Welcome to a new feature that I hope will appear monthly! Portia Turbo of Australian Perfume Junkies and I had so much fun doing “Scent Semantics” with some other fragrance bloggers in 2022 that we decided to launch TWO regular features as a new collaboration in 2023. The first, which we plan to post on the first Monday of each month, is “Notes on Notes“, in which we choose one note and write about it however the spirit moves us; our first Note was oakmoss. This second feature is “Counterpoint“, in which we ask ourselves the same handful of questions about a single fragrance and post our separate thoughts on it, on the third Monday of each month. We’re still experimenting with format, so comments on that are welcome too! This month’s Counterpoint fragrance is Chanel No. 5.
Welcome to the Friday 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, February 17, and I hope you all had a pleasant week, including Valentine’s Day if you celebrated it and just a great week if you didn’t. I can now reveal that the Valentine’s gift I got for my dear husband is one for us to share — a large bottle of Parfums de Nicolai’s New York. Not New York Intense, though I’ve read that is also very good. I borrowed from his small bottle I had given him some years ago while we were out of town, and I really enjoyed it on me as well as him! So now we’ll share it. I suspect he will use more than I will, because I have so many other options, lol!
How’s this for serendipitous: I was trying to figure out what might be a fun Portuguese perfume to bring home from our upcoming trip, and one of you suggested I reach out to Miguel Matos to ask him, but meanwhile I found out that The Perfumery in Barcelona carries Miguel’s own line! And we’ll be in Barcelona before Portugal. So I’ll go try some of Miguel’s scents and see if there’s one I’d like to bring home as a souvenir of both Barcelona and Portugal.
Our weather here has careened from chilly and wet, to sunny and warm, back to freezing cold and wet today. It’s not literally freezing yet, but it’s barely above that level and will dip below 32 F tonight. Glad I got in some overdue garden cleanup yesterday, when I think it was in the 70s! Sadly, the many pink magnolias that had popped open this past week will undoubtedly brown up and lose their blossoms after tonight’s freeze. They’ve been beautiful while they lasted.
Pink magnolia blossoms; image from allaboutgardening.com.
Next week will be Portia’s and my next “CounterPoint“, posting on Monday! We’ll be writing about our different experiences and versions of Chanel No. 5. Please join us!
What’s new in your world? I’ve been enjoying NST‘s community project this week, which was to match a fragrance with a textile or wear a fragrance that reminds you of a textile. So this week, I’ve worn Cristalle (textile-adjacent), Dior’s New Look 1947, and today — Grey Flannel, which I’m really enjoying.
Welcome to the Friday 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, February 10, and next week is Valentine’s Day! It is traditionally a peak season for fragrance sales, since perfume is often considered a romantic gift. I may just put my new bottle of Mitsouko eau de toilette in a Valentine’s gift bag and re-give it to myself on behalf of my husband. We don’t often go out for Valentine’s Day, but we’ll probably make a special dinner at home and maybe share a nice bottle of cava or Prosecco. I won’t mention here what I’m giving him, as he sometimes reads this blog!
Meanwhile, the spring flowers have started popping out all over my neighborhood after recent balmy spells. Yellow daffodils abound, but also forsythia, and my beloved pink magnolias. I just hope their blossoms don’t get nipped by a late frost, which often happens. I must go for a walk around the neighborhood this weekend to enjoy and sniff them, I think their fragrance is just gorgeous. I’ve not yet found a perfume that matches it, though I’ve tried many, many “magnolia” fragrances. The pink ones that bloom in the spring have a lighter, more lemony scent than the heavier white flowers of the Southern evergreen magnolias; we have several of those in our back garden along one fence line, so I’m very familiar with their scent.
Speaking of scent in the garden, our mahonias have been blooming for weeks now. They are the strangest plants — they look very forbidding, with their spiky, leathery leaves and weird forms like some kind of illustration by Dr. Seuss, but they smell like lilies of the valley, one of my favorite scents. Their fragrance tends to drift across the garden, emerging unexpectedly when one is occupied with various seasonal tasks like renewing mulch.
Leatherleaf Mahonia; image from Univ. of Tennessee Botanical Gardens
Do you have any big plans for Valentine’s Day, or a fragrance you’re hoping to receive? Has spring arrived where you live?
Welcome to this month’s installment of “Notes on Notes”, a monthly collaboration between this blog and Australian Perfume Junkies! Every month, we pick one fragrance note and write about it, posting on the first Monday of the month — fragrances we like that feature it, what we like or don’t like about it, anything else we know about it, whatever takes our fancy. For February, the note is vetiver.
