green

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Pleasures

pleasures
Mini bottle with clear ball cap and yellow eau.

Lovely rosy cranberries, fresh and juicy at first hello.
Then it gets brilliant with an unusual spicy-sweet, warm floral–
Karo-karounde is an African bush related to coffee, with rich blooms said by the Perfume Society to smell like jasmine and chocolate. L’Artisan Parfumeur features it at the heart of Timbuktu.
–I get a lot of pink pepper and curry-plant from it, maybe even nutmeg.

The guy says it smells like cilantro.
I think he’s catching the green edge of the lily-of-the-valley, and maybe some of the sandalwood at the base.

Doesn’t project as much as the other Estee Lauder foghorns I’ve tried. Misty florals stay within personal space, with sweet spicy roses on the skin, for most of the day.

Pleasures came out in 1995, and Joan Osborne released One of Us. Prince covered it best.

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Reflection

reflections
Two silver Amouage mini bottles at right angles making cool reflections. The only color apparent is the tiny salmon pink button on the dome cap.

There’s a high-end bridal shop dressing room vibe from this one–jasmine and chrome with infinite good taste.

Airy white flowers, with enough sandalwood on the bottom to make it shiny smooth.

The wet violet note (water violet is actually a type of aquatic primrose0 on the bottom lingers longest, into the late afternoon.

Mirror Lover is kind of shiny and smooth, too.

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Low Key Lyesmith

loki edge
Brown BPAL oil daubber bottle on hardcover of Neil Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS.

“Black clove and cassia flung onto glowing cinders and mingled with slow-dripping poisons.”
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s description beats even my purple prose–but it’s spot on.

Bright green leaves with that black currant sting, then–CLOVES. Big loud sweet woody spice, with a breath of smoke and an unnecessary dash of dirty cinnamon. After an hour it dries down to powder, a smudge of gingerbread dust and vanilla on the skin.

More insidious than godlike, but definitely good for tricky witchery.

Here’s an insidious witchy song with an awesome Bond-girl vibe.

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Private Collection

Private Collection
Private Collection pear shaped frosted mini bottle filled with gold eau, casting pretty amber shadows.

I love the opening, a magician’s big poof of flowers hidden in a sleeve.
They turn green quickly, facefuls of huge leafy citrus blooms with extra greenery, and woodsy patchouli stems by the armload.

Private Collection came out in 1973, but doesn’t bare the civet fangs that were so popular then–the base is cedar and bright spice a few feet from the skin. The dry down on clothes is wildflower sweet for two days.

The top notes are so fun, and the finish is pretty, but the middle feels like I’ve been whumped in the chest by the biggest bridal bouquet ever thrown.

This one first came out then, too.

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Confessions of a Garden Gnome

Confessions of a Garden Gnome edgyOpens with bergamot then rolls around on forest floor with violet leaf and lily-of-the-valley for a few hours.
Finishes with musky rose and wet ambergris on the skin.

Very brooding male pixie.
I love it.

(I may have posed in a compromising photo with a certain lawn ornament, many many years ago…)

This duo from Cleveland is doing fun things with music and video.

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Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint PhalleI was sixteen when I saw the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris, and fell in love with Niki de Saint Phalle’s wonderful sculptures.
She released her perfume in 1982–as a way to fund her life-long Tarot Garden sculpture project–with a variety of illustrated bottles, including a zodiac series called Eau Defendue.

The eau de toilette opens with peaches and wormwood, and mint–that has just enough of a toothpaste-and-orange-juice dissonance to make one wake up and pay attention, not unlike the vibrant color-blocking of her sculptures–weird and bright, yet pretty.
Carnation and patchouli and some green-dyed-leather twists it around for several hours, and woodsy moss covers the skin for the rest of the day.

Jean Tanguely, Niki’s partner, insisted that moss be allowed to grow on the Centre Pompidou sculptures, as Nature’s contribution to the art–so it can’t be a coincidence that the perfume carries the same green notes.

For more about the artist and her Tarot Garden, check out this New Yorker article.

Igor Stravinsky (watch a video of him conducting here) was a huge influence on John Williams, as well as The Beastie Boys, who sampled The Firebird Suite in two of their songs from Hello Nasty.
I like to think Niki de Saint Phalle, whose artistic style included found materials and juxtaposed media in her feminist compositions, might have approved of this cover by Robyn Adele Anderson. (And the guy on the Theremin is awesome!)

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Calycanthus

calycanthus edges
Borsari 1870 micro bottle with yellow bow and orange and red art deco label,

Vintage Calycanthus.

Opens sharp and sweet, like peaches, then settles into soft green forest floor leaves with a cinnamon/curry melange–calycanthus is also called “spice-bush” and “sweet-shrub” in the US–and ends with ferns with cardamom spoor.

Interesting and unusual.
Released in 1970 as part of Bosari’s Library of Fragrance, but I don’t know if it was sold apart from the reference set.
It’s a spicy scent–reminds me of the curry-plants the herb guy at the farmer’s market sells.

*

I’ve always liked this one.

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Voyage d’Hermès

voyage d'Hermes
Mini chrome flip flask in a pile of green cardamom pods.

A trip to India, for spices and Darjeeling and marigolds.

Opens with big bright lemon and brash cardamom–heaping handfuls still in their green pods.
There’s an interesting warm-and-cool, push-pull to the top notes that keeps it from settling down–and it stays that way, fresh from the citrus, yet powdery with the spice–for several hours at arms length.

Eventually green tea musk slides in, soothing it down and pulling the sillage in. Finishes with a breath of woody flowers on the skin.
A lovely scent for summer daytime wear.

Stromae is a Belgian musician who also manages to be both dry and refreshing (and  stylish–his design line, Mosaert, is gorgeous!) His first hit came out in 2010, the same time as the fragrance.

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Acqua di Rosa Thea

Aqua di Rosa Thea edge
Mini bottle (it stands about an inch and a half tall) with orange bow and label with a (…tea cozy?) (…woman in a huge hoop skirt?) illustration in black and orange.

Vintage rose from an antique reference set.
(Perfumeintelligence suggests this one was first formulated in Parma, Italy, in 1880.)

So how do you define what a rose smells like? This one does a pretty good job of it–

Opens with airy pastel buds, lemony with sugar in the tea, then ripens with earthy green leaves and bright fruity rosehip wine. The dry down is exactly that, dried petals–dusty, musky and spicy sweet with a hint of powdery cloves.

So top notes to bottom, a good illustration of rose that would hold its own against Perfume Workshop’s Tea Rose and Annick Goutal’s Rose Absolue–though it doesn’t quite have the luxe of Fort and Manle’s Harem Rose.

Everyone’s favorite pizza delivery tune, Funiculì, Funiculà, came out in Italy at the same time. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, so here’s some Sting.

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Bijou Vert

bijou vert
Sample spray and ad with a wet faced model staring moodily from greenery.

“Fresh and sensual” according to the tagline, but I get grapefruit pith and greenhouse at first spray, then it settles into vetiver an inch or two above the skin for an hour.

Oddly dated, but pleasant–it’s how I’d imagine the interior of an old VW bug that’s been decomposing in a retired philosophy professor’s back yard would smell like–full of weeds and nostalgia.

This scent was supposed to be inspired by Haiti. I don’t really feel that, but the closest I’ve been was Jamaica, and it smelled like bus fumes and curry.

Twa Fey (Three Leaves) is a very special Haitian folk song–this is a gorgeous version by Emeline Michel.