Synchronized Fridays 2019

[Cook.bot]

I hope someone brings this thread to the attention of Turin or Sanchez, so they can see how much we enjoy their writings, even when they're taking pokes at our darlings.

It's the wit of the writing that makes The Guides so much fun -- and wit is always more fun when it's snarling.

[tdem1961]

In Boucheron Trouble. LT gave it one star and called it a "dismal oriental" when I find it a lovely vanilla-sweet oriental with a nice tart citrusy note up top. Only my opinion, of course, which is entirely the point of The Guides. Whether I'm scratching my head in puzzlement or cackling along in recognition, LT and TS never fail to entertain.

[Earlyn]

I’m feeling way too serious today so going with Dior Addict.

[Puma]

Today I am wearing
ACACIOSA by Caron, the pure perfume.

This "soapy floral" was given 1 Star by LT.
I own and love many wonderful perfumes panned by LT, among them Poivre, Tabac Blond, Rouge d'Hermès, Cabochard, Coriandre.
ACACIOSA is the only one where I accept LT's opinion. For all the rest I own and that were panned by LT I strongly disagree.

[Trilby Lark]

The Tuscan leather " new car" cracked me up ;p I have a sample so might wear that or Infusion d'iris " woody floral" ( what's wrong with that, anyway?...)

I would have said,

Tuscan Leather - Beef Jerky

I ended up giving my bottle away even though I wore it a lot at first, especially when wearing an old leather jacket.

[justfoxie]

I hope someone brings this thread to the attention of Turin or Sanchez, so they can see how much we enjoy their writings, even when they're taking pokes at our darlings.

It's the wit of the writing that makes The Guides so much fun -- and wit is always more fun when it's snarling.

100% agree! I appreciate that they generally don't sit on the fence and are quite clear about what they like. . .and what they don't.

[Trilby Lark]

I hope someone brings this thread to the attention of Turin or Sanchez, so they can see how much we enjoy their writings, even when they're taking pokes at our darlings.

It's the wit of the writing that makes The Guides so much fun -- and wit is always more fun when it's snarling.

I just sent an email via their website perfumestheguide.com.

[incense+heliotrope]

I've known for months what my choice would be for this sync: Hiris d'Hermes.

Amusingly dismissed by Turin with one word: 'Orrible. He called it a "sad iris" and dissed both it and perfumer Giacobetti by calling it "one of her sour, thin florals".

I adore it and find it melancholy rather than sad, crisp rather than sour, and light-footed rather than thin. And who could disapprove of that beautiful blue bottle?





That should go into the Rules of Shopping, along with "Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry."

Has LT got it in for Giacobetti ? I'm Synching in another of her creations, Penhaligon's Elixir, which he describes as 'cinnamon rose'. I don't get much rose, and though there is warm spice, I mostly get eucalyptus and incense, especially at the start. Very wearable, and still one of my favourites.

[PerfumedLady]

Yay, I did make it in; I'm so happy I get to read all these great posts today!

We did tell Luca about this sync a few years back; he did peek in and gave it the thumbsup! I don't recall if he mentioned passing it along to Tania, though. I hope it will make them happy to see we're still at it!

Nice to have a twin, Earlyn! I am not drunk and I do like Addict!

I see lots of fragrances I enjoy today; Hiris in particular was robbed, if you ask me.

Yes to updating Rules of Shopping, Cook.bot! I was thinking maybe this cautionary tale should even be made into one of those terrible after-school movies from the 1960s/70s. All day, I've had an image of Sally Field staggering and holding herself up with the perfume counter as she rants about bourbon vanilla and orange blossom.

CwAlice, I'll try to get those requested reviews up for you over the weekend. I should have some free time tomorrow.

Just so glad to see this sync is still so popular! I'm with you, Trilby, a little fragrant rebellion is a healthy thing! At least stinkin' the place up is legal and safe!

[LiveJazz]

Syncing with Creed Vetiver '48.

It's one of my favorite scents, but like, Turin's not wrong in calling it "not vetiver". It's more like green mineral ginger powder, which is exactly what I enjoy about it!

