What female scents are even deadlier on the male? - Page 2

I had the most amazing oolong and orange blossom tea just the other day so I'm very disposed to this scent at the moment. Likewise I have a faithful bottle of Potter and Moore Tuberose and Orchid that's reaching a conclusion so I'll be looking for a replacement in the near future.

I'll look up the rose threads - the use of this beautiful flower has been a revelation to me and I can't believe it's not used more widely in conventional 'male' perfumery. But hell if it's out there does it matter who it's marketed at.

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Thanks for the feedback - I'm sure I'm going to come up against some stuff I really can't stand or that can't stand me, but that's going to be part of the... er... fun.

Ever thought that a female fragrance might be possible if not on you then for another guy? If so feel free to suggest away at your leisure.

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Thanks for the compliment... Black Orchid will have its day, fear not - along with a few of my favourites it's waiting in the wings!!

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Today I have been wearing Chanel No5.

I will report back on my experiences within 24 hours.

Tomorrow I'll be wearing Cuir de Russie by Chanel.

Decide what I'll wear the day after by posting your suggestions...

Oooops. No offence intended!

I know this is wondering off the point but what would you regard as being the 'dry and quiet male-marketed scents'? It would be good to get a perspective from the other side as to what in the 'male world' feels comfortable and wearable.

Anais Anais - that is totally from left field!! I've never even thought of that being worn by a man let alone heard of a guy sporting it... It's still widely available here in the UK so I'm totally fascinated, I will definitely give it a go - on a blotter!! Hehehe.

Thank you so much for your contribution and if any other suggestions come to mind just drop them on the thread.

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The first nomination for Caleche, though Kelly Caleche has had a number of mentions. Interesting, I wonder if the parent is more masculine than the flanker - have you tried them both? I like all the horsey associations with these older Hermes perfumes, so in keeping with the house's origins as saddlemakers.

Madam Rochas and First are also catching my eye - thanks for these new additions to the list.

Yesterday I went face to face, or should that be spray to skin, with Coco's most famous creation: Chanel No5.

Here's my report from the front line:

Approaching Chanel No5 is like nearing the Eiffel Tower.

It's a monument, an icon, a piece of history.

Just as Gustave's construction - only in it's thirties when Coco unleashed No5 on the world - occupies every vista in Paris, so this scent glowers over the world of perfume.

It is ever-present, in the background, watching as the city beneath takes shape.

And as surely as Monsieur Eiffel's wonder is male so Madam Chanel's is female. To women of a certain generation and perhaps more to men of a certain age Chanel No5 is perfume. Chanel No5 is woman.

But what kind of woman is she?

Some will say that she is a Dowager in an ancient moth eaten tweed two piece: ear rings too large and lipstick too rouge, a relic of another age.

No.

But neither is she, anymore at least, a little low cut black dress, all barely concealed cleavage and scarcely restrained sexuality.

No5 is alive, still stylish in a navy trouser suit, cut razor sharp by Saint Laurent. She is intellectual, forceful, political, opinionated, passionate. She is her own woman.

Every encounter starts with that legendary fizz, not bone dry champagne like Ma Griffe or Miss Dior. This is the alkaline effervescence, the plink plink fizz of of two tablets thrown into soda water to stave off the effects of another night before.

The heart is floral, but no bridesmaid's corsage. These are flowers, wrapped in paper, bought on an impulse by No5, or, more likely, an helpless admirer.

There's fur too. Something decided and animal skirting round her ankles, ready to bite. But not as much as there once was: still fur but no claw now.

As the day wears on (after an argumentative debate with old friends over lunch: fingers snapped, voices raised, old battles re-fought) so the mood softens. The suit is readjusted,the hair put back in place, powder reapplied.

But fear not if Ms Chanel needs to re-establish her authority at any moment, the plink, plink fizz can be called upon. No No5 woman ever leaves home without a vial in her her handbag.

No5 is admirable, admired and respected.

Is she loved?

Yes, though most especially by men, and women, who remember her in her prime.

But even for those with no liking for her she is necessary: an example in elegance, an exercise on growing old and gaining power gracefully.

And as for me, I adore her.

But of course, here's the rub: I am a mere man, so can I ever hope to spray and go on my way with any confidence?

To a degree: there's no earthly reason why the soft rich fragrance that No5 melts into shouldn't sit confidently on my skin. But No5 was never of this Earth.

I can only be at ease if I appreciate and accept that to wear No5 as a man is not merely to put on perfume, it is to take make a statement in scent. Others will recognise No5, others will know what I am doing, my number will be up.

