Chasing the Tuberose: A Story of the Barney's Perfume Counter Part II

Apothia "If" ***

L’Artisan “La Chasse Aux Papillons” **

L’Artisan “La Chasse Aux Papillons Extreme” *

Nasomatto “Narcotic Venus” *

Serge Lutens “Fleurs D’Oranger” **

L’Artisan “Tubereuse” ***

Éditions de Parfums “Carnal Flower” ???

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So last Thursday, I posted about my deeply-held insecurities feeding into my awkwardness at perfume counters. I wrote that I planned to meet my sweet friend, Christina, at Barney’s, and not only would she provide me cover with her lovely ebullience, she would also be my willing tuberose guinea pig. How did it go?

To pick up the story where I left it, we were at the perfume counter, trying out all things tuberose. The scary scents, along with the evil sales lady, were making me cry. Christina-as Sigourney-as-Ripley picked up her favorite flame thrower, cocked her head at the evil sales staff, and grunted "Get away from her, you b*tch!!!" Then she did this:

No. Just being silly. It didn't happen anything like that.
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What really happened was I was a few minutes late, and when I came in, Christina was already chatting up the (lone) cute 20-something boy on the floor (Natch.) (Everyone else working there in the entire store is well-groomed, poised, female, and 40+.)

I was so hoping Josh would be working that day because I had had a nice time with him once before-- One time before Christmas when I had screwed up my courage to go in, he was there behind the counter. It was his first day at Barney’s—he had worked in scent before-- but now he was manning the Mother Ship of scent. There’s a lot going on at Barney’s, and he knew it. He was a little nervous too, so we were in good company. He was most gracious to me, patient and enthusiastic. My limited (book) knowledge was enough to impress him, so we were both learning from one another, which is always nice. All in all, it had turned out to be a semi-not-so-traumatic experience. So I was most happy to see him there again.

I apologized for not calling first, but explained that we were there to try a raft of tuberose scents, roughly from the most ethereal to the most eye-watering, all the while keeping in the back of my mind that the Queen Mother of tuberose, “Carnal Flower” was at the end of the line-up, lurking…

Now, I walked in on their conversation, and wasn't paying close attention, but I might have heard Christina say the word "blog" and maybe even "Left Coast Nose." I didn't think much about it at the time, and I certainly didn't want to dwell on it. (I would never bring attention to something like that in that situation. One, it would posit me as far more of an expert than I really am. *Embarrassing!!* Then I would be terrified that he might actually log on, find me, and read me. *Excruciating!!* If you're reading this Josh, look away!!) So I blocked that little nugget out of my mind as we got started. But if you read Nina Z.'s comment from last Thursday, it makes it kind of funny, because that might explain what happened next....

Josh was the soul of graciousness and like a maitre d' guiding us to his finest table, he led us over to the scent bar and sat us down at the stools. And the bar metaphor is apt because for the next 90 minutes, we three sniffed and hooted and whooped it up like drunken sailors!! We were laughing, and spritzing, and sniffing each other, and flirting, sharing our stories and our impressions. As Christina said later, we were high—it was just so much fun!!

In the entire time we were there, the rest of the place was completely dead—at some point two other women come in—they sidled over to our snort-fest and cautiously dabbed at some Byredo number. “Here—try this,” I said, swinging a test strip in her direction. “Uh, that’s ok, thanks. I can smell it from here,” she said, backing off like I was inviting her to take a few jello shots and play spin-the-bottle with us.

Who cares!! More fun for us!!! Whoopie!!

Here’s what we sniffed:

Apothia “If” ***
I’d already shared “If” with Christina months back and have already reviewed “If” in depth. It was my plan, however, to remind her how *genius* this tuberose + grapefruit rind + white musk in an oil base construction was. Three of her favorite things all put together, and as it turns out, I love it too!

L’Artisan “La Chasse Aux Papillons” **
Ready to hate this from reading about it, I just couldn’t believe how much I liked it. I wrote “cool and elegant, early morning rose + tuberose + fresh inner lemon tree bark” in my notes, although I don’t read about rose anywhere in the scent notes. Shimmery. Summery. I could feel the little butterfly wings tickling my nasal passages. I tried it on my skin, and as it turns out, it reminds me that if I wanted to wear a straight-floral scent with no musks, spices or powders, what I really want to wear is Amouage “Reflection.” But it did give me hope that the demon tuberose could be kept in check.

L’Artisan “La Chasse Aux Papillons Extreme” *
This did not get any better for me pumped up to the max and with a bizarre anise element that I thought distracted more than added to the original. Did not get.

Nasomatto “Narcotic Venus” **--> *
This one was not on my initial list of things to sniff- Josh recommended it. We actually took a Nasomatto detour through NV, “Duro” and “Black Afgano.” (It turns out Josh is half Afghani.)

It’s probably a REALLY GOOD THING that we didn’t know the PerfumedCourt’s scent notes for NV read: “Narcotic Venus is the result of a quest for the overwhelming addictive intensity of female sexual power. I dunno about that, but you skank nuts should like it. Goes on sweet and slightly innocent... for a second, then it gets naughty.” Even without that prompting, the ensuing conversation was decidedly R-rated. Looking back on it, perhaps this was the point where the afternoon tilted towards the Dionysian, so maybe there’s something actually to it…)

I certainly didn’t smell any skank in it— I wrote down “tea rose + tuberose + green apple= Juicy Couture 'Juicy Couture.'” Christina actually liked this one enough to eventually try it out on her skin, and it went twenty years “young,” we all agreed. Fruity. Cloying. Kiwi. (I love Christina, and she is game to try anything. But her chemistry is such that all scents go straight to sugar on her.)

