Notes from the Plague Den, Part 3: Left Coast Edition!

A Review of Aftelier Perfumes Candide EdP

Hello dear reader! I come to you once again from my plague den. Different location, same tenacious disease! 

At least I am home now. Home comes with certain comforts not even an expense account and endless delivery Chinese soup can provide – namely, CATS! No, they don't talk back, but when even maid service stopped coming to my room and I went for entire days without seeing another human being in Boston, the comforting sounds of my roommates downstairs and cats meowing and general catly liveliness has been really comforting. I feel much less like I'm living a terrible missed chapter of World War Z or some other weird post-apocalyptic tale where all the world has ended but because the cable keeps playing I don't realize I'm the only one alive for miles.

But if I had to be the last living person in the state of Massachusetts, at least I would have gone out smelling AWESOME. That's right, dear reader. I have my priorities in line. If I die, let me die peacefully in my sleep with dignity and not eaten by zombies or wild dogs or wild zombie dogs. But if it must be zombie dogs, at least let those survivors who find scrapes of clothing as the only trace of my remains think, “This mysterious dead woman smelled beautiful even to her tragic and grisly end.”

Wow. That was weird and dark. Blame the fever brain. That's what I'm going to do.

Moving on to the event you've all been waiting for – the perfume! Let me start out by telling you about the joys Aftelier Perfumes Candide. Candide is described thusly:

Bright, uplifting floral, expressing its theme of optimism through sublime jasmine and age-old frankincense. Recent research in the Journal of Biological Chemistry finds that the scent of jasmine is better than Valium at calming and soothing. The sunny color comes from the orange shades of jasmine, pink grapefruit, and blood orange essences. The smell of jasmine is uplifting and cheerful in a sexy way – the perfect blend of high and low, sweet and dirty. The pink grapefruit is juicy and sweet; the blood orange smells of mouth-watering orange mixed with raspberries. The name is an homage to the great novel from Voltaire, with its theme of optimism.

Featured Notes:
Top: black pepper, blood orange, pink grapefruit.
Heart: jasmine grandiflorum, Moroccan rose absolute.
Base: frankincense, oppopanax absolute, myrrh.

Okay, for you literary types, let me say up front: this is not what I imagine Candide would smell like. That said, it's such an interesting scent! The black pepper is really prominent on me in the opening, and it gives the citrus a sharp, tangy edge. It's not foodie but it's not the light girlie note citruses so often come across as in scent. When I talk to people about the gendering of scent, I always like to use citruses as an example of the ways we tend to gender scents in silly ways. FN1. Candide is a perfect example of a scent with a strong citrus top note that would work well on a woman but doesn't necessarily come across as girlish or feminine. I think this is in part because the opening on me is medicinal and a little green, which I'm crediting to the rich base notes.

While there are hints of rose here, jasmine is the primary floral note for me, but it is well-balanced against the incense and citrus to the point that I honestly think it's probably 40%/30%/30% on me. It works beautifully together in a kind of harmony. As for the base, Victoria of Bois de Jasmin describes “the effect of opoponax is glowing and sensual” in perfumery, and I get that in Candide. There is a sensual glow to Candide, but it isn't overwhelming. I'd say it's sexy in a way that isn't obvious or overtly self-aware. It's a sexy scent that isn't trying to be sexy, that doesn't necessarily know it's sexy...and yet, it is. In that way, it is a perfect scent for the scent lover of any age.

A lot of people found the scent to be spiritual. Reviewers comment on the “Happy Buddha” or the “cathedral” aspects of Candide. FN2. I don't find it a particularly religious experience as scents go, but then, that may be due to my particular array of religious experiences.

There are also a lot of reviews that cheer the scent for being happy and joyous. I can see that, certainly, but I don't think that really does Candide justice. A lot of citrus-oriented scents get tagged with “happy,” and while Candide does have an element of that, I'd argue that it ultimately rejects any hint of a kind of Polly Anna glass-half-full-ness. It's a tempered optimism, an appreciation that only comes with the knowledge of the bitter. As Brian says in Vanilla Sky, “You can do whatever you want with your life, but one day you'll know what love truly is. It's the sour and the sweet. And I know sour, which allows me to appreciate the sweet.” I'm reminded of that quote when I smell Candide. It knows enough of sour to appreciate the sweet. I like that.

