No. Just being silly. It didn't happen anything like that.-----
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…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!!
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.
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.)
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.)
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.
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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.
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.
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Writing about roses for V-Day on Thursday. Love is in the air!!




































