O Tannenbaum - 3 Wood Perfumes for Christmas

A Joint Blogging Project for A Merry Christmas!

Another year has flown by and it's time to do our annual (2 years now!) Christmas group blogging project. This year Redolent of Spices has kindly organized a huge group of perfume bloggers to participate in celebrating the season by posting reviews of perfumes that feature wood notes.

Woody perfumes are some of my favourites. Whether it's bracing cedar, creamy sandalwood, peppy pine, or moody black hemlock, wood is indispensable in perfume as a base note in many perfumes but many gorgeous perfumes feature wood as the main note. This year, I am reviewing three wood perfumes I haven't reviewed before, and also listing some of my favourite wood perfumes from my personal collection.

Russian Orthodox Christmas: Comme des Garcons Zagorsk

Zagorsk (now Sergiyev Posad) is a city in Russia, the home of the great Russian monastery Trinity Lavra, the spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox church.

Zagorsk is also a perfume, one of the Series 3: Incense perfumes from Commes des Garcons. The series was devoted to incenses of 5 major religions. Zagorsk represents orthodox Christianity. I previously reviewed another from the series, Avignon. Nobody does wood and incense like CdG.

Zagorsk is dark and calm and meditative, like a church deep in the woods, covered in snow. Incense and wood are the main notes. The incense swirls around inside the wood like smoke in a log cabin. The opening is has pine and a very spicy note, almost like cloves. After the opening notes have calmed down, a fruity violet note is noticeable but Zagorsk remains mostly about the trees.

House: Comme des Garcons
Nose: Evelyne Boulanger
Notes: white incense, pine, pimento berries, violet, cedar, iris, hinoki wood, birch wood

Ottoman Empire Christmas: Caron Yatagan

Meant to evoke a romantic vision of mystery and adventure in the Orient of the past, Yatagan is named after the curved turkish sabre.

Caron launched Yatagan in 1976 as a men's perfume. But I adore it. It was no surprise to read that is was created by Vincent Marcello, who also created Private Collection for Estee Lauder. It shares the same gorgeous green and mossy notes.

Yatagan smells like pine trees, green leaves, wood smoke and a touch of leather. Now that I've read the notes, I can smell the celery, more like celery salt, but it's not overwhelming. The chypre base has darker notes of patchouli, moss and musk. It starts fresh green and woody and but ends with moss and leathery.

When I was 14 years old, I had a crush on an older boy from my church's youth group. On a winter retreat, we snuck off and took long walks in the snowy woods where we would sit quietly together for what seemed like hours to me, while he smoked, and maybe held my hand. I was in heaven.

All I want for Christmas is for all men to smell like Yatagan, but if I can't have that, I will dab it on my own wrists, and surround myself with the smell of walking into the snow-hushed woods in a borrowed leather jacket.

House: Caron
Nose: Vincent Marcello

Notes: celery, patchouli, musk (From the Caron website)

Moroccan Christmas: Atelier Cologne Bois Blonds

Atelier Cologne calls Bois Blonds a "cologne absolue" because it has the feeling of a light refreshing cologne but, at 20% perfume concentration, it has the oomph of a stronger perfume. Simple yet powerful, clean yet spicy, sweetly feminine and masculine notes notes combine to make Bois Blonds a perfume for everyone.

Bois Blonds' notes ring clear as a bell. Sweet orange flowers are accented with nose-tingling pink pepper from the bazaar. Around this floral heart dances a touch of incense and sheer woody notes. Vetiver and clean musk provide a base.

One thing not mentioned in the notes is juniper, but I get the distinct impression of juniper berries in the opening notes, like a crisp gin and tonic. The juniper note makes Bois Blonds like an icy cold morning with bright sunshine. I break an icicle off the bush, and I can taste the tree in it. In the afternoon, the sun melts the snow and the sweet smell of spring is just around the corner.

