Today I had hoped to show a video of Radium Maxwell and I doing a LIVE Video Sniff of the Neela Vermeire Creations. The universe has said that it should be shown at a later date, a unilateral decision on its part.
Photo Stolen FashionMag
In its place I have for you a treat, Natalie Portman was the cover girl and did a pictorial piece photographed by Peter Lindbergh for the January 2011 edition of US Vogue. In this video she talks a little about the shoot, the fashion, her role in Black Swan and stuff. What is more interesting than what Natalie is saying is how she says it, very casual, natural and clearly she thinks about what she is saying, but not self consciously. I have watched this 2.30sec clip a few times and really like Natalie Portman playing herself.
Photo Stolen JustJared
Do please enjoy,
Don’t forget tomorrow we have a super Neela Vermeire Creations GIVEAWAY!!
Portia
I have a super friend called Undina from Undina’s Looking Glass, (called Undinaba because she is Bloody Amazing) which is one of the frag blogs that I read EVERY installment of. We have sent each other a couple of fragrance care packages and my most recent one arrived just this week, a veritable scent filled goldmine of things long read & heard about, pored over and pondered upon while making hasty “Can I justify/afford this?” calculations in my head. Ormonde Jayne’s Champaca is just such a one. Even the frickin box looks too posh for me. This stuff is SERIOUSLY GORGEOUS!!
I must now say that having done some looking I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the affordability of the range, well within reasonable splurge range even on a way less than CEO style financial package.
Photo Stolen fragrantica
The internet tells me that the Michelia champaca is closely related to the fragrant magnolia but the flowers are yellow and smaller but their scent stronger. It is native to South and South East Asia and some of China, and has been used for millenia in fragrance.
Fragrantica gives these main accords:
Top: Neroli, pink pepper, bamboo
Heart: Basmati rice, champaca, freesia
Base: Myrrh, musk, green tea
Photo Stolen fragrantica
That fizzy pink pepper and orange blossom opening that is so 21st century is only slightly softened by the dry light bamboo, had we not had a stand of bamboo in the back yard that we played in and around as children I would probably never have noticed its inclusion.
Basmati rice really does come through the champaca and freesia, like it’s buoying them up and they float beautifully above it. There is still a definite orange blossom through the very heart of the fragrance and still there 5 hours into my wear. I was expecting Champaca to become a skin scent much sooner than this, though the musk is making itself known. I think staying close to me rather than skin scent, Champaca doesn’t seem to need to announce itself to the room though for the first couple of hours on returning to a room I could smell I’d been there. My skin gives me no tea, everyone else raves about the green tea, I went and made myself a cup to check but to no avail, my skin drank the tea.
It’s now 8+ hours, we’ve been for dinner, watched a movie at home on TV and I’m finishing up my post, there is now a slightly musky smell but it’s a sweet sweat, the myrrh and still, amazingly, a little of that sexy neroli; but you have to be close enough to….
Photo Stolen OrmondeJayne
Above you can see pictured the ORMONDE JAYNE DISCOVERY SET 12 x 2ml for only 48 pound including postage worldwide!
If you’d rather spring for a bottle prices start at 64 pound for 4 x 10ml Travel Purse Sprays or 80 pound for 50ml EdP at the OrmondeJayne site which is a pretty good deal for such outstanding niche fragrance presented so beautifully.
Thank you for coming and wandering through my fragrant thoughts, I hope you have enjoyed yourself as much as I did to bring them to you.
Wishing each of you only the good stuff you wish for yourselves,
Till tomorrow,
Portia xx
This is Linda Pilkington chatting about Champaca from her Ormonde Jayne website.
When I finally discovered you all it was a complete revelation. My own fragrance story was so introverted and self fulfilling that though I shopped online quite a lot I had not twigged that there would be other people who were already reading, writing, exploring, sharing, corresponding and generally enjoying the community that is the fragrance wormhole, for years!! Who knew there was a world of scent-ualists online?
I don’t know about you but I am often intrigued by the people who found the scentbloggosphere years before I did. They are now an elite crew whose knowledge, entrenchment and sophistication are world renowned, as are each of their personalities. They all took their baby fragrant steps together or helped the new kids on the block towards their own perfumista status, and still do.
