Christian Dior

Oud Ispahan by Francois Demachy for DIOR 2012

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Hiya Scent-ualists,

A few weeks ago I was trolling around Facebook Fragrance Friends, a site mainly dedicated to the chat about what you’re wearing and how it is, who else has it, all sorts of great stuff for the fragrance junkie. It’s also a place where people do splits. I’ve never done one before so it was a totally new experience for me. One of the girls bought a huge bottle of Oud Ispahan (way too much to use in this lifetime) and we were allowed order 10 ml for the very reasonable price of 10 quid including postage!! From the UK! So, of course I was all over that like mould on cheese. It arrived on Friday and I have been spritzing away like crazy.

Oud Ispahan Dior for women and menPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these notes:
Top: Labdanum
Heart: Patchouli
Base: Sandalwood, rose and agarwood (oud)

Photo Stolen indonesianagarwoodoud

How does it wear on me? I find Oud Ispahan to be soft, subtle and skin scent-ish; a barely there whisper of grandeur harking back to the Arabian perfumery through 21st century processes. It is quietly tenacious, lasting well over 8 hours on me, and almost linear to my nose unless I am concentrating continuously. There is a journey but not in a grand adventure way. The bright and warm opening whispers sibilantly like a  secret, in a very human almost bed breath way. I think this the softest and cleanest oud accord I’ve smelled yet; like it’s been washed and dressed for company and it rumbles through the whole fragrance life. Now smelling of breath, leather, flesh but all very indoors, captured, domesticized and polished. While the amber/vanilla/patchouli are playing around at the party, I can’t really separate them because of my lack of knowledge but they are all outshone by the incredible heart of rose that everything else here hangs off. It’s like the rose is holding court and all else are bit players, but keeping with the theatrical theme, this rose is Machiavellian. It slides in and around giving a spicy, peppery, sparkly, lemony, fruity rose it is one rose of a thousand faces and facets. My nose thinks it has her pinned and vamoose, gone! replaced by something akin but subtly different.

Due to the awesome staying power of Oud Ispahan I can’t tell when it finally takes its leave but my head tells me that real dry down is an amber/oud sheer layer of extra lovely translucence that makes me smell subtly more desirable. Well, subtly more desirable to TSO Jin. I’ll be smiling all day.

Photo Stolen Ispahan.com

1000Fragrances does his usual excellent job of reviewing and PerfumeShrine does a super pre-release geography, accord and history lesson. Both are well worth looking up for interesting data.

I hope you are lucky enough to get to try DIOR’s Oud Ispahan. I like it a lot; it’s classy, beautiful, long lasting, sexy and interestingly it has good sillage. I can smell it in a room that I’ve vacated and come back to 15 minutes later.
SurrenderToChance starts at $3/ml but 5ml is only $12 and that is a great size to really get to know it. Of my 10ml I gave 3ml to a mate and have about 3ml left.  This will definitely become a full bottle when I get to a counter.

Have you tried Oud Ispahan? Any of the Couturier Collection? How do you rate them?

Thanks for dropping by, and/or leaving a message. I am so happy and grateful that you do. Have a lovely day, till tomorrow,
Portia xx
PS The video below has nothing to do with Oud Ispahan, it’s just a lovely DIOR mini movie for Miss Dior Winter 2012

Eau Sauvage by DIOR 1966 and Secret Garden Video

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Hiya Perfume Junkies,

Firstly, HAPPY JULY 4 USA! Photo Stolen Chiquero


Photo Stolen perfumeshrine

Recently I was lucky enough to grab a sample of Eau Sauvage but gave it to a mate instead of sniffing it myself. Since then it has played on my mind, trying to remember it because I used to wear it back in the late 1980’s and loved it. I happened to grab a SurrenderToChance: Perfumer Guy Robert Selects Perfume Masterpieces 24-Sample Pack and guess what, there it is! Guy Robert (Caleche, Madame Rochas, Dioressence, Amouage Gold) felt Edmond Roudnitska, the perfume genius responsible for Eau Sauvage, had created a masterpiece. Even 46 years later, after IFRA prohibitions and reformulations, it still bears solid traces of its magic and majesty.

Photo Stolen onlyfornow


Belonging to the Citrus Chypre family it opens fresh, bright  herbalcitrus on me, then the flowers which are kept surprisingly cool by carnation and iris root yet buttery warm through the sandalwood & patchouli, it’s interesting the way the flowers work against the green against the woods and herbs before the deep base comes plodding from below giving us the dank river bank near a produce market. This scent is surprisingly country and rural, considering that it’s been the epitome of masculine scent for a cool and classy city slicker.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives the notes/accords as
Top: lemon, basil, bergamot, cumin, lavender, fruit
Heart: Jasmine, rose, carnation, iris root, coriander, patchouli, sandalwood
Base: Oak moss, vetiver, musk, amber

NowSmelllThis and BoisDeJasmine do great reviews, both much more in depth with great historical data included.

