Amouage Memoir Woman...Has Everything

By Marina New York’s hottest club is CREASE. Club promoter, Tranny Oakley, has gone all out. And inside is just everything: Lights, psychos, ferbies, screaming babies in Mozart wigs, sun-burned drifters with soap sud beards. From Stefon's SNL skit If you watch Saturday Night Live, you are familiar with Stefon, New York city correspondent and my husband's and my favorite SNL character, played by Bill Hader. The leitmotif of each of his descriptions of NYC's hottest clubs is that they have everything. Whenever I smell Memoir Woman, I hear Stefon's voice lispily intoning that it has EVERYTHING: absynth, cardamom, mandarin, pink pepper, clove, incense, black pepper, jasmine, rose, musk, labdanum, oak moss, styrax and leather. I mean, does it not sound like it in fact has everything short of babies in Mozart wigs? With the exception of such uncharacteristic offerings as Reflection (and several Opuses, as well as some masculines...Memoir Man, for instance, is an epitome of minimalism, in comparison to its feminine counterpart...), Amouage has never subscribed to the less is more philosophy. And good for them! In the olfactory sea of PC, one-note, generic eaux and "these are not perfumes" we need brands which would insist on dousing us with juices that have everything, last forever, and throw a sillage formidable enough to clear any of New York's hottest clubs. Kudos in that respect should also go to Mona di Orio and several of Etat Libre d'Orange's blends. If I had to humbly offer a critique of Memoir, it, therefore, wouldn't be that it is too much of a good thing. Absynth, leather, incense, rose and musk smell rather hot together. My problem is that Memoir is full of references to other Amouage perfumes. I smell everything from Ubar to Lyric in this opulent mix. But that is the danger for any extensive line that has been around for a while: sooner or later it becomes repetitious. Serge Lutens's is another example of that phenomenon. Which one of his creations do I NOT smell in Boxeuses? Having said that, Memoir is plush, rich, dressed up to the nines...Wear it to the hottest clubs, much to the awe and delight of sun-burned drifters. Available at Amouage's website and Luckyscent, $250.00-$280.00. Please tune in tomorrow for the first post from PST's new contributor Ashleigh who will be discussing The Return to Classicalism; the New Fragrance Mindset.