House: Atelier Cologne
Nose: Jérome Epinette
Notes:
Top notes: Tunisian neroli, pink pepper
Heart notes: Moroccan orange flower, incense
Base notes: Blond woods, musks, vetiver from Haiti





Some of my other favourite wood perfumes are:

• Chanel Bois des Iles - creamy sandalwood
• Commes des Garcons Hinoki - a forest of cedar and incense.
• By Kilian Incense Oud - frankincense and sweet sandalwood bliss
• Lorenzo Villoresi Sandalo - spicy and smooth sandalwood
• Bulgari Omnia - gingery cedar and white chocolate
• Ormonde Jayne Woman - the woods are lovely, dark, and deep with Canadian black hemlock

More  O Tannenbaum

Please visit all the other lovely blogs participating in O Tannenbaum to read their choices of woody perfumes:

• All I am....is a redhead
• Another Perfume Blog
• Beauty, Bacon, Bunnies
• Beauty on the Outside
• EauMG
• Eyeliner on a cat
• Fragrant Reviews
• Muse in Wooden Shoes
• Olfactoria's Travels
• Parfumieren
• Redolent of Spices
• Suzanne's Perfume Journal
• The Candy Perfume Boy
• Undina's Looking Glass

By Kilian - Incense Oud

Hurray For Fall

I love the fall. I love the sunny but cooler days that give me a brief window of opportunity in Canadian weather to wear suede. I love the gorgeous Ontario leaves and the crisp apples and cheerful pumpkins. I love the smells of fall: woodsmoke and hay and apples and turned earth. But most of all I love my annual return to woody/spicy incense perfumes. These types of fragrances just seem so right in the Fall.

This fall I've been wearing the heck out of my sample of By Kilian Incense Oud. Incense Oud was released as part of the Arabian Nights collection earlier this year. It was created to highlight the two ancient middle-eastern materials from it's name, incense and oud. The Kilian website lists the notes as incense, oud, rose, cardamon and labdanum.

Oud is the new black of perfumery ingredients. There have been many niche releases in the past year or so focused on oud. I'm not sure I'm on the oud bandwagon. The few times I've really identified it in perfume, it has been as a sort of "band-aid" note. I'm sure now that I've dismissed oud, it will inevitably become my new favourite note given a little time; it's happened before.

Anyway, I don't smell the dreaded band-aid in Incense Oud. It opens with a faintly sour, medicinal woody note but as it warms up on my skin it becomes a sweet incense and sandalwood perfume. There are fruity-woody notes that I assume come from the rose, smooth sandalwood and a gorgeous curl of frankincense smoke. Now Smell This is right, the first thing that came into my head when Incense Oud reached this stage was 10 Corso Como. It's similar but Incense Oud puts the emphasis more on the incense and 10 Corso Como is more about the sandalwood. When worn side by side, there is no comparison on sillage: By Kilian Incense Oud knocks it out of the park. Just a little goes a long way and my little spray tester has been doing me fine for a week now.

The drydown of Insense Oud is warm and a little spicy and reminds me a bit of Penhaligon's Elixer. It has a similar calming, meditative effect on me. If you're a fan of incense perfumes I highly recommend trying it.

House: By Kilian
Nose: Sidonie Lancesseur
Notes: Incense, Oud, Rose, Cardamom, Labdanum

Frederic Malle Portrait of A Lady and Heeley Hippy Rose

Patchouli roses for for bare feet or black tie

Patchouli and rose is a classic combination. Something about the rich perfume of roses compliments the dark, earthy-sweet, smell of patchouli.

Recently two excellent niche lines released patch-rose perfumes: Frederic Malle, Portrait of A Lady and Heeley, Hippy Rose. Both are beautiful and excellent quality. They share similar notes but they execute the classic combo in a different ways.

Portrait of A Lady

When I heard Frederic Malle speak in Toronto earlier this year, he reminisced about the creation of Portrait of A Lady. He told us that he worked quite closely with Dominique Ropion on this scent, which was born out of a shared love for their earlier perfume Geranium Pour Monsieur and a desire to re-use the base they loved from that perfume, but turn it into a perfume for women.

