I can tell the real from the fake: Reformulation vs. Retirement in Perfumery

A while back Mother's Cookies, a famous and long lived brand of cookies here in the United States, filed for bankruptcy. Many people were saddened by this news, for Mother's made a lot of fine cookies, notable among them the Circus Cookie, a frosted and sprinkled white and/or pink animal cookie. I have always loved these cookies, and felt very sad to see them pass into the great consumer beyond.

Then -- reprieve! Another company (Kellogg) bought the recipes from Mothers as part of the bankruptcy resolution. Iced Oatmeal Cookies and Circus Animals would live again. I remember being really excited the first time I saw them in the grocery store again. I immediately bought a bag and did a happy little jig all the way home. I poured myself a big glass of milk, yanked open the bag, and like the Circus Animal lover that I am, shoved a couple of cookies into my gaping maw.

I expected slightly greasy sugary shortbread deliciousness. Instead, the cookies tasted like unsalted butter covering a cookie made of sand.

This experience is what I think of every time someone starts talking about reformulated perfumes. It is what I thought of when I saw Octavia's sad post over at 1000 Fragrances about Miss Dior and Miss Dior Cherie last week. My Circus Animals, the ones I grew up on and loved? They're gone. Gone forever. They are not coming back. Same goes for the soon-to-be lost to history Twinkie and other beloved Hostess snack cakes. Just because you get close to making something like it was (or don't even bother trying, which is worse) and you call it by that name, don't think for a second you have actually recreated the thing. You haven't. As my daddy used to say, "Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades." FN1. Even if you're close, you haven't actually recreated the original, and to claim you have is to mislead and disappoint.

I saw a message from slumberhouse last week saying that they were discontinuing their scent Ore. This made me sad. I enjoy Ore and own a small bottle. The statement from the slumberhouse blog read as follows:

Ore will no longer be made. I have so many clients who love this scent and I know reading this is going to seem surreal but I really had no choice in the matter. Over the last year a growing number of ingredients for this particular fragrance have become unavailable to me. The good thing about being a perfumer is you can always find loopholes, ways to recreate accords, similar compounds, etc — however, these little tricks only work to a certain extent — eventually I realized the integrity of the scent had been lost. An untrained nose may not notice these subtle differences, but mine does. My goal above all else has always been to maintain an emphasis on quality and I simply cannot consider Ore, now that so many critical components are so difficult to find, to be of the same quality as the original formula.

"The integrity of the scent had been lost. An untrained nose may not notice these subtle differences, but mine does." That was the line that hit me the hardest, because it was so honest. Even if you, consumer, don't know the difference, I do, and I won't sell you something you didn't intend to buy.

Why is this so hard for large perfume houses to understand? Are we sad when scents we love are discontinued? Sure. FN2. But we shed a little tear, horde old bottles off Ebay, and move on. Frankly, I don't want the sand and wax version of my Circus Animal floating around out there, doing harm and disservice to the memory of the cookie I loved in the past. I'd rather there be no cookie than one that makes people think my delicious cookie was never good at all because it masquerades under the same name.

I've been trying to think of a way to communicate this to the worst offenders since I saw Octavia's post, and the only way is to refuse to buy from them, at least not anything that is speculated to be reformulated for no reason other than craven profit. FN3.  No one would sell a 1000 piece puzzle of van Gogh's Starry Night for the same price as the original work, because no one would buy it.  So I think this is an other case where those of us with purchasing power and knowledge need to be vigilant and communicative.  I thank Octavia for her thoughts on the subject, and I'd love to hear yours.

So here's my salute to the Circus Cookie and slumberhouse Ore.  The cookie is gone, of course, but as luck would have it, I got a message from Meredith Smith of Sweet Anthem, who wanted to me to tell all you lucky PNWers out there that not only does she have a few bottles of Ore left in stock, but she is having a fabulous Valentine's Tea Party event this weekend at their brick and mortar store in Seattle.

Shop local for valentines at a tea party hosted by Sweet Anthem Handmade Perfumes on February 11. From 12-4 PM, find flowers, perfume, and sweets for the sweet by local designers. Enjoy fine teas and gifts with purchase throughout the afternoon. 

Sweet Anthem Handmade Perfumes is pleased to introduce their 1st Annual Valentine’s Day Tea Party featuring three local designers in addition to the shop’s lines of unique handmade fragrances. This exclusive event offers a shoppers a chance to meet the designer and buy local for this Valentine’s Day.

