Chanel Jersey is a Pretty, Soft, & Fluffy Lavender

Chanel's lastest offering in their Exclusive line is the lavender based Jersey. It was released to mixed reviews, but, luckily I know I have to judge things for myself so I still really wanted to check it out, given my mad love for Chanel perfumes. Chanel Jersey is named after the ubiquitous fabric Chanel took from menswear and make accessible for women, and the perfume Jersey takes the scent lavender, almost always used in men's colognes, and adds a feminine touch. Chanel's website says Jersey is meant to be evocative of a meadow lush with lavender. Well, doesn't that sound beautiful! The notes are given as lavender, vanilla and musk. I think I detect a powdery iris in there somewhere, and perhaps a warm wood in the base, but that could be tonka. By "think I detect" I mean that this scent is so soft & delicate, no one note jumps out at you. 

Lavender fields in Provence, France

On first sniff I thought "pretty!". Then, as it dried down I thought "too sweet!" then "too powdery"! I thought why would I buy Chanel for a simple powdery lavender scent? But, as is often my wont, I had a turnaround. I have been know to hate a perfume on first sniff, only to later love it more than anything. So I never really say never with regards to perfume. Hours after applying the Jersey, the scent left behind was a delicate, warm, cuddly and cozy skin scent. It had a little something of the Guerlain warmth that I love so much in it, that warm skin smell that is very hard to describe without actually smelling it. So I thought, well, I will re-test and see what I think on subsequent wearings. 

Lavender honey ice cream

Well, turns out I like it. It is pretty, soft and clean smelling. There is a snuggly aspect that works even in warmer weather, likely due to the cooling & calming lavender notes. The musk/tonka combination adds a sweetness to the dry down that is sweet & enticing on the skin. It has a lovely spa effect, which I suppose one might expect from lavender. If you like soft elegant perfumes and you like lavender, I recommend you add Chanel Jersey to your sniff list. Verdict? Love.

Chanel Jersey is an Exclusive perfume, available at Chanel Boutiques and their website.

Annick Goutal Songes Has Me Dreaming of Jasmine

Annick Goutal Songes is a deeply sexy and lush jasmine perfume. For over-the-top, stiletto heels & red lipstick sexy, Annick Goutal Passion is really the queen, but Songes is the queen of sultry summer perfumes that are bursting with white florals and hot skin. I'd say sweaty skin, but that's not quite poetic enough for an Annick Goutal perfume. I prefer the more floral eau de toilette to the more vanillic eau de parfum. Songes is like a steamy hot summer day, the kind that makes you want to move slowly, and perhaps not at all. The word that comes to mind is "languid". 

...the sweet life, indeed

Songes starts out by coming on to you in the most shameless way. She is not hiding her ripe & succulent jasmine, ylang and frangipani, but instead sheds everything and just lies back on a bed overflowing with intoxicating white flowers. Slowly the warm cushy scent of gentle vanilla wafts up from the lush bed of flowers, adding a sweet and edible aspect that makes you want to bury your nose in this scent. Songes was allegedly inspired by a walk through an exotic garden on the island of Mauritius at night fall. As the air cools, the heat from the gardens rise and the tantalizing scent of tropical flowers surround you like a spell. You will need to find a slowly swaying hammock in a cool shady forrest, and lie down, while you float away on a jasmine-y cloud of flowers.

Night blooming jasmine; cestrum nocturnum

What makes Annick Goutal Songes sexy is that it comes on strong then pulls back a little. The heady and seductive scent that draws you in slowly subsides and becomes part of your skin, meaning if anyone wants to smell it, they will have to get close. And because the air is sweltering, getting closer will only make things, well, hotter. Best place to wear it? As Chanel would say, wear perfume where you want to be kissed.

Smells Like Sun, Hot Sand and Gold

Oh....leave it to Guerlain to take a feeling, a place, and a time, and to bottle it. Another one of their limited edition perfumes, Guerlain Terracotta L'Eau d'Ete was released in 1999 as part of the infamous Terracotta line. It was allegedly based on a much earlier Guerlain formula from 1910 called Quand vient l’été, meaning “When Summer Comes”. Terracotta Voile d'Été was released in the classic 70s montre bottle, which I just adore as they remind me of my mother's bottles of Guerlain on her dresser when I was little. To me they just say "elegant and grown up perfume". 

Voile d'Été could be interpreted as "summer veil" but also "summer sails". We know Guerlain has an affinity for far away tropical islands so it could really mean either one. It manages to give the impression of the sun beating down on warm, bronzed skin and hot sand on a faraway beach. It has a golden, sunny aspect thanks to a delicious combination of ylang ylang and carnation, the latter adding a spiky, spicy hot feel to the sweet flowers. Carnation always smells classic and somewhat old fashioned to me, but I love that soapy spicy note. It is often used in masculine scents, and that manly aspect helps keep sweet flowers at bay and stops the perfume from becoming syrupy or cloying. Add to this bright streaming ray of sunshine the pillowy powdery Guerlinade cocktail of vanilla and heliotrope (with a soupcon of iris and jasmine) and you have your hot, dry sand.

