Meet-Up

Guilty Pleasures – a Sydney sniffy meet up!

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TinaG

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Hi APJ!

Perfume people are the best! It’s great to be able to chat online & catch up in real life to swap fragrance stories and smell different things. Group catch ups are fun afternoons, and we tend to go a bit crazy….there’s always some awesome frags on the table.

Simon and Kerri from FaceBook Aussie Fragrance Network lead the charge organising a sniffy on Sunday 11 June, with a general theme of ‘Guilty Pleasures’. Heh. I think that’s an umbrella statement that we all fall under at some point in time. We met at Hotel Sweeny in Sydney, a pub which has missed the renovation revolution having street-rescued sofas and worn sticky carpet, but with some interesting beers on tap – I did try Illawarra Brewing Company: Smashing Rumpkin which had a funky pumpkin note. Odd but tasty.

Guilty Pleasures – a Sydney sniffy meet up!

We met at the rooftop bar & spread out our stashes. We did a LOT of sniffing!! I asked Scott to bring along a range of Rive Gauche by YSL for me to run through, as I’d heard so much but never really sniffed, and I knew Scott was a fan. He brought along (L to R in the photo) vintage EDP, vintage EDT, current EDT 2006 and vintage parfum 1980s. Fab.

Some of the “Guilty Pleasures” people brought along were:

Amouage Gold Man: you spray this and it takes over the room.
Cool Water by Davidoff: the vintage stuff is still incredible. Done to death by uncles, dads and other male relatives but still fantastic.
Giorgio Beverly Hills: an overpowering 80s tuberose bomb that lays claim to 5 metres around itself at all times.
Pure Honey by Kim Kardashian: Undeniably pleasant though, and very affordable.
Dark Ride by Xyrena: a super weirdy that polarises people through its green, medicinal, water-park dankness.
Baraonda by Nasomatto: when you know you shouldn’t spend a silly amount of money on a tiny bottle, but you do it anyway because it smells like the best dark chocolate and roasted nuts and boozey goodness.
Scent by Theo Fennell: a spectacularly lush floral with a skanky underside, like a beautiful, rich, classy lady wrapped in furs who just doesn’t shower often enough.
Glamazon by RuPaul and Diva by Ungaro I suppose because I expected them to be awful – the price point and the tacky bottles – but they are both amazing and rich and tenacious – thus they became guilty pleasures
Gaiac 10, Sacred Wood, MDCI sets – all generous gifts from online friends that he had never actually met.
Pino Silvestre: this is an old favourite of many people, and cheap as chips.

What’s my guilty pleasure when it comes to perfume? Oh, so many…. But I think my top hit would be that I seem to be starting a collection of vintage Guerlain – Vol de Nuit, Mitsouko, and Apres L’Ondee. Oops. I love them though.

What’s your fragrant guilty pleasure?

Till next time
Tina G xx

Last Sydney Sniffy Get Together 2016

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Portia

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Hi there crew.

On the 30th December 2016 a small crew of fragrance/fragrant enthusiasts got together to troll the Sydney City department store David Jones. Then we headed down the road to extremely Ra Cha Cha hotel and watering hole QT Sydney at 49 Market St for nibbles and beverages. It was a fun, frolicsome crew with loads of smiles and laughs, spritzing, bitching and fabulous repartee. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment and got to spend some quality time with people I’d only ever spent skim time with.

Last Sydney Sniffy Get Together 2016

Normally we would fit in more than one fragrant store but on this particular day David Jones had enough to keep our noses and credit cards working hard for about 2 hours before we all catwalk down to drinks.

Here is a small snapshot of our afternoon.

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Here are TinaG, Jocelyn Fullerton of Cult Of Scent and Angela.

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With the handsome Simon

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Kerri & Gina

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Angela, Gina & Chairman Meow

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Angela, Gina, TinaG, Chairman Meow, Kerri

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At QT Sydney

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Maybe you should get together with some like minded frag heads in 2017. It’s amazing how much fun we all have together.
Portia xx

I Hate That Perfume Because… Sydney Perfume Lovers

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Hiya APJ,

A lot of what we as perfume, fragrance and scent lovers do is done solo. We read our computers, test, smell, enjoy and buy a lot of our fragrance alone. It’s one of the things I really love about the whole perfumista life. Never having to wait for anyone else to do what I love, smell scents. Sometimes though getting together and sharing the love is as much or, Gods forbid, more fun. Imagine a crew of about 12 frag hounds all sitting around eating, drinking, laughing and sniffing. That’s what happened today here at my house. I don’t know if you’ve seen online a thing called MeetUp? In our modern day, high pressure, quick moving, ever changing world sometimes we lose touch with those that are near and dear and find ourselves unable to create new ones, or maybe what you love is very niche and you’re looking for some mates to enjoy it with, whatever the reason a friend of mine Catherine de Peloux Menage (Writer, Fragrance Finder, Personal Scent Consultant and glamorous, great girl about town) decided she would start a crew of her own called Sydney Perfume Lovers – MeetUp. From the tiny germ of an idea there are now well over a hundred members, events scheduled regularly and we have created a Sunday Scent Salon in my home once a month where we come together about a fragrance related topic and have a wonderful morning tea, here’s how today’s went down.

