Love them or hate them it’s hard to ignore One Direction. With their catchy tunes, fun matesy boys club attitude and perfectly produced handsome, on trend good looks they are a force to be reckoned with. I quite liked their first offering Our Moment, the sweet but not disgustingly cloying opening to the lingering forever toasted almond dry down. It was way better than I expected.
I haven’t tried the new one but the ad came out yesterday. Sadly Zane has moved on but the remaining four guys are here and camping it up again, my favourite is Niall anyway.
I do love BIG white florals, and recently I acquired a crush on Tatiana. I am not referring here to any of the numerous reformulations, all of which carry a bug-spray note to my nose. But recently a Facebook friend reminded me with a picture what the original bottle looked like, and I realized that the original does show up on EBay periodically and isn’t even all that expensive.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Bergamot, hyacinth, orange blossom Heart: Gardenia, jasmine, narcissus, rose. tuberose Base: amber, musk, sandalwood
Tatiana is a diva. You might think it’s a jasmine diva, or a gardenia diva, or a tuberose diva, depending on what stage you encounter. When I dab on the original Eau de Parfum, I smell jasmine first, with some bergamot and a faint suggestion of the bug-spray note which is so prominent in the reformulations. Fear not, it’s quickly gone. The jasmine has a warm creamy quality, rather the way you encounter it wafting around in Hawaii if you’re lucky and visit at the right time, and is a touch indolic. Gradually, over twenty minutes or so, gardenia creeps in under the jasmine and intertwines with it. At no point is it a gardenia soliflore, which is a pity because the gardenia accord is quite pretty. Rose drifts around underneath, and the musk is more noticeable now. After an hour there is a fair amount of tuberose, the rose continues to make its presence felt, and there is a definite animalic undertone. Over the following two hours ( on my skin; your mileage will probably be longer) Tatiana is a mixed white bouquet with a smoldering musky undertone. Periodically I get a sudden whiff of pure narcissus when I move during this stage, but this is not noticeable when I hold my wrist up to my nose. It’s an occasional surprise. After three hours it’s a skin scent, and quite a pretty one.
I have to emphasize that I am talking only about the original stuff, in the bottle shown in one of the original ads. I have tried the juice in every other bottle that it ever came in and have found it all to be substandard. You should also know that sometimes you find the old bath oil in the same bottle style as the old perfume, but it often has a rancid smell. You can tell the bath oil even in a photo because it is deep yellow, while the EdP is pale straw-yellow.
Is Tatiana a great perfume? No way. It’s too big and bold and simple and has no patience for surprising you and keeping you guessing. It is, perhaps, a reminder of the time when you could get perfumes at the drugstore that actually smelled nice. This is not an office-safe perfume, at least on me. But for a romantic summer evening on the deck, it’s a beauty. Ms. von Furstenburg herself, at age 68, is bold and sexy enough to give us all hope, and her perfume in its original form has the same qualities.
I am a particularly ritualistic creature, the practice of taking the time to do something in that beautifully precise way has always fascinated me so deeply and afforded me a great sense of ease during moments of chaos and turmoil. An abating constant, a precious microcosm in which time seems to abandon its seemingly accelerated continuity and allows one a glorious moment to simply inhale in the midst of life’s often mercurial orbit. My most cherished ritual and the one which offers me the greatest pleasure is the one in which I partake before I lay my head to rest at night; applying my most treasured potions of beauty, writing in my journal and anointing myself with a fragrance to carry me gracefully into the arms of sleep. Most crucial though, is the final step, which as of late has has been dominated by the inimitable cimmerian beauty of a fiercely hypnotic brew masterfully composed by Brooklyn indie perfumer Hans Hendley. A fragrance by the name of …..
Hendley Perfumes give these featured accords in one line:
Conifer resins, smoked tea, galbanum, ruh khus, nagarmotha, oakmoss
Fume touches my soul. From the very first push of the atomizer, I am transported to a sylvan landscape bathed in hues of exquisite emerald and blackened by the sprawling shadows of towering conifers releasing their very essence into the atmosphere as if beckoned by hallowed incantations of the Earth goddess Gaia herself. Chanting in mellifluous harmony with these empyrean conifer resins is the umbral redolence of bonfire smoke, gossamer tendrils of which exist as zephyrs flowing through the undulating branches of this enchanted forest. Such incredible beauty, I wept.
