Dear All

Was it the JLo fragrance that did it? I'll never know. All I can tell you is that my laptop suddenly started making this awful fan noise, the software collapsed, the power system fried, and I kept getting a very elusive whiff of "Still". After a month of toting the machine around town, I finally managed to find a kindly repairperson who did his Mac-whispering thing and ordered new parts. So we're back.

Since regaining access to the blog, I've noticed that there are a couple of readers who are less than pleased with my assessment/knowledge/general comportment. That's understandable -- perfume's a pretty personal thing, and at times a very emotional thing. If I scoff at something you were wearing when your husband proposed or the scent your late mother used to wear, it's not surprising the reaction is indignant.

I stated pretty frequently in earlier entries that my judgements are coloured not only by my personal body chemistry and age, but also by my own sense memory. Admittedly I tailed off on those sorts of disclaimers recently, mostly because I felt it was getting repetitive -- but it does still stand. This is by no means an impartial perfume blog; it's completely partial and very particular to my own reaction.

Please do continue leaving comments, good or bad. But I did want to assure all readers that I'm not trying to lay down a comprehensive judgement on perfumes -- it'd be foolish to even try, given how vivid the difference can be from wrist to wrist.

(And as a side note: Given that I have relocated to the far side of the ocean, I don't have the most brilliant access to fragrances. If you'd like to see a perfume reviewed on this site, feel free to email me or leave a comment suggesting it and I'll do what I can to source it. If you happen to have a sample of it lying around and would like to pop it in an envelope and post it, email me and I'll give you the address. I guarantee that anyone who takes the time to post a sample will get a prompt review.)

And with that bit of housekeeping done, back to the fun stuff.

Eliza

Sarah Jessica Parker "Lovely"

I am not a "Sex & the City" fan. I'm just not. The characters all make me itch, and I could not imagine a worse afternoon than one spent in their company. But given their omnipresence in the media during the past few years, I'd have to be blind and deaf not to know a little about each one of them. And so, if this perfume were to suit any one of those women, it would be Charlotte's.

"Lovely" is the first perfume that I've tested and totally forgotten about. It's just there. A perfectly serviceable white floral, understated to the point of being invisible. There's no pollen harshness, just a touch of throatiness and a hint of stem. And that's it. Not exactly bland, but certainly not exciting, "Lovely" is inoffensive, unmemorable, and generally a thesaurus's worth of other words that essentially can be summed up with the noise "ehhh" and that wobbly-hand movement that indicates you could go either way.

Verdict: Wouldn't go so far as "lovely", but does earn itself a "nice".

Yves Saint Laurent "Paris"

Unlike other powdery perfumes, which just remind me of grandmothers in general, this one pegs a particular sort of grandmother. The sweet baby powder scent is certainly there, as is the lacing of icing sugar, which is proving to be a hugely popular combination, and at first I thought I'd just set myself up for disappointment all over again.

But then a second line emerged -- a greenhouse. Like in "My Fair Lady", when Eliza is sitting in the Winter Garden, this has a humid, earthy, flowery note to it. It's generally overwhelmed by the sugar-powder, but does diversify the scent and make it a more complex fragrance overall. Not what I'd call a youthful perfume, and perhaps a little dated, but genteel and interesting.

Verdict: Tea in a plant-filled conservatory with your great-aunt.

Alexander McQueen "Kingdom"

"And then, I pulled my lover's still-beating heart from his chest, and turned it into this charming vial."

This is the sort of perfume that pretty much declares to everyone around you "I AM WEARING PERFUME". Not necessarily a bad thing, and "Kingdom" is by no means a bad scent. It's just not shy about making itself known. I was first reminded of a much stronger version of some of the Jayne Ormondes -- sandalwood and pine and a jumble of warm earthy spices, brought together in a heady mix that really seems to hang in the air, but escapes that weird "musky" flavour that some scents carry.

