The Perfumes That I Wish Would Come Back

Here in Ohio, we are in the beginnings of a heatwave. My household turned on the air conditioning this morning. Usually it is my mother that doesn't want the air conditioning turned on, this time it was my dad. He said it wasn't quite hot enough. So this week it's probably going to be a week of no 19 edt, Jicky and Worth Courtesan. Even with air conditioning, I don't want anything too heavy. 

So far, I have more access to my perfume collection and was able to pull out Une Rose Chypree and my Taur samples. I am still trying to locate my bottle of Une Rose Vermeille but I have my 2 spray vials of it to tide me over. I just don't want to pull out the unopened bottle of Une Rose Vermeille yet.

It seems like shortly before the pandemic, Andy Tauer had made a slew of discontinuations. Noontide Petals, Une Rose Chypree and Une Rose Vermeille were discontinued pretty quickly. A few others were discontinued along with the three I just mentioned. I had managed to nab backup bottles of Noontide Petals and Vermeille but wasn't quick enough to grab a bottle of Chypree. Even though I have a more difficult relationship with Vermeille, I do enjoy it. Vermeille has a huge raspberry note that can be irritating on the wrong day but Vermeille has the lasting power of nuclear waste. Even after using Tide, Dawn dish soap and a couple showers, Vermeille is still there. Which is pretty strange because I have dry skin and even with lotion, my skin still eats perfume like their is no tomorrow. Maybe Andy Tauer had to make some cuts to his line up and those three ended up on the chopping block.

There are other perfumes like Guerlain's Liu and L'Heure de Nuit that I would love to see a comeback. Liu was Guerlain's take on no 5 and L'Heure de Nuit was L'Heure de Bleue toned down. I did manage to get a bottle of L'Heure de Nuit but not Liu. But a whole lot of these purchases were made in better times. But I think with Liu and L'Heure de Nuit, they were bee bottle exclusives and probably too expensive for a lot of people to really buy.

But I am hoping that some, if not all, of these perfumes will come back. Guerlain has the means to do this, especially will all of the Shalimar flankers that they have cranked out in the past few years.

Eau No

Did anyone ever have this computer problem? Every time that I go to certain websites on my PC, it pops up as "connection insecure" and can't get on said website? I am having this issue. Facebook, STC, TPC and a few others but not my blog or Yahoo. I don't know if it the firewall or not but I know that I am not having this issue with my Kindle Fire. So I have no flipping clue on what's up with the computer and I am not motivated right now to deal with it.

On Sunday, I was searching for one of those perfumes that I haven't worn in a while. I do have a few that I don't wear often and some have a reason. Sunday was the day that I decided to wear vintage Mitsouko. I do love Mitsouko but she can be a little hard to wear. When I applied my vintage Mitsouko, it seemed like a mistake and didn't have the time to wash Mitsouko off and apply something different.

Some perfumes can be a mistake in certain circumstances. L'Heure Bleue and L'Heure de Nuit are two of them. Both are powder bombs but L'Heure de Nuit isn't a massive powder bomb as L'Heure de Bleue. Both of them just are not meant for hot and humid weather unless dabbed and a very small amount. I've noticed that no. 22 can be that way as well, especially in the vintage EDT form but the extrait form is wonderful and barely any powder in it. But it's difficult with perfumes loaded with powder or the vintage chypres to wear on a daily basis.

L'Heure de Nuit and Bottles

After yapping, panicking and a little bit of whining, I did manage to get my paws on a full bottle of L'Heure de Nuit. It was somewhat difficult to find a bottle because it has been discontinued and I didn't know about it. There have been a couple of perfumes that were being discontinued and I did manage to become aware of it beforehand to get a couple bottles. Sometimes I find out and can only afford one bottle. So now the hoarding begins.

