Overture, Allegro, Andante


– a review of Doc Elly’s experiments with Golden Cattleyas

A while ago, Doc Elly talked about one of her orchid varieties, the Golden Cattleya, and how the scent of them changed as they bloomed – from heady and indolic to fruity-floral in the best and original sense of the word. So when she offered samples of her experiments with her Golden Cattleya orchids, which apparently have a distinctive scent reminiscent of orange, I jumped at the chance. I grew up in Florida surrounded by orange trees everywhere, so naturally, I’m a sucker for all scents orange.

It’s such a privilege to participate in a perfume experiment. Armed with nothing better than my nose and few preconceptions, I’ll never know where I’ll end up or what wonders I might find, and in no small part to Doc Elly’s creations and her excellent blog, I know quite a bit more about both perfume and scented orchids than I ever did. I have been taken to wild and wondrous places and times and known emotions I’ve all but forgotten. Now, I had a chance to dip my proboscis into something on the ground floor as it were, and with one of my all-time favorite notes – in perfume as well as life, and how cool is that?

There were three samples, labeled GC1, GC2 and GC3, each with a different focus of the Golden Cattleya’s evolution and with a different accent. I sampled each of them on Canson Arches watercolor paper and my skin at different times in the past two weeks, before I was ill and once I felt better.

One thing is apparent almost immediately – just as there is a Guerlainade, a Tauerade or even a Lutens/Sheldrake-ade, Doc Elly, too, has her own unique signature in each of her experiments, a distinct imprint of herself in the perfumes she makes. Even in the prosaic sample bottles labeled GC1, 2 and 3, I can tell almost immediately – these are her creations.

In each of the three, you’d be hard-pressed to tell these are different interpretations of the same orchid right out of the vial. Since I learned that orchids evolve as they bloom, I wonder if evolution has a serious sense of mischief. Orange blossom on the tree may be orange blossom from top to bottom and start to finish, a rose on the bush is a rose is a rose is a poem by Gertrude Stein, but orchids are full-blown symphonies with top notes as they begin to bloom, heart notes as they open further, and a final blast of scent before the end.

GC1 – we can call it The Overture. This is the heady, indolic phase of the bloom, represented by a definite civet note. I detect orange blossom as well as neroli and a touch of orange zest, something that reminds me of tea rose, jasmine, a little spice I suspect is nutmeg or mace, and finally that animalic whiff of civet softened by a bit of vanilla. There are certain aspects as it develops on my skin that bring my near-forgotten bottle of Narcisse Noir to mind, but in only a few minutes, it loses some of its oomph and becomes less sexpot and more classic in its construction. This stuff has some serious sillage, I found out when I sprayed a small amount and the kids in my son’s kindergarten class gave me strange looks, nostrils flaring. This is bold and slightly audacious.

GC2 – The Allegro. This is one happy orange, the orange-you-glad-to-meet me that dances out of the vial on a vivid colored trail of orange blossom, zest and lots of lovely vanilla, but thanks to another touch of spice and sass, never ventures anywhere near Creamsicle territory. The spice is sweeter and softer than in GC1, which makes me think of mace as well as cinnamon, but just the faintest whisper. I sense the evolution of the orchid in this Stage Two, and GC 2 strikes me as more accessible and less in your face – I can see this develop into a bestseller with just a little more vanilla. All joy, all sweetness and the glow of orange light blooming off the skin. Orange I glad I tried it? You bet! GC 2 would be perfect for those gloomy, gray, dismal winter days when you simply want to be the Compleat Pollyanna optimist and dance out the door in winter’s despite, carrying your own beam of sunshine with you.

