Ghost de Lopez!

Totally unexpected side-effect of collecting perfume samples and then storing them incorrectly: at some point during my London-Reykjavik-Boston hop, I managed to knock the top off one of those daft little bottles of "Still" that salesman foisted on me a few months ago. This bottle was lurking at the bottom of my backpack, which at the time was also serving double duty as the guardian of my laptop.

What I'm saying is that my iBook marinated in "Still" for at least three days and two plane rides, and now it wafts up at me every time I open the damn thing.

Could be worse, obviously. I could have accidentally left a bottle of "Angel" in there, I suppose. But still! Very! Unnerving!

Cacharel "Promesse"

I'll admit, I've been using this scent as an all-rounder during my international move (apologies for the extended absence -- turns out that moving transatlantically is VERY TAXING). I'd accidentally left a handful of vials in my purse and those are the ones that will be seeing me through the next few weeks as I wait for my shipped boxes to show up. All of the others are somewhat niche, too specific to wear without specific intent. And when you choose to unconsciously grab a certain fragrance right after putting down the stick of deoderant... Well, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

It's an eclectic bunch, and "Promesse" is the least obtrusive. It's got a grapefruit burst to start, but then florals out. It's got good staying power, but I can't shake the feeling that this scent is cheap somehow. I may have been totally spoilt by "Flowerbomb", and "Promesse" is just coming away like a low-grade knockoff. It's pleasant, and it's certainly what I've been throwing on while dressing for a day of lurking about town, but I probably wouldn't be returning to it were it not for the fact that all my other scents are somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. (Hopefully not "bottom of" the Atlantic -- dear god, I hate international moves!)

Verdict: Kind of a teeny-bopper take on "Flowerbomb", really. Less complex, less enjoyable, but serviceable all the same.

Jo Malone "Nectarine Blossom and Honey"

This is my summer scent.

I'm saying it now, I'm saying it loudly, and there will be no going back. As much as I can't wear the citrus scents, straight-up nectarine goes on bright and fresh and stays forever. I want to wear this scent from May to September for the forseeable future, under white shirts with skirts and sandals, over thin sweaters, being brushed across the nape of my neck by a high ponytail. It's the sort of scent that makes me think of ribbons.

It's not complex. Nectarine, nectarine, nectarine. But unlike the way an orange scent sours on my skin, the nectarine merely warms and simmers. Like nectarine cobbler, or a peach pie, this is a fruit that smells just as lovely warm as it does straight off the tree. And I'd guess that following Jo's layering technique with another one of her scents would probably change this from a summer scent to something spicy and thick, a baked good right out of the oven.

And as an added bonus, it turns out that Olive is actually allergic to nectarines -- so not only does this scent make me feel lovely and springy, but it makes my sister think of itching and rashes! It's like there's a built-in anti-theft device! Brilliant!

Verdict: MINE!

Jean Paul Gaultier "Gaultier 2"

You have to give them credit for a snazzy sales campaign. The back of the bottle is magnetised, you see, which has made it possible to affix these giant metal plates onto the arms of the salesgirls in a holster-like fashion. They shoot you, then make a big show of putting the bottle against the magnetic holster, where it produces a satisfying "click". As our jaded, beholstered salesgirl deadpanned, "It's the best part".

For all I can tell, this one's unisex. The weird thing is, there are two very distinct, almost parallel scents at work here, and they come together at the end in the same complimentary fragrance. It's a neat trick.

The first hit is of baby powder and tobacco, then an old leather armchair, an attic that smells of mothballs and lemon. The strangest thing in all of this is that the scents really do balance -- the sweetness of the feminine baby powder with the masculine tobacco, then the muskiness of the male leather and the female attic lemon. The finish is a lingering sensation of a thicket of sun-baked flowers on an otherwise deserted, windy, salty beach: again, unexpectedly complimentary. This is the first perfume I've tested that hasn't bothered to find the middle ground from the start in a unisex fragrance; it keeps the male and female scents running alongside each other until they meet at the seashore. I can only assume that the floral is more pronounced on a woman, the marine more pronounced on a man. Fascinating.

Verdict: Intriguing. Could be good for work, for socialising, or just for puzzling over. Definitely worth consideration, though.

Return of the Eliza

Hello, lovelies! Apologies for the unannounced, unexplained absence -- first I got a cold (thus scuppering any testings), then Olive came to town, then all sorts of interesting and fascinating things happened. But in keeping with the blog's theme, we'll just say this: Miss Eliza Bennet went to Bath to take the waters for a month. She's very sorry for the inconvenience, and deeply appreciated your letters.

