Smell-O-Vision

2009-04-29T06:25:00.001-07:00

Liz Zanis: what i read last week (and i only finished one)
graphite on found printed board, 12 1/4" x 10 15/16", 2007

OMG! It's spring already! And that means it's already time to vote for the FiFi awards. And we are fast approaching Leslie Vosshall's Harvey Lecture! OMG OMG! Warm weather, sunshine, sweet scents, new president, Voshall talk in a geodesic dome? It's like the world has been re-tuned to perfection!

A brief digression on domes...

2009-04-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

Sure, the dome at Rockefeller University (aka Caspary Auditorium) is awesome (particularly on the inside), and a great venue for the Harvey Lectures, but if you're a Fuller purist, it's time to shlep across the East River.

Buckminster Fuller designed the Aviary dome for the 1964 World's Fair. It's now part of the Queens Zoo.

2009-03-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

A tip from Gothamist, that the sensory immersion at the Coney Island Aquarium will extend beyond the smell of fish sticks at the snack bar.

From the Associated Press:
"The New York Aquarium's 4-D Immersion Theater will combine the experience of a 3-D film with a variety of sensory effects built into the theater's seats and environment. The sensory affects include water mist, a neck air blast, snow, bubbles, leg ticklers, scents, enhanced floor lighting and seat vibrations."

Amanda Lepore by Artware Editions

2009-03-05T06:25:00.000-08:00

From heart candy heart

“I don’t drink, but I smell like I do,” Ms. Lepore casually announced, by way of introduction to a new fragrance that bears her name.

Front Row: A Buzz Without a Hangover
By ERIC WILSON
March 4, 2009
Fragrance available at ArtWare Editions.

Bond No. 9 Brooklyn

2009-01-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

Bushwick based artist Chris Kyung: Pizza #7, 2006

Gawker just ran part of the press release for the new Bond no. 9 Brooklyn scent. Apparently Brooklyn is unisex "with a decidedly masculine attitude." I love it. The notes are all over the place, with grapefruit and juniper up top, a la Snoop Dog's Gin and Juice. They must be conjuring up the west coast of Brooklyn with this one.

As one of my professors once barked at a visiting speaker who had somehow confused a number of the new York schools, "Bronx? Brooklyn? What's the difference? Coney Island, Riverdale? Same thing really!"

Actual Coney Island circa 2007

Which is my way of saying that I rather liked Bond's Coney Island scent. It smelled like cheap yard long margaritas; neon lime syrup, tequilla, mesquite, grilled hot dog buns and boardwalk.

Fine stuff if you ask me. The new scent seems to call up the Brooklyn Boatnic Gardens a la the father daughter team at Eau de Brooklyn. Brooklyn is so many things I suppose. It's also one of the first music videos I'd ever seen on NYC Public television.

Burger King Flame

2008-12-17T08:53:00.000-08:00

Ed Ruscha, Norm's, La Cienega, on Fire, 1964

The WHOPPER sandwich is America's favorite burger. Flame by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.

Robin just posted about this hot new scent over at Now Smell This. I love it. This happens to coincide with the new "Whopper Virgins" ad campaign by Stacy Peralta of "Dogtown and Z-Boys" fame. Clip below, followed by it's YouTube commenter response. An briefing on capitalism today, really.

bulanuldecluj (4 days ago)
-1 Poor comment

Fuck you're burgers and junk food americans... if you come here, you can see more than 95% beautiful women but if i will go there in USA more that 50% fat people. REASON? You're junk food and burgers.

Come in Romania and drink alchool made here... our stuffs are more natural than you. We have "tuica" or "palinca" who's much strong than you're Jack Daniel or Bud...

This movie is a big shit.

familiar unknown

2008-12-12T18:03:00.000-08:00

Trevor Paglen: The Other Night Sky. He will have a show at Bellweather Gallery March6th - April 4th, 2009
This revisit of Moon Sparkle is a terrific excuse to wander over for a look at Trevor Paglen's work exploring the "Dark World" of secret military projects which are not so secretly funded to the tune of $30 billion per year.

In our own lab, our projects are less secret, but still not widely discussed. And the lab has been fragrant with Moon Sparkle from one of our students. Lately I've been noticing Moon Sparkle everywhere (particularly on the subway), just as Escada is launching whatever new fruity thing will replace it for 2009. I like Blueberry Hubba Bubba, and I like Moon Sparkle. I'm guessing that it comes out in winter because it's a little too loud for the warmer weather of New York summers, and in the cold weather it's a round friendly scent. In the Black World, it wouldn't be the remote and mysterious Groom Lake, but rather a geostationary reconnaissance satellite hanging just over head, ever present, just out of sight.

