So have taken you on our flight to Vienna through it’s stops and starts, shown you Michael eating a schnitzel bigger than his head and now we are up to the meeting up with mates section We sampled fragrances, ate, drank, laughed and Michael shopped up a whole new wardrobe because he’s 6 foot 4 inches and whippet thin so Austria is the first place he’s been where they cut for his shape.
Birgit, Sandra (both of Olfactoria’s Travels), Michael and Sandra’s sweet and hilarious son Sean made our stay so fun and we saw Vienna the city to live in as well as the tourist city. I was so happy to have dinner with Birgit’s gorgeous husband again, he is sharp, handsome and funny and I am completely smitten.
You may wonder why there’s a dirty great ginger cat but Sandra took us to a Cat Cafe, where people who can’t have pets of their own can spend some time with a bunch of glorious cats. This was my favourite and reminded me a little of Undina from Undina’s Looking Glass cat Rusty, except this one would NOT pose.
Again we stayed in the Hotel Royal on the Stefansplatz, a very comfortable and affordable option in the heart of Vienna that serves an excellent breakfast. These are my three criteria for accommodation: Comfortable, Affordable, Excellent breakfast. Also add to that: Near the station.
Here are a few pics, enjoy a glimpse of Vienna, Austria with us.
Portia xxx
Well I’m back home and have nothing scheduled for tonight. AAAARRGGGHHH!!! I have found the ad campaign for the new Mercedes Benz Perfume though on art8amby.
Do I think the fragrance will be as good as the ads? My fingers are crossed.
Mercedes Benz Perfume by Michel Almairac for Mercedes Benz 2013
Going through my stuff in the cleanup I came across dozens of samples and manufacturers carded stuff that never got a sniff. I don’t know hot this one got overlooked, it’s on a huge card with beautiful pictures and this from Patricia de Nicolaï: Patchouli oil is an essential oil of great importance in my perfumer’s palette. Among all woody notes, it is the most sensuous. Here I wanted to work with patchouli in a very unusual way, with an accord rose-geranium, on a deep amber vanilla and incense body.
Patchouli Intense by Patricia de Nicolai for Parfums de Nicolaï 2009
Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Patchouli, oakmoss, bergamot and musk
Oooh sizzling citrus rush at the open and then quickly it calms to a green, woodsy, earthy scent. No Essential Oil style patchouli from the oil burner here folks. This is forest floor in the just warming, still brisk weather. Sunlight dappled meanderings with no destination till tea time. Pretty and unisex, I can imagine Patchouli Intense could become very addictive if smelled on a new partner or someone you have recently met. It must be the combination of oakmoss and patchouli that gives such a parkland woods feeling. Though there are no flowers named I get some distinctly floral leanings mixed in too, like a marigold (tagettes) flower about half an hour after you crush/crumble it up. I keep thinking the word “verdant” and cannot for the life of me put it into a sentence that reads remotely real. Damnit! I think the word lovely and it does indeed conjure in my mind images of the merry growth spurt that is spring. Now that I’ve thought spring I also get a feeling from Patchouli Intense that is a lot like holding baby budgerigars when you are hand rearing them, they get a particular powdery, earthy, clean, alive smell as their feathers start to fuzz up. Though Patchouli Intense doesn’t smell like that, the feeling, the essence of the experience feels remarkably similar.
Booze? I get a boozy, casual wisp of something alcoholic, maybe dark rum? It coruscates out through the earthy middle ground. I also get almond milk and something a little sweet. As Patchouli Intense dries down it dries out and gets a very lived in feel, a musky, dusky, dusty cooling like the inside of a forgotten attic filled with the scent of the death of books, leather, wood and fabrics. Then it starts to fade and somewhere between 5-6 hours I can no longer smell it at all.
I have found in my three wears that an extra spritz at the 3 hour mark will more than double the fragrant life of Patchouli Intense, I can spritz before dinner, eat, hang, sleep. Then when I wake up in the morning I can smell it all over again, beautiful and sensuous the patchouli and musk have made sexy smell babies. MMMMMMMM
Patricia de Nicolai has worked a wonder in this beautifully nuanced, soft but rugged, comfortable scent. It nods vigorously to mens cologne from a bygone era but is smoother, more sophisticated and easier to wear. This is the kind of scent I would have bought my Dad if he was still alive and Mum would have stolen more than half the bottle because it’s so good.