Sunday Scent Salon: I Hate That Perfume Because

Sydney Perfume Lovers – MeetUp

So the topic this month was “I Hate That Perfume Because…” and we were challenged to find a fragrance that really irks us in some way, drives us batshit crazy when we smell it, gives us hives, creates confusion or any other reason that we hate it. There was a catch though, we weren’t there to be only negative, we had to provide an explanation that went further than “YUCK, Disgusting shit. Hate it.” We had to bring a reasonable argument and scent memory with us, and preferably the fragrance too so we could all tell what you were thinking when you gave your spiel.

WOW! We got some DOOZIES!!! People had really gone all out to obtain their anti-elixir and had their stories primed and ready.

I hate that perfume because#1

Some of the fragrances we hated included, L’Heure Bleue by Guerlain because it smells like urinal cakes. Fahrenheit because it smells like bug spray, Rexona Men’s Sport Deodorant because it’s cheap, nasty and ubiquitous, BVLGARI BLV Pour homme because it is a nasty mess and melange of everything unwanted in a fragrance, La Petit Robe Noire Parfum by Guerlain because it is nice for the first hour but then lasts eternally and becomes both sickly and boring at the end, Tweed by Lentheric due to family remembrances, Giorgio Beverly Hills because of its overuse in the 1980s but we all agreed that it smells rather lovely now having not smelled it for years, L’Eau d’Issey Femme because it is a solid wall of scent that lasts eternally and is a metallic, super sweet mess. There were others including an art book infused with the scent of fear obtained by putting swatches on the inside legs and armpits a men and making them do really scary stuff, then recreating those scents artificially for a book which was strange, subversive and extremely compelling.

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There was heaps of lighthearted banter and no one took offense, we all really had a great time and as always I feel like I’ve made some new friends. People who like something I am completely beserko about. Good people who I was lucky enough to spend some time getting to know today, a couple I’ve met before and some others who are already my friends. More than anything it reminds me how lucky we all are. Without the internet I would still be a completely solo fragrance lover, which can be nice but now I can share my love with people all over the world.

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Be it these lovely MeetUp Scent Salons we organise, on the Facebook pages, reading blogs and articles or here in this wondrous space (APJ) where I feel like there is a whole fragrance family where we can share our Cuckoo, fly our freak flag and generally unleash our love of fragrance.

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I do apologise for my TERRIBLE photo taking, getting the lights in and rotten framing. We were having too much fun to be sensible and I am glad.

Today was great, you should think about starting a MeetUp where you are. Nobody has too many friends and you never know where your next BFF will come from. Should you wish to join us at a Sunday Scent Salon you must first join Sydney Perfume Lovers – MeetUp. We can’t wait to meet you and hear your stories over some great food, some champagne and tea.

Love and fragrant hugs from me,
Portia xx

 

Scents Of My Mother: Sydney Perfume Lovers Scent Salon

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Post by Catherine du Peloux Menage

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APJ and the Sydney Perfume Lovers have teamed up to run monthly Sunday Scent Salons. Perfume evokes memories and few memories are deeper than those associated with a mother, which is how thirteen men and women, some of them complete strangers met to talk about Scents Of My Mother, bearing photographs, perfumes and recollections. It was a moving, warm and sometimes funny event.

Scents Of My Mother

Sydney Perfume Lovers Scent Salon

Complex is the best word to describe the relationships we brought to the table.
We met many mothers. The one who smoked a joint with her son on his 18th birthday, the one who said ‘disgusting’ about a daughter’s folds of flesh, the one who criticised her naturally slender daughter for deliberately being too thin, the one who still tidies up when entering her daughter’s home, the insightful one who told her son that she thought he probably wouldn’t marry a girl…

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There was a gentle woman whose softness didn’t prepare her daughter for the tough world which awaited, the timid one who couldn’t give her daughter the strong role model she craved, the one who came out as a lesbian and couldn’t forgive her daughter for leading a different life. The one who had a child at 15 and brought him up with her own mother.

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Many were artists or studied art. Few fulfilled themselves in the workplace. Many were clean and tidy freaks who always look good. (No prizes for making a connection between the last two sentences.) Many were critical, many were loving and most were both at the same time. Many of us around the table described our feelings of love or pain or both for Glenda, Jane, Lauraine, Cheryl, Marie, Rosemary, Waina, Joan, Francoise, Teresa.

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What were our scent memories? One of us recollected trying to please her mother by making perfume for her by soaking flowers in water. Another brought biscuits from her mother’s handwritten recipe book to evoke the smell of baking. There were memories of babysitters arriving and mothers leaving in clouds of Chanel N’5, Chant d’Aromes and L’Air du Temps. I would love to have met the mother who wore Shalimar parfum during the day. Her child was fated not to be timid!

