Notes on Shoes Cake & Perfume

A rose is not just a rose...............Rose Kashmirie hits home!

I wonder if I'm the first person in the perfume-lovers community to review the newly released Rose Kashmirie from Les Parfums de Rosine?  You should know that I'm a bit of a recent convert to this line, after having become drawn to unusual combinations with rose at their core just over a year ago while decanting a bit of Guerlain's Rose Barbare from a bottle I bought for someone in Paris.  I followed it up with Serge Luten's Rose de Nuit, aptly described by someone else as a winey rose, and got properly hooked on rich rose scents, until summer hit (May in LA) and lighter roses began to appeal.  I continued my ambivalent relationship with Ormonde-Jayne's Ta'if, which finally ended with us parting ways, and I happily rediscovered the Rosine scents with a sample of Rose D'Argent from a great perfume friend. I was immediately captivated by its interesting blend of Anise, Geranium and Rose, which morphs into something else altogether, a "happy" scent that never fails to lift my spirits.  Hardly any of the rose scents I like really smell very much like a rose, but they wouldn't exist without it.  This is all part of the magic of perfumery, which is why we are all here!

When announcements appeared in June about the release of Rose Kashmirie with the following detailed and romantic notes worthy of California Cuisine in the 80's, I knew I had to try it....

Top Notes: Red strands of saffron from Kashmiria, Essence of Bulgarian Rose, Spicy seeds of coriander, Green peel of Sicilian bergamot
Heart notes: Red peonies from China, Damascene Rose absolute, Resin from myrrh or Bdellium (?!) from India
Base notes: Woodsy oil from Nagar Motha, Black vanilla pods, Roots of Indian vetiver or Khus, Sacred sandalwood, Benzoin tears, Ambrette seeds that smell of musk, Ambergris

I'm realizing that there are certain notes used in scent that will always get my attention, and they are not just the usual suspects.  Saffron, clove (and most aromatic spices), geranium, honey, most woods (except for cedar and oud), frankincense and myrrh.  Not only do I adore these scents on their own, but they often seem to be used in interesting ways.  I find that what I am most often after in a scent are the simultaneous sensations of effortlessness and stimulation.  The ones I respond to most are usually masterfully blended but with a surprising twist, and this finally brings me to Rose Kashmirie!

When my bottle arrived in the hands of a friend a couple of weeks ago I ripped off the cellophane there and then to get to the bottle and spritz, and I was sort of thrilled and a bit disappointed.  The light and breezy aspect of the Rosine scents are not my usual style, as I tend to like more richness and gravitas, but it did have the uplifting quality that I can't help but respond to.  As I drove home I kept sniffing, and I got to a sort of murky green moment that made me think that alas I wasn't going to be able to love this one................at least I had my scent pals waiting with bated breath to get their hands on some and they could make up their own minds.  Now the day I got my hands on this scent was one of our silly 90 degree Ocotober days, and I noticed about an hour later that there was a wonderful scent in the air, and realized that it had to be coming from me!  The RK had bloomed surprisingly beautifully -- I had to revisit it right away, and re-experience the top/middle/bottom affect.  This time I didn't much mind that murky middle as I could sense the transmutation of the scent, the perfumer's art resulting in the alchemy that is perfume. 

• So this is what happens when I spritz Rose Kashmirie - the first burst of the sweet/tart blend of spice, citrus and rose is quite delightful, a kind of honeyed spiced citrusy rose.  At the end of this phase, it reminds me a bit of Creed's Fleur de The Rose Bulgare because of that rose Sicilian Bergamot effect, but it is also rather sweet and feminine, which must come from the saffron rose combo.  ( I often forget that I like sweetness in spicy scents).  I think that funny middle period comes when the "Ambrette seeds that smell of musk" joins in, and for some reason it surfaces for a few minutes almost as if it is on it's own before the scent it becomes its true self, a lovely sum of it's parts, at once  warm, bittersweet, spiced and earthy. Rose Kashmirie really makes me wonder about the magic of scent development, how the labels of top, middle, and bottom notes don't really address the mysterious ways scents combine their different volatilities which ebb and flow at different stages to make the perfumes we love or hate.  Bravo François Robert and Rosine!

