Carnation smoke and green kid gloves, with retro tailoring.
Fills the room with sharp with incense-y labdanum and chrysanthemum florals out of the bottle, then settles to a bright spicy clove. 1970’s Estee Lauder moss soon creeps in over 80’s Drakkar Noir leather, but manages to stay delicate, the whole day long.
There’s a nice witchy “cool aunt” vintage vibe to it.
Sweeter on clothes than on the skin.
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This B-side came out in 1980, and layers strung out funk with a bit of new age synth.
Pez powder fruit salad, for the soprano who is too modest for Deci Dela.
There’s something sharp and high-pitched about it, yet sweet–the aria where the ingenue laments in white while holding a dagger.
Loud in personal space with spicy pomegranate and sour cherry dust, and good in the afternoon with a glass of rosé, (which, like Quel Amour! and opera, gives a headache if over indulged.)
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Cool pandemic art. (Annie Lennox is not shrill.)
It does! New muslin and patterns!
Cue fitting deadline anxiety in 3…2…1…oh, fuck.
Edit – 2/22/23
I bought this ages ago in a fit of collector’s mania, and then put of trying it for years, because I was too close to the inspirational source material.
I’ve worked with vintage paper sewing patterns for ermty decades, and they have a very specific smell–and I was so afraid this wouldn’t hold up to the real thing.
Paper & Cotton lists Coriander, White Sage, Birch Wood, Tundra Moss, and manages to make a very good representation of the title.
Opens with aqvavit spiked with herbs, and laundry soap for ten minutes, then softens to sweet woods, and there it is–that delicate ecru cross between newsprint and the sheerest parchment stamped with ink, that almost smells like root beer–and hot ironing starch on plant fibers.
Dry but not powdery, long lasting, and even after 5 years years since my last show, still manages to bring on surges of dread and creativity.
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Gorgeous song.
(I too have made a dress from a table cloth.)
kira a. gold 