Bond, James Bond

By Linda Because I’m a complete geek as well as a perfume geek, I was so excited to see Vesper Lynd’s personal effects near the end of Casino Royale and recognize a fragrance bottle. The handful of personal items, a tumble of things from her purse, expressed so concisely and in a few, elegant strokes just who she was. I am a harsh critic of movies and found myself really delighted by this clever visual haiku, this allegory of personality. (What might it say about me if my purse contents were shown? Oh dear, oh dear.) Of course I looked up the fragrance, Santa Maria Novella’s Melograno. It opens with a blast of citrusy, sharp aldehydes and progresses to sexy hints of incense, leather, and (yes, I do barely get) pomegranate along with the aldehydes and musk at the impressively mossy drydown. It is sweet and, after the rather piercing opening, rather tender, despite its assertive sillage. The overall impression is somehow penitent of its worldliness, as of skin impeccably scrubbed with expensive soap and then powdered into forgetting it is damp and breathing flesh. Like the fictional Miss Lynd herself, it is not exactly what I expected. It suits her to a T: clean and proper as can be, but musky beneath the surface; simultaneously tender and sharp; severe, but with hints of ripe sensuality. Melograno does not suit me: it is both too sharp and too sweet for me, and I am no penitent. However, there are some days when I crave its strangely tart and squeaky clean dry down. I also looked up James Bond’s rumored choice of colognes: Floris No. 89. No. 89 reminds me (quite delightfully) of Ivory soap upon the open – again, soapy clean, with traces of citrus, lavender, bergamot, rose, and nutmeg. It evolves slowly and seamlessly, exposing its other notes seamlessly … dangerous ylang and neroli, and finally the downright animal sensuality of its oakmoss, sandalwood, and musk dry down. Like Melograno, No. 89 is quintessentially English perfumery, and surprisingly tender. Whether or not the attribution of No. 89 as James Bond’s signature scent is apocryphal, it does evoke Mr. Craig’s moody depiction of character quite brilliantly. It starts out tidy, clean, and impeccably classic – even retro. Steadily, it slips its chain and becomes larger than life… surprisingly vulnerable and brutally seductive at once and by turns, this one fairly howls at the moon before it’s done. I find No. 89 completely desirable but not always manageable, as I discovered one day when I wore it to work and the rather rutty oakmoss and musk made themselves known. Like the characters they adorn, both scents are surprisingly similar on the drydown. Both feature drydowns of powdery oakmoss, sandalwood, and musk, with his & hers accessories – acid elegance (powder, aldehydes, and incense) for her, classic male grooming (lavender, cedar, and vetiver) for him. If you want your secret agent scent tart and stern, give Melograno a try. If you prefer it deep and a little edgy, your poison is No. 89 instead. I find it endlessly fascinating that, as Casino Royale so piquantly explores when the two agents meet and verbally joust on a train, two distinctive characters can turn out to be so similar and yet so vividly themselves. Please be kind and keep the comments as spoiler-free as possible for those who have not seen Casino Royale yet. (And if you haven't, oh, please do. Aside from being stone cold gorgeous, Daniel Craig has a genius knack for the character.) Image by Greg Williams.