Neither Shoes nor Cake nor Perfume but Epidermis

I must take a moment to shamelessly publicize my new line of skincare, Arcona, as a mere consumer, not manufacturer or spokesmodel, just delighted customer.  I have not been happy with my skincare since I've been back in arid Los Angeles this year, away from wonderfully moist Europe last year.  My skin is much happier in more humid environments, sadly I do not live in one, and must pay the price.  Finally I have found that the the price can be paid dollars and cents instead of skin quality!  Perhaps Los Angles, land of sun, smog, chlorinated water galore and desert climate, necessitated the creation of this line, not surprisingly, based here.

I know little of it's origins, but from the website it looks like one person pioneered the "natural" formulas, as well as the rather revolutionary idea that creams and lotions don't really add much to your skin.  The idea behind the line, made of rather simple and easy to understand ingredients, is that balance can be restored to all skin types by regular (and rather mild) exfoliation supplemented by potions that draw moisture to the skin and help to keep it there.   Arcona purports that everything they tell you to apply to your skin is actively DOING something for the whole time it is there,  and I am here to tell the tale.

I was very wary of committing to a 5 piece regime, and was eased into it by a nice sampler bag containing all of the pieces for me to get hooked!  Within 2 days my skin was actually dewy in the morning, the time when I had most felt dehydrated.  I figured that the Honeymoon might be over soon, and cynically waited for a couple of weeks to be disappointed.  Instead I refined my regime to work for my very particular skin, with the help of a nice Customer Service gal, and I couldn't be happier.  My skin is wonderfully smooth, and everything I put on it is completely compatible with the various makeups I wear, while conventional moisturizers have frequently been incompatible.  Even my beloved Aesop Rosa Damascena Oil never really seemed to DO much for my skin from day to day although it provided a lovely base for my foundation and my skin felt hydrated while it was on, it didn't feel hydrated when it wasn't on..............dommage.

It really makes sense to go for "natural" skincare in these times, there are strange chemicals in enough of what surrounds us, and everything we put on our skin seems to actually permeate it!  I hereby encourage anyone reading this to explore more natural skincare options, wheter it is Zia from the health food store which many people seem to love, or Alba Botanica, Aesop, Stella McC, Nuxe from France, there are more options than ever before.  I particularly recommend Arcona if you are willing to do a complete skincare turn- around, and take the risk to have lovely skin in your second half century! 

PS:  I promise new shoe and perfume posts in the near future, cake too!

 

My Ten Favorite Scents for a Modern Summer

I've loved reading the summer fave scents by the real scent bloggers, like Marina and Tom, Ina, and Victoria, so I had to join the fun.  Actually noticing and narrowing down my choices to the nearest and dearest made me think about what I really look for and find in my scent choices, and they naturally broke down into five catagories which made it quite neat.  The great thing is that all of our choices are pretty darned different, which is why we are all here, isn't it?

I find that there are several qualities in a scent that I crave during the summer, the first is the quite literally a bracing scent, fresh and invigorating, simply the opposite of the way that I wilt in the heat.  These quaranteed antidotes to the heat for me this summer are both by Miller et Bertaux, go figure!  That is what got me to musing on my comparative modernity this year, as I am not craving any classic perfumery at all -- unless you think my final entries are Classic, I just think they're Magic.

