Strange Invisible Perfumes Musc Botanique

By Tom As you know from reading the Posse, the LA ScentSation was a big success. The first gift bag (the one from the event, not the ones from the stores we went to) alone was worth the the trip. I think the highlight everyone would agree was the full-sized perfume from Strange Invisible Perfumes (I think it's $225 retail). I lucked out and got Musc Botanique. I write about it previously and bought myself a bottle years ago.back in the day I wrote: "But the one that I kept coming back to was Musc Botanique. Through the alcohol haze I remember the nice girl telling us that it was meant as a sort of riff on the idea of plants seducing each other through their smell, like the musk that animals produce to attract a mate. This makes immediate sense in its tart opening: the woody, almost harsh geranium mixes with sweet angelica to make me think of berry patches. It gets earthier and earthier as the frankincense and amber come in, until the whole thing gets surprisingly, delightfully slutty. But slutty in a wholly different way that you would imagine: not human and not even animal. It's as if you're walking in a night-time garden and suddenly the whole place starts giving you the glad eye; the woods, grass and flowers are waving their little fronds at you with a decided "Hello, Sailor" attitude. Not in that somewhat confrontational Satyr-of-the-berries CB I Hate perfume way (which, as you all know I adore) and not in some Majicky, Sci-Fi way either. It's different: it's also entirely wearable (I would and did wear it to the office) but definitely, wonderfully.. odd." The pure perfume version takes it even further- it's more than winking, it's standing there, hands on hips, daring you to come over. It's Sadie Thompson in a bottle and I love it. It's also very long-lasting for a pure botanical- I smell it on me the next day. There are many SIP fragrances that I would cheerfully buy if I could just hit the darned PowerBall: Lyric Rain, Fire and Cream, and Black Rosette to name three. But I was so thrilled to get Musc Botanique in my goody bag I feel like I did win the lottery.. Notes from their website: Egyptian geranium, frankincense, notes of white amber & botanical musk $225 for .25 ounce at their store in Venice, which if you're in Los Angeles you really need to visit. Mine came in the gift bag at the event. Image: Legendary Joan Crawford Website

Winter Roses. Fatale West: Xerjoff Damarose, DSH dirty ROSE

By Marina "O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm. That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy." The Sick Rose by William Blake Sometimes one wants to be comforted, sometimes one wants to feel danger(ous). For such a mood, nothing is more suitable than Dark Roses. Xerjoff's new rose chypre, Damarose, is one of them. The composition lures you in with the playful flirtatiousness of a fruity accord, a tangy, non-sweet blend than made me think of red currants and cranberries...don't let it fool you with its coy smiles though...the innocent flirt of fruits, pink roses and freesia will turn into heavy-lidded seduction, and smiles will become come hither pouts as soon as patchouli enters the scene. Damarose is très recherché and even patchouli, ever the wild child, is elegant here, its earthiness stylized, shown just a little, better to intrigue you...its slight chocolate-like undertone ever so discreet, just noticeable enough to tempt. The ambery, musky base is the texture of silk...dark, dark maroon silk. By the time the drydown comes, you realize that roses, which in the beginning seemed to be pink, fresh, innocent and always in a good mood, are in fact anything but. However, at that point it's too late, you have fallen hard for the fatal charms of this chic creation. While Damarose is a vamp in a figurative sense, dirty ROSE might possibly be the actual creature of the night. In contrast to the dressed-up, Parisian elegance of Xerjoff's offering, DSH's has something wild about it. Damarose's earthy feel was something of an affectation, here the rose is truly dirty. I'd switch the capitalization, and call it DIRTY rose. "The rose is blasted, withered, blighted, its root has felt a worm..." It won't bother luring you with faux sweetness, it will bite you right away with spices. Geranium and pimento give the blend a wonderfully sharp feel in the top notes; the heart is a sacrilegious mix of sacred and base, incense and patchouli; the drydown is the wicked woods from which you'll never want to find a way back home. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz recommends this rose for men, and I can see how it can easily be worn by them, with rose hiding all the while behind spices, resins, vetiver and tobacco...now you see it and now you don't...a hint of something red, moving behind the trees...Where was I?...Oh, right, it can easily be worn by men. Having said that, like any dry, leathery, "goth" fragrance of this kind, dirty ROSE is obviously unisex and dare I say would smell even deadlier on a woman. Damarose is available at Xerjoff's e-boutique, € 500.00 for 100ml, and I assume will be sold soon at Luckyscent...dirty ROSE can be found at dshperfumes.com, $40.00-$100.00. PS. I recently revisited Black Rosette by Strange Invisible Perfumes, in its new Eau de Parfum concentration, and fell hard for it all over again. This is a Dark Rose extraordinaire, the very epitome of Dark Rose-iness. If my memory serves me well, the new blend has less of a "leathery like lapsang-souchoung" and more of an "actually leathery" quality. I don't know if I particularly care for the loss of the tea note. But I am thrilled that I can now finally spray this nocturnal masterpiece. (Available at siperfumes.com and Barneys, $220.00 for 50ml.)