Serge Lutens “Fleurs D’Oranger” ***-->**
This one was the shocker of the afternoon, I have to say. So solid. But so balanced. So light. This reminded me of those ninja knives that weigh nothing and have a perfect balance point, yet are super strong and have a razor’s edge. FdO is just a well-oiled machine, there is no two ways about it. The jasmine, the subtle woods and spices, the tuberose kept perfectly in check. I’m not actually sure I would even call this a tuberose scent—maybe an indolic masterpiece instead. I would not ever reach for this while Michael Kors “For Women” is in the world, but, boy howdy, it sure smells nice.

L’Artisan “Tubereuse” ***
This is the one that started it all. I smelled this months back in Chicago, and it made me realize that I could actually fall madly in love with a tuberose scent. Milky, creamy, coconuty, mangoey—this is just a tropical flan of a scent. I tried this one on thinking maybe this could be the one, my one “true” tuberose. But as lovely as this one is on paper, it turned green on Christina, and on me it just blew up. As in, I had been sniffing perfumes for an hour, surrounded by bottles and strips and spritzes, and the only thing I could smell was my right elbow, and it caused my right eye to nearly close involuntarily. Wonderful, but way, way too strong.

I’m still giving it three stars for its on-paper performance—it is the soliflore tuberose scent that I love the best. “Tubereuse” will have to be my one true unrequited love, I suppose, the one I dream about-- from a safe distance.

Éditions de Parfums “Carnal Flower” ???
Is this a cop-out? I did sort of build this up in the story, and the reason I did that was because I had built it up in my mind. After all, this is the scent that Chandler Burr called a “loud, filthy, utterly gorgeous neo-brutalist tuberose hand grenade.” A “tuberose that comes at you holding a baseball bat in one hand and a raw steak in the other.” (Easily my favorite one-line review of just about anything in and of all time.)

Countless keystrokes have been struck analyzing this scent, and I thought that surely my reaction to it would be more… more I can’t say. But it surprised me. From my notes: “Neon green—yes, yes, yes. Vomit. (!!!) Green stems. Unopened buds. Not ready. Red licorice.” (Christina and Josh thought they smelled earth and dirt—I didn’t—just stems and leaves.) Not “flowery” like I thought it’d be. And, maybe I was just blasted out by this point, but not loud like I thought it would be. It smelled dense. Like a wall of smell—no place for your nose to hook onto. But not loud.

Christina gamely tried it on—now, mind you, this was the last tuberose scent of the day, so we were flying on fumes at that point. But I just didn’t “understand” it on her skin. I kept grabbing her wrist, sniffing, making a face, and shaking my head. Nope. Don’t get that. We went to a coffee shop after and talked for more than an hour. I have to say, for a scent that starts $200 U.S. a bottle, it died down disappointingly fast on her skin.

I will go back. I will sniff again. But for me right now, I have not yet wrapped my nose around CF: It remains a puzzle wrapped in an enigma baked in a Twinkie and stays unreviewed.
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So how about the very end of the story. Can I make something up about a demon tuberose punching a hole through somebody’s chest? No?

Here’s what really happened: We didn’t buy anything. After all that!! Christina and I looked at one another, raised our eyebrows, shrugged, and made our apologies. Fo me, there was just nothing in all that that warranted putting a three-figure dent in my perfume budget. Josh, for his part, couldn’t have been nicer about it, packing up samples, giving us his business cards, kisses and smiles all around. We joked that we owed him a drink—when did he get off? (Now I’m hoping our respective spouses aren’t reading this…)

I felt fine about it, until I felt bad about it a day later. Then I felt terrible. I knew that Josh didn’t work on commission—I had asked him that first off the first day I met him. And I knew that had we not been there, that would have been 90 minutes of a Wednesday afternoon where Josh would have had nothing else to do but make small talk with his coworkers.

But still. It had been such an enjoyable afternoon, and now I was feeling like we could never go back, free-riding sniffers that we were.

Then I put on the sweater I had been wearing that day. There was a whiff of something so lovely, so haunting—every fiber of my being sat straight up. What was that heavenly scent?

Late in the binge, we had messed around with a bunch of random stuff—mostly at Josh’s suggestion. He brought out Serge Lutens “Arabie,” making the rather audacious claim that it’s what Carla Bruni wears. I tried it on a strip and found it interesting enough, and then put a little on my wrist. It made absolutely no impression on me after all that swoony tuberose until I smelled it again two days later. THEN I COULD NOT GET ENOUGH. As in: I wore that stinking sweater for days on end, obsessively sniffing that tiny corner of left sleeve. I couldn’t get back to Barney’s—too busy, too rainy, too sick, and when I was free and healthy and it wasn’t pouring, Josh wasn’t working.

But the happiest part was, was when I finally did make it back to buy a bottle, I was given a superstar welcome: All the ladies of the perfumed court swarmed around me to say hi, Prince Josh gave me a sweet kiss on the cheek, made a big show of packing it up, getting me a sample, the whole deal.

So now I am the Queen of Barney’s!! Ha!! Thank you Christina!! Thank you Josh!! What once felt alien and intimidating as outer space is now a whole new playground to rompus in. Next time we three meet, drinks are definitely on me.
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And on that note, I wanted to say “Thank you” to all my regular readers here at LCN. When I started out, wanting to blog about perfume and pop culture and politics and all the other things on my mind, I was afraid it might be lonely. After all, besides Christina and a few other notable exceptions, perfume is just about the last thing that most of my friends are interested in.

