Rabbit rabbit! Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, September 1, and some people like to say “rabbit, rabbit” as their first utterance on the first day of the month, for good luck. Why not? Today is also the start of the Labor Day weekend, here in the US, and the official start day of my retirement. The party my kids planned for the occasion took place last Saturday, and it was so much fun! Many old friends came, including the only two people I knew in this whole state when we moved here from the Northeast, other than my husband, and two dear friends who flew in for the occasion. My lovely husband gave me a book about jewelry by Geoffrey Munn, one of our favorite experts on the UK “Antiques Road Show”, called “The Triumph of Love.” I’m truly blessed!
The Triumph of Love; Jewelry 1530-1930; by Geoffrey Munn.
The fragrance I chose to wear was new to my collection, which felt right for starting a new phase of life. It is Widian’s Rose Arabia Lily, launched in 2019. I got it this past February in Barcelona, on my visit to The Perfumery (a must if you are looking for niche fragrances in Barcelona, but you have to make an appointment). Notes listed by the brand are: Mandarin orange, bergamot, lemon, pink pepper; lily of the valley, ylang-ylang, carnation, tiare; ambergris, musk, vanilla, patchouli. It is beautiful and long-lasting.
The weather has improved here, after the super blue moon, but it’s still quite warm. The breeze helps, and it is much better than the temps of 98 degrees with 50+ percent humidity we had earlier in August. I think I’ll still be wearing my refreshing Hermès Jardin fragrances for a while. We don’t have any plans for Labor Day other than to relax, and maybe see the “Barbie” movie. Now I’m making a list of all the places I want to visit in London on our upcoming trip! I’m aiming for a mix of old favorites I haven’t seen in a while, and new experiences. All suggestions are welcome!
Please remember to come back on Monday, when Portia Turbo and I will be posting our “Notes on Notes” for the first Monday of the month. Have a great weekend!
I know many of you read the wonderful fragrance blog “Bois de Jasmin” and follow its author, Victoria Belim. She has written a memoir called “The Rooster House“, about her quest to reconnect with her Ukrainian heritage and solve a longstanding family mystery. It has had very positive reviews and is on my list to read now that I’ve retired!
Have any of you read it yet?
The Rooster House, by Victoria Belim; image from nytimes.com.
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, August 25, and it is my last Friday as an employee! My official retirement date is August 31, next week. My family is having a “friends and family” retirement party for me tomorrow, and one of my oldest and dearest friends arrived earlier today from out of town. She’ll be here all weekend, and I’m so happy about that! We’ve been friends for 40+ years and have supported each other through many of life’s ups and downs. She is also godmother to our oldest child.
The house is now sparkling clean, and our kids will be over for dinner soon, to see her before the party crowd arrives tomorrow. There’s nothing like a beloved houseguest and a looming party deadline to motivate me for some overdue cleaning. Not my favorite activity, but I do love the results.
So that’s my weekend sorted — how about you? And if you haven’t yet read Portia’s and my most recent “CounterPoint“, please do, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Welcome to this month’s “CounterPoint” about a newer fragrance: Chanel’s Paris-Édimbourg, one of Les Eaux de Chanel”, which has been a very successful series of lighter, more casual Chanel fragrances focused on freshness and named for particular destinations to which Coco Chanel regularly traveled, such as Biarritz, Deauville, and Venice. Most of “Les Eaux” are truly unisex, but Édimbourg, the fifth in the series, launched in 2021, smells to me more traditionally masculine than its predecessors. And indeed, perfume Olivier Polge has said: “Both fresh and woody, PARIS-ÉDIMBOURG could be the fragrance of a tweed jacket borrowed from the men’s wardrobe that was such an inspiration to Gabrielle Chanel.”
Apparently, Coco Chanel spent a lot of time in Scotland in the 1920s during the years when she was having an affair with the Duke of Westminster, who owned vast estates in the Scottish Highlands — a wild, forested, mountainous area, where nevertheless the visiting landed gentry and their guests still dressed for dinner after a day of fishing, shooting, tramping, and other outdoor pursuits.
