white floral

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Sikkim Girls

sikkim girls edges
Pot of LUSH solid perfume (tinted rose, though the scent isn’t rosy at all) and paper cut-out of bottle with original label–a black and white and red woodcut of two women.

A blast of jasmine and frangipani that melds into an almost edible sweet spice. The tuberose keeps it more floral than gourmand, with a sharp green edge.

On me, the solid perfume settles to the skin with creamy vanilla after an hour.

I’d rather this one in an incense stick, to burn behind a beaded curtain while drinking Indian tea.

Abhibyanjana Rubhi is from Gangtok. She had a song in Priyanka Chopra’s movie Pahuna, filmed in Sikkim. Her first single’s video is a little hard to watch, but the song is marvelous.

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Flower Market

Replica spray sample of pink eau on promo card featuring flower bouquets.

A florist in a hospital, maybe.
Anything with tuberose and peaches shouldn’t be this antiseptic.

Edit – 8/31/21

I keep going back to my favorites, just to make sure that they still smell how I remember, that I’m recovered from the C-19 anosmia–but I’ve found a few stinkers that I wrote off with some snark then forgot about, too.

This one is still sterile and generic, the rose and jasmine coming together in lemony disinfectant that kills everything organic and green, then quickly wilts to the skin.
I think it might do even worse in the summer, than when I initially tried it in January.

For the same price, a prettier bouquet and three times the performance all year round, go with Estée Lauder’s Private Collection.

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This is as moody, but much prettier.

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Sparrow

Square bottle with silver tall top and songbird label, half full of amber eau, in a blue glazed bowl. This one aged quickly, but the bottom notes that I liked ripened really nicely–makes for a very pretty room spray.

The bottled perfume smells like high end floral shampoo and wet garden–a bit meh, and doesn’t last long.

However, the candle has more of the spicy rosewood notes, and the wax brings out the creamy sweetness of the gardenia, so there’s a lovely hot cocoa accord, perfect for snowed in afternoons.
I bought three.

Lit candle in a tin with a pink breasted bird and music notes on the lid.

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Another Sparrow.

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Charogne

Etat Libre d’Orange sample vial, and accordion folded pamphlet featuring a black rose and blood-red designs. The copy inside says some stuff about skin and flesh and a beast, vanilla and pestilence.

Charonge–carrion–sounds prettier in French.
Also, ew.

Edit – 10/21/21

Yep, this is as gross as I remember.

Starts out with white funeral flowers, then devolves into rotted meat and fecal smearing, with some vanilla on the bottom to make it even more disgusting.

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A song about carrion crows–

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Pavlova

pavlova edges
Micro bottle with a doll’s tutu around the neck, leaning against the mirror of a rose velvet jewelry box.

Pavlova starts as fingernails on a chalkboard, gives a stern lesson in botany, then hands out sugar pastilles while dismissing class.

Gen X girls got this as a hand-me-down from Mom in the seventies. She was gifted it in a holiday present swap, bought because it was cheap and the packaging was pretty.
We stashed it in the bottom of the pink jewelry box with the ballerina who spun to a wind-up version of Swan Lake; we never understood the significance.

A shrill chypre powder grenade with a dry sweet finish.

This is my favorite arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece.

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Aqua Allegoria Flora Nerolia

Mini Guerlain beehive bottle on a tiny white cardboard box printed with orange blossoms.

Flora Nerolia is basically everything I love in a good neroli essential oil with three times the staying power and an added touch of elegance.
Opens with spring sunshine and honey caught in a crystal decanter, then jasmine and pettigrain rough it up to make it organic and skanky.
(The lushness could get sweaty in the summer. In winter it’s like wearing hope on the skin.)

Sadly discontinued. Secondhand prices are weird on this one–I’ve seen empty boxes go for more than full bottles.

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An elegant organic wintry song from Björk.


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Waltz

TokyoMilk bottle with label featuring painting of dancing couple, and a pink rose from my garden.

TokyoMilk No. 14 advertises linden, honeyed rose, wisteria petals and white musk, and yep, that’s all in there, for two hours.

Soft clean lime notes and honeysuckle vibes, with a gritty musk that takes it out of the country and into urban garden territory–grape-sweet wisteria hanging from pergolas, but with some city grunge in the background.

I prefer a mazurka.

Edit – 8/15/21

Found this one in a box with a post-it marked “Try In the Summer?” so here I am.
87 degrees F, and 84% humidity on the east coast of the Bluegrass, today.

The linden has a much bigger presence on warmer skin–greener, with bright citrus florals–and the musky rasp at the bottom seems less synthetic than I remember.
I’m always fascinated by how much perfume changes with temperature and weather.

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You can waltz (or mazurka) to this one–

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Diorissimo

diorissimo edgy
Vintage Diorissimo bottle with houndstooth black and white printed label and ceramic cap, filled with pale gold eau.

Muguet and nostalgia.
Titania gracing an outdoor wedding, the Snow Queen in her sled in winter.
Pure lily-of-the-valley, budding green, blooming to ringing white bells and fading to pungent roots.

My mother wore Diorissimo, which is the only thing I’ll ever have in common with Prince Harry, I’m afraid.

Dior released this one in 1956. The same year Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much featured Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera.

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Passion

Gold capped Annick Goutal ridged melon bottle with amber eau, and a gold ribbon holding the wreath tag.

This woman pops a cream candy in her mouth while coolly walking away from the burning house behind her.
I’m scared of her, but I want to be her friend.

Edit – 9/12/21

(From my rescued-from-the-back-of-the-closet collection.)

The first bite is a fancy floral sweet mess of tuberose and jasmine, milky white marbled with green, that melts into ylang-ylang with a verdant pop of tomato leaf. The herbal sweetness has a minty vibe, echoed again on the bottom by the patchouli and vanilla.
The oak-moss at the base anchors us firmly in the 80’s racks of the consignment shop–patterned silk dresses and art-house punk jackets. (A good place to find a vintage bottle–they can still be found at reasonable prices–though it’s still in production.)

Cheerful and clever, in a movie-heroine-gets-her-revenge-in-the-end-while-smoking-a-menthol way, but I never really took to it.
I’ll pass it on to my friend who can quote Heathers word for word.

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The amazing Chaka Khan came out with Ain’t Nobody in 1983.
I’m feeling this updated cover today.