And so they took the oriental base of benzoin, musk, incense, sandalwood, clove and cinnamon, and changed it: making the musk more feminine, reducing the sandalwood and adding in some "heart" of patchouli. As M. Malle explained it, real patchouli has a complicated fragrance with many different facets. Before now, perfumers had often wished that they could isolate just the "heart" of patchouli, the part the smells the best, and leave out all the less attractive aspects.  New technology available to modern perfumers has allowed them to do just that in Portrait of A Lady. Malle and Ropion loved it so much they put in as much of it as they could.

They balanced this overdose of patchouli, with a huge amount of turkish rose oil. Malle said he had the opportunity to question someone once on how the famous Guerlain rose perfume, Nahema achieved such beauty, and was told that it used an unusually high percentage of rose oil. Emboldened, Malle and Ropion decided to use what they call a "daring", even "excessive" amount of rose essence for Portrait of A Lady.

According to the Frederic Malle website,"Portrait of a Lady is undoubtedly the perfume containing the strongest dosage of rose essence and patchouli heart." They call it a "baroque perfume" and it certainly is. Like baroque art, it cannot be called conventionally pretty, but it's over-the-top usage of beautiful materials makes it like a Baroque church, full of movement, and life and grandeur.


Hippy Rose

Heeley's Hippy Rose has many of the same notes as Portrait of a Lady, and when I initially sprayed it on, it reminded me quite a bit of the Frederic Malle perfume, but after wearing them side by side for a while, I see how they are quite different.

The rose in Hippy Rose is a fresh, velvety petaled pink blossom, as apposed to the dark red of Portrait. Hippy Rose smells like a just-picked rose; it's soft and dewy. The opening is a little peppery and tart. The patchouli and incense give it a nice dry-woody base and the amber and musk make it a little softer and warmer, smoothing out any edges.

So the question I was asked on Twitter was: which one do I prefer? That's a hard one. If you asked me which one I enjoyed wearing the most it would be Hippy Rose. It's a soft, pretty, mellow, patch-rose that feels really comfortable. Hippy Rose feels natural for day or evening or just hanging out in bare feet in the backyard.

But, ask me which perfume I think is the most important. As a perfume fanatic, I am always looking for the best, the most beautiful, and sometimes the most shocking. Many times I have moaned about how a classic perfume has been reformulated into banal nothingness. I believe that fifty years from now, perfumistas will be hoarding original bottles of Portrait of A Lady. I may find it a little intimidating to wear, like when I was twenty and my aunt offered me a loan of her mink coat. I don't always feel like I can pull off Portrait of A Lady; it's an evening gown scent. But the next day, traces of it linger on my clothes and on my pillow and they smell divine. Portrait of A Lady is going to be a classic; if you care about that sort of thing, buy a bottle now.

House: Heeley
Nose: James Heeley
Notes: Bergamot, green moss, Bulgarian rose, patchouli, incense, Haitian vetiver, amber, musk

House: Frederic Malle
Nose: Dominique Ropion
Notes: turkish rose, red berries, spice, patchouli, benzoin, cinnamon white musk, sandalwood, frankincense



Photo dark rose: mrgarris0n
Photo Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Rome: mine
Photo pink rose: ~Dezz~

We Three Kings: Eau d'Italie - Paestum Rose

A rose among the ruins

Myrrh is mine: Its bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding dying,
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

This is my final post in the We Three Kings series. Many thanks, first to Joanne at Redolent of Spices for starting this project with me and also to all the other amazing bloggers who joined us. Their posts have all been awesome and I'm so happy to have made so many new perfume-fanatic friends. Check them all out from the links at the bottom of this post.

Myrrh

After gold and frankincense, the Magi gave myrrh to the baby Jesus. Like frankincense, myrrh is another resinous incense, collected as tears from the damaged bark of trees.

Myrrh was the gift that symbolized death.  Way to ruin the festive mood there, Magi. Myrrh was an essential ingredient in ancient Egyptian funeral rites and was also commonly used in ancient times as a medicine to treat wounds and pain. Jesus was offered a cup of wine with myrrh in it before he was nailed to the cross. The taste of this medicine was apparently not so good - the word myrrh derives from the Aramaic word for "bitter."