My only complaint is that the longevity, on me, was on the short side. The sillage is moderate at first, but becomes quieter and quieter until it just...dies on my skin. This is a real surprise to me because I'm one of those people who usually get a lot of life out of...everything. I'm the girl who gets four to six hours out of almost any scent that hits my skin. And with Candide, six hours is the absolute max for me, and I have to hunt with nose pressed to arm to find it. Normally I wouldn't find this a huge drawback except....at this price point, it is a real struggle for me to balance the truly beautiful scent against the longevity against the cost. Because of this, I strongly recommend a sample first of this scent, because not everyone who tries it has this problem. I'm wondering, upon reflection, if the decision to get the EdP version of Candide was where I went wrong (which I will dutifully correct with my wallet forthwith).

The scent itself is very well-done; in the 4 to 5 star range. However, due to the short skin life of the EdP on me, I have to give the overall experience 3.5 stars.  Upon reflection, though, I keep going back to what the lovely Martha said regarding the Aftelier Perfumes line in a comment on this blog a few weeks ago:

I wish that I could find what Henry Mitchell (my favorite garden writer) had to say about the question of long-blooming flowers, but the gist of it was that a peony or a once-blooming rose is often beautiful enough to be worth far more than many sturdy flowers that bloom all summer. The three days that they bloom before being torn apart by the last spring storm, gone until next year, is ample payment for the space that they occupy. 

The same is true for Cepes & Tuberose, and Honey Blossom, and most of the Aftelier scents that I've tried; even if they did only last an hour, they'd be worth it. And you don't even have to wait until next year to smell them again.

I have to agree with this statement.  Everything I have tried from Aftelier Perfumes is so singular an experience, I am tempted to say hang the expense.  I leave that debate to you and your wallet, dear reader.  It's going to depend a lot on how much longevity factors into your personal evaluations, and whether you think great scent -- at any length -- is worth it.

Candide EdP is available direct from Aftelier Perfumes. A 1ml sample of the EdP or .25ml of the pure parfum will run you $6. A 30ml bottle of EdP is $170. A 2ml mini of the parfum runs $50.

Okay. Back to watching a little mind-numbing TV while I wait for the sleepy meds to kick in. Tune in tomorrow for more reviews of Aftelier Perfumes! Now for one last cat picture before I go...

Want more reviews of Candide? Try…
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from Olfactoria's Travels
~ a review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ a review from EauMG
~ a review from The Non-Blonde
~ a review from Scent-and-Sensibility
~ a review from Katie Puckrik Smells
~ a review from CaFleureBon
~ a review from Scent Less Sensibilities

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FN1. I usually use leather, oranges, and vanilla to point out to people that when we encounter these elements in their real world expressions – a vanilla bean pod, a horse saddle, a luggage store, a grapefruit or an orange – we don't immediately think “girlie!” or “dude!” or “unisex!” We only assign these items a gender when we are lead by societal norming/commercialism to do so. I implore you – DO NOT FALL FOR THIS. As Admiral Ackbar would say, “It's a trap!”

FN2. I have to say that the “cathedral” review from Marina is my favorite of Candide as a reader of perfume-inspired writing. I encourage you to read it, especially if you're a lit/philosophy type. I really like the way she ties the scent to its literary namesake.


In the interest of full disclosure, the perfume sample above was provided by the perfumer.

He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store...

A Review of Olivier Durbano Citrine EdP

First off, picking a winner for the A Lab on Fire's Super Sweet What We Do In Paris Is Secret and 1950s/60s girlie group mix.

And the winner is:

TaffyJ!

Congrats to Taffy. Email me at feminine (dot) things @ gmail (dot) com with an address I can ship your goodies to. You package will also include a sample of A Lab on Fire's Sweet Dreams 2003, which I've obtained.

