Notes on Shoes Cake & Perfume

Best of 2009 Round Robin

I have always liked reading other Perfumistas Best of lists and today I get to do my own.  Many thanks to Elena at Perfume Shrine for inviting me and encouraging all of us to include all of our miscellaneous Bests! 

Best Design Revelation: Alexander Calder's Jewelry

Best things I made in 2009: a pair of earrings, a ring, patent leather shoes, and medieval booties.

Best culinary discovery: Persian/Iranian cooking -- great for perfume lovers!  I get to grind saffron, rose petals, cardamom with a mortar and pestle, and use other aromatics, herbs and fruits (pomegranate!) to make amazing food.

Best gifts of 2009: Two Global knives, and the Calder Jewelry book.  The global knives turn cutting and slicing into a transcendent experience, and the Calder book blows my mind every time I look at it.  The originality, form, movement, and dimensionality of his wearable pieces are unlike anything else ever made.  It makes the William Blake quote "the more personal, the more universal" come to life.  Gives hope to all of us making wearable design, especially me ; )

Best books I read in 2009:  Jane Eyre and White Noise by Don DeLillo.  One is an incredibly written story about the emotional reality of a woman finding her way in the world on her own, living on her wits and her merits, keeping her values, independence, and sense of herself intact, the other is the ultimate contemporary farce.  These two books represent opposite sides of the spectrum of literature as well as how I think, no wonder I get confused sometimes!  

Best Beauty tips: Glittery eyelids for all occasions, "pretty" lipsticks, and Philosophy Microdelivery Peel.

I opened up a new avenue of perfume interest this year, expanding my repetoire from a great love of what are mysteriously called "Oriental" and spice and woods based scents to cooler ones, including more appreciation of some contemporary scents, as I am a diehard Vintage Addict.

My perfume loves of 2009:  Ormonde Jayne Woman & Ta'if, Miller Harris Geranium Bourbon (I know I'm alone on this one!), Robert Piguet Vintage Visa, Pascal Morabito Or Black, CDG 8 88, Vintage Estee Lauder Private Collection and Azuree, Vintage Givenchy L'Interdit, Histoire de Parfums 1725 (Casanova), Parfums d'Empire Eau Suave, and any Aqua Admirabilis I can get my hands on, including Maison Kurkdjean and DSH. 

Perfume house to explore more fully in 2010: Dawn Spencer Hurwitz -- I met her in LA at a personal appearance, and became totally enamoured of her and her whole enterprise.

Here's wishing a fragrant and fulfilling 2010 to all of you!

Check out these other blogs for more Bests --

http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/

http://ayalasmellyblog.blogspot.com/

http://bittergracenotes.blogspot.com/

http://qwendy.typepad.com/shoescakeperfume/

http://www.eiderdownpress.com/Perfume_Journal.html

http://www.scenthive.com

http://olfactarama.blogspot.com/

http://journal.illuminatedperfume.com/

http://arosebeyondthethames.blogspot.com/

http://thenonblonde.blogspot.com/

http://underthecupola.blogspot.com/

http://sonomascent.wordpress.com/

http://www.savvythinker.com
http://alliam-aredhead.blogspot.com/
http://scelfleah.blogspot.com/
http://ismellthereforeiam.blogspot.com

Scents of Christmas Past and Present ?

Roxana of Illuminated Perfumes  (click for her link to all of us) kindly asked me, a most negligent blogger,  to be a part of The Circle, to  blog about Christmas scents, and I am most happy to oblige!

Living in virtually seasonless Los Angeles, my New York childhood is what laid the foundation for my Christmas senses for ever after.  I identified most thoroughly with Tom's scent memories of chestnuts roasting on the streets of NY, taking the Fifth Avenue bus with my head buried in the backs of ladies fur coats, and the actual smell of snow and of the icy cold air, which I especially miss the week before Christmas.  I'm still a sucker for anything smelling of fir, all year 'round, a conflation of summers in Maine and the smell of our tree (yes I'm Jewish!) and the Junipers just outside our door.

In the 70's my Mom was in a "Conciousness Raising Group" -- yes that's what it was called -- with a great woman whose husband was a minister in a neighboring town.  She invited us (secular NY Jews) to his Xmas Eve service, a rousing political and cultural commentary with audience participation, if I remember correctly, and I was hooked on Xmas Eve Services for many years.  I think he only lasted a year more at that post, but I dragged my parents to a service every year at a different place, the most memorable being the Old Dutch Church founded in 1685 in the town next to ours, with a cemetary attached made famous by Washington Irvington's tale about Sleepy Hollow Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.  There was no heat but a stove, and the flickering candlelight and smoky smell in the cold stone church stays with me still.

Here in Los Angeles, we don't have any environmental Christmas smells, but the combination of my BF's Incensey Comme des Garcons Avignon perfume (a vestige of his Catholic childhood in France (yes, he's Jewish too!) and Roxana's wonderful Sierra Solid Gold are hitting all of the right "notes" for me this season.  They can seem anachronistic in our daytime temperatures of 70 - 80 degrees during the day, but when the sun sets early, like I remember from childhood, the 30 degree drop makes the night air feel almost right, along with the views of snow capped peaks visible from certain street corners, which I can smell in my imagination.  Some "authority" wrote a book about smell saying that we never dream of smells, and I am here to tell you that they are dead wrong, I frequently have scented dreams, and these are the ones I wish for in December and January! 

Vintage Visa Redux

A great perfume pal sent me a sample of the legendary Vintage Visa by Robert Piguet and I fell in love with it, convinced I'd never have more than that tiny bit.  Surprise!  I found a few like minded gals and obtained an 8 oz bottle in it's original plaid package that had never seen the light of day nor been opened, I wonder if the juice could possibly be from 1946, the year it was made????  Quite a bit older than me if that is the case.

There really isn't much information circulating about Visa in its original version, as the new one (with which it shares only its name) takes up all the airspace.  It is often attributed to Germaine Cellier (Bandit,Vent Vert, Fracas, Jolie Madame) who I researched a bit and thought that she must be one of the coolest perfumer of all time.  Here is what Helg of Perfume Shrine at the end of her wonderful piece about the perfumer --

"It is difficult to imagine how perfumery would have been today without Germaine Cellier (or how she would react to today’s perfumery of focus groups and discussion panels), such was the defiance with which she paved her own way and became one of the most rebellious names in fragrance creation. And for that we’re truly thankful."

Denyse on Grain de Musc reveals to us that Visa was  composed instead by the influential Jean Carles (also Cellier's arch rival it seems) and looking at his list of perfume accomplishments, I can sense the connection between Visa and Tabu, Miss Dior, Shocking and Tailspin. But I’m disappointed that my new treasure isn't a Cellier Gem. 

And a Gem it is -- the masterfully blended aldehydes, rich florals, in an amazingly rich base of earthy woods and herbs,  and an animilic hit unlike anything else I know, add up to a truly great almost forgotten scent that I am thrilled to own. 

Vintage scents abound on Ebay and at The Perfumed Court, and I encourage anyone who is moved by these historical wonders to do anything to obtain them while we can!