But I just loved the perfume blogosphere—there’s so much going on—opinions, connotations, stories, creativity, interesting writing, and good suggestions. I just wanted to be a part of it. And one day I looked up, five months into it, I suddenly realized—I am a part of it. Thank you to everyone who stops by and reads and leaves comments, and thank you all for your lovely blogs that bring so much pleasure and inspiration.

While I'm spreading the love-- two posts I want to shout out. One is by Mals over at Muses In Wooden Shoes (Note-- she's made the leap to WordPress, people!)-- and not just because she says nice things about me. (Cheers!!) Her latest posting, "Critic Vs. Reviewer" was in direct dialogue with the JAR piece I did that evoked the comments that inspired this piece. So it's all part of one big conversation.

The other is Beth Gehring's posting over at Perfumerotica! on leopard skin bras and breast exams. Doing some self-care and looking smokin' while you're doing it-- I like it!!

Writing about roses for V-Day on Thursday. Love is in the air!!

Chasing the Tuberose: A Story of the Barney's Perfume Counter Part I

This is me:

This is me at the perfume counter at Barney's:

This is what I think of when I think about tuberose:

But that's alright. I'm not afraid. I'm going to Barney's with my dear friend, Christina:

I know she will take care of me, and it will be ok.

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Ok. Silliness aside, I have some serious points to make in this post.

A few weeks ago, I wrote extensively before about my political objections to snobbery in the beauty/luxury industries. The thoughtful discussion that that posting provoked made me realize that there is a deeply personal side to this experience for me, beyond the egg-head intellectual part (which is soooo much where I’d rather live, I’m well aware…) So, against my initial plan for this posting, I’m going to highjack this story with share-time, with the thought that it might put this whole perfume adventure into some context. I’ll do the actual reviews on Monday.
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I’ve been blessed all my life to be befriended by gorgeous women. (Why is another story I won’t tell now.) I mean, when you look through the eyes of love, anyone you care about is lovely. But I’m talking about objectively, in the standards of the broader culture, drop-dead, double-take beauties. I love looking at my friends—they’re so pretty!

Me—I was never that girl. I was always the Kate Jackson Angel—flat-chested, skinny, slightly-dykey-looking smart brunette—with glasses, no less. Before this turns into a Margret/Pauline discussion (Niko Case fans will know what I mean—Rita, too, is a fragment of a name…), in the spirit of full disclosure, due to a nice figure, I never played Velma to my stable of Daphnes, but, let’s just say, I knew where I stood.

So, feeling I could never compete with the true lovelies, I just never did the whole make-up/hair/pretty girl thing. I think glamour, if you don’t learn it early, you never really get good at it. I still don’t do it very well, but for the most part I don’t regret it. My husband loves my tomboy ways, and I’m getting to an age where I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.

The only sad exception to my happy ignorance of all things girly was perfume: For years I wanted to smell all the pretty things. But I eyed perfume counters with the same trepidation that a newbie jump-roper feels when getting her first chance to double-dutch. I just didn’t know how to get started! I hadn’t developed any beauty counter skills, and unlike make-up, where I could reach out to an eye shadow shade that I liked and go “Aaah,” in the perfume department, there’s just no frame of reference for anything I might like or dislike. After all, a fancy bottle and/or a sexy ad campaign tell you absolutely nothing about the juice inside.

Unlike almost any other realm of my life, when it came time to sample perfume, I didn’t know how to say yes, I didn’t know how to say no. I certainly didn’t know how to articulate what I liked, and it feels bad to turn down polite suggestions!! Also, I feel keenly for the folks who work there—I don’t want to waste anyone’s time as I browse. But also I hate the feeling of being sold to to meet some sales quota.

I’ll put my discomfort another way: I didn’t feel entitled to be there. Not pretty enough, not rich enough, not feminine enough, not looks and class-conscious enough. I have viewed the first floor of every department store as a hostile, exclusionary environment and have been repelled by them for years.

Then I fell madly in love with perfume, spending hours and hours reading about it online. That helped ease my perfume counter phobia—some. Why? Because now I was informed. I was equipped with knowledge. I was “smart” enough to be there. (Oh, when we find something that works for us, we go back to that well again and again, don’t we? Let my big brain be my passport to the sniff counter. I am such a cliché!!)

The prospect of going to a super-high-end snoot palace to go sniff perfume was still enough to cause some low-level anxiety attacks for me. Much like suiting up to go into outer space to fight acid-dripping aliens (!!), I had to don my protective gear: fix my hair, put on make-up, wear what I think those who shop for the latest fashions might dress like. Mind you, I’m doing this by Braille, since I have no idea what fancy ladies dress like.

At this stage in my story, I might have the guts to dress up and go sniff, but I still had more in common with those trenchcoated creeps who troll though the dirty magazine racks and then scurry off without buying anything. I’m just not comfortable buying something unless I get the time to know it better. So even then, armed with a notepad and cute boots, I would still sniff and run.

So this is what I meant by feeling I’ve got to have someone to protect me when I enlisted my dear friend, Christina, to hit the perfume counters with me. Christina would be my Barney’s beard. (I can hear her laughing out loud at that description as I type that…) Gorgeous, sassy, smokin’ enough to turn the gay boys straight. (She’s got Julianne Moore’s bone structure with Sarah Palin’s coloring. I remember sitting with her one time at a restaurant in the Castro. Our waiter, near the end of the meal, came over to our table and said to her “I usually go for guys, but if you’re free, I’m available.” Yeah, she’s hot.)