In other news, voting is now open at the 9th Annual Basenotes Fragrance Awards. I love Basenotes because it is such a wealth of information on fragrances, their notes and noses that is so easily searchable. It's the closest thing we have to a Wikipedia of commercial fragrance.

I think I'm allergic to patchouli

2008-12-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

Psychotronic Volume 8 available here

This is not my way of announcing that I am not a hippie. Nay-no. Instead, it is an observation, that there is a strong correlation between the application of certain scents (AHEM.. Midnight Poison) and watery eyes, sneezing, a swollen tongue and uncontrollable coughing.

I'm not allergic to much. As a kid I thought I was allergic to marshmallows because of an episode where I ate an entire bag and projectile vomited on my parent's friends. Similarly I thought I was allergic to gluten after sat down with a fork and ate an entire can of mock duck and then experienced flu-like symptoms. (It could have just been the sodium content, a coincidence, or contamination with melamine. Total enigma.)

But this is the second time a perfume has left me in fits. The first was Trance Essences' Abbey Rose. It's not that I dislike the scent - in fact, I am quite fond of Midnight Poison. There are some notes, like calone which make me gag, but they do not turn my eyes red and bloodshot. This possible allergy is a whole new experience.

Comme des Garcons for H&M

2008-11-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

Yayoi Kusamainstallation view, Infinity Mirror Room, Phalli's Field (or Floor Show) 1965 (no longer extant); reconstructed 1998. From artnet.

Perfume Shrine has already posted a review of the new Comme des Garcons for H&M scent, and I'll throw in my own polka dotted two cents.

(In an interview, Jeff Koons said that the key to his success was polka dotted shirts. When he was selling memberships at the MoMA, in his signature shirts and suspenders, he managed to pull off "zany, yet inoffensive", apparently the magical cocktail for commercial success.)

So nu, CdGH&M is very pop, a perfect distillation of the CdG aesthetic. I was expecting a bland citrus like the energy series, because that would have been zany enough. (Dianu!) But no, they upped the ante, combining the larger than life smoky birch-tar/cedar of an amped up Hinoki with a fizzy citrus top note almost as an after thought. Like the clothing collection which sticks with dots as a major theme, and drives it home, the fragrance goes big and bold. (And much bigger and bolder than I would have expected.) H&M is not the place for subtle artistry, and the scent is as loud and brash as wood can be. Very cool.

David Ellis, DRUM PAINTING PROJECT, V5.0 2005

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

2008-11-11T10:15:00.001-08:00

From the Yatzer design link to the restoration of Anthony Auerbach's Empire State Pavilion at the Queens Museum.

I was touched, (as I often am) by posts in Christopher Brosius' Blog. He describes the unusual connection he felt towards a stranger wearing his very personal Wild Hunt fragrance. The scent is brilliant, and in conjuring up the scent of a summer forest it has brought back my own memories of growing up.

Summers, my friends and I took a bus from our homes in Queens out to our summer arts day camp each morning. It was almost a two hour journey, so about half way we changed buses at a rendez-vous point in Queens. "Rendez-Vous" as we called it was the asphalt playground of a public school where we would wait half an hour for our second bus. But across the street was a small patch of wooded park which to us was a forest. We would explore the secluded reaches of the forest (often by necessity since Rendez-Vous had no bathrooms), and a friend who grew up in Russia even took us mushroom picking in this small green plot of land in eastern Queens.

Wild hunt is this quest, for an urban nature. Tamed in a bottle, we can find it daily, at the resting points in our journeys.

2008-11-06T18:31:00.001-08:00

It's like a remote control for your smell-o-vision. I just found this ten channel olfactometer by clicking on one of my own ads. Targeted advertising is amazing some times.

Viva la vulva!

2008-11-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

Judy Chicago (American, b. 1939). The Dinner Party, 1974–79. On view Brooklyn Museum

Sure, perfumery can be an art, but are there any applications for those who prefer to be shaken, not stirred?

Courtesy of Jezebel I present to you Vulva Original.

"Vulva Original is not a perfume. It is a beguiling vaginal scent which is purely a substance for your own smelling pleasure. Breathe in and enjoy, anytime, anywhere, the scent of a beautiful woman."

VOTE!

2008-11-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

Smell-o-vision and Jasper Johns urge you to get out and vote. At least here in Brooklyn, the air is crisp and leaf scented. And if you need to clear your nose from the scent of all this democracy, the coffee today is free. (And if you're as lucky as I was this morning, so are the Red-Blue Doritos of Freedom.)

