Roxana Illuminated Perfumes...and a give-away

By Tom I suppose that I could chalk it up to being jaded. Nothing has come out lately that has just gob-smacked me. I tried Dans tes Bras and was wanting more: of course this could be the fact that they only had a beensy tester at Barneys and the nice lady spritzed an amount so minuscule that it could perhaps only be detected on the subatomic level. I know it's not me because because Donna's review of Greyland made me seek it out, and buy. The large size please. I also know it's not me because of the package I got from Illuminated Perfumes. Roxana Villa has been doing this apparently out of her Los Angeles area home for quite a while. How did I miss this? She sent me samples of six of them: Lyra is orange and bergamot over amber. According to the website there are tropical flowers in there, but I don't get much, certainly not anything that I would normally think of as tropical: no hothouse gardenia, no over-the-top tuberose. I could be crazy but I think there's a touch of heliotrope in there. It's tropical in that bright, sparkling way that Patou did with Colony, but there's no pineapple. Q has the wonderful full woodiness of Chene added to the succulent amber of Ambre Sultan with contrapuntal bergamot and I think I smell a fair bit of musk in there. Not to say that it's in any way derivative, more to say, "try to keep me away from this one...." Sierra is written of as a "Conifer forest on an earthy bed of decomposing leaves" I get that (if none of the written of citrus) and I also get a recent forest fire. Like last week. Personally I love that smell so that's fine, but if you're expecting Julie Andrews spinning on an Alp, be warned... Aurora is spicy carnations, a "fresh floriental" Personally I prefer the forest fires.. Vespertine is the most elusive of the bunch: it's written of as "orange woven with florals grounded by earth" but I don't get anything that definite: I get something that makes me think of churches. Vestments, incense, old stones and older rituals. It stays close to the skin and is quite lovely. Vera is lavender so bright it dances. The brightness of orange peel and a startlingly true fresh green hay accord really makes this one sing. It's also the one that's easily the strongest, but none of these are exactly Fracas; I'd wear any of them to the office. All are available at her website; I can't wait to see what she did with Chaparral, the scent she debut at Sniffapalooza. See? I knew there'd be about three reasons I'd be po'd I missed that! Roxana Illuminated Perfume will be ay at Visionary Boutique in West Hollywood on November 16th at 11AM. I think I'm going! Since she was nice enough to send me the samples out of the blue I am going to pass them on to a randomly chosen commenter. The length of your comment or gushitude over how clever I am will have nothing to do at all as to whether I choose you. Honest. Winner will be announced in next week's post.