At one point, I actually stopped mid-sniff with the thought that maybe I'd picked up a man's cologne. And then I decided that it really didn't matter -- though the scent was aggressive and heavy and powerful, it could work just as well on either sex, something that isn't often true. On a woman, this is heavy-lidded, full-kohl perfume. There aren't any romantic delicacies here, no coquettish looks. Weirdly, to me it smells sort of like bottled feminism, or at least feminism as I'd envision it; confident and completely assured, grounded and unapologetic. So sexually assured that it wouldn't even strike her to be abashed about "unladylike" behaviour. This is not a "ladylike" scent.

There's also a blend of some sort of menthol smell, and a bunch of elements that strike me as masculine, but they don't sink very deep into the perfume. Most of these elements are actually things I typically associate with a clean sweat smell, deoderants and aftershaves, so I think I'm getting an echo of sweat out of my own scent memory, rather than in the perfume itself -- either way, the vague sheen of it is actually kind of sexy. If these odours were more embedded, then maybe the scent would trend too masculine, too typically cologne-ish. Instead, the male notes lay over the very sultry female elements underneath. It's an absolutely fascinating fragrance, though one that should be worn with care. It'll give you confidence in a dramatic setting, but if you wear it in a place too mundane, you could feel conspicuous.

Verdict: It smells like I've just had my way with a very attractive and well-kept lumberjack -- and let it be widely known that I shall do so again. And again. And again.

Elizabeth Arden "Provocative Interlude"

I just cannot win with the EA scents.

This was my first day of doing a perfume hall drive-by, so there are a few things I need to get used to. For one, I forgot one very key element of saleswomen, which is that they are trained to reel off the notes and influences in a fragrance as though they've memorised the press release (which they probably have). So when I sidled up to the giant poster of Catherina Zeta Jones and picked up the bottle, ready to spray and flee, I was totally blindsided by the woman who instantly materialised out of nowhere and told me it was a "floral gourmand with white chocolate, berries..." and a bunch of other stuff that I honestly don't remember. She was extremely fast.

I'm going to try to screen out any of that, but given the fact that I smelled apples in JLo's "Live" when I still thought it was "Be Delicious" (thanks, Frederik!), I can clearly be influenced.

But back to "Provocative Interlude". It went on sharply, though I can't give a great analysis of the first 5 minutes, given how much of that was spent fending off the vendor and not being able to scribble down notes. As soon as I got a chance to get a better sniff, I was disappointed to find out that there seems to be a nasty, fermented streak running through this EA that reminds me very much of the other EAs I've tried. I think I get the white chocolate that was mentioned, but boy, it is weird. I also picked up citrus, berry and floral, mixed in an unsettling way that made me think of a lime-infused chunk of white chocolate covered in thick pollen, sprinkled with dry cranberry skins. It made me think of how nice this could have been if it was, say, a Terry's white chocolate orange with raspberries and a sprig of freesia. It is not.

An hour later, it died down to something less offensive, but still with that musky, hot-mess quality that just drives me insane. I can only guess that this element is something that smells fabulous on some women, and those women are the ones buying EA perfumes.

Verdict: Weird and musky and bleh, the rogue Elizabeth Arden fermentation element strikes again.

Do you know this perfume?

I suspect this might be DKNY "Be Delicious". The green one, because I don't think the red one was out yet. It's unusual, to end up with a totally random (and quite generous) sample and have no marking on it and no idea of its contents. The reason I think it's "Be Delicious" is partly what I get off of it when I wear it, and partly because there's only one time I can remember getting unlabelled perfume, and that was at Sephora in DC with Olive. She might tell you that I ruthlessly browbeat a salesgirl into handing over a decanted sample of "Be Delicious" and in doing so, so terrified the poor thing that the girl also included a few other random vials in a panicked rush. In which case I would tell you that Olive is a recent engagee, and thus her head is so full of frivolous notions and taffeta and color schemes and wedding marches that she really can't be relied upon to give a straight account of anything as she's in a sort of meringuey bridal haze, and that she had better remember to be nice to her Maid of Honour if she knows what's good for her, because even though the MoH is very far away, the MoH is still in charge of the bachelorette party and is very skilled at evil plotting.

Anyhow.

