Sample pass: Weil Then and Now

Somehow, I had missed this (downtime perhaps?).

I would like to participate in such a pass the sample - I know little of the house (save for a few samples from a kind BNer).

cacio

I was very impressed by Mollie Parnis, though it wasn't impressed by me, lol; but if other creations by Weil even remotely that good, I am very curious. I haven't tried anything from Weil before: it would be a great educational experience. Can I join?

Oh, how did I miss this too???? If Larimar is not interested, I will offer my nose as a back up sniffer! Thanks for sharing Jujy! This is fantastic!

Yes, I'd love a spot, too- but only if you have enough space for me. It does look like you've filled up. If you have enough testers already I will still be happy to follow along!

I've already told jujy privately but will admit to the group that I have no Weil experience. Which is a shame because I know these were highly regarded scents in their day. I do remember they got quite a bit of love here in the States.

Sure, as long as none of us have been drinking!

Appreciate you making room for all of us, jujy! Very kind.

I would love to be a last drip tester if there are any....... or even an empty vial sniffer....

I know three of the Weils, Antelope, Weil and Zibeline, but not the others.

Yes very kind indeed. Thank you, Jujy, for such unique pass around!

Thank you Jujy! That is very generous of you! I'm looking forward to exploring this house!

Oh Poo!
I've been too busy all week to check the forum & I missed this!

Guess I'll just lurk here....enjoy everybody!

As for the number of people, it depends of course on how much each person uses. 5 for sure. I'd be optimistic and say 7, but perhaps you want to make sure that the last ones are iffy. One can always reoptimize as one goes.

cacio

So far I've already some cherished Antilope pure but have yet to experience the rest.
I'm on board if there's room for an upstart.

Jujy - I am very sparing with my testing, one tiny dab is all I need, but I can drop out so more experienced noses can test more freely.

Also, I think I should mention that I have an upcoming trip to Florida: I am leaving on the 29 and will be back on the 5th. Maybe I can drop to the end of a line after Larimar or whoever is last and if there is nothing left by that time, so be it

My experience is that they go a long way. Dab samples go much longer than the spray samples do. With the spray samples you've got to be careful. 3 people = 2 ml spray sample, not more. 2 ml dab sample can be 5 people easy, I'll be optimistic like cacio and agree with his 7 as well.

Yes, Jujy. I should have clarified, sorry.

Thanks so much jujy for thinking of me and organizing such a lovely sample pass. I have had no exposure to the Weils except for Zibeline PdT, which I offered you for inclusion. I am curious to experience the others as it is a house I know so little about. Thanks again so much!

I am sending some samples to Cacio as well:

Vintage Zibeline Perfume
Vintage Secret of Venus Zibeline Bath Oil (1 mil - but a tiny dab goes a long way)
Vintage Secret of Venus perfume (1 mil - very potent)

Hope they last...the SOVs in particular are very strong smelling.
If its not enough juice, I can always refill when the package gets to me.

I just received the beautiful packet. Thank-you so much! So many goodies!

I'll start working tomorrow, for now I just put on the first two I picked, chunga and padisha.
The opening of Chunga is a wonderful old style animalic oriental. Doesn't seem to last much though, but I didn't put much to start with, plus, I was just out of the gym and in a 100F day. Padisha on me is very sweet, vanillic oriental with some honey.

cacio

Thanks for the explanations.

Yes, The inner box smells deliciously sweet and fruity! I hope it'll remain long enough for the others to smell.

If I stick the nose in my inner elbow, I do feel some really nice civety drydown for Chunga. But I think I simply didn't dab enough (plus, it's hot). Padisha is gone by now.

I'm going to sleep and I couldn't help putting on a touch of zibeline. Wow, this is more intense, with the animalics firmly in place, drier and more civety than chunga.

As I mentioned in another post, today was animalics day, having received independently two ebay vintage Tabu purchases. Indeed, while they smell obviously different, I'm getting a Tabu vibe from Zibeline...

cacio

Not much time to smell today, so quick impressions.

