Sing, O goddess : A review of Esscentual Alchemy Hokkabaz

Hello reader:

You're probably wondering if I've died. I have not. I was, however, sick again. While I managed to soldier through work, a head cold prevented me from smelling anything for two whole weeks. Seriously. Of the ten weeks of 2013, I have been sick for four of them.

This is not a trend I enjoy, reader.

Birthday spot, unfiltered.
Seriously. It looks just like this...

And it isn't like I don't try to be healthy. I rarely eat red meat. I take a daily multivitamin and a ridiculous amount of vitamin D since I am pale and live in a land without sun. FN1. I....okay, I need to exercise more, but hey, I just bought a treadmill, so that's going to start happening. I blame my largely nonfunctional thyroid. My broken hormone levels pretty much mess up my whole body.

But enough about my complete lack of health, I can breath again! And while I couldn't breath, here's what I did: I saw Beautiful Creatures and liked it (though it was too short, it was true to the spirit of the books, which I appreciated). I read books and bought more books. I drank a lot of tea. I ate my fair share and then a little bit more of my annual allotment of Girl Scout cookies. I went out to the Gorge for a weekend with David. I had a deep emotional reaction to the announcement that I finally get a Veronica Mars movie. FN2.

I turned thirty-five.

Yeah. It's weird. I thought my life would be very different at thirty-five. One thing is for sure: my day-to-day is pretty much nothing like my parents or any other woman in the history of my family. I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I like the choices I've made to have an education and career. On the other hand, there are things that I expected to happen in my life (namely children) that have not happened and may never happen. And on the gripping hand, this whole “must create my own path because there are no familial role models and on early childhood ingrained ideas for whether or not my choices are good and/or sensible” thing is...challenging. It forces me to stumble across the uneven ground of the path less taken; it's tough, but I keep going.

Speaking of challenging, I have an interesting perfume challenge to review today. Esscentual Alchemy Hokkabaz. The scent is supposed to be a recreation of the long lost Guerlain scent Djedi, created by Jacques Guerlain in 1926. According to perfumer Amanda Feeley,

[Djedi] was created when the world was enchanted by all things Egyptian. Djedi, as the story goes, was a magician - a conjurer - who claimed he could raise people from the dead, even those who had been beheaded! Djedi means – “He who endures.”

Polished metal, well-worn leather, the coppery smell of blood – is it possible that Amanda was thinking Egypt, but reached a little further back and landed right in the middle of the Homer's The Iliad?

As two men, measuring-rods in hand, quarrel about their boundaries in a field that they own in common, and stickle for their rights though they be but in a mere strip, even so did the battlements now serve as a bone of contention, and they beat one another's round shields for their possession. Many a man's body was wounded with the pitiless bronze, as he turned round and bared his back to the foe, and many were struck clean through their shields; the wall and battlements were everywhere deluged with the blood alike of Trojans and of Achaeans... 

They flew forth like the blasts of some fierce wind that strike earth in the van of a thunderstorm- they buffet the salt sea into an uproar; many and mighty are the great waves that come crashing in one after the other upon the shore with their arching heads all crested with foam- even so did rank behind rank of Trojans arrayed in gleaming armour follow their leaders onward...

With these words he led the way and the others followed after with a cry that rent the air, while the host shouted behind them. The Argives on their part raised a shout likewise, nor did they forget their prowess, but stood firm against the onslaught of the Trojan chieftains, and the cry from both the hosts rose up to heaven and to the brightness of Jove's presence...

It is weird that this is what I think of when I smell Hokkabaz? Dust and dirty, leather sandals, the clang of sword on shield, and the air perfumed with blood? And maybe, in the distance, flowers in bloom?

The notes say I'm right. “Rose, vetiver, oakmoss, leather accord, civet, patchouli, antique mysore sandalwood, clove, vanilla, orris, calamus, embalming spices accord.” How strange, isn't it? How we can find one historical moment in another?

Now that I've marveled a history and poetry, let's get on to the real question: Is it wearable? Yes. Very. I think it is strangely sexy, this warlike perfume. It feels visceral, inevitable, immutable, and enduring. With moderate tangy silage and good longevity on the skin, it walks a fine line between a metallic tang on the tongue and a spicy rose in the nose so it is neither sweet nor unsweetened, lightly floral but not at all flowery. Iconic.  I feels, in a word, iconic.