Today we are talking to Anita Berlanga, you may know her from PerfumePosse as Musette, with the sharp and witty wisecracks. Anita has been unstintingly warm and generous to me and I’m sure many others of you so I thought it would be fun to get into her head a bit. She gets the APJ question but just tweaked a little….
Photo Stolen Musette’s Private Cache
Give us a brief history, who was young you, important you defining moments or early fragrant memories that may have herded you towards the ever moving now?
I was a typical Midwestern teenaged nerd with romantic literature leanings (windswept moors, dark, brooding heroes)…went well with my braces and zits. Early scent? Heaven Sent. Vats of it. My high school REEKED of the stuff. That, and Love’s Baby Soft. Enough to bring up your lunch. Oooh! and Coty Elan, which I liked because it smelled romantically windswept and had a cool bottle (I just scored a vintage bottle recently – it’s a greenery-yallery scent. But such a fab bottle!
Then I found that greeny galbanum Norell on my mother’s dresser, which I thought smelled so…windswept, with heathery scarves and velvet cloaks (hey! I was – what? 14? 15? And I was totally on that moor, with the wind whipping my straight, shiny, Cathy-esque black hair and sooty black lashes fringing my violet eyes, with a young Laurence Olivier striding towards me. Yah.. Except on me it smelled like I’d guzzled a bottle of Scotch. Then it was Nina Ricci Bigarade (which was the beginning of my bitter orange love, though Bigarade is, in truth, an unassuming orange blossom – but that is for Another Day). To be honest, I have NO idea how I came upon that one. But that leads us into your next question…
.
What perfume started your journey?
Nina Ricci Bigarade. Well, it didn’t actually start my journey. It started my journey HERE. Blame the Internet. Blame NST. Blame …?? 40 years later, I began to wonder about that perfume, which led to the Internet to revisit (I dunno how old you are but when you hit 50 you start looking for the weirdest things from your past. Puppet Fairy Tale books from your childhood.
Hostess cupcake packaging from the early 60s. Perfume is a biggie. Google has a LOT to answer for, lemme tell you. But in all honesty, it really was Google. I Googled Nina Ricci Bigarade, which led me to Now Smell This, which led me to the Posse. And the rest……..well, you know!Most embarrassing thing about my journey? I wasted SUCH an opportunity. At 23 I was a card-carrying moron. I didn’t know where I would be, 25 years later…… back when I worked as the Ad Mgr for Marshall Field & Company (only THE most elegant department store in Chicago -nay, the Midwest. At one point it was one of the few department stores in the country to rival Bergdorf) – managing advertising for COSMETICS AND FINE FRAGRANCES. Morong. I had access to Every. Single. House. Guerlain. Chanel. Dior. I met Karl Lagerfeld and Bill Blass and Calvin Klein – back when they were doing their own perfumes. (remind me to tell you about Herr Karl and me …and our fans….) I had No Clue. I took my first trip to Paris, without telling the Fragrance honcho I was going. He was stunned! What did I wear? Only what everybody else did. Chloe. Anais Anais. Though I did scent my sheets with Patou Vacances – but to tell you the truth that was more because I loved the little emerald-green stopper. I had scads of that stuff. Scads!! I wasted it. On sheets! 30 years later I am in tears about it. Who knew?
.
How did you get your perfume education and did you have any mentors?
I’m still a student and hope to always have a beginner’s mind. Otherwise this will become a bore. This is going to sound like a cop-out but it’s true: my mentors are the perfumistas who come on the blogs and the FB perfume pages. I’m stunned at how much I’ve learned from them. There is no ‘teacher’ – we are all amateurs, in the truest sense of that word, loving and learning as we spritz. And when it comes to parsing out notes? Nobody can do it like the folks on the Posse.Speaking of notes, though, I will tell you one of my very first ‘note’ experiences. I’d just started writing for the Posse and a friend sent me several samples to try – one being Anne Pliska. So..I spritz on the AP and am immediately assailed by this…note. Can’t for the life of me figure out WHY I KNOW THIS DAMN NOTE! It teases me allll day but I don’t have time to research (aka Google) it. So time ticks by, I’m working and this note is worrying my Very Last Nerve. Finally, bedtime arrives. El O and I go to bed, the boys just outside our bedroom door. All is peaceful…suddenly, at 2am, I sit bolt upright in bed and shout ‘PLAY-DOH!!!’. Used to my craziness, nobody in my house even turned over! But that was my very first ‘note’ experience. And yes, Anne Pliska smells persackly like Play-Doh. Which is not a bad thing.