In store appearances include designers Nikki Sherritt – candlemaker and perfumer from Gabriel’s Aunt and Rebel & Mercury; Anne Dowell – gardener and truffle maker from Garden Bon Bons; Lydia Love – chocolatier behind the artisan line Chakralat; and Meredith Smith – perfumer from Sweet Anthem Handmade Perfumes.

If you are local to Seattle or are free this weekend, I recommend considering attending.  You can even RSVP for the event on Facebook.

Ore is also still limitedly available at Indiescents.

So what say you, dear reader?  Is it better to have loved and lost our precious scents? Or should we be kind to those who try to recreate that which we love, even if they do it imperfectly?  

Inquiring minds want to hear from you.

"You can say what you want to say.
What we have you can't take.
From the truth you can't escape:
I can tell the real from the fake.

When will you get the picture?
You're the past; I'm the future.
Get away. It's my time to shine,
and if you didn't know the boy is mine..."
~ Brandy & Monica, "The Boy Is Mine"
__________________
FN1. This analogy always made sense to me because I remember the adults in my family playing horseshoes and washers from time immemorial. It was a thing you did in my family. You raised a pole or dug a hole, then you stood around with a beer throwing things at it and the closest person won. You could pass hours like this in my family, and we did.

FN2. Or, in the case of L'Artisan Vanilia, I am bitter, bitter, bitter because it wasn't so much discontinued as replaced.

FN3. Reformulation due to increasing regulation of materials, particularly in the EU, is a whole other conversation.  I still don't want it to happen.  I'd rather the scent be retired and something new take it's place.

She can't tell me that all of the love songs have been written, 'cause she's never been in love with you before.

Housekeeping side note: so I'm folding and putting away a ton of laundry that David washed over break. The man has 3-4x as many cloths as I do and he did all his laundry over break. I mean all of it. Shirts I don't think I've seen in a couple of years are clean. And David, who does not wear scent, per se, has always worn sandalwood oil. Specifically The Body Shop Woody Sandalwood perfume oil that, apparently, The Body Shop is no longer making. (He's going to freak when he finds this out, btw. Perhaps I should grab him some off EBay while I can?) He wears it straight, and also puts it in his body soap for showering.

Apparently, the upshot of this is that all his clothes, even the ones that have been unworn for literally YEARS, and have been washed really thoroughly, they all still smell like sandalwood. So right now, I have his shirts all around me, which means it smells like him everywhere. I love that smell. I don't think I could ever imagine this scent as anything but David. And I don't know many good sandalwood scents, so if you know of any, tell me. I'm sure I'll love it. After all, it will smell, to me, like comfort and safety and affection and...love.


"Your skin smells lovely like sandalwood.
Your hair falls soft like animals.
I'm tryin' to keep cool, but everyone likes you."- "Sandalwood," Lisa Loeb (you can listen to the song here)

A whole life so lonely, and then you come and ease the pain.

Serge Lutens Clair de Musc

My weird insomnia attacks continue. I tried everything last night. I took a pill. I took a shower. I made myself a comforting snack (my go to of late is buttered toast). I put in my first season of Gilmore Girls, which I love more than anything and always find soothing. It was five before I fell asleep.

Now I'm up because I had to take Papaya to the vet to have her spayed this morning. The vet just called to tell me she has a heart murmur. They're doing an x-ray to see if they can continue with the spaying or if it is more serious. Keep your fingers crossed for me. The sweetest cat in the world seems to be plagued with health problems. I'm hopeful, though. I don't think fate brought her to me just to snatch her away.

I have no idea why I'm telling you this. I guess I'm feeling especially chatty this manana.

I'm interrupting Rose Week here at Feminine Things to do a review of the now discontinued Serge Lutens Clair de Musc. According to Perfume Shrine, Serge Lutens has recently discontinued four scents: Chypre Rouge, Miel de Bois, Clair de Musc and Douce Amère. Naturally, this sent me directly to my sample box to rummage through it to see what I might die over missing. The only one I had was Clair de Musc, so I sprayed it on with vigor in anticipation of the overwhelming sadness I would feel at having it ripped away so suddenly, because I am, like most sniffas, a masochist.

Serge Lutens offers this about Clair de Musc: "A crystal...Freshness and Finesse.A luminous musk expressing its transparency through delicate orange blossom. Tinged with powdery white iris from Tuscany...Inimitable." I have no idea what to do with this description, so I turned to Luckyscent for more info.

