The Scent Of Freedom – Review: Lostmarc’h Aod

by Olfactoria Lostmarc’h Aod is the third perfume by Breton niche line Lostmarc’h that captures my heart. The gourmand Lann-Ael and the unique floral Ael-Mat got company by this quintessential beach fragrance. Aod features notes of grapefruit, gardenia, coconut and seashore accord. Starting with sparkling and fresh grapefruit, the gardenia (a light and summery, not very realistic, but lovely gardenia) comes through immediately, bolstered by a coconut that is non-sweet and fresh. The predominantly floral accord is surrounded by sea spray, by salt-water mist. Aod is not the classic tropical beach scent, not like Bobbi Brown Beach for instance, but rougher, the sea here is harsher, no sand but cliffs, not bright sunshine and cloudless skies, but a brisk wind that is blowing the clouds through the sky, tousles your hair and quickly dries your skin leaving the salty residue behind. Aod is meant to evoke beaches in the Bretagne, Lostmarc’h is named after just such a beach after all. And that is exactly what this perfume does. I vastly prefer such beaches to tropical ones. I prefer the harsh windblown Atlantic coast in the Northeast to Floridian mellow sands, I prefer the beaches in the Pacific Northwest to California’s surf paradise. And I prefer the beaches of England or France to those of Turkey or Greece. I prefer the cooler weather, the wind, the rough elements, the visible struggle of water versus land. An endless white sandy beach bores me to death (although I’d be perfectly willing to try one again anytime, for science’s sake!). I feel free when I stand on a rocky outcropping looking out over a lively sea, shivering slightly, my hair blowing every which way in the wind. Smelling the water and the colorful flowers that bloom despite the hardship. Therefore Aod is ideal for me. Aod is the olfactory equivalent of wind-beaten water, ragged cliffs and gnarly vegetation that is braving the elements. You want to close your eyes and inhale deeply. Can you feel the freedom? Image source: luckyscent.com, ruby beach via istock

Lostmarc'h L'Eau de L'Hermine

Those who, like me, shy away from full-on lavender scents, because of their sharpness, and those who, like me, are bored with citrus scents, because of their ubiquitousness, should, like me, find in L'Eau de L'Hermine a wonderfully wearable, soft lavender and an interesting take on citrus. I like it so much, I want to swim in it. Floral sweetness of neroli and peony brings out a honeyed, fruity aspect in lavender. Gentle fluffiness of heliotrope softens the jagged edges of the note and tones down the prickly, nose-tingling freshness of grapefruit and bergamot. There is a certain sweet cleanness or clean sweetness about L'Eau de L'Hermine that I find very appealing. A certain effortless simplicity, which is in fact a sign of harmonious complexity. This is summer in a bottle... the breeze carries the freshness of the sea, the herbal and honeyed aroma of lavender, the candied fragrance of orange blossom...It's a story of how, in the sun, in the face of the endless sea, things come into perspective, entanglements get disentangled and dilemmas come to a natural resolve, all on their own. A Summer Tale. PS. According to Antoine Vuillermet, the creator of Lostmarc'h, "Hermine" in the name of the scent is there to signify Brittany's symbol and flag: "One winter day our queen Anne de Bretagne was hunting the Hermine for its white fur, in front of a dirty pond, the Hermine stoped. Anne was so impressed by the animal's behavior, that she decided it could not be hunted anymore, and became the symbol of all the Breton: "rather dead than dirty", in France (as she married the king) later on the Hermine became the symbol of justice and purity." Available at Beautyhabit and Lostmarch, $85.00 and €55.00 respectively, for 100ml.

Got Milk?

