After posting my scent of the day, which is L'Anarchiste -Caron, I felt a tinge of unease in realizing I was getting nowhere in appreciating the fragrance and its components.
I got some orange peel, I got some clove, something slightly metallic, and later, a delicious amber-dominated accord which I found unique without knowing why.
The Basenotes directory gives its pyramid as:
Orange blossom, mandarin
Cedar leaves, sandal, vetiver, cedarwood
Musk
Except for the hesperidic note, I seem hyposensitive to all the riches of the middle notes.
Next I consulted Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez' The Perfume Guide for their take on it.
TS characterized it as "Apple Lavender". In her review she writes:
"I remember it as very different: a rich, spiced baked-apple oriental. Today it seems much more like every other fragrance in the Cool Water mode (apple, violet, lavender, violet leaf)".
My question to you is this:
When a reviewer describes a fragrance is she/he reporting on what they perceive to be the ingredients of the scent -and the accords that are created from them- or are they reporting their sense impressions without reference to the pyramid, as the mood strikes, like: ..'it's hot apple pie cooling by the open window with the breeze bringing with it the smell of the hot tarmac on the driveway'
With a stretch of the imagination, I can perceive in L'Anarchiste an accord that may be likened to a synthetic "apple-y" smell (esp. if I add that the apple was cut with a rusty iron-bladed knife). Lavender has wide-ranging guises so I won't push that point, but violet and violet leaf?
How empirical are perfume reviews? Similarly, are pyramids more or less guidelines to the ingredients of a scent or simply flight-of-fantasy- impressions of a publicist? Why do different sites have different pyramids for any one perfume?
How does one reconcile T Sanchez' apple, violet, lavender, violet leaf with the pyramid of orange blossom, mandarin, cedar leaves, sandal, vetiver, cedarwood, musk? Or are these different species which do not contradict each other?
Maybe I'm just too literal, but thanks for listening.
I'd really like to hear what reviewers have to say.
I got some orange peel, I got some clove, something slightly metallic, and later, a delicious amber-dominated accord which I found unique without knowing why.
The Basenotes directory gives its pyramid as:
Orange blossom, mandarin
Cedar leaves, sandal, vetiver, cedarwood
Musk
Except for the hesperidic note, I seem hyposensitive to all the riches of the middle notes.
Next I consulted Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez' The Perfume Guide for their take on it.
TS characterized it as "Apple Lavender". In her review she writes:
"I remember it as very different: a rich, spiced baked-apple oriental. Today it seems much more like every other fragrance in the Cool Water mode (apple, violet, lavender, violet leaf)".
My question to you is this:
When a reviewer describes a fragrance is she/he reporting on what they perceive to be the ingredients of the scent -and the accords that are created from them- or are they reporting their sense impressions without reference to the pyramid, as the mood strikes, like: ..'it's hot apple pie cooling by the open window with the breeze bringing with it the smell of the hot tarmac on the driveway'
With a stretch of the imagination, I can perceive in L'Anarchiste an accord that may be likened to a synthetic "apple-y" smell (esp. if I add that the apple was cut with a rusty iron-bladed knife). Lavender has wide-ranging guises so I won't push that point, but violet and violet leaf?
How empirical are perfume reviews? Similarly, are pyramids more or less guidelines to the ingredients of a scent or simply flight-of-fantasy- impressions of a publicist? Why do different sites have different pyramids for any one perfume?
How does one reconcile T Sanchez' apple, violet, lavender, violet leaf with the pyramid of orange blossom, mandarin, cedar leaves, sandal, vetiver, cedarwood, musk? Or are these different species which do not contradict each other?
Maybe I'm just too literal, but thanks for listening.
I'd really like to hear what reviewers have to say.