According to Luckyscent, Clair de Musc is

There are musks that are sultry and carnal, the dirty, animalic musks full of heavy-lidded sensuality. Clair de Musc is something entirely different, a musk that is luminous and transparent, with the delicate, pure, radiant beauty that is nothing short of angelic. The fragrance begins with a soft citrus accord of bergamot and neroli. The tender floral notes, the light jasmine and the gentle iris, grace the heart of the scent; the base is warmed by a subtle note of sandalwood. The citruses, flowers and woods are understated, beautifully muted, allowing the silvery-white, lunar musk to shine in all its ethereal, seraphic glory. A sublimely wearable, wonderfully versatile fragrance that is bound to delight the musk connoisseurs and to convert the musk-wary into ardent followers.

Notes: Musk, bergamot, neroli petals, Tuscan iris powder

I'm relatively new to musk scents. I admit that, even two years in, there are huge holes in my perfume knowledge, and musk is definitely one of those holes. So that said, I'll tell you a little new nose secret. When I'm feeling like a perfume newb, I go to the Fragrance Families page at The Perfumed Court, to remind myself what the hell it is I'm trying to smell. This page, combined with the ability to search the site for certain notes, allows me to get a sense of what other perfumes might share a similar center note or theme, which I can then sample side by side in order to get a better sense of what it means to say "woody musk" or "floral musk."

So now that you know how I cheat, pretending to know more than I actually do...

Onto MUSK! I definitely get some of the iris. And I love iris, so of course I thought this was delightful. I do get some bergamont as well. As for "musk," I'm still not quite sure what that means, honestly. I don't have a lot of musk-y samples, as it turns out (whole new world of scent to explore -- woohoo!), but the scent has a warmth to it, something that seems to keep close to the skin. It seems like a kind of animalistic smell, like the kind of scent one gets cozying up to a special someone who has just finished a brisk walk. You know, that natural smells a person has and when you love them, you think it smells just...good. I don't know how to describe it other than that. I know all babies have it naturally -- you know, everyone comments on the "good baby smell." And when you are in love, the person you love smells like that. So musk has a warm smell that I suspect you will either like or loath varying from scent to scent, and in this case -- love. I do. I love this. It is definitely a comforting scent, a scent to cozy up to. Thus it is, of course, a wicked ripping shame that it is being discontinued, especially right now whilst I am unemployed and cannot justify begging my husband to buy me a bottle simply because "it's being discontinued!"

Sigh.

Ah well. Also, every SINGLE review I could find was a rave. Buy it while you can where you can, my dears. I will have to nurse my sadness with what's left of my tiny sprayer.

Oh look! It's the Bangles episode... (returns to Gilmore Girls-athon)

"I believe it's meant to be, darling.
I watch you when you are sleeping.
You belong with me.
Do you feel the same?
Am I only dreaming
or is this burning an eternal flame?"
- "Eternal Flame," The Bangles (you can hear this song here)

UPDATE: Clair de Musc has NOT been discontinued. You can still buy it as of March 2010. Yay!

Want more reviews? Try...
~ A review from The Non-Blonde
~ A review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ A review from Splendicity

Images from Serge Lutens and also a band photo of the Bangles because, frankly, there were just no good pictures for musk. Trust me. And don't go googling for it. It's a dangerous place out there. The Bangles are better.

I want you rockin' back inside my heart...

Ava Luxe Film Noir

“By way of explaining what we are about to do, I am first going to tell you a little bit about the country called Tibet.”
~ Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks

I love Film Noir. I have been a sucker for detective stories since I read my first Nancy Drew when I was seven. The sad, isolated, embittered and chain smoking detectives, the loyal and dedicated Girl Fridays, the vulnerable (and possibly duplicitous) femmes (fatale). It doesn’t matter that there’s a formula. A good noir can either completely follow the formula (Chinatown, Brick) or totally break from it (Memento, The Usual Suspects); I love them all.

I’ve also mentioned my love stories about the inexplicable, the macabre, and the strange. The combination of these two fascinations is no better merged than in the early 1990s cult classic television series, Twin Peaks. I own all of Twin Peaks and still watch it, frequently sucking in new fans who are too young to remember anything on TV in the early 1990s. I still can’t believe, looking back, that something so strange and wonderful and unique ever made it onto network television, even for a season and a half.

Some perfumes are like that. They are entirely unique and interesting. Andy Tauer makes a lot of really unique fragrances that take you someplace “both strange and wonderful,” as Agent Cooper might say. Piguet Fracas is also like that, or Caron Tabac Blond. Another one of these truly unique fragrances is, appropriately enough, Ava Luxe Fim Noir.