Shall we start again, then? Good.

Pilar & Lucy "tiptoeing through chambers of the moon"

Stupid name? Check. Maddening grammar? Check. Silk flowers and a feather boa? Check.

Welcome back, ditzes.

I know, I know, just let it go. The bottle's cute! The name's quirky! Don't be such a snob! Yeah, well, I don't care. And this time round it's even worse, because I actually kind of like the fragrance. But will I buy it? Hell no. To pay for this bottle means that the silk-and-feather cabal win.

Not to mention that the bottle makes it look like it's all about roses and romance, which are the furthest thing from my mind when I wear this fragrance. My mother has a giant candle she keeps for Christmastime. She uses it mostly as a centrepiece and rarely lights it, which is why it's been present at every Christmas I can remember. She puts it on a low table in front of the fireplace, which is usually home to a raging fire. Without ever being lit, that candle can perfume the entire room in a cranberry, woodsy, piney, spicy, slightly waxy way.

That's exactly what this fragrance smells like to me. There's even a gourmand current running underneath, a jumble of delicious and warm foody smells like the aftermath of a fantastic dessert course. To me, this scent is the bit of Christmas you remember the rest of your life: a dreamy ambiance of decoration and family and food and warmth and happiness.

And I still wouldn't buy a full bottle due to the irk level of the packaging. Gah!

Verdict: Merry Christmas, depressing packaging. Ditzes.

Jo Malone "Lime Blossom"

This was brilliant at first! Smelled just like a cool lime grove, very breezy and very powerful, but somehow perfect. There's not a single false thing about it when it hits your skin, it's a big and enthusiastic fragrance.

But then my body chemistry struck again and brought in that milky carbonation edge I get so often with citrus notes, especially on the wrist sporting my watch. The other wrist's okay, but not the exhilarating burst from the first 15 minutes. If only the opening had some staying power, I'd be hooked, but much like a real lime you pull off the branch and slice up to garnish cocktails, time and heat get to "Lime Blossom" and just make it "blah".

Verdict: Might be suited to cooler blood than mine (would make a lovely air-freshener, though).

Issey Miyake "L'eau D'Issey"

"L'eau D'Issey" is green. Green like a bent sapling, green like a flower's stem, that sharp and watery and aggressive scent. Usually I like green, because when combined with other elements it freshens everything up a bit. But here the main focus is the green tone, and it's really a turn-off. Just imagine getting a lovely bouquet of beautiful flowers set off with twigs of berries and woody boughs... and then someone chops off the top half of the bouquet and hands you the beribboned stump. Not something you'd really want to bring to your face and inhale, is it?

And that might be my problem with this entire fragrance: it has elements of very nice concepts, just gone horribly awry at some stage. There's incense sticks that have been kept in a moist basement for too long; thawing spring earth that's been dried out in a hot attic until it's a sharp dusty powder; the ghost of Thérèse Roudnitska wafting about with her peppered honeydew melon slices. Top that off with a decapitated bouquet, and you've got "L'eau D'Issey".

Verdict: Bertha Rochester might have worn this -- mad, off-kilter, and gothic in a bad way.

J. Lo "Still"

"Here," the nattily-dressed salesman said, shoving four samples into my hand. "Quick, put them in your bag, I'm not meant to give you that much! This isn't even my zone!"

Ah, the danger and intrigue of the Oxford Street fragrance departments.

Of course, now I've got a ludicrous amount of "Still" I've found that it smells of nothing more than soap. Nice soap, but soap. As though I've taken a shower, then scraped my nail along the top of a moist white bar and rubbed the residue on my wrists and collarbone. Soap made up of white florals, maybe, but... That's it for four hours. Then a spicy/citrus whisper right against the skin that is so absolutely faint it might as well be a hallucination. Then... poof. Gone.

The bottle's easier to wax on about: the back's got this nifty refracting thing going on, so it looks faceted from the front. But then there's also a ridiculous plastic ring with a huge "diamond" settled around the atomiser! Now, this isn't an inexpensive perfume, so why on earth they'd spend the time and money making the really nice old-Hollywoodish bottle and then chuck a Crackerjack ring on the top, I've no idea. You can remove it, thank goodness, but... To what? Wear shoddy plastic imitation J. Lo "bling"? Silly marketing move there.

Verdict: Soapy fragrance with bizarrely contradictory packaging.

