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

Of Shoes, Bees, and Perfume

Hilarious!

I went out of town this past weekend to visit my friend Marni, author of the awesome Awkward and upcoming September release, Decked with Holly. I came home with four more pairs of shoes than I left with. I don't know what it is about shoes and vacations with me, but I think over half my shoes have been purchased on vacation. It's as if, upon arrival, I immediately deem all my thoughtfully packed footwear options loathsome, inappropriate, unworthy.

I often have some ridiculous excuse, too. "Oh, is it raining? I didn't realize it would be raining in the Olympic Peninsula!" "Oh, is there walking required? I appear to have only packed heels and dress shoes." It's not like these trips are a surprise to me; I'm the one planning them. I think I will have to chalk it up to some sort of weird subconscious need for a fun setting to buy shoes in. I was certainly happy dancing around in the store in a pair of peep-toe pumps on Saturday before I bought them.

By contrast, I rarely buy perfume on vacation. I've only done it once or twice. I don't know why that is. In theory, I like the idea of buying perfume on vacation. I like the idea of associating a beautiful scent with a particular place and time. But then, when the vacation arrives, I never find myself hankering for a perfume store.

I think it has to do with my impulse to tie scents to certain kinds of weather. Let's face it: what I think works in sunny L.A. in July is not going to be a "go to" scent for me nine to ten months a year in Portland. Based on that premise, I'm always hesitant to buy a whole bottle that will take me years to get through if I'm not sure it works in my ordinary life, and not just in my vacation life.

Speaking of vacations, seasons, and perfume, here's a fun thing that happened this sunny Spring weekend. I was covered in beeeeeeeees!

Spring flowers!
So pretty. So deadly...

Okay, that's not really accurate. I was neither covered, nor was it fun. I was in beautiful Ashland, Oregon, sitting on a bench, minding my own beeswax when I got stung. This is not a big deal for normal people, but I have an allergy to bees/wasps/yellowjackets/hornets that required a trip to the local ER even after I used my epipen Saturday evening.

The worst past of this scenario was that the bee, after stinging me, would not leave me alone. It flew into my hair and I had to get Marni to fish it out so I wouldn't get stung again. Then, on Sunday, I was basically chased into my car by a second bee. I've been trying to figure out what I did, because I was in and out of doors unmolested most of the time, then other moments were positively fraught with peril.

Marni kept blaming my shampoo (which admittedly includes a strong honey base), but I wasn't stung or chased immediately after I washed my hair. FN1. Upon further reflection, I realized both my sting on Saturday and my near miss on Sunday almost immediately followed the application of perfume. Yep. Saturday I sprayed on Hermés Un Jardin en Méditerranée right before I went outside and got stung. On Sunday, DSH Perfumes Spring Moss was the attractor. I put some on, then went to my car to look for my keys and ended up cowering inside the vehicle until the bee gave up and buzzed away. FN2.

Exciting ER times were had!

This is an exceptionally troubling realization for me, dear reader. My allergy has progressed to the point that I really can't risk things like camping or hiking in places where it would take more than 15 minutes for an ambulance to get to me or for me to reach an ER. And while death by bee sting is not exactly the way I'm hoping to go, I love my perfume too much to give it up.

This is complicated by the fact that bees seem weirdly attracted to me (I've been stung 8-10 times over the last 26 years, which is a ridiculously high amount) and the college has decided to install bee hives in the quad outside the building where I live. For serious.  They have attached two hives to the building, one by each entrance. while I've pointed out (loudly and repeatedly) that I feel this is a negligence suit waiting to happen, I take little comfort in the notion that David will be well-compensated when the college accidentally kills me with its urban bee population support efforts.

So what's a bee-allergy-ridden perfumista to do, dear reader? Give up my juice, at least until we move? Demand a plastic bubble for all future out of doors adventures? Become a vampire and hide indoors during daylight? FN3. I don't relish any of these ideas, but I like them more than dying. Also, I have to go to work which requires leaving my apartment, so I don't know what to do about the bees outside my building.

