Part 3- Fully fledged perfumistas- share your fragrances

[shoeprincess2]

Part 2 is nearly full!

If you do a bit of searching, you might turn up a vintage decant or sample. Surrender to Chance has a fair number of vintage perfumes.

Sorry, Susie!

Actually re Chamade I had a look at Bois de Jasmin and she reckons that the reformulation of Chamade is not at all bad -- not very different from vintage. So Susie it might well be worth trying it.

My first perfumes were Charles of the Ritz and Halston. Loved them both, and also had Cachet.

Thanks so much - I'll give it a go as I'd rather try and find it isn't right than not at all. I have no desire at all to be 15 again but I want to celebrate the fact that my parents went out and chose it together (lost my Dad recently). Love the fact that perfume is so evocative....

OMG Fuzzy, I'd forgotten Geminesse! I used to LOVE it.

Susie- I'm sorry about your Dad I didn't mention in the Geminesse story that my Dad passed away seven years ago, but I find it rather amazing how scent can transport us back to happier times.

I tried Chamade in Selfridges and I think the refill style bottle was around £50. If it doesn't smell quite right, vintage bottles on ebay are not super expensive- around £70 (very tempted myself!)

My first perfumes were Exclamation and So...? and I also loved the Body Shop's Fuzzy Peach

Thanks Fuzzybirds !! I've got a lovely story from about 1979 ... Do you remember that there was some kind of beauty club where they sent you a box of make up/perfume every six weeks or so? Well I used to really look forward to my little box arriving and one day there was a small compact in it which had three solid perfumes; Amber, Patchouli (which I love cos am an old hippy and sandalwood. So, you could mix and match them on your wrist or neck or wherever. I wore them all the time and it ran out quite quickly and I couldn't find the same thing anywhere. So, my mum said why don't you write to the maker (Jovan in the USA) and ask them where you can get it, so I did. Well, about two weeks later, I was sitting in the front room and heard a lorry come down our road, and then a man appeared at the front door with a HUGE box. In it were ten of the little compacts and two full size samples of all the Jovan perfumes (remember that used to do lots of musk ones?), also full sizes of their men's range and all body lotions, shampoos, soaps, etc in all the ranges - all full size! It was loads and loads of lovely stuff and on top was a compliments slip saying thank you for my interest and please accept this with their compliments. I didn't have to buy birthday pressies for anyone for about two years. It was so brilliant!

Does anyone remember Courant ?

Brilliant story, Ladame!

SotD is Frédéric Malle's L'eau d'Hiver, which I'm loving - almonds, mimosa + powder. Very light and sort of weirdly cool and warm at the same time.

Last night I put on Vero Profumo's Rubj, which I'd been really looking forward to trying. Orange blossom and tuberose, yes, but also a terribly clashing strong cumin accent - like having a vase full of beautiful flowers sitting next to a mortar filled with freshly-ground cumin. No link between the two smells except proximity. Weirdly, DH, whose nose is much better than mine, I think, couldn't detect the cumin at all, and really liked the perfume.

Anyway, that was rapidly replaced with Profumo's beloved Beyond Love. Don't think I have anything to add to her beautifully-chosen words - it's fantastic stuff, exciting, airy, radiant tuberose with great sillage and longevity.

Still having a lovely time exploring various samples.

Yesterday evening, tried tiny drop of golden oldie 'Fracas'. Had always steered away from it before, thinking it was much too glamorous and soignee for someone like me.

Reactions? Me - yes, this is lovely but my word you need to be feeling confident to wear it, otherwise it will wear you. DH - 'that's different' (how tactful!) Cat - got up and went away.

After about an hour when the first blast of scent had mellowed and softened, DH and Cat rather changed their minds. DH agreed that, after all, it did smell good, and Cat came back on to the sofa.

Mabe if I led a different kind of lifestyle, Fracas could become a favourite. As it is, I'm just please to have smelled it and got a glimpse into another - maybe imaginary - world.

Sorry! In message above, I forgot to say, clb, how very interesting to read about other scents based on tuberose. Your description of them both sounds SO inviting. Yet more to add to my list to try .

I don't know anything about tuberose as a plant. Must look it up. Sometimes there is an overlap of smells between tuberose and jasmine, don't you think? Is it perhaps the quality you describe as 'radiant' and 'airy'? Like something at the top end of some sort of scale of smells - similar to a beautiful (but not shrill) high note in music???

Marks and Sparks' scented candle in Frankincense and Myrrh smells exactly like the box we used to keep our Christmas decorations in when I was a child. I told my mother and she just looked at me as if I were mad.

Flora, I definitely think there's an overlap between tuberose and jasmine.......and I dislike both.

As I wasnt going anywhere today I thought I'd re-try Annick Goutal Sables to see if I liked it any better second time around. My biggest problem with Sables is the relentless blast of immortelle - the fragrance doesn't seem to evolve at all during the day, and it is so overbearing that I can detect no other notes. Does it demand a third try? Not sure.....

I had Serge L. Fleurs d'Oranger on today.
used to love it, gave me a horrid headache today. Can still feel it all around me.

too much tuberose.

Cointreau, Sables stays linear and suffocating fairly strong.

Mrs S - The candle - and your box - sound good!

