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Portia
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Hey there APJ Crew,
Where the hell did January go? It’s just flown by. Finally back in drag this week. Wore a bunch of favourite fragrances, opened a new weekly event, hung a bit with Jin and our mates and generally had a pretty chill week. Biggest drama being out China & North Korea legs of the February trip cancelled because of coronavirus.
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Portia
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Hey there APJ Crew,
I really dreamed that this week would be a slow one. BLOODY HELL! Quite the opposite. What a week. Even got a three night holiday to Tasmania in with Jin, Kath and Alice.
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Portia
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Hey there APJ Crew,
Another jam packed week. Except NO JAM because that’s off my list of eatable foods. This week was fun. Loads of fragrance, friends, food and fun. I have a lovely life and I’m grateful for it.
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Portia
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Hey there APJ Crew,
A bit livelier this week. Though there was ample down time it felt like I was back in the groove and ready for action. Saw some mates, did some shopping and dining, wore ALL the perfumes and had a wonderful week.
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Erica Golding
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Greetings all of you fragrance lovers! I hope this little note finds you well.
Today I am having a nostalgic mommy moment. I took a pause to think about what kinds of perfume my 7-year old tends to react to, and he is just all about the florals! Every time I ask him to help me pick a scent, he always selects a floral aroma. Sometimes I let him sniff a few sprayers and he chooses my perfume that way. Other times, I name general categories like “woodsy, sweet, soapy, or flowers?” Without exception he always picks florals, with a high affinity for jasmine and orange blossom.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
French jasmine, animalic notes
I got to thinking why he might lean this way, and I truly hope that it’s because of the following shared scent memory.
When my little boy was just a baby, I had a soft blue sling to carry him in, nuzzled into my chest. I didn’t wear perfume when he was an infant because I didn’t want to risk harming him or causing irritation, but once he was about 6 months old, I started lightly applying very small amounts. One of the first perfumes that he probably ever experienced was Nasomatto Nuda.
I had a treasured sample vial from Luckyscent, and one day I swiped a little on. The narcotic fragrance washed over me with a wave of pure euphoria, intensely lush and passionate. I was overcome with the joy of finally enjoying the extravagant yet simple adornment of perfume, after sacrificing that pleasure for so long. I will never forget that snapshot in time, his warm little body cozy against me, his sweaty baby head soaking my blouse, feeling peaceful and like a living safe haven for the miraculous life developing in my very arms. For several days, the sling hung onto the spellbinding perfume, a haze of luxurious delight. I like to think that this sensory association is something that we share, and that subconsciously, he associates the intoxicating perfume of sugared jasmine sambac to my boundless love.
Further reading: Olfactoria’s Travels and Memory of Scent
Nuda is discontinued but eBay sometimes has bottles
Have you built a shared scent memory with a loved one? Was it intentional or a happy coincidence? Tell me your story!
With love and light,
-Erica
(Ed: Love the photo Erica. You two look so peaceful)
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Post by Ainslie Walker
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Hello APJ-ers!
I hope you all had a great festive season and were surrounded by/heard from those you love. Also, that you found time to remember those who did not make it to this New Year. A reminder to ensure those you hold dear always know that you do. It’s too easy to be caught up in the “busy” and never stop to touch base.
I took a day to switch off and read a book that wasn’t about scents or perfume. This only seems to happen once a year and if I’m 100% honest, it did actually make mention of Dior’s Eau Sauvage! Last year it was Vivienne Westwood’s autobiography and this year it was Patti Smith’s Just Kids.
The book describes Patti and her soul mate Robert Mapplethorpe’s artistic lives and their evolving relationship from the late 60’s through to the late 80’s, predominantly in New York. Tenants of the infamous Chelsea Hotel – the heart of boundless bohemian ingenuity. Names of individuals who went on to become well known artists, poets, models, drag queens, playwrights, muses and musicians are bountiful throughout the pages. What a moment in history! The book runs in chronological order and references pertinent deaths and historical highlights of these epochal years. It’s easy to imagine being there as it is such a personal account. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, William Burroughs, Lou Reed/The Velvet Underground, Candy Darling, Edie Sedgwick, Allen Ginsberg, Vali Myers all get a mention, just to name a few.
Not mentioned above is of course Andy Warhol. His friends, work and The Factory scene weave in and out of the storyline and this led me to think about what fragrance I would scent him with.