I'll take my chances. Spin the wheel croupier. Number five. Black.

Thank you senore01 - another post from the House of Chanel coming up...

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Another masterpiece from the Rue Cambon. But if Chanel No5 was unmistakenly feminine, then I'm not so sure about yesterday's fragrance...

Cuir de Russie is an angular officer of the Tsar's cavalry mounted on the back of a black thoroughbred horse.

It is worldy, sensual, rough and exotic. Yet at once has vulnerability: it offers glimpses of tenderness and hints at a melancholy as vast and unending as the Russian Steppes themselves.

This is hide: black, burnished, animal and unclean.

This is not the polite, precise, bridled up leather of a Hermes saddle or bag: fit for French fops on manicured ponies.

This is military leather, hardened by battle and burned birch. Impervious to the elements and sentiment , at first unyielding and unconscious of compromise.

But wait, something resides beneath the apparently impenetrable surface.

For at once with the St Petersburg splendour of Empire so comes its underbelly. The Caucuses, the conquered kingdoms of Mohammedans, Cossacks and Stans.

There is something of the souk: cardamon perhaps, the charcoal burner of the water pipe and its sweet and flavoured tobacco, a slow cooking stew of meats and fruits and spices.

Yet, through the bazzar of boots and belts and bags, specially cured to disguise from whence they came. Beyond the army supplier's oleaginous smiles and eternal deals, without the Medina's walls: here resides the truth.

The tannery. It's filth, it's excretia, it's putrefaction. The inevitable and unbearable pain that brings forth such beauty.

And it is all too much amongst the stink of the skins.

Our officer raises a pomade of flowers and bergamot to the nose, hoping hopelessly to ward off the evil and the smells. Spinning on sculpted heal, turning a back on reality. An old pipe is lit with french tobacco and our soldier departs in search of sex, solace and forgetfulness.

As with every aristocrat of a declining Empire, our officer is open to offers from either man or woman - at the right price.

The mercenary promises to love no one. When present the presence is intense and enveloping as a lover's close embrace. Alas, it is gone too soon leaving only absence and the heart to yearn through the longeur to its return.

Cuir de Russie is the angular officer of the Tsar's cavalry mounted on the back of a black thoroughbred horse that every man and every woman wants to be or be with.

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In case you're wondering how I decide which new perfume to wear and comment on, well.... I don't.

You decide for me.

Every day I post a list of 10 options (the most popular from the 275+ recommendations I've received to date).

Just post or personal message your vote and at the end of the day I announce what I'll be wearing tomorrow and writing about the next day.

It's simple: I am your human perfume Guinea Pig...

Today, 7th December 2012, I will be wearing:

Caron Tabac Blond

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Hermes Kelly Caleche

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Cristalle

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Givenchy Absolutely Irresistible

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

Lanvin Arpege

Prada Prada (Amber)

or the new comer...

Molinard Habanita

Rule Change: All previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty four hours... starting now.

Hey - I'm running this experiment in a couple of places - hence not all the suggestions are from here - I've had more check ins for Intense than 21 - but if a few more like 21 it will make it to the top 10 ultimately.

Please be patient, there are over 275 suggestions and rising every day!!

Thanks for the vote for Portrait of a Lady, the first since it reached the top 10.

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Black Orchid has been an incredibly popular choice and is a perfume I was wearing for a long time before I even knew it was meant for women!!!

It will get reviewed in a special holiday season set later in the month.

In the meantime do keep voting...

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Another POAL supporter!!

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Thierry Muggler Angel

This is the quintessence, the apogee, the very apotheosis of a certain kind of smell.

This is the ultimate candy store cologne, A patisserie confiserie fragrance. A sweet shop scent through and through.

Bubbling vats of caramel and chocolat await behind its pretty as a picture door. On shelves giant jars bathe honeycombs in more honey, next coconut cremes, backcurrant straws with sherbert, pear drops and melon bon bons.

In the scarcely seen kitchen the hard pressed pastry chef whips Chantilly cream into concupiscent curls. The shop girl, whose heart crushes on him adds vanilla essence with a heavy love-wearied hand.

Out front, beyond brass rails, acres of counter of marble and mahogany bares tartes of shortcrust and flaky bases and those bottomed with sponge that we Anglo Saxons incorrectly name flan.

All are drowned in confectioners custard and surmounted with exotic and out of season fruit, here and there the odd marron glace.

An indulged mouse, fat on unbaked batters and unwhipped creams, scampers confidently across the floor to a nest beside the hidden oven.

