Paris by Chanel – Inside CHANEL Movie

September 26, 2014 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 1 Comment

Hi there Fashionistas,

Here we have another block in the Gabriel “Coco” Chanel story/myth/legend. She has been so painted, glossed and glammed that she could be a decoupage. The house lives on in splendour and Karl Lagerfeld is the reigning monarch. Still the house CHANEL is a major player and an international billion dollar money making factory.

I hope you enjoy their latest mini movie, a piece about the atelier, store and apartment at 31 Rue Cambon and Coco. Magic.

Portia xx

Photo Stolen WallPaperMine

Paris by Chanel – Inside CHANEL Movie

Femmes Savantes GIVEAWAY Winner

September 26, 2014 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 1 Comment

Hey there APJ Crew,

Great response and thank you to the lovely Azar for doing another amazing GIVEAWAY.

Portia xx

Femmes Savantes GIVEAWAY WINNER

Photo Stolen La Comédie des Parfums

WHAT COULD YOU WIN?

This week we will have 1 Winner who will get:
For today’s drawing Mr. Abraham has generously provided a sample of Femmes Savantes for one lucky winner residing in the continental US.
P&H to the USA

HOW DID YOU WIN?

Open to everyone USA ONLY who follows AustralianPerfumeJunkies via eMail, WordPress, Bloglovin or RSS. Please leave how you follow in the comments to be eligible. I must be able to check that you follow so if you have an email address on your gravatar that’s different to your follow address then please email me so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.

You must tell me how you follow APJ

and

Please comment on any of the fragrances from La Comédie des Parfums or tell APJ about your favorite citrus perfume (or fruit).

Extra Chance?
Tweet: @OzPerfumeJunkie Femmes Savante: La Comédie des Parfums GIVEAWAY http://wp.me/p3PURw-3cx #Perfume #Giveaway

HOUSEKEEPING

Entries Closed Thursday 25th September 2014 10pm Australian EST
Winners will be chosen by random.org or a fun other way

Photo Stolen HighestSelf

CAROLINE

The winners will have till Sunday 28th September 2014 to get in touch (portia underscore turbo at yahoo dot com dot au) with their address or the prize will go to someone else.
No responsibility taken for lost or damaged goods in transit.

Perfumes That Never Offend My Coworkers

September 25, 2014 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 21 Comments

Post by FeralJasmine

I work with a fantastic bunch of ladies. We have all been together for several years now, and couldn’t be happier with the arrangement. We know each other’s thought patterns, can predict each other pretty well, and have no serious trouble making decisions by concensus.

So when does the serpent enter paradise? Usually it has to do with perfume. My good colleagues are (thank The Lord and/or Lady) very outspoken and not given to passive aggression, which means that when I wear a scent that one of them doesn’t like, I am going to hear about it. Sometimes this is pretty damn funny: one of them calls anything that she dislikes “patchouli,” which leads to hilarious remarks like “I don’t like that patchouli perfume you’re wearing today” when I’m drifting around in Chanel #5. Aldehydes are a total no-go. Gagging pantomimes greet anything too sweet.

Perfumes That Never Offend My Coworkers

So what does work? I have a stable of stuff that draws purely positive comment. To my surprise, two of them are patchouli scents (but don’t tell my colleague!) Vanillas are happily tolerated if they aren’t too sweet, confirming my suspicion that for many of us, vanilla is THE primal comfort scent. The players are:

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Kate Walsh Boyfriend: this lovely warm patchouli-plum-tobacco scent is miles above the usual celebrity perfume and therefore is discontinued, but is still readily available on eBay. I have stocked up and will not be bidding against you.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Kerosene Unknown Pleasures: Earl Grey tea followed by a soft slightly sweet bakery vanilla. What’s not to like? This one is a great value, and I have obtained a backup bottle.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Xerjoff Lira: An exquisite soft vanilla that wafts in the most delicate and appealing way. Unfortunately, it is also $285 a bottle, which works out to quite a bit per waft. Still, I wear it sometimes because there is nothing quite like it. But Unknown Pleasures, after the somewhat brash lemony opening, ends up in much the same place for less than half the price, so no back-up bottles of Lira for me.

Photo Stolen DSH Perfumes

DSH Pink Gardenia: my one objection to Ms. Hurwitz’s vanillic gardenia is that it is too civilized and private. Which is why I can wear it to work to universal approval. Nobody is aware of it unless they happen to get very close, and then they like it. Now, if only she made a louder version to put on when I get home…

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

PG Coze: I can’t get my mind around wearing this one to work. But I did once, by mistake, and people loved it. Even the Patchouli-Slaying Queen commented on the lovely spicy resins. So I wear it once in a while at work, and a lot on weekends.

Here are a couple of sample sites that you can go see to try these.
Surrender To Chance
Posh Peasant
My Perfume Samples

I should add that I have dry perfume-euthanizing skin and these might not be subtle enough on everyone. But unless your workplace forbids perfume, there is something that you can get away with. Solicit honest feedback from a few work-buddies, and pay careful attention to what they say. After all, it’s their airspace too!