Viktor & Rolf "Flowerbomb"

This is a favourite of Lank's, which surprised me given that his wife apparently can't wear florals and is big on gourmand scents. I mean, "Flowerbomb" kind of implies floral overload. Now, though, I get it.

Firstly, how adorable is that bottle? Shaped like a grenade, yes, but I choose to see the design as a clever subversion of a violent object rather than something tacky. As for the fragrance itself: if you look at that bottle and imagine that the glass is actually candy, a sort of berry-tangerine boiled candy shell encasing a sherbety floral centre, then you're getting close to what this perfume's all about.

Much like hard candy, the sweetness is syrupy rather than sugary. (I tend to think of "sugary" as "a flavour with added sugar", whereas "syrupy" is much more integrated, with the sweetness and flavour blending so seamlessly you can barely tell them apart.) The first hint of floral I got was about an hour in, and that's only because I began to pick up a hint of powdery/polleny scent. I suspect there's a layer of jasmine between that candy shell and the actual bouquet -- it's the sweetest flower I know, and would explain the rather subtle segue. Then the fruity candy fades into the background and the burst of flowers is much clearer.

There is something vaguely dry about the floral accord, a little bit fizzy, which is why I'm thinking of a sherbet centre rather than a liquid one. Dried, powdered petals, maybe -- rose and freesia and lots of others, like confetti. Altogether I like the bottle, I like the concept, and the scent is a mass-market crowd pleaser. Would be suitable for Olive or Blondie, but I don't think I'd be able to wear it long into my 30s. I can't even wear it frequently now, given I'm not exactly the "effervescently sweet" type of personality. That said, I really wish I'd tested this one last night when out for a coworker's birthday drinks -- I wore "Une Rose" instead, and it was really a bit too classy for the occasion. Eh.

Canadianne likes it a lot, but was sidetracked by asking after "the sexy man one". Which is really funny, because I think she's going to use it on her boyfriend, and we both recommended it to her friends Dolphin Boy and AlternaScot last night, and Gil's just run off and gotten some in the States this weekend as well... Sexy men for everyone!

Verdict: A nice gourmand for those who avoid vanilla, and a nice floral for those who don't suit flowers.

Elizabeth Arden "5th Avenue After 5"

Ever wonder what Catherine Zeta-Jones smells like? Well, according to the ad campaign, she smells like "5th Avenue After 5". So, in order, like this: a grape out of a tinned fruit cup; dusty fruit; half-hearted cheeriness; the dregs of mixed juice left in the bottom of said fruit cup once it's been eaten; mustiness; a touch of compact powder.

How do you even create the smell of "dusty fruit"?! By adding coriander and saffron to the mix, if I'm reading these notes right. From what I can see they've tried to make a Middle Eastern-themed perfume, but while also trying to keep it young and cosmopolitan. Which is exactly what's ended up happening -- this is a woman who lives in the Middle East, eats Middle Eastern food, has all of those fragrances naturally embedded in her skin -- and now she's inexplicably splashed on a blend of citrus and honeysuckle-brightness and chosen a Mary Kay powderpuff over her black kohl. Oh, and don't forget the musk. Totally incongruous! I wouldn't be surprised to find a note of "kitchen sink" in this thing.

Verdict: This isn't a confident city girl; this is a deeply conflicted woman trying to be something she's not. No wonder Zeta-Jones looks so dead-eyed in the print ads.

Thierry Mugler "Alien"

I can't find a proper picture of the "Alien" bottle. Suffice it to say, it looks like a prop off the set of Stargate. To the right: an artist's rendering of the scent.

Selfridges had the entire entryway into the perfume hall set up to launch this fragrance. Women standing around, strategically zapping people as they walked by; a huge screen with an extra-terrestrial looking model apparently oblivious to the dangerous yellow octopus perched atop her head; displays with the various packagings on little plinths; the word "Alien" all over the place in Spooky Serial Killer font. Aside from the ET push, the theme seemed to be "Purple!". With a thought for the buspeople, I declined to get spritzed (get thee behind me, Mugler!) and instead made off with a tiny purple vial for later use.