Secret de Venus: this morning. Rather sweet, disappeared before relevant animalics could be detected.
Now, just before bed:
Zibeline (recent): no relation with the pdt. For now, just sickly fruity sweetness. May be more interesting in the drydown? I put back on some pdt. I dont' know if it's because the pdt has turned, but there is no fruity sweetness.
Weil de weil: green, green, vegetal, bitter mossy. Wonderful. Of course, a frag like this could simply not exist right now.

cacio

I received the packet from Civetlady. Zibeline and Secret the venus. More goodies!

So I just put on the two zibelines, perfume and bath oil. And now I tried on paper as well as skin. The perfume smells similar to jujy's pdt. The parfum perhaps has kept the top better, but we're in similar neighborhoods. On my skin, which tends to eat perfume, they both converge to the same fresh animalic note very quickly, perhaps some type of floral civet. I get a similar vibe to things like tabu and even, distantly, emeraude. But perhaps it's just that the style is so out of fashion that anything older will suggest associations.

On paper, they retain the top notes much longer. The floral notes in the parfum are especially noticeable on paper, a beautiful clean aldehydic note. The pdt displays some but even on paper it is now in the base.

The bath oil is quite different. It is stronger, as civetlady was saying. It has a very strong fresh top note, I'd call it mint, though it's not exactly mint. Now, 25 mins in, it is slowly moving towards something sweeter and more floral, but with the minty note still in place, with just a touch of animalic notes peeking through. But it still quite different from the alcohol forms. All very exciting sniffing!

cacio

Intriguing descriptions, cacio. Can't wait to sniff! And thank you Jujy for organizing all of this, and for letting a novice in on the fun. Currently on the lookout at estate sales for any other Weils to add to the selection. As a newbie, I'm especially curious about:

1. the bath oil still being fresh(er) smelling. Is this common for vintage bath oil to retain freshness better than other concentrations?

2. I know Jujy plans to eventually include some history-related links to the thread. Could any of you knowledgeable Weil aficionad(a)(o)s give some brief insider info on the house (history,quirks, and reputations beyond that typically found in guidebooks or databases)?

a&i

civetlady may know better about oil vs alcohol. To the nose, the Zibs definitely smell different, not just one having kept the top notes better. Modern western bath oils, which are more diluted, tend to be less strong than the alcohol version, and to last less. For instance, in the the labo oils they go directly into the middle and drydown phase. The Chanel is actually richer than the edt, though it doesn't have the crispness and freshness of the parfum. Since I just bought them, I don't know how they will last.

As for some history of the house, perfumeshrine had a couple of articles (I remember one on zibeline).

Now, a few more tests:
Secret de venus, perfume from civetlady and modern edt/edp from jujy. As for Zib, very different. The modern, as said yesterday, is sugary fruity, and with an undistinguished, synth drydown. The parfum is a rich floral, with sweet notes but not cloying, with some resins showing up as it goes, and with a certain thick, oily feel.

Yesterday, I also tried reve and secret. I don't know if I'm mixing them up, I forgot which arm had what.
Reve had a citrusy top, more peel than fruit, lemon and citron too.
Secret had a minty top and was a little sweet. One of the two had an incense feel in the middle, I forgot which one.

cacio

Trying Antilope by Weil, from a decant the vintage [50 years old] today for the first time, and while I'll note my olfactive skills aren't the best but working on them. after spilling 1/5 of the decant of it all over my wrist and using my wrists to apply it to the crook of my elbows. I set to work with a little sniffing. On the opening it's a big slap of florals, but really sticky and sweet like someone was crushing a bunch of cut flowers [stem and all] and cooking it down in a pot I get a bit of green-ness. When it begins to calm down I get sort of a soapy laundry detergent smell, and can begin picking out a few specific flowers, I get some rose maybe, jasmine, lily,[I'm not good at picking specific notes out but these are what came to mind] There's some soft warm wood stuff in there as well and a hint of chalkyness, not sure if it's dried down on me yet. will update in a little while with a drydown. Also throughout there's something tea-like in it

I think the 'soft warm wood' I identified could be ylang ylang, I don't get much of an anise/licorice vibe from it I can see there being amber as I'm getting more of a rose-LOTV-jasmine/amber/chalk drydown on my wrists, and more of the flowers are floating to the top in the crook of my elbow still with a hint of the chalk and that tea-like scent.