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Fresh green beans evoked one mother who survived breast cancer. Another always had acrid smelling salts in the bathroom cupboard in case they were needed and wore Arpege – a startling juxtaposition. Rive Gauche featured twice. It is still worn today by one daughter to differentiate herself as the opposite to her mother who like more run of the mill Avon fragrances, and was worn by another mother when it came out to stamp herself as modern. She also wore Tabu and Oleg Cassini. We encountered one generous perfume collector mother with over 300 bottles who loves giving her daughter bottles of Serge Lutens as well as one who never wears scent but does have scented handcream which smells like Fragonard’s Billet Doux. Cie Perfume (with Candace Bergen as its face) was an early favourite of a mother who also wore Tresor but now is faithful to Champs Elysees. La Cabrasella, a bergamot citrus scent from Calabria has always sat on the dressing table of one Italian mother.

We could have talked for many more hours and left feeling happy to have shared these perfumes and memories. I’m sure another Scent Salon will revisit this topic one day for another group.

CdPM xx

Tom Ford: Meet-Up with Matthew Tyler: International Director of Tom Ford Beauty

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Post by Ainslie Walker

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Tom Ford Fragrances with Matthew Tyler – International Director of Tom Ford Beauty

Organized by Catherine Du Peloux Manage of Sydney Perfume Lovers

Hi APJ, Ever wondered what a Meet Up group is like? Me too and I wanted to see how the Sydney Perfume Lovers group worked. Arriving at the ground floor of David Jones, met with Moet and sat at a glamorous oval marble table, by the gorgeous ladies of Tom Ford, is my kind of Thursday evening! And this was just the start…

If anyone has seen Tom Ford, his every movement is considered, every last detail of his attire-perfection, his hair immaculate…poised, elegant, sexy. An ICON. One who has dared to, with confidence, define his own style of fashion, film, cosmetics and of course fragrance.

The apothecary bottles surrounded us, with their 23 carat gold labels gleaming at us, sophisticated and intriguing.

Matthew arrived, and was introduced by Catherine. He looked sharp, manicured, perfectly dressed head to toe in Tom Ford!

Tom Ford Meet Up #1

We were given an insight into Tom Ford – the man. The designer, originally a trained architect, has extreme passion for detail, quality and perfection. (Watch the film he directed, A Single Man). Tom Ford is a leader and master in fashion and even with his perfumes and cosmetics, he makes no mistakes. Matthew pointed out, Tom Ford tried every shade of every lipstick and eye shadow before he approved them for sale!! (Unfortunately no photo’s available…!)

Onto the fragrances, not surprisingly each is a showstopper and even it’s packaging feels exquisite. These fragrances are for the discerning, the stylish and the bold. Somehow Tom Ford is able to bridge a gap back to the strength and glamour of fragrances from a bygone era. He is acclaimed for being the first to bring Oudh to the masses, where it has stayed at the top of his best sellers.

Tom Ford Meet Up #2

The Private Blend range are unique, being constructed as single heart notes, wrapped in secondary notes. The traditional top/heart/base note structure ignored. Only rare and precious ingredients are used.

Out came the Tom Ford ladies with their sparkling white trays, sample cards all lined up and given out.
Neroli Portofino: transporting us to the coast of Italy’s Riviera, including visually, the azure bottle.
Jasmine Roug: so voluptuous and sensuous, made with Jasmine Sambac Absolute and presented in a red glass bottle to signifying confidence and seduction of the potential wearer.
Oudh Wood: Rare, distinctive and exotic…a blast from the Middle East.

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We learnt part of the private blend range is The Jardin Noir collection, inspired by the dark elicit pleasures experienced in a garden at night. (OH MY!).
Café Rose: the best selling “whore of the range” (Matthew Tyler said “for the lady who is always available for men’s darkest desires”…!)
Ombre de Hyacinth: floral, green, moist and dark, the shadows of a regal garden.

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The Signature Collection is distinctive yet mainstream.
Black Orchid: containing all things black. Black truffle, fig, plum, blackcurrant and orchid. Its unfolding smell, go on and on, down into a deep black, milky, gourmand accord!
Violet Blonde: exuding old school Hollywood glamour.
Sahara Noir: encapsulates smoldering smoky frankincense, burning on an alter.
Grey Vetiver: traditionally masculine but loved by all the meet up on this evening, with Catherine picking up the nutmeg hidden in the blend.
Noir: which is the most personal to Tom Ford, designed to mirror the duality of his public and private personalities. Its crisp bergamot and verbena citrus top notes, pepper, nutmeg and patchouli middle, eventually giving way to a warm leathery vanilla dry down.

Tom Ford Meet Up #3

Before we disappeared into the night we were given generous goody bags with 5 x 2ml samples.

If you are in Sydney and would like to participate in these wonderful events, no perfume knowledge needed just a love of fragrance in all forms, Meet Up Sydney Perfume Lovers<<< JUMP

Big thanks to Catherine! (Ed: Who also supplied all the photos)

Ainslie Walker xxx