GC3 – The Andante. This is the third stage of the Golden Cattleya, and thanks to a potent dose of sandalwood and incense, this one contains its own memento mori. This is the final blast of glory, the swan song of an orchid, and even though the notes are darker and deeper, there are echoes and chords of stages 1 and 2. GC 3 has a gravitas to it, notes in a minor but never diminished key that are no less beautiful for their dusting of Cattleya blues. The orange blossom and zest of the beginning is underpinned and teased out by that sandalwood and incense, and is there myrrh in there too, hiding behind that feather-brush of nutmeg? I ran this by my (platonic) Scorpio friend a few days ago, and he almost ate my arm. As it dries down, it turns toward a luscious orange chocolate, bittersweet and delicious. While I very much liked all three of them right out of the vial, this Andante stole my heart. There is beauty here, and a twinge of regret, but more than anything, an underlying song of glories past and present – and an intimation that “we’re not gone until you forget!” Memento mori – “but you won’t, will you?” Of the three, this one strikes me as the most polished.

GC 1 and 3 could be worn by either gender, whereas GC 2 has a definite feminine vibe, at least to my nose. If I had any preconceptions, I would have expected to swoon over GC 2 – since I love orange and vanilla notes, separately and together. But to my own surprise, GC 3 stole the show and my heart, and Doc Elly, if you ever make any full bottles of this, let me know.

I’m doing what I can to spread the word!

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In a final aside, thank you – ALL of you, for all your well-wishing when I was so wretched with cold/walking pneumonia. Can I just say that your wishes did at least as much as the antibiotics? It’s good to be back! ☺

Image: Doc Elly’s Golden Cattleyas. No other image I found did them or these scents so much justice! 😉

All Flued Out


Ladies and gents, I have an announcement. Due to circumstances beyond even my ability to control, I’ll be away from the computer for a few days due to either flu or walking pneumonia, I’m not quite sure which, but the doctor will tell me tomorrow. Darn it, and I even had the titles of four new blogs written down, but my sense of smell has almost completely disappeared, and right when I have a truckload of samples in front of me, too! 😦

I’ll try to get better, but the prognosis is iffy, I’ve been trying for years!

Typed by a friend by dictation, who can attest to the fact that she’s utterly wretched…so it’s the perfect opportunity to steal some of her Balsamo della Mecca…;-)

Two-Faced T


– On the strange things skin can do to perfume…

Yesterday, on the night of a full Cancer Moon, something exceedingly strange happened, something possibly explained by Moon Magic, but I’m not too sure because this sort of thing has happened before.

I’ve been suffering from a slight case of writer’s block, not anything debilitating, but enough to stare into space and the wall behind my laptop thinking…I should do…something.

So in a fit of pique, I reached for the large Southwestern gourd, carved, stained and embellished by a member of the Zuni pueblo tribe of New Mexico, that contains a selection of my samples and decants. This has been known to do wonders for my writing, and at other times the precise opposite. I never know, but on a night like yesterday, I’d take my chances.

Since yesterday was a fairly light day, perfume-wise, I thought I’d see what I’d spontaneously reach for to try again.

Into my hot little hands fell…Mandarine Mandarin and Bois de Violette by Serge Lutens.

It’s no secret I sold a fair chunk of my olfactory soul to Uncle Serge. It’s likewise not a secret that sometimes Lutens perfumes can be shape-shifting creatures that take you on journeys you never expected, to places you never knew or even wanted to know. Rather like a lot of the music I love.

Ambre Sultan is the perfect example of that, but there’s a topic for another blog post.

I’ve tried both of them before, and sat firmly on the fence of ‘maybe/maybe not.’ The last time I tried Mandarine Mandarin, the celery seed note bloomed to such an extent, it drowned out all the other notes and threatened to eat me alive, unless I gnawed off my arm first. This was supposedly an Oriental, a luscious, complex mandarin/candied orange/Lapsang Souchong/amber blend that on paper at least sounded like something I should love to death, but that day, the celery seed was out to eat me, and that did not make me happy.

Which, after all, is partly the reason I wear perfume to begin with.

Alors, then – no. Never. Not even in my nightmares, and trust me, with the book I’m writing, they’re plenty bad enough.

On to Bois de Violette. Now, I do like violets, and I love violet candies and candied violets, but the bottled variety, not so much. From reviews and raves, I gathered this was a different, not-that-kind of violet, so I was looking forward to it. Violet paired with Atlas cedar, it couldn’t be too bad. So I thought before applying.

