L’Artisan Parfumeur

L’Eau D’Ambre by L’Artisan Parfumeur 1978

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Hello Gorgeous!

This morning as we got out of bed there was a definite chill in the air so I decided that it would be a perfect day to grab the L’Eau D’Ambre from the fragrance fridge and give it a whirl. On writing this I have been wearing it 7 hours and there is still a beautiful warm amber glow whispering from my skivvy. Amber fragrance has nothing to do with the Amber worn in necklaces except that it smells like wearing amber feels; warm and richly exotic. It is a sweetish, resinous and woody accord usually from benzoin, labdanum, and vanilla, then other interesting accords and notes are added to give light and shade to a fragrance.

Photo Stolen Allposters

L’Artisan Parfumeur’s L’Eau D’Ambre is created with an extremely short list of accords, amber, patchouli, vanilla and geranium. On my skin I love the herbal/medicinal opening and think the minty, green geranium, which softens out after the initial rush and swoop, is instrumental in keeping the ambers and vanilla from getting too gourmandy throughout the life of the fragrance, though it does skirt caramel sometimes. I do notice there is a feeling that we are about to get fruit or roses every so often, just a hint, they never arrive but I am kept guessing all day. An oriental that hints at the spice road rather than embraces it and if you are looking for that harsh, burnt, markets in Asia, in your face amber extreme then pass L’Eau D’Ambre by. It is warm and classy, never overbearing, but keeps itself very nice. Often referred to as the amber for non amber fans, I agree, no need to push yourself to love this because it’s just a delightful and elegant amber for any occasion, opera, dinner, shopping or Bar B Q. Sensual rather than sexual, I feel very comfortable, like I’ve put on a comfy pair of jeans that I know look great.

Photo Stolen L’Artisan Parfumeur

L’Artisan Parfumeur’s website says Jean-Claude Ellena created this glorious perfume. Fragrantica, on the other hand, quotes it as Jean-Francois Laporte along with Vanilia, Tubereuse and Mure & Musc in the same year. I guess L’Artisan would know? Fragrantica does say Jean-Claude created L’Eau D’Ambre Extreme and L’Artisan doesn’t bother.

eGlobalBeauty has 50ml for $95 including P&H
Annoyingly L’Artisan Parfumeur don’t ship to Australia so I can’t order from their sale. GRRR! But you can.

I hope you’re all having a lovely weekend. Have you tried this house? What is your favourite L’Artisan perfume?

Portia xx

BBC documentary “Guerlain; The Next Generation”, Terracotta Voile d’Ete Review

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Hi Fume Heads, Stink Whores, Perfume Junkies and all others,

Just had the most wonderful lunch with friends down at Blue Fish, Darling Harbour off Sydney Harbour, chatting away to a girl who I’ve met a couple of times and liked very much. Had NO IDEA that she was the girl to set up Le Labo bar here in Sydney, has met most of the world’s most recognisable perfumers and many noses, and wants to be my scent mother. Helping, teaching, exploring!! She has even offered to do some guest spots here on AustralianPerfumeJunkies. OMFG! I am blowing kisses to the universe and to my BFF Kath who started the conversation about AustralianPerfumeJunkies today over the most ENORMOUS seafood platter.

It’s Sunday and I’m dropping this in early to give Sydneysiders a chance to read and watch before dinner. Instead of writing about a perfume I thought we could all watch a story about a perfume house. In honour of it being a Guerlain documentary I am wearing Terracotta Voile d’Ete and if you want to know what it is like Denyse Baeulieu from Grain de Musc does history, scent and wearability. All I will say about Terracotta Voile d’Ete by Guerlain is that it is a soft spicy floriental with moderate sillage and lasting power, works all year round and is pretty cheap online at $50-$90 100ml EdT. Being a 1999 limited edition you will be the only guy/girl wearing it and it’s modern but not as you know it AND, the bottle is beyond fabulous, the most deliciously retro chic. Imagine this little beauty on your vanity, huh? I got mine from FragranceNet.com with 15% off for about $43.