Edit- just did a tiny re-dab and the Anise/licorice note is at the top

Smelled the last ones in the set, the Antilopes, comparing them, also on paper. Vintage antelopes are aldehydic floral-woody, with a touch of the Weil animalic base in the drydown. The 50s edt of civetlady seems to have more animalics than the other versions. The modern Antilopes are far simpler florals, but they are not, apparently, fruity florals as the other reissues. They also seem very fleeting. In any case, I must say that Antelope didn't wow me. Good, smooth, but there's no sparkle, nothing that makes them memorable to me or make me want to go back.

In general about the samples. My skin eats perfumes, but the Weils seem to perform worse than most on me. Typically, they're straight to the drydown, no time for topnotes, and even the drydown isn't particularly powerful. I don't know if it's the temperature outside or just the Weil basenotes disagree with my skin. Smelling them on paper gives a different impression, because the middle notes are clearer and the perfume seems much richer. So I resmelled many of them on paper to get the whole story.

Of the debasement of the modern versions we talked already. Not much else to add. Usually, they're inessential fruity florals.

Favorites in the set are Weil de Weil, a dark green chypre (not a surprise given my taste) - I may check ebay from time to time. And Chunga, a dry floral. In jujy's link, it is described as a masculine - kudos, one of the few masculine florals ever created, and, as the other, it likely flopped miserably. As said, though, this one is also weak, so it would required Arabian style spraying.

Then there are the Zibelines, I love the light "fresh animalic" base. But it is rather weak one me. Perhaps more abundant dabbing? I'd also like to see how it performs on furs, its advertised use. Fur keeps scents really well, so perhaps it was intentionally light.

While they are not my favorites, I see myself wearing also some others. Secret de Venus (in its vintage form) has an interesting citrusy top. Citron but not quite; pine, but not quite, plus some assorted resins. Don't know why I missed it the first time I dabbed, probably I dabbed too little. Today it's clearly there. There is some of the nice animalic base, but not as intense as Zib. I liked also Bambou (nice floral chypre) and Padisha (vanillic oriental)

The Secret de Venus Zibeline oil is very intense, but it is not the same as Zib parfum. In fact, it is much closer to the first part of the name, Secret de Venus, with a herbal note I described as minty, but now, smelled close, shows its similarities with the top of SdV. Looking around, I saw an old thread on Weil oils, some contributors seem to also indicate that the oil is a different perfume. If I were rich, I'd love to try it in its intended use.

Sorry to take all this time to go through the samples - so many of them! Sometimes next week I'll ship off to cestrum nocturnum. Big, big thanks to jujy for organizing this wonderful and to me totally new pass the sample, and to civetlady for adding more vintage goodies!

cacio

Strange on Antilope. Perhaps then it's just my nose which is anosmic to some of the base. Who knows. But when I smell it, it does indeed resemble My sin a bit, but with far less civet.

cacio

Mentioning Zibeline and Malik al Atoor in the same sentence sounds almost blasphemous to me - but after the pass the sample, I am officially in the minority!

Interesting as usual how we perceive things differently. Zib and SdV (and Antelope) made a rather different impression on me. And they were short lived. So it is really a matter of skin or nose. My skin must find Weils of its taste, because it eats them. Or my nose cancels out the florals there. Or both. The bath oil was more persistent also on me, but to me it had more similarities to SdV, not Zib; but here at least I will agree with cool plus ash (or mint plus dried something).

And I fully agree with the one liner about Weil de Weil, especially since swamp from this world is instead a definition I've been using for countless perfumes which to me, but not to others, smell this way (Bas de soie, Love in white - not the only one on this-, Eden, now the latest Champagne/Yvresse, etc etc).

cacio

This thread is such a wealth of information! I have been avidly following everything and will enjoy perusing some of the more detailed websites linked kindly by jujy. Sorry for lurking a bit! I have really enjoyed reading the impressions thus far and I am so excited to try all of these rare treasures.

