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Val the Cookie Queen.
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Hey APJ
Here she comes, you better watch your step, She´s going to break your heart in two, It’s true, It’s hard not to realize, Just look into her false coloured eyes, she’ll build you up just to put you down, what a clown. Cause everybody knows (she’s a femme fatale) The things she does to please (she’s a femme fatale) She´s just a little tease ……. The Velvet Underground 1967.
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Val the Cookie Queen
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Hello APJ.
There is no pleasure without DOULEUR: French for pain.
“Pain and pleasure. …… I think it is subtly strange, and uncomfortable, and disturbing …… and yet there is a softness, and a sweetness that gradually shines through, that cannot immediately be seen through the piercing beginning. This has been a love filled, explosively creative project, and I am so excited for people to experience DOULEUR.” Freddie Albrighton.
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Val the Cookie Queen
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Hey APJ
Hiram Green launched their latest creation, Lustre, at the Esxcence 2019. A rose soliflore, it is the luminous pearl in the otherwise brightly coloured collection of scented jewels, and perhaps the most exquisite.
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Kate Apted
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G’day APJ folk!
We all have those unsung hero type scents that sit mid way on the shelf, rarely used. For a myriad of reasons, the scent keeps getting over looked. I see it and think, ‘Yeah, another day perhaps; not in the mood for it now.’ I even forget why I was attracted to the scent in the first place.
This morning I picked this hero up and sprayed.
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Portia
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Hello Fellow Fumies,
Every Saturday we have a Question, an idea purloined from Olfactoria’s Travels. Everyone gets to chime in with an answer, chat with other responders and it is a fun event each week. Taking sides never means taking offence and everyone keeps it respectful and light, even though we can sometimes trawl the depths.
The idea is you’ll see it on the weekend or chime in through the week. Hopefully you will come back and see if anyone has responded to your comment and you can reply to them.
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Portia
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Hello Fellow Fumies,
I have had an idea. Well, actually I’m copying an idea from Olfactoria’s Travels. Once a week there used to be a Question. Everyone would chime in with an answer, chat with other responders and it would be a generally fun events each week. Taking sides never meant taking offence and everyone kept it respectful and light.
I’d like to carry on that tradition, maybe you’ll see it on the weekend or chime in through the week. Hopefully you will come back and see if anyone has responded to your comment and you can reply to them.
If we get over 200 responses I will draw a $20 Surrender To Chance Gift Card. Every comment will get a place in the draw, so if you comment purposefully on your own or another comment you’ll have a chance, random.org will draw the winner on Friday and the winner will be announced in next Saturdays question.
Send me an eMail to portia _ turbo at yahoo dawt com dawt au
PDI
OK, so most of us have a few trigger notes. You know, the ones you see in a fragrance note list that instantly catch your attention. Maybe you love it because it’s a note that you love to have overwhelming you. It could be a back story player that you find easy to notice and its participation always makes you smile. A Base note that you love because it will be the one you smell the longest in your fragrant wear. Perhaps its a top note that gives you shivers. I think we all have a few notes that we recognise with love but lets keep it to three today.
My answer:
Amber: Though not every fragrance that has amber is a favourite I do tend to like my scents warm, resinous and sweet. There’s something so comfortable about ambers, and fragrances that include it in their main ingredients. It’s a little deeper than vanilla but not so darkly animal as labdanum/styrax/benzoin alone. Some of my most loved ambers include L’Artisan L’Eau d’Ambre, Huitiem Art Ambre Cerulean, Jessica simpson Fancy Nights and Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan.
Rose: Roses come in so many different scent families. They can be sweet and jammy, citrus or tea, smoky, boozy, fruity and a whole host of others, or combined. There’s something incredibly precious about how a rose smells. Maybe because Mum loved them so much and grew them in our garden. I could have been influenced by the adoration for roses in prose, advertisement and gardening books but I really do feel a genuine attachment to the fragrances that roses emit. Neela Vermeire Creations Mohur, Soivohle Rosa sur Reuse, Olympic Orchids Ballets Rouges, Parfums DelRae Coup de Foudre and Annick Goutal Ce Soir ou Jamais are just some of my rose loves.
Lavender: Lavender is so soothing yet manages to also be gloriously alive and breathtakingly beautiful. Considering what a fragrant staple it’s been its poor reputation in the 21st century seems unwarranted. Personally I can take it straight up, blended among the crowd, a central or backing role. It scent refreshes my brain and lets me sleep like a log, whenever I change the sheets I spritz the new ones with L’Occitane Lavande de Haute-Provence. Other Lavender loves include CHANEL Boy, Le Galion Cologne Nocturne, Guerlain Jicky, Hermessence Brin de Réglisse and Jean Paul Gaultier Le Mâle.
So my question to you is
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Portia
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Hey there Rose lovers,
There’s been a LOT of rose chatter on the blogs for February is now the month of roses. Chemist In A Bottle, Undina’s Looking Glass and others are doing roses, roses, roses. The guys at LuckyScent do samples and this rose fragrance arrived recently so I thought I could do a one wear share of how it was. That’s right, the whole 0.7ml decanted and spritzed in one go.
