vanilla

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Velvet Orchid

Flocked faux flower (Say that three times fast!) and a mini purple bottle of Velvet Orchid.

Another olfactory pun by Tom Ford… fake flowers indeed.

I get a nice light orange honey out of the bottle that slowly turns purple–grape juice dye no. 69, lolly-sweet–and a huge mixed bouquet of gorgeous flowers, that weirdly smells more and more plastic the closer it gets to the skin.
Several hours later the blooms fade to faux suede–is it the labdanum that gives a slight chemical smoke?–and vanilla with a resin wood base, that last all night long.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.
It’s lovely from a distance, but Velvet Orchid costs a lot of money for a bunch of artificial flowers, and the concept of “tacky couture” can seem elitist and absurd.

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This is how you do absurd right.

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Splendida Tubereuse Mystique

Cobalt blue Bvlgari mini, and tea-leaf reading cup that sadly has no perfume bottle symbol.

Opens with an elegant brew of smoky tea, black currant and the same lemon creme I get from Teazzurra, but with an herbal bite, like it’s laced with wormwood.

The tuberose drifts in slowly, as if the sugar wasn’t stirred in and gets stronger and sweeter and prettier with each sip.
Lasts for hours, held just above the wrist with vanilla and enigmatic resin.

Perfect for modern mages and fashionable fortune tellers.

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I love this French cover of INXS’s Mystify–

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Bee

Pave bee pin, locally harvested honeycomb and decant vial, with test paper cutout of Zoologist Bee bottle.

This one is gorgeous: beeswax comb filled with vanilla and flower nectar and a bit of tonka that manages to come across as animalic, and so incredibly sweet you expect it to be sticky on the skin. The heliotrope–which I’ve not been a fan of lately–gives nice structure to the benzoin, and a lovely powder dryness to the honey-syrup.

There’s a brilliant smudge of labdanum on the bottom, a perfect hint of beekeeper’s smoke. Fills the room like a summer swarm and lasts forever.

I loved it passionately until the guy said it reminds him of that scented toilet paper from the ’70’s and now that’s all I smell and I’m so sad about it.

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This one is as sweet as the perfume–

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Relax

Lollia No. 8

A bit alcoholic out of the bottle, then dries down to lavender and vanilla with some honey amber. Stays close to the skin for several hours, and leaves soft floral dust on the clothes.

It’s actually quite soothing–I might try it as a pillow scent–and the bottle is adorable.

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Waiting on election results today. I need all the soothing I can get.

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Jimmy Choo Fever

Magenta box and bottle with gold accents, and a candy thermometer. (Please do not use cooking tools to take your temperature.)

Not bad.
The peelie gives me vanilla plums and creamy coffee, with some purple flowers tucked in there.

I’d look for a bottle, but I’ve still got half a Midnight Fantasy left, a few samples of Moonlight, minis of Black Tulip and Belle de Nuit to finish and a fresh J’adore, and maybe I’m a bit tired of the steady diet of prunes, y’know?

Edit — 3/4/21

Wound up with a (very pretty) mini bottle. The peelie was a reasonable match to the juice in person, though the real thing has less of the cafe-au-lait that I liked.
Very purple, very plummy, and very vanilla. Dries down to tonka woods on the skin in four hours or so.
Way too young for me.

Here’s another Fever, without plums.

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Shalimar

shalimarConfession:
I’m horribly intimidated by people who worship at the altar of Guerlain.
They say, “Mitsuoko, a classic of the genre,” and “L’Heure Bleue is my universal reference,” in reverent tones. I nod silently and try to look discerning while hoping my Lolita Lempicka or LUSH holds against my nervous sweat.

I keep trying Shalimar–vintage bottles and new–and sometimes it’s cedar sawdust and vanilla powder, and sometimes it’s leathery old lemons and oddly sweet turpentine.
I’ve just never gotten a “feel” for the stuff. It lasts forever on the skin, projects like mad, and reminds everybody else of somewhere, some time, or someone, but I’ve never understood the magic.
Everything wonderful is in there–a citrus opening, earthy rose and patchy iris in the middle, smoke and civet and balsam on the bottom–but there’s never that gestalt moment when the scent becomes more than the sum of its parts.

So I keep sniffing it, hoping for the a-ha understanding, when my novice schnozz graduates to full-on fragonista, capital-N-Nose, and maybe I will see the light that is Guerlain.

Shalimar was introduced in 1925, when Paris was overrun with American jazz and the années folles of art and entertainment following the Great War.
Gershwin hit Europe with Rhapsody in Blue that same year.
This father-son duo do a great piano arrangement.

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The Knave of Hearts

Knave of Hearts edgy
BPAL vial on an Alice in Wonderland illustration.

In-the-face PIE.

Toasted caramel, baked berries and vanilla cream. A hit of roses keeps it from being too cloying.
It’s a step above a Yankee Candle Bakewell Tart, but one I’d put in the Scentsy warmer rather than wear.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab blends are hit or miss for me–but the quality of the oils is always good.

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Daamn can Nancy Wilson play guitar.