I'd be interested to know what he actually wrote about it!

[Redneck Perfumisto]

Switched to 1-star (first Guide) Mauboussin Pour Homme.

mauboussin-by-mauboussin-for-men.jpg

Turin review to follow....

[Zealot Crusader]

I completely forgot the sync and wore something else but I had Duc de Vervins on the brain for what it's worth. It's a beautiful fougère for being the "worst" according to LT.

I'm beginning to think he hates conventional formulae as in anything composed in a well-worn style rather than pushing a boundary or being unique/avant-garde. I could be totally wrong though.

As a fan of both heavy metal and punk rock (both very derivative/intertexual genres), I'm fine with plain but well-crafted genre expressions

[Redneck Perfumisto]

Syncing with Creed Vetiver '48.

It's one of my favorite scents, but like, Turin's not wrong in calling it "not vetiver". It's more like green mineral ginger powder, which is exactly what I enjoy about it!

I'd be interested to know what he actually wrote about it!

Short enough to type!

Vetiver (Creed) * not vetiver

Creed has, as my father would have said, gone where the hand of man never set foot, and made a vetiver that does not smell of vetiver, which is a shame because (1) vetiver smells good, and (2) whatever is in there instead does not. LT

[Redneck Perfumisto]

Mauboussin Homme (Mauboussin) * woody oriental

There is a wonderful word in French that denotes an average specimen of the male of the species: beauf', short for beau-frère, i.e., "brother-in-law." This is his fragrance. LT

[luca turin]

Thanks for the heads-up! Having a laugh, keep'em coming!

[N.CAL Fragrance Reviewer]

Thanks for the heads-up! Having a laugh, keep'em coming!

Thanks for popping in. Hope you enjoyed the various picks here

[cazaubon]

I synced with Penhaligon’s Elixir, which I enjoyed very much. :-). Today I will give Profumum Confetto a go (I have a sample). I noticed when reading the list of one star scents that many were things I had previously owned and gotten rid of.

The best review for me is still the one for Amarige in the very first French guide. Hilarious!

[Redneck Perfumisto]

Thanks for the heads-up! Having a laugh, keep'em coming!

Mauboussin Homme (Mauboussin) * weirdy oriental

Luca wins. RP

[CuddleCat]

I'm late posting but I did sync. My day scent was Mon Guerlain - a lavender vanilla that was given 2 stars & my evening scent was Grand Soir by MFK - a woody amber that was also given a 2 star rating.

[cazaubon]

I'm late posting but I did sync. My day scent was Mon Guerlain - a lavender vanilla that was given 2 stars & my evening scent was Grand Soir by MFK - a woody amber that was also given a 2 star rating.

I love both of those! :-)

[Redneck Perfumisto]

Moved up to a 2-starred!


Aqua Pour Homme (Bulgari) ** citrus woody

If I were queen, one of my first acts would be to declare a moratorium on men's sports fragrances. This one keeps a low profile in an effort not to offend, but can't hide its bareness. TS

[PerfumedLady]

For ClockworkAlice:

Black Opium
The mere fact that the firm responsible for Y, Kouros, Rive Gauche, Champagne, Paris, and of course the original Opium produces this dreck makes you despair. This said, though it in no way diminishes their guilt, YSL is in very good company. BO (pun unintended) resembles a hundred other clones. Quite simply, everyone is doing it. How did we come to this?

The whole saga began in the 1980s, when linear perfumes came into existence. A linear perfume is one in which the materials (mostly synthetic, by necessity) have the property of being both long-lasting and with a flat perceptual curve, meaning that a little smells not much different than a lot. What this enables is a fragrance in which the top notes are pretty much the same as the drydown. Why is this interesting? Because people may buy perfumes based on the first thirty seconds, but they buy them again only if the next three hours work. Linear perfumery, at the expense of making initial composition tricky, essentially removes the time element from a fragrance, all the transitions between different accords that make things interesting in classical perfumes. The difficulty lies in coming up with a single accord that will carry the fragrance all the way. Then the fiercely difficult complexity of the top note achieves a sort of timbre-without-tune effect, a big band tutti stuck on a single, fraying chord, with the dancers briefly frozen in time before they vanish.