Clinging: Vine by Strange Invisible Perfumes

By Tom This past week I wore only one scent as part of an experiment, and it was interesting to find new facets to and and happily reaffirm my love for the dervish that is Muscs Kublai Kahn. But after that week in the sexy Mongols embrace, what to do? What to wear? Mark Buxton ain't gonna cut it. The answer turned out to be Vine, a 2005 release by Venice (CA) based Strange Invisible Perfumes. In her review, Marina wrote she found it "repulsive and irresistible"; I don't know about the former but certainly agree with the latter. It has a deliciously winey aspect to it's fruity beastliness that I find hard to put down. It's one that a guy can certainly get away with in small doses but I'm sure would be stunning on a woman. Sadly I don't see it on the SIP website, so perhaps it's been discontinued. I hope that it's only on Hiatus. We'll have to make that happen.. My bottle was a giveaway from attending Sniffapalooza LA

This 'N That: Strange Invisible Perfumes Essence of IX, Comme des Garçons Series 1: Leaves Lily

By Tom This weekend I was out and about with no-one to play with. So what did I do? I sniffed perfume, naturally. That and I looked at the iPad. Saturday was a trip to Venice to try the new SIP, Essence of IX. It's a lovely thing that opens with bright blackberries and rose that's inspired by a napa winery. Sadly it sort of died on me, but I'm not sure that isn't the fault of the testers being EdP spray strength while the actual product is pure perfume. But since they didn't have testers of the actual strength (nor did they have samples or offer to make one) I can only judge by the spritz on my wrist. Well, that's money towards my car insurance. Easter Sunday was a trip to the Grove to take a look at the iPad. If you wish you can read more about that at my blog since I ramble enough here.. Scentbar was open on that Easter Sunday so I stopped in. I had a lovely conversation with the nice young man about various things and he told me that he had heard that the Leaves series of Comme des Garçons most likely was going away. Since I had never bought a bottle of Lily and there was one left in the store I felt I had to: Lily of the Valley is one of my all time favorite smells, and this one is a literal take on my childhood memories of it. It grew wild in patches in the shade of the Maple trees ringing my New England childhood home- trees that were at the time very old and whose shade made sure that our house was always about 20 degrees cooler on a hot summer day and provided a riot of color in fall (as well as endless raking..). It was such a lovely scent that for the few weeks they bloomed we would mow around them. Comme des Garçons take on it adds in the grass clippings and a fair bit of soil. It's almost exactly like laying in that new mown lawn in that dappled shade, or at least my memory of it more than a quarter century old. At $82 dollars (and the last one in the store) I bought. Later having coffee I did feel the earthquake in Baja and it was a reminder to keep vigilant. Coincidentally, it's earthquake preparedness month in Beverly Hills, and there's an emergency preparedness list at the city website. While all of you don't live where there might be a quake, it's actually a pretty good idea to keep some of this on hand if you live in an area that floods or snows or tornadoes or hurricanes. In other words, everywhere Essence of IX is available at their $320 for .25 oz. Lily is still listed as available at Luckyscent.