Everyone loves Christina on sight, and I’ve never known a waiter, salesperson, bar tender, or cab driver who hasn’t wanted to…uh… flirt with her. To say the very least. So here is my idea: Christina will be my avenging department store angel. She will cover me with lots of lovely diversion bedazzling the sales staff while I sniff. And, she loves tuberose, that Olfacta Dentata of flowers. She will be my guide through some of the trickiest, scariest terrain out there for me.

To be continued....

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I’ve made the decision that I’m going to try to keep my postings shorter and sweeter—both to spare the eyeballs of my dear readers (those who slog all the way through these endless postings—Love you!! Bless you!!) and to pace myself in an attempt to maintain and sustain my creative energy in this project—not try to throw everything at every posting.

So next Monday, I’ll put up the tuberose reviews, and you will learn how my evil plan unfolded. Have a most wonderful weekend!!

Tom Ford “White Patchouli” (**)

So, before I got interested in perfume, I had left pop culture behind about a decade ago. It’s my husband, Bazr, who is the one around our house who reads Vanity Fair and GQ and Entertainment Weekly; I read The Economist. I can't tell the new crop of tv and movie stars from the next-- Saturday Night Live is becoming unintelligible for me, because I don't follow all the teen werewolf movies and reality shows. Let's just say that post-Miley Cyrus posing like she's dating her dad, I am completely lost.

So it says something about the cultural saturation of this image that before, let’s say, August 2009, when I started relating all of human existence through the lens of scent, even I was aware that there was an ad campaign out there—for something—featuring the great Erykah Badu.

Now, I know who Erykah Badu is, and I hope all of you out there do too. Magnificent law unto her own, she’s the one who told all us bag ladies to pack lightly. (If you don't know who the First Lady of Neo-Soul is, a couple of my favorite videos she did from the 90s are here and here.)

And who can get away from the power of that image: the fantastic ‘fro, the manicure, the light on her skin. She manages to be both soft and fierce everywhere at once. She out-Diana Rosses Ms. Diana Ross, and I didn’t know that could be done.

Regular readers of LCN know that I have a mad crush on Tom Ford, but even now, I’m no Tom Fordologist. I don’t follow the ins and outs of his marketing decisions. But back when my attention did begin to focus in on perfume as a casual consumer, it became clear to me that he had a whole bunch of niche-y no-face scents, the omnisexual Private Blend series, and then he had the two crushers for women: “Black Orchid” and “White Patchouli.”

I got to BO first, and that was very, very good. It took me a little longer to get around to WP, and when I did, I spent quite a bit of time with it. First, because I find BO so exciting, and second because, well… It’s Erykah…damned…Badu, people.

I’m going to go ahead and review the perfume now, and then, Tom, you and I need to have a few words.

Out of the bottle, WP is saturated at about a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, and it comes out as a big, green fresh “wow.” Lots of perfumes have bergamot openings—this is bergamot cranked up to 10. Bright and brassy, there’s a lemony-green goodness to WP in the first few minutes that make me, to be honest, a little high.

I’ve had varied reactions to WP on first smelling it—one time, standing in Sephora, though a confluence of sensory over-stimulation—the subliminal flickering of the fluorescent lighting, the ceramic ribs on the bottle, I wrote in my notes that WP actually “hums.” My nose experienced this… vibration coming off of it. Other times, I’ve had what comes close to Technicolor hallucinations when initially smelling it—one vision had me sitting in the midst of a vibrant multi-color meadow swaying in the breeze under a clear blue sky.

(I had to google a photo of patchouli. How disappointed I was to realize that rather than looking like this:

it looked like this: Oh well. No matter.)

I’ve read reviews all over the map about WP, including a few people who say they don’t smell much patchouli in WP. Well, I went to U.C. Santa Cruz, hippy school extraordinaire, and I can tell you from patchouli: it’s the fresh green-grass patchouli that’s in here, and it made me realize how often other patchouli scents smell dried out and brown. Not WP.

But then what happens? After about the first 5 minutes of olfactory complexity, of depth and meadows and big sky and architecture, the thing just starts falling apart. All the freshness and greenness flattens out and smells muddled. After about 15 minutes on my skin AND on paper, it dissolves into too much rose and lots of fruit, smelling like “David Yurman” through a wet blanket. The drydown is a steady whine of green apple and lychee and nothing else. I don’t care what the scent notes say: there are no woods, there is no incense—believe me, I would welcome that. There is no spine to “White Patchouli”-- there is no there there.

WP is a scent without purpose or focus, and somehow, I just can’t quite believe it. Love it or hate it, “Black Orchid” has a point of view and a story to tell—not to mention perhaps my favorite cedar/sandalwood drydown in all of scent. But after the first 5 minutes, WP shoots its proverbial wad, and no amount of sniffing makes it make any more sense to me. (I could say something cynical about how much time it takes to form a favorable impression of a fragrance, pick up a bottle, stand in line, and pay for it, but I’ll just let you draw your own conclusions.)

As I mentioned before, I spent way more time with WP than I would have if its name had been, say, “Private Blend Moss Breches,” and didn’t have one of the most glamorous ad campaigns featuring a woman of color in recent memory.

LCN applauds Tom Ford for using images of Ms. Badu, especially since, in the past, Tom has received a LCN WIKY To Award (Would It Kill You To Award) that asked Would It Kill You To Have More Interesting Looking Models? (Note: If you don't know what an LCN WIKY To Award is, you haven't been reading my on-going Credits and Commentary Section. Boo!! That's where I have half my fun!! I try to make an effort to be nice over here, but in the C&Cs-- it's knives out!!)

That being said, Tom, you need to hear me when I say this: You need to do better. You have to do better than having an ad campaign for a perfume named “White Patchouli” featuring Erykah Badu, and one named “Black Orchid” featuring her:

That is sloppy. That is lazy. Especially when there are no other models of color anywhere to be found in your own public porn loop.