What does it smell like?

Myrrh is a difficult note for me, I find it sometimes hard to isolate in perfumes, but, despite the origins of its name, I don't think it's a bitter smell. Myrrh to me is lightly sweet and woody, as you would expect a tree sap to be, It's not the intense, nose-tickling warmth of frankincense. Instead I think of myrrh as being a "cool" incense, if that makes any sense. Like smooth grey stones.

Myrrh works well in Paestum Rose, which is a perfume created to reflect the beauty of Paestum, Italy, a city famous for its ancient Greek temple ruins and its roses. Myrrh combines with a sheer rose to create a perfume that's light and cool on floral on top but also resinous and woody and comforting underneath. The rose is pale pink in my mind, and with a lightness like peony. A pink pepper spices it up and bridges the gap between the rose and the wood. The far drydown has something more piquant, maybe some black-currant, making it end sweeter than it began.

Paestum Rose is the smell of melancholy but also happy memories. Maybe I'll save Paestum Rose for the day after Christmas, a day for cleaning up wrapping paper and relaxing with a new book.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a fragrant New Year!

House: Eau d'Italie
Nose: Bertrand Duchaufour
Notes: davana, pink and black pepper, coriander, osmanthus,Turkish, incense, myrrh, opopanax, papyrus, Wenge wood

Please visit all these other blogs during We Three Kings week:

• Redolent of Spices
• EauMG 
• Parfumieren 
• All I Am - A Redhead
• Chicken Freak's Obssession 
• Notes from Josephine
• The Perfume Chronicles
• Bonkers About Perfume 
• My Perfume Life

Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch 

We Three Kings: Comme des Garçons Incense Series - Avignon

Does heaven smell of frankincense?

Frankincense to offer have I.
Incense owns a Deity nigh.
Prayer and praising all men raising,
Worship Him, God on high.

Welcome to my second post of We Three Kings week. The first perfume I reviewed was for gold, and this post is dedicated to the second gift of the Magi: frankincense. Frankincense is the gift that represents prayer.

Incense

Incense has been associated with communication with the divine since ancient times. It's mentioned in Indian Vedic scriptures from 5,000 B.C., and in ancient Egyptian tablets. Burning incense was serious business to the Jews during the time of Christ's birth; "holy" incense was burned only on special alters, by priests. It seems we humans have always found the fragrance of burning incense special and uplifting.

The Comme des Garçons Series 3 Incense is devoted to the five main spiritual teachings of the humanity; each one associated with a particular type of incense. Avignon represents Christianity and is focused on frankincense.

Frankincense did not start to be used in Catholic churches until the 4th century. Also called Olibanum, frankincense was introduced to Europe by Frankish raiders, hence the name. It's an aromatic resin harvested from trees native to the Arabian peninsula and north Africa. When the bark of tone of these trees is damaged, sap extrudes that hardens into lumps called "tears." The best frankincense comes from trees that grow in the harshest of locations, sometimes attaching themselves to barren rock.

What does Avignon smell like?

It smells like a Gothic cathedral. I've never been to a catholic mass where they swing the censors of incense, sending fragrant smoke over the congregation, but I've read from other reviewers that Avignon is pretty close to the actual experience. The frankincense is desert dry and woody in a way that brings polished wooden pews to mind.

Avignon is dark and contemplative; it smells of huge open spaces and dim lights. It's sheer, as if looking through smoke, but long-lasting and has significant sillage. In the drydown, an herbal chamomile and a gentle hint of vanilla soften the austere Gothic outlines of the perfume.

I find Avignon very meditative and comforting to wear. It clings to the fur collar of my coat, and when I smell it I imagine flickering candles in stone cathedrals and the sound of prayer. This is my scent for Christmas eve.