Brilliant sun this morning but still bitterly cold so - inspired by your comment- am wearing a very wintery sample: Frankincense and Myrrh by Czech and Speake. To my nose, fairly straightforward: incense, woods and a slight waft of orange. So far, no sense of hidden depths or anything mysterious. (And no Christmas-pudding-sweet (?cinnamon) element. Am pleased about that.)

This F&M makes me feel clean and cosy and cheerful. I would definitely wear again. But IMO not absolutely outstanding considering how expensive it is.

Coffee - Hope you feel better today. I wonder HOW smells make our heads ache? And how different smells do this to different people? Can any Perfumista enlighten? Heavy, sweet, peachy scents are one of the worst offenders for me. And something in 'Dune', and in Clarins's 'Eau Dynamisant'...

Hello PMs, feel like I am suffocating in Elie Saab today, all woody orange blossom, it's not bad, but this one is at the stage where I am bored of it. I don't think I would buy it again, not now my nose has be trained a little to like something more interesting. However, it is the emptiest bottle in my collection, and I am sticking to the one in one out rule in order to control my perfume spending, so really trying to use it up so I can replace it with something from my ever growing wish list. First new purchase will be either Carnal Flower or Coromandel.

I'm going pages and pages back now but someone mentioned Gucci Envy? I used to wear that all the time. Despite it being Gucci I used to get a huge bottle on Matalan for (I think) about £23.

Lately I'm finding that the only ones I love are more and more expensive so I can only justify bottles of them at xmas/birthdays. Sad they discontinued Envy ecause I'd love to find another everyday perfume that doesn't cost the Earth. I do buy huge 100ml bottles of Obsession Night for about £20 but I don't love it.

In fact the only two that I love are Flowerbomb (ok, not widly expensive but at £50-ish a bottle it's not cheap enough to go and replace as soon as one runs out) and Coromandel, nuff said about the price but once I love a perfume it becomes an obsession to get it asap. So for that reason it'd be a really bad idea for me to start buying loads of samples. I'd bankrupt myself

CV - Sables is foul. Don't go there. Try Duel or Grand Amour (which I asked DH for two Christmases ago and ended up with Les Nuits d'Hadrien - not entirely sure why, except he had forgotten the name of the perfume in the two minutes from leaving the caff and going into Galeries Lafayette.

I bough DH Carbone by Balmain the other day, from my odd little shop here that sells perfumes (Cabochard, Ivoire and a raft of other "oldies") plus slippers and frying pans, and I like it very much. Must go back and see if I can pick up another bottle of old stylee Ivoire before I can't get it any more.

Today I wore DKNY woman, because the weather is grey and foul, and it reminds me of a fabulous holiday I had in New York, plus DD2 has a spray occasionally and prances round saying "I smell like a wo-man!" and gyrating her hips before falling over in a fit of the giggles.

Been testing a few 'classics' and high rated high street stuff from 'the guide'. After trying Private Collection and Beyond Paradise last week, I thought I would try a couple more estee ones with good reviews.

Beautiful was first on the list, this to me is a nice floral bouquet but I can't get past the 'cow pat' note in it, what is this? Smells like a meadow complete with cows.

Next was Youth Dew, this smells like my mum did throughout my childhood, very heavy strong oriental, spicy and woody, brings back lovely memories, I hope they never discontinue this because one day I would like to own a bottle.

I also wanted to try Azuree, but according to the SA they only stock it in Selfridges in London (don't think this is true). Has anyone else tried this?

I tested Youth Dew last week -- rather liked it as a heavy, spicy oriental, although am presently too enamoured of Tauer Le Maroc pour Elle to fancy anything else in the rich as fruit cake kind of line.

I also tested White Linen, which I wore in the 80s. ProFumo said something a couple of pages back about Estée Lauder perfumes reminding her of a perfectly groomed, depilated woman who always has a blow dry (or something to that effect) and when I smelled White Linen I thought 'by golly, she's absolutely right'. It's impressive, and skilful, but like a blow dry and waxed armpits, not for me.

So niminy - a "clean all-American" smell, rather than something more complex, dirty and French, with an undertone of unwashed armpits and yesterday's knickers?

I used to love Youth Dew and wore it a lot. But haven't for years till I got a bottle a few weeks ago for old times sake after reading about it. I sent off for some Annick Goutal samples and here is what I thought

Neroli - gorgeous. But I love this scent
Eau d' Hadrien. - very very lemony. Much too sharp and lemony for me.
Gardenia Passion - I loved this one. It was like being in a florists shop. Just fresh cut flowers
La Violette - Very very sweet parma violet
Le Miguet - Quite sharp. But certainly lily of the valley. Not sure about this one.

I hadn't tried any Annick Goutal before these.

MrsS That's it, absolutely. Reminds me of a photo I once saw and can't now remember who by, of a young man and woman kissing in a cafe (sure it was in Paris, naturellement). Incredibly erotic -- but the thing that sticks in the mind is the man's hand on the woman's cheek has dirty fingernails. French perfume for me is a bit like that. White Linen was just too all-American and wholesome, with perfect teeth and a toothpaste smile.

I was wearing Cinnabar today which is pretty atypical of Estee Lauder perfumes.