They say that familiarity breeds contempt. It also breeds content. There is nothing more comforting than a scent you remember from childhood; the momentary calm that comes over me when I smell the vanillic aroma of a sweet pie baking is a knee-jerk reaction. Immediately I am transported back to my mother’s kitchen, feeling safe and having not a care in the world. Even more comforting than vanilla? The smell of milk. I don’t want to drink it, I just want to smell it…There is something irresistibly primal in the coziness and attractiveness of the fragrance of slightly warmed up milk. Subconscious parallels to being breastfed, cuddled, coddled and absolutely safe? Maybe. Psychobiologists say that newborns are instinctively attracted to the odor of human milk and display much less distress during a painful procedure while smelling their mother’s lait. So maybe I am just a big baby. Various types of fragrances have a lactic undertone; I smell hints of milk in vanillas (Vanille Aoud comes to mind), chocolate perfumes (Musc Maori), heliotrope-heavy scents (Farnesiana) and even, sometimes, fig fragrances (Premier Figuier, my little one’s current favorite, smells of milk on her…or maybe it’s just her). Three perfumes come to mind as being properly milky. Comtoir Sud Pacifique’s Matin Calin is the sweetest and most unrestrained in its sweet cuddlesomeness. There is nothing more comforting that its saccharine, vanillic, milky aroma. In small doses. An overdose of Matin Calin is an equivalent of maternal love that goes overboard in its intensity, smothering not snuggling with its passionate affection. The gentler Lann-Ael by Lostmarch, which blends milk with cereals and apples, expresses its maternal instinct less gregariously. It is calm and softly spoken, it caresses delicately, and doesn’t overwhelm with the overabundance of adoration. The ideal mother, one might say. Less obviously milky and thus less maternal is the 21 by Costume National. Blending milk with saffron, cumin, pepper, woods and a whole bunch of stuff (21 notes, supposedly, in total), this is the most complex of the three. The kind of mother who’d ask you to call her by her first name. Still, the milky aspect is very obvious to me and for that I adore 21 and find it as comforting as it is hip. Got more milk…perfumes? Do share! Happy Mother’s Day! PS. You can create your own milk mustache on gotmilk.com.

Lostmarc'h Laan-Ael, Aod, Atao and Iroaz

By Tom For this week, cats and kiddies, I am afraid that we're going to have what amounts to reviewlets from me, since A) it's hot, B) it's month end bill-paying at home and at work and C) I'm lazy. I was happy to get notice that Laan Ael had arrived at LuckyScent with three siblings, since I had gone through about three decants from the Perfumed Court. I was also thrilled to see the price: $75 for 100 mls. I suggest stocking up before they realise their mistake. Laan-Ael, as you all know is written of as buckwheat, milk and honey. I get Froot Loops and milk. Normally after having typed that sentence, you would think that I would write that I scrubbed my arm with a dremel tool and iced borax, but no: it's literally the most comforting thing you could possible smell and I am in hopeless thrall to it. It does become more than just the special effect of breakfast in footie pajamas; there's something pixelated to it that isn't quite musk, but less homogenized than the milky cereal opening would lead you to believe. But never, ever sly or winking. I can imagine that after (or during) a difficult day that a spritz of two of this would be better that an rum and atavan smoothie. Aod apparently means "Seashore" and I can't say that it smells exactly like any seashore that I've been near. No bad thing: there's a whisper of grapefruit, a scintilla of gardenia, a bare hint of that clean sheet/sea spray accord that we've all smelled about a bazillion times. There's also the rounded smell of coconut. I wore this today while at my friends house in Pasadena while wiping her work MacBook Pro in preparation for it's return, doing laundry and feeding her cats while she's in Texas: in the wilting heat this was joyously refreshing. Just enough of each ingredient to be refreshing without being overwhelming and for once the "sea" part of it isn't amped up to 11. Did I mention that it's $75? PS: if the seashore really smells like this in Brittany, I'm moving... Atao starts with rosemary, and lots of it. Those of you who have made something with rosemary know that it's only fault in cooking is that too much of it makes a soapy taste. The first sniff of this frankly goes there, and just when it does, the bergamot and lemon jump in to wrestle the whole thing to the ground. LuckyScent lists orange and mandarin in there, but I don't get those two distinctly, I do get a nice spicy wood. I can see this being a lovely, no-fault, no-brainer that you grab when you don't want to think about it, don't want to smell challenging or weird or perhaps have to meet with a prospective boss. Or are applying for a loan. Or are being sentenced. It reads "dependable, well-travelled, well-bred, (and on a guy) and smart enough to know that I should smell good but not in a way that's in your face". On a girl it would make that Jennifer O'Neill in jeans and a boys button-down statement- and yes, that is sexy as all get-out. Iroaz was quite frankly the only miss for me: I understand the idea of roses at the seashore and the juxtaposition of the creamy rose and the salty marine notes but the whole seemed muddled: I am not going to cast aspersions on the quality of the ingredients, but the rose versus marine in this one seemed to me to each make the other seem, well, kind of cheap smelling. Having typed that, it's $75.00 so if it shows up in a Christmas stocking I'd happily spray the curtains with it. It's refreshing; I just like my roses more threatening than these. So there you have it: three big hits and one near miss. I REALLY hope that both Lostmarc'h and Luckyscent are making a comfortable profit at this price point: I am so thrilled that there's something out there that is this good for under a Benjamin I could plotz! Now where are the soaps and candles? So far, only at their website. The rest are at LuckyScent, (for $75.00, I mentioned that, right?) including the Lann-Ael body milk and shower gel. Image source, maion.com.