The more I wear Patchouli Intense the less masculine it reads to me, this is a totally unisex beauty, if you like a soft friendly patchouli then this could be the one.
Portia x
Best line ever, “How do you make a baby happy? Say Gucci, Gucci, Gucci” Blake Lively is a great fit for what Gucci is trying to achieve with their Gucci Premier campaign.
This perfume world is absolutely crazy, fun, rewarding, uplifting and at times absolutely hilarious.
I have two favourite perfume games. They can be played as solitaire or with multiple players.
Game 1. Are they? / Aren’t they?
As I am out and about in the city, with or without my daughter (non perfume junkie friends don´t play this game)
we like to pick approaching people at random and guess if they are going to walk by in a huge cloud of fragrance,
leaving a trail behind them, a light spritz, nothing, or a bad case of BO. After playing this game for several years it is extremely satisfying to
see just how often I get it right.
(usually played silently and pleasurably in your head, depending how annoying the sales assistant is)
Ever been into a perfumery, department store or wherever and had the sales assistant talk a lot of nonsense?
Freddie from Smelly Thoughts recently told me that the SA in Harrod´s explained Vero Kern´s Onda as a lavender. Need I say more?
So one year on and I am about to meet up with Portia again. We will be in London together.
Harrod´s, be warned.
So APJ lovers and friends, feel free to share any perfume games you play!
So much has been written about this revered yet polarizing fragrance that I debated for quite a while whether it was worth adding my two cents to the conversation. But sometimes a fragrance is so moving and compelling that you just need to write about it. Serge Lutens’ Muscs Koublai Khan is one such fragrance.
Muscs Koublai Khan by Christopher Sheldrake for Serge Lutens 1998
Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Civet, castroneum, cistus labdanum, ambergris, Morrocan rose, cumin, ambrette seed (musk mallow), costus root, patchouli
The scent begins with the oft talked about animalic civet blast but I don’t find it nearly as scary or ugly as some reviews would lead me to believe. In fact, this whoosh of unripe skankiness is something that I find quite compelling and thoroughly enjoyable. Muscs Koublai Khan is very much a jolie-laide fragrance: it’s the nerdy, not very good looking guy that you initially dismissed in your early twenties only to find out when you’re 32 that he is he is the crazy, charismatic guy, full of depth, adventure and the one you should have picked all along. As the cliché says, beauty is only skin deep and so it is with this fragrance.
Given that, Muscs Koublai Khan takes some time to unfold its captivating charm completely. All the unwashed notes of the opening do indeed transport the wearer to other worlds and olden times when women and men roamed the land, ready for battle clad in loincloths; invincible in their leathery hirsute armour. The fetid character also transports me back to sometime in my not too distant past, say the late 1970s or early 1980s, when it was still ok for women to have a fur coat. I would go to my Mum’s closet and smell the slightly mildewed aroma of her cast off handbags sitting in garbage bags ready for a garage sale and her mink coat smothered in dry cleaning sheets. The slightly perfumed mothballed aroma of the fur spoke of sparkled nights and unspoken deeds.
Underlying all this unripeness is a blast of cedar and the composition then becomes considerably more sotto voce: all soft honeyed rose and the smell of salty damp skin after a night of passion and romp. Mr M immediately dismissed Muscs Koublai Khan as something rank and I hate to say that most of my close circle of friends would probably have the same aghast reaction. Thus, Muscs Koublai Khan is destined to be a very personal scent for me: one when I choose to shut out my benign petiteness and become a warrior princess: six foot tall, bound in swathes of tight leather and high heels and just completely indestructible.
Further reading: Bois de Jasmin and The Non Blonde
Muscs is now back in the Paris Exclusives line, but export spray bottles can still be found online. Amazon has it at $113.99/50ml Surrender to Chance starts at $4/0.5ml
What’s your take on MKK? Are there any skanky scents you love?
So much hate for this lovely scent. I have managed to find a couple of other lovers in further reading but the majority don’t like it. Apparently people think it loud, really? I just don’t get loud…..