House: Comme des Garçons
Nose: Mark Buxton
Notes: Chamomile, Cistus, elemi, Myrrhe, Incense, Patchouli, Vanilla, patchouli, palisander, ambrette seeds

Please visit all these other blogs during We Three Kings week:

• Redolent of Spices
• EauMG 
• Parfumieren 
• All I Am - A Redhead
• Chicken Freak's Obssession 
• Notes from Josephine
• The Perfume Chronicles
• Bonkers About Perfume 
• My Perfume Life

Photo: Notre-Dame des Doms d'Avignon
Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch

Comme des Garçons - 2 Man

A warm winter fantasy.

Two line perfume review: Comme des Garçons 2 Man smells like a man building a fire, in his log cabin, in a pine forest, in the winter. It's deeply sexy.

House: Comme des Garçons
Nose: Mark Buxton
Notes: Top notes are aldehydes, nutmeg and caraway; middle notes are orris, vetiver and saffron; base notes are leather, incense, note dima and mahogany.

Photo: Espen Clem

Penhaligon's - Elixer

A day at the spa

Created in 2008 by the talented Olivia Giacobetti, Elixer is a modern interpretation of the Penhaligon's classic Hammam Bouquet which was composed by William Penhaligon in 1872. While Hammam Bouquet was inspired by the smell of Turkish baths, the modern Elixer reminds me of a particular spa.

Near where I live is a water spa. Finished in warm wood and low, ochre-coloured lighting, it's a wonderful relaxing place to spend a couple of hours, sitting under waterfalls, meditating in the sauna, breathing the eucalyptus steam in the steam room, and generally wallowing in sybaritic pleasure. While lounging on poolside couches to catch your breath, kind women will bring you steaming cups of chai tea.

Elixer captures the experience of going to that spa perfectly. A warm, dry combination of woods, particularly cedar, and incense remind me of a sauna in much the same way as Hinoki does. A touch of eucalyptus is like inhaling the vapour in the steam room. The spices, cinnamon, mace and cardamom, along with a touch of vanilla, remind me of the chai tea. Although it's unlikely that Giacobetti has been to my spa, Elixer is an uncanny recreation of that place. Brava.

House: Penhaligon's
Nose: Olivia Giacobetti
Notes:
Head Notes: Eucalyptus, Cardamom, Orange Blossom Absolute and White Cedar
Heart Notes: Red Turkish Rose Absolute, Egyptian Jasmine Absolute, Cinnamon Leaves, Mace and Rosewood
Base Notes: Benzoin, Tonka beans, Vanilla, Incense, Red Sandalwood and Guaicum Wood

Photo: Body Blitz

Full disclosure: I won my bottle of Elixer in a contest on Penhaligon's Facebook page.

Tauer Perfumes - Eau d’épices

An orange for October

When the leaves turn to flames on the maple trees and there are fat orange pumpkins for sale at my corner store, I start to crave perfumes that make me feel warm, perfumes filled with woods, incense and spices. Fall is usually the time of year that I put citrus scents to the back of the shelf. While I find them cooling and uplifting in hot weather, citrus scents are not what I typically want to wear in the Canadian autumn. Until now.

It took me a little while to warm up to Eau d’épices. Tauer Perfumes typically use high concentrations of their essences, and they can be strong to start.  Eau d’épices opens with a big blast of something that made me think of gasoline but it turns out to be an overdose combination of clove and cardamom. It takes a little while for these strong top notes to burn off and let the heart shine though.

In that heart are some gentler, warm spices and a lovely tart citrus that will be familiar to those who have tried other Tauer perfumes. Andy Tauer uses a juicy clementine or mandarin note in the opening of a few of his perfumes, such as Orange Star, Rose Chyprée, Le Maroc Pour Elle and Incense Rosé. I'm starting to think of it as one of his signatures. But in Eau d’épices the tangerine shines through the whole progression of the perfume, making it bright and lively.

The spices swirling around the orange aren't hot or foody, just dry and woody. Joining the pomander are fragrant orange blossoms. Like citrus, I usually like these white flowers in warmer weather, but they work perfectly in Eau d’épices, adding a light floral creaminess to the tangy orange and spices.