Unfortunately, the creation of this idea coincided with the rise of analytical chemistry as a perfumery tool. Now within a day or so of the appearance of every major new perfume, every firm distributes to its perfumers a document detailing the amount and nature of every molecule in it, sorted by the gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer in decreasing order of volatility: top notes first, drydown last. With natural materials, each of which contains dozens of molecules, getting from the analysis to the recipe is tricky, because you have to decide which molecule belongs to which material, and furthermore naturals are expensive and not linear. So you tend to leave them out. With synthetics, it's a piece of cake: what it says is what there is. Only when you are dealing with captives, i.e. molecules you can't buy on the market, does imitation become tricky. Gas chromatographic separation followed by mass spectrometry reveals that Black Opium contains thirty-seven or so aromachemicals, every one of which you are likely to find in roughly the same proportions in dozens of other fragrances, and apparently little or no naturals at all.

Now you have the conditions for a perfect storm of mediocrity. Hard-pressed perfumers, now given a short time in which to work, can do what they are asked to do, i.e. the same only different, by literally cutting and pasting formulae of the composition into linear fragrances ad infinitum. The "different" part is accommodated either by rotating the fragrance a bit in odor space, by changing the proportions of the main accord, or by adding another synthetic to the mix. Repeat this process a few dozen times, removing at each step what's expensive and difficult to use and copying what is cheap and effective, and after compositions like Euphoria and Flowerbomb you end up with Black Opium and La Vie Est Belle, knockoffs of knockoffs of knockoffs.

Yet the trend continues, cutting and splicing molecules in as it goes along. These compositions have become like Swiss Army knives. They didn't work all that well when they had just a couple of blades, an awl, and a corkscrew, and they work even less when four inches thick and including three wood saws, a magnifying lens and a ballpoint pen. But worst of all is the huge plastic display knife slowly rotating in the shop window. This is where we are with Black Opium: a bloated plastic factice of a useless, derivative construction. LT


Whew! I'm sorry, I don't think I'll get time to post the other one (but will still re-read it and post any choice excerpts!). But wanted you to at least be able to read about your sync scent!

[IsoESuperman]

Late entry but synced on time.

I broke out my sample of Estee Lauder Beyond Paradise for Men. There was apparently a misprint in the guide, Luca gave it 5 stars and copy & pasted the review for something decent under the entry for this. He obviously meant to 1-star it. Here's the correct review:

Beyond Paradise for Men (Estée Lauder) * flacid aquatic

One glance at the bottle tells all. A confused color ramp of disparate hedione-laden aromatic and transparent floral elements. As a longtime hi-fi geek, I can confidently say even the best equipment in the world can't transform Maroon Five into sonic pleasure. Hedione is often successfully used as a floralizer. Here in a rare letdown from the talented Calice Becker, it is used as a demoralizer. I'd rather wear dilution of smokers cough phlem than this dreadful banality. LT

[ClockworkAlice]

Whoa, PerfumedLady, thank you SO much! You did such an awfully big and long job I already feel bad I asked! But it was a VERY interesting read - and although not hilarious at all, it was very informative and eye opening, which is even better.
As a fragrance consumer, I think I like the more linear scents more than the evolving ones - I guess it tells something about my inexperienced and unrefined taste, or maybe just my relatively younger age so that I haven't experienced many of the greats in their own time - Angel is among the first perfumes I remember. I wonder if my preferences for (non)linearity will change with time.
Cannot thank you enough here!

[PerfumedLady]

You're very welcome, ClockworkAlice! I was glad to do it; don't you dare feel bad for asking! Nope, not hilarious but excellent writing and explanation of the difference between classical and linear. There are many fine perfume lovers who strongly prefer the more modern and linear and there are plenty of beautiful scents in that category. A preference for one is not better or worse than a preference for the other. However, anyone who wears Le Baiser happily definitely has some classical tastes as well! Like many of us, I suspect you'll find room for a bit of both in your collection.