My first Bracing scent is Miller et Bertaux's earthy Spiritus (#2) , and my second is their self explanatory Green Green Green & Green (#3).  Though my immediate sensation of #2 is always "peppery," I'm never tempted to sneeze, it's cool pepper like szechuan peppercorns.  The stated notes of #2 are “Mystic incense, sandalwood, tobacco and spices are infused with ginger and rose,” now that doesn’t sound bracing does it?  But the effect of the scent is cool spice, perhaps due to the cooling effect of incense and tobacco on ginger?   It's completely addictive, like spicy food is sometimes.  I am notoriously bad at picking out notes and I’ve turned that weakness into a strength by lauding the fragrances I love that are blended so seamlessly as to blur the edges of all of their notes.  Now #3 is crisp and bittersweet, a git like green pepper blended with herbs to soften it's bitter edges.  It’s stemmy and fresh, reminding me of that Gobin Daudé scent that was so green and alive smelling, while Vent Vert, which is also very green, has that classic perfumey quality that I am eschewing.

The next quality that I crave in summer is piquancy, a kind of stimulating pungence, which I associate with spices, and again I have a double header by Divine Parfums, L’Homme Sage, one of my favorite spice scents of all time, and my new discovery L’Homme de Coeur.  Coeur seems to be made of rather pungent green herbs and spices, Sage is all brown and gold spice, simultaneously warm and and comforting and, and sharp and stimulating. 

    
When I read the notes of  L’Homme Sage and I think HELLO it’s made from mostly things I really love – even Lychee! (and what are “everlasting flowers?”), which combine to make a scent I really love, which seems intuitive but doesn't really happen all that often to me.  With saffron, mandarin, cardamom, lychee; balm, aromatic woods, everlasting flowers; patchouli, oak moss, amber and incense, it’s a never miss scent for me. 

In contrast, L’Homme de Coeur is green and gray composition does a completely different thing with an herbaceous combination of angelica, juniper berries, cypress, iris, vetiver, ambergris, and wild vanilla (which seems to be some kind herb, not the vanilla pod we expect).  Actually I would have named them in reverse, as this scent seems a bit more monastic (sage is wise in French, like wiseman, but also sort of quiet and good), and the Sage seems more warm hearted, but what’s in a name?

Believe it or not my next two scents are ALSO by the same house, Les Parfums de Rosine, and I am after their simultaneously fresh and stimulating aspects, which isn't what one would necessarily look for in a Rose scent.   Roseberry and Diabolo Rose have both surprised me as potions concocted from curiously refreshing components combined with rich rose to make scents that really last on me, for one thing, delivering downright amusing whiffs at every turn!  

Here are the interesing notes of these scents – Roseberry has almost a fizzy fresh aspect with “aldehydic, green and rosy notes, blackcurrant bud, blue camomile; lees of wine notes, wild rose, Turkish rose, raspberry leaves, blackberry; sandalwood, vetyver & iris.”  I swear that the red wine comes across, and as my foodie friend Richard always says about balance in food, it, along with all of those berries, brings “good acid” to the composition, hence it's refreshment.

Diabolo Rose hits with a whoosh of mint, like a breath of fresh air, that combines Sicilian bergamot, peppered mint, rose essence, lily of the valley, rose absolue, tomato leaves, peony, maté leaves, sandalwood, amber & musk.  The citrus and mint combined with those refreshing leaves and florals really makes this a special scent, so much more than the mere combination of it's parts.

My Happy Summer Florals this year are Creed’s legendary Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare, and Le Labo Neroli 36, both of which always make me smile, which must be aromatherapy doing it’s work.  Again, their notes don’t tell the story very well, as both scents are so evocative of times and places and feelings I may have never experienced, but these scents teach them to me with every sniff.   I experience a kind of ecstatic happiness from the wonderous Creed scent, which is like a magnificent fictitious tea rose.  If the amazonian genetic mutations of roses that are at florists for Valentine's Day -- one can’t help trying to smell them, only to be disappointed again and again -- had a scent, this would be it!  The notes are Bulgarian roses, green tea, Sicilian mandarin, Sicilian bergamot, Italian lemon, all of which can definitely be sniffed out in this transporting scent, but it that's not the whole story and the radically simplified almost generic notes of the uplifting Neroli 36 (for 36 ingredients) tell us very little about it “neroli, rose, musk, mandarin orange, jasmine and vanilla” (duh, whatever, how about Neroli Neroli Neroli?)  All I can tell you is that it works on me like Prozac this summer!

