One Over the Other

Ever since I've started down this perfume journey, I've noticed a few things. I have always preferred one house over the other. Or I lose interest in a house at a certain point. Some perfume houses seem pretty prolific when releasing perfume, others, not so much. But I lose interest all the same.

Let's start with Chanel. I do have some Chanel offerings in my collection. No 19, no 5 and no 22, Cuir de Russie. For a while, it was pretty easy to get decants of any Chanel offering, all I had to do was bop on over to TPC or STC and get a decant. Then Chanel decided that they didn't want that stuff and probably said that not so hot legal stuff will happen if you don't stop selling Chanel decants. That kind of ended a good chunk of my Chanel thing. I live out in the boonies and don't have access to a mall too often let alone a Chanel boutique. I just can't justify blind buying and I have underwhelmed by recent releases nor am I amused with Chanel changing the formulation of the Les Exclusif line (EDP instead of EDT). So it was time for me to move on.

Serge Lutens was another house that I kind of was obsessed with for a while, especially in the beginning of exploring what perfume had to offer. After a while, I did get kind of bored with his work. It all started to smell the same and the new releases started to smell like they were just poorly constructed. What also got me is some of the pricing has gotten outrageous. Three hundred plus dollars for a bell jar. Not happening unless I somehow manage to win enough with a scratch off lotto ticket (which ain't gonna happen since I don't play).

Amouage got irritating to me. While I love a ton of the earlier stuff, I did lose interest after Honour. Then Amouage really departed from their roots. What I did try were things that I have already smelled a million times before with a lower price point. So I am not amused with an already expensive brand cheapening itself but keeping the prices.

The one house that still fascinates me is Tauer Perfumes. Andy Tauer has experimented quite a bit but stayed true to his roots. Andy Tauer has kept prices reasonable in terms of niche perfumery and makes the effort to give the best quality perfume he can. The works released have been consistently good even though I didn't get along with a couple perfumes. I know that Andy Tauer is coming out with a new perfume and I can't wait to give it a go.

Le labo Jasmin 17 Review

I don't exactly know what's up with Blogger and the formatting for the pic but it's going to have to do for this post because I am not fooling with it right now. Why am I not fooling around with it? I'm lazy right now. 

You know how for the longest time that the Serge Lutens bell jars were only sold in Paris, then Barney's New York? Well, Luckyscent is selling some of the bell jars. The thing is that I have never, ever been thrilled with the price of the bell jars. For $300, you get 2.5 ounces and no spray mechanism. Yes, I can decant the perfume but it's a little bit of a hassle. I find the price for a bell jar to be a little steep though. I can hop on over to Beauty Encounter or FragranceNet and get 2 1.7 ounce bottles of Amouage for the price and Amouage isn't cheap either. The reason why I am mentioning the bell jars is my love of Sarrasins. The deep purple color of the perfume is highly unusual but more importantly, Sarrasins is how I like my jasmine. Dark and dirty. A la Nuit was too loud, dense and green for my liking a not something I'd wear that often. I like jasmine but it's difficult to find a jasmine that I actually really like to actually go out and buy. I was lucky enough to find an 80% full bottle of Sarrasins on E-bay.

For quite a while, I have been ignoring the Le Labo line. I've tried Labdanum 18 and Aldehyde 44 and did like them but didn't find them exciting enough. Well, Aldehyde 44 did make me swoon a little bit because I was having a tough time with Chanel no 22. Labdanum 18 was a stripped down version of Shalimar with a cola like note. I have a decant of Jasmin 17 and hoped that wearing it would change my mind with the whole Le Labo line. It didn't.

Jasmin 17 started off with waxy citrus that strongly reminded me of Lemon Pledge wood polish. I couldn't think of anything but, what the hell. I couldn't smell the jasmine part for a good ass while. Then and hour in, I could smell the jasmine. The jasmine wasn't very prominent but the jasmine was pretty strange. It had a Jasmine Full kind of feel to it, a strange hard candy like vibe. No skank, let alone any kind of depth, just a hot mess on my skin. The lasting power is about 5 hours on my skin. Jasmin 17 will not be joining my collection due to price and how it smells on my skin.

At this point, I don't think that Le Labo is edgy. I think that they are offering stripped down versions of other perfumes, so I can't call them a perfume house with that price point and aestetic.

Tauer Perfumes and my Mom

 My mother has never been a huge perfume person but takes a passive road when it comes to perfume. She does comment once in a while about what I wear. When she said that Au Coeur du Desert smelled nice a few months back, I was thinking of getting her a full bottle for her birthday. Then I decided that it was a little bit of a stupid idea, I was the one that really wanted a full bottle. I jumped to Andy Tauer's website and ordered a sample of Au Coeur du Desert and LADDM for her for Mother's Day. Since my mother will be in California for Mother's Day, I gave her gift early. She loved the gift. When she tried LADDM and Au Coeur du Desert, she had told me that Tauer perfumes smell a whole lot better on me than her. Yes, she told me that Tauer Perfumes was my house. She has also tried Lonestar Memories and did like it but she didn't think that one suited her. She said she thinks it's because she prefers lighter perfumes like the crap that Dolche &Gabbana releases. The one thing that I am not looking forward to is the dogs begging to be fed at 5am nor getting my arm ripped out of it's socket when I take them on 8 walks a day. They don't like to listen to me when they are not on a leash. Well, they don't even like to listen to me when on a leash but I have better control of them when they are on the leash.