Terracotta Voile d'Été is a testament to Guerlain's ability to paint a picture with scent. It is one of the very few summer beach scents that does not evoke colourful slushy drinks with umbrellas, coconut laced suntan lotion or even monoi. It isn't what one would call perfume for hot sunny day at the beach. This is a perfume that approximates, nay, IS, a hot sunny day at the beach. Only Guerlain can do this and do it this well. It also evokes a golden colour, for you syntesthetes out there, as if you are lying on a French beach wearing your gold jewelry. I only know what that smells like because that is probably one of my favourite things to do in the world. Add a good book & some dreamy music, and I'm in heaven. Yes, that is where Guerlain Terracotta Voile d'Été takes me.

Guerlain Terracotta Voile d'Été was a limited edition perfume and is available from selected online sellers. Get it while you still can.

Floris Snow Rose, A Beautiful Cool & Gentle Rose

I have been coming back around to rose scents lately. Interesting, rose is often associated in aromatherapy with "women's issues" and helping to balance moods. That's not to say men can't benefit from the calming and soothing benefits of the scent of rose, but I notice when there are fluctuations of the hormonal kind I often crave rose. In my powdery scent post, I mentioned my love for Talco Delicato. Floris Snow Rose offers a similar feel- gentle, powdery with a soft babyish musk. 

If you are familiar with Rochas Tocade, the iconic & beautiful rose vanilla perfume created by the wonderful Maurice Roucel, imagine Snow Rose as her sweet baby sister. If you aren't familiar with Tocade and love rose & vanilla, get some- stat! Snow Rose is clean and easy to wear with gentle notes of rose, jasmine, vanilla, musk and sandalwood. It is a calming scent and so aptly named. It has little hints of green freshness that shine through, like a little ray of sunshine in this cool powdery scent.

It is missing the violet note that is common in a lot of rose scents- I love violet but the rose-violet combo evokes lipstick and while lovely, not always what I want. Violet -rose scents like L'Artisan Parfumeur Drole de Rose and Frederic Malle's perfectly named Lipstick Rose come to mind. Rose and patchouli is also common- the "dark rose"- in perfumes like L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses and Stella McCartney Stella. These are gorgeous but again, not what my sensitive nose has been craving. Then there are bombshell roses like YSL Paris. I love that too and wore it for years but again, looking for soft roses here...Simple rose soliflores can be lovely but for some reason they can end up with a sour note I cannot abide.

Floris Snow Rose is simply pretty and lovely. I adore it, and have received compliments each time I wear it. It is a snuggly skin scent, and could easily work in warm or cool weather. This has earned a top rating in my collection. Sadly, it was a limited edition perfume for Floris. I found it at a discounter, so keep your eyes peeled. It pops up from time to time. There are also a few on eBay right now. Worth getting if you are a rose perfume lover.

The Understated Beauty of L'Artisan Parfumeur Vanilia

L’Artisan Parfumeur is the second niche line I fell for, when I sniffed their gorgeous fruity musk scent, Mure et Musc Extreme in 1998 while shopping in New York. There was something so transparent and “different” about the line,  and the scents seemed so odd compared to the standard commercial releases. The added novelty of shopping at Barney’s and just being in New York City no doubt shaped my impression of the line, and for that, I am grateful. I have beautiful associations with a beautiful perfume line.

I was already a full fledged perfume junkie and had an overflowing dresser full of bottles from almost all the mainstream lines. At the time I worked for an agent promoting new releases of many lines of perfumes from our humble Canadian Alfred Sung to all the Italian houses (D&G, Versace, Bulgari, Ungaro, etc) as well as Byblos, La Perla and some other more obscure but still mostly mainstream lines. I had OD’d on the 90s powerhouse scents like Mugler Angel, Chanel Allure & Christian Dior Dolce Vita after working in environments where they were being launched, meaning sprayed everywhere. All. The. Time. Mercilessly. To this day I can spot either one of those a mile away as they do not change on anyone’s skin (sorry to any fans, but they don’t) and maintain a screeching linear tone that makes me want to cut my nose off.