My last cagegory is Fabulous and Mysterious, a special feeling that both Balenciaga's Vintage Le Dix and Guerlain's Vol de Nuit always give me, and there is no way to imagine how either of them smell by reading their notes.

The Third Thing

Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,
but there is also a third thing, that makes it water
and nobody knows what that is.

The atom locks up two energies
but it is a third thing present which makes it an atom.                  D.H. Lawrence

Le Dix completely  took me by surprise.  I had gotten a HUGE bottle on ebay for a violet loving friend, and of course had to decant a bit for myself to experiment with, and I was very intrigued.  I have NEVER liked violet anything, except for the color!  The scent was violety, woodsy and captivating, and I have returned to it over time especially during warm weather, which is a double surprise, since woody violet with a hint of leather doesn’t sound too appealing for the summer, but that’s just one of the mysteries of which I speak!  Here are the notes, of the vintage, not the reformulation, strangely missing a violet note altogether: bergamot, lemon; ylang ylang, rose, lily of the valley, iris; civet, musk, vanilla, sandalwood, & vetiver.    
Vol de Nuit (1933) has something in common with Le Dix (1947) which can pretty much be discerned by reading the notes,  both have a violet aspect which is not listed (Le Dix is MUCH more violet, and Vol de Nuit is always depicted in a sort of violet mist, perhaps to evoke The Night) but I suppose it’s the citrus topnotes, rich floral middle notes, and woody musk base notes create a genetic relationship for sure.  But none of them describe it's aura properly, and there is no way I can tell you what Vol de Nuit smells like.  Others have made a better stab at it, but no one has been able to describe what it really is.  I love that!  Supposedly it is made from orange, mandarin, lemon, bergamot, orange blossom; jonquil, aldehydes, galbanum; vanilla, spices, oakmoss, sandalwood, orris, musk.

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Eau My Sin Redux

Oh my, Eau My Sin is as wonderful as I had imagined it would be. Everyone who has sniffed it on me has said “Ooooh that smells wonderful on you,” although each of them has declined to try it, which makes me think that it is another one of my particular fancies that that no one else can really imagine joining me in, which means all the more for me!  I prefer the Eau to the Extrait, perhaps because the parfum sample I used had a bit more of an aged quality, maybe due to some spoiled top notes, or to funky basenotes?  I’ve just sniffed a bit of extrait from one of my ebay coups which is lighter in color than the first sample I had, and it is a bit fresher smelling but the drydown seems to be mostly ylang ylang/musk/civet and the heavier floral aspect of this scent is not my favorite facet. 

Here are the notes:  Top Notes of aldehydes, bergamot, lemon, clary sage, neroli; Heart Notes of ylang-ylang, jasmine, rose, clove, orris, lily of the valley, jonquil, lilac; Base Notes of vanilla, vetiver, musk, woods, tolu, styrax, civet

Madame Zed, who created My Sin (Mon Peché) in 1925 or 1926 for Jeanne Lanvin, seems to be one of the glamourous White Russian exiles populating Paris since the Russian Revolution, many of whom were involved in fashion and other arts of luxury.  Some of these women were titled aristocrats who had probably escaped with jewelry and cash and needed to make a living, doing for others what they had done for themselves all their lives, creating personas through clothing, accessories and personal care.  This partucular Russian sensibility, arriving in Paris on the heels of the first sightings of Diaghalev’s Ballet Russe and the heroic exoticism of Paul Poiret’s design empire, transormed high syle in the Paris of this period.  Mme Zed created this scent (the final scent of 15 she did for Jeanne Lanvin before 1925!!!!) at what seems to have been the end of her perfume career, as there are no scents credited to her after it.