Welcome to the Friday 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, February 3, and what a week it has been. On Monday, we buried my dear father-in-law: Rainy Days and Mondays. I appreciate the kind words from several of you! Flew back home late Monday night, had another day off on Tuesday to decompress, then back to work we all went on Wednesday. I’m so glad it’s Friday!
In fragrance-related news, I spent the weekend using my husband’s bottle of New York, by Patricia de Nicolai, because I forgot to bring any of my many decants and samples (my go-to travel options). New York was so interesting yet comforting, for hours at a time, that I used Amazon points to buy a large back-up bottle so DH and I can share it. Have I mentioned lately how much I love Amazon points? Some reputable retailers of fragrances like BeautyHabit have Amazon stores, and you can use your points there. So much for my low-buy resolutions — but I tell myself that using points isn’t really “buying”, lol.
In other, more cheerful news, we are planning a trip to Lisbon, Portugal this spring, with our son and his girlfriend. This will be AFTER our upcoming trip to Barcelona with our two daughters. A work trip for my husband, while daughters and I entertain ourselves all week. I’m making up for all the trips we weren’t able to take in 2020 and 2021.
I know many lovely perfume outlets in Barcelona but have never been to Lisbon. Suggestions, anyone? Please share in the comments! Also, don’t forget to check out new posts from me and Portia on Monday, when we’ll do our next “Notes on Notes“. The note in question will be vetiver. I hope you’ll chime in with your thoughts!
Welcome to the Friday 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, January 20, and my big fragrance excitement this week was that Portia Turbo (Australian Perfume Junkies) and I launched our second blogging collaboration, “Counterpoint.” (The first one was “Notes on Notes“). Our first Counterpoint subject was Mitsouko; our first “Notes on Notes” was about oakmoss. We hope to do one of each of these monthly, on the first and third Monday of the month, so wish us luck and please join us in the comments!
Our next “Notes on Notes” will be about vetiver; if you have any particular fragrances to suggest we include in our selection, please tell us in the comments below! And our next “Counterpoint” fragrance will be Chanel No. 5 in as many of its forms and versions as we can muster.
Welcome to a new feature that I hope will appear monthly! Portia Turbo of Australian Perfume Junkies and I had so much fun doing “Scent Semantics” with some other fragrance bloggers in 2022 that we decided to launch TWO regular features as a new collaboration in 2023. The first, which we plan to post on the first Monday of each month, is “Notes on Notes“, in which we choose one note and write about it however the spirit moves us; our first Note was oakmoss. This second feature is “Counterpoint”, in which we ask ourselves the same handful of questions about a single fragrance and post our separate thoughts on it. We’re still experimenting with format, so comments on that are welcome too!
The Perfume Chat Room is back! After a brief hiatus for December’s Scented Advent, then my new collaboration with Portia of Australian Perfume Junkies, “Notes on Notes” (first Mondays of the month), I’m ready to chat again and I hope you are too.
So, if you’re new to this blog, welcome to the Friday 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, January 13 (yes, it’s Friday the 13th), and here in the USA we are looking forward to our three-day weekend in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. This year, the holiday falls on Monday, January 16. I don’t have any special plans other than perhaps a lunch with the other volunteers who take part in a prize program to recognize high school students who make positive contributions to race relations in their schools or communities. I helped launch this program many years ago, and it is now nationwide. We’ve met so many wonderful teenagers who are doing great work. I love it.
Heads up — I spent last weekend visiting one of my closest friends in West Palm Beach, and I was able to go to the Guerlain boutique in The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach. Yes, I came home with a bottle (the “new” Mitsouko). Yes, that means I made it one whole week into 2023 before buying a new fragrance. Yes, I’ll do a separate post with photos!
Are you attempting a no-buy or low-buy for 2023? I am going to try a “low-buy” but I’m not exactly off to a good start, lol. Or do you have any particular fragrances on your 2023 wishlist?
Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone! Undina over at Undina’s Looking Glass has reminded me, with her Saturday Question, that I haven’t yet posted here about “What Went Well” in 2022.
Two of our three young adult children solidified and continued romantic relationships that started in the fall of 2021 and make them very happy. Whatever happens, they’ve had a lovely year, and I love that.
The third young adult child was able to move into her own small apartment, after a happy year of sharing a house with friends, and the apartment is much closer to our home, which makes us very happy. She and her sister (who also lives nearby) still have their own keys to our house and come and go quite often.
