Starts harsh but finishes mellow.
Cardamom bombs the opening, the same throat closing assault when entering any truck stop store outside Paris, Appalachia–menthol cigarette ash and candy bars–but then it slowly melts into the skin with tobacco and vanilla a la Tom Ford.
Not many people realize Tom Waits actually wrote this one–also harsh and mellow.
I tested this one in the store, and loved the cloves–it faded to spiced coffee on the skin after a few hours, but I huffed my wrist all evening–and the next day I went back for a bottle.
Maybe the weather had changed, but the woodsy notes wound up being more than I bargained for, too green, too feral-tree-sprite than the Turkish cafe I thought I was getting.
I gave it my brother, who can pull off forest faun with just a smirk.
It suits him.
I bought this at the LUSH store in Stockholm. Theses guys come from there, too.
A comforting scent that drifts to the masculine, with enjoyable self-care vibes.
Opens with oaky root-beer and a hit of patchouli, then settles into vanilla sweetened incense smoke.
A bit of myrrh on the bottom gives a nice medicinal note in an indulgent healing way.
Lasts for a good hour a foot of the hands, and two more close to the skin.
I snapped this pic on my dad’s harpsichord. This song features one and has some of the same easy feel-good vibe as the scent-
This one opens with a ’70’s record scratch of thorny green rose then settles into a good long roll in the hay while listening to Joni Mitchell albums–but then the pepper leaves you itchy, and you’re vaguely aware that a cat has peed nearby.
To be fair, this is a nearly fifty-year-old bottle of perfume, and it may have soured a little.
(The same might be said for my nearly fifty-year-old nose.)
“See the blue pools in the squinting sun–“
This one opens strong and sweet, the hot edge of licorice biting with teeth.
Musk takes over.
Musk takes over the whole house.
Then it turns to hardwood–glittery resin and deep heavy mahogany.
I like sweetness of it, but the second I invite him over he’s gonna swallow my furniture in one big gulp and write his name over mine on the lease.
Kimberly New York is a new brand with a marvelous collection using organic ingredients–one to keep an eye on.
(Jay-Z has his own scent brand, but I’ve always loved this song.)
Smoke, leather and cocoa powder.
Peppery milk chocolate grows slowly, endlessly, with maple and balsam and kerosene.
This could be worn by a wounded-football-hero-turned-reclusive-lumberjack when he decides to clean up nice.
He has no clue that he’s sexy AF.
It fades after a long day to an herbal kiss on sweaty skin, left with creamy lip balm.
This song has that same sweet roughness.
The fashion illustrator René Gruau’s 1953 advertisement for Jacques Griffe’s Mistigri is much more famous than the perfume ever was, but I’ve always been curious about the scent.
I finally managed to score a 70-year-old vintage mini, the little box (made to look like a deck of cards–the mistigri is the Jack of Clubs, as well as the trickster cat–still intact. The bottle even had the string on the cap, though it fell apart as soon as I opened the stopper.
A dried up drop was left, a flake of amber brown in the corner of the bottle that smelled like every fusty antique store and estate sale.
Disappointing–
–until I rinsed it out, and the warm water brought a green chypre to life, resinous and floral. Some sharp pepper and flirty cloves were mixed in there too.
An hour later the room smells faintly of cedar and the soapy-sweetness of Chanel No. 5, in a trousseau chest with a secret kind-of-way.
So Mistigri was a nice scent, though nothing amazing. But the cat drawing on the box? I want a poster of that on my wall.
My favorite Catwoman, Eartha Kitt released C’est Si Bon in 1953.
