Molly: Advent Perfume Diary
I started this draft in December as an "end of the year perfume diary" but alas, it is now the beginning of a different year! If only there was a designation of time that spans both...
What I took to New Mexico:
Reve D'ossian
I mentioned Oriza Legrand's Reve D'ossian a few months ago so it's not a new sample, and I've worn it frequently throughout the season, including to a Christmas Eve mass in New Mexico. I also wore it to the mass for the Immaculate Conception earlier in December. My thinking was to do something seasonal and occasion appropriate without trying to smell like the church itself. But, as I am wont to sit near the aisle in the back, I wound up with the altar boy in charge of the censer standing next to me for a full five or so minutes, smoking me out entirely. Reve D'Ossian can't help but invoke churches and solemn formality, but it's quite different from the other incense perfumes I enjoy - With The Candlestick, for example, and how warm and alive it is. RD'O is colder and enigmatic thanks to its opening that brings airy pine with the incense. The warmth is one layer deeper, and what I always end up thinking about is the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time. The experience of wearing Reve D'Ossian is a daydream of entering a forgotten sacred place and conjuring the life and rituals it once held by the force of your imagination.
This Advent, I attended vigil masses for two of the days of obligation: the Immaculate Conception and the Solemnity of Mary. I love evening mass. There's something intimate and more conducive to mystery about it, and even more so at Christmas. The Immaculate Conception was probably my "favorite" mass of the year, which might be a weird thing to have. The choir sang "There Is No Rose of Such Virtue," an old carol I love. The parochial vicar was presiding, and I'm always excited for his homilies, which brim with enthusiasm and the passion of his faith. He is also disconcertingly handsome. Not my type in the least: tall, clean cut, boyish, and almost certainly younger than I am. But anytime I see him close up I'm kind of shocked. I find that I am deeply moved by his presence and the fact of his physicality in a way that is not related to anything impure (truly). He clearly loves his vocation and all it requires of him, and to see someone born with so many advantages that would take him far in secular callings choose to live this life is inspiring.
Ginger Biscuit
It smells like what it's called. It doesn't last long, but who cares? Neither does Christmas. I have a mini and that golden brown bottle with the red cap is just so pleasing to look at.
Winter of '99
Kerosene's Winter of '99 is magical. I love wearing Kerosene, Clue, and Pearfat perfumes in cold weather. It makes me feel close to my Midwestern roots, and I like to think the powerful projection of scents like Bread + Roses, Warm Bulb, or Winter of '99 is on purpose, created with cold, grey winters and wind in mind. I never have the chance to wear the kind of layers that I think these perfumes could blast through, but it's easy to imagine. Winter of '99 is the perfect molasses scent, sticky and woody. I remember where I was in the actual winter of 1999, or at least New Year's Eve. We lived in North Carolina then, but Ohio, and the house I feel like I partly grew up in there, was still a big and regular part of my life. My body is still calibrated to Ohio's versions of the seasons, always waiting for those bleak, grey-white days that everyone else seems to hate. Winter of '99 is a perfume for being inside on those days - for being inside rooms I will never get to be in again.
Pas de Chat
To come back to Odette yet again, they excel at perfumes that are easy to wear. Pas de Chat, Grand Battement, and Coup de Pied have rocketed to the top of my most worn perfumes of the past few months. Along with something like Musc Moschus or Universal Flowering's Poems One Through Twelve, I reach for them often when I can't decide what to wear. Pas de Chat is Odette's most popular perfume, and according to the website, was created because perfumer Odette Fontaine needed a signature scent for herself. The center of Pas de Chat, fittingly, is the irresistible kitten fur accord, which never fails to surprise and impress me with how well it comes through. Again, like Musc Moschus, I count it among my favorite musky perfumes because it has the quality I enjoy in animalic musks that is very hard to articulate, but feels something like my skin will sink into itself.
