Contributor

A WEEKEND IN LONDON.

/ cookie queen / 31 Comments

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Val the Cookie Queen

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Hey APJ

It is eight in the morning and I am sat here wearing the Strangelove NYC deadofnight.  It is an oud; I was given it in London.  More of that in another post, after I have sold my children.  And whilst talking perfume, I got some vintage Chanel N°5 from Portia, via Tara.  I nearly killed myself on that, overspraying.  And despite what Portia says, not recommended.  It reignited a thousand memories, and is utterly divine.  Take a look at Tara’s write up of our time together, she has lots of great photos and actually remembered everything that we did.  Which saved me having to.

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Beige by Chanel – Not so hasty, Kate!

/ katesplace356115470 / 24 Comments

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Kate Apted

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Years ago, I saw Beige sitting on the counter at the Chadstone Chanel boutique. You are kidding me that Chanel would call an exclusive … Beige?! Such a boring, nondescript name would have to have a boring scent inside. To top it off, the sales assistant told me it is her favourite from the line. I walked past it and never, ever tried it. I felt I was missing nothing.

For some bizarre reason, I bought a used bottle of the EDT from an Ebay seller I have implicit trust in just two months ago. A huge 200 ml bottle with about 50 ml left. And it was cheap!

Beige EDT by Chanel (2008) – Jacques Polge

beige.jpg

Fragrantica lists the following notes: frangipani, freesia, honey accords and hawthorn.

Upon first spray, I began to have this dialogue run through my head; “Kate, you let this go, girlfriend?! WHY did you not try this before it was discontinued?? *eyes roll back in rapture* Get another bottle STAT!”

Every single day since that first spray, I have been trawling through all my familiar online haunts to secure myself at least another 50 ml of this honeyed beauty. I have not been this smitten with a scent upon first sniff ever. I am yet to find a bottle, used or new, that is within my budget and able to be posted. It will happen.

The notes really do not appeal, on paper. I adore the freesia in my Antonia’s Flowers, so a mighty high standard for any other freesia to match. I am not a fan of frangipani, as I had overdosed on it living in Bali. Honey is a sweet note I would prefer to eat than simply sniff (OMG, stringybark honey!!). As for hawthorn, huh?? Yet, together, the effect is a smooth elixir of something not tropical, sweet or boring. Polge did an astounding job of making a seamless, rich golden floral.

Beige should not be oversprayed. One torso spritz is all I need, and I am a habitual oversprayer. Beige hums on my skin for a good four hours, with all the notes ever present and in equal amounts. I get a constant aura that tickles my brain in such a delightfully playful way, yet Beige is very much a grown up scent I feel a little fradulent wearing, to be honest. It is in a similar vein to 24 Faubourg by Hermes, but much more approachable.

I understand the story that is learned verbatim by Chanel sales assistants regarding Beige, however, the name brings to mind those horrid neutral toned body hugging dresses a certain American reality star-cum-model-cum-whatever else she is today wears. Beige, as a colour, to me, is devoid of character, mood, interest and texture. I find myself mentally and emotionally disengaged from the word and the colour. The sheer genius is in the perfume itself. But nothing attracted me to want to try it, much to my chagrin. The redeeming fact in all this is my renewed interest in the Les Exclusifs line. I am now wondering if I am missing out on any more strokes of Polge talent.

And I humbly admit to my own prejudices. Excuse me while I go and sniff at the altar of Beige divinity…

Have you disregarded a scent based on the whole package, only to find you got to the party too late?

Ciao bella et bello.

Kate xx

aroma M Geisha Botan by Maria McElroy 2018

/ cookie queen / 17 Comments

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Val the Cookie Queen

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Afternoon from Europe APJ

I am in the middle of getting ready to go to London for the weekend, taking my daughter along to look after me, you know?  Make sure her mother can cope with getting on the Tube.  Stuff like that.   I am meeting up with a A Bottled Rose and with The Candy Perfume Boy.  I am gonna pick up a vintage N°5 Perfume that Portia sent home with Tara.  I have noticed recently that it does not always get a lot of love from bloggers, but I adore it.  I think the fact that I booked a ticket to England to go pick it up, says how much.  BUT before I go, let me briefly introduce you to the new Geisha Botan from aroma M. Continue reading →

Scenting Gigs, The Rampage, and MMA.