For a perfume that is supposedly long gone, this modern rendition feels very old, indeed. Hokkabaz isn't a scent for everyone, but I like it better that way. You're going to need to embrace the idea that perfume doesn't smell like food or flowers for this one. But if you do, I think you might find something really impressive.
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FN1. Seriously. IRL, if you are deathly pale and live in the PNW, you don't sparkle. You glow with the deathly blue of your veins clearly visible through your translucent skin and become very vitamin D deficient; you don't sparkle.

FN2. This gif was pretty much my reaction to the Veronica Mars movie news in a nutshell.

In the interests of full disclosure, this sample was provided by the perfumer.

Take me out to the black, tell them I ain't coming back...

I recently switched cell phone providers to an Android phone, and uploaded a bunch of music to Google Music to try it out. It turns out that I forgot I had a bunch of audio clips from TV shows and movies I love on my hard drive, because I will occasionally build a mix CD off some other medium -- a piece of visual artwork, but more frequently a quote from a poem or book or film or show -- and I like to use the audio clip to open or close the mix CD. FN1. So now occasionally I get these clips mixed in with my music, which is surprisingly delightful, particularly when the following song seems to pair with the quote.

I aim to misbehave.

One of the quotes I keep running into is this from one Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the firefly-class space ship Serenity: "The darkness. Kind of darkness you can't even imagine. Blacker than the space it moves through."
So imagine that you are me, mindlessly drafting away on legal documents, listening to music, and then these words pop into your head. What perfume do you instantly think of?
For me, it's obvious: Bvlgari Black.
Created in 1998 by Annick Menardo, Bvlgari Black is described on the Bvlgari website as follows:

Black is unconventional, a fragrance conceived around the smoky, woody notes of Lapsang Souchong tea, that celebrates the pleasure and freedom of expression. A fusion of cool, stripped-down design in high-tech matte rubber with a chrome cap and transparent glass.


Notes are black tea, rosewood, bergamot, cedar, oakmoss, vanilla, amber, sandalwood, and musk.

What can I say? Black is  a multitude of wonderful smells, and yet, difficult to describe. Its immediately evocative of hard vanilla candies, incense smoke, hot rubber, the smell when you pull cold water rushing over stones into a cup in your hands and bring it to your lips, the smell of the inside of your boyfriend's leather coat when you are held with it wrapped around your whole body. 

But that's just me.  Other people get "celery salt and rubber" and "pale green;" "dark vintage cashmere allure;"  "urban cool;" and a tie for my favorites: "biker eating an ice cream cone" and "most likely work best on attractive young yuppies or hipsters of either gender." It's somehow everything, and nothing, and appears to change a lot, based on the person wearing it. Not unlike looking out into the Black, I suppose.

Do I like Black? Of course I do.  It's sweetly strange, delightfully sexy, and weirdly delicious.  I can't decide if I want to taste it on my lips when I kiss someone's neck or spray it on a riding crop or spray it on my scarf on a cold morning.  Perusing reviews, it seems the real test of Black, though, is how it holds up next to one of my all-time favorites, the equally avant-garde L'Artisan Dzing!

Ah, the infamous hockey puck!

Trying them side by side, Dzing! and Black seem like cousins. Okay, perhaps less cousins, and more like.... You know how, when you see someone from the back or the side or at a weird angle and you are110% sure that it is someone you know and it is not until you actually walk up to them and say something that you realize they are a complete stranger and you have made a complete fool of yourself? That's what mistaking Dzing! and Black is like.  You are sure they look alike, but when you really pay attention, you realize they are nothing alike. FN2.

 I never thought there'd be two of them, and there aren't really.  Black is sweeter, smoother, and less aggressive or muscular than Dzing! Dzing! is heavier on the rubber and salt on me, while Black is heavier on the amber and sandalwood end of things. I like them both, and I think my preference for one over the other would probably hinge on my mood, or the weather, or the day, or my destination, unlike the great LT, who put Black in the top 10 fragrances of all time. FN3. Me? I think I might be more of a Dzing! girl, but I'm biased. After all, I've lived with and loved Dzing! for years now.  That said, at the low price point one can acquire a bottle of Black, I say, why not have both? I found a 100ml bottle on Amazon for $35 of all places!

Black is marketed unisex, and that's a good thing, because it is a lovely scent that could work great on anyone.  And at the low, low price of practically next to nothing, I command you to get thee to a Sephora to try it, and don't be dissuaded if they happen to have stuck it on the 'men's' perfume wall. 