Leaves of luxuriant, smoky tea long act as harbinger to your fortune; weaving in effortless synchronicity with utterly haunting beauty Fume’s sonorous incipience. This is a fragrance which radiates like the gentle velvet glow of lambent embers, unfolding in subtle shifts much like the daylight bleeding into placid twilight. An amaranthine scythe of galbanum ricochets fractals of kaleidoscopic light into the onyx sky, a breathtaking aurora borealis to illuminate the glistening bed of luxuriant oakmoss and dulcet vetiver which lay below. I am so profoundly bewitched by this extraordinarily mesmeric sequence that I am at loss for sufficient words to describe just how enamored I am. It is here that my journey with Fume begins to reach its immaculate conclusion and I return to the tangible realm once again.
Fume wears as a delicately effulgent cloak of fragrance, celestially rich but deeply intimate, intensifying beautifully as one’s body heat begins to rise. I get a proper 8-10 hours of life from Fume, often catching pulchritudinous whispers of beguiling aroma when I wake the next morning. If you happen to be in the market for an indie perfume or simply looking to have your breath taken away I wholeheartedly urge you to get you hands on a sample of this truly remarkable composition, I know I’m smitten.
When I mentioned to Portia a few weeks ago that it was sometimes tough to come up with something to write about, he said to write whatever I´d been up to and include the perfume I had been wearing. That would do it. Let´s test it out.
DAB OR SPRAY?
Murmurings from the Uninspired.
Featuring fragrances I have added to my small collection.
Set up a date with APJs Azar in September. We´ll be having tea in Seattle very soon.
Gave up Red Bull and Monster and started to drink water.
Helped my son move into his apartment.
Completed my .vero.profumo. collection with the Rozy Extrait and the Onda Voile d´Extrait.
Located a bottle of Cuir de Lancôme. Purchased it.
LONDON VISIT
Finalised a pefume tour party blogger lunch and cake feast not forgetting the epic ice-cream, kind of thing. In London. Getting to hangout with Volatile Fiction, Olfactoria´s Travels, Perfume Candy Boy, Nick Gilbert and more. Amongst other groovy things we are going to visit Penhaligon`s, the new Bloom, the Chanel Store and the new Malle Store. I am of course taking my daughter the BlondesWunder with me and she will report back as to her second experience of hanging out with a bunch of old perfume freaks.
(Yes Portia and Michael, my heart aches that you won´t be there.)
DAB OR SPRAY?
Wearing a lot of extraits, and only dab them. I love the sensuality of using a glass stopper to apply the perfume. I do like to spray the back of my neck though. However, spraying everywhere gives me a grand mal seizure, and since my kids do that to me anyway, I prefer to keep them to the minimum. I reckon I might be in the minority though. This is a much discussed subject but what do you APJ readers do? What interesting application techniques do you use? I stand in front of a mirror and conduct my perfuming ritual. I do not like perfume on my clothing at all and make sure I get nothing on it from the application of the fragrance. Clothing goes on after the perfume.
Am about to start a new book. A Brief History of Seven Killings. Marlon James. “It´s like a Tarantino remake of The Harder They Come but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner ……..” New York Times. And a lot of it is written in Jamaican Patois. I spent some time in Kingston but that is another fragrant story. 😉
I love to shop the discounters. It is not unusual for me to find a fragrance that I once coveted available online for less than half the original price. There is, of course, the issue of fakes. I rarely encounter one of those but when I do I consider it collectable, not unlike the antique replicas of precious wentletrap shells (Epitonium scalare) that are now worth far more than the real thing. There will be more on my fake fragrance collection in another post.
Today I am considering the mass marketing mistakes that result in so many fragrances being relegated to the online and the brick and mortar discount bins. One recent find, Maria Amalia EdP by Morris Italy, has me wondering just what it takes to make a fragrance attractive in today’s mass marketplace.
The packaging and presentation of Maria Amalia EdP are beautifully done. Meticulously pleated cellophane, sealed with the perfume logo, wraps a silk textured box enclosing a heavy urn-shaped pressed glass bottle. Information about the fragrance is presented in a tiny foldout illustrated with the art of Pre-Raphaelite painter John Waterhouse (somewhat anachronous) and with stunning photos of the Maria Amalia product line.
The EdP itself is a bracing, totally unisex brew opening with a cool fruity/citrus accord lasting a moment or two before morphing into a combination of ginger, cardamom and angelica that creates an arresting impression of dusty gunpowder, spice, citrus and sweet herbs. This odd but exhilarating beginning expands to include scents of wet earth, lemon and may rose peppered with nutmeg and a touch of cinnamon. Maria Amalia dries into rosewood, myrrh, sandalwood and a residual aura of lemon and green herbs, a perfectly refreshing summertime spritz.
This fragrance was purportedly created from an original recipe of the favorite perfume of Maria Amalia of Austria (1764 – 1804). She was the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I (the Holy Roman Emperor) and sister to Marie Antoinette. Maria Amalia was known for her flamboyant, cross-dressing life style and (unlike her sister) for her genuine generosity to the poor. Her life story reads like a novel.