And I did find an excerpt that pretty much summarizes the Le Baiser du Dragon review:

For something so loud and rich, it runs out of puff early. This is a floral oriental trying so hard to get everything on board that the dragon ends up above maximum gross weight and has to abort takeoff.LT

Now that is pretty funny, and the kind of statement that could only be made about a classical perfume!

[Cook.bot]

For ClockworkAlice:
Black Opium
The whole saga began in the 1980s, when linear perfumes came into existence.

Whoa. Talk about your teachable moments.

[LiveJazz]

Linear perfumery, at the expense of making initial composition tricky, essentially removes the time element from a fragrance, all the transitions between different accords that make things interesting in classical perfumes. The difficulty lies in coming up with a single accord that will carry the fragrance all the way. Then the fiercely difficult complexity of the top note achieves a sort of timbre-without-tune effect, a big band tutti stuck on a single, fraying chord, with the dancers briefly frozen in time before they vanish.

I love this statement, and that was a super interesting excerpt.

Perfect metaphor for the many overwrought chemistry exercises currently masquerading as perfumes. I can't particularly speak to Black Opium, but this "fraying" effect is also prevalent in many, many modern masculines.

[PerfumedLady]

^And there's the reason I honestly didn't mind typing this up! I knew that more people than CwAlice and me would benefit from it. For as much chemistry and history as it covers, it's actually quite succinct.

I love that passage especially too, LiveJazz! I did sniff BO (heh-heh) but it didn't make a huge impression on me. Don't remember much except too caramel-y/sugary for me. And yes, what it was at first spray was what it remained throughout. But I bet I know some of the masculines you're referring to, and I'd still way rather smell Black Opium than some of those.

[Earlyn]

For ClockworkAlice:

The difficulty lies in coming up with a single accord that will carry the fragrance all the way. Then the fiercely difficult complexity of the top note achieves a sort of timbre-without-tune effect, a big band tutti stuck on a single, fraying chord, with the dancers briefly frozen in time before they vanish.

Thank you PerfumedLady for posting the whole tome! As far as humor goes - I found the visuals/audibles of this particular statement quite hilarious and highly educational.

I'm understanding linear fragrances to be similar scented candles, pumping out one collected thing until extinguished. I am a fan of vintage and prefer and the complex and varied progressions, but sometimes I am in the mood for something that smells the same all the way through - like a candle (although a candle that could provide a complex development would be pretty awesome!). Linear might also work when I am going out and I want to smell a certain way at a certain time- floral heart vs. mossy drydown , for example. Very hard to manage that with an ever changing vintage.

I think I appreciate Turin's sentiments in the opening of The Guide where he speaks about his general attitude towards fragrance, again in musical terms-

"The fact is that this stuff (perfume) is worth loving. As with the tawdriest pop melody, there is basic pleasure in perfume, in just about every perfume, even the cheapest and the most starved of ideas, that is better than no perfume at all. It decorates the day. It makes you feel as if the colors of the air have changed. It's a substitute for having an orchestra follow you around playing the theme song of your choice." LT

I can't imagine wanting to be followed around by a frozen big band "tutti" all day, but there's room for many theme songs.

[PerfumedLady]

Nice to know you enjoyed it, Earlyn! I think scented candles are a great comparison to linear perfumes. Many people want and expect both to smell just as they did at first sniff, and keep right on playing that same theme song all the way through. I'm with you, there are times when mood or occasion cause me to crave the linear, in spite of my love of complexity. First example I thought of as I read your post is after bath or shower. I do often reach for something that's simply powdery, rosy, vanillic, herbal or citric (depending on season), and not much else, when cleaned up and tucking in for an evening. And as you say, on certain social occasions, it really can be convenient and fun to know that you're going to smell that particular way throughout. It's unfortunately a little too easy for me to make room for both vintage/classical and modern scents; your signature makes me suspect you have the same "problem".