Sample Of The Day - July 2010 - Page 2

They gave me one at the Caron boutique in NY. That's weird - I just googled it and it's hardly anywhere... Not even TPC yet. I figured it must be out now if they gave me the sample. Maybe try giving a call to the legendary Diane at the boutique and see if you can get her to send you one?

It's been forever since I've worn Dark Rose, but I thought that plasticky note was an aspect of the oud...

Anyway, yesterday I wore Frapin 1270.



Seriously, I have the worst luck with BN favorites. It seems like every time I get a sample of some beloved obscure niche scent that all the more experienced noses here love, I always end up hating it...

On my skin, 1270 was basically a mix of sweet grape and vanilla amber. The grape note wasn't real-smelling - instead, it was that artificial grape soda note made famous by Poison in the 80's. It took a couple of hours for the faux-grape note to mesh with the gourmand amber, at which point, I could see how they were trying to create a cognac scent, but it really failed on my skin, with the sweet basenotes making the fake grape smell really syrupy, like someone made a pitcher of grape Kool-Aid with way too much sugar and purple powder and not enough water. And then poured it on themselves while wearing an amber perfume.

In the very background, at times, I could smell a pinch of anise trying to create the illusion of booze, and, late in the day after the grape had faded, I could smell a tiny bit of woods in with the vanilla amber. But at no point did I get the exotic spices and boozy woods and coffee and all the wonderful things promised in the notes.

Honestly, my skin tends to make gourmands waaaaaaaay sweeter (which is why I prefer my gourmands tempered with tobacco or woods), so it may very well just be me, or my reaction to that Poison grape note.

Oh well, every scent that fails on me is more money in my pocket, and more to go around for everyone else...

Today I went out shopping and ended up wearing the upcoming L'Artisan Parfumeur Coeur de Vétiver Sacré.



I think this is going to be very big here...

My first thought on spraying it was "wow - this smells like Chergui!" It had that same mix of dried fruits and green herbs, heavy on the cardamom. What differentiated it was a big hit of bergamot, which gave it an Earl Grey tea feel when mixed with coriander. Deeper into the heart, there was a just a pinch of cumin in there, not really smelling sweaty, but more just keeping everything from getting too sweet and hinting at something leathery when paired with the incoming vetiver.

It took a while for the vetiver to finally push its way through. When it did, it was paired with rose geranium, which gave it the feeling of Encre Noire (but still very much mixing with the herbal notes and fruits from the topnotes).

That's about it. About 6-7 hours later, the sweetened, slightly leathery vetiver is still going.

This is kind of an oversimplification, but if you take Chergui, add bergamot, and take out all that sweet red berry stuff in the base and replace it with Encre Noire and a pinch of cumin funk, that's how Coeur de Vétiver Sacré has smelled on me today. If this makes it sound derivative, it really isn't - I've never smelled a vetiver scent that did this.

I'll probably wear it again tomorrow and see how my thoughts change when I'm not walking around all day in the heat... That being said, if they'd had bottles available for sale, I would have picked one up in a heartbeat.

Absolutely 5 stars.

Despite my wanting to focus on Coeur de Vétiver Sacré, I also spot tested some Guerlains today, too.

One one side, I had Guerlain Bois d'Arménie.

How long could I resist the lure of Guerlain's take on incense? Actually, I've had a sample forever and never really cared for it, but it smelled so nice at the store I had to try a bit.

It basically wore its incense in its topnotes, smelling like a pleasant mix of benzoin and frankincense. It quickly faded to its heart, which was sweet, creamy sandalwood and some perfumey tonka. In the end, I prefer my incense scents harsh and smoky and manly. Bois d'Arménie is the exact opposite of that - it's creamy and curvy and feminine.

On the other side, I have Cuir Beluga.

To be honest, I never smelled any leather. It went on like a butterscotch gourmand, then faded to a powdery amber. If forced, I could imagine some of that soapy white musk in there hinting at something sort of suede-ish, but Cuir Beluga ended up on me as more of a gourmand amber.

Some random thoughts on stuff smelled on paper:

Nicole Miller, the new one: Peachy fruity floral. Meh, but they're giving it the big push at Saks.

Bleu de Chanel: Just awful. Aquatic "woody amber" dreck. It's the smell of walking into the Macy's mens store with all those cheap woody amber aquatics all mixing together. Just a chemical stew. Even the SA's (who, of course, know me) kind of shrugged it off. It'll make a lot more sense in the Sephora and the Macys than it does at the Neimans men's counter surrounded by Eau Noire and Duc du Verveins and all those Lutens...