That is all well and good but why did Maria Amalia – the perfume – end up in the discount bin?
I suspect that the historic references did not resonate with today’s consumer. Maybe the packaging and presentation were too old fashioned. Was 2006 too early for a real unisex fragrance or was Morris, Italy too closely identified with its German parent company, the hair-coloring experts, Schartzkopf/Henkel? Perhaps the demise of Maria Amalia had nothing whatsoever to do with marketing but was simply a result of the EU or IRFA fragrance regulations. Whatever the case may be I feel lucky to have stumbled upon Maria Amalia the fragrance. I have stocked up.
This week we will have 1 USA winner who will receive:
1 x 5ml decant of Maria Amalia by Morris, Italy
P&H USA ONLY
HOW DO YOU WIN?
Open to USA ONLY who follow 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 (portia underscore turbo @ yahoo dot com dot au) so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.
You must tell me how you follow APJ
and
Please tell us if you have heard of or have tried the Maria Amalia fragrance or give us your take on marketing perfume in the 21st century.
HOUSEKEEPING
Entries Close Thursday 25th June 2015 10pm Australian EST and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by random.org
The winners will have till Monday 29th 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.
This review of Maria Amalia EdP first appeared last week on Ellen Covey’s blog. You can win there as well!
While you are trolling the internet today please jump on over and check out the newest post on My Perfume Samples. The My Perfume Samples gang have given me a really great new outlet for fragrance writing and this fortnight we decided to look at Summer Scents that may have slipped under your radar. Some really good choices as it heats up in the Northern Hemisphere and even if you want to remember the fun fizz of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
So please jump across and check the list out on My Perfume Samples<<JUMP. Leave a message with something you think should be there or a favourite from the group so we can have a bit of a natter about it, I’ll be dropping in regularly over the next week to answer any and all comments.
Looks like the Sample Packs are popular. Good. I love to pay it forward. We had a great response and I am so happy that you all want to help me clean house. Thanks.
Portia xx
SAMPLE PACK #2 Giveaway WINNER
SAMPLE PACK #2
Champagne de bois by Sonoma Scent Studio
Charogne by Etat Libre de Orange
Rose Anonyme by Atelier Cologne
Amber Woods (oil) by Seplasia by Bruno Acampora
Opardu by Puredistance
Dark purple by Montale
What We Do In Paris Is Secret by A Lab On Fire
Precious Oud by Van Cleef & Arpels
Aromatics Elixer Gel by Clinique
Plume Manufacturers Sample
Tubereuse by Le Galion Manufacturers Sample
L’Homme Infini by Divine Manufacturers Sample
Ambre Rayonner by SOIVOHLE Manufacturers Sample
Mad Madame by Juliette Has A Gun Manufacturers Sample
A Taste of Heaven by Kilian Manufacturers Sample
Flora Azteca by Primordial Scents
Tobacco & Tulle by SOIVOHLE
Vamp a NY by Honore des Pres
Shalimar by Guerlain
Mitsouko by Guerlain
WHAT COULD YOU WIN?
This week we will have 1 winner who will receive: 1 x SAMPLE PACK
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DID YOU WIN?
Open to everyone worldwide 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 (portia underscore turbo @ yahoo dot com dot au) so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.
You must tell me how you follow APJ
and
Please tell us what you sampled recently that took your fancy
Entries Closed Sunday 21st June 2015 10pm Australian EST
Winner was chosen by random.org
Photo Stolen EverythingHealth
Nikki
The winner will have till Thursday 25th June 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.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Green notes, mandarin, peach, basil, bergamot, lemon Heart: Spices, coriander, sandalwood, orange blossom, jasmine, oakmoss, cedar, rose Base: Amber, musk, civet, vanilla, vetiver, incense.
It’s the damp herbal first blast of Obsession that I adore. Yes, there are softer, easier things to come, but that dark, slightly bitter opening is for me, addictive. After that I get spices of course, although not the florals.
The base for me is mostly amber and vanilla, with incense keeping things cool and dry. The vanilla is far from being sweet and foodie – which is just how I like it. I wear the modern EDT, the stuff you can get for a song just about anywhere perfume is sold.
Obsession is usually classified as an oriental, but through its marketing, Obsession rejects conventional oriental fantasies and metaphors. We get no lacquered spice jars, no souks, no Buddhas or Indian princesses etc. Obsession does not weave sentimental fairy tales; it is about nothing but sex.