Fresh - Strawberry Leaves

2008-11-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

Sarah Lucas, Spamageddon, 2000 -courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

An homage to the boldest fruit, she who wears her seeds on the outside. Sister to the rose, most feminine of flowers. Strawberry flowers are far worldlier than I, who in my unsophistication was shocked to discover their bottled scent. For in the world of Fresh they smell much like soiled pantyhose.

A wry comment on femininity. Perhaps this scent is a thesis project on the capitalist evisceration of the female body, extruded into bottles and sold as un elixir charnel. Conceptually astute, but I fear this is a scent I can recreate more cost effectively by embracing the lacuna between my own body and soap.

Still, bonus points for listing the ingredients: Alcohol, Fragrance, Water, Limonene, Hexyl Cinnamal, Linalool, Citral, Citronellol, Geraniol, Isoeugenol, Benzyl Benzoate, Alpha-Isomethly Ionone, BHT

tastes like burning...

2008-10-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ant Farm: Media Burn (1975) videos available here and a shorter version here

The other day I stopped by Takashimaya and Bendels to sample the new fragrances. At Takashimaya, I developed new respect for Ineke Chemical Bonding and pretty much the whole line of Neil Morris Fragrances. In the brown somber hall of the minimalist Japanese store there was a radiant scent of cheer. What can I say, I love a good upbeat citrus, and these lines offered a range of appealing and unusual variations on this theme.

Henri Bendel is done up in bright colors, but the scents there were positively somber. A lovely perfumer was representing her line of 60's influenced scents. One of them even featured my own name so I had to try it on my skin. It was a nice mix of bright citrus, dry rose and a thick gray incense. I found it quite unusual. Standing next to her samples, the perfumer told me a little bit about her company when she excused herself for a brief coughing fit. I realized my own eyes were starting to water. When she returned I realized we were standing in a cloud of incense vapor! I walked away and my eyes thanked me.

Ant Farm, Space Cowboy Meets Plastic Businessman, 1969. Performance at Alley Theater, Houston

After I left the store, my throat felt off and I realized it got worse as my sprayed hand neared my face. Psychosomatic or otherwise, the scent of incense seemed to grow, and tickle my eyes and the back of my throat with it's sooty fingers.

I'm not sure if this was my first allergic reaction to a fragrance or of something in that scent is a universal irritant. But seriously, yuck. I am now a huge fan of ingredient labeling on scent, because I want to know what this was so that I can avoid it at all costs.

Additionally, I was browsing PubMed the other day to put together ideas for an experiment and found numerous articles about the diffusion of synthetic musks into blood, breast milk etc. Double yuck. Besides the fact that many synth musks make me want to hurl, I try to avoid sneaky hormone-like chemicals whenever possible. My fondness for perfume makes this a sticky wicket, as lavender oil will grow extra boobs, and most fragrant things are going to be aromatic hydrocarbons which are likely to fuck with us in yet unknown ways. So my goal is to try to stick to the ones that do the least fucking. And no, this doesn't mean natural perfumery, because nature has graciously provided us with some of the most powerful toxins and mutagens known to man. It just means that I'm keeping my eyes open and noticing labels. I may not know what all the ingredients do, but I have a greater incentive to try to keep track of the effect they have on me.

A Rose by Any Other Name: The Science of Smell

2008-10-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

"Rose and Ant" from The Floral Stereoradiographs of Albert G. Richards at The Museum of Jurassic Technology

A quick heads up on a cool talk coming up in December:

A Rose by Any Other Name: The Science of Smell
Speakers: Leslie Vosshall, The Rockefeller University, HHMI;
Avery Gilbert, author, What the Nose Knows

Dec 2, 2008 • 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
A reception and booksigning follow until 9:00 pm.
The New York Academy of Sciences, 7 World Trade Center, 250 Greenwich St. at Barclay St., 40th fl.

It's part of the Science of the Five Senses series. More info is available at the New York Academy of Sciences site. Also, Leslie Vosshall will be giving a Harvey Lecture on May 21st. Harvey Lectures are free, open to the public, and some of the most fun you can have inside a geodesic dome.

Sniffing out the Diagnosis

2008-10-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

Matteo Bonazzi, Listeria monocytogenes polymerizing host cell actin into comet tails (63X)(#48 in the 2008 Nikon Small World contest)

The Yale School of Medicine has a cool show on microscopy through the ages that featured a fun online quiz on food borne microbial pathogens. One of my favorite parts is this chart matching unusual scents to different diagnoses. Who knew tuberculosis smelled like beer?

2008-09-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

I've been away, spending most of my time filling my skull with genetics rather than novel fragrances. (Speaking of which: If anyone has a good sagittal view of a mouse's skull where I can see how the olfactory system integrates I would be grateful like the Dead.)