Mystery Perfume With a Green Stopper is very nice. Straight on it reminds me somehow of "Flowerbomb", but for no good reason whatsoever. It's like "Flowerbomb"'s fruity, peppery, saner second cousin. Where one requests that someone devour you immediately, the other is a much more confident, understated, knowing scent. I think one of the big differences is that I would wear this one on a first date, whereas "Flowerbomb" would certainly be later on (you want to be careful with olefactory "Eat me!" cues).

This isn't a crisp, fresh apple sliced in half; it's not warm apple cobbler; it's not anything that makes your mouth necessarily water. This strikes me as more of an orchard scent, possibly on a sunny autumn day after apples have already been picked and only the occasional fallen one is still around, warming and slightly bruised in the sun. Which sounds a little awful, as a theme, if you're thinking of the entire dating-as-fruit-on-tree metaphor, but is also kind of nice in that it's natural. Fallen apples are the ones that produce new trees, and that's sort of what this perfume makes me think of -- an assured and good scent, an all's-right-with-the-world scent, with just that hint of peppery zing to stop it being too linear. It's even got a slightly arid/acrid tinge, like there might be a bonfire a county over and just a hint of it's snuck into the orchard.

The only downside I can see is that it fades on my wrist really quite quickly, so I have to load it on if I want to get anywhere at all with it. And even then, the end of it's a little too sharp on the pepper for my tastes -- I don't think it increases at all so much as the apple just fades away entirely, making the pepper seem almost ominous by comparison. Shame.

Verdict: Afternoon events or lazy Sundays curled up on the couch with someone. Sadly, it won't last longer than that.

Dear Reader...

Good lord, I am sorry.

Absolutely inexcusable, this entire vanishing act. As it happens, I did go to that job interview wearing Jo Malone's "Nectarine Blossom", which I absolutely treasure and makes me very happy. It also seems to make others very happy, because I got the job that night. And THAT is what I have been doing lo these many months -- full-time, nonstop work. Literally, 36 hours after having my passport stamped in Auckland, I received a contract via email at the B&B. Jo Malone works in mysterious ways, that's all I have to say.

So that stash of untried testers ended up languishing at the bottom of my suitcase. Frankly, I'd expected more down time while being deeply unemployed, during which I could amuse myself by sniffing at my wrist in a lunatic manner while basking in sunshine at sidewalk cafes -- but starting work within four days of arriving (and while still severely whacked-out from jetlag) sort of put paid to that. Due to prior experiences with demon concoctions like "Angel", I was really hesitant to start dousing myself in the unknown before either socialising with my new flatmates or heading into the enclosed space at the office. One prefers not to earn the moniker "The Woman Who Smells", even if that's later qualified with "...no, good! She usually smells good!".

There's been another hurdle as well -- I can't seem to find a department store in NZ willing to hand out testers. In the UK and US, you just stroll up to a counter, feign interest, and there's a 50-50 chance that someone will lob a vial of something your way. But I'm told that here, they only give them out if there's a promotion running, which means I'd have to skulk through the perfume department on an almost daily basis just to catch them when they come out. Which might seem dodgy.

And at that point, if I'm going to be vaguely dodgy, why not go the whole way?

So here's the plan, dear reader: given that I already work in Wellington's CBD, I am going to implement a cunning scheme wherein I take a detour through the perfume hall at about lunchtime and pick a scent to test, then spritz it directly onto my wrist. I'm only going to be able to do this a few times a week, because I actually DO have an embarrassment threshold, and even the slightest chance that the staff might start publicly querying me about using up all the perfume in the store would have me blushing deepest puce for a good few months. But as you can see from the image above, my personal stock is running perilously low (I've already tested most of those, I think) and drastic times call for drastic measures.

As for my current coworkers and what they'll have to suffer through as I attempt to test "Angel: Rose" or whatever the hell that monstrous house is currently trying to foist off on an unwary public -- I've tried to warn them. I've tried to train them to expect various scents with a rotation of Romance, Nectarine Blossom and Flowerbomb. And of course, they have met me now, so they're somewhat used to my personality and I doubt this sudden bout of perfumemania will come as a surprise.