Fire in the Sky: Strange Invisible Perfumes Fire and Cream

By Tom When Marina wrote about this houses Aquarian Roses she compared the scent to a magician's trick, Alexandra Balahoutis being the magician. Her newest, Fire and Cream in my mind puts her more int the role of a painter of the California Plein Air school. It was inspired by a late-summer evening sky and although I'm sure that she didn't in my minds eye I see her mixing the scent in front of that fiery sunset. It opens on me with a burst of ripe orange, somewhat like Mandarine Mandarin, but branching off with the addition of an innocent orange blossom and smoky frankincense. Whiffs of lavender and tuberose join in, but never overpowering. The drydown finally gets to the cream: sandalwood and a touch of patchouli. It's not a literal cream; it's not the funhouse Creamsicle of Argenteé (as much as I enjoyed that one). It's the polish on the woods and the barely-there patch that is a wonderful take on a warm summer evening. Like some of the scents at SIP (Lyric Rain, for instance, ain't), this one is fairly unisex. It's available at their store in Venice, CA and on their website (link above), $145 for 1.7oz of EDP and $195 for 1/40z of perfume

Strange Invisible Perfumes Aquarian Roses: Perfume Review

Like every great magic trick, every great perfume consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". But while during this stage a magician usually shows something ordinary and normal, a perfumer more often than not has to attract one's jaded attention with the striking and the unexpected. No one is more adept at that than Alexandra Balahoutis, whose perfumes are notorious for being "odd" in the beginning. I would not call the top notes of Aquarian Roses outright weird, but the piney, herbaceous aroma of marjoram opening a rose perfume is unexpected, and the realism of the rose accord is stunning. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary object and makes it do something extraordinary. The perfumer has to make sure that the middle notes live up to the nose-catchiness of the beginning of the composition. And thus the marjoram leaves suddently turn into...underwater plants?...the saline, seaweedy quality in a rose fragrance is unusual and exciting...but where are the roses? Cutter will tell you that making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. And that is the third act of a magic trick, the hardest part, the part that is called "The Prestige"...Will Balahoutis pull it off and make the very true-to-life roses from the first part come back...and most importantly of all- and this is what the trick was really all about- would, in the finished creation, those be the roses that I will love and be able to wear?...Are you watching closely? The aquatic plant transforms into a rose and the base accord takes the rose and leads into the familiar, time-honored union with sandalwood. Do I love it? I love it! Love the herbal start, the salty middle and the proper-perfumey, strangely old-fashioned end. Abracadabra! Available at Siperfumes.com and Barneys, $175.00-$210.00 The image, the quotes and the general inspiration for the review are courtesy of one of my favorite movies, The Prestige.

Strange Invisible Perfumes Epic Gardenia: Perfume Review

The floral trio, launched by SIP this spring, which, alng with Epic Gardenia, includes Aquarian Roses and Urban Lily, comes with the promise of embracing "the eccentric nuances of flowers", illuminating "the facets that are too often ignored". (from SIP press release) As far as gardenia is concerned, in perfumery, it is mostly portrayed as creamy, heady and sweet (Chanel's, Molinard's, Il Profumo's Gardenia Royal, Goutal's Gardenia Passion...). Some lines surprise with an airy, breezy interpretation (Goutal's new Un Matin d'Orage, Guerlain's Cruel Gardenia). A couple of renditions dare to bring to light the flower's earthy darkness (JAR Jardenia, Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia). Alexandra Balahoutis puts a "humid" twist on her gardenia. "Humid, velvety" is the way the creator herself describes the scent, and that really is the most fitting description. The humid part is equal parts raw-earthy and sultry-floral, with a touch of something indeed slightly wet...it's that feeling of thrilling heaviness in the air, just before the heavy rain falls and greedily consumes the earth. I love the beginning of the scent, which has a surprising fruity undertone. In the top notes of Epic Gardenia I imagine I smell the tart candied-ness of black currants; the fruitiness segues into the sweet floral heart, where immediately that humid aspect becomes apparent. That subtle raw feel cuts through the typical creaminess of gardenia, rendering the aroma less opulent and heady than usual. The overall effect it strange and harmonious. My only complaint- and I rarely complain about this!- is that the fragrance does not last; half an hour after application I practically cannot smell it at all. Having said that, it might be a novelette, not an epic, but its soft, odd beauty is worth the bother of re-applying. Available at Siperfumes.com and Barneys, $175.00-$210.00. Image source, rodneysmith.com.