Grand Battement
As I wrote above, of the two amber forward Odette fragrances I have, Grand Battement is well...grander, heavier, and slower. I wore this to see our local ballet's Nutcracker with my mom, something we don't always get to do but is still a tradition for us. We also want to introduce my son to ballet and getting a nutcracker every year (or every time he goes to a performance) and they had the CUTEST mouse king for sale. But!! The people in front of us got the last one! Something visceral and ugly bubbles up in me when anything happens that thwarts anything to do with my precious little toddler. It worked out in the end though, because I found the mouse online a few days later.
Noel au Balcon
I bounce off of so much ELDO, my beloved Putain des Palaces aside, and Noel au Balcon is another that I kind of like but something keeps me from really liking. Maybe it's the patchouli, which I can often deal with as a base note but here I guess it's like you're on the balcony above E Sempre Natale's Christmas market but someone is smoking pot inside.
Took but already wrote about: Soufflot, Musc Moschus
P.S. I asked my mother in law if she liked perfume or ever had a signature scent and she told me that she seems to have bad skin chemistry with most things, but has enjoyed white musk in soap and candles. I took this as a challenge and got her a mini of DedCool's Xtra Milk, which is just white musk, amber, and bergamot. At least on a first try, she was very into it!
Frequents and favorite samples:
Fee du Sucre
This is one of those don't have smart things to say scents. I love Christmas a lot. A LOT. Sometimes I wonder if it surprises people who know me to be a very withdrawn person. None of those people would be reading this, though, so I'll never find out. Anyway I like almost everything I've tried from Odette Parfum Co. so a perfume inspired by the sugarplum fairy was a no-brainer. If there is a downside to Odette, it's that none of the perfumes are weird enough to be super divisive (it's not surprising to me that her most difficult perfume IMO is Les Chaussons Rouges, a collab with the big swing taking Pearfat). Perfumer Odette Fontaine excels at gourmands that feel elegant, and that's what you get with Fee Du Sucre. The inspiration is executed wonderfully without feeling childlike (no offense to Snow Fairy).
Coup de Pied
When I first got the discovery set from Odette Parfum, my mild seasonal allergies were acting up. For a few weeks I would go back to the samples and think "this is nice, but nothing special." After I was able to appreciate the scents more, I quite liked them, especially Pas de Chat with its warm kitten fur accord. I was torn between Grand Battement and Coup de Pied for which amber forward perfume I liked more, and wound up getting a rollerball of Grand Battement. Long story short, when I picked up the limited edition Fee du Sucre I decided to throw in a roller of Coup de Pied, and it's become my favorite Odette perfume. I'm not sure why I didn't take to it in the early days, but I'm thankful in a way, because it's a wonderful winter scent. Grand Battement is a louder, stickier amber thanks to its rich gourmand forward notes. Coup de Pied is a little fizzy. There's plenty of sweetness, but the mimosa opening and the spicier base notes give it a lighter, festive feel. I also wore this as my daytime perfume in honor of Epiphany, since it has the frankincense note.
Dev #3: The Inevitable
This is what I wore for the night of Epiphany, as it has notes of both frankincense and myrrh. I'm a little disappointed in hindsight that I didn't make this a three perfume day and do some kind of abstract interpretation of gold. Anyway, Dev #3 is not a perfume I actually chose to sample. It came with some minis and samples I ordered from Olympic Orchids months and months ago, but I remembered briefly smelling it and liking it though finding it wrong for the height of summer. If I ever need to go head to head with the censer again, this might be a decent choice. I have not read the book Olympic Orchid's Devil Scent Project is based on: Quantum Demonology by Sheila Eggenberger, and Dev #3 is described as a scent that "represents the stage at which all secrets have been revealed, after the inevitable destruction of people, things, and relationships has occurred, when the two lovers recognize that they have to part ways forever." Though I don't know the the characters it is specifically invoking, this theme makes sense to me, and I also see "the inevitable" as referring to death - hence the myrrh.