/ cookie queen / 38 Comments

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Val the Cookie Queen

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Hey Guys

I have not had proper training session at the gym for a couple of weeks, due to a hurt knee and a strained neck.  I am actually in a filthy bad mood because of it,  but no time to really feel properly sorry for myself as the last week was so busy.  This is a fifth Tuesday which is not a normal CQ Tuesday so I will take the liberty of telling you what went down.  You will need to excuse the few dodgy photos.

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Autumn: Fragrance and Fire

/ cookie queen / 56 Comments

Val the Cookie Queen

Hey there APJ Fumeheads

I have just got back from the shop after baking up a few hundred cookies, semi-panicking because I am about to miss my APJ deadline,  happy that the shop didn’t burn down last week.  More of that in a minute.  Hurray!  Autumn, Fall, Herbst, whatever you call it, is finally here.  Although to be honest you would not know it.  It is the middle of October and still hovering around twenty-five degrees.   It is finally  time to change over to a different set of perfumes, and I cannot wait.

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Scotland Love Affair

/ Sandra / 23 Comments

Hey, hey, hey APJ!! What’s up?!It has been such a long time and I have missed you all and all of the chats here. Needless to say, I am thrilled to see APJ up and running again. Truth be told at first I did not know what to do with my free time. I ambitiously thought that I would continue to write during the break and come back with stories to tell and then … life took over. Haha, so much for my goals. Life has been hectic but wonderful and full of surprises. I am going to tell you today about my love affair with Scotland. As my husband had a business trip to Hawaii during my son’s spring break, I decided to go to Edinburgh and the Highlands with my son. Of course I have travelled alone with him, but this was our first sightseeing adventure without Dad there to entertain or be an adult conversationalist in the evenings. I could not have been more thrilled with the experience. We put away the iPad and iPhone (couldn’t talk to husband anyway because of the 11 hour time difference) and hit Scotland with loads of energy and excitement.As my son so eloquently stated on our first day in Edinburgh, Scotland completely surpassed all of our expectations with its beauty, people, history and sites. My son surprised me with his knowledge of some history and when I enquired where he had read that he told me Donald Duck was not as useless as I always claim. Edinburgh is a city of contrasts with the Old Town and the New Town. The architecture is stunning and the sheer determination of humans to occupy the Castle Rock, where Edinburgh Castle is positioned is unfathomable to my feeble brain. Edinburgh has stolen my heart with its magnificence.The 19th century Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson described Edinburgh so eloquently when he wrote the following in Edinburgh Picturesque Notes. “Into no other city does the sight of the country enter so far, if you do not meet a butterfly, you shall certainly catch a glimpse of far-away trees upon your walk; and the place is full of theatre tricks in the way of scenery. You peep under an arch, you descend stairs that look as if they would land you in a cellar, you turn to the back-window of a grimy tenement in a lane: -and behold! You are face-to-face with distant and bright prospects. You turn a corner, and there is the sun going down into the Highland hills. You look down an alley, and see ships tacking for the Baltic.”Our tour of the Highlands was a highlight on this trip and has ensured that we will return next year to further discover what the Highlands has to offer. As a child I believed in Nessie the Famed Loch Ness Monster. My son is not quite the believer I was but he had a wonderful conversation with one of the crew on our cruise of the Loch. Maybe one day he will believe. Ben Nevis was clearly visible on a partly cloudy day and the air was so fresh and clean that it reminded us of Austria. But our absolute favorite part of the Highlands was Glencoe, the famous glen surrounded by snow capped mountains, waterfalls, lush greenery and clean air. We could have spent hours leisurely walking around and discovering the wilderness there. We spotted a herd of red deer grazing which elicited squeals of joy from both of us.Scotland is fantastic and I will go back next spring break with my son. We plan on exploring the Highlands a bit more. Perhaps The Isle of Skye and the surrounding area.I was monogamous in my perfume choice for the entirety of the trip as well. This past winter I fell in love with Frederic Malle’s Dries van Noten and it was a perfect choice for the trip. Due to the chilly air I needed something cozy and warm. The opening is a tad bit harsh but Dries van Noten quickly dries down to a soft vanilla, tonka bean, sandalwood, woody dream. I am not a light sprayer and the more I spray of Dries the better my experience. It melds beautifully into my skin creating this wonderful aura. I usually stick to one perfume if I am traveling to an unknown destination, I don’t want any challenges to my olfactory senses when I am trying to focus on the new destination. If it is a family vacation I tend to bring samples or decants so that I can vary things up a bit.How about you? Do you travel with perfume? Please tell me what you have all been up to. Any trips? Any new perfumes?KissesSandra xoxo(All photos taken by me.)