Parfumo gives these featured accords:
Top: Citric notes
Heart: Powdery notes
Base: Musk
I chose Nasomatto’s Silver Musk. Its clean, quirky and fuzzy, futuristic scent seems to fit Andy’s avant-garde style and pioneering ideas of the time. The scent creates an ambience of what people thought things would be like in the 2000’s when looking towards them from the 70’s/80’s. Remember the cartoon, The Jetson’s? Lifestyles like that. There is an ethereal and earthy beauty to this fragrance, which is only described on fragrantica as “musky.” To me there is white and grey ash, oak-mossy ozone, aluminium filings, lavender herb soap on clean skin, light tobacco and something coniferous like spruce, fir or pine. The drydown sweetens and smokes. Humming. Spacey. Aquatic. Elfin. Elegant. Volcanic. Mercurial. Otherworldly. Musky enough to have me imagining Warhol’s pale skin sweating gently under his polyester skivvy.
I really love this one and gifted it to my dad last Christmas. Anyone who enjoys the eccentric molecule series and pheromones concept should try this clean musk…think Andy with his scruffy hair – the silver mop, wrapped in some sort of neat yet particular flared suit combo. Silver musk is like a polaroid, a snapshot of just one moment in the journey Afternoon of a Faun by Etat Libre d’Orange takes us on…. if the faun was trotting along somewhere silvery, mercurial and out in space.
Further reading: Nathan Branch and Scent For Thought
Libertine Parfumerie has $230/30ml with FREE Australian Delivery
LuckyScent has US$185/30ml + Samples
Tell me a celebrity or book character and a fragrance you’d love to douse them with!
Hey Frag Family,
Today you can come look at a fragrance from a line that I keep hearing great things about. They are often talked about on Fragrance Blogs, the FaceBook Frag pages and among perfumistas and are held in high esteem. Last year in Vienna with Birgit I bought a bottle of Nuda, I haven’t opened it yet, because one 10 minute wear and I was head over heels already. Today’s fragrance is from Nasomatto’s first offerings back in 2007, well that is the first mention I can find and it’s on Perfume Shrine who writes this: The masterminds are both Italian, Allesandro and Arturetto, who had been students in Germany at the H&R company for courses in “medieval” perfumery. We’re told that Allesandro was taught by Arturetto and then went on to create fragrances for designers such as Romeo Gigli, Versace, Valentino, Helmut Lang and Fendi, finally locating in Amsterdam and re-uniting with Arturetto to launch his private vision: a line of his own niche perfumes, called Nasomatto.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Tuberose, jasmine, lily, spice
Nasomatto does not release note lists so we can wear the fragrance and enjoy it for what it is meant to be, a culmination of science and artistry that makes a fragrance that is more than the sum of its parts, it is an experience. My nose is so dodgy that I often need to check the notes because I smell things that are quite different, I think my nose and set of memory reference points can be slightly awry.
Anyway, how does Narcotic Venus smell on and to me?
Michael and I saw this lovely painting (Birth of Venus by Cabanel) while at the Musee d’Orsay in Feb 2014, purchased by Napoleon III at the 1863 Paris Salon which was the same year Manet showed ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ which we also saw. I think it a perfect representation of the cool, perfect, unsexy sensuality that Narcotic Venus displays. To be completely honest I like my narcotics more rough and in your face, this little baby is prim and pretty, and seems to be beautifully executed with expensive feeling ingredients but no raging sex kitten. Expectations have let me, and the frag, down I think. Such a shame because with a name like Nartcotic Venus I was hoping to be overwhelmed by a wall of white flowers with very dirty and sexy “come hither me hearty” attitude, sadly I am not. The end.
Photo Stolen Wikipedia
Further reading: Scent For Thought and Perfume Shrine
LuckyScent has $185/30ml and samples
First In Fragrance has €118/30ml
What are your thoughts about the Nasomatto line? Which have you tried? Do you like the aesthetic of the brand?
Portia xx
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Post by Greg Young
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A while ago I entered a competition on a fragrance forum to write a limerick about perfume. Sadly I didn’t win, but I enjoyed the challenge. I’ve since written a few more, which I thought I’d share with you. I find it quite challenging to both come up with a suitable limerick and try to encapsulate the essence of my opinion about a scent within it. Hopefully I’ve managed it in a fashion that you’ll enjoy.
Don’t forget to jump back and enter our Tauer Perfumes GIVEAWAY!!
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The exclusive house of Tom Ford
Sells scents no-one can afford.