All is well, though, and thanks to all who've left a note on the blog! I am happy and ensconsed and employed and generally in fine fettle for a person who's uprooted and travelled to the opposite side of the planet, and am now ready to get back to the taxing task of pursuing the perfect scent.

Eliza

New Zealand

And then she landed.

So I'm officially here in NZ now, for a whole 24 hours at this point, which means that my mind is warping things like a fisheye lens and I'm totally disoriented and having bipolar moments consisting of "oooh, this place is lovely!" and "WhathaveIdonewhathaveIdoneohgod!" Now begins the flat/job/life hunt, which is always very exciting but also a lot to take in all at once. It does mean I'll have a bit of time, though, during which I will be sitting in cafes and able to surreptitiously take notes on something I've put on my wrist.

But before I unwrap the samples I brought (wrapped in about three layers of plastic wrap and a couple of ziplock bags, due to air pressure in the hold as I took about five flights), I'm going to my job interview today wearing Jo Malone's Nectarine Blossom and Honey. That's the lovely black tissue paper the shop assistant at Heathrow gave me, as I actually didn't have enough room in my luggage for their bag. And that's the giant bottle of Nectarine on the left, which I shall have to make sure not to leave out where light can get at it and break down the scent. And on the right? Well...

Seriously, is it sad that I actually purchased a small vial of Amber and Lavender just in case I date someone here? I think it might be. But there it is. I've actually made my own life difficult by recommending this scent to any guy I know and like, so now Gil's wearing it, as is my Liverpudlian ex Audio Science, and I've now managed to mentally associate that scent with nice men. Though all of my EEG coworkers assure me that there are no nice Kiwi men, so I've nothing to worry about. In which case I shall just wear it myself and curl up and watch John Hughes movies, so there.

Verdict: New Zealand is nice, and I think shall only get nicer as I get over my jet lag and figure out how things work more. Also, I smell delicious -- thanks, Jo Malone!

Dolce & Gabbana "Light Blue"

And lo, I went into the outlet store, and there it
was: a sample of the "most popular perfume on the market", according to whoever tabulates such things. I'll admit, considering the amount of buzz this stuff got, at one point I was thinking of shilling out for an entire bottle (I then remembered the Coco Mademoiselle episode and regained control
of myself). But a sample bottle for a buck? Done.

Aaaaand... done. Sooo not a fan. Citrus, for one. Not just citrus, but a
smell like an entire lime thrown into a blender: lime, leaf and possibly
bough. There's also a sherbety buzz, which strays across the line and
becomes dusty ever so often. I really had to wait for the more subtle notes
to come out -- a definite marine, plus a sweet grassy smell, like dune
grass. Those two scents I liked, but not enough to wait around for, and
certainly not if that wait takes the form of lime incarceration. Hopefully
everyone else who purchased this perfume has the opposite experience; a day
at the seashore with lime wedges in their cocktails, maybe?

Verdict: They're singing songs of love, but Light Blue is
not for me.

"Nnnnnngh!"

I would love to know what's up with me and official photos. Looking at me, you'd think I'm perhaps capable of a good photo. I haven't any evident deformities, I've shiny hair, straight teeth that betray nothing of my British heritage... But for some damn reason, if there's a photo that's going to be used in some sort of official capacity? Oh, man. Doom.

My childhood photos are just going to have to be called an even draw, mostly because I was actually kind of cute, if androgynously so. They're called "page boy" haircuts for a reason, Mom. Then... uh, well, there was an overbite. A pronounced overbite. A serious, serious overbite. And you may all be thinking "braces" at this point, but I will one-up you with this: Headgear.

I don't want to talk about it.

Aaanyhow. The braces coincided rather frightfully with the early 90s, which means that there is a photo out there of me "accessorising" in 5th grade: I chose the pink-and-blue laser backdrop for my school photo, then wore a matching sweater, AND alternating blue-and-pink elastics on my braces. There may also have been a puffy black satin headband, but I really couldn't say, because to look at the photo in that sort of detail would surely bring on blindness. Thank god the grade school photographer was a head-and-shoulders kind of guy, because I don't think anyone could really handle the pegged-jeans, scrunch-socked monstrosity that clearly lurked out of frame.