I have sniffed a few cool new (to me) things:

Guerlain Eau de Lit:
Guerlainade citrus
turns to chamomile and hay.
600 count sheets.

Jules by Dior:
Strong and well rounded.
Propper dry woods and pepper.
A mensch for ladies.

Derby by Guerlain:
Guerlinade's winter
Citrus to spice transition
like dry mulled cider

Bill Blass #7:
a fizzy gin-joint
relaunch of a classic brand
(Nicely done samples)

Harajuku Lovers G:
creamy coconut
with a drydown of Play-Doh
fun for the weird kids

Leslie Vosshall sells out!

2008-09-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Or rather, her talk sold out at the Secret Science Club's meeting last night at Union Hall. Fortunately I was able to sneak in to the standing room only event and catch the tail end of her talk.

I particularly enjoyed her scent world shout-outs. She highly recommends Avery Gilbert's book

What the Nose Knows, and offered props to the major aromachemical companies and their aggregation in her home state of New Jersey.

She mentioned a new paper on alarm pheromones, that showed that a mere whiff of the stuff could cause mice to freeze. (There is some hot coverage of the frozen mice over at NPR. It's good stuff.)

maDAME by Jean Paul Gaultier

2008-08-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

art by Trenton Doyle Hancock.

"Dude! Lets make a smell!"
"Wouldn't it be punk to just throw some random stuff together?"
"Lets make it totally androgynous!
I've got some orange zest, fresh rose, and what the hell, a splash of grenadine..."
"Dudical!"
"Wait, it needs something else. How about a synth-musk, extra bilgey?"
"Perfect! Gag on that fascists!"

Ageless Fantasy by Harvey Prince

2008-08-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

Mr. Wilde, author of such works as The Portrait of Dorian Gray and The Yong King, a short story who's illustrations played a large part in my own potty training.

The Cut directs us to WWD with tales of the "world's first anti-age perfume." Apparently Ageless Fantasy, the "ultimate youth perfume" is extra science-tastic because it is "inspired by clinical trials".

From the site:
"Research proves that men around women who used the perfume thought they were on an average 8 years younger! The Essence of Youth, this precious youth elixir is a blend of pink grapefruit, mango, anti-oxidant rich pomegranate, jasmine and musk."

They left out the links to these clinical trials. A quick search of PubMed turns up some articles linking the scent of grapefruit essential oil with sympathetic nervous system activity.

In a double-blind study, the scents of mango, pomegranate and musk were frequently mis-attributed to "bongs, thongs and sarongs."

Jacques Garcia Silver Home Fragrance

2008-08-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Interior of the Rothko Chapel, Houston, TX

On on of the medical school secondary applications, there is question "If you could have three people of your choice (living or dead), over for dinner, who would you invite and why?"
Now is this just a silly question, or is this preparation for a career raising the dead? There's a great unmade Roger Corman movie about two slacker med-students furiously filling out their residency applications. Heres my ONE MILLION DOLLAR script:

Students bring back dead luminaries for dinner date.

Luminaries annoyed to be raised just for a dinner.

Dead luminaries form zombie army demanding their promised food.

Ramones reunite, play theme song as zombies take over school.

Dave points out that this movie has actually been made. I point out the differences between my genius concept, Frankenstein and Dr. Faustus. He directs me to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. He got me, the new DVD even comes with a matching highlighter!

Back to the scent:

I had expected Jacques Garcia, in it's heavy black glass bottle to be proper, perhaps even trite. Instead, when I sprayed it on my skin, I got a quick cool blast of the crypt. Wintergreen and lilies combine into something utterly necrotic. The opening is a little bit like the Frankenstein opening of JAR Bolt of Lightning.

After a few minutes, the creature rises and her breath is soft and warm. Apricots and tuberose compose this new life among us. It's one of most unusual examples of narrative perfumery, and I've never smelled anything quite like it. The art direction is by Rami Mekdachi who also collaborated on the fabulous collection for the Hotel Costes. The nose is Pierre Bourdon who has played with hot/cold flashes in Cool Water and Parfums Frederic Malle's French Lover. There is an excellent review of Jacques Garcia's sister scent Gold at Perfume Shrine and a wealth of information on Rami Meddachi at Aedes. Silver is available at LuckyScent and Bergdorf Goodman.

Chaos by Donna Karan

2008-08-14T08:52:00.000-07:00

Flame fractal by Roger Johnston

After the Non-Blonde's review comparing the old and new versions of the Dona Karen scent, I knew I had to give ot a sniff at Bergdorff's. As luck would have it, yesterday was one of their celebratory launch days, so the sniff was accompanied by Veuve Cliquot and little canapes of delicious meat pastes on tiny vegetables. Oh my!