Les Eaux de Chanel: Paris-Édimbourg; chanel.com
How did you first encounter Paris-Édimbourg and what was your first impression?
Portia: Being an Aussie we tend to get everything a little behind the rest of the world but I always check in with my local CHANEL Beauty stand alone store in the Westfield just down the road. Everyone was raving about the newest from the Les Eaux range and that they’d picked such a strange place to be the destination. I’ve no memory in my readings of Coco hitting the Scottish Moors but that’s probably my memory. Anyway, I went into CHANEL Beauty on the off chance and lo and behold there was a Tester and stock. Did you know they also have body products? So cool. Tried it, walked around the mall doing my shopping and went back to buy it before leaving. Honestly, I would have bought it anyway because I’m a completionist and I already had the rest of the line. That it was so bloody gorgeous was just the cherry on top.
Old Herbaceous: I was able to get a travel spray decant of it from a monthly fragrance subscription, after I had done the same with the earlier “Eaux de Chanel.” With the first three, I had tried them as samples pre-pandemic at Nordstrom, and liked them very much. So when my subscription started offering decants of them, I quickly added them to my queue! Also, I have a thing for complete collections (Portia calls that being a “completionist”, lol), which I usually try to restrain, but chose to indulge with Les Eaux. After all, travel sprays don’t take up much space!
My first impression was that this is a traditionally masculine aromatic fragrance, and that is still my impression. I ended up giving my travel spray to my 22 year-old son, and he loves it so much that he requested a full bottle for his birthday this summer. His very chic girlfriend loves it on him, which I’m sure clinched the matter! It does smell very nice on him, and he likes the fact that it reminds him of Scotland, a country we have visited as a family and enjoyed very much.
Fragrantica classifies Paris-Édimbourg as woody, aromatic, and aquatic. Top notes are listed as cypress and juniper berries, middles not as cedar, lavender, and vetiver; base notes as musk and vanilla. I’m not sure why it includes “aquatic” in its description, because to me, it doesn’t particularly evoke water or watery notes. It does have the bracing, cool quality of aromatic evergreens.
2. How would you describe the development of Paris-Édimbourg?
Old Herbaceous: The opening is quite strong, and redolent of juniper even more than cypress. I like that a lot (the only hard spirit I drink, on the rare occasion when I have a cocktail instead of wine, is gin, which is flavored with juniper berries; perhaps that is the perfumer’s clever reference to the cocktails undoubtedly enjoyed by Chanel and her friends). The cypress and juniper notes combine to smell very herbal and green, to my nose — another plus for me. At this stage, Paris-Édimbourg has strong sillage, so one might want to apply it lightly. One light spritz on my wrist carries well beyond my arm’s reach, and I expect most wearers will want to apply scent to more than just one wrist.
As it moves into the heart phase, Paris-Édimbourg becomes less green and more herbal with the lavender accord becoming prominent. The cedar and vetiver accords lend warmth and woodiness to this stage, and contribute, with the lavender, to the impression of a more traditionally masculine fougere-style fragrance. The light application to start pays off in this stage, as it now feels “just right” to my nose, though still a fragrance I would prefer on my husband’s skin to my own. It just goes to show you how engrained these cultural impressions can be, aided by the fact that both my husband and my late father have leaned toward classic “barbershop” fougeres in their fragrances.
The dry-down stage is very pleasant, becoming the scent of warm “skin but better” with its base notes of musk and vanilla. The lingering traces of lavender lend it a soapiness that is very pleasing, evoking not just warm skin, but clean skin.
Portia: The opening woods are green and spicy. The tart citrus even veers towards grapefruit and I’m smelling something spicy like nutmeg, maybe cinnamon. Could it be the juniper berry? I’ve always smelt that as a cool spice, like capsicum as opposed to chilli.Ahhh, the heart resolves into juniper and pine.
Paris-Edimbourg smells so fresh and clean, like a modern fine fragrance version of Norsca. Yeah! I remember thinking that on my first wear. Reminiscent, not same. Just a jump started memory. There is a warm sweetness as we head towards dry down. I’d have said a not very vanilla heavy amber, resinous sweetness.