 Want more? Try:
~ a review from Robin at Now Smell This!
~ a review from I Smell Therefore I Am
~ a review from Muse in Wooden Shoes
~ a review from Bois de Jasmin
~ a review from + Q Perfume Blog
~ a review from ChickenFreak's Obsessions
~ a review from All I Am - A Redhead
~ a review from Pere De Pierre
~ a review from Nathan Branch
~ a review from Scent of the Day
~ a review from Scentsate
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FN1. Yes, I love the mix tape, for lo, I am a child of the 1980s, and I *still* have tapes x-boyfriends made me twenty years ago, even though I have nothing to play them on, because I think they are some of the most personal gifts I ever received.


FN2. Or, Oh! You know that tumblr of Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber? It's like that! Like mistaking one of those lesbians from a distance for the real Bieber! (BTW, I have an IRL friend who was actually featured on the site.) (It's even Bieber approved (See video clip below.))

FN3. LT = Luca Turin, author of Perfumes: The Guide, and other fancy perfume accomplishments.  If you don't know, google it.

I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand.

Perfume Challenge Week 23: Monday, 6/20/11, to Friday, 6/24/11

Whew! It's been a busy week and quiet weekend for me since I'm headed out of town next weekend.  Where to, you ask?  Well I just got my very first passport and shiny passport card, so I am headed to Victoria, B.C. for part of the weekend.  I'm also dropping by my favorite vampire-ridden Washington town for Independence Day festivities.  I mean, who doesn't enjoy a good old-fashioned frog jump? So this weekend is about work and projects and chores for the most part. I finished Lauren Kate's Passion, the recently released third book in the Fallen series, which I enjoyed, although the ending was not what I expected.  I also watched two of the three episodes of BBC's Sherlock, which I am lov-ing.  Whatever Sherlock's damage may be, that man is fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

I need to say two quick things about current events before I get to the reviews.  I am very happy that the fine state of New York has joined the ranks of those states to approve marriage equality for same-sex couples.  The arc of history truly does bend toward justice, and these days when it can sometimes be hard to remember that, a group of people will come through in a clutch and remind you of just how much we are capable of when learn to overcome our petty differences in favor of the things that unite us.

Simultaneously, I am very sad that Peter Falk has died.  He was an angel walking among men, but I'll always love him most as Columbo, a man who made beige trench coats cool and whose squinty-eyed demeanor was remarkably charming.  I hope he has found the peace now that eluded him so much in the last few years of his life.

In fact, here's a little musical interlude, in honor of our bumbling, beloved fallen member of the host.

When you're following an angel

Does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?

Somewhere they're meeting on a pinhead

Calling you an angel, calling you the nicest things

I heard they had a space program

When they sing you can't hear, there's no air

Sometimes I think I kind of like that and

Other times I think I'm already there.

Thank you Mr. Falk for reminding us that merely being human is sometimes worth the greatest of sacrifice.  Also, note to self, get tickets for that TMBG show this fall.  Okay, now we can move on to the perfume.

Monday: As part of The Midsummer Night's Dream event, I reviewed JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Night Queen.

Tuesday: Olympic Orchids Olympic Amber - This was originally formulated as a base for other perfumes, but it stands beautifully on its own. A rich amber scent full of natural labdanum ornamented with vanilla, benzoin, incense, resins, patchouli, and woods. A true oriental fragrance that will transport you on a jeweled magic carpet of olfactory delights. Let's say you wanted to like Guerlain Shalimar, but it was just too big and loud and floral, like your Aunt Earlene's taste in heavy curtains. This might make an excellent alternative. Where a person might find the former full of big loud floral prints loved by women with frizzy hair, here there is resin and dirt and decaying leaves and wet wood.

I, however, love Shalimar. As a descendant of the kind of women who love those curtains, who employ design firms like Sugarbakers Design to install them, I would love it for sentimental reasons even if it were all those garish things. That said, I personally find it fashionable and fun, and if there is big floral print, it's the kind you find on a tiny summer dress with a swishy full skirt and big Hepburn-style sunglasses. Haters gonna hate, but I don't care; Shalimar is still wonderful.

But I was here to talk about Olympic Amber. As a Shalimar lover, I love this, too. And I love it for the differences. This is a very naturally scented amber, an amber that derived from the earth and forest and sea, nestled in notes that make it feel like a jewel discovered there.


Holding Olympic Amber up against Shalimar and Beyond Kilian Love to my friend LillieMae, who has an affection for perfume that I would describe as in its infancy, but growing, she agreed that she could smell the strong vanilla/amber notes across the three. Her completely uninfluenced opinion was that she thought Shalimar was nice, wanted to eat Love, but the one she'd want to wear, actually wear as an expression of herself? Olympic Amber. I am inclined to agree; as strongly vanilla/ambers go, I'd like to wear this one, too. 3.5 of 5 nods.