I had a long overdue leave from my job this fall and was able to travel to see family, especially the two trips to New Hampshire in 2022 to see my FIL, one of which included all three kids, who hadn’t seen him since 2020.
My leave this fall has shown me that yes, I’m ready to retire, which I will do later this year after the spring semester.
My dear husband and I also began a more structured routine for better fitness and strength, and we’re enjoying it!
Three of us had COVID right around Thanksgiving, but we all recovered quickly and well — and we were all able to quarantine together here in our house.
My list reminds me, again, that what really makes my life go well is when I achieve a balance of happy, healthy family; happy, healthy marriage; maintaining healthy boundaries between my life and my job; and taking better care of myself and my physical health. In many ways, 2022 was a difficult year for me, at least the first three quarters, due to workplace politics and shifts. The leave I took in the fall was long overdue, after two years of doing a LOT of extra COVID-related work for my university employer starting in March 2020, on top of my regular duties which did not lessen. The return to being onsite full-time, with all students onsite, for the 21-22 academic year, was very challenging for everyone, and many valued colleagues left in 2022, leaving jobs vacant with the same workload needing to get done by fewer people. The new boss I acquired, the third in three years (academia is notoriously poorly managed) proved to be much more difficult than I had expected, and mismanaged my staff while I was on leave, leading to more resignations.
But now that 2022 approaches its end, I have a plan in place to retire in 2023, ending my third career on a positive note for my students and colleagues. I’m looking forward to what comes next! Stay tuned for some new collaboration with Portia Turbo of Australian Perfume Junkies and A Bottled Rose, coming soon to a blog near you!
Happy New Year, everyone, and let’s hope that 2023 brings more peace, health, hope, and wellbeing to as many people as possible. Thank you for joining me and other readers here; I love the online perfume community that has been so welcoming and positive! If you drop in periodically but haven’t commented, I encourage you to do that if you wish — the more, the merrier!
Happy Christmas Eve! I never got around to posting yesterday because I was so busy creating the first of several family feasts for last night and the next few days. I love to cook, and I love having our kids and their friends around, so this is a great time of year for me!
For December 23, my Advent SOTD was Guerlain’s Embruns d’Ylang, created by Thierry Wasser and launched in 2019. I like it much more than I expected to! Not that I dislike ylang-ylang, but it’s not high on my list of favorite floral notes. I like it a lot as a supporting character in many beautiful fragrances, but I wouldn’t normally seek out a fragrance where it has the starring role.
According to Fragrantica, the notes included are: top notes, Salt and Bergamot; middle notes, Ylang-Ylang, Cloves and Jasmine Sambac; base notes, Iris, Patchouli and Vanilla. I never know how to identify “salt” as a fragrance accord, except as a sort of mineral smell; and Embruns d’Ylang definitely has that in its opening, with a tangy bergamot. Believe it or not, the combination of salt and a bitter citrus has a long history, though mostly involving grapefruit: “Grapefruit and Salt: The Science Behind This Unlikely Power Couple.”
After the opening, ylang-ylang is the dominant accord, and it is very lovely. Interestingly, although I often think of ylang-ylang as falling on the sweeter end of the yellow flower spectrum, here it doesn’t come across as very sweet. It certainly isn’t cloying at all, and it is a ylang-ylang that would work well for all, truly unisex if that is a concern. I don’t smell cloves at all, though given the above article’s explanation of how our taste sensors can cancel each other out, I wonder if cloves are helping to reduce the sweetness of the ylang-ylang. I do pick up the jasmine sambac, but here it is a supporting player.
The ylang-ylang persists into the drydown and the base, which makes for a very interesting combination of yellow floral, powdery iris, soft warm vanilla, and earthy patchouli. I find it quite unique, and very pleasing. It also lasts on my skin for several hours, including overnight.
Ylang-ylang flowers; image from beezly.com
I find this to be a thoroughly unisex yellow floral fragrance with a unique combination of notes. Its name has a poetic meaning: seafoam of ylang, which takes into account the salt accord. This is different enough that I would suggest trying before you buy it, if you are so inclined, but it is well worth sampling.
Now I have to decide what to wear for Christmas Eve! Truthfully, I have many nice options, so I might have more than one SOTD. Happy Christmas Eve, everyone who celebrates it! Advent officially ends tonight, so I’ll wish you also a very happy Christmas; and to everyone everywhere, a happy, healthy holiday season. Thanks for joining me and other readers here on Serenity Now: Scents and Sensibilities; I look forward to hearing more from you all in 2023!
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