On first application? BAM. Seriously, I sometimes wonder if Thierry Mugler could take the extended break between "Angel" and "Alien" because they've actually branched out into the development of chemical weaponry for shady government departments. If you like "Angel"'s sillage, you've got another contender here. But this isn't a gourmand scent on me -- unfortunately, what I immediately identified was the smell of tiger lily. Tiger lilies: beautiful, exquisite flowers that have the most appalling stink in close quarters, with pollen that will stain your clothes and never, ever wash out. "Alien" is like living in the heart of that deep lily throat, covered in rank pollen. It turned my stomach a little, it was so aggressive. I actually left Starbucks because I was self-conscious at how much this fragrance stank.

Once home, though, I began to come around. An hour and a half in, the green and jasmine notes asserted themselves, and the sillage died WAY down. There's something lurking underneath all of that green, something that is definitely out of place logically but also smells rather nice (it turns out to be a marine note, which intensifies as the day wears on until it becomes the dominant drydown note). The vanillin is very understated as well, emerging and taking over a few of the green notes as time goes on. The woodsy scent's been around since the tiger lily left, but in the background, eventually blending with the vanilla in a way that knocks any sticky-sweetness off.

Here's a bit of weirdness: my clothes still smell like the tiger lily-stage, but my skin moved on to woodsy green-vanilla and is rapidly giving up the ghost entirely only three hours on, leaving the strong marine element. Hm. The sillage die-off will disappoint fans of "Angel", and I'm leery of the tiger lily pollen. I admit that the stages after the opening are winning me over; it's a very eccentric scent, certainly not easy to pin down.

Verdict: A very nice and unusual fragrance, but not truly out of this world solely due to the opening. A very good alternate Mugler for those who can't stomach "Angel", I'd guess.

Christian Dior "Miss Dior Cherie"

Ah, now I'm regretting the "Coco Mademoiselle" purchase. Whoops.

"Miss Dior Cherie" is like a fresh fruit salad dressed with "Coco Mademoiselle". I caught a strong whiff of strawberry and melon on first application, which has settled down to a dry, fruity/woodsy musk. I'm surprised I like this as much as I do; my experience with the citrus side of things had me convinced that any fruits would immediately sour against my skin. I enjoy the sweetness of this fragrance, for once not laced with sugar or vanilla -- just a clear, clean fruit-sweetness. To be honest,there's also a sharpness in this scent that really is right on the edge for me; it's like a clump of lichen and a tangerine have gotten into a scuffle with a gatecrashing poof of powder somewhere in the background, but the situation is generally under control.

When I told Lank that I'd bought "Coco Mademoiselle", he was surprised -- said it was a little old. And honestly, he's right. If I'd known about "Miss Dior Cherie" from the get-go, the more powdery "Mlle" would still be on the shelf. Ah, well. Live and learn. And get a sample.

Verdict: "Coco Mademoiselle"s younger, fresher sister. While Mlle's meeting friends in an upscale restaurant, Cherie's enjoying a pub lunch outdoors on the riverbank.

Stila "Midnight Bloom"

I cannot escape the thought that this is a perfume designed as an evening fragrance for teenagers; the second perfume they've ever bought, the one they start wearing out at night. It's as if someone took a look at the entry-level teenage daytime scent of powder and vanilla and just substituted musk and gardenia for the vanillin. There's not much of a progression with this fragrance: it arrives in a burst of powdery gardenias and stays that way for ages, that giant bloom hanging heavy over any other notes for the rest of the day.

It's a sweet enough fragrance, I suppose, but very basic. The notes smell a little canned, and that gardenia will kill you. There's also an initial syrupy-sweet hiss that is the main development, eventually evaporating into a more typical vanilla note that brings a bit of cedar with it. Six hours on, it finally escapes the looming gardenia, becoming vanilla pudding with a few petals swirled into the dish -- a nice, perfectly pleasant scent and executed really well here, just coming in too late to really make up for the opening. I'd love to be able to say it smells like a trellis of gardenias or something, but the scent just doesn't lend itself to grand imagination. And man, this stuff is strong -- it almost overpowered me in the first two hours, so go easy on the dose. In the end, it hits me as yet another generic, kind of hamfisted design, available in hundreds of incarnations at the nearest pharmacy.

Verdict: A teenager's purchase for her first real date; unfortunately, the stage truly worth the amount of allowance she forked out for it is at the very end.

The Different Company "Bois d'Iris"

"Bois d'Iris" is absolutely not what I expected. Because The Different Company is Jean-Claude Ellena's brainchild, I assumed that this fragrance would have similarities with "L'Eau d'Hiver" -- that vivid single iris from the florist shop, but out in the wild. What I didn't expect was to apply this scent and suddenly experience a powerful impression of incense wafting out the censer waved by a Roman Catholic priest. It was the very specific scent I remember as a child, sitting in our clean modern church, as Father Tim made his way down the aisle trailing that cloudy, heavy odor.