Unnatural acts with natural ingredients: experiments in perfumery

By Linda As some of you have heard, like Marla, I have launched myself into DIY perfumery. I am neither as experienced, nor as well educated as Marla with respect to ingredients, and am relying entirely on natural fragrant components (essential oils and absolutes) rather than sallying forth into the world of synthetics. This limitation to natural perfume ingredients is not yet an ethical commitment if ever it will be: so far, it is just my way of dipping a toe into the pool. The prettiest single materials are also the hardest to work with, like prima donnas of the fragrance universe. Jasmine grandiflorum, high-altitude Grasse lavender, Canadian fir balsam, tarragon, and hay absolute are so magnificent that it seems almost a shame to mingle them with lesser glories, and those experiments that do not pay off are really heartbreaking when they do not live up to the heightened expectations that their raw ingredients promise. Most of my experiments are little more than accords of three to five elements, which will be cannibalized and altered when I build more complex fragrances. Nine-tenths of my experiments involve me spoiling the potential of two or more exquisite aromas by harnessing them to one another in unappealing ways. The other tenth are the lucky, simple combinations that really work together, such as carrot-and-vanilla (my signature if there is one, so far), or immortelle-and-fenugreek. However, I am fiddling with a few more sophisticated combinations that I think will be quite wearable when they are finished. Floral absolutes in particular are shockingly easy to be inspired by. A simple dilution of a floral absolute would be sufficient perfume for any occasion where a soliflore would do: provided that you like the flower from which they are produced, they are magnificently lovely. Accordingly, I have been playing largely with absolutes of jasmine and orange blossoms. I have one perfume that is nearly finished: I made alterations to its balance last night and am waiting for it to mature before I adjudge how finished it really is. I am a big fan of facetious working titles, and its working title is “all this used to be orange fields”– which is what I say when I'm feeling or pretending to be querulous about changes in the world, since I have returned to the region of coastal California where I was raised and found it very much altered. As one might predict from the playful working title, it's a fragrance based on the magnificent contrast between birch tar (breathtakingly smoky, slightly tarry), juicy tangerine (which is a stunningly pretty citrus, even on my citrus-hating skin), and orange blossoms (sweet, creamy, divinely fragrant, with a sappy bitter green undertone). My goal has been to connect, unify, and magnify these disparate aromas, but it was a hollow contrast until my partner suggested I balance it with an austere touch of spice. Even before maturation, it was breathing with new life last night, and wears beautifully on the skin, drying down into cuddly, slightly incense-like warmth only barely kissed by smoke, and clasped by the ghostly trace of soft orange blossoms. I am pleased, but it almost certainly needs a little more work. Overall, if I were to change it, I might give it a woodier and drier aspect to offset its sweet creaminess. Yet there is something tender about that very sweetness, and I am loath to lose that mood. Decisions, decisions. The other promising scent I am working on is the "bold black vertical slash" built to emphasize the sizzle of black pepper that I have described elsewhere. It was inspired by my stylish friend Jes and her love for things antiquarian and unconventional. (Also, she asked if perfume could be based on black pepper – inspiration doesn’t get more direct than that!) I cannot wait to bring this scent to its full potential, as the preliminary rough blend is pleasingly dry and vivid. Rooty vetiver is the center of this composition; I am doing my best to emphasize its wild and earthy depths, rather than to favoring its more usual aspect, the ethereal, almost citrus-zest freshness that I love so much in Sel de Vetiver. We shall see. For now, it’s very early to tell how this one will develop. Perfumery is an easy hobby to love, and one that intrigues (and sometimes horrifies) one’s friends. I am having the time of my life. Like all my favorite hobbies, it is best taken in intense, relatively brief doses, punctuated by frenzies of washing-up, and separated by hours of obsessive brooding and daydreaming. Scents are my passion, as I know they are yours, and I hope to create something really beautiful. Wish me luck! Image source, casavella.co.uk.

Ebba: By Sand, Miss Marisa and Miss Marisa Tropical

By Linda Every once in a while I encounter a scent that I find sufficiently arresting that it brings everything to a halt, calming me like a good cup of tea. The day slows around me and I relax. By Sand is one of those scents for me, which is shocking, because it is everything I normally do not care for in a scent. It is sweetly girlish. It is fairly linear, after the wild few seconds of the top notes settling into the long afternoon of its heart. It is initially citrusy, which usually—but not here—translates to “30 seconds until Linda has a headache and smells of armpit.” And it has ripe, decadent fruit, tons of fruit to my nose. It has become one of my favorite early-summer scents. When first sprayed, By Sand bursts with an almost perverse riot of Kaffir lime, apricot, jasmine, and ginger. I think I smell a very subtle vetiver, but it is gone before I can grasp it, perhaps a fleeting, olfactory hologram of vetiver created by the zesty freshness of the lime and the languid warmth of ginger tea. The jasmine morphs into a sort of candied gardenia as vanilla emerges to warm the scent further. While it is indubitably a fresh scent, indubitably fruity, it is remarkably easygoing and comforting: a cup of warm ginger tea and a plate of apricot scones in a sunny window seat. Because I was excited to try other offerings from Ebba, more or less at random, I tried Miss Marisa and – out of complete perversity – Miss Marisa Tropical. There is a certain Ebba aesthetic all three of these scents conform to, as if they had been built out of dissimilar materials to form a similar picture – all are creamy, sweet, and conjure up open spaces and greenery in my mind. Miss Marisa is a remarkable scent, which I think I would give to my young teenage or tween-age daughter, if I had one, as a first perfume. It is at once sophisticated, energetic, and young, without being too seductive or piercing. The heart of the scent is a sweet waterlily and blackcurrant mixture, tart and intriguing. A remarkably fresh mint weaves around the edges of the fragrance. One pictures an excursion to pick fruit at the water’s edge, one’s feet in cool mint and with delicate spring petals falling. Miss Marisa Tropical is exactly as one would assume it would be: Miss Marisa minus the brilliant mint scent, with ginger to replace the minty piquancy and a heavy freight of fruit, including peach, mango, coconut, pineapple. For the first ten minutes it is on my skin, I find it intolerably fruit-cocktail-like. (Someone stick a tiny umbrella and straw in me, and … well, you get the idea.) But to my surprise, it mellows into an interesting mélange warmed by ginger. The rabid pineapple-coconut scent mellows and it assumes a fruity, creamy aroma that is very pleasant.