Neroli Outrenoir by Thierry Wasser and Delphine Jelk for Guerlain 2016

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 11 Comments

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Portia

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Hi there APJ,

I tried Neroli Outrenoir when it was first released while Jin and I were in the Champs Elysees flagship store. I was totally overwhelmed by the venue and underwhelmed by the scent and really haven’t given it another thought. Recently though I bought a 10ml decant in a split. To be honest I don’t remember putting my name down for it. You know that late night cyber crawl after a couple of cuppas and Continue reading →

Boxwalla October Beauty Box

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 4 Comments

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Val the Cookie Queen

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November Greetings APJ

From L.A. The Boxwalla October Beauty Box
From L.A. to New York, from New York to L.A.

I chatted a lot with the charming Lavanya as she was in the process of setting up www.theboxwalla.com. Talking about it is one thing, and doing it quite another. Two years on Boxwalla continue to offer four different subscription boxes; the Beauty Box, Food Box, Film Box and Book Box. The boxes themselves are superb. Boxwalla have them made by a small company in India, who make the paper from cotton scraps. Tree-free handmade paper. I keep my decants in an empty box. They are very strong and tough.

Boxwalla October Beauty Box

The October Beauty Box is nothing short of divine. I am most impressed that products are either full sized at least a large travel size. I am not partial to tiny samples that you need to rip open with your teeth, squeezing out the three drops from within. Boxwalla´s Beauty Boxes treat you to amazing green beauty products. We have most certainly moved on from what my daughter and I refer to as “Müsli products” which we wouldn´t touch with a bargepole.

The October Beauty Box showcases www.hforlove.com products. The Rapha Harmonizing Cleanser feels stimulating on the face. I wear a lot of makeup, which I chose to remove in my normal way. I followed it up by massaging the cleanser into my face, soothing my skin and removing with a hot flannel. Skin is noticeably softer each time I use it.

The Propolis Regenerative Mask felt wonderful, I don´t know if anything has regenerated yet as I have only used it once! The Kinu, a decadent body balm is so good, leaving my skin hydrated and amazingly soft for hours. It smells divine, laced with essential oils of grapefruit, cedar wood, bergamot, rosemary, and vanilla.

Shipping within the US is free, and Boxwalla ship their boxes abroad too, with the exception of the food box. Fifty bucks every two months? Worth every cent and more.

Next time: We go to New York: Aroma M Geisha Marron Eau de Parfum

From sea to shining sea.
Roasted marron bussis
CQ

(ED: All Photos supplied by Val. XX)

Apollo Hyacinth by Alberto Morillas for Eric Buterbaugh Florals 2015

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 2 Comments

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Portia

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Hey fumes,

I wrote about Apollo Hyacinth back in 2015. It has remained in my head and on my To Buy List since, so recently I bought another 3ml decant to see if I’ll go through it. My major concern, and why I haven’t gone FB on this green beauty is the bottle. I really love how it looks and think it’s perfectly gorgeous but if I had to decant it out to wear I think it would just not ever get used. Yes, I know how petty that sounds but let’s be honest here. If I have 17 green fragrances to choose from and 3 of them need to be decanted out to be worn then you can be bloody certain that those three will end up being totally ignored while I spritz some CHANEL No 19, Giverny In Bloom, Silences or Niki de Saint Phalle.