Maybe I need to research the kinds of scents that are repellent to, or at least do not attract, bees, and then try to find perfumes that strongly feature those notes? I don't know. This is going to take some creative perfumey thinking. However, I feel I am up to the challenge. If anyone has any suggestions, please comment below.

_________________
FN1. Chased is an exaggeration. It feels like chasing. It's probably more like random bee meandering in my general direction, which makes my bee-related hypervigilance kick into high gear. I fear I have, at least temporarily, transferred said same hypervigilance to Marni.  Sorry, Marni.

FN2. The keys were later located in the trash, because all the medication from Saturday night still had me totally whacked out. 

FN3. This last option is particularly appealing to me for a number of reasons, but since I am already on a heavy daily dose of Vitamin D because of my lack of sunshine, it's probably not the best idea.

I've been lying too long; I was right when you were wrong.

Spring Time Reflections, Some Perfumey and Some Not

View from the Oregon City elevator

In an  "everybody else is doing it so why can't we?" mindframe, I’m was going to do my top ten scents for Spring 2011, for my own since of personal scent development archiving and because I can. But I already did a pretty hefty Spring scent list over here already. So instead, I’m just gonna record, for your entertainment and mine, some random thoughts for Spring, perfumey and not.  Also, some random pictures from a recent adventure I took following brown signs to historical sites around Oregon City, Oregon.

Bands/Artists I can't get enough of: The Watson Twins, Neko Case, Rilo Kiley, The Decemberists, Fitz and the Tantrums, Fleetwood Mac, Muddy Waters.

Surprise go to Scent this Spring: DSH Perfumes Lush Honey, bought unsniffed and so loving that I will buy another bottle while I still can, before it is discontinued.

Houses I need to try more of: Dior, Hermes, Annick Goutal

Best scents I bought for under $15: A tie between Coty Stetson and Worth Je Reviens EdT.

On the "soon to be purchased" short list: Miller et Bertaux no. 3: Green, green, green and green (finally), Tauer  L'Air du Desert Marocain (also finally),  vintage Evening in Paris (go, go ebay bidding skillz), CB I Hate Perfume At The Beach 1966.

If I had a million dollars: A huge bottle of Roxana Illuminated Perfume GreenWitch, which is so amazing I can barely stand it.  At $175 for only 7.5ml, is just sadly well beyond my price range, as my ideal would be to have twice that much at least. Carefully hugs her tiny 1gram $30 sample vial. Truly one of the most beautiful green scents I've ever smelled, and deserving of a lengthy review as soon as I can get to it.

End of the Oregon Trail
Interpretive Center closed in 2010.

Happiest stumbled upon scent love of Spring: Hermes Un Jardin En Mediterranee. Who knew I liked figs? I certainly didn’t. Want to try more figs now.

Best newly discovered indie perfumer: I am so glad I found Ellen at Olympic Orchids Artisan Perfumes. Not only is she a really nice person, she makes great perfume and is doing us PNW perfumistas proud

Notes I’m weirdly over right now: vanilla, sweet florals, roses. I think I burned myself out.

Notes I can’t get enough of: weird fruits, anything green or herbal, moss, civet, cedar. If you’ve got recommendations in this area, please provide them.

Spring, in general and as part of college life: My least favorite season. Maybe it’s a time of adventure and renewal for everyone else, but for those of us who live on a college campus, it’s an ending time. This year is particularly difficult because, thanks to an early retirement program, forty-five life-long members of my beloved campus community are retiring. Yes, you read that right. Forty-five. So much for institutional memory. It really reinforces my feeling of not belonging here anymore; it’s strange to feel like a relic of someone else’s adventure in your own life.

Among those retiring is one of my favorite people in the entire universe, Stephen Dow Beckham. If there is a person in the world who inspires me to never give up or think something is out of my reach, to push myself harder and always believe I can do anything, it is this man who has done everything and still keeps on trucking. He is the first person in my collegiate career who ever implied my work was valuable, that my ideas were worthwhile and my voice, worth hearing. I had a lovely advisor before Dr. Beckham, who was a great and special man who believed in me, but Dr. Beckham is the one who took everything I did in stride as a matter of course and demanded more because he knew I was capable.

