Friday, May 31, 2019

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.

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

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.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

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.

Saturday, May 4, 2019

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?