I’ve been and had Korean BarBQ, a few drinks and chatter, then watched some footy. There’s still an oily grass, pithy citrus and fluffy musks with some torn green twiggy branch. Now feeling done in a very Jean-Claude Ellena vein. A soft wash of it. That’s a long ride for what is basically a cologne style of fragrance.
3. Do you or will you wear Paris-Édimbourg regularly? For what occasions or seasons?
Portia: Amusingly, until today Paris-Edimbourg had sat unopened in my wardrobe. You can see the wrapping in the photo.
Les Eaux de Chanel: Paris-Édimbourg; image by Portia Turbo.
We are heading into our warmer months in Oz. Already the days are 20C/70f and above. Paris-Edimbourg fit the day perfectly and has even been a good fit for this evening. Last summer I wore Paris-Venise and Paris-Riviera so much they secured places in the grab tray. I think Paris-Edimbourg will be taking Paris-Venise‘s spot.
Old Herbaceous: I doubt that I’ll wear it myself, but I’ll enjoy smelling it regularly on my son! I think it’s just right for an occasion when one wants to smell a bit more “dressy” but still at ease. Paris-Édimbourg strikes me as the scent equivalent of male or female “business casual” — a fragrance that goes with a crisp collared shirt and neatly pressed, tailored pants. Classic and well-mannered.
4. Who should/could wear Paris-Édimbourg?
Old Herbaceous: Aside from the standard reply, “anyone who wants to”, I do perceive this as a more masculine fragrance based on my own scent history, but it could be worn to great effect by a woman or really anyone of any gender! In that sense, like the other “Eaux de Chanel”, Paris-Édimbourg is absolutely unisex. Perfumer Olivier Polge and Chanel have called it “androgynous”, which I think fits.
Portia: The joy of the Les Eaux line is they are wearable by all. Paris-Edimbourg is no exception and I think it might even be the most masculine leaning of the set. The bottles are a beautiful hark back to vintage CHANEL and I love that they’ve used the regular box lining-card for the outer presentation. The price point is affordable for a luxury brand and I’m thinking this could be a very good gift for someone special. Who doesn’t love a little bit of a CHANEL logo?
Most of us need another perfume like an extra hole in our heads but if your collection is missing a very wearable, spritz and go cologne style scent then you could do a lot worse than Paris-Edimbourg.
Have you tried this, or any of the other “Eaux de Chanel”? Any favorites? Do you have any on your wish list or “to-try” list?
Les Eaux de Chanel: Paris-Édimbourg; image from chanel.com
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, August 18, the end of my third week away from my former workplace! So far, so good — I have so much to keep me busy, and I’m not sad to be missing some of the ongoing turmoil where I used to work. Right now, I’m still available (remotely) to answer questions and help with transition, but my successor will start on August 24, and one week after that is my truly official retirement date. One week from tomorrow, my family is throwing me a “friends and family” retirement party, which is so lovely but it also means I’m doing a LOT of house-cleaning and garden-tidying! Well, it’s good to have a goal and a deadline, and I’m getting a lot done. I’m also enjoying the birds who visit our garden during the daytime, most recently a pair of goldfinches and a very busy hummingbird.
Hummingbird and cardinal vine; image from amazon.com
Next Monday I’ll be posting another in the series Portia and I are doing this year, CounterPoint, where we record our responses to a fragrance using the same questions. Please drop by and add your own observations in the comments!
Today’s Community Project at Now Smell This is to wear a scent that has a note of something edible you might grow in a garden — just up my alley! Already this week I’ve worn Un Jardin en Méditerrannèe, Un Jardin sur le Toit, and First Cut. Today’s SOTD will be Sarah McCartney’s Le Jardin de Monsieur McGregor. Love it! I may continue the trend this weekend with St. Clair Scents’ Gardener’s Glove. I haven’t kept pace with Diane St. Clair’s newest releases, have any of you? Thoughts?