The maitresse de maison catches your eye steps forward bobs a greeting and smiles a toothless smile, smearing chocolate hands against her straining stained apron.

Will you stay in this palace of sugared pleasures, the atmosphere thickened with fudge flavours and nougat notes?

Can you bear so much sweetness and heavy, heavy air?

Some will take their seats and gorge an hour or three, gathering like-minded souls around them by the dozen.

And others, like me, will flee. Something too cloying in this toffee finished fragrance to countenance too long.

But is it because the madame's customers are mainly women of the court? Oh no, Monsieur Mugler's is just across the way and identical in everyway, except he sells coffee, and he's not for me any longer either, though as a youth you understand I went there now and again.

Who hasn't a marvelous and misspent past?

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It's a little after midnight thirty. London. The lines are closed.

Today, 8th December 2012, I will be wearing:


Molinard Habanita Eau de Parfum

I know it's not the EdT, but it's the nearest thing I can get my hands on at such short notice following the sudden surge! I may come back to the EdT another time depending on how this beast rides later today.

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Hermes Kelly Caleche

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Cristalle

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Givenchy Absolutely Irresistible

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

Lanvin Arpege

Prada Prada (Amber)

or the new comer...

Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles

Rule Change: All previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty three and a half hours... starting now.

I do know what you mean about Angel - there is something beneath, hence the mouse running across the floor and the toothless smile - just the merest hint that all this sugar and spice that can't be good for one. I just wish that there was more, because the patchouli, as much as I love that note just can't offset all the caramel.

Of it's type though, as I hope I made clear, the absolute pinnacle an uncompromising work that inspires and deserves a certain respect.

Ahhh, Carnal Flower. A wonderful fragrance but officially unisex so sadly off limits for my experiment. Potrait of a Lady is a truly enchanting scent so maybe you'd like to give it your vote.

Thank you for your kind words and continued interest.

Remember if you ever come across another gem that you'd like to add to the long (275+ perfumes) list just post it here...

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Great suggestions CapriDog: Maharahjah is a new recommendations and so goes onto the list. Likewise Elixir - though others have mentioned Eau des Merveilles. 31 Rue Cambon has a few supporters and will make it onto the top 10 if a few more like it enough.

Remember - please keep your recommendations for the long list coming and don't forget to pick from the daily top 10 as to what I will wear the next day!!

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Thank you so much for sharing these thoughts Profumo, they are so well put.

I really agree with you. I found that No5, after the initial hard-headed opinionated scent that we all know, really mellowed as the day went on - into a gentle post lunch haze that had sandalwood, vanilla and for me quite a lot of rose present throughout. I found it a rather comforting smell - and this is quite aside from associations as I don't believe any of the important women in my family or friends have ever worn the fragrance regularly.

I would go as far to say that after a bristling sense of confidence that came with the initial aldehyde kick, the effect on me was a warm sense of reassurance.

I don't think I'd have any problem wearing No5 out and about and if that sense of bonne dans sa peau could be replicated this could be a regular scent for me.

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Good call MonkeyBars - something I probably left out of the review is that certain spice that sweetshops - especially in Germany and northern Europe have. Cumin, yes that could be it, I had thought that there was maybe a hint of aniseed, very, very slight, liquorice...

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Better late than never. Technical problems overcome, here's yesterday's review of a truly incomparable perfume...

Caron Tabac Blond

The winter comes in early and hard to these northern ports where France ends suddenly and the blank-faced Atlantic begins.

In storm surges sideways rain slams the little parade of quayside shops. At night all are battened down except for M. Caron's, the red cedar stained exterior lit by one lamp. It casts its beam across the familiar sign 'bar-tabac-bierres blondes' and Pelforth's pelican looking on.

Inside, cutting a swathe through the thick sweet cloud to reach a table, the scent is not of acrid tobacco shavings smoked by sailors, stokers and stevedores but of the honeyed, clove-infused, golden hued stuff of the officers' mess.

Defying the sign you order a bierre brune: dark amber in a glass, brewed from English yeast brought over to conjure comfort for soldiers on their return from the front.

Long stemmed carnations in clear glass carafes have been commandeered by amorous sea captains eager for female attention.

For their part, the women ranged against the creme Anglaise coloured walls, dresses polka dotted pinks, blues and violets smell sweetly of last summer's improvised flower water, iris and a citrus blossom, and of the musk of their profession, the oldest.

Longing to kick off leather boots to the knee and settle down to true home comforts, you must settle instead for their simulacrum: a stodgy pudding in the English style laced with heavily vanilla-ed custard from Caron's kitchen and the conversation of a woman who is not and could never be your wife.