Strange Invisible Perfumes Aquarian Roses, Epic Gardenia and Urban Lily

By Tom This weekend I went to Strange Invisible Perfumes store on Abbott Kinney in Venice to sniff these three new fragrances, which will premiere next month. That, and there were cupcakes. Aquarian Roses list rose, sandalwood and marjoram in its notes. I liked it; it seems unisex and lovely in that, well, Strange Invisible way. The rose weaves in and out, becoming more or less rosey as the stemmy sandalwood and thorny marjoram comes to and fro. Epic Gardenia really could be accused of false advertising. The gardenia is hardly epic, which is frankly no bad thing. Gardenia can be such a sucker punch scent-wise and frankly if they had done one of those I could have found five others that would do the same dance at (sometimes) half the price. Epic Gardenia is a ghostly one; gauzy and indistinct as a memory, and just as wrenchingly lovely. However for me the real winner was Urban Lily. I adore lily of the valley, but find that some scents don't get the accord quite right for me. This is somewhat like laying in my parents backyard at home, the scent of lily, cut green grass and earth finally fecund after the long winter frost. It also has a heaping helping of their gorgeous Musc Botanique, which immediately makes it rocket to my list of things to blow the tax refund on (Or here in California, the tax refund IOU). The three will be available in late March, $210 for 7.5 ml Parfum or $175 for 50 ml Eau de Parfum.