You know, I’m not good at picking out notes, and frankly don’t aspire to it, as my definition of a fabulous scent is one in which each individual note is sublimated to the whole and none asserts itself too strongly, except for maybe a few moments on it’s way to morphing into something else.  But now that I sniff and read the notes listed, I can imagine that the topnotes smell like that strange herbal citrus floral quartet, and the middle mixture of heady florals, fresh spring flowers and murky iris has a complete yet somehow Unfloral effect, all held by an astonishing 7 basenotes ranging from the frankly benign vanilla through to the earthy vetiver and woods, to the mystical styrax and tolu, climaxing with notorious civet (it’s an antique, so we might as well enjoy it!).  My Sin is a kind of everything but the kitchen sink all perfumes rolled into one, which makes it feel like one of the truly iconic perfumes of the first half of the 20th century.  My Vintage Perfume Enabler, Denyse Beaulieu (also known as carmencanada) said of it in her email encouraging my ebay odyssey “My Sin is pretty much my definition of perfume. Fabulously blended, refined and animalic, totally undefinable.” Now if SHE can’t define it, what am I to do?.  Just reading the the notes is fascinating, like reading a great recipe, one feels that the cook is definitely functioning on a special level, and that s/he knows something I definitely don’t and can learn a ton from.  Thank you, Madame Zed.

Vintage Mania: Oh My Sin!

I hadn't been feeling myself for a few weeks, and my sense of smell and taste were strongly affected, to the point where I wasn't particularly interested in perfume, and it made me very sad!  I was going for stronger tastes in food, eating Thai and Szechuan and Lebanese and Korean food, all very easy to come by here in LA, which cheered me up a bit, but I missed my auto perfume responses terribly.  

Finally, after almost three weeks I started craving vintage scents most of all, that kind of strange dark almost bitter tinge of Jolie Madame, Miss Balmain, Vent Vert, and Cabochard, all of which I have in my arsenal turned out to fit the bill, but then my little sample of My Sin Parfum twinkled beguilingly, quite different in character from the others.  I had falled in love with it a month or two ago and had bid on several bottles on Ebay rather timidly and lost them, and I attacked the auctions with renewed vigor, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that I won several in one day, like a gambler on a roll, I felt invincible, and that this chance might not repeat itself, compulsively bidding on each My Sin auction in a 24 hour period, winning each one!  Ah, the old days, I've always been nostalgic for the times I've never seen, and my interest in vintage scent really makes me feel as if I can actually smell another time, so I don't feel guilty about craving it, as the payoff is so great.

But later, with pangs of remorse (I've never been interested in proper gambling, as the stakes weren't at all interesting to me) I was concerned that I might have made a big mistake, blowing my was on one scent, while I had just had a renewed sense of scent, might I have changed a bit?  I'm so promiscuous with scent anyway!  And what of the difference between the parfum and the EDT (called simply Eau de Lanvin or Eau My Sin (get it?  Oh My Sin?).   I'd just have to wait until the bottles rolled in.

The first came in today!  I tore open the package, and got to the small bottle (thank heaven more was coming!)  I splashed it on, immediately and breathed in sharply, ahhhhhhhhh, that's it, My Sin, just as strange and interesting as I had imagined from my parfum sample.  And now I can live out my fantasy of drenching myself in it (cough splutter) but there is that adage about too much of a good thing, easy girl!  I could smell it all through dinner and wondered again if I was going overboard.  Ask me tomorrow what I think of it.  And about the two bottles that will come in next week, will they be any different, different years of production, different formulas, who knows?

Tune in later for my further adventures with My Sin, Mme Zed and Jeanne Lanvin..........

Lychee Litchi Who's Got the Lychee

Growing up in NY, Chinese restaurants had those interesting fruits for dessert sometimes, kind of weird looking, perfumey tasting, denigrated by my bohemian parents for being Canned Fruit.  When I started to go to art school, I discovered fresh litchi in the Asian markets to paint with watercolors, because their exterior texture and interior shell colors were so beautiful, with the luminous flesh inside, oozing perfumey juice.  I don’t think I ate them, because they weren’t chocolate, I just painted and sniffed at them.  Years later, in Los Angeles, someone (maybe that cool Lebanese guy who lived on my street in Beverly Hills?) introduced me to the sheer delight of eating fresh litchi cold from the fridge, icy perfumed amazingly textured fruit exploding in your mouth!  I’ve been introducing other people to the Wonders of Litchi ever since. 