CDG Wonderwood: Not quite what I expected - I'd guessed it would be primarily cedar and Iso E Super, but it's much more creamy and oud-ish and heavy on the sandalwood and gaiac. There's a bit of poopy funk lurking off in the distance, too.

Marc Jacobs Bang: Now this is exactly what I thought Wonderwood would smell like. A smokey cedar forest with a pinch of pine and vetiver, drowned in Iso E Super and encrusted with spicy black pepper. This very very much smells like a niche fragrance that would cost 3 times as much. While it's not really doing anything new to the woody incense formula except adding pepper, it's huge that someone is finally putting one of these out as a mainstream scent and giving it the huge push. I really hope it takes off, and I'll probably pick up a bottle when it hits the discounters (yes, I'm a cynic, but every mainstream frag reaches the discounters eventually...)

As a side note, I'm also surprised how much they're marketing this to gay men. The launch at Bloomingdales was this weekend and the now-infamous ad with the surprisingly-well-muscled naked Marc Jacobs was there, accompanied by a DJ playing gay house music and random shirtless muscle men dancing and handing out samples with "Bang!" painted on their chests. The gift if you purchased today? Your picture with the shirtless Bang boys!

Side note #2 - That Bang bottle is terrible, such a cheezy novelty. You'll understand when you see it, the way it's weirdly 3d and smashed in.

Honore de Pres Nu Green: I still can't figure this one out. Mossy but bright, with some sort of mysterious bright sweetness - it's supposed to be mint over cedar, but this doesn't smell like what I think that should. It's creamier, but still green and minty. Odd.

Acqua Di Parma Bergamotto di Calabria: I keep liking this one every time I smell it. Sure, it seems to be just a simplistic bergamot cologne splash, but so few scents dare to do full on bergamot and it's such a pleasant smell...

Byredo, the new-ish tulip one: Like a cheap "floral" aerosol room spray or something they'd scent a cleaning product with and call it a "spring garden" scent or something like that. Resoundingly cheap and fake-smelling.

Clive Christian "C" for Men: All the SA's in town are being catty, making fun of how much C for Men smells like Tom Ford's Tuscan Leather. On paper, they're certainly right, but with a blast of dark peppery herbs on top.

You know, I just finally got a sample of Dior Homme and I still haven't tried it - I'll have to break it open tomorrow...

Anyway, to catch up, on Friday I knew I'd be alone in the office, so I thought it would be fun to wear something utterly loud and obnoxious that I could normally never get away with, so I picked Montale Oud Queen Rose.



Three sprays of this and I was reeking to high heaven of roses, mostly, with violets to give them a dewy green character, some ylang to make it more "perfumey", and of course, oud.

In the pantheon of oud/rose scents I've tried now, I'd say this is a bit more on the floral side. Montale's house oud is notoriously medicinal and plasticky in the topnotes, but there were enough flowers in Oud Queen Rose to obscure that and keep things cleaner.

By about lunch time, the rose essential oils started to lighten up, leaving room for a soapy, lightly powdery base to come in, which also helped obscure the funkiness of the oud.

In the end, I think Oud Queen Rose is kind of an oud apologist. The oud is always present, but never takes center stage, leaving the flowers to be the stars. That being said, if you don't like oud, you still probably won't like this - it's just there for people who sort of like oud a little, if it's not that strong...

By Friday evening, Oud Queen Rose had settled down to a powdery, lightly oudy patch on my skin, so I figured I'd rev things up again with another obnoxiously loud rose scent, Bond No. 9 Harrods Rose.



Holy crap - this shit is loud...

Two sprays had me reeling. It was a sweet tea rose with a pinch of strawberry in the silage and a touch of jammy patchouli making things a little darker when I smelled my arm. But with the volume on everything turned up to 11.

It was linear and very long-lasting. It was still threatening to choke me in my sleep when I finally went to bed and I woke up occasionally in the night getting huge wafts of it. In the morning, my sheets and pillows reeked of strawberry-tinged rose and it took some serious loofah time in the shower to make it go away.

In theory, this massive silage and longevity is what some people here look for, but this just wasn't pleasant. Rose isn't supposed to behave like this. Like in Oud Queen Rose, actual rose essential oils evaporate and fade after a few hours, no matter how strong they are. Harrods Rose, on the other hand, was clearly made from some sort of rose-flavored chemical mix (in addition to its unnatural longevity, you could smell this - it was more like a rose-scented Glade room freshener than an actual rose).

With a very light application (like half a spray), I could probably enjoy Harrods Rose for what it is. And it would probably make way more sense in a very very hot humid climate, the kind of weather that eats and spits out normal EDTs.