I'm froze by desire.

2011 Perfume Challenge Week 16: Monday, 4/18/11, to Friday, 4/22/11

A weekend in Wallingford...

I had a nice time in Seattle last weekend celebrating my friend Becca's birthday.  We watched great stuff on video, ate and ate and ate, wandered Seattle, and returned my hair to a color of awesome.   I'm sad she lives so far away, but I'm happy for an excuse to visit Seattle more regularly.

Unfortunately, being out of town has resulted in a long week here in Portlandia for your intrepid sniffa.  Lots of travel, lots of work, but not a lot of sleep unfortunately.  When this happens, it help to keep myself focused by giving the week a theme.  This week I am giving my challenge week attention to the elizabethW line based out of San Francisco.

Monday: elizabethW Rose - Irresistible, passionate, sophisticated. Moist green notes and wild roses, enhanced with accents of fresh forest berries and hawthorn. A light honeyed rose with a hint of cinnamon underneath. I do get a little hawthorn, which makes it a slightly greener rose than you normally find. It's a nice rose, though not a singular reation in a crowded field. Also, my biggest complaint, not just for this scent but all of the elizabethW creations, is the staying power. It is still there by the four hour mark but only very faintly. By the 5.5 hour mark the scent had disappeared completely. 3.5 of 5 nods for quality of scent, 2.5 for longevity.

Tuesday: elizabethW Magnolia - Summer nights, romance, sensual. White magnolia petals deepened with saffron and sandalwood mingle with Riviera mimosa and gardenia. Magnolia comes on like gangbusters at first, full of pretty clean floral oomph. After ten minutes it backs down significantly, though I do really enjoy this floral blend, which becomes more gardenia than magnolia by the fifteen minute mark. By the four hour mark I could barely smell it. What there was of it, while it lasted, was a lovely solifloral. 4 of 5 nods for quality of scent, again 2.5 for longevity.

Wednesday: elizabethW Lilac - Romantic, fresh, intensely floral. A single note from boughs of springtime lilacs brightened with subtle hints of jasmine, neroli, and freesia. A warm dark lilac, but the jasmine gives it a candied edge. As twenty dollar lilacs go, I challenge you to find a better lilac at this price point. 3 of 5 nods for quality an 2.5 for longevity.

Thursday: elizabethW Sweet Tea - Gracious, spirited, elegant. An enticing marriage of oriental black teas, juicy fresh Amalfi lemons, and the sweetness of almond honey. I am southern. Anyone who has read this blog for more than fifteen seconds probably knows that. So you can imagine how I feel about the creation of a sweet tea scent. In this I get lemon and classic Lipton instant tea. I don't get honey, but I do get a bit of artificial sweetener. So in a word? Smells like home. 4 of 5 nods for quality, though again only a 2.5 for longevity.

Pike's Place Market

Friday: DSH Perfumes Nouveau Gardenia - Notes: Bergamot, Mimosa, Gardenia, Musk, Sandalwood What a strange experience of Gardenia. It's almost Palmolivey in the first few seconds, then becomes this dry musky scent with a citrus like orange pith rather than orange flower. It's not all that sweet and might make an excellent masculine gardenia (what a strange treat!) if you could find a man you could pin down long enough to spray it on him. I really do need to find a guy who is willing to let me randomly apply scents to them. Perhaps when my friend Andrew comes back to town... 4 of 5 nods.

Winner of the Week: Sticking to my theme, elizabethW, I'd have to say my favorite is the Sweet Tea. I also loved the Magnolia and will happily pony up $20.00 for a 15ml purse spray. If you fall in love with one of these scents, you can grab an entire 2ounces (60ml) for only $35.00. And the low price tag actually makes the longevity problem less of an issue. For $100, you an buy five different purse sprays and wear a different one morning, noon, and night.


"I am yours now.
So now I don't ever have to leave.
I've been found out.
So now I'll never explore.