As a special treat I’ll leave you with the DIOR Secret Garden movie. Glorious! Raf Simons stamping his modern nod to the houses history quite firmly over his predecessors kooky, often disconnected flamboyance. BAM! Yesterday’s fashion is again today’s news.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our look at Eau Sauvage, I really just wanted an excuse to play that video.

Is there a DIOR in your sights? Are you craving?
Portia xx

Grand Bal by DIOR 2012 Review

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Hey All,

Grand Bal by Christian Dior from La Collection Couturier Perfumeur range opens bright and cool, like a room lit with only LED light. As the juice warms on your skin so too does the scent. I was expecting it to be a very quiet and unassuming fragrance from the reviews I’ve read but no, it is cool bergamot, sexy, musky, white flowers, buttery ylang-ylang and sandalwood that are set in a perfume harking back to days of Grand Balls and the enormous gowns they wore that were made with the lightest and most expensive materials, enormous amounts of them. It doesn’t have the deep skank factor of days gone by, nor does it have the modern clean feel, the fleshiness here is not OCD clean but really living and breathing.

Photo Stolen DIOR

As you expect from Dior the fragrance is timeless and modern, giving a delicious and obvious nod to history, using the same materials available to everyone else and then doing it better, classier, more luxuriously, yet without pandering to the lowest common denominator. It is the same but more than the rest, a perfect scent accompaniment to all those delicious Dior gowns I always fantasized about but will never own except in my head.

Photo Stolen FashionBombDaily

From the DIOR website:
Literally fascinated by the excess of the imposing balls that he would not miss for anything, Christian Dior used his fashion to celebrate a certain luxurious and timeless celebratory spirit…”Grand Bal is an echo of Christian Dior’s great ball gowns, whose full skirts and beauty evoked the petals of a flower in full bloom,” François Demachy.

Photo Stolen piroskawolf

1000 Fragrances says in his review
The fresh sambac jasmine with its sensual sparkling green touch dominates the perfume while a small exotic vibe is brought by ylang-ylang Mayotte. The drydown is very sensual and alluring because it uses a new quality of natural sandalwood from Nouvelle Calédonie.

Photo Stolen shinystyle

Just by whacky chance Undina’sLookingGlass has also reviewed Dior’s Grand Bal today. She has done a very different review and it smells different on her skin, go see.

Fragrantica gives the notes in one line as
Musk, jasmine, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, sandalwood, bergamot

My only down side with this lovely fragrance is that my skin has eaten most of it in 4 hours, there is the vaguest musk and wood hint left that is not a skin-ish scent.

I was lucky enough to grab 5ml at SurrenderToChance in a Daily Chance Special, still they have Grand Bal decants starting at $3 for 1ml.
DIOR counters everywhere will probably have it too but I’m not sure. It’s fun to go seeking though,

Have you tried any of La Collection Couturier Perfumeur range? Do you have a favourite? What did you think? If not, are you avoiding them?
Thanks for dropping by,

Portia xx

DIOR HOMME Fragrance Review and Video

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Heya Stink Junkies,

I hope this finds you happy and well, I have an admission to make. I am poorly prepared for today’s topic and nearly out of time to present it. A busy weekend doing Jin’s Birthday celebrations over a 4 day period left me little time to prepare my week. I have just finished my Q&A for 5 nights of Turbo Trivia this week. OOOPS! So I decided to chat about a scent I smell quite often around the house….

2005 DIOR Homme Photo Stolen Fragrantica

2011 DIOR Homme Photo Stolen DIOR

DIOR HOMME 2005. This is not to be confused with the Francois Demachy 2011 version that comes with a black central suction pole, 2005 Dior Homme has a silver suction pole. An Olivier Polge superstar fragrance that takes you on a journey through the scent scale. It is bold and fearless, majestic, manly and feminine, herbs, spice, flowers, food, leather, so rich and diverse its like looking at a Kashmiri 10×7′ silk hand knotted rug. The closer you get and the more time you spend with it, the more you will see. This is TSO Jin’s favourite scent and I can rarely tell he is wearing it because every time it’s a different story. This is regularly the scent I ask him, “What IS that?” Some days it will be a back street market stall in India, others we might be on Bond St London, a Spanish leather shop, a desert town in Australia or an African campfire. A panoply of visions with what seems a surprisingly short accord list. There is a grunt to DIOR Homme 2005 that is hard to find in modern perfumery but it still manages to become Jin, meld with his scent and seem like him. It is also tenacious, giving him up to 12 hours of story. We can wake up and I still smell something deliciously other about him, but it’s him plus. It is a sensual, easy wearing fragrance that can be worn with a suit, sweats or jeans and is not so strong that you couldn’t wear it to a movie or dinner.  I think women should give it a go to0, it could become your new go-to, DIOR Homme 2005 will definitely invite the beast out to play.