And, what’s so especially disappointing about it is you are the master of shock and awe when it comes to fashion photography. You are the genius who believes the world needs this image seared into its retinas in order to sell $5,000 off-the-rack suits and smelly water:

You, who have pushed the envelope of sexuality and gender and desire with so much skill and so much balls. You’ve made us laugh, you’ve made us squirm, you’ve made us hot, you’ve made us gasp, you’ve made us believe, all the while shaking our heads in disbelief. You have had very interesting things to put out there on sex—please think harder and give us something thoughtful to chew on about race. I know you can do it.

And I know you can do this too: Next time, make some juice worthy of Queen Badu, please?

Image Credits & Commentary

Both Ends of a Carrot (And a Spot of Butter Lettuce)

L’Artisan “Fleur de Carotte” *

Abdul Samad Al Qurashi “Water Lily Oil” ***

Brooklyn Bunny “Lettuce” ***

One of the very best things about living in the Bay Area is the market for and commitment to local, organic, and fresh produce and prepared foods—we’re vicious food snobs here, don’t we know it. This is the homeland of Chez Panisse and Alice Waters, and if we didn’t invent the locavore movement, well, we certainly embraced it in full. If you’ve never traveled to San Francisco, one of the sights to see is our remodeled Ferry Building, erected in 1898 as, well, a place to catch ferries. But in the early 2000s, the City got the great idea to gut it, put in a wonderful glass roof, and opened it in 2003 as a food-porn emporium. If you do come to our fair city, it's defintely worth a look.

You can find all kinds of wonderful, shockingly expensive local delicaies there. I could prattle on and on about the knockout crabby-lesbian artisan cheese makers, the Cowgirl Creamery (run by famously, as it turns out, a gaggle of crabby lesbians); or the crazy-good chilequiles (home-made tortilla chips soaked in chile sauce, fried, along with organic scrambled eggs) that we stand in the 45-minute line every Saturday morning, even in the rain, to get a plate of; or the $8/pound heirloom tomatoes that we live and die for every August.

However, I have a love/hate relationship with the whole yuppie food phenomenon. Ideologically, of course, I’m on board all the way: food should be nutritious, fresh, and tasty. The food distribution system that makes it possible for every single American to have fresh, yellow banana slices on her cereal no matter where she lives or what time of year it is has become increasingly suspect. (How to square nutritious + fresh + tasty = affordable is the big question.)

But food is SO political here, it becomes completely exhausting. My hands would drop off if I were to even spend the time typing out the broadest contours of all the various food fights (!!) we engage in here in the Bay Area: vegetarians vs. vegans vs. fruitarians vs. pescetarians; the anti-soy/corn/wheat movements; the raw food restaurants; the politically correct fishes; free-range chickens and eggs; fair exchange citrus; gluten-free bakeries; lactose-free ice cream parlors; tofurkeys; pro-Palestinian chocolate Hanukah gelt; and which no-name, hole-in-the-wall underground coffee shop serves the truly boffo Cafe Americano—I’m just barely getting started. What makes it worse is you often don't know why a person is taking his/her stand: is it for political reasons? Religious reasons? Health concerns? Ethical considerations? Just because they're crazy, and they're trying to drive you crazy? You can never be sure.

Just to give you a taste (!!) of what life is like here, I had a dinner party last year—myself and three guests. Here were the dietary restrictions: a vegetarian; someone who is wheat- and lactose-intolerant; someone with deathly blood-sugar issues who does not eat sugar or starches (me); and someone who eats almost anything but wheat, as long as it’s organic. Bon appetite!! (Actually, we did a tapas-thing with about 10 different little dishes. Everyone could avoid what their poison was, and it worked out swell!) But still. The dream of the three-course sit-down, everyone-eat-the-same-thing dinner party? Not possible.

So there's the local food movement, there's the I-have-a-reason-for-every-morsel-that-goes-into-my-mouth people, and then there's the I-must-have-the-very-best-of-everything-the-whole-world-has-to-offer attitude exemplified by a lot of our food boutiques. As in: my champagne must be from France (well, all right. Champagne only does come from France-- the stuff we make/sell in the Napa Valley? Sparkling wine.) My goat cheese must come from a tiny hill-town in Spain. My clotted cream must come from Surrey. Only the most obscure and far-flung delicacy is good enough for me.

David Rakoff wrote a wonderful piece in his howler of a book Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count,the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems entitled "What is the Sound of One Hand Shopping?" on the preciousness of the modern gourmand and how the need to have every morsel be authentic, fabulous, far-flung, exotic, and rare says more about the person partaking of it than the food itself. (David Rakoff is like David Sedaris with a political consciousness. I love him.) His great example: a Scotch whiskey company that will overnight you real Scottish ice cubes chipped right off a frozen Scottish stream to properly serve your single-malt-on-the-rocks. No kidding. (Remembering this was written a few years back...) Like you need special ice to truly experience this swaff. Kill me.

So my goal in this life is to not let extremes drive me to extremes. I support local businesses when I can and do my best to be mindful. I don't shop dainties for dainties's sake. Then I eat whatever I feel like.
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This past Saturday morning, I was down at the Farmer’s market with Bazr, my Other Nostril, (!!!) and bought these glamorous red carrots:

It got me to thinking about the tensions that we experience in this globalized world between having the ability to have dainties and marvels from all over the world delivered right to us—all the magnificent things the world has to offer, stacked up against having the good sense to enjoy the bounty that is right in front of us.

