L’Artisan Parfumeur

Passage D’Enfer by L’Artisan Parfumeur; Vegan Curry

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 12 Comments

Hey Y’All,

Easter is over, Jesus has risen and I have added kilograms of chocolate to my super sized figure. It was worth it. Yummy, YuMmY, YUMMY! We had a lovely, lazy 4 day break and felt refreshed and ready to return to the world yesterday.

Saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Monday at the cinema with TSO & BFF. Oh my! You must get out to see it. I am a massive Indiaphile but it is a wonderful film; aside from its reminding me of extraordinary years of holidays in India, spent with a hotelier love and his family & friends. Dames Maggie Smith and Judy Dench were the only 2 who could get me back into the cinema, which I abhor. Thanks Kath and Jin for making me go. Cried tears of joyful reminiscence through much of it. Did I mention popcorn?

PASSAGE D’ENFER by L’ARTISAN PARFUMEUR

This 1999 release from L’Artisan Parfumeur begins like a very expensive, freshly opened packet of incense, you can even smell the wood stick that the incense is on. The lily is quietly flowing around but barely there. Passage D’Enfer is very cool and quiet on me. Although it does get louder as it warms up it never really does much more than make me smell better if you are nuzzling me, lots of people like that, I want to be able to smell myself though. Honestly, I wear perfume 100% selfishly. Good for you if you can smell me but I really want to enjoy an olfactoric ride. Passage D’Enfer is gorgeous, I wonder if a second or third try would help me to notice it more? I shall do so at my leisure, if anything changes you guys will be the first to know.

Photo Stolen from L’Artisan Parfumeur

A perfect fragrance phobic work scent. I have to douse myself in Passage D’Enfer by L’Artisan Parfumeur to know that I am perfumed but I do get delicate and wonderful little whiffs on and off.

UPDATE: Funnily, I have read that this fragrance does not last, but on my usually scent-hungry skin I’m getting 3-4 hours and it is MUCH lovelier now than when I first applied. At the 8 hour mark there is the same whisper that it started with. I have underestimated and misread this perfume and will definitely be giving it another go. It’s almost as if my nose had to become accustomed to the quiet dignity and fragility of this sheer but lovely scent.

So that was Monday, on Wednesday morning I have given myself another spray and this perfume seems more robust in the 10 degree celsius that it did in 20 degrees on Monday. Interesting. I am getting a whole panoply of nuances that I just didn’t detect on first application. OMG! This is a gem, so subtle and SEXY. I can now imagine this as a dinner or, um, you-know-what scent. It definitely has a whisper of the temptress or hunter about it. Warm, spicy, woody and deep. I am LOVING Passage D’Enfer on the revisit. As you know i think all perfume is unisex but this one is so wearable by both sexes that if you are in a mixed sex relationship you’ll both be fighting for the bottle.

Photo Stolen from peter-pho2.com

I really enjoyed the review by Now Smell This and Fragrantica has the notes, accords and reviews.

Vegan Curry

This has nothing to do with perfume and I am a total meat eater but this is my go-to curry, it’s also good just in case you are unsure of your guests dietary requirements, and excellent for ready meals that last a week in your fridge. And SO CHEAP!

Ingredients

  • 4 washed small potatoes cut into 1cm cubes
  • 1 large onion cut into wedges
  • 1 cup split peas (any colour but I used yellow last night)
  • 1 cup broccoli florets in 1-2cm pieces
  • 1 cup mushrooms sliced
  • 2 zucchini halved and cut into 1cm pieces
  • 1 teaspoon iodised salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 2 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 2 large cloves garlic thinly sliced
  • 4 fresh green chillies slice thinly across, keep seeds
  • 1 tablespoon plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon prefab crushed ginger ginger
  • 1 tablespoon prefab lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon rice bran oil
  • 1/2 cup boiling water

Cooking

  1. Prepare all ingredients; leave vegetables in bowls of lightly salted water.
  2. Wash, rub and drain split peas 3 times or till water is clear-ish.  Add 4 cups water to split peas and bring to boil on med heat. Skim foam.
  3. Drain potatoes and add to peas. Return to boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered 5 mins.
  4. Stir in drained broccoli, zucchini and mushrooms with salt. Return to boil, reduce to simmer, cover and cook 10 mins.
  5. Heat oil in pan over med-high heat. Add cumin seeds 20 seconds, stir in garlic, chillies and turmeric 1 minute.
  6. Stir the cooked vegetables into garlic/chilli mix in pan.
  7. Whisk flour in mug with some boiling water until smooth. Stir into vegetables.
  8. Add ginger and lemon juice.
  9. Increase heat to med-high and stir continuously 1 minute.

Serve with Rice and Roti (we buy our Roti frozen and pan fry)

Eau de Sud / Muscs Koublai Khan Reviews

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 24 Comments

Hey gang,

Today I’m trying 2 new scents

Eau De Sud by Annick Goutal

eau-du-sud-annick-goutal-fragranticaFragrantica

 

Eau de Sud according to the Annick Goutal site, and I think they’re pretty spot on;

A symphony of citrus accords melts into slightly peppery and woody notes. Mandarin orange, bergamot, verbena, mint and basil. An invigorating trail of scent that recalls the creator’s voyages to Provence and Tuscany.