What is your current favourite mass market perfume house?
Guerlain. Even when they miss, they do it spectacularly and they get huge points for keeping the classics in their line and even showcasing some of the lesser-known perfumes of yesteryear (Neiman Marcus in Chicago had a breathtaking display of the Guerlain ‘oldies’, some in the original bottle design. It made my heart sing!) In my opinion, they are the embodiment of Western haute perfumery (non-niche). Large niche house: tie between Amouage and Frederic Malle. Both Houses are intriguing, unwilling to pander to focus groups and mass trends. And they consistently deliver stellar perfumes . I wish they were better known. I don’t understand the urge to smell ‘exclusive’ – as far as I’m concerned, a roomful of people wearing Carnal Flower or Epic is a GOOD THING!
.
Do you have a favourite independent perfumer and why, or if that is too politically loaded; what makes a good indie perfumer?
I have several but my steadfast favorite is Liz Zorn – I think it’s because so many of her scents touch my core, immediately and viscerally. The first one, Historical Chypre, I thought might’ve been a fluke. But we’re well into double digits now, so obviously there’s a connection there. The first time I smelled Violets and Rainwater, I teared up! I was back on Lexington Ave in NY, in front of a florist shop, after a pelting Spring rain. Busted pot of violets on the sidewalk. Nobody loved them. Or me. I was bereft. Then I realized, if I just picked the damn violets up and put them back in the pot everything would be just fine. And it was. By the way, none of that actually happened (though there was a florist on Lex that I loved) But such is the power of Liz’s scents that the entire scenario leapt, unbidden, into my psyche and became part of my history. In one spritz.
What do you see as the most important trend in perfumery currently?
I think all trends suck. Truly. The one ‘trend’ (in mass market) I would like to see is a return to ‘real’, structured perfumery, for adults, crafted with quality ingredients. But I suspect that time has come and gone. There’s too much money invested in the quick ROI, ingredients are astronomically expensive and the general public’s taste seems to be devolving, with the aspiration more for the marketing image rather than what stuff smells like. Then again, I love the smell of Clinique Happy – so what do I know??
Isn’t she AH MAY ZING? Thank you Musette for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this. I feel blessed that you’d come and chat so openly, honestly and interestingly for us.
Wishing you all painless, easy and harmless world domination,
While I have never sniffed Le Nuit de l’Homme I do think they’ve done a great job with the ad. Not feminist inspired or even acceptable probably but I think it is the ultimate fantasy of most men. Wanted by 3 women at the same time, all gorgeous, all elegant all within a certain circle of society. The reality would be a disaster but it looks nice in this ad.
Out of interest, has anyone smelt this fragrance? Is it as good as the ad? Does the ad sell the correct product?I expect it to be screamingly masculine by the movie but….
Please enjoy the mini movie, even if it’s just to growl BASTARD at the computer,
If you have been anywhere on the scentbloggosphere then you’ve probably seen this, It’s been popping up all over the place. I know though that some of you read here only so this is Lady Gaga’s FAME advertisement/movie. As usual she has chosen strong visual imagery that gives more to original black fairy tales than the modern one and could even be skirting horror. I don’t think I’d have wanted to see this before I was 10 years old, I probably wouldn’t have slept for a week,
DIOR is special. I’ve never owned anything from the fashion house except fragrance but when I was studying fashion in the 1980’s and then working in the industry they were already stand out leaders in the field. I did buy my long term partner Varun a Christian Dior suit a few years ago and it was, like him, incredibly gorgeous. Christian Dior the man’s story is a good one too if you like biographies. Whenever I go to try a new to me fragrance from DIOR I have to steel myself because when I am disappointed by their work it makes me sad. Not to worry here though, this one is a hit!