Cacio, you are such an efficient sniffer and writer! It is truly an art to be concise and still capture the essence and character of a scent. It’s really very impressive! I can only hope to hone my own olfactory and descriptive skills as I experience more.

Thank you again jujy, for being our fearless leader on this journey of Weil exploration!

I had a really long day today, but just a quick note to say that the lovely package welcoming one to the wonderful world of Weil arrived safely today!

I love, love, LOVE No. 19 and will report back on any similarities to Weil de Weil, and look forward to the new addition of Kipling.


Jujy, why worry, we will warden whosoever wants within:

Alliterative Authors Anonymous

Absent apologies and all about accommodating, affirming and acknowledging amicable, assenting adults and a special sanctuary simply serving secretive scribes somewhere safe so society stays sane.

(What was that? Did I hear a shotgun cocking in my direction???)

Aha! Although alliteration also allows anterior vowels. lol!

I started unwrapping some of the vials and the aroma was so delicious combined with the Mollie Parnis and wood of the box! I can’t wait to apply later today, but still deciding how to go about it most efficiently.

Indeed, so much stuff to smell. It might be interesting to wear different versions of the same perfume at the same time, to compare. Though it doesn't really make a difference to wear modern versions together with vintage, as the difference is very large. Also, as I wrote, many Weils seem to die quickly on me, in which case it makes sense to put on paper.

As for Chanel 19, I wasn't thinking about it when smelling WdW, but now that you point out, there are some general similarities. But more in general, I see WdW as more of a green chypre than Chanel 19.

cacio

Hello, I'm hijacking your hilarious yet helpful thread to inquire if anyone is familiar with Weil Eau de Fraicheur?

Thanks jujy- I went ahead and blind bought the Eau de Fraicheur anyway with the current 20% off promotion on Fragrancenet.

After the sniff, I bought on ebay a bottle of Chunga pdt: masculine floral is a must for me. I liked it on paper, though on skin it disappeared within 30 seconds. I hoped that abundant dousing would help. But no. It still disappear within 30 sec. The top is a very nice and oily bergamot floral. On paper, it stays a little longer. On my skin, it goes right away into a faint drydown of honey, tonka and some amber. Very very faint. Slightly better on cloth, but only so much. I read on fragrantica that some people call it a butch Antelope. But evidently my skin does not agree.

cacio

Aw, I hope I didn’t come across as obnoxious, jujy! I can never resist the musical allure of alliteration, and was just having some fun. I don’t ever want to leave anyone fuming. (Sorry, had to slip in a tacky pun, too.) I love all of your posts and comments, and far be it from me to be a judgmental grammarian. BTW, I went to one of those crazy schools with the supposedly “newest and best” educational methods (however, I think the students are actually just guinea pigs) and at the time, NOT teaching grammar was in vogue. My usage of language is intuitive at best!

Thank you for all of your witty and informative posts, AND for this ***Fantabulous*** sample pass. (<-And I swear that is a real word!)

I think I will follow cacio’s suggestion and try various of the same scent at the same time to compare and contrast. Paper sniffing is always something I forget to do! Thank you for the reminder!

So far I have only seen the Secret de Venus, Secret De Venus Zibeline & Secret de Venus Antilope - mostly bath oils. They all seem to have that unique spicey/minty top note. I just acquired the SDV Antilope & it is similar, but more buttery soft than the other 2 SDVs. SDV Zib has more wood/resiny notes. Please excuse my terminology for the notes, I'm still very much a newbie at this, but i do know what I like!

On the Houbigant civet oil (copy care of "dusty rose perfumery"), this used to be my Go To scent in my 20s for evenings on the town....probably the closest thing to my signature scent. It is definitely a Long Lost Perfume, and quite honestly not as much Civet in it compared to Bal V or La Nuit for instance, but a very unique and beautiful fragrance from the 70s.