Parfumo gives these featured accords:
Rose essence, Rosa centifolia absolute, Rose oil, Red fruits, Honey
HA! Roses. Burying your head in a sweet, fruity garden rose. If roses straight up are your thing then this would be a great addition to your collection.
You know the feeling in the back of your throat when you have been sucking honey straight off your spoon? Add that to a slightly dry, tea-ish, sweet rose. The berries aren’t fresh, they’re glacé and sticky. The honey comes front and centre through the heart and it creates an animalic overlay that is quite wild. Happily ferocious honey drizzled roses. Bloody good stuff. The price is super good too.
I can imagine this glorious rose/honey combo becoming a signature scent and for those that have one display bottle at a time this is so fabulous. I bet it feels amazing in your hand too.
From LuckyScent: For 2016, Fabrice Pellegrin chose perhaps Grasse’s most iconic flower, the soft, sensual and spirited Rose de Mai. And what an interpretation it is: Essences Insensees seems to positively sweep us into the springtime meadows of southeastern France, to sunstruck bucolic countrysides where men and women in straw hats weave through fields awash in stunning pink flowers, selecting the lushest and freshest among them for the honor of undergoing the intricate steam distillation that will help them live forever.
Further reading: Colognoisseur
LuckyScent has $180/120ml & Samples
I know some of you love your roses. Are you wearing them for rose month? Which ones?
Portia xx
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Portia
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Hey Fumies,
This week is Use My Samples & Decants Week. You’ll be reading a bunch of first time experiences of fragrances that have been here in vials or decants and sat unworn so far. Yes, if it’s a 1ml vial I will pour the whole thing on and wear it for a day. Obviously they have been sniffed before and often dabbed but got put in the Must Further Investigate pile and then left. So hopefully I will get to use at least 7, hopefully more.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Ambergris, black tea, Bulgarian rose, rose, olibanum, rose oil, oakmoss, green tea, guaiac wood, green leaves, myrrh, neroli, orris, pink pepper, raspberry, fruity notes, tea rose
Rubis Rosé opens dry, sweet and fruity. It’s an unusual opening that brings to mind rose petals in black tea with a lemon slice. The fruit isn’t quite lemon though, a bit less antiseptic and friendlier. Maybe more a Rosé wine, a dryer, less fizzy one, lightly chilled.
If you like the tea scent of roses in your garden then this will definitely be a winner. It’s as subtle and close as garden roses but every now and then I get a luscious, rich, fruity, red rose waft that’s just overblown at dawn and I’ve come across it as all dew has dissipated. Considering the extensive note list Rubis Rosé is surprisingly simple at first sniff. It ages greener and dryer, becoming more woody and leafy. The teas become more prominent too. Is this a rose chypre? is a question I have asked myself more than once on the journey.
PDI
Personally I have a plethora of rose scents here and the ones I reach for most are the heavier, denser and more swampy or oudh-ish like Midnight Oud by JHaG, original Agent Provocateur, Mohur by Neela Vermeire Creations or Ballets Rouges by Olympic Orchids. If these babies scare the shit out of you then Rubis Rosé could be a perfect rose for you.
Further reading: Colognoisseur and EauMG
DSH Perfumes has samples from $6
How do you like your roses? Radiant or swampy?
Portia xx
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Post by Gabriella
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Hello fragrance friends! While I’m a huge floral lover, I’ve got to say that when it comes to rose, I’m pretty finicky. I tend to love darker, spicier roses or those with a chypre edge rather than the perfumes that make you feel like you’ve stuck your nose into a big bouquet full of blooms. It’s ironic really as the rose is where perfume all started for me. As a young girl (I’m quite sure many of you did this too) I decided to create my own perfume by plucking the petals off Mum and Dad’s rose bushes and soaking them in water, desperately hoping I’d get some glorious ladylike scent in the process. What resulted was a rank and fetid smelling water, but thank god, this did not put me off perfume or roses forever.
My favourite rose perfumes smell much more glorious than those failed experiments, so without further ado, I present to you:
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Fragrantica gives these accords:
Top: Bergamot and violet
Heart: May rose and iris
Base: Sandalwood
The formative rose. I was 14, I wanted to be all woman and this bold, shapeshifting scent in its iconic pink and black topped bottle was it. Paris, now vastly reformulated and lost in a mass of flankers, was a mesmerising concoction of violet, rose and iris, that managed to be bold and confident but demure and sweet all at the same time. I wore copious amounts underneath my school uniform and how I didn’t get expelled for overpowering the whole school with my sillage, I’ll never know.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The funny-story rose. I started to wear Stella around the time I was dating Mr M the first time around many years ago. I asked him what he thought of the green-tinged, but voluptuously warm amber rose creation. He said: “Smells like Grandma.” So, I stopped wearing it and it became my very expensive room spray. But then, every time Mr M came round, this is what my place and I smelt of. So, it was to my amusement a month or two later that he presented me with a bottle, completely forgetting the backstory and thinking that he done something wonderfully romantic because it “reminded him of me.”