It is getting increasingly hard to find pre-reformulation and I have not tried the new one yet.

DIOR Homme Intense Photo Stolen luxuryes

Fragrantica gives the notes but I find that they don’t particularly run in this order and that you get revisitations of top notes and middle notes all the way through to dry down.
Top notes: lavender, sage and bergamot;
Middle notes: iris, amber, cacao and cardamom;
Base notes: patchouli, leather and tahitian vetiver
NowSmellThis didn’t love DIOR Homme 2005 when it was released and sadly is the only non video review I could find on the first 5 pages of google by a blog.

I have shown the video before but Jude Law is always worth a second look.

Before I sign off, Thank You for coming and reading, and commenting. It makes me happy that you do and I hope you enjoy it also. What “mens” fragrances have you been trying on?
Love, Love, Love
Portia xx

Making of DIOR’s Secret Garden, Thursday Giveaway Competition

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Hey Hey Everyone!

I hope your weeks have been lovely. Most of this week has been cool and wet here in Sydney but today is sunny and glorious. I’ve just come in from sitting in the front yard reading in the sun with a cuppa and watching the cockatoos, galahs and lorikeets eating the seed rings I put on the liquidamber. It’s easy to be grateful when life is so lovely.

Last week we nearly made 1000 IVs, 994! We also nearly had a 200 IVs day, 197! AH MAY ZING! We also had our first guest blog on Perfume Posse if you didn’t get a chance to see it. Wrote about the old and the new, Bob Mackie & Kerosene’s John Pegg. Hit lightly on Viktor & Rolf’s Spicebomb and a multitude of other great stuff. With any luck you’ve enjoyed reading all these as much as I’ve enjoyed bringing them to you. Here’s the payoff.

THURSDAY GIVEAWAY COMPETITION

Picture Stolen hemodernhome

It’s my favourite day of the week again. The day where we get to look through all the great stuff we’ve talked about during the week and decide what will go in the draw and how we are going to get a winner.

This week we will have 2 winners, each will receive.

2ml spray decant of Mackie by Bob Mackie
2ml spray decant of Dreaming by Tommy Hilfiger
.5ml spray decant of a Kerosene fragrance (remains of my samples)
.5ml decant of an Arquiste fragrance
P&H anywhere in the world

How do you win? This is a complete no brainer, copy and paste the below sentence into your Twitter. EASY PEASY! The 2 people who tweet or have retweeted the most number of times with their handle included will win. I will see each tweet and retweet in my interactions so it will be super easy to follow. If anyone reaches 50 retweets (that’s 50 of your friends retweeting) they will get a special prize 2ml of something niche & discontinued.

https://australianperfumejunkies.com/ I smell a GIVEAWAY COMPETITION Retweet to enter Go to it @ozperfumejunkie

These giveaway competitions are our way of saying THANK YOU for your support. Even if you enter and don’t win you will have earned a million thank yous, just for being part of our AustralianPerfumeJunkies family. It is noticed and appreciated. As a special thank you I’ve added the making of DIOR’s Secret Garden mini movie. You’ll get the full movie tomorrow, see you then.

Wishing all of your good dreams come true,

Portia xx

Making of Secret Garden Versailles

Miss Dior Cherie Review

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Hey hey,

How good was Evie C’s interview with Aussie Perfumer Howard Jarvis of Bud Parfums yesterday?

I found this somewhere on FaceBook a while ago, or maybe one of my friends sent it to me. Thank you to who ever it was. Every now and then I come back to it and worry about how silly we are as a race. Will the earth survive us?

MISS DIOR CHERIE

Photo of Natalie Portman Stolen from beautysorority

On a completely other track. Below is the incredible Natalie Portman for Miss Dior Cherie. I love her most in the bath with sunnies. HILARIOUS! Don’t you think so?