The nights at the 'bar-tabac-bierre blondes' are long, and though perhaps not what they should be or once were, in a world turned upside down, on a weathered-beaten winter's night they are without doubt the best show in town.

Year's later, a thumb worn photograph in hand, you will not recall the colours of Caron's, you may not even remember the girl's name, just the colour of her hair, the damp yielding of her flesh in the cheap room upstairs and that priceless smell.

Hello All

A double helping of reviews today due to yesterday's technical problems.

It's time to leave the icy climes of a French sea port behind and head to a much more heady atmosphere, as we spray on the:

Mollinard Habanita Eau de Parfum (2012)

Reflecting, it's easy to see how Habanita became so habit forming.

It seemed such fun at first to dive into its deep resinous pools of laughter, to smoke reefers with new friends in rooftop courtyards, potted geraniums lining up against terracotta walls.

Then, someone introduced mystic philosophy and suggested it wasn't necessary to wash absolutely every day, healthier not to hose down each dawn.

A spritz of an antique great uncle's vetiver here some patchouli oil behind an ear there. The musky smell really wasn't that bad, quite, well, sexual, really.

Soon we were floating from room to room quoting Sufi texts in floor length embroidered Kaftans and debating Jung in Killim strewn salons.

Someone said, I forget who now, we should take a six month trip to Tangiers, live on nutmeg flavoured creme brulee and trust funds.

How we laughed and laughed until we cried.

Then someone, oh, I really can't remember her name, a feminist, she was always reading de Beauvoir aloud to the group. She got very upset about the whole thing, accused someone of wearing leather, which was banned, so we abandoned our plans and made up bouquets of roses we stole from the botanical gardens.

Happy times. Where are they now? Oh, I couldn't tell you. No idea.

Habinita Eau de Parfum is the pre existential smell of 1920s bohemian Paris re-imagined by a well meaning West Coast new age commune. All the rough edges and intellectual vigour knocked off and replaced with a dose of sugared sentimentality and only slightly knowing sexuality.

It's sophisticated in a long line skirt and short bob cut sort of a way and there's absolutely no reason why a man (metaphorically) an a smock shouldn't get away with it.

A very long lasting oddity, sure to draw knowing glances, especially from the fully self-actualised.

Please note, this review is for the new Eau de Parfum not the older Eau de Toilette that is more widely available especially in the US.

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I'm totally with cumin - I often find both this and cardamon in sweeter and vanilla perfumes though they are never listed on the pyramids. I find the label 'spices' very very frustrating and imprecise as though fenugreek and cinnamon or ginger and cayenne were in anyway the same. It's a bit like just saying 'flowers'.

Anyway, you're right there is a spiciness to this perfume that saves it from being pure candy floss - just like a decent sweet shop (candy store) has stem gingers, apple sours, rhubarbs and custards and liquorice.

Another fragrance I detect in some perfumes is cannabis smoke (god knows you smell it enough in the air in London), yet again it never makes its way onto the pyramids...

Thanks teardrop - I fully intend to - the fragrance pyramids read quite differently for the two. At first I was comparing the listing for the EdT which has leather right at the front as a big gun, with the scent and I thought I was going mad as there was none coming from my wrist. Then I looked at the EdP listing and lo and behold - no leather. Likewise the benzoin is gone - I was really, really looking forward to this leather / benzoin combination it seems well - totally out there. I'm also a big, big fan of both notes.

What the EdP does have is Mastic - another sweet resin - and nutmeg a-plenty, which does give it a slightly off kilter feel as I hope the review conveyed.

This is not a bad perfume, it was just so much more restrained than I was hoping and expecting.

I feel I have unfinished business with Habanita and am eyeing up some vintage EdT right now.

Thanks for the comments.

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A perfume that some associate with more mature women. Well, only in part I feel...

Lanvin Arpege

Arpege is an unnerving child.

Arriving at the neat counterfeit of a country cottage that is her parents' - your dear friend Andre and his wife Jeanne - 'little piece of Laguedoc in the suburbs' - she comes across as willful, headstrong, almost unhinged.

Asked to collect flowers for the house from the Fraysee's beautiful garden she (Margaret is her given name, used exclusively by her mother when upset with her, which is often) turns almost feral, a teen on a chemical kick she rushes around the manicured borders (themselves pretending after the style of rural meadows) pulling up plants careless of their complexion or the destruction she is reeking.

Eventually she dumps them all: Jasmine, Rose, Iris, Lily, Lily of the Valley and even the precious camelias from the cloche in a series of unwashed carafes still sour with the stench of last night's rough white wine.

