I must begin with my apology for dropping the ball on my chronicle of our visit to Strange Invisible Perfumes! Had I not been alerted to Tom's review of Botanique Musc by Roxana, I probabaly would have lagged even more -- there are those bloggers who cannot stop themselves from posting every little thing they do, and there are those, like me (and Cait ; ) who are mired in their every day experiences (I speak for myself) and simply forget to blog! I even forget to check my beloved perfume blog Grain de Musc and can miss tons of interesting posts and comments in only a week! But enough about me and my slothful ways.
As at least 106 (my traffic that day, whoops!) of you read in Tom's review of Musc Botaniqe last week, we had a lovely visit to Strange Invisible Perfumes in Venice (California ; ) a couple of weeks ago. All of the women who work for this place are delightful and happy to share their beloved naturally based scents, which is the best advertisement I can think of for this jewel box of a shop. I grew up in the late 60's and early 70's, and I must admit that the lure of the hippie perfume oils was lost on me at the time. I was already a bit of a snob and also a vintage-clothing-wearer (although I did wear leotards and jeans on occasion) and I was more interested in smelling like Rita Hayworth in Gilda than the girl who sang I Met a Boy Called Frank Mills in HAIR (which I LOVED, check out this video, but it wasn't my aesthetic). I could be wrong, but I think that this was also the period during which loads of synthetic Musk was hitting the streets in hipppy oils, Patchouli and Rain aside. I just remember that some of the scents labeled Musk smelled very interesting to me, although I didn't "get" them, and others just smelled wierd, as did lots of the blends one tried in head shops or small boutiques. This must have been the beginning of my sensitivity, or asnomia, to many synthetics used in perfumery.
All of this is to say that the charms of Natural Perfumery is not lost on my, I do smile when the scent of Patchouli oil wafts past me at our local Farmer's Market as it did a numbe of times this morning, because I understand and appreciate the signification, and I do like the smell. But I generally like my scents more expertly blended and mysterious. The scents at Strange Invisible Perfumes, while harking back to a more innocent time, are, in fact, expertly blended, and in some cases are quite a bit more than a sum of their parts. Overall, the sensibility is a bit sweet for me, as I like my perfume a bit darker, more bitter, and even trickier it seems, but there are certainly a number of crossover scents at SIP which might even please a diehard vintagelover. Lyric Rain, for instance, has a full-on vintage quality (thank Tom's nose for this, and only my corroboration), and if I didn't have a dozen of them already, or if I were a diehard Organic fan, I would be very happy with it. Galatea is also one of the oddest scents there, and I need to go back to try it again. Black Rosette, as Scentself mentions, is a rather gothic twist on rose, and bears further exploration, as does Magazine Street (with proceeds going to aid Hurrican Kristina victims in New Orleans), and L'Invisible. The interesting surprise for me was indeed Musc Botanique, which starts out smelling freshly and greenly nothing at all like Musk, but dries down to a lovely "skin scent" that I swear is what other people are loving when they smell Musk -- like in Musc Ravageur, but not as sweet. Now this scent alone doesn't rock my world, but I am looking forward to trying it as a layering element to help other beloved scents stick to me, as I could detect it's presence on my upper arm a full 12 hours after I had applied it!
Stay tuned for my Chemistry Set Experiment with the formula of A Taste of Heaven, which has actually been enacted -- thank Heaven for long weekends!
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