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The va-va-voom rose. I tried Agent Provocateur firstly because the whole ethos of the scent was something I had to have. I was called “cute” even at age 30 and I all I wanted to be was a sexy and sultry goddess. The first whiff of Agent Provocateur had me in a spin because I had smelt nothing quite like it. A dark woody and utterly captivating chypre rose that says strength and sex all at the same time.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The surprising rose. As I said, I’m finicky about rose. I’m also especially finicky when it comes to patchouli and as for vanilla and gourmands, they are usually no-go zones, but Francis Kurdjian has managed to create something with all four that I adore. It’s a sweet but dark rose that manages to be both pretty but voluptuous and vivacious at the same time with glorious sillage and lasting power.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The new rose. I enter the Christian Dior boutique expecting it would be New Look 1947 or Grand Bal I would buy as my upcoming birthday present. And although I’d smelt them before, I was underwhelmed as I stood there, nose to wrist. The SA kept pushing me towards Gris Montaigne with the assurance that “This is the one for you.” One sniff and my eyes rolled back in pleasure as I softly cooed. Gris Montaigne is surprising, because, if you read the notes, one would expect a spicy chypre rose a la Agent. What it actually is a very pretty, sparkling and sophisticated rose bouquet that is imminently wearable and utterly special.
So, do you like any of my choices? Is rose love it or leave it for you? If you like rose, what are your faves?
With much love till next time!
M x
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Post by Suzanne R Banks
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“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” Gertrude Stein, 1935
Some say Gertrude Stein is referring to the rose like this to express her feeling that things are what they are. According to Wikipedia: “In Stein’s view, the sentence expresses the fact that simply using the name of a thing already invokes the imagery and emotions associated with it,..” So when you say rose do you invoke the scent, or the colour, or everything? It is the most romanticised flower in history and appears in many poems, prose and plays. It is often associated with love and intimate moments of the heart.
Do you take time to stop and smell the roses? What is life if we don’t connect to its beauty at every turn? The scent of a beautiful rose is a true gift of nature which invites us to convene with the oneness of the universe in the now!
Rosa centifolia – another rose used to make essential oil
I never buy a rose that doesn’t have a scent – to me that’s the most important part. Isn’t it a wonderful thing when you enter your house to be greeted by the natural perfume of roses? Essential oil of rose is made by either steam distillation or as an absolute (where the scent is extracted into a fat and then lifted by a solvent). I tend not to buy absolutes as there seems to be a heavy chemical intervention and I’d rather have my oils extracted in the simplest way.
Rose oil is a complex arrangement of hundreds of molecules, some of which have still not been identified. No wonder it is referred to as the “Queen of Oils”. We know Cleopatra used roses in her beauty regime, and it is claimed she used rose petals in her boudoir to seduce Marc Anthony from the Roman Empire. The Romans used roses too, and the mention of roses appear in Christian, Buddhist and Confucian literature. Roses are seen in Asian motifs dating back to 3000 BC. It seems as though commercial production of rose oils and rose by products can be traced to Persia in the 10th century. The oil was referred to as “attar of roses” or “rose otto”, which is a term still used today.
Rosa gallica – a sub species named “James Mason”
So what can we use use rose oil for?
* use rose oil to help with any heat or infection in the body (you would put a few drops into some carrier oil and smooth it on the face and body – a great treatment for any illness)
* use this rose body oil to help take the sting out of eczema and psoriasis
* a drop on the temple to relieve stress and tension and counteract a headache
* a great oil for attending to grief (use it a single drop on the heart chakra or in a personal mist or room mist)
* a drop added to your facial oil or cream will refine your skin and give you one of the most powerful aromatherapy treatments in the world. You will feel soft, unruffled, connected to the universe and ready to be the Queen of your world
* a few drops of rose oil in an oil burner will create a scented paradise of peace and calm so it’s great for upset children, the elderly and even pets (if you are using 3% in jojoba it’s not really suitable for an oil burner – you will need to buy the pure oil)
* a drop or two in the right place, as a perfume, will do amazing things for your self esteem as rose is the oil of self-love and nurturing
Rosa damascena – the most used rose for oil production
When buying rose oil you will mostly find it comes in a 3 % dilution in jojoba oil and this is simply because it is a premium oil and is very expensive. Even if you buy wholesale, pure rose oil can cost hundreds of dollars. It is precious!
Remember, treat yourself first then everyone will benefit!
Suzanne R Banks x
Ed: If you thought this was good go see the Suzanne R Banks site (LINK JUMP) or like her Facebook Page (LINK JUMP)
All Photos from Suzanne R Banks site. This post is a reprise of a piece from Suzanne R Banks blog
Australian Perfume Junkies 