E Sempre Natale
My favorite European Christmas scent between this and Noel au Balcon. E Sempre Natale is not on a balcony. It's in the middle of a Christmas market. I was laughing with a few friends about how the fragrantica note is just "spices" with no elaboration, but...yeah...it's the Christmas spices!
Philtre
I wrote this as a substack note first: I had a Hadestown carnation sticker on my old laptop AND a pin on my MPDG military surplus jacket that fell off at some point. Its prominence in the show’s iconography changed how I thought of the carnation - previously a “cheap” flower or inextricably linked to the at once dusty and antiseptic smell of protestant Sunday school rooms on Mother’s Day. Philtre is a scent worthy of the carnation’s history as a flower of love, and of sweeping romances, tragic or not. “Resinous” isn’t a bad way to describe falling terminally in love, either.
I was also attracted to this scent because my son is named after the most famous philtre drinker in myth and legend. When I first tried it my husband, who always indulged my perfume talk, had a rare extremely enthusiastic reaction. Something like "I can tell this is the good stuff." When we planned a date for the anniversary of his proposal I knew Philtre was the choice for that evening. As I was getting dressed, I spilled most of my sample on the mantle of our hotel room, which is also romantic somehow.
Bengale Rouge
This lost out to Olympic Orchid's Dev #3 for an Epiphany perfume, but I did wear it to the mass of the Solemnity of Mary on New Year's Eve. You can read about how perfumer Liz Moore was inspired by her Bengal cat when making Bengale Rouge, and I find it does bring out feline qualities: the urge to sink into comfort, to stretch, to follow your whims in an unhurried way. Qualities I mostly lack, to be honest. It's just a gorgeous, sumptuous perfume, but the most luxurious cashmere sweater rather than a gown or jewels. With it not making it to Epiphany but there to honor the Mother of God, I thought more about the connotations of myrrh.
Unlike Dev #3, where the connection to death and embalming feels very present in the myrrh note, there is nothing in Bengale Rouge that suggests coldness or lifelessness. I realized that's rather fitting for the celebration of Mary as the Mother of God. One of the unimaginable burdens and responsibilities Mary accepted was to live every day as a mother with the knowledge of her son's death. I can barely wrap my head around that, and the tiny percentage that can just overwhelms me as a fellow mom. Though we don't have accounts of Mary's internal life for most of Jesus' childhood, it's hard to imagine that she let that constant grief get in the way of warm and loving parenting. So maybe a perfume that only speaks of comfort and warmth but carries with it a symbol of death is perfect.
Annindriya - Orris Soyeux
Thanks in large part to my best friend's love for the note, I've been exploring iris a lot more lately. The other night I asked for a perfume prompt and my husband gave me "fog." I was stumped for a minute and then knew that it had to be Iris Silver Mist. My husband hadn't gotten a chance to smell the haunted carrot yet, so it was nice even if I hadn't been planning to do something so dramatic on a weekday evening. Iris can take on many characters, like a few perfumes later in this post and their powdery, vintage high glamour. Orris Soyeux is not dressed up but it's not unglamorous. It's deshabille. I would group it with Miller Harris' Etui Noir as an iris that invokes intimacy and sensuality, though I think I like Orris Soyeux better!
OrdioLab - Black Cherry
Truly a good encapsulation of black cherry as a sexy, feminine flavor. It's what that particular shade of dark violet smells like - if my hair color had a scent. If Clue's With the Candlestick and Amphora's Primal Yell are dark and complex cherries in a way where they might show up in a still life or painted Renaissance feast and Una Tira l'Altra is cranked saturation pop art, this black cherry is in an edgy contemporary gallery. The wine note is strong but doesn't overstay its welcome like some red wine scents that just seem like you spilled it on yourself do.