The drydown of Eau d’épices has the familiar "Tauerade" of incense and labdanum. I think there's ambrein in there; it's in many of Tauer's perfumes. Ambrein is a gorgeous extract of labdanum that Tauer describes in an interview with Nathan Branch as “pineta”, pine wood, ambergris on a chord of wood, dry fir needles under a Mediterranean sun, woody pine incense."  

In the same interview Tauer says that orange blossom and labdanum were two of the first essences he experimented with, his true loves. In Eau d’épices these two notes lift and sweeten the spices and create a beautiful resinous depth behind the orange note.

Leave it to Andy Tauer to create a citrus scent perfect for October. Eau d’épices is round orange moon rising above a dark spice forest.

House: Tauer Perfumes
Nose: Andy Tauer
Notes:
Head: An Indian basket of spices with cinnamon, cardamom, clove and corriander with red mandarines.
Heart: An opulent heart of orange blossom, jasmine, orris root and incense.
Body: A woody cistus ladaniferus resin, softened with ambergris, tonka beans and vetiver.

Photo: adaenn

Yves Saint Laurent - Belle d'Opium

A snuffed candle

Yves Saint Laurent launched its best-selling fragrance Opium, in 1977. It was one of the big iconic perfumes of the 80s, a fragrance that signified exoticism, mystery, danger and sensuality. Its popularity and its decadent scent trail inexorably led to a backlash against heady perfumes that I think we're still recovering from. 

So, in 2010, YSL released Belle d'Opium, the latest flanker to the famous oriental. The YSL web site says that it contains an "overdose of rare and precious ingredients to take extreme femininity to the limits of indecency." Ah, no. Belle d'Opium doesn't even get near my limits of indecency, but I do like it.


Belle d'Opium opens with white pepper, a hint of peach and some sandalwood from the base showing through. The heart of the perfume revolves around what they refer to as the "Nargileh accord" and incense. Nargileh is a tobacco water pipe (hookah is basically the same thing), like I described in Fumerie Turque. But I don't smell tobacco in Belle d'Opium. Instead the idea of a lazy curling column of smoke has been created with a smoky note that smells like a just-snuffed candle, with a touch of incense weaving through it. The bottle hints at this candle aspect with a red wick running through the middle.

Although "Casablanca Lily" is the flower that the marketing focuses on, I don't really smell lily either, which is a good thing by me.  Lily is one of the new "it" notes this season but not one of my favourite flowers. Belle d'Opium has a quiet, well-blended white floral bouquet, quite demure and nondescript actually, supporting the curling smoke heart. It's almost as if the fat, waxy petals of those flowers translate into the waxiness of white candles. The base is a musky wood with patchouli - pretty much the ubiquitous "new chypre" base.


Belle d'Opium is fairly quiet, staying close to the skin (unlike the original) and fading after a few hours. I'm disappointed that Belle d'Opium, with such a delicious list of notes, and marketing that promises an "overdose" of ingredients, is so tame to me, but that seems to be the way that the big main-stream perfumes are done these days. Truly "indecent" perfumes, or perfumes that dare to have sillage, still can only be found in the smaller niche lines.

But Belle d'Opium is pretty. I like wearing it. If I could get a big bottle inexpensively, I could see spraying this on liberally in the cooler months. I like to relax in those long dark evenings with candles burning and a cashmere wrap for cuddling. Belle d'Opium would be a good comfort scent for those casual evenings, shut away from the rest of the world, lolling about on the couch. Not unlike an opium den, actually.

House: Yves Saint Laurent
Nose: Honorine Blanc and Alberto Morillas
Notes: Sample card lists: Casablanca Lily, incense and Nargileh accord. OzMoz lists: top note: Mandarin Orange, Lily, Gardenia, White Flowers middle note: Frankincense, Peach, Pepper, Tabacco, Hookah Accord, Fruity Notes base note: Patchouli, Sandalwood, Smoky Notes, Amber


Photo: One of a series of photographs by Hungarian photojournalist Brassaï taken in Paris in the early 1930s. Via stevechasmar.