See what I've done.
That bridge is on fire.
Going back to where I've been.
I'm froze by desire.
No need to leave."
~ "Islands," the xx

Scent that Book!: Beautiful Creatures & Beautiful Darkness

Scent That Book! is a new, reoccurring feature here at Feminine Things. It is premised on the idea that even books require perfuming, whether the authors realize that or not.

Reading is sexy!

Dear reader, do you read a lot? I read…a lot. I’ve always been a big reader. I was the kid who always carried around a book like a safety blanket; I was like the Rory Gilmore of my Houston suburb. My reading slowed to a trickle during college and then law school. In the last year, though, I’ve returned to fiction with ferocity. I read two to three books a week, usually in the two hundred to five hundred page range.

Something I’ve been noticing. These books will have passages that describe scents, usually the specific way a person smells, and my little sniffa brain immediately begins distracting me with an internal hunt to place the scent in the panoply of perfumes I know. Then I thought – why play a game alone that could be so much more fun with friends?

Thus here we are, the first in a new series I’m calling Scent that Book. I’ll give you a passage from a book with some scent related items mentioned. You help me figure out what perfume you think might be similar.

First up:  Beautiful Creatures, and its sequel, Beautiful Darkness, also known as the first two novels in  The Caster Chronicles, are books by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia. Beautiful Creatures was named it one of the top ten books of 2009 and the top pick for best teen book by Amazon.com. Here's a brief description:

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small southern town of Gatlin has ever seen. Lena has wavy black hair with large green eyes. She wears a necklace made of pieces of junk and carries around a tattered journal. She is gossiped about, picked on and neglected because of the fact that she is the niece of Macon Melchizedek Ravenwood (Otherwise known as Old Man Ravenwood), the town's shut in. Lena is struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten south, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Lawson Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape Gatlin, is haunted by dreams in which he is trying to save a beautiful girl he has never met. He has brown hair and blue eyes and lives with his care taker and house keeper Amarie "Amma" Treadeau and his depressed father who has shut himself in his study since his wife's death. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

Without giving away too much detail, here are two snippets of scent description from Beautiful Darkness:

I was caught in her drag, struck by the current that bound us together and kept us apart. I leaned in to kiss her mouth, sand she held the lemon in front of my nose, teasing. "Smell." "Smells like you." Like lemon and rosemary, the scent that had drawn me to Lena when we first met. (pg. 32) 

Lemon and rosemary, Lena Duchannes' signature scent. So what do you think, dear reader? What scent might capture all the magical turmoil of Lena Duchannes (rhymes with "rain") and her star-crossed love affair with Ethan Wate in tiny Gatlin? I was thinking maybe Guerlain Jicky at first because Lena's power is supposed to go back generations, but now I'm thinking Miller Harris Le Petit Grain, the oak-moss, vetiver, and patchouli leaves at the base reflect some of the story elements that I'll let you discover on your own.

Ah, yes, but as all star-crossed stories go, Lena and Ethan struggle with forces working against their love, and teenage temptation rears its head. Enter Liv, who is described below.

But I didn't answer her. I pushed her shiny blonde hair away from her face and leaned down, our faces only inches apart. She inhaled softly, our lips so close I could feel her breath and the scent of her skin, like honeysuckle in springtime. She smelled like sweet tea and old books, like she had always been here. (p. 211)

Honeysuckle, sweet tea, old books. Like a cross between CB I Hate Perfume In the Library and Jo Malone Honeysuckle & Jasmine, or better yet DSH Perfumes Wild Honeysuckle? Though that, sadly, misses the sweet tea aspect, which if you're from any part of the South, you know won't do a'tall. I've never tried elizabethW Sweet Tea but maybe that would do. I dunno. It's stumper, Liv, the English would-be librarian.

So now its your turn. You've got a few words about the universe, the characters, and some notes. What do you think?

You can read more about Beautiful Creatures and Beautiful Darkness here.