I don’t have any more wisdom than that—all three of the perfumes I’m reviewing are rare and exclusive to their place of origin. But I’d love to hear about what food movements are doing in other parts of the country/world.

L’Artisan “Fleur de Carotte” *

A limited edition released only in France, the scent notes say baby carrot, cucumber, lettuce, tarragon, apricot, ginger. Too weird? I think that line-up sounds swell.

Out of the bottle, it’s 1 on a scale from 1 to 10 saturation. Ok. It’s an eau de toilette. Out of the bottle, it smells like a dead ringer for Robitessen. Hmmm. Both on my skin and on paper. And I most certainly do not mean in a good way. I never appreciated the cucumber element in cough syrup before.

Then, after 2-3 minutes all that unpleasantness blows off, and a lovely, light-light-light waft is left behind. I smell the carrot (the greens, actually, rather than the root), cucumber, tarragon, and apricot/tea rose—pretty much in that order, but so faint, it smells sort of like: “ca….cu…tar…ape…ro…” And that’s it. It smells like unscented glycerin soap. And for a while, that is truly swell.

Then, after 30-45 minutes, the deadly Robitessan thing comes back, and then no matter how delicate FdC might be, I do not wish to be smelling it on my person.

I hate these kinds of scents. Or, more specifically, the conundrum of scents that have fabulous and difficult passages in equal measure. Will I ever wear this again? No. Am I glad I smelled it? Yes. Can I imagine spritzing a few friends with it and having a lively conversation about it? Yes. Yuuuurrrgh.

Alright. No more whingeing. Rating rule of thumb: always round down. One star. And the French can keep it for themselves. More for them.

Abdul Samad Al Qurashi “Water Lily Oil” ***

So, the idea of traveling the world to sample exotic, exclusive things gives me the kind of pleasure that makes my toes curl. (Is that different, somehow, from having someone else discover them and deliver them to my door?) The House of ASAQ is out of Saudi Arabia, and save for a single shop in Paris from all I can gather, is exclusive to the Middle East. The website, while kind of fabulous, doesn’t seem to let you buy from them directly. So how to get your hands on it?

I was so smitten by the water lily oil, I spent some time trying to see if I could buy a bottle. I believe it is possible but only if one:
A) Travels to Paris or the Arabian Peninsula and/or
B) Speaks and/or writes fluent Arabic and/or
C) Is willing to type one’s credit card information into one of those dodgy websites plastered in flashing pop-ups and weird glitches. Like, enter your CC# here and be prepared to have your identity stolen to fund Eastern European mob activity for the rest of your natural life—you know the sites I’m talking about…

So, I’m just going to have make good with my tiny little sample from theperfumedcourt for right now. I understand that this sample is the pure water lily oil—no fillers. The stuff is the color and consistency of honey, thick and viscous. Just opening the sample bottle, the scent is demanding, penetrating, heady, and rich.

I really traveled with this scent—it went through all sorts of twists and turns for me. I was going to try to put all this into some sort of clever narrative, conjuring a magic carpet ride, or some such nonsense as that, but I think the experience is wild enough to speak for itself.

From my notes:
Opening: Fresh and piney; buttered & spiced carrots (!!), honey and cardamom.
After about 45 minutes: sweet clover hay, honey, pine nuts, and amber.
After another half hour—go back and sniff again, now it’s sweetened and softened out, smelling like cinnamon, almonds, marzipan (“Baklava!!”).
Not through transforming yet, after some more time, it conjures the egg yolk, vanilla, and heavy cream of a good French vanilla ice cream, along with rose water.
Finally, nearly spent after about 3 hours, it smells like gardenia, a deep rose, and coconut flesh. (For some unknown reason, then I wrote “NOT a Twinkie.” Underlined for emphasis. Just so you know.) Really, really fun. And imagine, I wasn’t even hungry when I wrote this!

It’s a bit too “foody” for me ever to wear regularly, and there is nothing subtle about this stuff. I pulled it out at a perfume party, and in a room filled with some big stinkers, this was the one that everyone was talking about. However, it is a wonderful scent experience for people who object to perfume for being fake or chemically. And it’s hugely useful as a touchstone note—now I smell water lily oil ringing through loud and clear in scents like Ormonde Jayne “Sampaquita” and David Yurman. Answers the question in the affirmative: Can you travel the world on a smell?

Brooklyn Bunny “Lettuce” ***

I spent a happy 18 months living in Brooklyn, going to graduate school, so Brooklyn feels like my other hometown. I was delighted to be reminded of my days living in DUMBO, taking leisurely strolls along the East River.

I just got "Brooklyn Bunny Lettuce" in the mail two days ago—this is a scent created by Christopher Brosious of CB I Hate Perfume fame, inspired by Roebling the white fluffy bunny, Internet sensation. I guess some Brooklyn hipster decided that his ticket to the big time was to put a web cam on his pet rabbit for the purpose of “transmitting soft white soothing signals,” and then sell a whole lot of Brooklyn Bunny-inspired swag. Aaaahhhh…. Remember, back in the day when people had things like disposable income, and an *adorable* business model like that made sense?

Anyway, the lettuce water worked just fine—I read that it’s sold out. It’s supposed to conjure “the light and sweet scent you get when cracking a head of cool, fresh lettuce in your hands.” It certainly is cool and light, and the word -:¦:-•:*'""*:•.-:¦:-•*Happy!*•-:¦:-•:*'''''*:•-:¦:- floated into my head-- feeling just about like how I spelled it out there, with little fireflies and songbirds and butterflies flittering and twittering all about.

