Portia

Leaving for India! What fragrances did I pack?

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 34 Comments

Hey Crew,

It’s time to pack bags and jet off again.I have written and sent all my Trivias to the girls. There are some REALLY curly Q&A this time ladies. The APJ family has worked overtime to make sure all their contributions are ready to launch while I’m gone, they’ve all been edited and pictures, notes and all the frills have been added and linked. THANK YOU GUYS!! My clothes are all washed, the beds are changed, food has been bought, prepared and frozen and I am almost ready to go. The plane leaves at 10.15 and I am writing to you from 2pm. How organised is that? Normally I’m throwing crap in my bags as we should be leaving.

incredible-india_1822 incredible-india-1 Taj Mahal

This trip I know there wont be much fragrance shopping like in Europe or LA sop I’ve decided to do a decant set for my travels 5ml & 8ml. It’s always so hard to choose and today is no exception. So what made the cut?

Ava Luxe Tuberose Diabolique Parfum
Caron Royal Bain de Caron
L’Artisan Parfumeur Cote d’Amour
Iunx Splash Forte Friction de Iunx
Jean Paul Gaultier Fleur de Male
Tauer L’Air Du Desert Marocain

I am also taking from Neela Vermeire Creations a bottle of Bombay Bling. How could I not? And a Vintage Chanel No 5 Parfum.

'Incredible_India'

So I just watched this video below and I’m crying like a baby, its been nearly three years since I’ve been back to India am I’m so excited to get back and see my buddy and his family and the magic that is India. I can almost smell it it’s so real in this little Incredible India ad. I can’t believe I’m going back……

See you tomorrow!!
Portia xxx

All photos stolen from the Incredible India Campaigns

Rêve by Van Cleef n Arpels 2013 Ad Campaign

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 15 Comments

Hi APJ family,

This new fragrance launching May 2013. This girl in the picture, Anabela Belikova, is so fresh and pretty and doesn’t look like a bag of bones on heroin. I love her look and she makes me want to try

Van Cleef & Arpels Rêve Fragrance 2013 Ad Campaign

Reve Van Cleef & Arpels FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Pear and neroli
Heart: Osmanthus, peony and lily
Base: Sandalwood and amber

Image via TFS. Stolen with huge thanks from art8amby

Camilla Akrans photographed top catwalker Anabela Belikova for the latest fragrance campaign from Van Cleef & Arpels, Rêve.

 

Mecca Balsam by AbdesSalaam Attar for La Via del Profumo

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 36 Comments

Hello folks,

I was lucky while in Vienna to catch up with one a the scentbloggospheres most loved bloggers, Birgit from Olfactoria’sTravels. Sitting pretty at breakfast with the gorgeous Sandra they both plied me with samples and Birgit handed me the most fabulous bottle ever. I wish I had known that gift giving was a traditional perfumistas handshake, so embarrassed, but the girls are so wonderful that they didn’t even bat an eyelid at my gaucherie, for which I will be forever grateful.

Photo Stolen La Via del Profumo

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Labdanum, tonka bean, Arabic frankincense, raw tobacco, Indian tuberose, damask rose, incense, agarwood, benzoin

From the AbdesSalaam’s blog: In Mecca, the scents of Labdanum resin, of Benzoin, frankincense and of the precious Agar wood invade the streets together with the 4 million pilgrims who pour to the streets 5 times every day, walking to the great mosque like river. The trail of a million scents in the wake of the pilgrims at Mecca raptures the nose of the visitor and make this travel an unforgettable experience for a westerner little used to such a profusion of olfactory stimulus.

Mecca 22h22Photo Stolen 22h22

AbdesSalaam Attar is the name that perfumer Dominique Dubrana goes under to create his all natural, astounding fragrances. I have a little sample set of them on my desktop that I’ve almost used entirely and one of my favourites has always been the Mecca Balsam. The bottle Birgit gave me had the name Balsamo della Mecca on the base, in our excitement I did not put 2 and 2 together and realise that these two names could be one and the same. Oh joyous rapture, oh bliss eternal!! They are the same and I now have this extraordinary bottle on my desk.

Straight out of the atomiser and onto skin it is resinous and sweetly balsamic, bitter, herbal, dark and still light. Tobacco notes both sweet and burnt, burning, smoky. Oudh adding its cow poo/medicinal/acrid/beautiful voice and the whole is so complex and happening at once and big, brash, shouty. It picks you up by the hair and shakes you till your teeth clack like castanets, then it throws you to the ground a laughs at your incapacity. OK it doesn’t really do that but this is certainly experiential perfumery of a class that you will never find in department stores. This is the real thing and I love it. Loving it SICK!!