Prior to the review, I had assumed Chaos would be a dark incense scent like Back Cashmere, but in reality it is a beautiful glowing thing. Red fruits, citrus and woods explode in bright shades of red and amber and then slowly collapse so that after an hour, the scent is a soft gray ash of incense and woods. It's the first olfactory reconstruction of the big bang I've ever smelled. Like Lovely Prism, the name conveys the broad spectrum of composit notes, and Chaos begins with a glowing fizzy note which reminded me of Demeter's Ginger Ale.

I love this narrative quality in perfume, and experienced it again with JAR Bolt of Lightning. Mr. Branch had spoken highly of it with a caveat that the first minutes may be stomach churning. The sales associate actually apologized that he had applied too much too my hand and asked me repeatedly to give it some time before "scrubbing" it off. (I was shocked that he used that word - perhaps he has seen someone describe it on a blog as a scrubber.) The initial thunderclap is represented by camphor, wintergreen, sharp green notes and something buttery. It reminded me of Cy Twombley's ancient-Rome-rendered-in-toothpaste-impasto work.

Cy Twombly, "Leda and The Swan" 1962

After the lightning comes the ozone, and the scent mellows to a warm green fog. I don't know how "warm" is rendered in scent but it smells like eating breakfast in the mountains - warm oatmeal and green grasses. It's very beautiful, and lasts for hours.

Back to the subject of chaos, it reminded me of the first bouquet of flowers Dave ever gave me: a romanesco, or as I called it, fractal broccoli. Such a wise Mr. Mandelbrot who linked our concepts of chaos and order through a vegetable.

Those fractally inclined bight like to listen to the Sweet Child o Mine at the Self-similar GNR midi synth.
Q: Huh?
A: They used recordings from GNR albums, speeded them up, and used the resulting tone patterns to re-compose the songs. More detail is available on their website.

Fractal chaos? Perhaps you prefer intellectual property anarchy in the form of unlicensed sampling. That references social chaos and turbulent weather? Well then the K-OTIX have what you need.

Hot Lavender Boobs!

2008-08-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

Do you want big lovely boobies? I credit my Avalon Organics Lavender Nourishing shampoo with one of the finest compliments I've received. When asked about my role in our band, Viki said "Duh, you're the one with the fine rack!" Awwww!

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine from 2007 suggests that Lavender and Tea Tree Oils may be just what the doctor ordered. Or if you are a pre-adolescent boy with gynecomastia it may be just what your doctor has told you to stay the hell away from.

The article includes case reports of three pre-pubescent boys:

"The patient's mother reported applying a compounded "healing balm" containing lavender oil to his skin starting shortly before the initial presentation. The gynecomastia partially resolved within 4 months after application of the healing balm was discontinued..."

"In Case 3, the patient was exposed intermittently to various over-the-counter personal-care products containing lavender oil. His twin brother used the same lotions but not the scented soap, and gynecomastia did not develop in him."

They also followed up with in vitro studies examining the role of lavender and tea tree oils in activating estrogen receptors, and inhibiting androgenic activity.

I love lavender, and love wearing lavender based scents, but this is enough to ensure that I refrain from ever using the oil at full strength, (which is a good idea for any essential oil, really). As for the boobies, as a caution to those seeking bodacious tatas, estrogen is a well established cancer promoter. Sigh, you win some and you lose some. Just one more example of how "natural" isn't necessarily healthier.

Gendarme

2008-08-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

Robert Mapplethorpe, Leatherman II, 1972

This is what cops smell like?

With official notes of citrus, verbena, jasmine, thyme and leather I was expecting Mapplethorpe, and instead got Ryan McGinley.

On my skin I smell a little citrus, then a fragile fresh hay. After a few minutes, medicinal phenol and toothpaste notes creeps in, and the composition smells like the pale teal image of a future hospital. Perhaps our gendarme is a fresh faced young resident, blanched by the surgical lamps, chewing hay and carefully washing his hands. This is somebody's kink, but not mine. I'm even embarrassed to find it a little creepy. This is one of the weirder interpretations of masculinity, and like McGinley;s work it eloquently expresses fragility and vulnerability, but brings in an antiseptic quality that turns my stomach. I'm curious what it smells like on other people.

From Ryan McGinley's website.