In a previous blog, I waxed poetic about an amazing dessert concoction by my favorite maitre, Pierre Herme, the Isphahan (named for the rose), that consists of cream studded with litchi sandwiched between rose macarons and studded with fresh raspberries.  Imagine, munching on slippery litchi perfumed cream, preceded by the rose perfumed pink macaron crunch, framed by the gritty acidic raspberry texture & flavor happening at once in your mouth – it’s absoletly volcanic!

Last night I did my first perfume/dessert pairing – ice cold litchi accompanied by sniffs of Indult Manakara on our wrists, yum!  I had chanced upon my samples of Manakara and Isvaraya earlier in the afternoon and decided to try them, along with about 8 others I hadn’t yet dipped into!  I relegated Manakara into the swap pile, after the first Banana, ewwwww, hit.  And as I was making dinner preparations, it persistently wafted up sweetly from my right wrist, and smelled so not like anything I’d like yet it was quite intoxicating – why I wondered?   It’s a Litchi floral!  Coincidentally I had just bought a can (they’re good, Mom!) of Litchi for dessert, thus my dessert/perfume scheme was hatched, with great success!  If you’ve got an Indult Manakara sample, I urge you to try it too, and if you don’t have one, I’ll share my source!

Sniffapalooza in LA

As many of you know, Corps Karen took Sniffapalooza a couple of weeks ago, and about 50 of us were treated to a very full day of sniffing and schmoozing.  Since Tom has have given the exact rundown of speakers and activities on Perfume Smellin’ Things, my entry in the perfume blog arena will be, as usual, a completely personal take on the experience. 

Arriving was delightful, and the nice café at Fred Segal was filled to the brim with perfume afficianados, including a surprising number of men!  Interesting the difference having it in SoCal makes, perhaps it’s that sense of openness that I originally moved here for, almost 24 years ago!  Half of the speakers were women, and I found the difference in the types and scale of businesses between men and women noteworthy, and the cultural differences between American and European points of view on perfume making also very striking.  Here's a great picture of me with IrisLA and Marlen, you can see how much fun we were having!

The most outstanding differences between the men and women with their own fragrance-based businesses was the sense that the women wanted to make a wonderful product and get it to people who really love it, and the men seem to be more business oriented and and even though they enjoy making a product with a special point of view, they organically make their businesses big and successful and start flying around on people’s corporate jets (one imagines) or flying around first class consulting as a result of their self-created perfuming.  Is this a man's brain/women's brain kind of difference, or is it a kind of culturally based characteristic?   Perhaps the women who are drawn to having a business like this relish the ultra personal  kind of connection they forge with their associates and clients, whereas the men are  more motivated by a kind of independent business model with a creative focus.  I'm always so fascinated to note these kinds of differences, as a creative professional with a completely eccentric business model, motivated less by fame and fortune and more by making a special product and finding it's proper place with individual consumers.  I always think I might be missing something, and here was a great opportunity for me to learn how others have resolved their businesses.  Hmmmmmmm...............I fit so neatly into the group of women who make their own products, I wonder if that's the way I want things to be?    

Perfume Riffs: Style and Content

There is an intriguing new trend in scent, even though it doesn’t produce too many scents I’m dying to wear. It is perfectly represented by the new line Etat Libre Orange, which appears to be a reference to the Free Orange State of Holland.  Perhaps it’s creator, Etienne de Swardt (ex LMVH and creator of Eau My Dog!) is refererring to the history of the Dutch being in the vanguard of civil liberties, and every type of 20th Century design.  From his long list of scents, some, like Jasmin et Cigarettes, can be taken literally, others are obviously pressing buttons like Putain des Palaces (Palace Whore), while one is amusingly opaque, Rien (Nothing).  Their website heralds a banner that proclaims “vive le parfum est mort”, announcing this iconoclastic label, one which asked perfumers to do their own contemporary riffs on perfume.  Frederic Malle did the same thing with his perfumers, giving them complete freedom to create scents, many of which have become original classics, and Serge Lutens’ was among the first of the improvisational perfume lines, prefigured by Annick Goutal, for whom storytelling was paramount.