After an hour or so it calms to a dull roar, the size is considerable less but the fragrance is pretty linear, at this stage though there’s enough air between the notes that it’s not the bombardment of before. Now you have time and the ability to savour the resins and the flowers make a very quiet and pretty descant over the base notes of everything else. It softens and softens till gone, hours into the dry down.

Mecca Pilgrims abcPhoto Stolen ABC

Further reading PerfumeShrine and TheNonBlonde
La Via Del Profumo starts at €13.22/5.5ml up to €396.69/10gr of Attar
SurrenderToChance starts at $7/ml

Have you seen the website and do you have favourite names? They are all so evocative for me. Maybe you tried these fragrant masterpieces? What were your impressions?

Till tomorrow, take care of yourself and those in your orbit,
Portia xx

Clove Absolute by Washington Tremlett 2009

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 19 Comments

Hey Hey Niche Nerds!!

My mate Michael who writes for APJ is often turning up with unexpected gifts of fragrant decants. A lovely and generous soul I am lucky to have such a buddy in the same city. Today’s perfume was a very large decant gift the other night and I have been spritzing with abandon. Thanks Michael!!

Clove Absolute by Washington Tremlett 2009

Clove Absolute FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Amalfi lemon, lime
Heart: Clove, heliotrope, rose
Base: Incense, vanilla, French labdanum, patchouli, musk

From Wikipedia: Cloves are the aromatic dried flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium aromaticum. Cloves are native to the Maluku islands in Indonesia and used as a spice in cuisines all over the world.

Funny story! Well funny for me. I get a soy sauce smell in the first opening waft from Clove Absolute, it’s salty, tangy and a little bit burnt. Every time I spritz it the opening jumps up and takes me by surprise for about 5 minutes, it’s excellent. The cloves, lime and lemon then take over and already the vanilla pods are bursting through behind them. Though this is not the sweet biscuit and bakery scent that most gourmands are it certainly is foody. Is it possible to be foody and sensual concurrently?

My nose reads only the food elements at front and centre, everything else plays support and extra work. Clove Absolute has a definite Eastern-ness about it that is not perfume related but life smells related. There is also an oiliness, a sheen to it, a glistening, scintillating magic. I love to wear Clove absolute and have found myself reaching for it a few times since I was gifted a very generous 5ml, quite a bit of air in the atomiser now and I think it will be well and truly emptied through the Australian winter.

Dry down is sweet and warm, the patchouli/vanilla/amber/musk all mushed in together making a beautiful soft skin scent that lasts more than 12 hours completely smellable. I want to smell this on Jin but am too selfish to even give him one spritz of something I enjoy so much.

AWESOME!! You should try it.

Clove PlusEssentialPhoto Stolen PlusEssential

Further reading PerfumeSmellinThings and PerfumePosse
FirstInFragrance have Clove Absolute €140/100ml or €4 sample

Do you have fragrant fairies that gift you interesting new scents? I have a couple and they are often spot on with my taste but always opening my nose to new olfactory vistas.
See you tomorrow,

Portia xx

L`Humaniste by Sidonie Lanasseur for Frapin 2009

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 11 Comments

Hey Hey APJ Family,

We have recently been cataloguing my samples, a long and tedious job that took nearly 6 days and still we had not got them all on the spreadsheet. You will be disgusted to know there are over 600 samples and decants in this house! I am beyond disgusted at my outrageous frag gluttony. The fact that they are not all opened or sprayed yet is what worries me most, I have these rare and often precious works of art and science just laying around unsmelt. TRAGIC!!

L`Humaniste by Frapin 2009

L`Humaniste Frapin FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Lemon, bergamot, cardamom, pink pepper and black pepper
Heart: Juniper berries, nutmeg, thyme and peony
Base: Gin, oak moss and tonka

From Frapin site: It is to François Rabelais, the most illustrious member of the dynasty, that the house of Frapin has dedicated L’Humaniste. A shot of gin laced with citrus, spices and herbs anchored by soft tonka bean makes it as bracing and limpid as the curious, open minds of Renaissance men.

