The Classic Beauty, Dior Diorella

The new "Les Créations de Monsieur Dior" collection

The house of Christian Dior has many beautiful perfumes that span generations. They are not all my taste- but how boring would the world be if we all liked the same perfumes, right? The iconic Diorissimo, is the worlds best known and prettiest, in my humble opinion, Lily of The Valley perfume. It was worn by many women over my lifetime and has only the sweetest memories attached. And who can forget the killer Dior Poison? Probably one of the most memorable perfumes to come out of the 80s, and how terrific is that name? For a perfume- fantastic! It can be nuclear strength if applied with abandon, but on my beautiful and elegant cousin Jean, who must just gently dab it, it smells other worldly and beautiful. 

Vintage Diorella: I fondly recall the Dior houndstooth plaid bottles on my mother's dresser...

One of my most favourite masculines has always been Dior Eau Sauvage- smells both rich and quiet and adds instant elegance and panache to the man wearing it. Simple and unadorned, yet decidedly identifiable, the world would be a better place if more men wore Eau Sauvage. Just sayin'... The dry beautiful green chypre Miss Dior, which my mother wore, will always smell like grown up ladies in lipstick, with pretty silk scarves and leather handbags. Even the sweet Miss Dior Cherie (recently re-named Miss Dior...oh how they confound and confuse us with this nonsense....) while not for me, is a lovely strawberry delight that smells snuggly and delicious on my 15 year old. I can't fault a perfume house for evolving and creating perfumes that will appeal to everyone. Snobbery in perfume is a bit tedious. We don't all start out wearing Shalimar at ten years old...and if you did, well, you might want to open your mind a little and realize there is, indeed, a perfume for everyone.

Rene Gruau did the iconic ads for Dior perfumes. How chic is this woman?

Dior recently re-released a collection of the classics under the name "Les Créations de Monsieur Dior" and even with restrictions on things like jasmine, sandalwood and oakmoss (and who knows what else) I think they have done a lovely job of recreating the originals we loved so much. Diorella was launched in 1972 and was a departure from the heavy florals and orientals that dominated women's perfumes in the previous decades. It is a soft floral chypre, with gentle fruity floral notes grounded by the subtle yet sexy mossy notes so well loved in 70s perfumery. Mmmmm. Love.

Rene Gruau's ad for the sexy-clean-in-a-French-way (dirty clean) Eau Sauvage

Diorella is based on a simple cologne with the lemon, lime and basil notes but Dior added florals to give it a feminine touch. The heart notes include gentle honeysuckle, jasmine, and rose which are tempered by a yummy peach note to keep them bubbly and light. Add the base of rich oak moss, a touch of smoky vetiver and some sexy patchouli and you have a cocktail of delight on the skin. It performs as an invigorating post shower eau de cologne for day, staying close to the skin with the citrus notes so cheering and uplifting. As the day cools into evening (or in cooler weather) the sultry base notes come forward and warm on the skin, making those around you wonder who smells so damn good. All the while, the sweet floral notes keep it decidedly feminine and temper the fruity effervescent top notes and the woody, mossy smoky green basenotes. Perfection. 

Topnotes are like the morning- crisp, clear & bright....

The pretty floral heart notes are warm like a sun filled field....

The mossy, smoky woody base notes warm beautifully on the skin like a cashmere wrap at night....

It does not smell anything like the average fruity floral on offer at perfume counters these days. At. All. It does not have the cloying synthetic musk note that every other perfume has these days, that makes them all smell the same and makes me want to run screaming from crowded elevators and movie theatres. One of my beloved perfumes is a discontinued Creed, Aubepine Acacia, and I do think the gorgeous Diorella can fill its shoes. And then some...

Guerlain Jicky is Beautiful

How does one review the oldest perfume still in production? Especially when you love it dearly. I will try...carefully and with respect. Created by Aime Guerlain in 1889 there are a couple stories that surround the inspiration of Jicky. One is that he created it for an English girlfriend he had- this sounds very romantic and knowing the Guerlain men did create fragrances inspired by women seems possible. Jacques Guerlain, Aime’s uncle, once said, “ I felt something so intense I could only express it in a perfume”. But, this same uncle was also known by the nickname of Jicky so it seems more likely he was the inspiration for the scent. Love is a more romantic inspiration but I think everything about Guerlain perfumes are romantic. Before Jicky, perfumes were soliflores, perfume waters that featured a single flower like rosewater, violet and the like. Floral scents that were light and as simple as the flowers themselves were in nature. Jicky changed all of that by incorporating unusual spices and some synthetic ingredients and turning perfumery upside down.

