There's a possibility that all I had is all I'm gonna get.

The Ten Party

So yesterday Angela and I did our presentation for the Gender Symposium on perfume. A prof brought her whole class and it seemed fairly well-received. I'm working on a couple of pieces for this blog that outline the content of the presentation, so for those who are interested -- hold your horses, it's coming. The most fun part I think, though, was when we passed scent strips we'd made around and tried to get the audience to guess if the scent was marketed as for men, for women, or unisex, and why they thought that. It was a lot of fun. More on that later...

Today I'm reviewing Ten Party by The Party. The description on The Party website was kind of ridiculous, though, so believe it or not, I turned to Luckyscent for a more useful description,

Where the Party in Manhattan seduces with a decadent night on the town, The Ten Party invites us to celebrate the refined pursuits of the day. It speaks of timeless elegance -- mornings of tennis at the club, afternoons on the yacht. The fresh-aromatic opening, redolent of citrus, gives way to its spicy, lightly floral but rather unisex heart. A civilized afternoon with jasmine tea refreshes, while an unexpectedly sensual drydown of woods and musk at sunset, the end of a long, rewarding day, whether at work or at play.

Notes: Bergamot, lavender Provence, Sicilian lemon, caraway essence, petigrain, pink peppercorn, tarragon, jasmine, clove, mate, incense, cedarwood, patchouli, oakmoss, musk

On me, The Ten Party is an interesting experience. On a warmer day a couple of weeks ago when I first tried it, I got a heady spice mix up front. Today, though, I got something akin to black licorice for the first twenty minutes or so. It was a very real kind of licorice thing going on, with just a few hints of spices popping through on occasion. About twenty minutes in though, all that spicy/licoricey goodness drops out as I get this sort of hollow ozone-y thing that has a lemony edge, kind of like a cleanser on me.I know it's partly the bergamot and partly the lemon and partly the caraway, and I want to like it, but on me all I get is something that smells like an organic cleaning product. I know a lot of people love this one, but for me? My body chemistry just says no.

Too bad, too. I wish the licorice thing had lasted. That was quite nice. It might make a nice Spring scent for someone, but it just isn't me.

You can buy 100ml of The Ten Party for $160 from Luckyscent, and you can get samples from The Perfumed Court.

"So tell me when you hear my heart stop.
You're the only who knows.
Tell me when you hear my silence.
There's a possibility
I wouldn't know."
- "Possibility," Lykke Li (You can see avideo featuring the song here)

Want more reviews? Try...
~ A review from Perfume-Smellin' Things
~ A review from Perfume Posse
~ A review from The Scented Salamander
~ A review from He Smells, She Smells
~ A review from Fragrantica

With Every Trace Of Life, It Seems, Confined Within A Frame

Avon Christian Lacroix Rouge & Christian Lacroix Absynthe

The recent death of John Hughes and some writing I’ve been doing about the influence of Madonna in my life has got me thinking about the value of nonconformity lately.

I, like every other teenager in the history of time, once believed I was a unique and beautiful snow flake and felt the need to express that though the archetypical fashion choices denoting rebellion at that particular moment in suburban America. This, for me, meant flannel shirts over thermal underwear (in the Texas heat, mind you), long flower skirts, and big stompy boots. Also, lots of black. So much black, in fact, that my grandmother cut me off, wardrobe-wise, until I promised to buy something, *anything*, not black.

But underneath all this conforming nonconformity was a heart yearning to find originality and self-expression amongst the cookie cutter tract homes of my world. That part of me – the self-obsessive, introspective, navel gazing, artist-type – has never died. Though submerged by an even greater desperation to survive, she’s in there, still raging against the machine, whatever the machine might be. I like to think she does it with more effectiveness and grace now, or at least better clothes, but who can really tell about these things?

Anyway, this sharded self who must.be.different. above all things really values the occasional waft of a scent she’s never seen before. If it’s weird, difficult to love, or vaguely offensive in an artistic way, this is the part of me that screams, “YES!” and beings the frantic scramble for the credit card. Given my incredible brokenness and the high costs of moving and setting up life all over again, this is the part of my inner perfumista who is the least happy with me right now.

My Avon week is not really helping.

Today I tried two more Avon scents, Christian Lacroix Rouge and Christian Lacroix Absynthe. Like most Avon scents I was hunting all over the internet trying to find more than a meager one line description and a few notes as a starting point. (Not that ad/marketing copy ever really reflects the experience, but hey, it’s nice to start somewhere.) Thanks to Robin’s exceptional thoroughness at posting “New Scent” posts on Now Smell This!, I did find a few little blurbs.

Christian Lacroix Rouge is described by Avon as a “burst of citrus and spices [that] unveils a floral heart wrapped in the most sensual cashmere woods.” Robin adds that Rouge is a “‘floral chypre’ developed by perfumers Laurent Le Guernec and Carlos Benaim and includes notes of white pepper, orange, red peony; osmanthus flower, plum blossom, water lily, cashmere woods, patchouli and musk.”

Christian Lacroix Absynthe, per Avon, is supposed to be “[a] mysterious potion of sexy florals and rich woods inspired by the magic of absynthe.” Thanks to Robin, the fragrance notes are supposed to “include absinthe, freesia, green anise, orchid, saffron, narcissus, ancient woods, ebony, musk, myrrh and amber.” Supposed, Christian Lacroix himself had this to say about Absynthe:

Absynthe, a mysteriously mesmerizing 19th century potion known as the green fairy, is still one of the world's most seductive mysteries. Irresistibly inviting, dangerously captivating - a great inspiration to my fashion and newest fragrance.