I wouldn't say this is CB's most realistic scent-- it leans a little too hard in the tea rose/apricot direction to be a true lettuce scent for me, and like everything else he does, the water creations have a half-life of about 15 minutes. But really, I don't mind a whit. Ethereal, of a certain place, and fleeting-- I don't need to hold onto the experience too hard. I hope Roebling does get to smell this all day cooped up in his 24/7/365 Real World life. Sniff happy, Brooklyn Bunny.

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Apothia “If” ***

If my last posting was only for the fume heads, this posting is only for the Mad Maniacs (Sorry!! Just have to do it!!)

This time I have to ask the question: What does Peggy Olsen smell like?

Ok. So. Now, you must understand right here and now that I can’t be 100% objective about Peggy because, you see, every time I look at her, I think to myself: I AM PEGGY. Awkward, plain, slightly mannish, with mild-to-moderate sartorial issues, doesn’t quite know how to fit in--I feel you, sister. Oh, but so earnest. So upright and correct. Sharp mind harnessing an iron will. We all root for her, I know for a fact. But what will become of Peggy?

In writing about Betty, I asserted that two main components to the Mad Men series are discursive violence and silence. Peggy brings another foundational element to the show: dissonance. Peggy is all dissonance: her appearance, her relationship to her own body, her station at the office. Nothing fits together smoothly. Nothing, as it turns out, about her is either fish or fowl. This fact is Peggy’s greatest hurdle, but it’s also the source of her tremendous strength.

When we first meet Peggy, it’s her first day at the office. But we don’t see her at the Sterling Cooper office—she’s at the doctor’s office, sent there by Joan, the office manager. She is being fitted for a diaphragm. The modern equivalency of taking a drug test and having one’s credit score checked, (unmarried) women at Sterling Cooper are expected to be “available” to the men who will oversee them.

After her first day at work, she is visited at home by Pete Campbell, the sleaze-weasel. He invites himself…in…shall we say. The rest of the season, we see Peggy slowly change—she’s gaining weight, letting herself go. There is a silent horror for the audience in watching Peggy’s descent—is she pregnant? If she is, she’s not letting on. Is she gaining weight to insulate herself against this charged setting where she’s being continually judged and preyed upon for her looks? Well, if she is, she’s not doing it consciously. Either way, Peggy is suffering in an environment of casual, corrosive sexual harassment.

In the final episode of the first season, we know the answer. The diaphragm was not fitted in time: she learns she is pregnant when her water breaks. Her denial is total—she is not pregnant—she can’t be (but she is.) She rejects her baby and eventually gives him away. We know now that Peggy is capable of epic suppression, walling off huge chunks of herself.

This is her connection to Don, a fellow traveler who has also endured unbearable shame to remake himself. If I had to pick one scene out of the entirety of Mad Men that sums up its towering, awful brilliance, it’s the hospital scene in Season Two (the episode is appropriately titled “The New Girl.”) Peggy has been back at the office for a few episodes now—we don’t know what happened to her and her pregnancy. In a flashback we see that her post-partum refusal to acknowledge her baby in any way has landed Peggy in the psychiatric ward—she appears to be drugged.

Don is sitting by her bed. He is not warm, sympathetic, or kind. Instead, he is there to dole out the only medicine he knows: Do and say whatever she needs to do to get herself out of the hospital. Then, put it behind her. “This never happened,” he says. In the nine most chilling words in the entire history of television, he leans forward to drive his point home: “It will shock you how much this never happened.”

To the sensibilities of the modern viewer, this recommendation of total obliteration of trauma and shame is primitive, medieval, even biblical: If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. What Peggy needs is therapy, a good support group, rehabilitation; to grieve, to learn that she’s not alone, and to integrate this experience into her sense of herself.

But this is the 1960’s, people! No time to feel sorry for yourself!! Up and out of the hospital, Peggy heads back to work and gets busy redefining herself as a successful career gal.

So it that truly what she is, or at least, on her way to becoming? Has she weathered this terrible storm? Has it given her the strength to remake herself?

Peggy sees herself clearly enough to know that she doesn’t fit in: she doesn’t want to be one of dozens of female typists out in the general pool, and she doesn’t want to marry herself out of a job. She is smart enough to study and master the rules. She is good enough at what she does to deserve promotions, and she’s forceful enough to ask for them. We can see her seeing herself in a better place. For all these reasons, we modern viewers love her, pull for her, want to see her get what she deserves. But I fear that by having the power to turn such a blind eye upon herself she is setting herself up for a huge fall.

***** This next section is only for the die-hard MM fanatic—the references are esoteric, and will only make sense if you’ve seen the whole show. Skip to the next set of **** if you want to avoid plot spoilers from both the second and third seasons.

Peggy’s ability to see and honor her own oddness turns out to be a good thing at times: she is conscious enough to see others clearly, identify their motivations and hold them gently while remaining true to herself. Indulge me with a few examples to make my point:

On her failed femininity: Joan and Peggy are in the break room. Joan is giving Peggy some unsolicited, excruciating advice on how to improve her appearance and thereby increase her status at the office. (Not only is Peggy not “hot” enough as a woman, we know she’s no mother either.) Peggy is at first, understandably, irritated and defensive. We are witnessing Joan at her most queen-bee punishing, and it is a terrible thing to watch. But then, we see Peggy’s face change: “Wait a minute,” she says. “You think you’re being helpful.” In that moment, the energy shifts—Joan thinks she’s being listened to and appreciated. She softens and smiles. But Peggy is miles above her now—the head-mistress may be administering her lessons, but it is for a game that Peggy has absolutely no interest in playing.

