powdery

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Zinnia

Vintage Floris bottle with iconic royal blue label and cap, and dwarf orange and pink zinnias from my garden.

I wish my zinnias smelled like this.
Mine smell like dusty bee pollen, green stems and maybe some petrichor from this morning’s rain.

Floris Zinnia smells like peach sweet tea and clove carnations and a bouquet of powdery roses and lily-of-the-valley–that should seem matronly but are pure coquette–in a garden, with lawn games involving a mallet or a racquet or something, played by people who say “ta” and “cheers” a lot.

Good performance, fresh and bright in social distance for several hours, then spicy and warm in personal space for the rest of the afternoon.

First in the catalogue in 1860 and relaunched in 1990, bottles can still be found at reasonable prices. I’m surprised they aren’t snatched up more quickly.

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Looks like evening rain, too.

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ZigZag

Cut cube bottle with black tall top, on photo of Zsa Zsa in diamonds. The eau was originally chartreuse, mine has turned amber.

I was feeling kind of nostalgic and reached for this one this morning–originally out in the late 1940’s, had a heyday in the late ’60s when Zsa Zsa Gabor became the face, and then relaunched by Dana in the late ’90s.

ZigZag is a bit of a shapeshifter, opening with fascinating sniffy green tarragon amid some orangeade, then sliding into blowsy jasmine for an hour before lying on the skin with a dust of indulgent powder that has nothing of the top notes at all.
There’s a timeless cheeky pretension to it that I love–ultra feminine but cheap in the best way, like false eyelashes from the dollar store–and I bet it will have another resurgence, maybe late in this decade.

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More nostalgia, with no pretense whatsoever–from Joni’s first album, 1968.

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TokyoBlue

Copper accented sample spray and bottle cutout paper tester, with a pile of smashed up Chowards violet mints.

A powder burst opening, chalk clouds of green violet and a mimosa pollen bomb, that slowly settles to social distance with brassy cedar sawdust.
Orris drifts in with smooth musk–Insolence‘s iris grown out of her silly fruity sweetness–and hovers a foot off the skin all day long.

Leans to the well-groomed boss end of the spectrum.

Inspired by jazz saxophone notes and Chris Collins’ father’s violet colognes. I get the “Blue” in the name, but I have no idea what Tokyo has to do with any of it–but I’ve never been there.

Not badly priced for a well-performing niche fragrance.

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Wayne Shorter died the other day. He played sax on a lot of amazing stuff–including my junior high personal anthem by Joni Mitchell, Be Cool.

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Cotton & Almond

A cut glass flask of cologne in a cannister of Quaker oatmeal.

The almond turns into nutty field grains and the cotton into cardboard–exactly like the bottom of a can of Old Fashioned Oats.
The label touts the word “Comforting” in several languages–and a nice bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon is a lovely comfort food–but sadly this has none of that indulgence.

Healthy, dusty and earnest.

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A more fun Cotton.

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Insolence

Small frosted Guerlain bee bottle with purple label and pink eau, with strawberries.

Scintillating strawberry baby powder.
Brilliant, with a delicate dissonance that shifts between sparkling floral dust and sweet berry syrup, for hours and hours.
Chaotic, with the lure of a candy shaped bar of soap, and easily worn by anyone from age 9 to 90–

–unless if you happened to be in elementary school in 1980.
Because this smells exactly like Strawberry Shortcake doll hair.

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Here’s another dissonant Insolence that works well:

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Bubble Gum

Pink ceramic bottle and Dum-Dum bubble gum lollypops.

Bel Rebel’s interpretation opens with a tutti-fruity candy coated gum ball, loud and boisterous, the kind that clatters down the clear spiral base to ding the silver door of the coin machine.
I get the orange flavored one, citrus tart and sweet.
Sadly, the trace amounts of cloves aren’t enough to elevate it out of the candy dish–more sweet spice is needed to blend the fruit sours into that truly iconic bubblegum flavor.
I’m reminded of Fruitchouli Flash, an earthier distant cousin, maybe.

Settles down to elbow length after half an hour, with a dusting of chalk powder and the faintest hint of mint. (I got sneezy for a minute, but perhaps not the fragrance’s fault? Cold-season and all.)
(It’s 23 eff degrees outside, right now.)
Nice, and sniffy–I’m aware of it as I type–but I wish the heart had a bit of L’Interdit‘s tuberose or jasmine to cream it up and give the opaqueness that the bottle suggests. Bubblegum isn’t clear–

Lasts half the day, slowly fading to lighthearted patchouli on the bottom, with some super soft musk, an inch above the skin through the evening.
I like it. For the price, I’d hoped to love it.

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I do love this–

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Grain de Soleil

A mini bottle of red amber eau with Fragonard’s iconic sunburst cap in silver, sitting on fresh snow.

I needed a bit of sun today, and this little beauty gives big powdery vanilla amber warmth with just one drop. (Really, just one–this stuff gives off melting honey rose trails a mile long.)

Sandalwood and cinnamon on the bottom keeps the marzipan-ish heliotrope from getting sticky, and adds some maturity to the vanilla.
Lasts all afternoon and through the night on clothes, leaving sweet spice dust behind like footprints in the snow.

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Stay warm, yeah?

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Zut

Mini bottle shaped like bare-from-the-waist-down legs with a dress puddled at the feet, and a pink and green box with gold accents. The original bottles had frosted panties with polka-dots and stripes.

Such a fun surprise!
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this clever little multi-faceted cassis that shifts to vanilla leather and jasmine incense then powdery tonka musk and back again.

Bergamot makes for a fresh opening, with ylang-ylang and lily-of-the-valley keeping it sweet and licorice-ish for a good half hour. Then the florals get complicated and ever changing–a bit of suede from the marigold, rose tinged sandalwood, creamy orris dust–held to personal space for half the day by the black currant jam.

Unisex, cheerful, and very high end.
There’s a Guerlain vibe to the airy sweetness, yet the base is grounded with an earthy Chanel weight–and it’s all combined with a quirky hit of Lolita Lempicka gourmand.
I can’t help but love it.

Elsa Schiaparelli–a French designer who worked with surrealist artists Marcel Vertes and Salvador Dali–put this out in the 1940’s (though I’ve seen it cited 1937, too) as the bottom half to Shocking’s torso. It was re-released in the late nineties, and is apparently out of production, but unopened boxes are still available at reasonable prices.
I may have to get a big bottle.

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99 Regent Street

Sample dabber and beige Hugh Parsons box, with crest featuring green oak leaves on white and a helmet head topped by a unicorn and so on. The London company was established in 1925 and has nothing to do with the Hugh Parsons of Springfield, Massachusetts, who was acquitted of witchcraft in 1651. (His wife wasn’t so lucky.)

This would be a reasonably refreshing powdery Dude-Bro fragrance if the ball-peen hammer of musk didn’t hit the center of the forehead quite so hard.

Recommended for outdoor use only.

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This hammer is much better.

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Narciso

Mini cube of dark eau (yes, it stains) with an ecru top. The full sized bottles are lined with opaque white.

Delightful.

An opalescent woody musk–there’s a lovey creamy yet multifaceted quality about it–and blatantly rich. Starts out with a splash of Shalimar cola, then dusts up with earthy mineral powder made carnal and soft by gardenia.
A bit of rose grows up a few hours in, wild, dry and thorny over the cedars, staying in personal space all day.

Marketed to women, but would be absolutely lethal on masculine types, in a sulking prince way.

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Benjamin Haycock is a singer/rapper/songwriter out of the UK–I love the percussive techniques he uses on the guitar.