Les Nez - Let Me Play The Lion

Pale, dry golden yellow fur, sand, wood and smoke

Scents of dusty trails,
Of lightly sweetened ochre,
Of sun-weathered wood,
Of silence swept by mild breezes,
Of skies open like an endless azure cut oozing signs
of the coming storm.

Wood and incense, my favourite notes. Those are the first two things I smell. The wood is pale and bleached, the incense light, just a trail of smoke on the horizon. Then suddenly the whole perfume lifts. It almost feels like that, a physical sensation. What it smells like is the sudden addition of a light floral, almost herbal note that reminds me of chamomile. That fits with the pale golden yellow feel of the perfume.

There is a peppery spice note, like you wandered through a souk earlier in the day, and the smell of the spices for sale still clings to your clothes.  The whole thing is dusty dry - not quite desert, but maybe savanna, with tall dry grasses, and a campfire at night.

I don't find that LMPTL has a Head, Heart and Base as much as other perfumes, the notes swirl around and up like smoke.


House: Les Nez
Nose: Isabelle Doyen
Notes: incense, wood, spices

Comme des Garçons - Wonderwood

I <3 woods

Wood, glorious wood! Wood in the head, wood in the heart, wood in the base Wonderwood is Comme des Garçons' love song to wood - and they know wood. I've already written about my passion for Hinoki, their perfume inspired by Japanese hot spring baths and Scandinavian forests. In Wonderwood, CdG attempts to squeeze in every wood and wood-like note they can into a perfume.

Wonderwood starts with spices and an aromatic pillar of incense smoke. The incense is not as intense as in other CdG scents - just a light swirl of smokiness through the pepper and nutmeg.

In the heart, a fruity wood is paired with a dry cedar, under the shade of pine boughs. The warm spices, sweet wood, and dry, aromatic cedar and pine make the perfume both warm and cool - it floats in the air and yet seems to wrap you in an embrace. In the base, smooth sandalwood joins the party, making me think of far-away places.

Wonderwood is balanced but still allows you to pick out the individual notes as they shine. The notes all gracefully reveal themselves and then twirl back together like a dance.

This is one aspect of modern perfumery I really like, the way perfumers really allow you to perceive individual naturalistic notes, instead of just blending them all together into something new but undefinable. I want to smell like something. I enjoy the enfolding story of different notes, and the "ah-ha" moments of recognizing exactly what that new note smells like. A perfume may be gorgeous, but bore me terribly if it's just a blend with no surprises.

Wonderwood is never boring. I love wearing it and I think it would smell deeply sexy on a man. I'm already plotting ways I can get Desslock to  wear it (he's a plain soap guy.) It's a must try for anyone who loves woods.

House: Comme des Garcons (for Monocle)
Nose: Antoine Lie
Notes:
Head: Madagascan pepper, Bergamot, Somalian Incense, Nutmeg
Heart: Cristalon (?), Cashmeran (pine and patchouli), Gaïacwood, Cedarwood, Carvi Graines (caraway seeds)
Base: Javanol (sandalwood), Sandalwood, Vetiver, Oud (Agarwood)

Photo: mine

Monocle + Comme des Garçons Scent One: Hinoki

The heavenly smell of forests, the summer cottage and saunas. 

Oh, my fickle nose. For today, forget flowers!  I never want to wear anything but Hinoki. I wrote earlier that my perfect summer perfume would include the smell of a dock in the sun by a lake, and a pine forest. Well here it is, baby.

I'd sniffed Hinoki in a shop but it wasn't until yesterday that I received a sample. Comme des Garçons is a japanese fashion label that has launched many interesting perfumes. Hinoki comes from a type of Japanese cypress tree that is commonly used in temples and baths. The perfume was created in partnership with Monocle, an "international affairs, business, culture and design" magazine. According to the Monocle site, Hinoki was "inspired by Japanese hot-spring baths and Scandinavian forests." 

It starts with the woody-spicy tickle in your nose of frankincense. The incense gives you the feeling of a temple. Then it seems to bloom - to rise up from your skin like fragrant billows of steam in a wood sauna.