In the music room, where she places three flower rammed vessels in a row atop an apparently out of tune upright piano the smell is approaching the unbearable.

When Arpege starts to hammer out her chromatic scales, you notice that it is her playing and not the instrument that is off-key, and more to the point quite deliberately.

You exchange a sly smile with the daughter of the house: she is affecting inability as accurately as only a truly useful musician can.

What feels like a brief conversation follows and she excuses herself to change for dinner.

Talking politics and the economy and the desperate state of things since the crash as the women prepare, Andre teaches you a new aperitif - vanilla Martinis - the latest American way of forgetting.

Jeanne enters, elegant as ever.

Then Arpege, her hair tied up and and held in place with? With a pencil, an artist's pencil. At dinner she grows with a glass of wine in hand into what you realise she now is: a young woman. Well read, she speaks eloquently of Eliot and that woman Woolf and fragrant. Is it her mother's sandalwood or father's vetiver that envelopes her?.

After the meal you retire to sweet Amaretto's and sweeter Chopin, played by the same delicate hands that earlier tore up roots with such urgency and blundered through elementary piano exercises.

And then she is gone, an early night, for after all she is merely on the cusp of womanhood. A promise of a future of greatness, or perhaps an echo of her mother's magnificent past.

Arpege, even in its reigned in contemporary form, is a tough and strange perfume to get to know. Her behaviour in the opening notes is by most measures quite unsettling and to some noses rather upsetting.

But forbearance and a little understanding sees the acidic aledhyde blossom into first a full-bodied floral and then a warm-hearted almost wooded amber scent, that never looses its edgy integrity. Arpege can give the best in this class - including the biggest names - a run for their money.

I long to meet her mother - the true vintage.

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If you read these reviews regularly, you might be interested to know that you can help decide what perfume I wear each day and review the following.

I post the results at around midnight GMT and the options for the following day below, just post your favourites on this thread...

It's a little after midnight. London. The lines are closed.

Finally, a very clear winner.

Today, 11th December 2012, I will be wearing:

Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Cristalle

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Givenchy Absolutely Irresistible

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

Prada Prada (Amber)

Hermes Eau des Merveilles

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

... or the newcomer...

Chanel Chanel N°19

Rule Change: All previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty four hours... starting now.

That voting, together with private messages and others, makes things very close.

A four way tie.

Please cast the deciding vote and put me out of my misery...

Once more into the breach dear friends.... take to your trusted steeds....

Hermes Kelly Caleche

'Those horses are so spoilt I swear they sleep on straw strewn with rose petals.'.

An equine huff of a laugh, he rears his head back, raises a riding crop from his side to tap a glowing forehead. He breaks a smile and with a click of the heals of long riding boots he turns, showing off his golden mane as he does and is gone.

But it is he who smells of roses and leather and the early summer. It is he who smells exactly as you do.

He came, a messenger from 'the Gods': the judges. Those venerated men and women in whose hands your equestrian fate now resides.

How much simpler for the show-jumping powerhouses, projecting into the air with flair and barely controlled strength. Their task is merely to dazzle, to defy sense with their penetration and precision. They can be judged objectively: all they need to do is make no errors and achieve the required time.

And the masculine three day eventers? As long as they stay the course and come up reeking of earth and animal and grass, well, who cares?

Yours is the more difficult task. To harness horse sans Equipage into a wholly pleasing whole. Combine film star glamour and princessly Grace into three minutes of animal ballet.

The final preparation for your dressage moments in the ring. You and the beast exchange whispers, with a flick his tail he throws a shower of fine white powder in the air, you adjust the saddle: the finest French leather, cured and scented so not even an allusion to the abattoir might upset the ride.

You mount and breathe deeply, the breeze brings the hint of wild yellow irises from the meadows lying fallow beyond the stately home.

The same wind brings your name made tinny by tannoys. You bridle for a moment. Your desire to perform, the urge bring pleasure makes an anxious knot of your insides. Walk on.

The arena, the illustrated sports photographers' flashing bulbs, the hubbub, the crowd, the swell and the excitement.

First silence. The smell of his roses, your rose, the bridle and the horse.

Then music.

The dance begins.

Kelly Caleche is a perfume that exists above all to bring a message of pleasure. Bright, gorgeously groomed citrus, yields instantly to early summer roses and the unmistakable hue of the most luxurious leather. This leather, is the distinct Hermes note, high and clear and carrying a fragility that is to my nose slightly haunting, or perhaps more precisely yearning.

It is this quality and the sparseness - as one critic put it - of this relatively simple composition that raises this perfume above the thorny crowd.