The early TV ads were directed by Richard Avedon and make you feel as if you have wandered on to the set of some weird modernist play. Everything is in monochrome, but clearly the scene is vibrant with sexual obsession. In one, an older man laments a young woman (played by South African model José Borain) who has left him (“Was it me? Did I somehow driver her away?”).
In another, that woman is the object of obsession for a beautiful teenage boy (“ … the whispers at my bedside … her arms … her mouth … her amber hair … and oh, the smell of it.”).
The early print ads were shot in Puerto Villata, Mexico, by Bruce Weber and feature, in blue sepia, two (or three) naked, entwined bodies.
Famously, Kate Moss also modelled for Obsession, but that came later, in 1993 when she was 17. Shot by Mario Sorrenti and still in monochrome, the location was a shack on the beach: “Just me and him and loads of film,” Moss later recalled. The ads speak to the photographer’s obsession with his model. Moss was his girlfriend at the time but the relationship did not survive.
All of these ads are edgy. “You walk a fine line, especially in advertising,” Calvin Klein admitted, “if you try and do something sensual.” Sometimes I find them more disturbing than, say, Tom Ford’s quite sexually explicit ads for his perfumes.
Not long ago I bought this 15ml travel size off one of the FaceBook pages. It’s been sitting here awaiting my attention ever since. I think a few things arrived that day and it got shunted aside. Lately I have been searching out some skank and the word animal when applied to fragrance is a high def pointer for me too, add that to tuberose and……..
Parfumo gives these featured accords: Top: Kumquat, Neroli, Tuberose Heart: Herbs, Plum, Tuberose Base: Immortelle, Blond tobacco, Tuberose
How come the notes list for Tubereuse 3 Animale doesn’t say honey? What I am hit with immediately is an incredibly rich honeyed tobacco that sits like a big ole can of molasses in the same room as a vase of tuberose. Front and centre is this rich viscous scent that is absolutely beautiful, mesmerisingly so. It’s hard to focus myself to write this piece and not get caught up in the magic. Citrus I get none, maybe a little way in I get some sweetish fruit but it’s only a very soft side dish. I get the feeling of thick, hot, molten amber-glass before it gets made into stuff.
Later I get a lovely dry whiff of immortelle, that strangely dry green sapless dessicated scent that is both raspy and smooth, like the point where sandpaper scours pebbles into smooth, shiny, cool nuggets. Tubereuse 3 Animale also has a furry something that is what I think of as a perfumers version of a very old mink coat, dry and dusty but still with the faintest whiff of the poor creature it was stolen from.
This is what I imagine the screen sirens of yesteryear would have LOVED to smell like and I can see some of the more famous 21st century cougars getting a thrill from the overt sensuality that Tubereuse 3 Animale displays. What I did not expect was the general size of Tubereuse 3 Animale, it is a sillage and projection monster compared to most other modern offerings and it has a sweetness bordering on urinous, definately skirting the edges of downwind from junkie alley.
Who would and when could Tubereuse 3 Animale be worn? Well let’s just say straight up that for most work situations it is completely over the top, especially for the first hour or two. I think you would have to be careful to use a light hand if food is involved or confined spaces. Personally, I will wear it to my Turbo Trivia work and definitely for my own selfish pleasure at home, it may even get a spritz for the grocery shopping.
There are a bunch a samples & decants that sit here, tested but now in the discard pile. Some of the reasons for being there? Maybe I bought a FB, it had an issue that renders it unwearable, I liked it but have something similar, somehow I have double, I hated it, I LOVED it and completely forgot about it, I’ve moved on. So many reasons, so MANY samples. They are all used a bit but they have heaps for testing and trying. This pack has mainly dabs rather than spritzers but there are some with atomisers. I know you’re going to love at least something in this pack.
Mad Madame by Juliette Has A Gun Manufacturers Sample
A Taste of Heaven by Kilian Manufacturers Sample
Flora Azteca by Primordial Scents
Tobacco & Tulle by SOIVOHLE
Vamp a NY by Honore des Pres
Shalimar by Guerlain
Mitsouko by Guerlain
Please help me with another little clear out.
Portia xx
Photo Stolen TheTruthAboutMummy
SAMPLE PACK #2 Giveaway
WHAT CAN YOU WIN?
This week we will have 1 winner who will receive: 1 x SAMPLE PACK
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DO YOU WIN?
Open to everyone worldwide 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 (portia underscore turbo @ yahoo dot com dot au) so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.
You must tell me how you follow APJ
and
Please tell us what you sampled recently that took your fancy
Entries Close Sunday 21st June 2015 10pm Australian EST and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winner will be chosen by random.org
The winner will have till Thursday 25th June 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.
Australian Perfume Junkies 