Perfume Review: Strange Invisible Perfumes Musc Botanique

By Tom Strange Invisible Perfumes is a house that for various reasons kind of stayed off my radar. I trekked once out to Venice to their shop, where I was wholly ignored by the young man behind the counter. Being a naturally huffy person, since he wasn't asking if I wanted to go on his trip to Palm Springs, I huffed on in a... huff. The website used to be of such aggressive unusability that I would have to force quit Exploder to get out of it (that, and it was unreadable). I had been back once or twice and met a very lovely lady who looked like Maud Adams and who showed me the line; there were several that I liked, but on me they faded fast and I'm cheap: I like my fumes to last the day. I've always meant to get back there, but it's all the way in Venice (please insert Wendy Whiner voice), which when you work in Downtown LA and live in Beverly Hills might as well be Acapulco or New Hebrides: at least an hour and a half in traffic if it's moving then the fight for a beach-adjacent parking space. Or the MTA bus that will take a week. Not that I'm lazy. Or spoiled. Not at all. When is ScentBar going to deliver like Jacopos? Then QWendy set up this little trip out on a Saturday morning. For those of you who are unaware of her, Wendy has her own blog and has a business making shoes. Yes, that's right. She makes shoes. That's like me mentioning that when I am not blogging I'm busy knitting Automobiles to spec. There're some talented people out there in Perfume-land... So the deal was that we would meet at 10am on Saturday AM at the Abbott Kinney Store, which would open early especially for us. The MTA gave me directions that were within reason, so I didn't even have to drive there, and even arrived with time to spare. Upon my arrival I saw several familiar faces, including IrisLA and Robin, but I will leave the rest of the recap for Wendy to cover on her blog (linked above). I also had two glasses of Champagne, which added sparkle to the morning if not to my ability to speak coherently. I did find the answer to why the ones that I liked in this line seem to have no lasting power: most are only available in perfume strength, but the testers are EDP's. I don't think it's a matter of saving money as much as it is that EDP's develop faster and you can wash them off when you're unable to expose any more skin for testing without years of Yoga and the risk of an indecent exposure arrest. I did mention that perhaps it would be a good idea to have both strengths available, so that when one narrows it down to two or three that one would have more of an idea of the lasting power and the development from the concentration actually sold. Now that I know that that last impediment to my enjoying these (or my cheap-a$$edness) was out of the way I was able to test with abandon. There are several (Vine, Galatea, Narcotic and Moon Garden) that I really liked and several more that I wouldn't exactly cry over if they showed up in a stocking. But the one that I kept coming back to was Musc Botanique. Through the alcohol haze I remember the nice girl telling us that it was meant as a sort of riff on the idea of plants seducing each other through their smell, like the musk that animals produce to attract a mate. This makes immediate sense in its tart opening: the woody, almost harsh geranium mixes with sweet angelica to make me think of berry patches. It gets earthier and earthier as the frankincense and amber come in, until the whole thing gets surprisingly, delightfully slutty. But slutty in a wholly different way that you would imagine: not human and not even animal. It's as if you're walking in a night-time garden and suddenly the whole place starts giving you the glad eye; the woods, grass and flowers are waving their little fronds at you with a decided "Hello, Sailor" attitude. Not in that somewhat confrontational Satyr-of-the-berries CB I Hate perfume way (which, as you all know I adore) and not in some Majicky, Sci-Fi way either. It's different: it's also entirely wearable (I would and did wear it to the office) but definitely, wonderfully.. odd. Musc Botanique will be available at SIP in September, I believe it's $135 for the EDP and $165 for the pure perfume but don't quote me on that. I will write that as one of the line that is designed to be sold as both EDP and pure perfume that the lasting power on the EDP is great and that strength might be better for day wear or for guys. The perfume is that much more. I might need that much more...

