Esxence 2017

Homo*Elegans: Experience Kit

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 26 Comments

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Portia

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Hey There FUMIES!

In Milan at Essence 2017 I was hanging a bit with my mate Margo. As I was so overwhelmed by the event on the first day I asked Margo to point me in the direction of some Must-Smell-Houses. In the end she only directed me to one house, a reasonably new crew called Homo*Elegans. The worst name for a brand in the history of branding. When she told me the name I laughed in her face. Who could carry a line with that name in their store?

Judith, Margo & Val the Cookie Queen at dinner in Milan

Beyond the terrible name she told me to go smell their perfumes. They are the one new thing you’ve not tried in the whole event that you MUST get your nose on. So I did. The boys gave me an Experience Kit.

Homo*Elegans

Tadzio Homoelegans FragranticaFragrantica

Tadzio by Michele Marin for Homoelegans 2015

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Lime, orange, ivy, cucumber
Heart: Black currant, sea water, orange blossom
Base: Immortelle, patchouli, opoponax, musk

I love the cool, frosty opening to Tadzio, it’s freaky fun. Even as the salty black currant comes in the mint stays and the cucumber adds its wetness. Even later when the smooth, warm baseline appears there are still small hints of the coolness in the beginning. Tadzio is my favourite of the three by far.

Quality Of Flesh Homoelegans FragranticaFragrantica

Quality Of Flesh by Michele Marin for Homoelegans 2015

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Juniper berries, pink pepper, black pepper
Heart: Narcissus, patchouli, styrax, costus
Base: Leather, civet, benzoin, castoreum

My nose is instantly hit with the leather, dank wet rooty earth and animalics. This wetland foxhole smell is only slightly abated by the smooth creaminess of resins and patchouli. Quality of Flesh smells funky. It’s the most Indie smelling of the three.

Paloma y Raices Homoelegans FragranticaFragrantica

Paloma y Raices by Maurizio Cerizza for Homoelegans 2017

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Peppermint, green accord, mamey, grapefruit
Heart: Tuberose, ylang-ylang, coffee, tobacco
Base: Tonka bean, tolu, peru balsam, vanilla

Imagine if they made a chocolate coated biscuit filled with tuberose and ylang cream. A rich, tropical, dreamy scent that is sweet but not in the modern fairy floss way, much more a nuanced resinous sweetness surrounded by dark chocolate.  The base is all warm, clean flesh. Paloma y Raices becomes a soft but noticeable skin scent, perfect for close quarters and undressing.

La Via del Profumo GIVEAWAY

WHAT CAN YOU WIN?

This week there will be 1 winner who will receive:
1 x Homo*Elegans Experience Kit
P&H Anywhere in the world

HOW DO YOU WIN?

Open to everyone worldwide 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 tell us which Homo*Elegans fragrance sounds most you?

HOUSEKEEPING

Entries Close Wednesday 14th June 2017 10pm Australian EdsT and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by random.org
The winners will have till Wednesday 21st June 2017 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

Bois d’Oud by Detaille 2014 + GIVEAWAY

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 16 Comments

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Portia

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Hey APJers,

You may remember that I met the owner of Detail and his wife at the Milan hotel we stayed in for Esxence? Louis and his wife Christine. He was so sweet and passionate about their fragrances. Even made one of the newest range especially for Christine, with her involvement. She was wearing it to breakfast so proudly.

As we chattered over breakfast about his company Louis told me that they’d released some new fragrances recently. I tried a couple but the one I liked for me was Bois d’Oud. He gave me a bottle right there on the spot and Jin & I have both enjoyed wearing it since then.

Bois d’Oud by Detaille 2014

Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Agarwood (oud), bergamot, labdanum
Heart: Saffron, cedar
Base: Tobacco, agarwood (oud), cedar, patchouli

As I was wearing Bois d’Oud I was telling him what I thought I smelled. Synth oud, loads of pencil shaving cedar, honey & patchouli. Well, I was almost all correct and Louis was thrilled that I had been able to place some notes. Really he was a complete gent.

Bois d’Oud opens with a lightly fecal synth oudh that quickly calms into a animalic, creamy, resinous labdanumwith only hints of the oudishness. Very nice, comfortable, easy. Then the cedar mines in underneath and you can smell it almost rising through thew scent to become front & centre. It’s beautifully played and smells good to me.

 

As the hours pass the tobacco, which smells delightfully honeyed and browned, and patchouli float through. Patchouli is pretty clean, no headshop shenanigans going on here and all backed by a soft blur of creamy oud. Smooth, the whole fragrance is very smooth.

It’s a nice, wearable, synth oud. Not too skanky, won’t scare the Grandmas or the teens away, and has a very comfortable wear. Bois d’Oud is not a groundbreaking perfume, won’t challenge the wearer and is at the cleaner end of the oud spectrum. It is a very nice version of what it does though.

Detaille has €90/50ml

 

WHAT CAN YOU WIN?

This week there will be 2 winners who will receive:
1 x 10ml decant of Bois d’Oud by Detaille
P&H Anywhere in the world

HOW DO YOU WIN?

Open to everyone worldwide 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 tell us your current favourite woods or oud fragrance? 

HOUSEKEEPING

Entries Close Wednesday 19th April 2017 10pm Australian EdsT and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by random.org
The winners will have till Wednesday 26th April 2017 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

Scent Diary: 20.3 – 26.3.17

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 19 Comments

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Portia

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Scent Diary: 20.3 – 26.3.17

Monday 20:

Luxumbourg has an excellent cafe/chocolatier on the Place Guillaume. we had afternoon tea there and wrote postcards.

I might have bought these in a corner perfumery with a 20% discount. YAY!