L'artisan Fleur de Liane

2008-08-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

Henri Rousseau. (French, 1844-1910). The Dream. 1910 at the MoMA

When the Scented Salamander described the new vine based Fleur de Liane I was intrigued by the concept of "eternal feminine" embodied in the moist embrace of a jungle plant. Or as I like to call it Green Vajeen.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930

Well I just got to smell it at Barney's and it is fabulous, the scent of the Tropical Pavillion at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. It was only a quick sniff, but I wanted to share these first excited impressions. Of the "green" fragrances I've smelled, this is the first to capture the lush foliage of that jungle greenhouse. The official notes include guava, and though there is a slight sweetness it is not a fruity tropical concoction, but rather a dense and soothing forest that will be a great joy to wear in the cooler months. It captures jungle rain without calone or the mysterious molon notes of Apres la Mousson, instead relying on what seem to be moss and cut stem notes to conjure up the rain.

If you need a reason to consider research training at the National Museum of Natural History, I can give you two.

1: Viki worked in their Hall of Insects for a summer, and observed that in April the bee hive produced fragrant yellow honey from D.C. cherry blossoms, but that by July the honey had become foul smelling and black, as the bees discovered the much closer ice cream wrappers and spilled sodas at the entrance of the museum.

2: This young scientist in their program is the first thing that comes up when you search for "butt nut". (Lodoicea maldivica) And doesn't he look like John Kratz?

2008-08-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

The New York Academy of Science presents a podcast: What the Nose Knows by Avery Gilbert

On-trend perfume concepts for the fall of 2008: 90's revival

2008-08-05T10:01:00.000-07:00

Dewberry Chalk
CK1 & Diet Peach Snapple
Crushed Necco Wafers at the bottom of a Jansport backpack

Hear me now, smell me later

2008-08-05T07:04:00.000-07:00

From a very cool 2007 review of current findings in olfaction: The scent of life. The exquisite complexity of the sense of smell in animals and humans
(EMBO reports 8, 7, 629–633 (2007) doi:10.1038/sj.embor.7401029)

CO2-sensitive neurons expressing Gr21a (green) and Gr63a (red), proteins that together are necessary for CO2 detection in Drosophila. The neurons target a specific region of the fly brain, which is dedicated to processing the smell of CO2. Credit: Vosshall Laboratory, Rockefeller University. Reprinted with permission from Macmillian Publishers Ltd [Nature, Jones et al, 2007].

Participation in the Vosshall lab's study on the Physiological Effects of Androstadienone Exposure is open on the RUCares site. I haven't had a chance to participate in any of her experiments but they sound like a great way to get in touch with one's own olfactory perception.

The scent of life
article offers an excellent summary of the controversy surrounding Luca Turin's controversial model for understanding odorant receptors.

The major model is the odotope theory where the shape of the odorant determines the selective binding to the receptor. Only a small portion of the odorant binds so it is possible for different odorant molecules to activate the same receptor, and potentially for a single odorant molecule to activate multiple receptors depending on the contact point.

In contrast, Luca Turin's model proposes that when an odorant comes in contact with a receptor with a congruent vibrational pattern, the electrons jump to a higher energy state activating the receptor. I confess that I don't know much about electron tunneling, the main phenomenon behind his theory, but I have never heard of it as part of a biological phenomenon. Electron tunneling offers extremely cool applications in bio-imaging, and electron excitation is the physics behind modern fluorescence microscopy, but I have never heard of it as part of a biological system - which doesn't mean that it's not true, but it's significantly more complicated than the predominant model and does not seem to explain certain biological phenomena. For example, it doesn't seem to explain why the chirality of molecules would have such a large impact on our perception of their odor.

R Carvone smells like spearmint, S Carvne smells like carraway.

For example, let's look at Carvone , a simple ring structure that's frequently used in Organic Chemistry texts as an example of chirality or "handedness". When a molecule and it's mirror image (or enantiomer) cannot be superimposed, they are said to be chiral. For example, looking at your left hand, your right hand would be it's mirror image or enantiomer, but you can't superimpose them. Right hand sure looks like the left hand, but they are not conformationally the same as anyone who's ever tried to jam their left hand into their right glove will attest. And this can at least in part explain the difference in odorant receptors - if you have a left glove shaped receptor protein, it's going to be activated preferentially by left hands, though as the jamming experiment dictates you might have some success trying to force a right hand in there.

So this is my simplistic understanding of odorant receptors - that we can smell thousands of scents based on the activation of only 400 types of odorant receptors because the specificity is low enough that many odorants activate multiple receptors. It's this pattern of activated receptors that is translated by the brain into what we understand as smell.

No discussion of science is ever complete without a picture of Jeff Goldbulm (or possibly Alan Alda. In this case, his role in The Fly is an homage to the humble Drosophila who have assisted the Vosshall lab in illuminating the neural anatomy of olfaction. Any and all tributes to Erik Kandel will feature Mr. Goldblum's famous line from Annie Hall: "I forgot my mantra."