I think I might have actually looked pretty cute in my mid-teens, but by that time the awfulness of prior photos had finally sunk in, and I avoided camera lenses as though they'd steal my soul. So as much as I claim I looked good, there's no real proof. Also, this hiding technique may have angered the photographic gods, because I've not been able to get a sensible official photo out of them since.

Age 16, driver's license: I believe the glasses I'm wearing occupy about 50% of my face. I do not know why no one told me this at the time.
Age 18, US passport: Drunk foreign exchange student
Age 18, UK passport: Stoooooned foreign exchange student
Age 20, ACIS card: Oh, okay, I forgot this one - Olive had just given me a haircut that made me look like Cleopatra, and I looked damn hot. I knew it at the time, too, as evidenced by the fact that I peeled this photo OFF of the expired ACIS card and proceeded to submit it the next year as a Tube pass photo. No joke.
Age 22, replacement passport photo: My friend Anna came with me for this photo during a break from work, and oh my god. It's winter, and I'm wearing a scarf and my off-day glasses, and there's something disastrously wrong with my hair and I'm wearing a black turtleneck to boot, and the guy only has black-and-white film to take the photo with. The result is that I look like I have arrived directly from Cold War Russia, KGB division. Anna and I are in the middle of discussing exactly how impossible it will be for me to travel ANYWHERE on that passport photo without being immediately detained and questioned when I get a call that someone's found the original passport, making the entire thing moot. I keep the photo, though. It's just that weird.
Age 24, rail card: We are late for a train down south. Olive and I have run to Paddington, run to the departures board, run to the ticket office, realised I qualify for a discount card, run to the photo booth to take the photo. I look like I've had a lobotomy -- like, I have this blank, blowsy, dazed look. It's a photo that should say "Oh, lord, we're going to miss the train and it's all my fault!". Instead, it says "Mmmm... eh? Hallooo!" In all, this saves me £3 with the rail card, which is about the same cost as the photo itself. Daft.

And then there's getting my license today. I tried today, people. I found the oddly-located RMV behind a train station with moderate difficulty. I filled all the paperwork out in advance, so as to avoid that thing where you fill out a form while resting your forehead in your palm and end up with greasy fringe and a red pressure splotch in the photo. In fact, it was all so smoothly done that I was waved right in and found myself before a deeply bored (and undoubtedly depressed) public servant within a matter of moments. Yeah, I was a bit shocked, too.

"Look in the thing heeyah," said the public servant, motioning towards a spot on the front of his booth. I took a moment to think. I didn't wear the black KGB turtleneck. I put on nice makeup. I wore the shapely black frames. I even wore the earrings that Olive's boyfriend gave me for Christmas. All should be well, right? Well, maybe one quick prayer to the soul-stealing photo gods would be goo... "Arright, yah done." What?! There wasn't even a flash!!!

Obviously, I end up looking like some sort of assassin-librarian. It's the sort of photo that makes me realise why old cockney geezers would sidle up to me in London and jolly "Cheer up, luv! It might not happen!" Looking at my new license, I wouldn't blame you for thinking that I spend my days quietly stacking books in the local library and shushing people, only to be occasionally interrupted by ninjas, at which point I flip open the P volume of the enyclopedia to reveal a razor blade embedded in the spine and go to town. It's just that sort of photo.

And so, despite my hopes, 2006 is apparently not the year that I finally take a good photo. If I could remember where I took the Cleopatra photo, I might be superstitious enough to go back, see if there's some sort of magic to it. Alas, that's a mystery as well. Or it could be that I need another haircut from Olive, except that could be unwise at this point, due to an unfortunate incident involving me, her, her freshman year, and the anguished words "too short!". But let's not dwell.

Let's cross our fingers for the passport renewal of 2008, shall we? Bah.

Givenchy "Organza First Light"

I really like this one. Some 'white floral' scents try too hard and finish up covering you with a wash of soapy odours, but "First Light Organza" has a very light touch.