I had a big weekend of writing planned, but other things got in the way, hence my extreme delay in posting a winner.  I did, however, consume an inhuman quantity of Gossip Girl, which was only slightly less fun than seeing the look on David's face as I intermittently explained the plot twists to him. Bafflement, doubt, and incredulity is all there is to describe it. Of course, it was the same look he just gave me while I explained the changes to the college football bowl/play-off system, so there you go.  I speak many popular American tongues with which my California-born, perpetually unshod, lifelong-pescatarian Jewish husband is unfamiliar, and they range from faux bitchery on the Upper East Side to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.  And him? He's better at foreign policy, Victorian history, gaming strategy, international relations, and getting people to like him.  It all works out in the end. I did manage to give myself a manicure and got all my grocerying for the last two weeks done in one late night Target run with the Kate, so the weekend wasn't a total wash.

One way the D&D symbiosis works out is that David is often willing to indulge me (a wonderful trait in a partner, IMO).  Tonight he helped me make up for lost weekend time by taking me out for a proper date, complete with sushi dinner, stop at the Sweet Factory for fancy candy (David likes to go crazy in one big bag, whilst I like to divide into multiple smaller bags that include chocolate in one and a mix of cherry and strawberry sour ropes in another), then to see Moonrise Kingdom, which was delightful. David declared it the "least depressing Wes Anderson film ever." So charming, so sweet, great soundtrack with a heavy reliance on Hank Williams tunes.  I loved it.

You know what else I love?  You, dear reader.  Thanks for being there.  Sometimes I think...no, I know, I'd be lost without you.

And with that: on to the perfume! I chose today's scent because it reminded me of the color palette for Moonrise Kingdom, which in turn reminded me that Wes Anderson is always worth experiencing on a screen large enough to immerse yourself in the full sensory experience of his world.

Citrine EdP is the seventh and final scent in a series by Olivier Durbano is his "Stone Poem Jems" line based on semi precious gem stones known for their healing powers. Citrine is an "amber wooded spicy" and is described as follows: 

The scent unfolds and reveals materials reflecting the color of the sun: bright Sicilian lemon introducing a citrus blast; sweet mimosa buds clustering on branches doused with pure sunlight; and warm amber solidifying solar energy. Notes of ginger and pink pepper further invigorate the golden notes with zest. Traces of precious woods and the finest Japanese incense complete the scent journey from inner flame to celestial light. 

Notes: Sicilian Lemon, Wild Orange, Elemi Incense, Ginger, Pink Pepper, Carrot seeds, Mimosa, Rosewood, Gaiac wood, Musk, Myrrh, Grey Amber, Beeswax

 Citrine's citrus opening is strong without being acidic like cleaner or overpowering, and quickly sl-l-l-i-des into an amber so smooth it's surprising after the sharp opening. The scent reminds me most of a good tea with lots of honey and lemon.  It's beautiful, strong but also soothing; Arthur described it as having a glow, and I think that's dead on.  Not terribly unlike the gem from whence it takes it's name, come to think of it.  It grows more toward the incense and wood about an hour in, but remains surprisingly light.

Citrine wears very close to the skin.  On me, the sillage is so low I feel like I'd need to double spray to get enough.  Longevity is middling, about six hours, most of which is more about slightly sweet woods and not so much about citrus, so if you want to try a citrus that isn't really -- a kind of gateway citrus, if you will -- this might do nicely.

Unfortunately, for the price point?  The scent is too soft for my tastes.  But then, I like aggressive perfumes.  If you don't, this might make a great addition to your collection.

Olivier Durbano Citrine EdP is available in 100ml for $190, but you can buy samples from LuckyScent.

And with that, I'll leave you with this classic gem which features prominently in Moonrise Kingdom, which I have loved since I was a little girl:

   

  Want more? Try...
~ a review from EauMG
~ a review from Doll Eyes
~ a review from A Nose is a Nose is a Nose
~ a review from CaFleureBon
~ a review from Kevin at Now Smell This!

You know I've never been to heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma.

JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Collette parfum

It's possible that if I favorably mention JoAnne Bassett's Night Queen one more time within a single month, people will think I am on the take. Take heart, dear reader: unlike our elected representatives, Feminine Things remains, at date, bribery free. FN1.