After my bee bottle had arrived, I don't know what I was exactly expecting but this wasn't it. Let me be frank, I own some huge bottles of perfume and I mean huge. I had bought Cuir de Russie and Sycomore before they came in a manageable 2.5 ounce bottle. I own 8 ounce bottles of Chamade and Jicky and a 9 ounce bottle of vintage Bal. So it was a little bit of a shock to see how little 4.2 ounces is compared to the bottles that I have mentioned. Maybe it's the fact that the bottle is like the Serge Lutens bell jars, they are round. But I was still excited to add a bee bottle to the collection.

It's not often that I actually do buy a brand spanking new bottle of perfume. Just can't afford that often. After the rush of tearing off the cellophane and opening the box, I have to gaze at the bottle.There is something about getting a brand new bottle of perfume, especially if it has been discontinued. A good most of my collection isn't in a cool cabinet but out in the open and mostly protected from light. Yeah, I'm sure that some are clutching their pearls but what's the point in having some good looking bottles and not look at them. I will admit to the fact that I can be a bottle slut once in a while.

Some bottles are pretty utilitarian when you look at them. The classic Chanel bottles are pretty plain and so are Serge Lutens' export line. Serge Lutens must have taken a couple notes from Chanel but still has his exclusive line in bell jars. But Guerlain might have been the first to create bottle swag to help sell perfume.

One of Those Times

I could be blogging about a lot of other things today but just not exactly motivated to do what I had initially wanted to blog about today (reviewing Coromandel). But a couple other things have popped up that makes today a day of being all over the place.

I've always been behind of many things in the perfume world. The latest releases, discontinuations and many other things. But the recent release stuff really doesn't bother me too much. Not like things being discontinued. I had finally decided to just bite the bullet and order that massive bottle of L'Heure de Nuit. It doesn't come in smaller sizes and it never seemed to be popular, even in the perfume circles. It could have been the musk in there that practically laundry musk but I love it in spite of that. I find L'Heure de Nuit easier to wear and a whole lot less powdery. Looking around to find a bottle, knowing that I was going to spend almost $300 for it. It was on a couple websites as being out of stock. After posting this on NST and getting a couple facts and a phone number, L'Heure de Nuit was discontinued and that a Neiman Marcus store in Houston, Texas had two bottles left. So I ordered a bottle and I am having it shipped to Ohio. Do I need a bottle that contains 4.2 ounces of perfume? My answer is hell no but how can I really resist a bee bottle? Did I blow my resolution for no new bottles? Yes but I view it as worth it. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect of scouring E-Bay for a full bottle.

Yes, I have been staying off of E-Bay, so my New Years resolutions haven't entirely been broken. I don't need to procure another bottle of vintage Bal nor do I really need to look for more Deneuve or anymore vintages right now. Keeping up with my full bottles and decants is difficult as it is but I have made a little progress. I dumped out my worn and reviewed decant bag and threw out some empty decants (evaporated), drained a few and since I had a few decants of the same scent, I combined to make a little more room in that bag. Why do I need 5 decants of MKK where most of them are partially full? Combined those and made 2 larger decants. I had mostly threw out a lot of 2ml decants and a couple 3ml decants. It's always the smaller decants that always take up the most space. It isn't a whole lot of progress but it's progress.

Perfume Frenemies

Does anyone have perfume(s) in your collection that can be called a frenemy? I certainly do. It starts out as reading about a perfume and then going over to the perfume counter to get a sniff. Then a few days or weeks later, you either order online and it arrives on your doorstep or you buy it at an actual brick and mortar store. And then you wonder what the hell happened.

It's happened to me a couple times with a few of my perfumes. Let's start with Diorissimo shall we. Diorissimo and I started out as almost the best of buds. I had a decant of pre-reformulation EDT, then I tried the current EDP version. I really liked both but the EDP called to me a little more. I'm thinking that it was the whopping dose of jasmine that was a little poopy. And there was the fact that I really didn't have a Dior in my stable at that point. I don't exactly know what happened with Diorissimo.