Ordiolab - Espresso Ash
Espresso Ash reminded me of when I lived a few doors down from a corner coffee shop, when I had to commute from NJ to Manhattan. They had a small menu of carefully made specialty drinks but I'm a black coffee drinker and their regular house brew was super bitter. The only time I ever had this coffee was grabbing it and then standing outside at my bus stop. Even though the smokiness comes through strongly in this scent it still feels morning coffee to me - not late night coffee and cigarettes. Ducking into cafes for a quick cup or breakfast while traveling in an unfamiliar city and being more grateful for the warmth and chance to reset than caring about the quality of the coffee itself. Not that Espresso Ash smells like bad coffee, just that it evokes to me more the universal idea of "glad I have coffee now."
Lush:
In Albuquerque I had the opportunity to go to a Lush store, not realizing what a madhouse their rare sales are. But I powered through the line that took up the space of the room and the swarms around the bath bombs to get what I wanted, which was mostly to indulge my most unsophisticated impulses.
Cherryish
I'm always curious when fragrantica reviews are split between positive and repulsion, but I was willing to give Cherryish a try because I like plasticky cherry (see Una Tire l'Altra) and plasticky chocolate (see Centerfold). It shares a lot of DNA with Centerfold while being a less creamy, less whole version of those things. The medicinal quality of the cherry is sharper, the chocolate more dusty. I still really don't mind it.
Sticky Dates
Exactly what it says it is.
Chelsea Morning - solid perfume
One of the first full bottles of my intense perfume hobby was Kerosene's popular Unknown Pleasures. Despite the name, it's a pretty happy scent. I always feel like I've been sprinkled with powder sugar when I wear it, yet somehow it doesn't completely negate the emo details of its own copy: walking around on a grey day, listening to Joy Division. Chelsea Morning is also a lemon pastry, but it's warmer and more caramel forward. If it were a person it would be an unambiguously positive person who is not listening to Joy Division.
Yog Nog
Sticky Dates in a Santa hat.
Snow Fairy
Snow Fairy smells like the shade of pink on its packaging: you are floating on cotton candy, you are tiny and live in a big round gum bubble. It's good to have things like this sometimes and not take yourself too seriously. I really enjoyed doing this as my night scent to the day's Fee Du Sucre.
Rose Jam
I think it smells less like a finished jar of rose jam than a jam you're in the middle of making and you just measured out that strong, heady rose water. I like it, though more after it mellows out a little bit.
What I received as a gift:
Astier de Vilatte - Les Nuits
I learned about Les Nuits from the delightful video above, featuring in/famous perfume critic and shape rotator Luca Turin. The story of recreating George Sand's perfume is really interesting so I recommend watching. I was very surprised to get the 10ml as a gift! I opened it, dabbed some, and immediately put it away for an as yet unforeseen special occasion. It's captivating, and pulls off something incredible, which is not only smelling like a perfume paying tribute to vintage perfumes or a recreation of a vintage perfume, but as if the actual liquid in the bottle is old. The carrot is haunting the opening ever so slightly, but on a wave of the most opulent and powdery iris and rose. It's just so, so beautiful. I have no idea what I'm going to wear to do it justice, but it's a good problem to have.
Dama Koupa
Kama Koupa is a really fascinating iris. I find myself wearing it a lot, and it's crowding into the "when I don't know what to wear" VIPs. This is a little surprising, because it's not exactly "easy." It's not like a pair of shoes or a bag that goes with everything. It's more like my beat up lavender leather tote that I frequently have to rearrange my socks or sweater for, but I still use it all the time. When I think about intimacy and levels of formality in iris perfumes, Dama Koupa is almost like a slumber party where everyone is wearing vintage nighties and maribou slippers. Or...the Heavy Rotation video of irises?
Vermeil
I mentioned Bienaime's Vermeil in November and was gifted a 9ml sample. I stand by my opinion that it's the perfect vintage makeup scent. On the alignment chart of iris, it's quite chic and dressed up but a little friendlier for everyday than Les Nuits, and very far away from the grey moors Iris Silver Mist is wandering around on.