There is no doubt that this audacious genre has an audience, probably akin to the one Demeter and CB I Hate Perfume serves, as well as Perfumistas of all stripes who are hungry for new scents and new scentsations.  Even I have found a scent from ELO that I like, Rien, which is more like Beaucoup, but never mind.  Who would have imagined that people wanted to wear fragrances smelling like Dirt or Laundromat, Spaghetti Sauce or Funeral, before Demeter came along?  Certainly not me, but I’m probably the wrong generation: I’d rather BE provocative than smell provocative, and now I’m old enough to pull it off.  From the age of 15 until I was about 30, my personal style was deliberately provocative, and if I could have better mirrored my look with my scent I would have – all I had was Annick Goutal’s Eau de Ciel and Charlotte, which were quite ahead of their time (coincidentally my BF was wearing her evocative scent Sables, named for Sand, long before I knew him).  Perhaps we were both after what the audience of Etat Libre Orange is after now, but I can’t help but feel that these new scents are are more a kind of mark, like tattoos, for people to identify their compatriots, against the grain.  I’ve rarely wanted to indulge in the the conventional trappings of individuality, which always seems like a reaction to what is perceived as old school, and has a tyranny all its own, the tyranny of the new, which gets just as boring as the traditions it is trying to subvert.

To me, the ELO works smell as funky as they sound, swaggering, and a bit offputting, deliberately composed in minor keys, and almost exactly the opposite of what I’m looking for in a scent.  I’m after a) beauty; b) a scent that evokes my personality of the moment; c) a stimulus for me to feel a certain way, and Putain de Palace ain’t it, whereas Guerlain’s Rose Barbare is perfect for me on all three counts.  The 20th Century is rife with Bad Girl scents, or scent names, starting with Paul Poiret’s original Mon Peché in 1911, (My Sin, the name lifted by Lanvin in the the 20’s), on to Tabac Blond and Bandit, and the evocative Scandal and Rumeur, through to the tongue in chic Ma Griffe (Jacques Griffe’s label was his thumbprint, his griffe, his scratch, slang for signature).  I just found a notation for a lost Chanel scent from 1946 called Cynique, but no one has recycled that name yet!  The uber chic minimalist modernism of the maximalist Coco Chanel’s 5, 19 & 22 is riffed on by a pair of corporate escapees, the creators of Le Labo with their perfume names that refer to the dominant not of the scent and the number of ingredients it uses.  Let’s hope that corporate perfume life spawns more of these renegades. 

Peachy Skin is Mine!

While I was away a nice fellow found my blog and emailed me about a product called Skin MD Natural, a new kind of product which acts as a moisture shield for the skin.  As I knew I would be returning to bone dry LA after moist and green Brittany, I made sure that his product would await me for emergency treatment.

Sure enough my skin freaked out in the dry LA winter air (now it’s more like summer air, but that’s another story) and I applied the shielding lotion like mad.  It made my skin feel very smooth, but the results lasted only from application to application, which is not the point of this product, which is supposed to help your skin build up it’s own store of moisture. 

So then I decided to apply products I like, serums, moisturizers, even oils, first, and using the lotion afterwards to shield them from evaporating and in the process sort of bind them to my skin.  This use was intuitive on my part and has been very effective.  Now my skin is always fairly moist and plump, even right after I wash it.

Since I have this big space to fill next to this lovely peach photo, here's some of the info from their site -- "Skin MD Natural™ becomes part of the outer layer of skin to restore this natural function. It helps damaged skin by preventing moisture-robbing irritants from entering its deeper layers and helps reduce moisture loss.

Despite its shielding effect Skin MD Natural™ does not prevent the skin from breathing, in fact it improves it because it helps keep the skin pores from being clogged with outside irritants that are often too complex to be eliminated naturally."