One for times when life is about giving and receiving or desiring pleasure.

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Please don't forget, it's you who decide what women's fragrance this guy wears every day.

My promise to you? To report back on the latest stage of my voyage across the sea of female scents...

It's a little after one am. London. The lines are closed.

The closest and most frenetic day of voting yet yielded a four-way tie. After count back, seniority and the tossing of a coin...

Today, 12th December 2012, I will be wearing:

Givenchy Absolutely Irresistible

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Cristalle

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

Prada Prada (Amber)

Hermes Eau des Merveilles

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

Chanel Chanel N°19

...or the newcomer...

Calvin Klein Obsession


Rule Change: All previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty three hours... starting now.

Thank you Profumo

Isn't coincidence a strange thing?

First, I too adore the scent of roses - I live near three our four of the world's most fantastic rose gardens - and whilst they have remarkably long seasons from May to September I miss them the rest of the year.

If you haven't seen them yet - there are a few comments on some other rose perfumes I encountered the other day.

Second - I chanced upon Tea Rose on a fragrance database just yesterday and looked it up immediately on e-bay and amazon - it's around and I am very, very tempted having read your words.

Big thanks for you much appreciated input.

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Thank you Profumo

Isn't coincidence a strange thing.

First, I too adore the scent of roses - I live near three our four of the world's most fantastic rose gardens - and whilst they have remarkably long seasons from May to September I miss them the rest of the year.

If you haven't seen them yet - there are a few comments on some other rose perfumes I encountered the other day.

Second - I chanced upon Tea Rose on a fragrance database just yesterday and looked it up immediately on e-bay and amazon - it's around and I am very, very tempted having read your words.

Big thanks for you much appreciated input.

Thanks Profumo - so kind of you to think of me.

This is now added to my wish list and I'll be keeping an eye out on e-bay for it.

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Thank you first of all to all of you who invited me to the most outrageous gathering in human history...

Jean Desprez Bal a Versailles

1789.

The floor of the Hall of Mirrors is filled with fractured glass.

Marie Antoinette skips gaily across the shards in untied ballet shoes and bonnet atop her seventy two inch face: six feet from chin at base through powdered visage and scaffolded hair above.

The queen and women of her toilette encased in immense dresses a la Polonaise are costumier conjurers' sleights of hand in damasks, plain silks, laces, bustles, embroiders, and petticoats, petticoats, petticoats.

They have come to disdain the deliberately deranged destruction of the night before. To review the revels and not speak of revolution.

Around them a haze of powder hangs in heavy air. They beg to deceive with orange blossoms, roses, jasmines and musk. But the nose cannot be fooled.

Despite their perfumed protests this place is menagerie not orangery.

Their very gowns give them away: nothing can counterfeit the crust of human excretia that forms on every surface.

The sweat of the near-extinguished attic seamstress infuses every sewn detail of the skirts; the drool of the fawning courtier in search of sexual and political favours forms dried rivers on each sleeve; a distressing, animal dampness rises from decolletages disturbed by distant cousins' amourous graspings.

And all around, amongst the fallen soldiers of the soon to be ancien regime: felled by drink, excess and fornication, an unseen feral mob is rising too.

Beneath floors and between walls, in attics and unused ante chambers a mass of minks swirls with civets and the escaped sheep of a pet farm, together feeding on crumbs of the vanilla cake of a court that has banished bread.

'More powder!' commands our monarch and asks her resins be brought forward to staunch the stench. But no amount of balsam can retrench the putrid perfume of a palace in its death throes.

From a grand salon far off in a distant wing of her vast sarcophagus she catches music in three four time and begins involuntarily to dance.

One slither of a mirror slices through shoe and draws a steady line of blue blood from her pale royal skin.

Death is in the room and will not depart.

***

Bal a Versailles is a dangerous, irresistibly repugnant scent for men and women prepared to dance the dance of death. For all its wondrous beauty nothing can disguise the beating of its monstrous bestial heart.

There may be flowers and powder a plenty but this is an unapologetically animal aroma with plenty of tooth and claw.

With silage the size of a herd of wildebeest and longevity the length of an elephant's memory this is not a commitment to be taken likely.

Accept its invitation and you are bid welcome to the party of a lifetime, but stay too long and you to may succumb to the guillotine's blade.

But hell is worth the risk!!

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It's a little after midnight. London. The lines are closed.

After a more pedestrian day at the polls a winner by an hair's breadth.