I had to take the description of Film Noir from The Perfumed Court because, like my beloved Wild Blackberry Musk, Film Noir is already discontinued. Film Noir is “a dark, haunting, dramatic leather scent with notes of leather, hemlock, spruce, amber, olibanum, coumarin, tobacco, and tonka. It is an eau de parfum, edp.”

Film Noir is a fascinating experience. It’s hard to say if it’s masculine or feminine, really, because it seems too alien for either in some ways. On me, the initial experience is a mixture of the smell of iron shavings, like the metallic tinge in the air of a factory, and oranges. One imagines this might be the way the world smells to an overworked airplane mechanic at some small airfield that services crop dusters that are old and badly in need of maintenance somewhere in the Florida. Surrounded always by the smell of metal on metal, old and cracking leather seats, hot rubber melting over and over again in the 100+ degree heat, he takes a second to wipe his brow and looks toward the citrus groves off in the distance, wondering why he thought he’d end up owning one of those when he came here, rather than working on the broken down planes of the handful of single family farms desperately trying to cling to survival.

Then the scent shifts, and I get a different kind of metal, coppery, like sucking pennies. The rubbery part is stronger here, too, so that it's like imagining an old prize fighter who placed one bad bet he couldn’t cover too many, and the smell is the taste in his mouth as he hits the hot, steam concrete of the parking lot behind the bar where the men owes money to caught up with him, like they were always going to.

Next I get a strangely sterile smell, like the smell I associate with a hospital. You know the smell, that overly clean astringent smell, the one that indicates that Bad Things happen here, and like Lady MacBeth’s hands, no amount of washing will ever get the damned place clean.

Finally, it settles into little bits of sweetness – it’s the tonka and tobacco at last, I think – that makes me think of all those film noir scenes in bars with atmospheric light and hushed voices, places you think would be best long forgotten, where the troubled nurse their secret shames and try to forget what they always remember. The tobacco smells delightfully feminine to me, here, and vulnerable. It’s that femme fatale again, slowly inhaling from her cigarette holder and exhaling slowly as the director shoots a close up of the smoke escape her wet lips.

In short, Film Noir is an exquisite and interesting scent. It might be one of the most interesting and difficult to describe scents I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing, one that is more about setting a mood than trying to create a specific moment or memory. I would kill to own this one...which is why I am feeling fairly homicidal toward Ava Luxe right now.

Every time I love an Ava Luxe scent and get around to posting about it, the scent has already been discontinued. Luckily I have a 30ml of the aforementioned Wild Blackberry Musk, but I have a measly 1ml sampler of Film Noir, which just KILLS me. My advice, when it comes to Ava Luxe scents, is that if you get a sample, try it immediately. If you like it – don’t think – just reach for your wallet. Far too often, the wonderful creations that come from Ava Luxe disappear, like the real villains in those old-time-y noirs. And once gone, you’re never getting them back. You can forget it, Jake. In the world of perfumery, it’s Chinatown.

"Shadow in my house.
The man he has brown eyes.
She'll never go to Hollywood.
Love moves me."
- "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart," Julee Cruise

Want more? Try…
~ a review from I Smell, Therefore I Am

Images courtesy of Twin Peaks (top right) and Jim Ferreira, who creates fabulous Classic Hollywood Glamour & Film Noir Cinema Portraits in San Francisco, CA.

You know he never stings, and he only hums for me...

Ava Luxe Wild Blackberry Musk

One of the things I already miss about Portland is that three seasons a year, Spring, Summer, and Fall, you can get your hands on pick your own fruits and vegetables. There are lots of small farms around Portland, though my favorite is The Farm on Sauvie Island. They grow everything: strawberries, raspberries, peaches, sweet corn, Bartlett pears, lettuce, zucchini, tomatoes, pumpkins, and more. Among their many offerings are lovely, luscious blackberries.

When it comes to perfume, making fine fragrance out of fruit is difficult business. One lovely example is Ava Luxe’s Wild Blackberry Musk. According to The Perfumed Court, Wild Blackberry Musk...

...blends juicy wild blackberries and light skin musk with just a bit of white rose and Madagascar vanilla. Subtle animalic base notes complete this fragrance. Wild Blackberry Musk is an eau de parfum, edp.