Cheap Thrills and Nostalgia: Villainess’ Jai Mahal and The Girls Love

By Linda Recently I discovered Villainess “Whipped” – a richly emollient, veganesque body cream that I will never be without again. (Veganesque? Well, there is some bugsploitation – peace silk and some honey based fragrances.) You can find them at villainess.net if you want to try them. Two of the three fragrances I tried are heavenly. The fragrances stay on the skin for hours. First, there is Jai Mahal. It’s supposed to be exotic, palatial spices and luxurious vanilla. I must confess that what I get is this: Christmas ribbon candy and buttercream frosting. It is a sweet vanilla spice fragrance that is so seamlessly blended that I cannot really make out individual notes… just feel-good, lighthearted gorgeousness. It’s like a time machine back to childhood, but is elegant enough that you can wear it wherever. I wear it almost every day and it layers well with many of my favorite scents. The other Whipped that I particularly liked was The Girls Love Vanilla – a scent borrowed from Possets, perfumer Fabienne Christenson’s line of fragrances. The “girls” in question are bees, and this is a honey-saturated, vanilla-besotted scent capable of inspiring a diabetic coma. The foody notes are married by a robust and boozy whiff of tobacco. It reminds me of my grandfather’s cherry vanilla pipe tobacco. This lotion smells comforting enough to wear to bed, like footy-pajamas. (My partner is not impressed, so in a way, it’s very much like footy-pajamas. He doesn’t like honey.) I so liked Villainess’ The Girls Love Vanilla Whipped lotion that I went poking around the Possets website itself looking for other tidbits: http://possets.com/ There, I found lots to tempt me. I am a spice and candy lover in my scents, and if you are, too, you will be richly rewarded by a stroll through their scents. Not all of them are sweet, but there are plenty of “toothache perfumes” to play with. The descriptions can be maddeningly brief and vague, but will rarely steer you wrong. And there, I found Gingerbread Whorehouse. I’m a sucker for things that make me giggle. The goofy name managed to wheedle my credit card right out of my purse and into my hand, lickety-split. Everything at Possets’ beautiful site (use the search function if you get lost) is blissfully inexpensive, which was a relief. Fortunately, this was one of those customer experiences that completely rewarded me. Not only did I get my little 6 ml. vial of perfume oil (for $10) and the sample 6-pack I had ordered: I was also sent a few other Possets scent samples. Score! My favorite really is Gingerbread Whorehouse. It smells exactly, and Iam not kidding you, exactly like homemade gingerbread – not the house kind, the soft cake kind! I can smell the ginger, the allspice, the molasses, the butter, the cake, the vanilla… even the raisins, for heaven’s sake! This, too, is a footy-pajama of a perfume: only sexy if you have a gingerbread fetish, but so comforting, homey and warm that it can turn a rotten day wonderful. Here are a few others I love, from the samples: High Tea: you will smell exactly like the steam rising from a cup of Lipton’s black tea. This takes me back to spending the night at my grandmother’s house, where she would bring me a cup of tea in bed every morning (she got up early!) It is plain, gorgeous black tea – not Earl Grey, not white tea with raspberries, not rooibos, but a simple, perfect cuppa. I am buying a bottle. Flossing: meant to evoke the stitching of a corset (or “flossing”), this one is dainty, pretty, and sweet. I can make out sweet orange, a wisp of vanilla, and a hint of spice, but this is not a foody scent – it is delicately floral and immensely ladylike. The Scent of Angels: this one smells like soap to me, in the best and most wholesome of ways. Flowers undergirt with vanilla and musk – again, very soft, clean, and soothing. Angels fresh from the tub. Silver Carnations: I adore carnations – not the powdery character that shows up in scents so often, but the green spiciness of the fresh cut flowers. I don’t know what the “silver” is, here, but I suspect it is a light musk. With it wafting up on the breezes as I took a spring hike, it gave a charming impression of a bouquet of carnations. Even the sappy greenness of the cut stems was there to my nose. In the interests of total disclosure, I will also mention those I didn’t love: Villainess’ Grundy (which I wanted to love): mulch, moss, dandelion sap, daisies, weeds, soil. More or less exactly as advertised, but it really was not as I imagined it. The first blast evoked a hectic and exhausting honey-do Saturday. Eventually it mellowed into something interesting but very Not Me. Possets’ Haute Love: very successfully evokes crystallized ginger dipped in milk chocolate. Unfortunately, Possets’ chocolate scents do not flourish well on my skin and take on unbearable levels of mixed syrup and skank for a bit. Your mileage may vary – I know many people love them. Possets’ Frou-Frou: old-fashioned floral but not in a good way – a maiden aunt’s handbag, or a box-store rose sachet. It’s a performance art piece of a scent, which is fine… but I didn’t find it wearable. Possets’ Id, Ego, and SuperEgo: lavender and chocolate at the heart, with different balances and embellishments. These are interesting, but may be based on too ambitious a contrast for my taste.