Dark Tuberoses: Heroine, Narcotic and Trapeze by Strange Invisible Perfumes

Last night in the fields I lay down in the darkness to think about death, but instead I fell asleep, as if in a vast and sloping room filled with those white flowers that open all summer, sticky and untidy, in the warm fields. When I woke the morning light was just slipping in front of the stars, and I was covered with blossoms. I don’t know how it happened— I don’t know if my body went diving down under the sugary vines in some sleep-sharpened affinity with the depths, or whether that green energy rose like a wave and curled over me, claiming me in its husky arms. I pushed them away, but I didn’t rise. Never in my life had I felt so plush, or so slippery, or so resplendently empty. Never in my life had I felt myself so near that porous line where my own body was done with and the roots and the stems and the flowers begin. White Flowers, Mary Oliver I reached the stage in my relationship with perfumes which Angela of NowSmellThis once called that of a connoisseur and which I rather less positively call jaded. My nose believes that it has smelled it all and my brain is in the state of ennui. For a perfume to register on my radar, it has to be Great. To excite my jaded senses it has to be Exceptional. The words of the Red Queen come to mind, "If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" In regards to perfume, "twice as fast" means either being absolutely sublime in its "realism" (Malle Une Rose) or absolutely unlike anything else I have ever encountered (Aftelier Tango). There are some sublimely "realistic" tuberoses... I am using quotation marks, because there is always a necessary degree of stylization in perfume, a degree of creative interpretation of the material, which is what makes it a perfume and not an aromatherapy oil... Malle Carnal Flower and Caron's and L'Artisan's Tubereuses are among them. Lutens' Tubereuse Criminelle inhabits the twilight zone between the territory of "realism" and that of boldly taken poetic license. I will talk about the sublimely "real" at some later point. Today I am focusing on the strange. Strange Invisible Perfumes' take on tuberose, to be precise. And a word to other jaded, if you somehow until now overlooked this brand (I know, unlikely!), do try their creations. They do imaginative things that step close to but never overstep the mark of unwearable. Their descriptions, in which vetivers sleepwalk through bright and textured corridors of lemon verbena, do overstep the mark of ridiculous, but I digress. Three of the perfumes in their collection put emphasis on tuberose. Heroine blends the note with sweetly balsamic opoponax and slightly charred cedarwood. The creaminess of tuberose is enhanced by the presence of frangipane, and you would think that two such heady flowers would dominate the composition, but they let the resinous accord to be always in the forefront. That accord makes tuberose smell smoky and husky and, to me, just irresistible. I find the base, which smells of frying shelled sunflower seeds, strangely comforting. Narcotic uses orange blossom instead of frangipane to enhance tuberose and adds freshness to the blend by making vetiver sleepwalk through the aforementioned corridor of lemon verbena. In other words, the blend starts fresh and a little earthy, the citrusy accord finds its logical continuation in orange blossom, which in turn draws in sweeter and heavier tuberose enriched in the base by vanilla and sandalwood. Simple, right? Not really. You'd think that breezy citruses would turn the usually not at all innocent tuberose into a blushing bride, but here orange blossom has such a pronounced indolic undertone that it makes tuberose smell frankly indecent. Add to that the earthiness of vetiver and the booziness of vanilla, and you have got yourself a perfume that is X Rated. In Trapeze, the killer queen tuberose walks a tight rope flung between the red spiciness of carnation and the icy freshness of spearmint, and the rope is weaved out of vetiver roots...And no more reading of the SIP website for me, as their style is apparently infectious. Anyhow, whereas I have smelled tuberose paired with a mentholated accord before, the addition of carnation is fairly unexpected. I love the piquancy and the slight powderiness that the note brings to the mix and even a certain retro quality. It would be a huge stretch to say that Trapeze smells classic...but not as long of a stretch as from here to the galaxy far, far away, in which dwell other SIP creations. The galaxy to which the jaded should take regular tours just to be reminded that there are scents out that can still surprise and excite us. Narcotic and Trapeze are available at strangeinvisibleperfumes.com (which has been made a little more use-friendly since the last time I attempted to look), $185.00 for 1/4oz. I was unable to find Heroine, perhaps it was discontinued. Many thanks to Alyssa for the poem and for also seeing the darkness of white flowers. The image is by Ellen Von Unwerth.

New generation: Vine and Helmut Lang

Vine by Strange Invisible Perfumes It is easy to lure me with the promise of a Greek myth, wine and pomegranates. I am also unable to resist the words like “whispering decadence”, “ambrosial” and “poised”. Vine is all of those things, but what is strangely invisible in the description of the fragrance is a very noticeable animalic accord that is persistently there through the two thirds of the fragrance development and only gets less noticeable (but never disappears completely) in the drydown, where Vine is all sweet fruits and thick dark wine. To stay in the vein of Greek mythology, that animalic accord is perhaps the smell of Cerberus sent by his master to stealthily follow Persephone; it is hard to believe that she could have stayed oblivious to his musc-y, wet, sweetly repulsive odour. I cannot. This “three headed dog from Hades” note in Vine somewhat obscures all that is ambrosial about it. That is not to say that I don’t like this fragrance; I find it repulsive and irresistible at the same time, just like I cannot get enough of Muscs Koublai Khan, the fragrance that first opened my eyes to the wonders of all things musk and animalic. Helmut Lang by Helmut Lang Another relation of Koublai’s, very distant this time. A pale, androgynous cousin many times removed but still somehow reminiscent of that dirty naughty Koublai Khan of Lutens fame. The indescribable nameless animalic note is super light here, but it is still present. There is a “skin accord” among the official notes, and, whatever that may be, I bet you that is what makes this sleek, clean, modern eau de parfum smell on my skin like an unwashed Mongol warrior. Helmut Lang is very wearable, rather discreet, with just a hint of a hungry sexy predator lurking beneath the very contemporary minimalistic surface.