If you live anywhere where the moisture of your skin is challenged, OR live somewhere nice and moist and would like to use a minimum of product, Skin MD Natural would be a great choice, and at a great price of $25!

Balenciaga in Paris hugely disappointing!

I was terribly excited to be in Paris in time to catch the Balenciaga exhibit, though I braced myself for seeing his garments in outlandishly bad taste (and not the good kind) which are so contradictory to his great architectural masterpieces that he is admired for.  I was truthfully curious to see the whole group, as I love to see the bad work of any great creative mind, as we all have to do bad work and good.  Instead, what I found was an exhibit so poorly mounted that the clothes were all put to shame!  If this were to be one’s introduction to the work of this 20th Century fashion icon, I can’t imagine what the experience would be.  I remember going to the Schiaparelli show here at the Musee de Mode, which was so badly displayed and lit that the clothes looked like they were made by loving hands at home.  I suppose that this quality must have been some of their charm at the time, but it was a travesty to have to focus on the unevenness of stitching, wavy seams, and funky buttonholes, instead of the amazing decorative elements and interesting shapes and proportions of Schiap’s work, simply due to terrible lighting!

As to Mr. Balenciaga’s equally interesting work, his clothes are displayed on mannequins with stuffed cotton bodies, and hinged wooden arms, on little pedestal stands that make them shorter (and of course thinner) than a human being, so that everything has the effect of being oversized.  The gowns with those great eliptical hems, which filled with air as the wearer moved (the effect was as if she were gliding), are dragging on the floor, and hanging limp.  The strapless dresses have unstuffed, or rather unfilled bodices, and long gloves have been pulled onto the awkward hinged wooden hands and arms, so what you see revealed is the big shoulder hinge quite shockingly attached to the improperly shaped stuffed form that should be the decolltee, eek! 

The exhibit design itself couldn’t be less appropriate to the clothes and their time, or more distracting!  The French love of commercial design (most often OVERdesign), and the overall feeling of modernity often flaunts itself in exhibit design here, with the frequent consequence of partially eclipsing the work it is trying to elucidate.  In this case it was more annoying than anything else, as the improperly sized and stuffed mannequins hampered the actual work much more. But I simply couldn’t overlook the amazingly ill-suited and barely legible computerized typeface displayed in that intense blue light used to illuminate new car dashboards and cellphones.

There was additionally an impossible white bathroom tiled pod shaped viewing room showing black and white films of Balenciaga shows in the 50’s (which are fascinating period pieces) as well as contemporary clips of the shows under the Balenciaga moniker now.  All of the ”adults” were watching the 50’s films, and the young people were watching the 2005/2006 collections, designed by Nicolas Ghesquiere, who actually seems like a very interesting fellow.  Since there was only a little bench for two built into the “bathroom” wall in a fair sized room with four dangling monitors, everyone else had hunker down on the blue violet carpet, which really doesn’t work for people of a certain age, who lurked for a moment around the edges and then disappeared, or waited for the bench to be vacated. This brings me to the cynical portion of my critique. 

It’s a shame to think that a major show like this is ultimately a sales tool for the contemporary Balenciaga label (whose clothes and commercials were part of the exhibit, shown chronologically, at the end, or the beginning, depending on how you went through – the signage is rather inscrutable).  The brilliant blue lit computer type is meant on one hand to show that Mr B was almost futuristic with his most enduring his design ideas (although nothing at all like the self styled futurism of Courreges and Cardin and that other guy) and on the other hand to appeal to the young people seeing the show, like it has been keyed into their Nokia phones, and will hopefully send them straight to the shop, quite nearby, to see what they can try to save up for.  Dommage!

All of the publicity I’ve seen for the show focus on the career of the great Balenciaga, and it is an admirable opportunity to do so, but I’m glad I couldn’t convince Pierre to come with me, as it would have been a complete waste of a precious Paris hour or two for him.  Phew.