Eau Fraiche de Rosine

2008-07-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

A lovely image of Karen Finley by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. A celebration of America.

My Sneak Sniff of Eau Fraiche de Rosine just arrived, in time for a weekend in Newport. Although the press release states that Eau Fraiche is based around a yellow rose accord, it strikes me less as a sassy Texan than a prim New Englander. Although the dry rose scent reminds me very much of Tommy Girl (which I like), the most distinctive thing about the pleasant off-dry fruity floral is a lovely honeysuckle note. Later I get some pears, just a hint of Petite Cherie. Then the ambrette, and a slightly carroty musk. The top notes are listed as citrus but I smell more of a banana aldehyde, perhaps a contribution to the yellowness of the composition.

But I do love honeysuckle. As a kid, I had a scratch and sniff book about Winnie the Poo, and it was the pages about honeysuckle, pine forests, and the fireplace that were my absolute favorites. The honeysuckle page, reduced to a moist mess was how I first figured out that odorants don't necessarily taste good.

All American off to the beach scents 7/31/08
1. Tartine et Chocolat Ptisenbon
2. Eau Fraiche de Rosine
3. Un Jardin sur le Nil
3. Demeter Bubblegum
4. Tommy Girl

Givenchy Tartine et Chocolat Ptisenbon + Giveaway

2008-07-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

Oh sweet bird of youth! When the mercury hits 85 and just keeps going, it is very tempting to curl up in a little air conditioned cocoon. In fact, one of my ONE MILLION DOLLAR ideas was a parlor where affluent patrons could nap in a crisp white bed, attended to by a lovely nurse-maid, who would mop their brow and bring madelines and tea. For an extra $50 she would whisper "Oh, mon cher Marcel! Tu est tres petit, mais tres malade!"

Since this is not yet available, I am content spraying myself with Tartine et Chocolat Ptisenbon. (Or as one website translated it, "'Lil SmellGood".

Rumor has it that Ptisenbon is enormously popular in Japan with multiple flankers in scents of lemon and peach that occasionally turn up on ebay. Soft, soothing, and utterly inoffensive, Ptisenbon is a sweet balm of oranges, light florals and mint. The official notes include lemon, lily of the valley, honeysuckle, oakmoss and amber. I couldn't find the nose behind it, but many of the Parfums Givenchy scents are currently composed by Marc Buxton at Symrise. Ptisenbon, released in 1987 probably came before his tenure, but it has the lovely Buxton spectrum quality; a luminous glow up top that radiates with incense. Comme des Garcons #3 and Lovely Prism both have this quality where no single note is easily discernible but the result flows beautifully, like a shimmering aura close to the body.

Speaking of close to the body, have you seen kid's halloween costumes these days? Both of the above are available at Costumes Super Center, though Shabbos Queen may be my all time favorite. Personally I could do without the gothic lolitas or the 'tween sized "Major Flirt", but I'm something of a prude. Just in terms of merchandizing though, I'm impressed that what was once the exclusive domain of LA's Trashy Lingerie is now available to not only the hard working ladies of the San Fernando Valley but scores of 12 year old across the country. I was going to post pics, but after a friend's photography site posted the work of Lewis Carroll, I know what kind of traffic that will draw. So instead, I'm posting a giveaway.

For Marc Buxton completists and the young at heart, I present to you a 7ml mini of Absolutely Givenchy. Notes include apple, passion fruit, sweet pea, and musky woods. I hear this is a European exclusive, or possibly the rare Duty-Free exclusive. It's certainly targeted towards young people - the bottle is the same as Lovely Prism's, but with a bright chartreuse colored juice. To enter the giveaway, just let me know in the comments what scent puts you in a young mood. I'll announce a winner next week, so keep your eyes pealed. And peal your eyes on this:

The Mother Land: a trip to Symrise

2008-07-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

A hearty "Thank You!" to Karen & Karen of Sniffapalooza for putting together this most excellent adventure at Symrise. Themes around Russia, this year's focus among the rapidly growing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations. Sorry, this is just a quick blast before I compose my thoughts as I have a major deadline looming, but Sniffapalooza and Symrise put together a most excellent treat. I will elaborate at a later date.

Did you know that Chanel #5 isn't even in the top 30 fragrances? Or that Moscow Rouge is the scent of pre-glasnost babushkas? One can only imagine this scent had some creative uses - in Venedikt Erofeev’s Moscow Ring, the narrator describes a spectrum of cocktails based on various combinations of ingredients such as red wine, vodka and "deodorant for the feet". (I couldn't find a quote online, but apparently Tania Sanchez has read the book, and uses it as evidence of the low toxicity of aroma chemicals.

"In Russia, we do not have condoms. We use onions."