For me Miss Dior Cherie was too Fruit Tingle-esque, it sizzled away on my skin and though others thought it almost gone; every time I went to sniff, there it was larger than life but not in a good way. This is what the girls of today like to wear and good luck to them. My question though is, “Aren’t there a hundred fragrances out there that smell almost the same but half the price?” On a $20 bottle of Ambre de Cabochard the bow is cute, here I find it offensive and desperate, even though I know it’s a re-representation of an old school Miss Dior bottle. I’m sorry to anyone who loves this fragrance, it just did not work on my skin or for my nostrils. And, of course, because I hated it, it lasted on my skin for HOURS! which has made me tetchy with the whole shebang.

Yes, not a great literary endeavor today, nor is it sufficiently objective, sorry. Didn’t like it, can’t pretend. You may love it, try it at any department store for free. The DIOR SA’s are usually lovely, helpful and smiley.

Have you spritzed something lately that tried your patience? Tell me in the comments, I love to read others tales of fragrant torment too.

Have a lovely day all,

Portia xx

DIOR: Shanghai Spring/Summer 2012 highlights

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Hey Fellow Fumeheads,

Having adored it all my life I studied Fashion in the 1980’s and there is a thrill still left for me in the words Yves Saint Laurent, Vivenne Westwood, Hermes, Donna Karan, Gucci, Thierry Mugler, Louis Vuitton, Gianni Versace and of course Christian Dior. There are many more names that could have been in this list but these names are the ones that have stuck in my head and which I associate with the longing I felt for high fashion while having neither the budget, body or where with all to be it. There was a spate of label purchasing through my 20’s and 30’s of usually off beat, unwanted, ready-to-wear pieces that had found their way to the discount stores in Europe and the USA, some house store sale shopping and the very rare in-season piece that I couldn’t live without. What I did do through these years though was buy ties, shoes, belts and fragrance from the big guys, giving me a taste of my dreams without losing the shirt off my back.


Photo Stolen from gatshfros.blogspot.com

For the rest I have stolen runway ideas and thrown them into my costumes; a collar, cuff, colour or treatment that moved me each season. Not to be up to date but because I was inspired by the bevy of amazing things done. Most of it was grown out of and handed down to the next generation and sometimes I see a newbie in bits and pieces of something I made 20 years ago.


Photo Stolen from internationalposter.com

My favourite designer purchase I ever wore was a gold/orange and dark coffee Thierry Mugler footed catsuit with the Thierry Mugler TM as the LV in open mockery of Louis Vuitton luggage. It was funny and silly and I wore it a lot. Its first ever wear was at the Cannes Film Festival to be interviewed by Ruby Wax while we were there promoting Priscilla: Queen of the Desert in 1994, or 1995? Cool huh?


Photo Stolen from egodesign.ca

Why have I included this long and seemingly pointless preamble? I came across this awesome video of the Shanghai DIOR show from March and realised that I am completely without a fragrance from Christian Dior in my Wardrobe. I love Diorissimo, Dune, J’Adore, Poison, Eau Savage, Fahrenheit and Dior Homme but have not purchased any of them for years, maybe because it’s so easy to go to a counter and get a squirt when the mood takes me, maybe not. It seems a glaring omission and I think I’ll have to rectify it during the week.

No reviews or anything today. Sorry. It’s Sunday and sunny and I want to be out among it. Wearing Soivohle; Rosa Sur Reuse and am quite liking it though. Maybe I’ll review it for you someday.
Have a super lovely day,
Portia xx

Please enjoy this short and sweet look at Shanghai DIOR Spring/Summer 2012.

“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future” Coco Chanel

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By Evie C.

A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.
Christian Dior

A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.
Coco Chanel

My perfume adventure is not going well.  I have discovered that I have neither the taste of Turin nor the omnivoric appetites of those perfumistas who post such regular and explicit reviews.  It seems my nose is tone deaf.  I should not be writing about perfume at all.

I googled perfume quotes in an attempt to find inspiration for this blog and the first two that appeared are above.   Coco Chanel’s seemed particularly ominous.

I started a new job today.   Before she left for the day one of my new colleagues sprayed herself with Paul Smith’s ‘Rose’.  Several people commented and it was indeed a lovely counterpoint to a long day but not something I would have wanted to be surrounded by all day.  I envied her that signature scent though, as it clearly had meaning for her and seemed a fabulous pick-me-up at the end of the day.

I don’t know how you all do it.  ‘Best-of’ lists and trying to settle on a favourite genre/note are clearly not the way forward.  I see now that one cannot be scientific about trying to identify a favourite.  Perhaps someone out there has broken a similar olfactory block?  Or perhaps some of us just don’t get it? Discuss . . .