I’ll never forget the day after I did my radio interview as spokeswoman for a statewide campaign against parental notification for abortion. FN1. I ran into Dr. Beckham on my law school campus; he was there to interview dean candidates for the law school. He stopped me, and I felt this terror swirl though my stomach. Here was this educated, established, well-off white man who I loved and admired and wanted to think well of me, but whose politics I had never been all that sure of. “I heard you on the radio,” he said. I nodded, and said something perfunctory about the interviewer having ties to my alma mater. “ I heard your voice, and I thought, ‘I know who that is’” he replied, his eyes twinkling. He didn’t come out and say he was proud of me, but I could tell he was. Dr. Beckham knew one of the things I was most ashamed of in my life, and he was proud of me for standing up for what I believed in. That was the moment I knew doing the campaign was the right thing, and I felt, for the first time, we might win.

It was a huge moment for me personally, and I think it says evverything about how much a teacher can shape your life, helping you long after you've left them to know you're on the right path.  I pity all the students who won’t get to have him as their teacher. He’s the kind that can change your life.

What about you, dear reader. How is your Spring going?

"I can't hear this anymore.
It's time to leave.
I've closed the door.
Did you ever believe in me?
In you and me?"
"U-N-Me," The Watson Twins
_____________________
FN1. Yes, I had an abortion. No, I don’t regret it. No, I don’t feel the need to justify that to you. Yes, I did radio(NPR)/television (all three networks; yes, even Fox)/newspaper interviews where I talked about my experience, which included a photo of me on the front page of the widest circulating paper in the state. Yes, people said things to me, good and bad. Ultimately, we won, thus keeping Oregon the state with the least regulation on choice. I know anecdotally that at least some votes were changed because of my story. I’m glad I did the campaign and would do it again.

Let me also say, that as a woman who had an abortion in Texas, I am appalled by the recent news that the Texas Legislature has passed a bill requiring a sonogram before an abortion can be preformed.  This will not stop a woman who wants to have an abortion; it just adds unnecessary time and expense.  Society spends a large part of its energy policing women's behavior through shaming, particularly around issues of sex.  Well, guess what?  You've already made your feelings clear about our choices.  But they are our choices.  And you won't stop us.  You never have.

Of White Flowers & Supple Fruit: The Joys of Spring

Serge Lutens Nuit de Cellophane

In many ways, I feel like the late comer to the perfume ball on this one. Serge Lutens newest addition, Nuit de Cellophane, has been reviewed all over the place. But let us begin at the beginning, with the words Serge Lutens offers by way of description for Nuit de Cellophane:

As the night unfolds, it reveals a cluster of heavenly bodies.
The velvet pirouette of moths fluttering around glowing lanterns.
Creatures of darkness, crickets and other dwellers of the shadows lying undercover, transmit their requests.
-Excuse me, miss? Could you wrap that please?
-Is it a gift, sir?
-Indeed it is, a gift for you.

What that is intended to tell you about a perfume named “a plastic wrapped night,” I do not know. Upon announcing the addition to the Serge Lutens stable, there was a great deal of who-ha over the name. Folks aplenty spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of scents this name was supposed to evoke in the mind’s eye. Some of the best name-gaming can be found over at Perfume Shrine. Despite the quirky name, however, reviews of Nuit de Cellophane have been mixed, with some reviewers lamenting its plain/obvious/inoffensiveness, wondering “where is the signature weird we have come to know, love, and expect from Serge Lutens?”