Another example of a perfume frenemy is L'Heure Bleue. I do love L'Heure Bleue because of it's historical value but it's the powder that makes it a frenemy. I swear that it is a huge powder bomb in the current formulation, as I have yet to smell the vintage version. I find that wearing Apres L'Ondee much easier to wear because there is little to no powder and is pretty much the same structure as LHB. L'Heure de Nuit is different though. LHN is the one with a whole lot less powder and there is some laundry musk in there but I find it easier to wear than LHB.

At the end of the day, I'm not one to reach for any of these perfumes that often. I guess it's because these perfumes are exausting to wear after a while/

Guerlain Apres L'Ondee EDT Review

I've finally got around to wearing something new. Not exactly got around but kind of got out of that rut of either finishing off my smaller decants or just wearing the same old things. For a long while, when I was reaching for full bottles, I was reaching for my no 5 in EDT form. And I still am fixated on L'Heure Bleue and L'Heure de Nuit. It took me a while to get L'Heure Bleue and now love it. I love L'Heure de Nuit but just can't bring myself to drop almost $300 for a shade over 4 ounces of perfume, so a large decant is gonna have to do. But both of those bring me to Guerlain's Apres L'Ondee.

For a while during my wearing of Apres L'Ondee, I couldn't place what perfumes that it smelled similar to. Then in the dry down it hit me, L'Ondee smelled like a very stripped down version of L'Heure Bleue. If L'Heure de Nuit was somewhat stripped down, L'Ondee is even more stripped down. Then I looked online and found that L'Ondee was created in 1906, a mere 6 years before L'Heure Bleue and over 100 years before L'Heure de Nuit. Comparing the three perfumes, they share similar notes. I was really loving Apres L'Ondee but the only formulation that I am seeing online is the EDT formulation. Guerlain EDT's and I don't exactly mix unless they are the vintage versions. So Apres L'Ondee only lasts about 3 hours on my skin and it sticks really close. When sprayed on clothing, I can get maybe 4 and a half hours. Not all is quite lost for me because I can enjoy it's two siblings and not be missing much. But it was fun wearing L'Ondee while it lasted.

Guerlain L'Heure de Nuit Review

Guerlain is one of those perfume houses that I have come to love. I've had a hard time liking, let alone loving a good most of what I have tried. It took me a long while to love Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue and understand Jicky. But I understood and loved Shalimar right away. But I realized one thing about Jicky. The EDP version of Jicky doesn't last all that long on my skin, even when wearing a thicker moisturizer. I had ordered a fresh bottle of it and was so excited to spray it on my skin. I had gotten about 4 or 5 hours of wear before it petered out to nothing. Boy, I was disappointed and Shalimar in EDP kind of does the same thing too. But Mitsouko and L'Heure Bleue (in EDP form) simply last forever on skin. So there is a lot of head scratching there.

With flankers, there is a lot of pearl clutching going on on my end. Especially when it comes down to classics. No. 19, no. 5, Shalimar, and now L'Heure Bleue have flankers. Even though I like Eau Premiere and now L'Heure de Nuit, classics really shouldn't have flankers.

For the past three days, I have been wearing L'Heure de Nuit. At first, I was kind of unimpressed. It did smell exactly like L'Heure Bleue and I felt a little on the cheated side, Then on the second day, I smelled a whole lot less powder and maybe a little more on the flirty side. With L'Heure Bleue, I got a whole lot of powder with maybe some flirt deep down. L'Heure de Nuit when compared with L'Heure Bleue, there is a whole lot of flirt on L'Heure de Nuit. The flirty part is almost skanky unlike Mitsouko who makes you dig for the sensual or Shalimar that has an animalic growl to it.

While I really do love L'Heure de Nuit, I hate the price tag for 75ml. For almost $300 and packaged in a bee bottle, I just really am not able to fully love it like I should in spite of the color of the juice being blue. I'm guessing that I will have to make do with large decants and my bottle of L'Heure Bleue.