Apollo Hyacinth by Eric Buterbaugh Florals 2015

Apollo Hyacinth by Alberto Morillas

Apollo Hyacinth Eric Buterbaugh Florals FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Neroli, pear, galbanum
Heart: Hyacinth, lily of the valley, angelica
Base: Haitian vetiver, oakmoss, cedar

Candied pear, or pear with sugar on top, galbanum and greenery. Imagine a stinking hot day and you’re walking through the shaded bushland eating a pear and drinking pear fizzy soda. That’s how Apollo Hyacinth opens for me. Elegant, spacious and yet friendly. This is no austere No 19 or arctic Giverny in Bloom, no, this is welcoming green. Even the angelica has a sweetness to it and I’m not sure how it has happened but it’s so different that I am surprised every wear. About an hour or so in I smell the soft, drippy, green stalk of cutting flowers from bulbs as plain as day. Also the LotV makes an appearance around this time but not as a lead player.

Because I’m wearing Apollo Hyacinth today in 35C heat my own sweat has added an extraordinary saltiness that I have never noticed before that skews the whole fragrance a little towards the salty white floral. Very interesting.

Apollo Hyacinth Eric Buterbaugh Florals

Lasting power is excellent, though after 4 hours you have to be very close to notice.

I’m thinking I will buy the Discovery Kit at $315 with 8 x 10ml of the whole range except the new one. They are all spritzers and come with a Travel Case.

Further reading: Perfume Posse and Australian Perfume Junkies
Eric Buterbaugh Florals has EdP $295/100ml
Surrender To Chance has samples from $5/.5ml

Would you be bothered decanting?
Portia xx

Boy EdP by Olivier Polge for CHANEL 2016

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 17 Comments

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Post by Robert Herrmann

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Hi Fragrant Friends!

Heres I am writing from my small island home in the great Pacific Northwest….

Funny thing about this new Chanel…when I first wore it I was decidedly ambivalent about it. So I wore it the next day, just to be sure. And then the next day and and and…..now I am completely obsessed with it, and find myself reaching for it at some point almost every day!!!

Boy EdP by CHANEL 2016

Boy EdP by Olivier Polge

Boy Chanel Chanel FragranticaFragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Lavender, rose, lemon, grapefruit, rose geranium, orange blossom, sandalwood, heliotrope, vanilla, musk.
The CHANEL website also adds fern to the list.

Boy EdP is classified as an Aromatic Fougere. Now admittedly, the fougere family of scent is not one of my favorites, I find the notes to be scarce and repetitive, and they often go bitter/sour on my skin. However this new Chanel for the Les Exclusifs range is working out just fine and dandy, actually WAAAY beyond my expectations!

Boy capel ChanelCHANEL

Named after one of Coco Chanel’s early lovers, Arthur “Boy” Capel, was a famous sportsman and self-made millionaire who was tragically killed in an auto accident on his way to a rendezvous with Ms. Chanel at Christmas in 1919. Their tempestuous affair lasted for twelve years.

Boy opens with a blast of sweet lavender and heliotrope, but the sweetness quickly dissipates as the herbal qualities of the fougere step forward surrounded by musk, and what I think of as the classic Chanel (Chanelade?) notes found throughout the perfume range.

Solidly unisex, with a feeling of a vintage Chanel, but given a contemporary twist from grapefruit and lemon giving this an almost cologne-like vibe.

Yes there might be better scents in the Les Exclusifs range in my opinion, but I would (and have already) gladly add “Boy” to my full bottle collection! Sorry….gotta’ go re-apply!

Boy Capel CHANEL Polo WikipediaWikipedia

Further reading: BLeauG and The Whale & The Rose
CHANEL has €320/200ml
Recently CHANEL stopped all sample/decant stores from selling their products so you must go in store to try boy

Do you have a favorite from the Chanel Les Exclusifs range??