Photo stolen allurabeauty
Mitzah is painted in the Press Releases as an elegant, feminine and mysterious oriental fragrance and I guess that is a pretty fair assessment but it is more than that too. Like the woman the fragrance is named for, Mitzah Bricard, one of Christian Dior’s most important muses throughout his amazing career, Mitzah the fragrance has ZING. It is a spectacular leap into gorgeousness. It seems to me that Mitzah has in fact taken the very best of all the other great Ambers and collected them into one extraordinary fragrance with great sillage and longevity thrown in for extra good measure. I ask you, “What more could you possibly want?” If your answer is a smaller bottle then I do agree, a 50ml would sell like hot cakes, and I would also like it to be available in more stores.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Fragrantica gives its notes/accords as:
Coriander, rose, spices, cinnamon, labdanum, vanilla, honey, patchouli and incense.
I love how Mitzah opens all hot smoky spices and incense, I feel that there are unmentioned leather and tobacco notes too but maybe they are some of the rose facets, roses have a million faces so it’s hard for me to pinpoint. A cracker of a perfume, swirling around itself, making me feel all glamorous and giving me the va va voom of a Gabor sister in her prime. This is not an intense journey through the perfume with mountainous peaks and troughs, while there are definite start middle and end notes it’s more of a progression. The kick at the start warms slowly and languidly through mildly sweet towards a honeyed amber dry down. On a good day I get 8+ hours before Mitzah is lost. As the PR says elegant, feminine and mysterious, but I think not so feminine; a man could wear it very comfortably because it is spicy amber.
It’s Sunday and I know you’re all dying to see the making of the Louis Vuitton 2012/13 fall/winter ads, which I thought were gorgeous!
The whole train trip as an event you got spruced up for, rather than a necessity is wonderfully evocative to me. Here are the print ads and making of video. I wish Vuitton would bring out a fragrance, even though I understand that they don’t want their stuff in the discounters and they want to maintain absolute control over the image, but wouldn’t it be amazing?
Photos Stolen millionlooks
.
Sorry there’s no QUICKSNIFFS today, it’s been CRAZY around here, hopefully they’ll be back next week.
Love to you all, I hope your Sunday is glorious like ours is. Sunny, cool and a little breezy here, the wind-chimes are tinkling and bonging in the background as I type.
See you tomorrow for Madeleine’s post,
Much love and hope for your good health,
Portia xx
This is not a fragrance I would ever have seen myself owning or reviewing and I’ve not read a review of any of Kylie’s fragrances but instinctively felt they’d be shite. Even the name Sweet Darling has my “WTF why another super sweet boring clone-ish confection by one more celeb with NO FECKING CLUE about perfume,” face on.
I love Kylie, have performed to her music, had it blaring from my car/house/radio, loved her videos, fashion, concerts. I’ve been in the same room as her even, though we’ve never spoken. A girlfriend of mine (Heya Annie!) has a few of her fragrances but this one didn’t work for her so she wondered if I would like it. Um, sure….
Photo Stolen girl
So brought said bottle home and looked it up, Thierry Wasser (of Guerlain fame) made both Darling and this sweet flanker Sweet Darling. Maybe it won’t be so bad starts to click over in my head. What if it was fabulous and we’d all been ignoring it because we thought it was a celebutards celebuscent? Could it be so?
Fragrantica gives the accords as:
Top: Passionfruit, freesia
Heart: Boronia, cotton candy
Base: Australian sandalwood, patchouli and vanilla
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
How does it smell on? If you like Miss Dior Cherie or whatever they call it these days then this is for you. It’s a super bargain slightly different version of that. GAK!!!