Fresh and sweet opening, it’s like the new millenium opening for fragrance: citrus and pepper with a green hint. Very pleasant and bright but hardly groundbreaking. That’s OK, it doesn’t need to be NEW and L’Humaniste is very nicely blended, the cardamom giving a very nice nod to Indian curry, in fact it reminds me a little of the sweet curry that my Mum would make for us, not the same but a lovely reminder.

L'Humanist Spicy Citrus MJsKitchenPhoto stolen MJsKitchen

As the fragrance progresses it has a lovely light depth, remaining quite crisp but with lovely shadowy undertones. I know I’m not going crazy for L’Humaniste and it reads like I’m a bit Ho-Hum but that would be a very wrong impression. This is a very solid, beautiful and interesting fragrance in the grand tradition of men’s aromatics but where I think L’Humaniste would truly shine is on a woman. I have sprayed my BFF with it and she commented that she would LOVE to wear this, it reminds her of Bigarade Concentree by Frederic Malle but less in your face, more wearable, softer. I agree, L’Humaniste is a very wearable unisex fragrance that could easily take you from brunch, to the gym, to the boardroom or to romantic dates and conquests.

Frapin VIPXO WeinQuellePhoto Stolen WeinQuelle

From Wikipedia: Frapin is a Cognac producer establishing their headquarters in the Fontpinot Castle at Segonzac, in the heart of the Grande Champagne region of France. The Frapin family has been established in the South West of France since 1270, initially as a family of wine-growers who became distillers and have continued in this tradition for 20 generations.

Further reading PerfumeSmellinThings and TheScentualist
LuckyScent has $145/100ml
SurrenderToChance starts at $3/ml

I love that the Frapin company has moved into fragrance and done such an excellent job of it, this is extremely well priced niche fragrance at its best. Which of the line have you tried?
Portia xx

En Passant by Olivia Giacobetti for Frederic Malle 2000

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 22 Comments

Hello my lovelies,

While in Vienna recently Birgit and Sandra from Olfactoria’sTravels took me to the only known place on earth where they let you mix & match your Frederic Malle 3 x 10ml set when you grab it!! I think it was called Day Spa? Anyway, tell Birgit you are coming to Vienna and she will give you the address. Here is one of my lovely scores:

En Passant by Frederic Malle 2000

En Passant FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Lilac, surrounded by watery and green notes, cucumber and wheat

This morning in Sydney the weather is beautiful. Crisp, sunny, warm: it feels more like spring than Autumn 10am and 21 degrees celcius. I am writing a week ahead of today and Kath and I are doing the office work, well Kath is doing the office work and I am writing to you. As I went to spritz myself this morning I also gave Kath a healthy squirt too.

I love the pretty green sappy swoosh directly after the spritz, the cucumber and watery greens, it’s fresh, wet and slightly plastic. I find flowers often give me a plastic vibe, not a wet Tupperware stink but a slightly unreal-ness, lilac has it in spades. I could walk out the back door into a spring garden in my mind. This is crisp and elegant but in a less formal tone, less knowing than Chanel 19. A younger, free-er, lighter and happier version of one of my favourites, without being like it at all.

En Passant Fairy Lillucyka DeviantArtPhoto Stolen DeviantArt

It’s hard to get my head around how beautiful and delicate En Passant is, usually not my style at all but there is something alluring and beguiling about this little Frederic Malle stunner that keeps me coming back to my wrists again and again.. En Passant is seriously selfish, introverted fragrance. You won’t skunk anyone at the office or anywhere, you will give an aura of fresh vitality and exuberance.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Further reading ISmellThereforeIAm and PerfumePosse
MeccaCosmetica in Australia has $194/50ml (Free shipping within Australia)
BarneysNewYork has $155/50ml
SurrenderToChance starts at $6/ml

There is something magical and whimsical for me even in the name Frederic Malle. His scent curation adds a patina of glory to everything with his name on it. I wonder if I would find En Passant as alluring and interesting if it was by Woolworths Home Brand? Would I sneer at its trite simplicity? What do you think?
Portia xx

Bull’s Blood by Josh Meyer for Imaginary Authors 2012

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 18 Comments

Hello Everyone,

These Imaginary Authors have been on so many blogs in the last year, I have been totally intrigued to try their stuff. To be honest, the sample set arrived months ago and has been sitting in my To Do list ever since. While we were doing the sample cataloguing they floated to the top of the pile again. My first is the one that has garnered the most praise and hoopla, start at the top I say.