On her value in the workplace: Don may have saved her, may have promoted her, but he still takes her utterly for granted. When he gets ready to leave Sterling Cooper and plans to take Peggy with him, he essentially commands her to pack her things and follow him. We see Peggy digest this order and the rationale behind it: “Everyone thinks you do my work for me—including you!!” she blurts out. She won’t go with him, and it is her unflinching refusal to be either bullied or seduced (Don's two default modes for getting what he wants--remember how he tries flattery in asking her the second time?) that snaps Don into getting real. He must ask her a third time: In standing up for herself, Peggy forces Don to look her in the eye and give her an honest assessment of what she means to him. And when he does, she will say yes to him.

On navigating her way with the runt-weasel, Pete Campbell: Throughout the first two seasons, we watch Campbell treat Peggy like dirt: he uses her, ignores her, demands her again, then drops her.

There is a scene at a bar where the office is meeting after work. Peggy, fresh from early-morning illicit office-sofa sex with Campbell, is trying on this now-found power of hers—she’s attractive to this man, and she likes it. She starts to do the Twist—shyly at first, but gaining in confidence—she’s trying out her body in new ways, and she makes eye contact with him, dancing towards him. Is this what it feels like to be wanted?

Campbell won’t have any of this—Coldly, he smacks her down: “I don’t like you like this,” he says, and gets up and leaves. (I could have killed him with my bare hands for that…)

But Peggy will survive. Remember during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Manhattan empties out as everyone awaits nuclear destruction. The other weasel man in her life, that creepy priest who has made making Peggy repent for her transgressions his pet project (!) has advised her to confess her sins.

Peggy will confess, but not to the Good Father. She goes in to visit Campbell, (the Bad Father?) holed up in his office with his beloved rifle. (!!!) He’s pensive on this day, the eve of destruction. He is magnanimous, contemplative, expansive. Like a king awarding titles, he deigns to reveal to Peggy his desire for her: she was the one he should have married, he tells her. He thinks he is the lead actor here, the one who has made a terrible mistake.

Peggy, again, is right there with him, all the while flying miles above. No, she says. She is the actor: she had his baby, told no one, and gave it away. She could have shamed him, could have forced him into recognizing her and her predicament. But she didn’t. They find themselves where they are today not because he failed to act, but because she acted alone.

Conscience cleared, fully confessed, Peggy goes home that night, tucks herself into bed, crosses herself, and falls asleep. Law unto her own.
*****

So yes, Peggy at her best is a tigress. We should have nothing to fear for her, she who is growing into a trailblazer

for women in the workplace, knowing that she has the steel spine to work twice as hard and to endure epic sh*t to get where she’s headed.

But I fret for Peggy—I really do. And here’s why: She has the power to will herself into being, to conceptualize herself in a nontraditional role (not a typist, not seeking her M.R.S. degree, not a victim.) But what is the positive vision that she has for herself? As far as I can tell, she is modeling herself on the bad behavior of the men around her: live to work/work to live, abandoning tradition, family, God, and the borough of Brooklyn.

Her only mode for her sex life seems to be predatory: prey or be preyed upon. She turns a sexual encounter with a sweet boy who seems to want to like her into a one-night stand, and now she’s having nooners with Duck. (Dry drunk or wet drunk, Duck’s got serious disconnected/dissonance issues of his own. This particular pairing for Peggy sets off all sorts of alarm bells for me.)

Peggy hasn’t shown us to be a drinker nor a smoker like the boys around her. But perhaps she found herself a new vice with elements of both: She took to pot right away. (Remember her getting up to leave the room after an afternoon of smoke-filled debauchery at the office. She is disheveled, hair awry, but her face is soft and dreamy: “I’m in a really good place right now,” she says, as she floats out. She’s never been steamier.)

My fear is that Peggy is growing into a Mad Man, right about the time that these ad men and the rest of the world around them are learning that this old pattern of checked-out, disconnected behavior is empty and defunct. Part of why we feel for Peggy is because she has to be her own role model. Will her differentness lead her to becoming something magnificent, authentic, and resplendent, or will the parts of herself that she shuts off to manifest what she thinks she wants to become be her downfall?
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So, I know what you’re asking yourself right about now: How, in heaven's name, does all of this add up to Peggy wearing Apothia “If”?

Like Peggy who negotiates her feminine status in the masculine world she’s chosen for herself, “If” is defined by its contrasting elements: a heady (feminine, floral) tuberose is wrestled into submission by a crisp, almost bitter, (masculine, citrus) grapefruit rind. With those two troublesome, tricky elements in a wary standoff, the buttery musk underneath gives this scent heft, sensuality, and weight. “If” has an oil base, which means it has nearly no sillage

at all—it remains very close to the skin—an ideal office scent for a woman who lives for her career. Like Peggy, it doesn’t draw attention to itself right away, but when you get up close to experience it, you’re drawn in by its sensuous, swoony power.

“If” is a scent of secrets, of illicit sexuality, of unruly forces kept uneasily in check. I am no tuberose fan-- in fact, just the opposite-- but I can't get enough of this stuff. When I think about "If," I think about applying it to the back of my knees-- the only scent I can honestly say that about, and surely only trouble can come of that. Only it's tendency to die down to almost nothing within 2 hours keeps me from giving it a full four stars.
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I see Peggy as a rare thing: a study in discordant authenticity. She is a cubist painting, a Picasso girl. She doesn’t fit together into something that “reads” right the first time. She is something beautiful and strange, however, with the potential to become a modern and self-actualized person, capable of seeing both herself and the world around her for what it is, with the power to remake them both in her own image. She’s a heroine, to be sure, but whether she’s tragic or triumphant remains to be seen.

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