It promptly dropped me into a gargantuan pencil box of very expensive art pencils – and stayed there. Violet???? What violet? This should have been titled Bois de Viol, because it was…rape by pencil shavings, enough to fuel the Ècole des Beaux Arts and several sketch artists for at least ten years. Yikes! I used kitty litter that smelled better than this! I’ve used cedar shavings on my rose geranium that smelled exactly the same.

Something was very wrong with these pictures. These were not the mind-blowers I had come to expect. I put them away in their Pueblo gourd and forgot about them.

Until a full moon night, a night I couldn’t write, and they flew into my hand as if propelled unseen by Uncle Serge, whispering in the ether…

“Really. You should try them. You’ll see.”

Two perfumes. Two wrists. On the left, Mandarine Mandarin, Bois de Violette on the right.

I waited the prerequisite five minutes, staring into my wall, wondering if I’d want to shoot myself.

Well, I do. For other reasons than I expected.

Mandarine Mandarin, that celery-seed arm-eating gargoyle, was on her best behavior last night. Holy Orange Blossom, this was glorious stuff. Mandarin zest and candied mandarin, orange blossom and black tea and… hello, lover, where have you been? Can I marry you, or should I just settle for embalming when I leave Planet Earth?

Opulent and rich and heady, my favorite kind of smoky citrus scent, the kind that slays the unsuspecting. Yes, I need that at my age. Whatever it takes. Take me. Please. Not like its sibling, Fleurs d’Oranger, which to my untrained nose is bottled sunshine-y days, this is an evening perfume that sends out certain messages of expensive dinners at Lapérouse in Paris, in one of the cabinets particuliers, champagne included and fireworks likewise.

I really need to get a life. Or else a less dangerous imagination.

On to Bois de Violette. Last night, there was no pencil box in sight, only the pensive, slightly melancholy yet flirtatious air of wood violets talking, not whispering, from a cedar-forest floor. I caught myself thinking this would be perfect for a Pisces kind of girl, someone sweet and cuddly and but with hidden depths you could never guess. BdV would be perfect for those days you should be concentrating on Serious Things, like splitting atoms or infinitives, just not so serious you want the world to forget you’re a girl after all, or forget yourself in all that serious cedar. Make no mistake, this is very woody in the best way, yet the violet sweetens it just enough to push it over the frilly edge of feminine, at least on my skin.

I had a bad case of perfume schizophrenia on my arms last night. Just call me Two-Faced T. Whether it was hormones, mood or the phase of the Moon, I didn’t know what to expect except the unexpected.

Be careful what you wish for. You will get it! Such as – a cure for writer’s block!

Have you had any surprises on your skin? Perfumes that turned traitor, right when you thought it was love eternal and everlasting, or else Demons of the Dark that hid their angelic side underneath, only to spring it upon you unaware?

Mandarine Mandarin and Bois de Violette are in the Salon-exclusive line of Salons Shiseido at Palais Royale, although Bois de Violette is also in the export line available at Luckyscent, Aedes and Barneys NY, Samples and decants can be bought from The Perfumed Court.

Image: Yours truly, seriously mangled.

Coming Attractions


In the unlikely event anyone has been wondering, I have not forsaken you! As the snow has thawed, I’ve been snowed under elsewhere, and 36 hours in a day are just not…enough. This is not at all the same as saying I’m going to wimp out – so instead of a new perfume post, I’ll give you a sneak preview of what’s in store!

I know I’m on the road to perdition when…I spent the better part of an evening yesterday on First In Fragrance’s website, trying to decide what to try. Decisions, decisions…so many choices, and so little time.

But in the next few weeks, expect to see my takes on a few button pushers and the ones I ordered just because my curiosity is killing me.

Birgit of Olfactoria’s Travels has a lot to answer for – among them, my curiosity over Amouage. Oh, that slope is so slippery and steep, and Epic Woman is on the list…and it’s all her fault! 😉

Robert Piguet’s Bandit has been ‘walking her catgirls on leashes in leather‘…so I have to, I absolutely have to try this again, it’s been so long…

Byredo is a line I’ve never tried, but when someone pays an homage to one of my all-time favorite poets, I have to sit up and take notice! So…Baudelaire and Green are thrown in, too.