Fizzy and uber sweet opening, honestly it’s just sweet, I can’t pick passionfruit or freesia out of this, maybe some pineapple? I can’t THINK!! Like that little bit of vomit in the back of your mouth sometimes, sweet, acidic, wrong, swallow, burning sensation. It stays sweet and ripe, but not so searing after about 20 minutes, and the cotton candy is definitely doing a kissy kissy twirl thang but the boronia has passed me by, there’s a slightly spicy note that may be boronia? I can’t tell. At about the 40 minute mark I am getting a vanilla/patchouli swirl through the sweet stuff. It stops being quite so sweet by the one hour mark and starts to be a very conventional, and quite nice, vanilla/wood/chouli base. I don’t know how long it lasts because I am going for a bath.
CheapSmells has 50ml for $20.27, and the rest of the range
I hope all is your world is SWEET, Darling. Have you tried it? Any of Kylie’s fragrances?
See you tomorrow for another instalment.
Portia xx
Even though I didn’t love Sweet Darling, I do LOVE Kylie’s current single, TIMEBOMB. Yes, I’ve shown it before but it ROCKS!!
I am a fan of big old fashioned slam your head against the wall floral spectaculars. I know you’re surprised but I felt it was time to come clean with you all and fess up. Here is another of my favourites, a 36 year old banged up whore of a perfume. Once she was a screaming symphony of flowers and funk, filled with civet and oakmoss which unfortunately are both banned nowadays. She has been through many incarnations, getting sleeker and more refined each time, losing that young, nasty, dirty girl as she has grown up. Much like any old sex worker that married well and glossed over a seamier past with elocution lessons, a change of postcode and a better stylist. It’s a pity because I love the memory of what she was but considering how much they can’t put into fragrance these days she is better than she could be. Maybe it’s testament to Jean-Claude Ellena’s genius that it has remained so vibrant and wearable and reminiscent of itself.
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
The Fragrantica note list is extraordinary:
Top: Bergamot, mandarin, black currant bud, aldehydes, peach, raspberry
Heart: Hyacinth, Turkish rose, narcissus, jasmine, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang, carnation, orchid, tuberose, orris
Base: Amber, tonka bean, oakmoss, sandalwood, vetiver, musk, honey, civet.
First opens with the sparkly fresh fruit and citrus bang that you hope for in a heady aldehydic floral that is an incredibly accurate representation of the sparkle and flash of Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery. I can’t really tell the notes apart in First, I think the wild sensual white flower power is anchored by the yang-ylang, carnation and orris and the orchid amps it all up, still being helped along by the glittering aldehydes. The base has been there all along but you don’t notice until well into the first hour because until then it plays only a filler role, giving the whole its magnificent shape. After about an hour these deeper, and interestingly, sweeter notes and accords waft through in front of the earlier players en mass, leaving us long secret glimpses of what went before as we tumble into dry down hours later. Sometimes I get 6-7 hours and sometimes more, this cool weather currently helps to slow the progression down and its much slower to reach the real base before it’s gone.
Go and check the BoisDeJasmine review and I would have put another but couldn’t find one on the first 4 pages of google that was working. FragranceNet has a great selection at very reasonable prices.
THURSDAY GIVEAWAY WINNER
Our Thursday Giveaway this week is a fantastic Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum Coffret 50ml EdP (that has had 1 spritz taken by APJ guest blogger EmmaKate who donated it) and a 6.7 oz of Body Lotion valued at RRP $75.
How did you win this week? Only Australian addresses could enter. All you had to do is tell me somewhere that you would like to wear this gorgeous Paloma Picasso fragrance. Easy Peasy!! And the winner is……
SAFFYISHERE
Photo Stolen bitrebels
Please get in touch with your address details by Wednesday August 1 2012 or I’ll give your prize to someone else or maybe keep it for myself, I’m running low. Communication via DM on Twitter (@OzPerfumeJunkie) or FB (Portia Turbo-Gear).
I am leaving you today with a really lovely Van Cleef & Arpels mini movie for Faerie; a gorgeous, forgotten flop that we’ll talk about soon.
Love to you all,
Portia xx
Photo Stolen FashionMag
Photo Stolen JustJared
Photo Stolen fragrantica
Photo Stolen fragrantica
Photo Stolen OrmondeJayne
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Australian Perfume Junkies 