I, however, will not lament Serge Lutens choice to make something generally considered as more “marketable” or “mainstream.” I figure, times being what they are, who am I to judge a manufacturer for throwing in a little bit of normal along with a whole lot of strange? Plus, while I recognize that certain perfumers build a name for them for creating along specific lines (e.g. CB and his ultra realism), I hold with the tenant that any olfactory artist should be able to create any item of beauty, even if it smells kind of like every other beautiful thing around that year. There’s always room to do the standard just differently enough to create a new perfection or interpretation. Nuit de Cellophane is exactly that.

While the notes listed for Nuit de Cellophane include jasmine, osmanthus, carnation, lily, muscs, almond, wood, and honey, on me the initial application is all white flowers and old fashioned soap with a little bit of fruit-like sweetness, which others peg as apricot. The lily and jasmine are especially prominent upfront. It’s possible the fruit note I’m smelling is the “honey” note Luckyscent refers to in its description, but it doesn’t seem strong enough or distinct enough to me for honey. I like the sweet bit though, because it is sweeter than a lot of big white flower scents on me (I’m thinking Kai, specifically) but not so sweet as to be sickening, like dousing oneself in canned fruit salad syrup. It also doesn’t knock you down with its size, which is nice for a white flowers fragrance. It’s not big in that way that so many white flowers are, over powering and loud. This is more realistic. The experience is less like shoving your face full on into a blooming flowering tree, and more like gently sniffing at a well-made bouquet. On dry down, the carnation comes through a little stronger, further sweetening the mixture.

On the whole, Nuits de Cellophane is a very lovely white flower and fruit mixture. Will I be running right out to buy it? No. It’s pretty, but doesn’t grab me in a way that screams, “I must have it!” I do, however, know lots of people who would feel that way about such a well-made, pretty fragrance. And make no mistake, this is well made, like all Lutens fragrances. Rather than lob together a lot of white flower scents so one smells like a blaring, overcrowded, and undergroomed flower garden, bottle it up, and call it good, there was a great deal of intentionality in creating Nuits de Cellophane. I realize that, in the world of perfume reviews, saying “white flowers and fruit” isn’t as detailed a response as one might need to discern Nuits de Cellophane from the vast number of similar scents, but that apricot note really separates this one out from the pack. If you normally think, when smelling white flowers, “Gee I wish this was a little sweeter,” try this one. It might be for you. Certainly it is a lovely invocation of all that sweet Spring implies: the blooming of flowers, supple fruit, and new beginnings.

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Robert Frost, "A Prayer for Spring"

To read any of the whole laundry list of other lovely reviews for this Nuits de Cellophane by visiting...
~ Scented Salamander here.
~ Perfume Posse here.
~ 1000fragrances here.
~ I Smell, Therefore I Am here.
~Grain de Musc here.
~ Perfume Shrine review here.

Hilarious!

Who knew that my first give away would be so uncontested? I can't decide if I have only one reader or simply that most of my readers are people I know in real life who can ask me for samples at any time and know I'll provide.

Well, congrats to Divina, who will be getting 1 ml samples of Kai, L'Artisan Vanilia, *and* Memoire Liquide No. 900 Champagne et Mure Parfum as promised. Indeed, because she is the only person who posted and then mentioned that CB I Hate scents are hard for her to obtain, I'm throwing in samples of CB I Hate Perfume's Wild Hunt, Black March, Memory of Kindness and To See a Flower because I appreciate the support for my perfume ramblings. If nothing spurs the rest of you to post next time, let it be that I might actually send you more gifties than you originally thought available!

Divina, email me your mailing address at femininethings@gmail.com and I will have your package in the mail by the end of the week.

And for those of you who care, my last paper is being proof read as we speak and my last exam begins in three and a half hours. Around 9:30pm PST I will be completely finished with my requirements for this semester! I still have a lingering thesis paper to finish, but I have a week and a half of no classes, exams, or job to do that in. Despite this A paper nonsense hanging round my head, I consider myself more or less done as of tonight. That probably makes no sense to anyone but me, but if you've ever watched me write a 20 page paper in less than a twenty-four hours, including the lion's of research, then you know that ten days to write my A paper is more than enough for me to finish in time for the grade deadline.