was why I got the sample -- a quest for more figs to love!) Yes, it is figgy, but not edibly so. It doesn't feel like biting into the fruit, or eating a piece of toast with fig jam smeared on it. Instead it smells like, well, fig tea. It's got a nice dry aspect that leans toward the sophisticated, it isn't gourmandly sweet, and generally feels like a mature scent. Not grown-up in a sexy way, but grown-up in a "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunch" kind of way. Respectable, poised, put together. It smells like a more put together woman than I will ever be, like that montage of women getting dressed at the beginning of The Devil Wears Prada which made me feel permanently twelve. I just don't feel like I ever project the kind of image this scent does with. I like it; I think it's lovely. Sadly, I just can't see it on me, which is too bad because at $35 for 30ml it is very reasonably priced. 3.5 of 5 nods.

Thursday: Frederic Malle L'Eau d'Hiver - Created by Jean Claude Ellena. Notes: bergamot, angelica, iris, hawthorn, jasmine, honey, carnation, heliotrope, caramel and musk.

Robin at NST! called it a "sheer, understated perfume" and I agree. I actually risked wearing this one to work, feeling it was light enough I could get past the scent inspection. FN1. I get a lot of iris and, yes, I can now also identify the carnation here. For something so floral and decidedly feminine, it is a very light and unassuming scent. Angelica and honey are also super evident on me after about an hour but the musk stays safely buried underneath, which for this scent is a good thing. I never thought I'd say, "This Frederic Malle would be great for a young girl!" but here's one that would, which isn't to say it is only nice for young girls, but I do think it would make a nice high quality gift for a woman of any age, and that's a rare get. 4 of 5 nods.

Threat meter high!

Friday: Le Labo Fleur d'Oranger 27 - Created by creator Françoise Caron. Notes: bergamot, petitgrain, grapefruit, amber, musk and vetiver.

Less edibly orange than Jo Malone Orange Blossom (which I own), less bitter than L'Artisan Fleur d'Oranger (for which I have an unrepentant lack of appreciation), Fleur d'Oranger 27 hits an enjoyable sweet spot between the two thanks to the vetiver base and a sweetness that comes on the form of amber, rather than a foodie vanilla or fruit sweetness. I really enjoy this despite it being almost too polite, perfect for an upstanding, regular Sunday church attendee complete with big hat, white gloves, and pearls. I'd tell you it's pretty, but that's too pedestrian; it's more notable for its elegant propriety. Five hours in and still very apparent on my skin even out of a small wand sampler, this is one orange flower that will definitely stick with you.

 If you like scents of this stripe, I really recommend you try this one. It's a little on the pricey side, but with the staying power being so significant off even a small application, a single bottle would delight you for years. (You could probably also get away with a 10-15ml decant for a good long while.) I'll also say that I appreciate the minimalist packaging of the Le Labo line. What some people might find ugly or frumpy, I find classic and appealing in its simplicity.  4 of 5 nods.

Winner of the Week: This probably won't make any sense to you after the reviews, but the winner is still Penhaligon's Bluebell for the great opening. I'll probably never own it, but those for few moments make it an Icarus in my scent pantheon; it may have landed with a spectacular failure, but for a brief time, the ascent was beautiful to behold.

Twilight CosPlayers -- yes really!

"Got my addictions.
(My addictions.)
And I love to fix 'em.
(And I love to fix 'em.)
No one's perfect."
~ "Teeth," Lady GaGa

_____________________
FN1. Only half kidding here. One of the bosses gave me a pointed nose crinkle last week when I accident wore some Bond no. 9 New Haarlem in because I had a meeting right after work and sprayed it on before work without thinking. A VISIBLE NOSE CRINKLE at a scent made of patchouli, vanilla, and coffee. Seriously? In Portland!?! You could practically rename the scent Bond no. 9 Portlandia, that is how much those scents are synonymous with our hippie-flailing, coffee-swilling, food-cart-loving town. It is my scent most guaranteed to be liked and complimented here in any weather conditions. I wanted to tell her to GO PUT A BIRD ON IT, which I think, in the right tone and context, is a great hipster euphemism for "f--- off."

All photos taken by the author.