Jicky is not a perfume for lightweights, but that doesn’t mean it is strong. At least not in an 80s heavyweight perfume way of strong. On the contrary, it sinks into the skin and becomes part of the wearer. It smells old world and modern at the same time. The "old world" part may present a challenge to some wearers. The lavender and citrus top notes feel clean & classic in an eau de cologne kind of way but the twist that makes Jicky so incredible comes along and everything changes. The lavender is rich and oh so French smelling, so if you are a lover of the fruity floral scents that line the perfume counters and shelves these days, Jicky is not for you. Its a green and herbal lavender, the herbs could be Herbes de Provence…..so it's not a sweet lavender at all, and its coupled with a bright and tart citrus note. Just when you think you are wearing a soapy clean simple lavender scent, the classic Guerlain tonka and vanilla begin to waft up and ground that airy top note, warming it with a touch of sweetness. Opoponax (sweet myrrh) adds a resinous warmth akin to incense without the smoke. The warmth is an olfactory illusion though, because a cool earthy iris swoops in and then BAM! everything gets ethereal from that point on.

The real magic in Jicky comes from the civet. Civet is a glandular secretion from the civet cat which has a strong scent that is a weird balance of fecal and floral. When it is purified (in the case of natural civet, although I would imagine synthetic civet is used more frequently these days) the scent reveals a deeply feminine floral scent. Civet is used to enhance scent and as a fixative. It can be an acquired scent taste as well as some may be anosmic to it, as I was. For that reason it was years before I “got” Jicky and no longer found it kind of boring. Better I suppose than my dear friend Vicki who only gets “cat bum” from it YIKES! Civet is one of those tricky notes. You either love it, hate it or can’t smell it. And, you can learn to love it, like an acquired taste. For me, on that fateful day at the Guerlain counter, it was sudden love. After years of not smelling it, I decided to give it a go. I tried the eau de toilette (Guerlain perfumes are notorious for smelling quite different in different concentrations) and suddenly the lavender, citrus, herbal, iris, vanilla, tonka cocktail became 3D and I LOVED it. How could I have missed this? How did I not smell iris in this before? Vanilla? Wow. Then, I tried the eau de parfum…..heaven in a bottle. The sweet and dark femininity of Jicky becomes richer as the perfume concentration intensifies. I think a man could wear the eau de toilette quite easily but it’s not enough for me…..now I have my eye on a bottle of the pure parfum…..

Jicky transcends seasons. It is perfect on a hot summer day, the lavender and citrus cooling and soothing. On a cool breezy day the vanilla tonka combination becomes cozy. As with most of the Guerlain masterpieces though, I find Jicky is most perfect on an “imperfect” day. On a gloomy day, or even better, on a stormy day, with menacing clouds that make me feel a bit dark and melancholy. Guerlain takes poetry and makes it scent.

If I was a synaesthete I would say Jicky smells like rich, dark purple velvet. Now, doesn’t that sound beautiful?

Beautiful Russian Caravan Tea

I love tea scents but frankly have been a bit bored with them. After the green tea mania of the 90s nothing new or interesting in the tea genre has struck me as something I might want to wear. I do enjoy L’Artisan Parfumeur’s The Pour une Ete which is a gentle green tea with a barely there jasmine but never enough to own it. I have and love Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint, a lovely powdery mint tea with a gentle jasmine, but I tend to wear it to bed more than anything.

A friend recently gave me a bottle of Christopher Brosius’s I Hate Perfume Russian Caravan Tea water perfume and perfume absolute. At first spritz I thought hmm, a lovely black tea scent, and went on about my day. It is the dry down of this Russian Caravan Tea that surprises and delights. And the fact that such a gentle, water based scent could last all day. By gentle I mean hardly any sillage, it wears very close to the skin but throughout the day little wafts of the scent of warm comforting steeped tea wrap around me like a silk scarf. This isn’t an herbal tea, or a green tea. It’s a rich black tea, steeped for a long time. It smells like a quality black tea that brings to mind the Russian Tea tradition. A cozy baroque room, tea served in beautiful podstakannik (silver holders for glasses) and maybe even some Russian Tea Cakes.

My mother’s family is Ukrainian and her mother brought a tea samovar exactly like the one above to Canada when they fled Communist Russia. It always seemed to grand & royal to me- of another time and place, the kind of thing used to serve tea in fairy tales. It had old Russian wiring so it was never used, which made it all the more mysterious. My grandfather was a palace guard in the Tsar’s army and I like to imagine the tea the Romanovs might have enjoyed in the palace, and the scents that might have been wafting around. Tea was an important occasion in the palace, and the Empress Alexandra had a love of fresh cut flowers. Maybe the combined scent of flowers and tea with some buttery tea cakes is the scent I imagine.

The notes from CB I Hate Perfume’s site say there are smoky notes but I can’t smell any smoke at all. Perhaps its so smooth it doesn’t smell lapsang souchong smoky which is good because that kind of smoky would not be a pleasant perfume. There are also notes of bergamot and the citrus is noticeable but so subtle and compliment the tea perfectly. And Russian Caravan Tea is very lovely, addictive almost. Interestingly it is not sweet, which is what ends up bothering me about most tea scents.  Perhaps the citrus balances the tea and adds another dimension in lieu of sweetness. Yet its not bitter either- its just right.


CB I Hate Perfume Russian Caravan Tea is available on their website or at Luckyscent   on their website. If you haven't tried CB I Hate Perfume, you might have fun navigating through his selection. He has a very interesting, often odd, take on perfume.