Wednesday: Boadicea The Victorious Divine - Notes: Jasmine, mandarin, aldehydes, styrax, sandalwood. Primarily jasmine, the aldehydes are a wonderful blend here so this stays away from becoming a heavy floral and stays light and pretty. This is a wonderful floral scent for summer. It doesn't have the best staying power (about 4 hours) but that does mean it is excellent for summer weather. Also, you don't always want a floral to bloom so large that it feels like you're carry a virtual hedgerow in front of you. Sometimes, light floral is exactly what you want, particularly in a jasmine. 3.5 nods.

Thursday: As part of The Midsummer Night's Dream event, I reviewed The Scented Djinn Peaseblossom EdT.

Friday: Soivohle Cordovan Rose - Notes: leather, smoke, plum, rose. If I think of just one of the listed notes and close my eyes, I can find it here, right here, in the opening.

Unfortunately, the combination, if I'm not trying to pick out a particular note and just hit a whiff of the opening? Chewing tobacco. Yeah, that's right. Dip, snuff, chaw. Call it what you will -- my dad dipped, my brother used to dip, hell my great gramma and great aunt used to dip, that's how deep south my family roots go. Sadly, this makes the opener of what would otherwise be a hugely unique scent experience for me a complete bummer.

And that is terribly sad. Because, and once again I will drag my perfume machinations into this, when I made LillieMae smell it and then smell it again a half hour later, the middle and end of the drydown read as the smell of a wonderful old leatherbound book or a beautifully made leather couch with a vase of two dozen strongly scented roses on the end table next to it.

So basically it repulses me unfairly, when I would obviously otherwise love it. It would work beautifully on a man and makes an awesomely unconventionally attractive scent for a woman, the kind of woman who could pull off the outfit to the left, say with some matching boots. So, ignoring my weird associations with the opening, 4 or 5 nods for its uniqueness.

Winner of the Week: For me personally, Olympic Orchids Olympic Amber. That said, I think Divine and Cordovan Rose are every bit as good.

"You know that I want you
and you know that I need you.
I want it bad, your bad romance.
I want your love and
I want your revenge.
You and me could write a bad romance."
~ "Bad Romance," Lady GaGa

She says, "A girl needs a gun these days on account of the rattlesnakes."

Caron Tabac Blond parfum

Jodie wears a hat although it hasn't rained for six days...

It was hot. Incredibly hot. It was so hot that Jodie couldn’t actually remember what water tasted like, even as she drank from her canteen. Wiping her mouth against the back of her handkerchief-wrapped hand, she wondered if this summer was ever going to break. Late September already, but it felt like mid-July, with Montana seemingly hellbent on riding the year out in a relentless heat wave.

Rolling her head back against her shoulders, she sighed and gazed out across the hills, squinting to make out stray cattle as the air rose in a haze off the dirt and dead grass. The herd was restless. Too little rain meant too little food and water, which meant cranky livestock. And less money come the end of drive season, but she wouldn’t think of that now.

Readjusting in her saddle, she nudged her horse gently and they began a lazy gallop toward the highest concentration of tiny black dots etched against the horizon.

. . . . . . .

It's hard for me to peg Caron Tabac Blond. It's such a classic scent. It's ninety-one years old, for goodness sake, and therefore possible that I am, right now, wearing a scent Meangus, my grandmother, and Mother Nanny and Ain't Lee (my great grandmother/great aunt), could have also worn. (For the record, everyone in my bio-family is known primarily by some crazy nickname straight out of a Southern Gothic novel because we are, in fact, that southern. Also, trust me that no one in my family ever actually wore Tabac Blond. They were WAY too poor. Like holes-in-their-shoes, a-single-piece-of-fruit-for-Christmas, no-indoor-plumbing-or-reliable-electricity-until-the-1970s kind of poor.) So I put it on, and I try to imagine them wearing it, or women contemporary wearing it. But I just don't see it.

Then I try to picture it as it historically might have been created, in the context of the story that Caron likes to tell on their website:

To mark the dawn of feminine liberation, CARON made the bold move in 1919 of dedicating a deliberately provocative perfume to the beautiful androgynous women of the era, with their long ivory and mother-of-pearl cigarette-holders poised nonchalantly between their lips.