So I'm not going to talk about Night Queen. In fact, we're not going to talk about Night Queen at all. We're going to keep her out of this.

Instead I'm going to talk about another offering from JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Collette parfum. According to the card that came with my sample, the notes are as follows: Cepes and Whit Cognac from France, various citrus essences, and others.

According to JoAnne, the scent concept has its roots in France, motherland of perfumery. FN2. I have never been to France (or Spain or England or anywhere but all over the US and a bit of Canada, really). So let's see how my little nose meets the challenge, shall we?

Collette opens citrus but immediately turns toward this slightly green open-air dirt smell on me, one that I seem to mentally associate with the smell of standing over a freshly dug grave before anything is put in it. It isn't the foremost experience of the scent, but it hangs around like soil clinging to exposed root. I think that must be the mushroom "used to ground and reveal secrets of Mother Earth," as the scent description provides. I have a friend who is a budding mycologist; I'll have to ask her what she thinks.

As the song says, I've never been to heaven, but I've been to Oklahoma...and Wyoming and South Dakota and New Mexico. I can't tell you why this scent makes me think of the Badlands or the year I lived in Santa Fe or a few days I spent once in Wyoming or long drives across portions of Oklahoma, but there is something about a scent that aims to capture the beauty of earth that makes me think of the stilling grandeur of such places.

These are not places full of obvious life. They are not like the lush greenery where my heart and soul find succor and internal sustainability. FN3. And yet, they are no less alive. Stand in the places in the world that appear barren for more than a few minutes, and what you'll find is that the impression of isolation from modernity may fit, but isolation from life itself is not. In the supposed emptiness of the desert or the tundra teem a million lives that ignore us, not the other way around. Our view of our environment is myopic and self-centered, which is a reflection of our limited bodily knowing of the world. But if you close your eyes, and you listen and you feel, not with your hands as we typically choose to define the world, but with your whole body, you will realize that the world is a thousand fragile things in every moment, most of them missed by us all the time.

We worry about the dishes and the laundry and being late to movies and who will feed the cats and if our jobs will last and if we will be happy and who will win the last football game of the season and if the writers of Vampire Diaries will ever just get on with it already and give Damon and Elena the hook-up they deserve and stop torturing us, and we miss...

...everything. So many everythings. The birth a bird in the tree by our window, the death of the worm its mother feeds it. The way our loved ones are slowly changing in front of us, the way our lives pass away in massive floods or slow forming drops.

 Some people will send you to an island if you want to slow down, or a forest if you want to reconnect with nature, and I understand that. But if you want to remember yourself, I say go to the desert for a few days. Force yourself to look past the initial sense of nothing and see the world, in you and outside of you. Notice how the earth and the land meet in the far horizon in an unbroken line that seems impossibly long, how the wind feels against your bare arms, how the sounds grow sharper as you notice them, as if hearing them for the first time. Lay on the ground, look up at the sky, and realize you are clinging to the earth as you float through an infinite space of impossible magnitude with a kind of magic that we call science because we like to think we are in control. Your life is everything to you, and nothing to the universe. You are infinitesimally small and extraordinarily large in every moment, even in your death.

Close your eyes and inhale. The dry night air is alive with mysteries, intimate and unknowable. Mysteries that smell like this.

FN4. FN5.
____________________
FN1. Though I am not above taking free perfume for consideration, review, drawing, etc. as long as it's on my terms  Perfumers, see the solicitations policy up top. <g>
FN2. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, Mutherland! (Sorry, I'm a little punchy today.)
FN3. For lo, I have lived in ugly, uninspiring places, and in the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac, "Ooooh, never going back again."
FN4. If you got the Twin Peaks reference buried in this post, you are either a. someone I could be friends with IRL b. one of a very specific group of fumie tweeps I heart; c.someone forced annually to spend your Thanksgiving weekend watching Twin Peaks with me, d. all of the above.
FN5. Also, my apologies about the Vampire Diaries-related angst but no new episodes until January 2012? Really!?! *Dies*

Scent provided by perfumer.