Today, 13th December 2012, I will be wearing:

Chanel Cristalle

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

Prada Prada (Amber)

Hermes Eau des Merveilles

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

Chanel Chanel N°19

Calvin Klein Obsession

Or the newcomer...

Estée Lauder Azuree Pure

Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty four hours... starting now.

Err thanks Compass Rose.

But you know when I set out on this journey part of the adventure was always going to be that I would encounter some horrors as well as joys and so far I've gotten away very, very easily, so perhaps it's time for my comeuppance ]. Hehehe.

Some interesting suggestions here - Opium has been mentioned before and I have access to both the vintage and current formulations..

KL by Lagerfelt and Eau de Rochas are new to the thread - so thanks for the original recommendations.

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A surprise review today!

Unfortunately Givenchy Absolutely Irresistible is proving absolutely impossible to locate in the UK where it has been 'withdrawn'.

Never fear, I have a sample on order through the internet and I will return to Hubert's house as soon as it arrives.

Meanwhile, today's travelling companion was:

Chanel Cristalle

The winter is passed.

Throw open shutters long closed against the saddest season and let the sunlight in.

Squinting in the brilliance perceive a sea of lemon trees: leaves waxy, elliptical fruit vivid in their summer coats.

Pause to take in the clear air still sharp with morning's first coolness.

A crisp white cotton shirt on yesterday's browned skin will guard against today's rays.

Descend the stairs and enter a world beyond the darkness within.

The garden: here dew dusted wild grasses are balm to life sore, care worn feet and high, cultured hyacinths kiss breezes that caress your face, once turned from the wind.

A peerless note of Jasmine rises like a song from your host.

Working in the grove, she coppices too early growth to ensure a sweeter harvest and treats deciduous mosses cruelly to keep them from claiming too much ground.

You walk into the middlemost part of the citrus forest to be alone with sunlight, fruit, wood, flower, grass.

To be alone with sunlight. To be alone. To be.

***

Cristalle is the cleanest, purest and, perhaps, most practical fragrance from the house of Chanel.

Like the atomically ordered materials from which it takes its name, it is easy to perceive, it's lines clear and sharp it's heart transparent and readable.

So much Sicilian lemon and citrus bergamot to start, then hyacinth and the characteristic 'Chanel Jasmine' as recognisable as the 'Guerlainade'.

Then wild grasses and cut wood, bark and moss compete with the higher notes that, on my skin at least, are never quite ready to let go.

It may be that our over-familiarity with this journey from fruit to flower to stem and soil has made it contemptible to us through a thousand shoddy copies.

But to disregard this Mediterranean marvel would be a great disservice both to it and to yourself.

For days when a clear head and a good conscience are required, this fragrance, be you man or woman, is a wonderful tonic.

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It's a little after midnight. London. The lines are closed.

Today. 14th December 2012. I will be wearing...

Hermes Eau des Merveilles

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

Prada Prada (Amber)

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

Chanel Chanel N°19

Calvin Klein Obsession

Estée Lauder Azuree Pure

Or the newcomer...

Yves Saint Laurent Opium

Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty four hours... starting now.

Thank you so much Mike T.

With this amazing post you take me beyond the 300 mark in terms of all the suggestions and recommendations that I've received.

I'm really so grateful to you and too all the other people that have contributed so generously and knowledgeably to the thread and to my magnificent adventure.

So to the next leg of the adventure...

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Today I ventured forth from the orange and lemon groves and towards the coast...

Hermes Eau des Merveilles

The scent of skin after a day sea swimming.

Warm salt water dried to crystals and then in turn smoothed away with lotions of amber and orange oil.

Departing hot sands in wild grass espadrilles you scale high dunes, where ocean's air is freest and head for coniferous forest beyond.

Amongst cedars and firs you find yourself jumping pools of light, cascading waterfalls of illumination from the incomplete canopy above.

You break a peppery sweat and stop to recall waves breaking on the shore, the sigh of sand as water withdraws and crackling salt, shimmering in sunlight.

So the sea bids you to return, to accept her effervescent embrace, relinquish the amber and the orange oil to her charms, the waxing and the waning of her watery arms.

At ocean's reach, you wait a moment, regard the indeterminate horizon, then, on an instant dive and enter the cool blue immensity.

***

Eau de Merveilles is a minor miracle of a fragrance.

What it may lack in troubling depths and dark complexity it more than makes up for in its spare and precise composition.

This perfume exceeds the mere reminiscence of a beach in high summer, this is sand, and sun and sea and mainly salt.

There are some tones of sweetness too, of amber and orange citrus. There's swathe of forest, the needles of towering conifers, their bark, their resins and the wild grasses that the trees protect then give way to on the exposed dunes.