Champs Elysees by Jean Paul Guerlain 1996
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Blackcurrant, almond, anise, melon, peach, violet Heart: Lilac, lily of the valley, hibiscus, almond flower, rose, mimosa, peony Base: Almond tree, cedar, benzoin, vanilla, sandalwood
I have a story, it’s a little bit embarrassing because I’m worried you are all going to kick me to the perfumista curb. I have Champs-Élysées in EdT, EdP and Parfum strengths and also have the body wash. I love it so much and you can get it at the discounters for NOTHING!! Like, seriously, they almost pay you to take their excess stock off their hands. I bet there are a dedicated few who love and wear Champs-Élysées almost exclusively and they are going to be GUTTED when it dies the death of the unloved scent, discontinuation. My belief is that 10 years after this is axed it will be worth a fortune. That core of lovers will be bereft and RICH.
Today I’m wearing a 2011 Champs-Élysées EdP, it’s the 75ml and while I adore the bottle design, to me it harks back to the art deco era but there is a stupid, ugly whilt plastic shoulder and neck that gives the air of a budget $3 “Smells Like” scent from the dollar shop.
Straight out of the gate I get a watery melon backed up by the soft waxy plastic feel of mimosa, that recedes into the background quite quickly as a sweet milky green-ness flows through. Champs-Élysées is so GIRLY! Soft , fresh, innocent and totally animalic or humanity free. The cleanest of all my Guerlains I can understand why hardcore perfumistas eschew its sheer, even prim and airy charms, there is only floating, no heft or pushiness, just a breeze blowing through that happens to be beautifully scented. The almonds milk stays softly insistent through Champs-Élysées life and is the closest thing to a grounding force that it has. This is what 60% of the celebuscents are trying to be and I can imagine it being a perfect first grown up fragrance for a teen or tween.
Fortunately Guerlain, while keeping Champs-Élysées light and youthful, has done it with such a deft hand that it is ageless, the lilacs and peonies through the heart blend beautifully with the return of mimosa and if you are 16 or 600 years old I think you will be pleased, if this is what you are after. Normally my skin sweetens scents but here I get the almonds all the way through and the woods and vanilla play only supporting roles as an amorphous chorus.
Surprisingly, for something so ethereal and wispy, Champs-Élysées has good longevity and 5-6 hours go by before I lose the scent completely. The sillage is quite mild as is the projection, I think you could wear Champs-Élysées to work as long as the space is not confined or your workplace completely fragrance averse. Really, I don’t get the loud thing, not loud on me at all.
Are you a Champs Elysees lover or a hater? Please leave your feelings and a short why in the comments. No judgements made on any answers, either way, as long as you keep it respectful.
Portia xx
The below photo is me standing outside Guerlain 68 Champs-Élysées, Jin and I decided to leave it to the last night we were in Paris February 2013. That afternoon it closed for renovation!! I KNOW!! This photo was the last thing done just before I broke down crying like a little bitch. Poor Jin, he had his hands full. It still makes me sad, thank goodness I have been back to Paris, in fact all going to plan I have just left it for London. From the Sydney Summer of my writing I have everything crossed that this time I will have been able to cross the threshold.
Le Temps d’Une Fête (Time for a Party) is a fragrance I discovered through The Muse In Wooden Shoes, who adores it and writes so lovingly of it that I really felt I would like to know it but it was always shunted out of the Shopping Basket at the end of an online shopping extravaganza in favour of something more pressing. Then came the news that it would be either discontinued, or made limited distribution, and I realised it may be now or never.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Galbanum, opoponax Heart: Narcissus, jasmine Base: Oakmoss, sandalwood, patchouli, woody notes
Phwoar!! Just recently I was lucky enough to grab an old bottle of Le Temps d’Une Fête and the difference in opening sequence is astounding. Here I find immediate and awesome ZWOOOSH of narcissus, like you’ve crushed a flower in your hand with back ups by the resins creating a feeling of leaf pulp too, maybe even a bit of bulb. I also get a fruity, fun and waxy vibe floating through. More intense and deeper than my current edition, which I like very much BTW but they are like two similar sisters. If you were to meet them solo they would look alike but to see them together there are a bunch of differences. Patricia de Nicolai has made this very spare note list work super hard and Le Temps d’Une Fête is a full bodied sensual diva of a fragrance, in both old and new forms but now I completely understand where The Muse In Wooden Shoes is devastated at the changes.