It is a 1996 unisex fragrance and both the mens and womens bottles contain the same stuff, usually you can find the mens at a much better price online. Citrus is not something I wear very much so I am looking to put one in the fragrance wardrobe. It starts out beautifully tart and crisp and whipish, at about the 15 minute mark it starts to warm for me, maybe the sandalwood and vanilla making an early appearance, it has maintained a pretty linear dry down and at 2.5 hours is barely there, almost just smelling a prettier me.

As always Fragrantica is my go to for the basic notes & accords with real people reviews and Now Smell This gives a more in depth and interesting review.

 

Musc Koublai Khan by Serge Lutens,

Sir Edward John Pointer, The visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon photo stolen from AGNSW

Muscs Koublai Khan by Serge Lutens is one of the fragrances often referred to on the scentbloggosphere as a reference fragrance for sexy, dark and dirtiness. There is said to be a great disparity between the bell jar original and the export versions and unfortunately I don’t have 2 for comparison and as I am using a sample from Perfume Niche there is no way of telling which one I have. Honestly though, I don’t smell anything even remotely sexual, dirty or dark. I smell deliciously deep patchouli, amber and musk, I think. It is warm and resinous like wood that’s just been waxed and polished but it does stay that way for hours, gloriously. I like Muscs Koublai Khan a LOT!! I think I will order 10mls and really give it a whirl.

Fragrantica has the important stuff and Confessions Of A Mad Perfumista and BoisDeJasmin offer 2 very different reactions to the whole mystery and mystique of this fragrance

What an awesome and fragrant week I’ve had. Just looking back through the stuff that I’ve sniffed and what you’ve read doesn’t even cover half of it. I think I should have asked Evie C if we could have called the blog ScentWhores or StinkPigs because it’s like having to write a food diary to show you how much you eat. Blogging has woken me to the fact that I am Scent-ual. I hope you are enjoying the ride.

It’s Thursday and that means GIVEAWAY COMPETITION time. you have to tell us the last perfume you tried that was full bottle worthy, why and did you buy it yet. The winner will be judged on Saturday night 7.3.12 around 10pm Sydney EST

We are giving away approximately

1.5ml JINX by Tommi Sooni decanted spray sample

1.5ml L’Eau D’Ambre by L Artisan Parfumeur decanted spray sample

1.5ml City of Angels by Royal Apothic decanted spray sample

1.5ml Fantasia de Fleurs by Creed decanted spray sample

1ml Fig by Aftelier Perfumes remains of manufacturers sample spray

plus postage and packing to anywhere in the world

ALSO you need to go and read TheCandyPerfumeBoy today he has been chhosing scents for that Nicki Minaj songstress that I LOVE!

Just for fun I’ve added this L’Instant Guerlain ad because…..

Perfume for the musk-averse?

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 6 Comments

Hello – I’m the laggardly half of Australianperfumejunkies.  I’m the yin to Portia’s gorgeously positive and vivacious yang.  Where Portia describes herself as a perfume ‘slut’, I’m determined to find ‘the one’.  I’ll fill my cupboards with a million decants before I invest in a full bottle that doesn’t speak to me fully and completely.  I’m not a perfumista.  I’m just a somewhat anally-retentive civilian who wants to find a great scent, is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of possibilities out there and needs a systematic way to reach the holy grail of a signature scent.  And I don’t like musk.

This caveat would seem to narrow the field substantially as musk is apparently found in 90% of fine fragrances (according to perfumes-world.com).  I don’t think I’m alone in this aversion, however.  My hypothesis is that all those people who claim to wretch when they pass a perfume counter are musk-averse.  There’s even a celebrated perfumer (Christopher Brosius) who claims to hate musk and leaves it out of most of his perfumes.  You might say I’m in search of a signature scent for people who claim not to like perfume.  I’m convinced it can be found.   I hope there’ll be more than one but I’ll be happy with one.

Adventure One – The Quiet Perfumes

Lists, lists, lists – perfumistas love lists. What better place to start than with a pre-culled selection from those who know better.  Portia popped my perfume-cherry with Luca and Tania’s Little Book of Perfumes so I’m going to start with one of their lists.   Since musk is typically a bold, animalistic scent, I thought Luca and Tania’s favourite ‘quiet’ perfumes would be the place to start.  Surely ‘quiet’ is something of an antonym to ‘musk’ in the perfume world?

A pre-screening of the candidates for evidence of musk on Fragrantica.com proved this to be not necessarily the case and I have had to reject half of the original ten for offences against the musk-averse.

Here are the remainders – Turin and Sanchez’s favourite ‘quiet’ perfumes sans musk:

  • Bois d’Encens (Armani Prive)
  • Commes des Garcons 3 (Commes des Garcons)
  • Lime, Basil & Mandarin (Jo Malone)
  • Hermessence Osmanthe Yunnan (Hermes)
  • Timbuktu (L’Artisan Parfumeur)

I’m going to wallow in these perfumes for the next two weeks and my favourite amongst them will be the beginning of my next adventure.  If there’s anyone out there who thinks they’re musk averse and has found a favourite I would love to hear from you.  Evie C.