DOc Elly

Devilscent – Part Two: The Samples


– a conversation with the Devil

Dev was waiting for me when I came home this afternoon feeling rather frazzled. Cool as anything, he pulled up a chair next to my desk and nodded toward a small black box.

“You know we have some work to do here, right?” He tipped back his chair against the wall.

“Dude, I’m wiped. Toast. I’ve had a monthful of days. I need a vacation.”

“I know. You need better excuses. Later, baby.”

“You would say that.”

“I’m a fictional character, I can say whatever I please. And I say we have some samples to look at.”

“So you’re saying that Doc Elly took the bait?”

“Sink, line, bait and hook. This will be a hit. She can smell it, too. Open up the box.”

“Yes, Master.” Inside nestled neatly labeled small test vials of six different frankincense extracts, steam-distilled and CO2, four kinds of labdanum, and four other essences best described as “Hazardous To Your Fevered Imagination”.

I dug out my sample blotters. “Where do you want to start?”

“Hmm.” First, he stuck his entire nose in the box and breathed it in. “Holy…no, I can’t say that on a perfume blog. And you can’t write that, either. This is potent stuff.” He reached out for a vial labeled ‘labdanum absolute’. “Sexy! You were looking for a whiff of goat, right?”

“That’s the idea. Well, you know…it’s the animal thing. You’ve got to have a little…animal in there. You are.” I cast my beady, bleary eyes at those frankincense vials.

“Not nearly so much as you.”

“Shut up. I know I’m a 130 lb chimp with a bad attitude, OK? Dude, we’ve got a perfume to make.”

“So we do.” He tipped a drop or two of Boswellia sacra and serrata onto the blotting paper and waved it under his nose. “Ummm…it needs something.” Labdanum, a touch of CO2, and a mystery labeled with a name followed by ‘Givaudan’. “I hate having to watch my language, but…oh, yeah. This is great. This is sinful.” He dug into the box. “Here’s another Ingredient X. I was excited about this one, but it’s not what I expected.” He added a drop of it and jiggled it under my nose. “So whaddaya think?”

“I think I need coffee, is what.” That frankincense was so…relaxing. I’d curl up under that desert tree any day.

“Get a grip. We have work to do.” The most incredible aroma was wafting around the room. He added a little oud. “Needs more goat.” He pulled out a vial. “Not enough. There’s labdanum and frankincense in a catfight on that blotter, and I can’t tell which one is winning.”

“My money is on the labdanum.”

“It would be. You can’t get enough of that stuff.”

“Hush. You like it, too.” I added Boswellia neglecta. “Oh, baby. I just hit the oh-zone layer. So that’s why it’s thinning.”

“And fully dressed, too!” he laughed. “So…we’re getting something like a base going here. Neglecta…is lemony. Not what I expected.” He sniffed again. “We need more sin.” Another drop of Givaudan sin.

“Any more sin, and I’ll be burned as a heretic,” I heard myself say. Already, my senses were reeling. “How Doc Elly does this, I don’t know.”

“I do.” Green labdanum absolute dripped down. That blotter should be banned, I caught myself thinking as I sniffed. It was heady. It was dangerous. It was glorious. It was very nearly the drop-dead sexiest thing I had stuck my nose in since Boxeuses. I hoped he wouldn’t wear it. I didn’t have anything left to sell.

“OK. We’ve got the rhythm now. We’ve got the bass line.” The Devil waved the blotter under my nose, and I breathed it all the way in. Danger. Dark. Devil. Oh, yes.

“Now,” he said after a while, “all we’re missing is a melody line and a lead guitar…”

to be continued…

The Devil’s Brief


I received an email from Doc Elly early this morning about something she found in her inbox, and I rather suspect you might be interested, so without further ado, head over to her blog, Perfume Project NW, for further details!

And big thanks to Bloody Frida, who gave me the perfect word for my own reaction:

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Yes, I’m excited. So I’ll slink away into the shadows again and get back to that Other Thing I Had To Do…

😉

Tarot Card: Guiseppe Lama, Voodoo Chilli

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! 😉

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!