After the initial fruit of the opening the fragrance dries down into a fairly linear scent, but then aren't the best beach days seemingly constant and unending too?

And the best beach days? Well they are shared with the best of friends, and they can all - men and women - come along to this elegant party.

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It's a little after 1am (Hey it is Friday!). London. The lines are closed.

On countback and by the tiniest of margins.

Today, 15th December 2012, I will be wearing:

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Prada Prada (Amber)

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

Chanel Chanel N°19

Calvin Klein Obsession

Estée Lauder Azuree Pure

Yves Saint Laurent Opium

Or the newcomer...

Estée Lauder Cinnabar


Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty three hours... starting now.

A bit of a sleeper this one, but slowly climbing to the top of the top 10.

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I really like Eau de Merveilles. It's an extremely subtle fragrance - expect no fireworks, but a perfect evocation of a time and place. It also has surprisingly pleasant silage for something that could at first seem rather a close to the skin scent. I also found longevity - with which I often have problems to be good.

As for the gender question - there isn't one, this is totally available for men or women.

I'm looking forward to L'Heure Bleu - I love these old Guerlain scents no matter how much tell me to be weary of them. But I guess a few days in and I'm getting battle hardened - maybe people are backing away from me and laughing and I haven't noticed yet. He laughs.

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Yes, there is something very - insistent about Mugler fragrances. I don't mean that in their own way they're not complex and well composed but there seems to be little variation, not much of a journey to travel. We'll see - this one has quite a lot of support and so I may end up wearing it soon!

I don't think you'll regret Shalimar Parfum Initial. I loved it - an exercise in creamy vanilla without the cloying.

Today we're off to a very particular place. The Regent's Park, named after our most perfumed of princes, is London's most beautiful open space and at it's heart is a exquisite secret.

Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady

At the Regent's Park in London, nestled below the Primrose Hill where flowers no longer grow. Between the slight lake, ornamental bridge and 'alpine' blooms of a Japanese landscape and the proper boxed-in beauty of Italian avenues there lies a rose garden.

Here, between late May and mid September, thirty thousand stems of four hundred different families compete each year in fragrant floral battle.

They are called 'Song and Dance', 'Mountbatten', 'Radox', 'Angela Rippon' after Broadway shows, royal relatives, soap sud-ed relaxation and near forgotten newsreaders.

All summer they spread their scents and crowd each other out: corollas inevitably bigger, bolder and more carelessly beautiful than before.

Join me now at this season's end, after a downpour has broken the uncommon heat, and in an humidity that humbles.

The flowers have begun their sweet decay. And the thirty thousand's innumerable thousands of petals are distilled by a climate we despair of into nature's perfume.

So many notes in this massed choir and yet they reach a harmony, and sing, if not with one voice, then in a a single accord.

Rose.

The memories of the blooming months just passed pass through my mind - summer fruits and festivals - incense burnt against insects, harvests preserved with cloves and cinnamon and spices in jams, chutneys, pickles: all to warm cold winter.

This is water to ward off long dark nights.

A sketch of nature's most seductive daughter: Summer.

***

Portrait of a Lady is as simple as a rose garden made scent.

It may carry the notes of various varieties and species, but ultimately they unite to form a fragrance that is pitch perfect.

There are summer fruits here too, crushed raspberries and blackcurrants, their juice released directly onto the prying fingers that try to pick them.

For me, the incense comes and goes and is as much sweet benzoin, spice and sandalwood as it is smoke. It never shouts down the floral heart of the perfume that is so attractive and enduring.

The English Rose is of course a Lady, and this is a particular, accurate and charming picture of her.

But the rose is also the symbol of England itself and no Englishman, indeed no man of any country, should be embarrassed to wear the bloom in his buttonhole and the scent next to his skin.

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It's a little after midnight. London. The lines are closed.

On countback (again) and by the tiniest of margins.

Today, 16th December 2012, I will be wearing:

Guerlain L'Heure Bleue

What will I wear tomorrow? Choose from the following 10...

CoSTUME NATIONAL Scent Intense

Dolce&Gabbana D&G Light Blue

Chanel Les Exclusifs de Chanel Coromandel

Prada Prada (Amber)

Chanel Chanel N°19

Calvin Klein Obsession

Estée Lauder Azuree Pure

Yves Saint Laurent Opium

Estée Lauder Cinnabar

Or the newcomer...

Cartier Must de Cartier

Remember all previous votes count towards a fragrance's running total and every participant gets a new vote every day!

You have just under twenty four hours... starting now.