But much like memories become idealised over time, I'm aware that "Bois d'Iris" is missing some of the negative elements of the real Roman Catholic incense. The oppressive smokiness, for one, is gone, as is the stinging spice. After 15 minutes the notes began to separate and I picked up cedar and wood and lichen, then the clearer florals between.

It's funny; I came into this expecting a flowery meadow for some reason, and so was blindsided by the entire religious experience -- what did that have to do with a woodland full of irises? But having wholly dismissed the name as ludicrous, the way the notes emerged actually brought me right back: willowy cedars clustered on a thick carpet of moss, pockets of irises jostling for any leftover space, like unexpectedly stumbling across somewhere totally idyllic and secret after a long hike. It's a full fragrance, kicking off with a heavy punch that doesn't so much mellow out as clarify, which makes it a lot easier to take. Unfortunately, the fragrance does fade rather quickly -- which I don't mind, as I prefer its lighter incarnation to the more gothic first impression.

Verdict: It somehow pulls off incense without actually being incense-based, and warm without being smoky. Really fascinating, and overtakes "Jasmin de Nuit" in the "I Must Own One of The Pretty TDC Bottles, I Must, I Must, Which One Though?" contest.

Guerlain "Aqua Allegoria Gentiana"

Fair warning, this is a bottle I unexpectedly unearthed while clearing up the flat. It is one of those bottles I mentioned in my very first post, the tiny airport testers my father brought back for Olive and myself. My friends, this bottle is probably about twelve years old, and has been treated abominably, and yet somehow managed to cross the Atlantic with me and survive three different England moves. So I tried it today more out of loyalty than anything else.

The aldehyde smell is pretty sharp. There's a dried orange smell, like the candied fruits you can get at specialty stores, coated in fine granulated sugar. Spices as well, like a packet you're just about to put into mulled wine. I'd imagine that there are potpourris that smell exactly like this on sale at Christmas. But the dried orange slowly changes into a powdery packet of orange gelatin, and the floral scents that emerge are incongruous with the entire holiday scene. They fight against the spiciness somehow, and that clash finally results in an oddly musty tone -- like a freshly halved grapefruit covered in pollen, gelatin and cinnamon? Sprinkled, of course, in aldehyde.

Verdict: A winner at the start, but the drydown's just a random crush of things out of a dried goods pantry (I'm choosing to blame the aldehyde on the sample age).

In other news, I just got back in touch with my high school friend Lank, who is getting married this fall. My neighbourhood boy from childhood, Gil, has been keeping us informally updated about each other, and finally I rang Lank up. Apparently he is now some sort of hotshot at a NYC perfume house, totally unbeknownst to me, and the first thing out of his mouth?

"Gil told me you're interested in fragrance!"

Ack! Thanks, Gil. Unexpectedly caught in a situation not unlike a tai chi novice discussing martial arts with Bruce Lee, I babbled incoherently for a while, and am still too humiliated about the entire thing to really focus on it for any amount of time. Then again, lovely Lank could end up being a bit of a sample source?

Bond No. 9 "Hamptons"

I've never been to the Hamptons, mainly because I view it as Cape Cod for Famewhores. Celebrities who want to have an actual vacation go to Nantucket or the Vineyard; celebrities who want to be available to Page Six photographers go to the Hamptons. That said, I've always imagined the environs are similar (bar the Hamptonsesque stench of collagen and desperation).

So "Hamptons" was familiar, mostly. Bug spray (but the nice sort), an unlit citronella candle on a wooden deck, sunscreen faint on your skin, a breeze coming in off the ocean through the dune grass and maybe a hint of seaweed drying out on the sand. Nice and a little reminscent, even if I think that the bottle is naff.

Here's the thing, though: after a couple of hours, I suddenly noticed a salty sting in the back of my throat. And not sea salt. Table salt. A doctor once told me to gargle with salt for a throat infection, and that weirdly stale salt coating is right there now at the back of my throat. I'm not sure if this has somehow changed my sense of smell, but suddenly I'm getting an undertone of black sand (the churned-up, foul-smelling, probably rotting-shellfish-based sand that gets exposed at very low tide). But... with whiffs of beach flowers on top. So that's salty, sickly-rotten and super-sweet-flowery all on one wrist. It's not got a patch on my personal Perfume Archnemesis, "Angel", but for me this is just not happening.