For a little while it also reminded me of the wood shop behind my friend's antique furniture store. I loved the smell of sawdust there and all the different woods. At the heart, the scent becomes more like pine forest - deep green, mossy and fragrant.

It was quite wafty for the first couple of hours but now, 8 hours later, it's just a snuggly, woody-incense scent close to my skin.

Hinoki is somehow simultaneously dry and steamy, light as smoke and substantial as a tree trunk. I love it now in the heat, because it makes me think of a muskoka cottage, but I imagine it would be great in the fall too, with the smell of leaves and woodsmoke for company.

House: Comme des Garcons (for Monocle)
Nose: Antoine Maisondieu
Notes: cypress, turpentine, camphor, cedar, thyme, pine, Georgian wood, frankincense, moss and vetiver.

photo: okinawa soba

Tauer Perfumes - Orange Star

Orange creamcicle meets wood and incense.

OK, first thing you have to know is that when Andy Tauer sent me a sample of Rose Vermeille, after I won a random draw on his blog, he sent it in an adorable little tin with 4 other samples: Incense rosé, Le Maroc pour elle, Une rose chyprée and Orange Star.

I had already tried the others, I actually have Full Bottles (FB) of Incense rosé and Une rose chyprée, so I will be doing posts about them eventually, but Orange Star is new to me, and fairly new to Tauer Perfumes too; it came out earlier this year. Andy Tauer has been busy!

The second thing I want you to know is that today was the hottest day of the year in Toronto so far. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to swim through a vat of warm, wet, woolen mittens, then you should visit TO right about now. So on the way home, in honour of the new perfume I was wearing, I stopped off for a vanilla frozen yogurt with mandarin orange pieces on top.  It was divine.

And how did OS stand up to this soupy weather? Really well, actually. I was kind of hoping that it would be refreshing, in the way that citrus colognes often are, but OS is not a cologne. It's a deep, resinous perfume with a rich vanilla and only the barest hint of floral. Still, it wasn't overpowering, even in the heat.

OS starts with a brilliant, tart and juicy clementine/mandarin note (which having just eaten, I can tell you is very realistic), and a woody lemon (the lemon grass). But when I first put it on, I thought I had misread the samples, and put on Incense rosé by mistake. Incense rosé has a juicy clementine opening as well as the eponymous incense.

As the top notes settles down a rich vanilla comes out. But now I think I smell Une rose chyprée! The same clementine top note can be found in the beginning of Une rose chyprée as well as a rich vanilla base.

Take the rose out of Une rose chyprée and put in the incense from Incense rosé and you are close to OS. But why do I smell a resiny incense in OS, when none is listed in the notes from Tauer?

Well, the notes that come with the ad copy of perfumes aren't the end of the story. They're not even really a list of ingredients. They're most like a description of what the perfumer thinks the perfume smells like. Somewhere in OS is some of the same incense or resin as in Incense rosé. But I guess it's not a major note in the perfume, as far as Andy Tauer is concerned.

The orange and vanilla are the main stars in OS. It's an orange creamcicle, my favourite! The orange is tart up top, but not sweet. It's almost a dry perfume. The vanilla is deep and mysterious, not sugary, darkened by the woody incense. This is the most unisex of all the Tauer's I have tried so far, and I'd like to smell it on my husband.

I think the similarities in the three of the perfumes can be explained by the fact that Mr. Tauer is sort of an artisanal perfumer. Tauer perfumes are "handmade in Switzerland" by Mr. Tauer. His creations are direct embodiments of his personal vision and taste. He has a style, so to speak. It's a lovely style, and he does magical things with incense, clementine and vanilla.

House: Tauer Perfumes
Nose: Andy Tauer
Notes: HEAD NOTES: A fresh citrus chord with mandarines and clementines.
HEART NOTES: Juicy lemon grass and clean orange flowers.
BODY NOTES: A rich ambergris base with Tonka beans and hints of vanilla.




Photo: accent on eclectic