I’ve heard plenty of great things about Odin New York. C’mon. With a name like that, it’s like throwing a spear into a Viking horde in berserker mode. So in goes…Odin New York – 02 Owari.

Heeley is another line I’ve heard lots about…and just because the name tickles my fancy, I’ll start with Esprit de Tigre.

The fun won’t stop there. Another package from Olympic Orchids arrived today and is waiting for a pickup at my local post office tomorrow.

It will be glorious, I promise you!

So what are you, dear reader, dying to try? Let me know!

Image: Edmund Dulac, Psyche and Cerebus

Dead of Winter Antidote


– a review of Olympic Orchid’s ‘A Midsummer Day’s Dream’

Today was a day when it was as if spring would never come, as if summer were a bout of desperately wishful thinking. The landscape was everywhere sere and brown and dead, and the fog never lifted from the barren, sleeping trees that seemed to pull their cloak of cloud and mist a little closer, a little tighter and denser, as if to say…wake us when it’s over. We’re sleeping in.

The only sound I could hear was the black metal caw of the rooks headbanging on the lawn, taking flight in a flurry of funereal, ominous black metal notes when a girl in a pink parka ran to the bus stop, the only shock of vivid color among the patches of melted snow and ice, the dun of the trees and bushes, the green of the grass dulled to a faded Polaroid moment memory of green.

Spring will never come. Summer never happens. This barren, this damp, marrow-aching cold, this sere, this brown…is all you will ever know.

Those days of ease and warmth, that still and breathless, restless heat, that scent of green and growing things in a rage to bloom and blossom, that heady trail of elderflowers and philadelphus, the purr of the wood doves under the eaves of the beeches…it was a dream, one fervent, fevered wish to feel entirely alive, entirely there, entirely connected to all that grows and wants and desires…to laugh in winter’s despite.

Unless…summer can be invoked in other ways, by opening that tiny vial of ‘A Midsummer’s Day Dream’. All is quiet as I do, the house is asleep, even the cats are snoozing on their cushions above the radiator, noses to tail tips, twitching in their dreams.

I’m convinced there are genies in these little vials, different genies of times and places and spaces, not at all alike, that sleep and await their moment to rise up and creep out on their fragrant trails and invoke their place and time.

This is the quintessence of a temperate summer, the days that we live for, that heated solstice shocking kiss of life to live, the days that seem an eternity, an aeon away on a fog-cloaked January morning. This is the green that burns your retinas and wakes you all the way up, and up – or down, lying on the emerald grass watching the clouds dance a measured, lazy waltz across a blue, blue sky, and beneath you, crushed wildflowers, bruised grass, trees full of sap and full of leaves inhaling sunshine, exhaling joy – that this day, this moment, this grass that tickles your nose and snaps your synapses, these nameless flowers imprinting themselves on your skin – life is nothing but perfect and you are never less than perfectly content.

Such a perfume, you might think, has never been bottled, such genies never captured, such scents, such moments never happen…outside of books and poems and Shakespeare plays.

Yet I’m telling you that they have. In a tiny little vial called ‘A Midsummer Day’s Dream’.

The perfect dead-of-winter antidote. Breathe it in, all the way in, breathe in that grassy, floral, emerald green all the way out to your fingertips and feel it tickle your nose and your fancies, and you could believe, as I did, that a fog-cloaked, dismal day was surely a figment of your imagination.

Unlike that little vial of bottled sunshine that is very, very real.

I’m speechless. Hard to find the words when all I want to do is lie back against the wildflowers, write cloud stories in the sky, and whistle with a blade of grass between my lips…

“A Midsummer Day’s Dream” can be sampled or bought at Olympic Orchids. Spread the word. Doc Elly is a genius. Or a genie, I’m not sure which…;-)

Image: Frank Cadogan Cowper: Titania Sleeps (1928)

Thanks to Josephine for the inspiration – and to my followers who make me write!