Tuesday 21:

Arrived in Paris around lunchtime. We are staying in a new to us hotel near the Arc de Triomphe. Coming out of the Metro on the escalator and being hit with one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks is pretty spectacular.

Obligatory Serge Lutens flagship store visit. Bought Jin a new MKK because he is going through his bell jar rather quickly and got Scotty something too for house minding our place. SHHHH.

Near the Louvre Museum they had a memorial to all the homeless that died in Paris last year. Hundreds of them, not all with names, were represented by a flowering plant. We laid a rose and said a prayer for one who died on Jin’s birthday. Very moving tribute and a woman danced through the memorial to French provincial music played by a smell band.

Yes, went to Guerlain Champs Elysees store but did not purchase. they still have Liu if you’re looking for it.

Dinner with Nicolas & Enno from Le Galion and Aether. They are bloody wicked company and we laughed and chatted the night away. So glad we are mates with such clever, passionate men about life, work and fragrance.

Scored the brand newest Aether scent and will be doing a giveaway when we get back so you can try it too. Based on the smell of hot metal and made with only captured molecules Methaldone is really good stuff. Freaky, wearable and smells good to me.

Wednesday 22:

Since 2013 Jin and I have reminisced about having crepes for breakfast one morning in a market with our mates Aaron & Gerard. They were delicious and it was a great thing to do. Jin decided we would repeat the adventure and painstakingly worked out where the market was and on which days it is open. They were as good as we remembered and it was fun to go back.

Then we went inside Notre Dame. We have been outside a few times but never went in. This time we went in and lit candles for friends & family. Beautiful.

Here I wear the Eiffel Tower as a hat. This is the bridge near Princess Diana’s tunnel where she died. Still sad.

In the afternoon we went to the Grand Palais and saw the Rodin exhibition. Really interesting look at an artist that I know not very much about. We learned a bit but more than anything I loved that he was a great sketcher and we saw a lout of his drawings/inks and that captured my imagination more than anything else.

Jin called this the Beyonce Single Ladies statue. We bloody lost it and all the French matrons looking at us like we were from outer space as we laughed and did Single Ladies singing & dancing impersonations.

Thursday 23:

Ahhh, Galleries Lafayette. I know that Printemps is posher but the shiver of excitement I feel whenever we shop beneath that glittering dome is worth more than anything. Yes, bought the Hermes Collection Colognes. The Hermès SA loaded us up with extras too and made me SWEAR I’d come back and shop with her. Indeed I will.

We saw the Pissaro exhibition, excellent. Seeing the way he grew as an artist. There were all sorts of wonderful pieces in the pointillist, separatist, impressionist genres but interestingly he also had a sideline in simple watercolour and gauche paintings that were really easily sold by his art dealer. That was the way he paid the rent and fed his family. It also meant he could pursue his grand pieces. The last ones were so magnificently painted that they looked like the light was streaming out of them, as if backed by light boxes. Unbelievable.

We tried to go to the Louis Vuitton Foundation but there was no exhibition on. Having paid for the best tickets available we were a bit grumpy. The building is a ridiculous conglomeration of hideous architecture wankings anyway. What a pile of shit.

 

Friday 24:

OMG! Jin and I flew to Milan in the early morning, had some lunch and then met a few of the frag crew in clouding Val the Cookie Queen. We then went in to Escxence. It is enormous, filled to the gills with perfume houses. So many of them brand new and hardly any of my most loved.

Charles de Gaulle had an interesting selection of Mass-Tige fragrances including Diptyque, Amouage, Lutens and Goutal.

Val the Cookie Queen is mortally afraid of photographs, weird because she’s so beautiful.

Nick (I’m sorry I didn’t get a pic with Pia too) Gilbert and Lucasz from Chemist In A Bottle

Antonio Gardoni of Bogue and Francesco from Luckyscent

Adam & Francesco from LuckyScent, Vero Kern, Neela Vermeire and up the back Judith Fox, Val CQs best friend (and psychotherapist). This is my favourite Esxence pic by far.

It was so overwhelming that I only allowed 3 houses to give me their sample sets. I already love Miller & Bartaux, their product is weird and wonderful while remaining perfectly wearable.
Atelier des Ors is a favourite of Ainslie Walker and I know Megan their rep.
Brand new and winner of the worst brand name ever Homoelegans, I liked one of their frags particularly, more on that later.

We finished the day with a bunch of great mates for dinner. They all really needed a quiet wind down and we found a spectacular candlelit restaurant close by that served wonderful food for very decent prices. Petit is the name and they worked hard to make it a special evening for us all.

Saturday 25:

Started my morning at the Milano Savoy with Aussie milliner to the stars Naomi Goodsir. I bloody love her.

This years offering is Nuit de Bakelite. It’s green with a tuberose heart. The closest analogy I can make is a 21st century Niki de Saint Phalle EdT.

The Duomo. The Pope was in town, he missed us by minutes.

Neela and Jin. The display was gorgeous at the NVC stand and Neela was swamped by people all day, every day.

At Campo Marzio 70. I might have bought a Kiki Extrait at retail, so good.

Farewell to Vero Kern & Antonio Gardoni with Val the cookie queen.

I might have got this to…….

Sunday 26:

Up early for a farewell breakfast with Val the Cookie Queen and Judith. Saying goodbye to people we love is shit.

We dropped into Esxence to see Neela and she gave us a bottle of Bombay Bling to photograph on our travels in Milan today. BIG responsibility. Jin is up for the challenge.

A cup of tea with Neela before bed. The fragrances she creates are as warm, wonderful and delicious as Neela herself. I love her passion and perfectionism.

So what has happened in your week, fragrant or otherwise?
Portia xx