It starts off with a gentle talc, like a grown-up baby powder. There's a hint of powdered sugar again as well, but this is a more mature, refined sweetness. And then the florals, which begin as an indistinguishable bouquet and then drift apart at the end. It's like finding a flower girl's posey on a chair at the end of a wedding reception, then separating out each bloom and holding it up to your face: slightly sweet from dusted sugar cookies smuggled to keep the toddler quiet, the talc scent where the bride hugged her, and then the white rose, narcissus, gardenia she's been carrying around carefully all day until her mother finally made her set them down and took her home to sleep.

And then there's another scent in there, which is green and peppery, and I think that's what tips the scent over from being cloying into being a great dressy, summery scent. Because in the end, you're not the flower girl in this scenario -- you're the guest who tucks one of the flowers into her hair and then spends the rest of the night with one of the groomsmen.

Verdict: A great white floral with just the right amount of adult edge.

Anna Sui "Sui Love"

I've actually worn this a few times and been totally unable to write a review. Usually I multitask: go shopping, go to work, read a book, whatever -- I just jot notes down on a scrap of paper and keep sniffing my arm like a lunatic, and by the end of the day I've got something to say. But "Sui Love" is an ever-changing jumble of so many different things, it's hard to pull out any specifics unless I sit down and actually focus on what's happening on my skin. So, with the help of "Beauty and the Geek 2", I finally sat still long enough to get through it.

At the start, there's a sweet, fruity incense over some sort of herbal mix. Cleanly smoky, it has an edge on it for the first five minutes before calming down to a nice thrum. This would have been a great scent to bridge the work/date divide (such as those weird times when a guy asks you to lunch and you can't tell if it's an actual date date or just convenience because you work in the same area, and you don't want to wear a very sexy scent because if it's casual he'll get all twitchy, but if it's a date date you want to be wearing something different than what you wear everyda... Uh, not that I think about this a lot. Ahem.)

But it turns out none of that matters, because only about fifteen minutes in, the entire thing goes all watery celery-and-pepper on me. There's a sweetness in there, but it's more like the natural sugar of the celery rather than a candy-sweetness. Reminded me a bit of the Malle "Therese" because of that very unexpected peppery tone, but the Ormonde layer was there too. Lurking.

And then there's the final stage of "Sui Love", which is totally weird, because this is when the Ormonde note suddenly becomes the dominant (and only) pitch. This note's not even an identifiable scent, really -- it's a warmth, like something mulling against your skin. I know you usually mull cider or wine with spices, but this isn't a spicy or smoky smell. All I can think of is a stemmy flower, like an iris. Take that iris and leave it in a vase for days on end: at some point, the iris will hit a turning point where it's stopped smelling fragrant and has just begun to die ever so slightly, almost creating a hint of heat as the flower begins to turn on itself. Okay, now somehow imagine mulling that scent of dying flower against your skin. It's definitely a weird thought, but it also an element I detect in almost every Ormonde I try. I'm sure there's something very lyrical I could say here about the beauty of burying a hint of overripeness or death in perfume, but I think I've been wordy enough for what is, in the end, a lackluster effort.

Verdict: Only worth it from the 5-15 minute mark; both before and after that, it's been done better.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

So here's the thing with international moves -- no matter how impeccably you plan, you're always going to run out of time. You'll leave something out of the shipping boxes, or forget to finish a bit of paperwork, or bury your passport and flight confirmation in your suitcase, or pack every single perfume sample you own in the safest place possible, which in this case was swaddled in a set of curtains in the centre of Box 2 (of three) destined for the slow boat out of London. A box which only reentered my life YESTERDAY.

So hurrah! All of my belongings from London have rejoined me at the family manse, where my parents view them with a growing sense of trepidation ("...and where do you intend to leave all this stuff?"). Tomorrow I'll be able to unearth my collection of scents and we'll be back on track -- at least until the next move, which is only about a month away.

And here's where I need your help, dear readers: Do you know anything about Wellington, NZ? I'm all set up to move there at the beginning of March, and I'm going in relatively blind. Any stories or tips would be greatly appreciated, or if you know anyone who wants to hire a writer-ish person? Feel free to give a heads-up.

And tomorrow? Perfume review! Seriously! For real! It's been so long since the last one, my iBook doesn't even smell like J-Lo anymore.