Someone on Fragrantica describes Le Temps d’Une Fête as having “pollen like skankiness” and I think that sums the earlier hour or so but as it starts to head into its late heart/early dry down that skankiness becomes the clearest ringing bell of narcissus, so lovely and so innocent smelling. Like a young person on the verge of discovery, restrained, pretty, sweet even but underneath beats a heart just learning its power.
The base reads warm, soft and buttery for me. It may be the summer heat that gives it that feeling. What I do get through the whole life of Le Temps d’Une Fête is a shine, luminescence, radiance, a feeling that something wonderful could happen while wearing it. Time for a Party? Yes indeed!
I get around 4-5 hours from Le Temps d’Une Fête, though the last hour is not really fragrance but a hint that I smelled quite good earlier. First two hours had good projection and sillage before in moved to a quieter register and began the fade. Where would I wear Le Temps d’Une Fête? Date night, as a pick me up, reading, shopping, cleaning. Anything that could be enhanced by smelling beyond incredible is a good time for a sneaky spritz.
When we talk about essential oils, it’s often an umbrella term for many different kinds of aromatic liquids.
Essential Oils
These are usually water/steam distilled, and this is the most common way to date that oils are extracted. All the oils you would commonly buy today would be steam and water distilled and this process is simple, traditional and dates back through the past century.
Absolutes
These are usually made flowers or very delicate plants where a chemical extraction process is used (see my article Absolutes? Not Absolutely) but they resemble essential oils in viscosity and are used in the same way as essential oils. They tend to be more concentrated then essential oils.
Oleoresins and Resinoids
These are highly concentrated liquid extracts that are a combination of resins and aromatic oils. The plants they come from have a high resin content so they fall into their own category. Once again they can be used in the same way as essential oils.
CO2 Extraction is also called Super-critical CO2 extraction and it produces a couple of plant products – extracts or selects, and totals.
A relative newcomer in the world of extraction, the name makes it sound bad but it’s not! There are lots of good things about this process and I’ll try to sum it up briefly and succinctly.
The extraction process uses carbon dioxide heated to a degree where it has both liquid and gaseous properties- this part is the super-critical part. It’s less hot them steam and water distillation so this is a bonus as it doesn’t change the plant materials as much. It’s this liquid form that extracts the volatile plant material. Aromatic oils, resins and other cellular materials like pigments are extracted by the liquid CO2 which evaporates easily, leaving a substance that more closely resembles the plant.
CO2 extracts more closely aromatically resemble the whole plant, whereas essential oils are specifically the volatile oil component of the plant.
CO2 extracts may be better scent wise, or less attractive. It depends on the plant.
Some CO2 extracts that are now available are – ambrette, cardamom, cinnamon, coriander, clove, nutmeg, caraway, fennel, ginger
sea buckthorn
amaranth
cocoa, coffee, vanilla
pomegranate
evening primrose, rosehip
chamomile, champaka, ginger lily, jasmine, juniper, linden blossom, patchouli
arnica, calendula, lavender, hops, St Johns wort,
angelica root, orris root, kava
agarwood, frankincense, galbanum, myrrh, spikenard
I don’t use CO2 extracts extensively in my practice yet, as many of the extracts are semi-solid and aren’t easy to work with. It seems some of the extracts are better suited to using in creams and lotions. As I move more into the area of natural perfumery I know I’ll use some of the extracts more often. I haven’t actually spent the time looking at the analysis of each oil, which will indicate the therapeutic property of the “oil”.
According to Nature’s Gift, “totals” are a secondary product of the CO2 process: “are usually thick and pasty due to the beneficial fats, resins and waxes they contain that come from the plant material itself. These totals are soluble in essential oils and vegetable oils. …. These potent extracts are wonderful for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The Calendulas extract, for example, in a dosage of 2 grams extract to 1000 grams ointment is effective for it’s anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial activity.”
None of my suppliers in Sydney provide these “totals” and I don’t have first hand knowledge of how they work – but it sounds interesting!
Australian Perfume Junkies 