My first niche line was Annick Goutal. I had fallen for Annick Goutal probably in 1994 when my local Holt Renfrew (the smallest in Canada) had the line there for a very brief period. Serendipity I’d say, as they carry only the most popular lines due to limited space. Their popular and fresh Eau d'Hadrien (lemon, grapefruit, ylang ylang) became my daytime scent and the sultry Passion (tuberose, ylang, patchouli, vanilla etc) was my nighttime go-to. What I loved most about Annick Goutal was no one I knew had even heard of it. DING DING this was the clincher and soon having a unique perfume that no one else might be wearing became a Very Important Thing.

Back to L’Artisan Parfumeur. Dismissed by many hardcore perfumistas as too bland and mainstream (although a few of their recent releases have been interesting…) I still love this line. They were the first house to do a fig scent and their Premier Figuier is still one of the best creamy fig scents- it was my eldest daughter Emilie’s signature perfume for years. Which is why, as much as I love its green, creamy, powdery and slightly coconut-y scent I can never wear it as it just smells like her. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Funny how we can associate a scent with that person and it becomes impossible to mold it into anything or anyone else.

Vanilia is an older scent from the house having been released in 1978. Perhaps it smells a bit like the 70s where high quality ingredients were tossed into perfumes pell-mell, like a soup.  The notes given (or that I have compiled online) are simple- ylang ylang, vanilla bean, amber and sandalwood. There is a fruity note that perhaps comes from the ylang ylang with the vanilla making it almost foody- but it is never too sweet or cloying. It dries down with the amber & sandalwood adding an almost smoky resinous scent, that sits and warms on the skin never becoming cloying or saccharine. The smoke is barely hinted at before it goes and for that I am grateful as I am not a fan of smoky notes. Its more of a soft barely sweet incense. Vanilia is a bit of a shape shifter, one minute being a soft vanilla scent then becoming an amber-y floral. Some have complained that Vanilia is too soft and too ethereal and have wished for an Extreme or more intense version. I think that would take away from the whole point of this scent and I love it just the way it is.

Truly one of the oddest vanilla scents I was never quite sure if I liked it. I am not a fan of sugary sweet scents and, if you are looking for straight up vanilla scent, you may be disappointed by Vanilia. If you want to smell like cookie dough or cake, this is not the vanilla for you. This is a grown up vanilla with the smooth relaxed vibe I associate with the 70s. Think soft flowing hair, maybe Indian cotton dresses and long skirts and even YSL Safari jackets. Maybe some George Benson playing in the background while you mix drinks and get the fondue ready. The beautiful yet carefree style of Talitha Getty comes to mind and Vanilia to me smells like effortless bohemian luxury. Luxury is key because there is nothing hippie or head shop about this perfume. Vanilia is for the beautiful people, to wear when you are going skiing in Klosters, or dinner in Biarritz after surfing all day. It isn’t loud and doesn’t try to hard. Like you are wearing just a touch of make up, with your hair down and sporting a carefree attitude, in Vanilia you are enveloped in a soft cashmere wrap that is so fine it’s almost ethereal- you can barely feel it on your skin. 

News on the internet says Vanilia is discontinued but several retailers I know of have plenty of stock.  The manager at the L’Artisan Parfumeur boutique at Ogilvy in Montreal told me it was not discontinued, and, have it on their price list catalogue they so kindly send me from time to time. Yet, I have decided to get a back up bottle…just in case…

L'Artisan Parfumeur is available in Canada at boutiques, and they have a freestanding boutique within Ogilvy Department Store in Montreal.

The Beautiful Spicy Flowers of Creed Tubereuse Indiana

Tubereuse Indiana is one of my favourite Creed perfumes.  It has the famous creed ambergris base that I find so mouth watering- it lingers on my skin forever and gets warmer as the day or evening goes on. It’s a different twist on tuberose- warmed up with vanilla and ambergris and some spice that is not listed by Creed- it takes the white floral and makes it sweet. This isn’t the bombastic (and unwearable in my case) Piguet Fracas, or the full blown green & lush Frederic Malle Carnal Flower (which is beautiful but not always wearable…) Straight up tuberose perfumes tend to have that dreaded “cheese” note for me- L’Artisan Tubereuse, Jo Malone Tubereuse among others. I’ve learned that I prefer a white floral blend- a soft one that does not present an olfactory challenge, and I like them more if they tend to be on the soapy side of a floral. L’Artisan La Chasse aux Papillons Extreme is a good example- much maligned by perfumistas as bland and pedestrian, but I adore it. It smells pretty, clean soft and feminine and often that is just what I want. 

As much as I adore gorgeous beautifully composed perfumes, as time has gone on I don’t want sillage monsters that reach out to strangle anyone in the near vicinity. I find that those who do are suffering from olfactory exhaustion, meaning they no longer smell the perfume they wear every day, and add more and more or go for killer perfumes that should not be worn in public. I wore Givenchy Amarige back when it was launched, and even Giorgio...before I knew better. Funny how our perfume tastes evolve. Thankfully!