On me, at first, both Rouge and Absynthe were fantastic and unique. Rouge was a delicious warm, sticky carmel apple concoction; Absynthe started out a weird balance of black liquorice, amber, limes, and cocoa powder. But almost immediately this strangeness burns off, as both collapse into a fizzy sweetness that reminds me of getting soda foam up my nose. An hour in, while Rouge tips toward the warm and sweet and Absynthe tips toward the aquatic and citrus, the mildly spicy bases were virtually identical. Both seemed flankers of a missing center pole, and without that center, neither really hold. And it makes me sad, too, because I tried both three times and each time the nonconformist in me wailed as the immediate singularly sensational impressions dissolved, crying, “Wait! That was lovely! Where did it go!?!”

I miss the weird. I like the weird. Absynthe could have stayed a mildly sweet, peppery, tangy citrus mix. Rouge could have stayed warm and supple and so sweet it reminds me of Starbucks Carmel Apple Spice. I’m sure neither would possess a huge audience, but it would have been so much better than the completely boring, mild and non-descript fragrance each becomes. As they are, neither were meant for me; they are not unpleasant, just ho-hum. And the little rebel within simply won’t have that.

“I feel like this could all come to no good.
The kids who populate these cul-de-sacs
will never know what stood
beneath those cookie cutter houses:
fields and streams and woods.
They'll sit in cars and wait for mom to drive them
out of this boring neighborhood.”
- “Oh, Susquehanna!,” Defiance, Ohio

Christian Lacroix Rouge & Christian Lacroix Absynthe are both available for purchase direct from Avon.

Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

Hello, dear reader. My name is Diana, I am a budding sniffa, and I have a problem.

In my early twenties there was a young man I hit it off with and went out with exactly four times. At the end of each outing, I’d think, “Why did I go out with him *again*? He’s nice, and he’s lovely to look out, and what a wonderful kisser, but we just don’t click!” Yet the next time he’d call, and I still wasn’t seeing anyone else seriously, I’d go again. Each time I’d think, “I’m sure if I just spend a little more time with him, we’re going to figure out why we are attracted to each other.” But we never did. And it wasn’t that we ever had a bad time so much as that we just never had a very good time that made it seem so dissatisfying, but even that dissatisfaction was tempered by our failure to connect. I could never get too worked up about him, one way or another.

Some scents are like that. There are fragrances I love from the moment I sniff them. Beautiful, rich, and dark. Light, clean and angular. Something in between, I just love them. It’s the olfactory equivalent of looking across a crowded room and falling, instantly, in love. Then there are perfumes I smell and I think, “Not if you paid me to smell like this would I wear it.” I am smart enough to know how much of love is about taste to try not to be overcritical of what is probably someone else’s love (though I am still overly harsh too frequently), but there are potential lovers you just know instantly are not for you, and sometimes those come in a pretty package and are adored by plenty of others.

No, my problem is that fragrance first date that goes well, but not well enough. I splash it on my skin and think, “Well, you’re sort of nice. Let’s see how it goes.” But then it just stays there. In cases where the fragrance is particularly well-liked or even lauded by more mature noses, I find myself feeling frustrated, mostly with myself. I wonder, “Everyone else sees how wonderful this is – why don’t I?” Yet, I just don’t. And I want to. Like that young man from years ago, I just keep saying yes because I cannot get why I seem to be the only one who cannot get into it.

I’ve been told by my personal Obi Wan Kenbo of perfumistas to just sit such perfumes aside and wait. In six months or a year, as my nose develops, she assures, I might feel differently. And perhaps that’s true.

The fragrance I am struggling with at the moment is L’Artisan’s Mûre et Musc. Mûre et Musc, released in 1978, is described as follows on Lucky Scent:

Fresh, lovely and a bit naughty. This groundbreaking blend of wild blackberries and clean musk has become a L’artisan classic. Since its creation in 1978, the enchanting fragrance of “Mûre et Musc” has never ceased to cast its spell. Those who have chosen it are so attached and faithful to its scent that it has remained one of L’Artisan Parfumeur’s all-time greats. Some, bemused by its powerful charm, have tried to imitate it, but none have succeeded. Elegant, playful, sexy.

Mûre et Musc notes: wild blackberry, musk, citrus.

Mûre et Musc is a lovely scent. Light, sweet, flowery…like a scent one catches on a breeze in a beautiful English garden. I imagine small children with ribbons flowing behind running across manicured lawns with lush flowers beds on warm summer days, fingers sticky and mouths stained purple with blackberries. I see those little girls crowned with laurels made of flowers on green woody stems. There is something innocent about it, which is beautiful. But it’s also so very…nice. Picturesque. Like a blushing eighteen year-old virgin getting her prom corsage. Like full-bottomed white panties edged in lacey ruffles.

And perhaps therein lies the problem. I’m not sweet. I'm not innocent. I’m not nice. I tend toward scents that are dirty or skanky or wild or cruel because I’m a lot of things but I’ve just never been very nice. So while I like Mûre et Musc a lot, and I think it is brilliant at what it does, I just don’t see us going anywhere.

Which is kind of too bad. I’m sure there is a part of me who would really like to be nice. That part just does not seem to earn more than a few moments of consideration, flirting with what might be, before the reality of what is settles in.

For other reviews, see Bois de Jasmin's review.

Photo from Flickr.