FeralJasmine X

En Passant by Olivia Giacobetti for Frederic Malle 2000

September 24, 2014 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 9 Comments

Post by Gabriella

Hello fragrance friends,

Do you ever get cravings for perfumes that you don’t have in your collection? This very thing happened to my last week. It’s actually very surprising as the scent in question was one of the very first perfumes to blow me away when I first started exploring niche scents and yet, after all these years, I still don’t have a bottle. Today, I’m talking to you about an oldie but a goodie – the fragrance I am going to discuss is the sublime En Passant.

En Passant by Olivia Giacobetti for Frederic Malle 2000

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

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

My reaction to the initial spritz of En Passant is one of feeling overwhelmed, but in a beautiful way. I’m enveloped in the distinctive yet delicate scent of masses of white lilacs. It is morning and their tiny petals are covered in tiny droplets of rain from an overnight shower. The rain has freshened the blooms, providing an ethereal aqueous quality. I don’t get the cucumber note that has bothered quite a few people with this scent. It’s just pure fresh and fresh lilac and quite linear, yet when the sun starts to peek over the blooms in the yard, you can just begin to smell the warmth of baking bread from a nearby kitchen window. Yet the yeasty aspect doesn’t overwhelm, it just provides a welcome temperateness to the green, watery quality of the lilac.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

Even as I write, I’m conscious that my words don’t capture the loveliness of this scent. The perfume is an essence of time and place the story it tells is a very distinctive and emotional one. The best I can do is a series of adjectives: it’s diaphanous, it’s ephemeral, and it’s impressionistic and just plain beautiful. It is a story of lilacs, bread and spring What Giacobetti has done with these elements in perfume is akin to what Monet or Pissaro did with light and texture in painting.

En Passant is not powerful, its beauty is sotto voce and it’s a terribly personal scent as Portia has mentioned in her review. Despite its quietness, I still get a good 4 to 6 hours of wear; over this time, it just seems to waft gently from the skin like a breeze.

Photo Stolen DeviantArt

Because of its discreetness, En Passant is something you could wear almost anywhere. But I find it’s best when I’m craving beauty and solitude. Oh, and the promise of spring that sadly, just quite hasn’t made it to Melbourne yet. Better satisfy those cravings and just get a bottle of this beauty.

Further reading: Olfactoria’s Travels and Perfume Posse

Mecca Cosmetica has 3x10ml/$124 in Australia
Frederic Malle has €110/50ml

Surrender to Chance starts at $6/ml

Have you tried En Passant? What perfumes have left you speechless?

Until next time,
M x

Femmes Savantes by Gabriel Abraham for La Comédie des Parfums

September 22, 2014 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 24 Comments

Post by Azar

Hello APJ,

La Comédie des Parfums is an indie perfume house based in Seattle and Paris. The multi-talented nose and CEO, Gabriel Abraham, currently offers seven perfumes on his website http://www.perfumescomedy.com, all but two inspired by the comic plays of Molière (AKA Jean-Baptiste Poqueline 1622-1673). Today’s review sniffs the EdP Femmes Savantes, Abraham’s fragrant take on Molière’s satire about the “learned” women of 17th century Paris – “Les Femmes Savantes”. These days this play is often described as overtly “sexist” but I read it simply as a commentary on humanity’s incredible capacity for pretension.

Femmes Savantes by Gabriel Abraham for La Comédie des Parfums

Photo Stolen La Comédie des Parfums

The listed notes for Femmes Savantes from the La Comédie des Parfums factory site are:
Top: Bergamot, lemon peel, green leaves
Heart: Osmanthus, sheer jasmine, muguet, cinnamon spice
Base: Cedar wood, balsamic, musk.

I adore the lemon top note of Femmes Savantes. It is not the dishwasher detergent lemon or the lemon meringue lemon but a light, powerful impression of the complete fruit including a whiff of the juice, pulp and the oily rind smelling much like the large, round, thin skinned Persian limoo shirin (C. limetta) that I love so much. This refreshing and pungent opening is reinforced by bergamot and a bouquet of green herbs resulting in a sparkling and sophisticated first impression, not at all pretentious, quite the opposite of the women in Molière’s comedy. As the lemon subsides the herbaceous floral heart blossoms into osmanthus, jasmine and a cool hint of muguet drying to a diaphanous (Ooo) cedar and musk. I have to admit that I don’t detect the cinnamon but perhaps you will?

Photo Stolen Perfumes Comedy

Femmes Savantes is probably the most skillfully composed lemon I’ve experienced in a long time. The opening is my favorite part of this fragrance. The light to moderate sillage and medium longevity (no more than five hours) make it possible for me to madly spray several times a day for the lemony rush I crave.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

This year our PNW summer was particularly hot and dry. Femmes Savantes, Pirouette’s Wild Spruce and Tobacco, Borsari Parma Acqua Classica Cologne and EdT as well as another Abraham fragrance, V. Van Gogh, were all part of my summer strategy to beat the heat.

You can purchase Femmes Savantes at Perfumes Comedy

Be Cool.

Azar xx

Photo Stolen myprettypaints

Femmes Savantes GIVEAWAY

WHAT CAN YOU WIN?