Photo Stolen from Fragrantica

Denyse is also the author of “The Perfume Lover” which I am currently enthralled in. It’s a page turner about a memory of a magical night turned into a fragrance by one of the world’s most talented perfumers, Bertrand Duchaufour of L’Artisan Parfumeur. Quite a plot, that also happens to be based on the real life events that led to the creation of Séville à l’aube, the new perfume from L’Artisan Parfumeur. I hope we get a movie with Lucy Liu, Maggie Smith, Angela Bassett, George Clooney, Eric Bana, Zac Efron, Will & Jada Pinkett Smith too. That would be AWESOME!

Go to with abandon!!

Portia xx

Guerlain, The Next Generation

Just so you know. APJ is not affiliated with any businesses mentioned in our blog.

What do GRUMPY people smell like?

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Hey all,

So ever had a day that from the moment you were awakened it all seemed like shit on toast? Not even!! No one took the time to do toast, it was shit sandwich.

Well, I am being over dramatic, of course, but I did have a major case of the grumps yesterday which meant people who are my nearest and dearest were finding other rooms (read suburbs) to be in. I kept having to say to TSO Jin, “I’m not really angry about this. Please excuse me,” after flying off the handle at tiny little things that irk me usually but today generated seismic tremors. I felt like Ouisa Boudreaux (Shirley MacLean) from Steel Magnolias, and usually I’m Claree Belcher (Olympia Dukakis).

What do grumpy people wear?

L’Eau D’Ambre
In the morning L’Artisam Parfumeur’s 1978 release L’Eau D’Ambre got a run. I’ve talked about this scent recently so won’t bore you all but L’Eau D’Ambre is a pants fragrance that stiffens by back and fills up my cajones when I have to get business accomplished.

Photo Stolen from L’Artisan Parfumeur

Green Tea
Home in the afternoon and wanting something fresh and lively to lift my spirits and give a breath of fresh air I chose Elizabeth Arden’s 1999 offering, Green Tea. How do they get all those delicious notes in this perfume to smell exactly like a fresh cuppa? It’s a budget scent but Francis Kurkdjian, Green Tea’s nose, has done extraordinary work on some of your favourites: JPGaultier Le Male; Ellie Saab Le Parfum, Narciso Rodriguez For Her, and his own Maison Francis Kurkdjian line. This is quality breeding folks. It is a short, sharp shot of lovely and lively that helps me to center. PS Yesterday we featured a  Francis Kurkdjian interview.

Photo Stolen from Fragrantica

No 5
Late afternoon and still grumpy so I thought the splendid and extravagant thrill of Chanel’s 1921 visionary/copycat (depending on who you believe) No 5 might lift and separate the gloom. That effervescent flash of citrus & aldehydes, followed by ylang-ylang,  jasmine, rose, iris & more, warmed by vanilla, musk, woods and patchouli. So; sharp, bouquet, deep clay earth is how it runs in my mind as the notes (that I mostly can’t follow definitively anyway) float over and around me. It is sexy, stately and gorgeous, and for a while, so am I. Lost in the absolute bliss, and Mum memories, of a masterpiece.

Photo Stolen from oo.com.au

Evening saw me restless and wanting more glamour; so off for a HOT Radox bath with some lightly scented body wash for bubbles and moisturising non-soap. MMMMM My most delicious and sensual waste of time, usually with a book. (Currently The Widow Clicqout by Tilar J. Mazzeo, the Chanel No 5 biographer. Good stuff.)

Parfum de Maroc
Warm, clean and fresh it was time for something more niche and exclusive. A sample of Parfum de Maroc by Aftelier Perfumes that swept me away when I first tried it was put aside when i fell heavily for Crepes & Tuberose and invested in a bottle. I forgot what a delicious journey Parfum de Maroc (perfume of Morocco) takes you on. Harvested directly from Aftelier Perfumes website; they say…

Photo Stolen from Aftelier

Scent Family: Spicy Floral
Inspired by an ancient Moroccan spice recipe Ras el Hanout or “top of the shop” – a mixture of the best spices a seller has to offer….
..Notes
Top: saffron, galangal.
Heart: Turkish rose, nutmeg.
Base: cardamom, myrrh.

Thanks for reading. What do you wear when GRUMPY?

Portia xx

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

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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.