As for a my white floral preferences, I prefer the gentle and sweet tropical night blooming variety.  I would not be surprised to find out Tubereuse Indiana had a bit of soft jasmine, orange blossom or gardenia even if they don’t say so. I won’t hold that against Creed because it just smells so good. So I won’t get into whethere or not Tubereuse Indiana is a “ true tuberose” perfume or not…

It does smell slightly tropical, but then takes a slightly unexpected turn to oriental with the vanilla ambergris combination. I know there must be other spices in there, but according the Creed there is just bergamot, tuberose, vanilla and ambergris. They claim the tuberose is Indian, hence the name, but I also thought the name might be a twist on the spices. Whatever else might be in there, it’s so soft and beautifully composed that it becomes a sum of it’s parts. Never too much, not indolic at all, the warm spicy notes accentuate the creamy quality of the white flowers. This is a huge compliment getter, and men and women seem to love it equally. I love that is not common at all, and I have yet to run into anyone who wears it. I’ve had people say it makes them think of walking at night under flowering trees while on tropical vacations and others have said it smells like a beautiful flowery soap.

As with almost all Creeds, this wears excellently. It lasts for hours and the ambergris gives it a tenacious but not cloying quality. I love it because it can go from jeans and a nice sweater to an evening event- it dresses up or down beautifully- and is one my favourite “blends into the skin” florals. Lovely. I love it in the summer, but it takes on a slightly different character in the winter. The soft spices become slightly more prominent, and it makes me think of sweet spicy floral tea. I end up wearing this more in cooler weather, and it is a holiday favourite for me.

Creed is available at select Holt Renfrew stores across Canada or from the Creed website. 

Gently Beautiful- Etro Heliotrope

Etro’s Heliotrope, with notes of heliotrope, sweet almond, vanilla, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, and petit grain, is the perfect scent to wear to when you want to feel cozy. It’s sweet without being cloying and candy-ish and warm without being redolent with spices.

Heliotrope is slightly powdery but in a good way. The scent of almond adds to the powdery softness of the heliotrope, and the vanilla makes it slightly sweeter and maybe a tiny bit alcoholic- maybe it reminds me a bit of Amaretto. Heliotrope is an interesting flower that is often talked about as having a “cherry pie” scent. I sometimes find cherry and almond share a similar scent so maybe that is what gives it that Amaretto/marzipan scent. 

Petit grain adds just enough sharpness in the dry down to keep this scent from turning into your baby powder, giving it a decidedly grown up and modern edge. The orange blossom and ylang ylang come through in the dry down as gentle delicate clean flowers.

This is a perfect perfume for the crisp days of fall.  Those clear days with fiery leaves and bright-blue skies and the cloudy grey days when the leaves are the only light around.

Funny, I wore Heliotrope in the summer and it was much more floral, with the vanillic sweetness taking a back seat. It is chameleonic that way so perhaps it will only get better as the weather gets colder. I also think this would be a wonderful scent to wear after a long day full of stress and headaches. It’s so calming and sweet, comforting, the perfume equivalent of a hug. How beautiful.

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 Blogs of the Week

There are some great folks writing fun stuff out there and I would love to share my favourite beautiful blogs with you. So, in the tradition of the weekly roundup, the weekly blogroll etc, I will be posting my Beautiful Blog Posts Of the Week for you. Life is busy and not everyone is as obsessive as I am about scouring the interwebs so I am happy to give you some quick links to some great reading!

The wise & beautiful Gaia over at The Non-Blonde revisits Estee Lauder Beautiful, the classic 80s floral perfume. I wore it...did you? 

So happy to discover that Abigail of I Smell Therefore I Am wrote about the new release from Diptyque,  Eau Duelle, the "vanilla for those who don't like vanilla". I have been dying to try this and Abigail's lovely review makes it sound like something I might need....

The fabulous Michelle over at The Beauty Editor has been updating from New York Fashion Week with looks that are making sexy 70s hair and come hither make-up look like a great alternative to the flat iron and boring daytime make up....

Chanel nail polish hysteria continues and the lovely Christine at Temptalia tempts us (well me anyways, I am a sucker for Chanel nail polish...) with the new for fall Chanel Soho Story Limited Edition polishes Steel and Strong. These dark dramatic colours seem perfect to wear with cozy sweaters and fabulous boots...

Over at Beautygeeks, the beautiful and not geeky at all Janine chats with stylist Phillip Bloch about Style Lite and going on a Shopping Diet. As I look through my closet and see stuff with tags still attached, I'm thinking this is a diet I might want to try....

I hope you enjoy these beautiful tidbits of wisdom as much as I did. It's a gorgeous sunny fall evening here and I am SO going out for dinner. Have a lovely weekend!