Wild Blackberry Musk is a fantastic mix of realism and artistry. Magically sweet and tangy, the scent is like the taste of berries bursting in your mouth, joined with green, glossy leaves and a musky hint of dirt clinging to the waxy black bundles. And just like picking fruit in the warm sun, Wild Blackberry Musk is even lovelier on warm skin. If one were to eat beautiful, plump blackberries, sucked like jewels from the tips of one’s fingers, sitting outside in the warm sun on a blanket with friends, one would approximate the scent of Wild Blackberry Musk. While the scent has low silage, sticking closely to the skin, it has great lasting power.

While, sadly, it appears Ava Luxe is no longer offering Wild Blackberry Musk, you can still get decants from The Perfumed Court.

Hey blackberry, how you taste so sweet.
Hey blackberry, tell me what you see.
Tell me, is it interesting?
- "Blackberry," Black Crowes

A Week of Vanillas: Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille

This is the fifth and final review in a five-part series looking at several different lovely vanilla options available to perfumistas.

Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille
Guerlain describes Spiritueuse Double Vanille, a 2007 creation, thusly

If a colour or fragrance were to be associated with each day, like the planets were in ancient times, sandalwood would be the Sun, saffron would be Jupiter, and without doubt vanilla would be Venus.
Notes: vanilla, benzoin, frankincense, spices, cedar, pink pepper, bergamot, Bulgarian rose and ylang-ylang.

Wow. This is an incredible fragrance! On application, Spiritueuse Double Vanille was strong and held close to the skin, as if one ground vanilla tobacco down, soaked it in oil, and then oiled my skin with it. Like doing shots of vanilla extract infused vodka, the way the smell lingers in your mouth and nose long after the shot has already burned its fiery path to your belly.

In the midsection, Spiritueuse Double Vanille becomes less sweet, and more of a gorgeous tobacco-y smoke, a little powdery or ashy akin to a cloud of vanilla smoke. After about an hour, the liquor note remains strongly on me, and all but the barest hint of the smoke drops out, leaving a strongly vanilla extract smell. Not sweet like baked vanilla, but again strong and distilled, like making some sort of crazy bootleg vanilla hooch in an old tub out back. Also, on me, it lasted for hours! So beautiful. 
The way it hangs around you, being sweet and intoxicating, is a little like the kind of feeling intoxication you feel after you make out with someone for the first time. Then you stumbled out of your car up to the door and giggle as you wave to the driver. And you hum and you sing and you feel giddy. And the world seems sweet, sweeter than it did before. The worm will turn, of course, as it inevitably does. But in the moment, in that dizzying cloud of sweet smokey love, you just feel overwhelmingly happy and grateful, so grateful, to have the moment in the first place.
The sadness here, of course, is that Spiritueuse Double Vanille was a limited edition and, with the exception of buying decants from The Perfume Court, I can’t find a place to buy it anywhere. I have no doubt I will be spending a ridiculous sum on as much Spiritueuse Double Vanille as I can get my hands on as soon as it is fiscally possible. It is the Iris Pallida of vanillas for me, so of course it also has to be LE!

Here's an evening dark with shame.
Throw it on the fire.
Here's the time I took the blame.
Throw it on the fire.
Here's the time we didn't speak it seemed for years and years,
and here's a secret no one will ever know,
the reasons for the tears.
They are smoke.
- Ben Folds Five, "Smoke"

Want more reviews?
~ Scented Salamander review here.
~ I Smell Therefore I Am here
~ Perfume-Smellin’ Things review here.
~ Legerdenez has a review here.
~ And if my five reviews weren't enough, Robin over at Now Smell This! reviews Spiritueuse Double Vanille and a few more vanillas here.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I jumped in the elevator at work the other evening and another woman got on behind me. Immediately the small space filled with a large, flowery scent. I looked over at her and said, “You smell great! What are you wearing? Is it Gap So Pink!?” She replied, “No, Este Lauder Beautiful, but one of the side ones.” Apparently one of the Beautiful flankers (probably Beautiful Love based on its combination of big white flower notes and “mango mist,” whatever that is) to me smells *exactly* like Gap So Pink! Which in my mind is not a bad thing – I like Gap So Pink! – but with Pink costing, in its day, ~$26 for 100ml, and Beautiful Love coming in at $63.50 for 100ml, it is hard to imagine paying so much for a scent largely marketed to teens. So if you like Beautiful Love, perhaps now is the time to poke around on the net to find a heap bottle of Gap So Pink! While Gap no longer makes it, you can still find it around if you check.