Tabac Blond: a subtly ambiguous fragrance that borrows the leathery head notes from the world of masculine fragrance, and combines them with Caron's inimitable floral bouquet...

Accords: Leather, Iris, Cedar...

So I try to imagine these women with rouged cheeks and knees and their short hair in pin curls and waves, with bright lipstick and loud talking, hiding bootlegged hooch in flasks inside the garters of their hosiery, driving cars and giving their properly raised mothers fainting fits, in a sort of post-first-wave feminist version of "shock and awe" warfare. But when I smell Tabac Blond, I don't get that either.

No, I've tried Tabac Blond (the parfum version), several times now and the Texan in me cannot stop thinking about the female barrel racers at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo that I was dragged to several times a year each and *every* year until I was about ten. I may be a Left Coast liberal now, but there is a deeply ingrained Texas girl in me who loves a good rodeo, and tell you *exactly* what a livestock show and carnival smells like (hint: it's not a great mix, really), and who CANNOT be confronted by leather and not think of saddles and chaps and cowboys and cowgirls.

In my world, Tabac Blond is the smell of a well-worn saddle, worked supple by continual contact with strong sweaty hands and thighs. It's the smell of sweat from physically demanding activity, on the part of the rider and the steed, spent in the pursuit of a hard day's work. It starts out soft and quiet, but then roars to strength as it blends with the wearer's skin, warmed by what folks used to refer to as "making an honest living." It smells expensive, but in a durable way, like something of value that takes a long time to earn and therefore gets deserved care. It's not flashy or ostentatious; it's not a party. If you know country music, then let me tell you it's less about Garth Brook's "Rodeo" and more about Michael Burton's "Night Rider's Lament." (Note: This version of Night Rider's Lament is actually sung by a female vocalist who tried to adapt it for a cowgirl's perspective.) This isn't about the "roar of the Sunday crowd;" this is riding for short pay and getting nowhere and losing your share because you don't know how to live any other way. To me, even more than say, Tauer Perfumes Lonestar Memories, which feels much more high-falutin', Tabac Blond is a Louie L'Amour book, a John Wayne marathon featuring The Searchers, a quintessential longing for a open-ranged American West declared officially closed in 1890 and that was never as romantic as we like to imagine in the first place, a place of wide-open land and skies and freedom and isolation and the thrill of all of that. A place of exploration and discovery, where the understood motto was "Don't Fence Me In." In a word, Tabac Blond is iconic.

It's just not the icon Caron ever intended.

According to Angela at Now Smell This!, Luca Turin once described Tabac Blond as "dykey and angular and dark and totally unpresentable." But if you're idea of proper womanhood is a sort of classic European grand dame, then perhaps "totally unpresentable" is exactly the way I like to think of Tabac Blond. Then again, I like dirt and rodeos and cowgirls like Jodie. By Turin standards, I'm probably fairly unpresentable, too.

I should note that the parfum I'm trying is, I think, post the much lamented reformulation. I received it in 2007, and I don't think it was a vintage sample, which everyone says is better. I don't know the difference, frankly, and I love what I have, so I don't really care.

You can buy Caron Tabac Blond in 100ml EdP spray for £160(~$242) from Escentual.com (British site -- watch the shipping). You can get the pure parfum in much smaller quantities (say 7.5ml) for similar prices. You can get a sample of the pure parfum from The Perfumed Court for $7 if you just want to try it. I hear that if you buy it in quantity from the Caron Boutique in NYC the price point goes down as the quantity goes up. I, for one, will probably be saving up to buy a bottle of it eventually, just like I did with Iris Pallida. It's one of those things where the ridiculous expense is, at least for me, totally worth the experience.

"She looks like Eve Marie Saint in 'On the Waterfront'
as she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance.
Her heart's like crazy paving, upside down and back to front.
She says 'Oh, it's so hard to love
when love was your great disappointment.'"
- "Rattlesnakes," Tori Amos (You can see a video featuring the song here)

Given that it's a classic, everyone has something to say about Tabac Blond. Try...
~ A review from Perfume Shrine
~ A review from Angela at Now Smell This!
~ A review from Bois de Jasmin
~ A review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ A review from Pere de Pierre
~ A review from I Smell Therefore I Am
~ A review from Yesterday's Perfume
~ A review from Confessions of a Perfume Nerd
~ A review from SmellyBlog
~ A review from Scent Hive
~ A nice piece by Victoria at Suite101
~ A review from Perfume Projects

Images from Caron and The Stoecklein Collection.

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.