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Guest Post by Val The Cookie Queen

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PATCHOULI NOIR OSMO BY IL PROFUMO 2006

Hi to all you new APJ  friends.

It was 1973 when I got my first full bottle of perfume.  Miss Dior.  Little knowing at the time of it´s ultra cool status.  Mum was a Guerlain/Chanel lady.  She taught me that it didn’t matter what I wore, as long as I smelled good and expensive! I also learned from her that as I got older, I would be able to wear more grown up perfumes.  Which was, of course the reason, that she would not let me spray my thirteen year old neck with copious amounts of Mitsouko.

Photo Stolen KalleoSoaps

This would explain why she was not a happy camper when I changed, to straight up patchouli oil in about 1976.  Scored from my local headshop, it was thick enough to need a paintbrush to apply it, and stained my neck a dark yellow.  She informed me that I smelled as if I had just stepped out of the local whorehouse. (I wonder to this day on what that was based.)  It was around the same time, as I walked through the streets of Bristol, with my boyfriend, (he too drenched in the stuff) that two bobbies on the beat stopped us.  They seemed to take great delight in informing us that people who didn’t take baths, and those who smoked wacky backy, were partial to patchouli oil.  Wow!  Brilliant that a scent could cause such a strong reaction.

So began a lifelong love of patchouli.  And the cops were right.  I became a perfume junkie.

I  don´t buy my oil from headshops any more.  There is just the one oil that I use.

Picture stolen from  Lucky Scent

LuckyScent lists just five notes in a line:
Mint, cedarwood, patchouli, poppy, vanilla

With my eyes closed, I inhale deeply.  I am transported back to another time.  It calms me, relaxes me, and gives me a feeling of well being.  And it´s legal.  (Despite wearing, owning, and loving many other fragrances, it is always the heavy patchouli smells that get me the compliments)  This stuff is soooo smooth an soft and gorgeous. It is perfect to layer with other fragrances as it is a fixative.  Patchouli belongs to the mint family, and the short lived hit of mint in this patchouli is fabulous.  The vanilla delectable.  The hint of cedarwood sublime.  A little goes a long way.  I have had my bottle for more than 5 years.  It only gets better.  It ages like a fine wine.

LuckyScent has 100ml/$165

Straight up patchouli.  You either love it or hate it.  As my girlfriend says, “Whatever blows your skirt!“  And Patchouli Noir blows mine sky high.

I had a splendid time with Portia and Jin in Vienna in January.  We went together to the Chanel Les Exclusifs counter, where I bought a bottle of Coromandel.  Finally. I wanted to write about it, Portia beat me to it. But as my daughter said to me ,what more can you say than: “It´s freaking awesome!“? Patchouli and Miss P???  Was I not warned it would get me into trouble?

Bussis

Cookie Queen