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, August 11, and we’re having one thunderstorm after another. Part of the day will be sunny, hot, and humid, and part will include torrential downpours, lightning, and thunder. Our dog Lucy isn’t happy about it, but we think the calming measures we’ve provided are helping her. We have a pheromone-based diffuser near her crate, and I give her “calming oil” in her food when we expect thunder. My SOTD for summer thunderstorm weather is Hermès’ Un Jardin Après La Mousson, a longtime favorite. It’s very refreshing!
Un Jardin Après La Mousson by Hermes; image from Hermes
I’m getting lots of work done around the house and garden, with my newly free time; we just got several vintage bathroom fixtures reglazed, and they look spectacular! Two bathtubs and two sinks, original to our 1906 house. So (fingers crossed), I think we’re finally done with bathroom renovations, which started with a plumbing disaster in the fall of 2020 at the height of COVID lockdown. I was motivated to get the fixtures reglazed this summer because some longtime, cherished friends are coming to visit in two weeks. Now everything will work AND look nice!
Our youngest moved back to campus this week for his last year of college. We miss him already! We’re very spoiled because he goes to college about a 15-minute drive away, and has lived at home every summer since he started college. In former workplace news, more senior staff have announced this week that they are leaving. I’m quite relieved to be gone myself, as those kinds of departures always impose more work on the staff who remain. My other news is that a ten-minute play I wrote will get a staged reading tomorrow at a local theater! I’m very excited. I’ve had a couple of staged readings before, but I hope to commit more time and attention to playwriting now.
In honor of theater, I think my SOTD for tomorrow will be Cabaret, by Parfums Grès. It isn’t nearly as well known as its sibling and predecessor Cabochard, but I like it very much, and I seem to be on a Grès kick lately because of the recent exhibit of Madame Grès’ beautiful couture designs I saw, and the “CounterPoint” post Portia and I did recently about Cabochard.
Do you have any fragrances that you associate with the theater? Or thunderstorms?
Welcome to another monthly installment of “Notes on Notes”, a collaboration between me and Portia Turbo of Australian Perfume Junkies! This month, we focus on tropical fruits. For me in the Northern Hemisphere, this seems very appropriate given the sweltering summer heat and humidity we’ve been enduring lately, complete with afternoon torrential downpours.
“Tropical fruits” covers a lot of territory — everything from bananas to pineapples, both of which are easily available in American supermarkets. We almost always have bananas on hand, and as it happens, I have fresh pineapple in the house right now because we had our three young adult children here for brunch, and I usually buy a readymade fruit salad to serve with brunch, which often contains pineapple. The fruit is much sweeter and fresher than any fragrance I’ve tried manages to convey. Fresh-squeezed pineapple juice is a treat I enjoyed on our one trip to the Bahamas many years ago. Come to think of it, we rarely travel to tropical locales, even Florida which is a nearby state; South Florida is considered “tropical.”
Did you know that coconuts are technically fruits, in a category called “drupes”? And they’re certainly tropical. Unlike pineapples and bananas, I rarely eat coconut. I don’t dislike it, I just don’t come across it very often, other than as an ingredient in baked goods or candy. In fragrance, the scent of coconut immediately reminds me of suntan lotion.
My impression is that the widely varying scents of tropical fruits are most often used in perfumery to convey “sunshine”, “summer” or “beach”, although Zoologist’s famous Bat used a banana accord and notes of other soft tropical fruits to refer to fruit bats in the tropics. (Bat was discontinued by Zoologist, but the perfumer who created it, Ellen Covey, now sells it online through her business Olympic Orchids Artisan Perfumes, under the name Night Flyer). Jean-Claude Ellena famously built his first fragrance as Hermès’ in-house perfumer, Un Jardin Sur le Nil, around an accord of green mango, as recounted in Chandler Burr’s book “The Perfect Scent”, not to evoke the tropics or a beach, but instead, a garden island in the Nile River.
The Perfect Scent; image from macmillan.com.
A classic example of how tropical fruits may be used in fragrance is CK One, often presented as a summer scent — so much so, that the brand frequently issues a summer flanker of CK One. It includes pineapple and papaya among its top notes, with citrus fruits such as lemon, bergamot, and mandarin orange.