Still they’ll skip half their meals
To buy Tobacco Vanilles
Leaving his accountants suitably awed.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
On Basenotes there’s general consensus
On the greatness of Creed’s scent Aventus.
But now a pizza chef type
Told me “Ignore all the hype”.
It smells just like the Hawaiian he’s sent us.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The frustrated nose at O’Driu
Was almost about to say “See you”.
Then he said “Why don’t we see
If they’ll add their own pee?”
To which the market mostly said “Eeyew”.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Now that every outlet is stocking it
There are plenty of people knocking it.
But the real crying shame
Is that it’s not only it’s name
But the number of guys who are rocking it.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
They say scents by Nasomatto
Are as strong and as rich as a gateau.
Starting out light, Silver Musk
Lasts from dawn until dusk
But it never surpasses that plateau.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
I was wondering what to wear to an interview.
A mate said the result will be sure if you
Wear Mark Birley Cologne
But I had none of my own
So he kindly offered to sell me two.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
When the depths of winter coment
I think that citrusy scents are notent.
What best suits my moudh
Is the rich and warm oudh
Of M7, by Yves St Laurent.
Hey from HOLIDAYS!
We are making our crazy way across the continent of Europe. It’s two glorious weeks in and we’ve seen five countries so far!! WOW!
VIENNA
Early last week Jin and I were lucky enough to be invited on a breakfast and perfume shopping spree with the gorgeous Birgit from Olfactoria’s Travels and her friend and fellow perfumista Sandra who has traveled the world and landed in Vienna. The girls are both gorgeous, friendly, fun and totally up to date in perfume. It was like hanging out with a couple of encyclopedias, and they have sniffed EVERYTHING!! Seriously.
We started at the Central Cafe in Vienna which is as beautiful as a cathedral and the food was SCRUMMY, that means good. The girls has tea, we had bacon and eggs. Yummy.
Then to Le Dix-Neuf, Vienna’s newest niche store, where I tried quite a few new frags from a host of lines currently near impossible to get in Sydney. It was bliss, the SA was really knowledgeable and helpful but it was Birgit who led my nose to NUDA, the recently discontinued jasmine bomb from Nosamatto and VolkaMaria by WeinerBlut (Blood of Vienna) that I can’t wait to wear at home, just to tell people the name.
We went to loads of other places, Le Parfum, Pure Day Spa where I bought the Frederic Malle mini trio of Carnal Flower, En Passant and Lys Mediterranee.
We were absolutely captivated by Duft & Kultur where they had an enormous Niche selection including A Quiet Morning by Miller & Bartaux, Jin adored it and I can see him getting a bottle soon.
There was more, including Hermes, Robert Horn’s Ledermanufaktur and others but no buys just looking. Birgit and Sandra had busy days ahead so the peeled off and we went home EXHAUSTED, even though it was barely lunchtime. Thank you Vienna, thank you ladies.
BUDAPEST
Only a three hour train trip and we are in the heart of Budapest!
There are two famous niche perfumeries here.
The first, Neroli, is next street along from the Mecure Hotel and the lovely Ursula is helpful and fabulously knowledgable. I was lucky enought to bump into the owner, Aron, while there too and have a quick chat. He is sexy and cool, left a life of journalism to run a niche perfume shop seven years ago and has a fabulous selection including the Naomi Goodsirs. Ursula gave me some wonderful Montale samples and they ship to the world for only 10 euro!!
Croisette is the second, owned by Zsolt like the G in George-olt. Zsolt is a perfumer and was so bright and bubbly Jin and I both fell in love. He is all about creating gorgeous and interesting scents but bespoke. They also have a wonderfully curated range.
I haven’t made my niche purchases with them yet but there is an incredible sell out store just opened in the Shopping Passage and we scored some INCREDIBLE bargains including L’Instant, Samsara and Homme body washes by Guerlain, a Lolita Lempicke Au Masculine after shave balm and am Aromatics Elixer for about 5 Australian Dollars each! Quite a fabulous score and I do love a posh body wash.
We are doing the laundry today and finalizing Niche Purchases so there will be more to photograph next Saturday. We are loving Budapest, it is an architecture lovers dream, the people are friendly, it is inexpensive to eat even in the best restaurants two courses and drinks is coming to less than 100 Aussie dollars. We are doing loads of sightseeing and walking.
This post was much better in the first two drafts that the iPad deleted because I forgot to save after every paragraph. Thanks for putting up with my long post if you’ve made it thus far.
Loads of love Portia xxx
Australian Perfume Junkies 