I do spend quite a bit of time on Now Smell This, especially reading the posts on what other people are wearing. Quite a few of us do wear Andy Tauer offerings on a regular basis on NST. But I see a lot of Une Rose Chypree, LADDM and one or two others quite frequently, there is one that doesn't seem to get talked about too often. That perfume is Une Rose Vermeille. URV either isn't as popular or others have it in their collection but forget about it. It took me a while to truly fall in love with URV. A lot of it was the raspberry note and some of it was the fact that URV has the lasting power of depleted plutonium. So I am wearing URV even though it's going to take a couple showers for it to finally dissapear.

Old Favorites

It's May and May Day has already passed. Now it is May 4th and it's Star Wars Day. But May 1st got me into Diorissimo and Diorissimo is not a perfume that I wear often. A younger me, 15 or 20 years ago would have probably worn this exclusively. Ever since I have fallen down the rabbit hole, heavy florals is not something that I reach for often. But for some reason, I was looking at Guerlain's annual Muget perfume release. I have never smelled any of the Muget releases. Reason being, it's always been out of my price range and I don't need to fall in love with something that I can't afford. I don't care if it is a 4.2 ounce bottle but if the price varies between a minimum of $400 to $600, that's out of range for most people when talking about a bottle of perfume. I think that I will stick to the more affordable and more available Diorissimo.

Since I don't have a realistic way to organize my perfume collection yet, I have been looking through my collection a little bit more. There are things that I kind of did forget that I actually did own. Mind blindness is to blame. Cuir de Russie is an old favorite and I have a huge bottle. Sycomore is another favorite that I don't reach for often. Sarrasins, Nahema, Mitsouko, are others that I sort of forgot I had but yet knew that I had. Now is the time to start wearing the crap out of them. I think that I have been so wrapped up in vintage BaV, L'Heure Bleue and Ubar that they fell off my radar. It doesn't help that I have a pretty large collection anyway that some perfumes were going to get lost in the shuffle. How many of you have done this?

Faberge Tigress Parfum Review

I have blogged in the past that I do love animalic perfumes. Vintage BaV, Rose de Nuit, Shalimar and MKK and wear them on a regular basis. I tried Faberge's Tigress Musk and loved it and had to try the original Tigress.

I have a 3 ml decant from TPC that came in the mail today and have a 1/4 ml of the parfum version, so I am working off of the parfum version. I was excited to try Tigress and hoping that it would be a whole lot like Tigress Musk. But it wasn't and in a lot of ways. It smelled dated, in a 1980's or before type of way. It's supposed to be animalic but I am not smelling it in the parfum version. What I seem to be smelling is a cheap version of Chanel Coco. I kept waiting for the skank to arrive but it never even happened. I will eventually try the EDC version to see if I can get the skank note. Chanel has taught me the finer points of every concentration smells a little different and I am hoping that is the case. If it isn't, Tigress is a vintage dud on my skin.

Trying to Finish Stuff

For years, I have been trying to finish off some full bottles. Last year, I managed to finish two full bottles and this year, I have finished one. I don't really have a goal of how many bottles to finish but I just want to really start on finishing some of my full bottles. There is going to be some success though. I managed to reach a box of perfume. When I took a look inside, I saw success just waiting to happen. I saw two Chanel extrait bottles that were mostly empty.

The extrait bottles that I have are not huge bottles and the extrait bottles never really are big ass bottles to begin with. I saw that one of the bottles of No 19 is two thirds empty and Cuir de Russie probably has only two or three wearings left. I love both perfumes and have back ups in one form or another. I have other extrait bottles of no 19 and I don't know how many bottles of EDT and EDP that I have but I am mostly set for a little while longer. Back when Cuir de Russie was released, Cuir de Russie was only sold in a 6.8 ounce bottle of the EDT. Cuir de Russie was my first perfume that made me fall down the rabbit hole.

Things have changed with the Les Exclusifs line at Chanel. They used to be $200 for a 6.8 ounce bottle but now up to $350. A 2.5 ounce bottle now sells for $200 and it used to be $130. How do I know? I took a look in my e-mail. It's amazing how the prices at Chanel have skyrocketed. I am a little dissapointed that I cannot find a way to test out Coromandel or no 22 in EDP form. I am also working on finishing bottles of Chanel no 5 in EDP and EDT form. I have so many Chanel bottles, I have to start working on finishing something, why not start with Chanel.

The extrait bottles might be small but every victory counts. Every victory means more space that I do have.

Perfume House Foolish

I am kind of excited right now. There are very few things in the perfume world that gets me excited. I used to get excited about any new release by Amouage, Chanel and Serge Lutens but it's not that way anymore.

The three houses that I mentioned have been cranking out offerings that I haven't smelled at one point or another already. So with Amouage, Chanel and Serge Lutens, I have lost interest in those perfume houses. Chanel was probably the first house that I really lost interest in. Chanel has the money and had the perfumers on staff to take the time to make a perfume worth it for me to actually drag my ass anywhere to smell it but they don't utilize that talent or money wisely. The recent releases from Chanel have been horrible smelling.

Chanel hasn't exactly been in my good graces for a while. I remember when Chanel decided to mess with the Les Exclusifs line, changing it from and EDT form to an EDP form. Uh Chanel, us perfume nuts know that your EDTs and EDPs smell different and what you did with Cuir de Russie wasn't that great. I've also noticed that your prices have been slowly creeping up and I would like to see the Les Exclusifs line to have a 1.7 ounce option.

The one perfume house that I am excited about is Andy Tauer. On Facebook, I found out that he is releasing a new perfume soon and if I remember right, he is not putting any rose in this one. Andy Tauer has released tons of work that's consistently good. There have been a few that I have not liked, I have enjoyed quite a bit of his work. I hope that this new one will be released soon and I will be able to give it a try.