Verdict: Starts off fun and genuine and clean and breezy, only to end up as thinly-masked corruption that literally leaves a bad taste in your mouth. "Hamptons", indeed.

Editions de Parfums "Une Rose"

Whoa. Hello, roses.

I'd just begun to wonder if I really don't like roses on their own. As a booster for another floral scent I could take them, but all one their own they immediately make me think of the tinny, watery perfumes I got as a five year old, prepackeged with a fake lipstick and transluscent eye shadow compact. This bias held as I first applied "Une Rose" -- a single rose in a plastic wrapper, possibly purchased at a filling station. Green and not particularly fragrant and disappointing.

But then imagine that the person who gave you that single rose leads you to a room, opens the door, and it is full of giant, blossoming, boisterous roses. Those roses have been in there for a while, warming in the heat of the tealights dotted about, and the air is a deep swirl of heady, velvety roses. Mature roses -- not innocent, hopeful sweetheart roses. Provocative roses.

I spent the whole day bringing my wrist to my nose and inhaling this scent. It's not the close-to-the-petal scent of "L'Eau d'Hiver" -- it's a thronging mass of fermented blooms somehow working in reverse: instead of wafting by you in the air, it's clinging to your skin. I'm so glad I didn't wear it to work; it would be so out of place. But I would adore wearing this out in the evening, and carrying the scent of the best part of a rose's bloom with me everywhere. For the people around you who get the sillage coming off you, it will be as though YOU are a rose.

Verdict: Damn sexy and damn seductive, and damn worth the investment.

Burberry "Weekend"

This is one of the hard-won samples from Selfridge's, which I picked up on the recommendation of my high school friend Pidge. Burberry's got a bit of a chav-tastic reputation lately in general, and the bottle looks downright stupid, but Pidge is a classy lady so on it went.

A melon wash at first, which then blurred into an almost alcoholic woodsy spice on me -- not boozy, just bright. That freshness lingered for a good three hours, then mellowed into a muskier tone that deepened the spices a little. There was a touch of powder at the end, but totally devoid of flowery insipidness, so it didn't bother me at all.

"Weekend" is somewhat utalitarian for me -- it's a good scent, and I certainly wouldn't turn away a free bottle, but it's very much a take-or-leave perfume on my skin. Pidge's body chemistry is about as far from mine as you can get, though, and I'd be interested to see if the flowers come out on her.

Verdict: Inoffensive, clean scent that is as casual as they come, but won't be setting my world on fire anytime soon.

Ormonde Jayne "Ta'if"

First, an apology.

My dear fellow passengers on the top deck: I am so, so sorry. I only darted into Selfridge's briefly after dinner. But then the perfume lady zapped me with "Vera Wang" before handing me a sample of the Men's version. And then another lady hit me with Stella McCartney's "Stella". And then I put Serge Lutens "Blond" on voluntarily (mistake) and then scored my second sample by allowing myself to get spritzed with "Burberry Weekend". But the truly appalling final act was mine, oh buspeople. Because I was the idiot who, completely of my own volition, picked up a tester of "Angel" and put it on the back of my Vera Wang'd right wrist.

Why I didn't realise that this is like putting a sleeping fairy and a soaked gremlin in a small room and then walking away, I don't know. Because the VW slumbered on prettily until the Angel crawled right around my wrist, smothered it, and then began an attempt on the life of the man sitting next to me. I tried to muffle the Angel against my jeans, but it only came back stronger. And you buspeople were very nice not to chide me publicly for smelling like a chemical weapon of mass destruction, though I suspect it was because some of you saw the samples in my hand and feared Angelic retribution. So... sorry.

Love, Lizzie


That done with, it's "Ta'if" time. Honestly, this was repellant first on -- horrible and musty and evil. It took a good 15 minutes for it to die down a bit, at which point the mustiness settled into a very heavy, dry spiciness mixed with roses and other flowers. It made me think of clouds and dusk, something muddled and swirling and dense, but at the same time not strong. And then at the end my old nemesis powder made an understated cameo. There was something alluring about "Ta'if", sly and slightly unpredictable, which I found attractive. I'm just unsure that I can ride out the musty opening and the powdery finish enough to enjoy it.

Verdict: Subtle and smoky at the same time, it's nice at the midpoint, but the start and finishing notes are killing me. (Though not as badly as "Angel", frankly -- I may never run this one as a true test, I feel ill.)