CK One; image from highstreetpakistan.com
The full list of notes, per Fragrantica, is: top notes of Lemon, Green Notes, Bergamot, Mandarin Orange, Pineapple, Cardamom and Papaya; middle notes of Lily-of-the-Valley, Jasmine, Violet, Nutmeg, Rose, Orris Root and Freesia; base notes of Green Accord, Musk, Cedar, Sandalwood, Oakmoss, Green Tea and Amber. Created by Alberto Morillas and Harry Fremont, launched in 1994, M. Morillas has said it may be his favorite of the hundreds of fragrances he has created, in a 2022 interview with Fragrantica’s Patric Rhys:
“I created this perfume for the States, but it’s a very European style, my style – the Spanish style. It’s very fresh, easy to wear, but it can be appropriated. It smells different on each skin, when a man wears it, when a woman wears it… And for me, it’s still very modern, and doesn’t smell old fashioned, but of the actual time.”
I would agree — CK One is still modern, fresh, and unisex. I don’t find the pineapple to be a main player in the opening, though — the citrus fruits dominate. However, I think the pineapple accord contributes to the sweetness they convey in CK One in addition to the usual citrusy brightness. CK One moves through its opening stage quite rapidly; the heart notes are mostly floral, at least on my skin. To my nose, the combination of base notes just adds up to “green and woody” and I can’t say that I really detect separate notes. All in all, CK One doesn’t last very long, but the journey is very pleasant and does bring to mind a sunny vacation.
M. Morillas likes it so much that when he was asked to name the three fragrances he would want to keep personally, of all his creations, if he could only have those three, he named CK One first, saying that it captures his “sunny personality.”
In a 2017 interview with blogger Richard Goller at Fragroom.com, M. Morillas explained how he has used tropical fruits in creating summer flankers of L’Eau d’Issey, which was originally created by his friend Jacques Cavallier:
“Both the masculine and the feminine Eau d’Issey personalities remain so distinctive I can play with new modern freshness by inviting novel ingredients into the composition, while staying true to their unique signatures. Pineapple and kiwi bring the new exotic twist to the masculine scent. Summer is also played by exotic fruits for the feminine version. I introduced a new invigorating brightness throughout the colourful cocktail of dragon fruit, mango and guava.”
Another fragrance with a detectable pineapple note is Birmane, by Van Cleef & Arpels. Unlike CK One or many other scents using tropical fruits, it is not meant to be a summery or beachy fragrance. Now discontinued, I’ve read that it was designed as a “light oriental”. It is lovely! “Birmane” means Burmese, i.e. from the country now known as Myanmar and formerly known as Burma. Myanmar does in fact have a tropical climate and sits in the monsoon region of Asia; it is a top producer of tropical fruits. I suspect this is why Birmane was created as a “light” oriental fragrance, with no spice notes (more characteristic of scents meant to evoke the Middle East). Top notes include bergamot, pineapple, rosewood and lemon. The heart has notes of rose, orchid, iris, and heliotrope. The base notes include vanilla, tonka, sandalwood, and musk. Orchids, of course, are tropical flowers, and vanilla also comes from an orchid that grows in tropical environments.
Pineapple growing in Myanmar
Birmane was launched in 1999, which is interesting as it smells to me more like a classic fragrance of an earlier era. Not musty at all, no aldehydes, but it is rich and multi-layered in a way that was starting to go out of style among designer fragrances in the 1990s. As it dries down, the fruits give way to the flowers which then give way to sandalwood with a touch of vanilla and warm musk. It’s a very soft, appealing fragrance when judiciously applied. I can see that it might be a bit overwhelming if heavily sprayed.
There are other, more famous fragrances that incorporate a pineapple accord: Creed’s Aventus is one, and Jean Patou’s Colony is another. I don’t own Aventus; I do have a bottle of Colony, from the Collection Heritage that perfumer Thomas Fontaine created to bring back some of the house’s legendary fragrances, but I haven’t discussed it here because it has been tucked away with some of my collection while we have some repairs done.
