New leather boots and I love it, but I wished it lasted longer.
Goes on stiff with big fresh leather, tanned with green herbs, and a little vanilla ice cream polish–then softens down with resins and frankincense and cedar to the skin, over the course of two hours.
*
Carlos Santana and Gavin Rossdale covering T. Rex’s Get It On.
Rich honey rose and vanilla incense, roughed up with some crushed herbs–as if Amouage Fate and Absolue Pour Le Soir met for antipasti before a fancy event–then skipped it and went for bezoin ice cream and meaningful conversation instead.
I don’t often think of perfume as an accompaniment to food–but this would be amazing on a romantic dinner date.
Leans more toward silk neckties than chiffon scarves, and lasts long into the night.
*
Another gentlemanly rose–
Alejandro Rose-Garcia goes by Shakey Graves when he’s not acting.
The ad says a lot of pretty things involving fancy car interiors and the Roman countryside, but I get old diner next to a truck stop–chocolate ice cream sundaes, chrome and red leather bar stools, cigarette smoke and Trident gum–in the best way.
Brash and loud at the start, then melting into sweetness, the leather is almost edible, but for the marvelous hit of car-exhaust labdanum.
I can find the tomato leaf after I know to look for it, a twang of green with a metallic discord, but it fades after the first hour, drowning in the syrupy resins at the bottom of the dish. I wish it lasted longer–the sharpness is interesting, and cuts through the vanilla.
The benzoin and myrrh stay half the day on skin, and whisper the next morning on cotton.
Lots of fun.
*
Chuck Berry’s “You Can Never Tell” is a diner jukebox staple–
(Semi-Modern Vetiver.)
I love this stuff!
At first, vanilla ice cream, sweet and a little sweaty, with that strange metallic smoke of burnt wire, but wonderful–y’know the scent in the air at McDonald’s, when the shake machine blows a circuit mid-pour? That.
The singed plastic note grows into the middle–the vetiver, hot and ashy, but sexy in a smouldering way–for a nice hour inside cuddling space, before melting down to the most enjoyable myrrh for the rest of the day.
ELdO spins a nostalgic story about the gigolo who aged out and had to go into trade (yay for artsy ad copy!) that reeks of classism and fatism and ageism–NoT aLL eLeCtRiCiAnS!–and yet, because this stuff is so fantastic, we get a marvelous tribute.
The workingman’s ass crack made voluptuous, his sweat pheromonal–and who doesn’t love the guy who fixes the shake machine?!
*
Clutch has been rocking out for thirty years–
Myrrh & Kumquat is marketed as being “harmonizing,” but it’s the first 4711 Acqua Colonia I’ve sniffed that gets flirtatious.
Opens with a sour candy citrus zing, then melts down into very personal space with sugary balsamic come-hither glances, for thirty minutes.
Lingers with caramel sweet spice on the skin for another hour.
Unisex, unexpected, and marvelous. A good one for a spontaneous lunch date.
*
Another Myrrh.
The Church has been around for forty years–this is an early one.
Fir and sweet balsam pine, with benzoin making it soft.
There’s a timeless quality to Fresh As, as if it could have been worn by a troubadour of centuries past, with stringed instruments made of spruce wood and polished with golden resins, yet also by a modern musician, fresh electric ozone and green Recording-In-Progress lights.
Pair with a clever shirt and a tweed cap.
*
My brother introduced me to this one–I love the way this is filmed, so we feel like we’re in the studio with them.
Wildflowers by the seashore, and it’s gorgeous.
Opens bright, with fresh lavender and herbs, held together with Amouage’s signature spicy rose incense.
After thirty minutes or so, soft animalics drift in with dried sweet everlasting flowers and seashell ambergris, and stay in personal space for hours.
Rich salty resin sticks to the skin most of the day, and patchy cardamom on clothes forever.
So pretty.
*
One of my most beloved songs. Adele turns it even angstier than the original by the Cure.
This is the other guy in your MFA class–who rolled his eyes at the dude who started every sentence with “Actually…”
He smoked menthols, and cooked you dinner with five spice powder and wrapped his leather coat around you when the weather turned bad, and you never officially dated but once in a while you still get a postcard from Asia that smells of joss sticks.
*
This one is pure handsome-doctor-in-a-television-drama.
Soap and water, good leather shoes, a touch of medicinal anointing oil, get-well-soon roses and brooding hero amber.
I’d totally huff it on the ER resident with a stethoscope and good bedside manner.
There’s a lot of speculation about the true identity of Dr. Robert, but he obviously prescribed some fun drugs.
From Diptyque’s collection 34.
The copy says incense and osmanthus in “a tribute to Japan.”
Opens with sweet flowers and aniseed, then immediately ripens into a weird camphor with amarena cherry cough drop notes and smoke, and stays there for a long afternoon.
The end comes slowly, a leather on the skin that is more slick vinyl than soft cowhide.
It’s a strange one, chemical but pleasant. I’ll keep the sample in the medicine cabinet–it might be comforting on a sick day.
Here’s the very famous Japanese girl group Momoiro Clover Z’s collaboration with KISS, because why not?
kira a. gold 