Bull’s Blood by Imaginary Authors 2012

Bull's Blood FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured notes in one line:
Patchouli, Rose, Costus Root, Tobacco, Black Musk & Bull’s Blood

WOW! This is an experience. Maybe it’s the hype but I really smell that tinny taste you get when you bite your lip or if you have gingevitis from lack of oral hygiene during my 20s then when flossing you will get blood too. It is a very specialised taste and Bull’s Blood definitely has a smell of that taste. It’s interesting and confronting but not disgusting like Secretions Magnifiques can be. I feel like I am wearing the olfactory correlation to art, it makes me think and I am seriously moved by the strangeness.

Notes swirl here like a merry-go-round or a school of fish, turning beautifully and precisely and I am not going to ruin my trip by trying to parse the magic, though I do get wafts of patchouli, rose, sweet tobacco and musk throughout the frag life, it’s more about the kaleidoscopic pictures than each singular piece. Waves and waves of beauty, with an edge, a touch of something slightly off kilter that keeps it interesting, a fine line between absolute beauty and terrible disgust. I AM HOOKED!! Bravo Imaginary Authors, this is drama in a bottle.

BullFight Demonstration pbsPhoto Stolen pbs

It’s now tomorrow morning and there is still a sweet, bloody musk, quite strong lingering around my body. It is now very much like the opening of MKK. The staying power on this baby is extraordinary, I think it may be the costus that has stayed so beautifully. Maybe I am plagiarising but THIS is what Lady Gaga’s fragrance could have smelled like, did anyone else write this. Beautiful and weird. I am definitely in the market for an FB. I can’t believe how reasonably priced this wonder is.

Further reading SmellyThoughts and CaFleurBon looks at the whole range.
ImaginaryAuthors has $85/60ml (which is a bargain for niche so beautifully constructed)
You can also grab the 7 x 2ml sampler at Imaginary Authors Site (<<<JUMP)

It’s a great name isn’t it? Do you have a favourite freakily named frag?
Portia x

Sorry, I couldn’t bring myself to add a photo of a bullfight, they make me want to cry. I don’t judge or want to change the Spanish tradition but I can not look at them without stupid sad tears of shame and anger pouring down my face.

Fleur De Rocaille by for Caron 1993

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 16 Comments

Hello GORGEOUS!!

I have quite a lot of the Caron fragrances. I like the way they smell, that they seem to be joined, the bottles and the packaging. There is something glamorous about the whole Caron thing that lures me in. I think it is a neglected icon that needs a Tom Ford to sweep in and resurrect their staus.

Fleur De Rocaille by for Caron 1993

FleurDeRocaille FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Aldehydes, gardenia, violet
Heart: Carnation, iris, rose, ylang ylang, lilac, jasmine, lily of the valley, mimosa
Base: Oakmoss, musk, cedar, amber, sandalwood

Fleur De Rocaille means flowering rock garden or flower of rubble. So, of course, I expected to be floated away on a hefty sparkling floral with stark and challenging depths that floated high and above a labdanum (rock rose) base. I expected goat, grass, greenery and twisted & tortured woods.

What did I get, the air at high altitude, it opens fizzy like a life saver mint which fits with how I expect the air to smell in a rock garden and then becomes the softest, sweetest and most fleeting fragrance I have in my memory. The note list reads like a 1980’s blockbuster and I am sadly deflated. Having said that there is a lovely section from about 30mins to 1.5 hours that to me is a soft lily, not the very fragrant ones, and some mimosa, after that I get sugar, something quietly green and amber but so sparse as to almost not be there. I wonder if this was made with the Chinese and Japanese markets in mind?

If you hate perfume but feel the need to have something on your dresser and that you must spritz before you leave the house then this is for you. You will not be overwhelmed, nobody will complain of you skunking even an elevator after a double quadruple spritz. I use the last 3 ml of my 5ml decant today in one wearing and only noticed that I was wearing fragrance intermittently, and no one else commented at all.

RockGardenDesigns amazing-home-designPhoto Stolen AmazingHomeDesign

Further reading UnseenCenser
FragranceNet has 100ml around $45
MyPerfumeSamples has $2/ml or $7/5ml which is what I bought

I love the Caron vibe but feel it’s fading, with the new regulations I wonder how these houses will survive. What do you think? Will we miss the old ways in 20 years or will the people then be immune to it?
See you tomorrow,
Portia xx