Do you have or love any pineapple fragrances? Or scents with any other tropical fruit(s)? And please jump over to Australian Perfume Junkies to get Portia’s “Notes on Notes”!
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, August 4, and now we’re getting lots of rain that doesn’t relieve the humidity. I continue to harvest eggplants and adapt my new favorite recipe for eggplant parmesan: Delish’s Skillet Eggplant Parmesan. Last night, I used the same tomato sauce that includes truffle, porcini, and cream, but topped the whole thing with goat cheese instead of mozzarella (which was still in the inner layers). The crowd went wild! I think that version’s a real keeper.
I have more time to cook and garden now, because this past Monday was my last day in my workplace! I’m finishing up a couple of projects and will help transition my successor later this month, but I’m basically retired now. There was a nice gathering for me with colleagues on Monday afternoon, and people said nice things. TBH, I’m not sad to close that chapter. As much as I’ve enjoyed many aspects of my work over almost two decades, it just kept getting more and more stressful, and that was affecting my health more and more. Farewell to all that!
I’ve discovered Trader Joe’s bouquets of “garden roses”, which have a lovely, old-fashioned form like the English Roses I love, but no fragrance! Such a shame, as they’re very pretty and so far have lasted well in a vase.
Luckily, the roses I grow in my own garden are very fragrant, and I’m taking better care of them now, which rewards me with more blooms and fragrance. I have quite a few other flowers blooming, but many of them, like coneflowers, have little or no scent. I love them because they support pollinators and birds, and they now come in all kinds of wonderful colors.
Do you have a favorite scented flower that is NOT a rose?
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, July 28, and it’s still hot! I am consoled by the fact that my garden is now providing generous amounts of tomatoes and eggplants, as well as a second flush of rose blossoms. Also, I’ve found a new favorite recipe for eggplant parmesan: Delish’s Skillet Eggplant Parmesan. Honestly, it’s way better than normal eggplant parmesan because it’s not as bready. Normally I don’t think my husband and son would touch eggplant with the proverbial ten-foot pole, but they devour this. My second attempt was even better than my first, because I used a tomato sauce that includes truffle, porcini, and cream. Heaven!
As for the tomatoes, we are now happily in tomato sandwich season and I plan to eat that for lunch every day. Even if my own plants don’t deliver daily, our local farmer’s market sells plenty! The New York Times recently ran an article on tomato sandwiches that set off a furor in the comments, because its headline implied that tomato sandwiches are particular to the South: The Sandwich Southerners Wait for All Year. Folks from New Jersey, which is justly famous for its excellent tomatoes, were particularly incensed.
Given the current bounty of my garden, I thought it would be fun to identify fragrances with notes of both tomato or tomato leaf, and rose. And of course, what popped up but a longtime favorite: Gardener’s Glove, by St. Clair Scents! Also La Feuille, by Miller Harris. Another fave of mine, Un Jardin Sur le Nil, famously combines a tomato note with florals and other notes, but not rose.
Do you have any favorite scents with tomato or tomato leaf notes? Or a favorite tomato sandwich recipe?
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is Friday, July 21, and it is HOT! We did get some rain last night for the first time in several days, which will help my garden survive the next heat wave. I’ve been watering daily like a fanatic, but so far, everything is doing well, including the tomatoes that I swear every year I won’t plant again, and then I do.
Update on the Lucy saga: we seem to have conquered the pee smell, yay! And she hasn’t repeated her accidents, so we think some of the calming resources we’re using for her during thundery weather may be helping. Who’s a good girl?
If you haven’t yet read Portia’s and my latest “Counterpoint“, check it out! We’re having a lot of fun with these monthly collaborations (the other being “Notes on Notes“).
Are you sweltering in hot weather? How do you cool off? I am mostly staying inside, also due to poor air quality from the Canadian forest fires (!), venturing outside in the morning to do garden tasks, then retreating inside either at my office or house. I’ll go outside again around 6, when things start to cool down a bit, mostly to check on plants.
Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities 