Woodcut by Ellen Covey for Olympic Orchids 2014

January 12, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 60 Comments

Post by Azar

Hello APJ,

Happy New Year – and I am ready for it! There have been too many changes in 2014. This time last year I was dealing with emotional trauma associated with the destruction of the small forest behind our home in Issaquah, WA, “Tree City USA”. The smell of sap and tree blood was almost toxic, the whole experience brutal. After the trees were ripped out and hauled away, a monstrosity of a house was erected not far from our lot line. In an effort to mitigate the view of our neighbors’ kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms we installed 150 feet of cedar fencing, several varieties of timber bamboo, 20 cedar saplings, prayer flags and a large polycarb greenhouse. It will be several years before the bamboo and cedars obscure the up-slope action, but eventually we hope that we will no longer be a part of our neighbors’ intimate daily lives. In the meantime we have been enjoying our greenhouse and looking for peaceful retreats away from the fishbowl that is our home.

Photo Donated Azar

On December 29th Ellen Covey, her husband Michael Clune, Brad and I set out over the Puget Sound to visit Troy Meyers Orchid Conservatory near Poulsbo, WA. The conservatory, residence, greenhouse, shops and guesthouse are located on several acres of beautiful cedars, hemlocks and Douglas firs. When we arrived at our destination an all too familiar smell assaulted my nose…sawn wood and tree sap! Initially I was stunned, but when I took a closer look I could see that our host had very carefully and selectively cut a few trees in order to manage the forest, preserve the buildings and allow the solar panels to continue generating electricity. This well considered stewardship of the land was a far cry from what had happened behind our home in late 2013. Visiting Troy Meyers Orchid Conservatory, staying in the lovely guest cottage and seeing how Troy and his wife Phyllis managed their sustainable and self sufficient life style was the perfect and positive ending to a year dominated by the life, death and smell of trees.

Speaking of the smell of trees: 2014 also saw the launch of Ellen Covey’s new fragrance Woodcut.

Woodcut by Ellen Covey for Olympic Orchids 2014

Photo Stolen Olympic Orchids

Woodcut was released late last year and has already made it to the Cafleurebon “Best of 2014” list. The name Woodcut describes the fragrance perfectly.

My first impression of Woodcut was of a bracing, outdoor cedar board scent associated with new fences and carpentry. For me this introduction lasted, at the most, five minutes. There was no gradual transition to the next phase but simply an immediate and sudden shift to a dense and heavy sap, recalling the brooding woodcuts of American artists Leonard Baskin and Edward Gorey. Within 10 minutes or so Woodcut shifted again and a completely different personality appeared. Sugar, caramel, and vanilla surrounded the resinous balsam and created a cozy and comforting perfume that lasted for many hours. Woodcut is perhaps the first fragrance I have experienced that manifests such distinctly different and delineated personalities. The bracing cedar, the dark sap and the caramelized resin do not evolve from one to another but simply change in an instant.

Photo stolen lavanyasrecipes

Woodcut GIVEAWAY

WHAT CAN YOU WIN?

This week we will have 2 Winners who will each get:
1 x 1ml sample of Woodcut by Olympic Orchids
2 x additional decants of “woody” fragrances from Azar’s collection
P&H to the world

HOW DO YOU WIN?

Open to everyone in the world 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

Leave a comment about the new Woodcut fragrance or name your favorite tree or wood smell.

Extra Chance?
Tweet: @OzPerfumeJunkie Olympic Orchids Perfume GIVEAWAY http://wp.me/p3PURw-3vv #Perfume #Giveaway @EllenCovey1

HOUSEKEEPING

Entries Close Thursday 8th January 2015 10pm Australian EST and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by pulling names from a sunhat (maybe)
The winners will have till Sunday 11th January 2015 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.

Azar xx

Alpha Musc by Liz Zorn for SOIVOHLE

January 2, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 14 Comments

Heya Perfume Junkies,

It’s no secret that I love the SOIVOHLE (pronounced See-Voh) range. It is an acronym Sending Out Inspired Vibrations Of Healthy Loving Energy and I think Liz Zorn a dashing artist genius. We have chatted about her and SOIVOHLE quite a bit on APJ. Right now Liz is selling off the Mixed Media section of the fraghrance business and is going to concentrate on the naturals. It’s a sad day here for me and I have bought back up bottles of two of my favourite SOIVOHLE fragrances, Rosa sur Reuse and Jasmine Summer. Really I do not want to live without them. Tonight we are going to look at another fragrtance I love from the range that is currently at CLEARANCE prices.

Alpha Musc by Liz Zorn for SOIVOHLE

Photo Stolen SOIVOHLE

SOIVOHLE gives these featured accords in one line:
Patchouli, Moss, Vanilla, Pepper, Champaca Leaf, Animalic Musks
MUSC-CHYPRE-ANIMALIC

I get a chocolate vanilla with fabulously freaky green tinge on opening with Alpha Musc, a burning, searing scent that skirts the edges of overkill, never quite reaching the too much level but dangerously close. It has a resinous, thick, treacle-ish quality that feels like the air has become too thick to breathe into my nose and lungs, a sensation only Alpha Musc has ever given me. It’s sweet and sweaty, dry, dusty and dank and though it’s a very full fragrance that demands attention still it is quite sheer, sheer AND dense.

Photo Stolen Flickr

As the initial fireworks subside the whole fragrance dries out and the pepper, cracked and ground, gives the choc/vanilla a savoury edge that makes it zing beautifully. A toasted tobacco note, sweetly honeyed but dry and dessicated rolls in and alongside the pepper is so unusual that it really makes my nose stand to attention to see what’s going to happen next. You know the smell of your dogs paws, that yeasty/urinous/furry scent that is like almost nothing else on earth? Alpha Musc smells nothing like it but there is something that feels as if that scent is being referenced obliquely. As if the idea of dogs feet has been put there, an echo, a nod, a whisper of what the real thing smells like. It may even smell a little like a Musk Deer, but I’ll never know. I have smelled some 60+ year old musk tincture of Jean Kerleo’s that he used while at Patou, there are very faint echoes of it here.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

I have a motor bike and I leave my helmet in a plastic airtight box on the back. Sometimes if I have been riding a lot and the weather is warm I get a real animal musk scent from it when I first get it from the box. It’s a bed head and healthy sweaty man combination, sweet and very slightly sour, and the musks and vanilla in Alpha Musc remind me very much of this funky scent but ever so soft on deep dry down after I awake next morning. It is tantalisingly human and quite sexy but very, very muted.

Photo Stolen WikiCommons

Where would I wear Alpha Musc? It is a wear anywhere, smell good, slightly feral comfort scent. Only in the first hour need you worry about skunking the severely anti fragrance types but everyone else will bask in your beautiful soft, naked, healthy skin sillage. About 3 hours mildly fragrant before heading towards close skin scent.

SOIVOHLE is clearing out Alpha Musc: Sample $2/ 11ml $25/ 50ml $50
You have to get it before it’s gone.
Which of the SOIVOHLEs do you know?
Portia xx

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