The lovely ladies of symrise presented some compositions on a Russian theme including the breathtaking but unfortunatly named Baby Swan. (aka Ugly Duckling?) Two variations on the theme of nature in the guise of Red Summer were outstanding; a larger than life feminine: large red berries splattered across the windshield of a limousine, Matt Damon asking "How do you like them berries?" before straddling your face for a demonstration. That kind of berries.

The masculine was much tamer in comparison with the Red Summer masculine taking on the guise of a radiant herbacious composition with just a hint of cassis to keep it modern.

Of course, marketing to a Russian audiences poses it's own challenges as exemplified in Victor Pelevin's book Generation P (alternately translated as Babylon).
To keep things simple, I now present to you, an Israeli ad for Pelevin's book about translating American ads for a Russian audience.

Love for sale...

2008-07-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

And you may ask yourself, where is my beautiful white space? Well, to the right we have ads. It's an experiment to see how google parses the text of the blog into advertising form... and of course, a plan to make ONE MILLION DOLLARS. According to Dave's calculations I should net about $3.00 at this rate in one year's time. Whatevs. In 333,333 years we are having one AWESOME pizza party!

So let me know what you think. Awful? Awesome? When I view, AdSense is usually selling me essential oils and occasionally Authentic African Soaps. Have the ads told you anything interesting?

We have a winner

2008-07-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

Dan Flavin. “monument” to V. Tatlin XI, 1964; “monument” to V. Tatlin, 1966; “monument” to V. Tatlin, 1966—69; and untitled, 1970. © Estate of Dan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Bill Jacobson. (Which I saw today at the incomparable Dia:Beacon)

Congratulations Paper Girl Productions, you are the winner. Email me at oblitterati at yahoo dot com with your address.

In other news, the Dia:Beacon is a fabulous place to spend a well-airconditioned day with some well situated earthworks. Most of the space is cool and odorless. Just watch out for the Bruce Nauman galleries, Mapping the Studio I smells like a wet dog in a rain bonnet. And the Richard Serra pieces have their own inner climate, 10 degrees hotter than the gallery space with a faint rusty dessert scent.

From MoMA.org.
Bruce Nauman. Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo. 1972. Neon tubing and wire with glass tubing suspension frames, three parts, Each 21 3/8 x 28 7/8 x 2 1/4" (54.3 x 73.3 x 5.7 cm). © 2008 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Ineke Chemical Bonding

2008-07-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

John McCracken. (American, born 1934).
The Absolutely Naked Fragrance. 1967.
As seen at MoMA today. More info here.

I just went to MoMA this afternoon. Mutzu pointed out the similarity between Mr. McCracken's oeuvre and my favorite scent in 8th grade, "Butt Naked".

Ineke's Chemical Bonding has elements of both. It's sharp, crackling minimalism that would excite even Domenique de Menil. The Dia Foundation bottled if you will.

It starts with bright citrus, much like my beloved Butt Naked. It has the chemical, metallic dust of Odeur 72 or Joseph Beuys eating an orange. Awesome. I found it at Takashimaya across from the MoMA but it's available on the web at Beauty Habit.

SakeCat has alerted me to the importance of temperature in olfactory appreciation. It was one million degrees today in Manhattan. Three degrees cooler in Queens.

Today is an arty day. Enjoy Dara Birnbaum's
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978)
(Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry (1979) is awesome but I couldn't find the video online.)

Lancome Magnifique

2008-07-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Memorial to the Idea of Man If He Was an Idea
(closed), 1958 by HC Westerman
(Check out a lovely guide to his work at the Westerman Curriculum page.)

While stopping by Bloomingdales yesterday for a frozen yogurt, I saw myriad red bottles out in preparation for the official launch on August 1st. Sadly, there were no samples to be had but a liberal dose on my left arm left a very favorable impression. The official word is that the scent by Oliver Cresp seeks to reconstruct "red" from roses and woods, much like the Comme des Garcons series which include Sequoia and Palisander.

My first impression is that the scent is much brighter than I'd expected. Tangy. Delicious. It starts with a very bright top note with citrus qualities that I couldn't quite place. It's very boozy fruity, like August harvest moonshine, and in retrospect it may have been a tangy over-ripe cassis accord.

It has the little girl in mama shoes sensibility of In Love - Hillary Duff. It's clearly a modern reworking, much tangier than earlier styles of perfumery, but it departs in a new direction - tangy woods. Who knew?

I had trouble detecting the rose, but that jammy boozy note reminded me of Cresp's very weird La Rose Angel. While La Rose Angel is the La Brea Tar Pits of Rose Jam, Magnifique throws a handfull of treats your way, with rose as only one element.

(Costes is available at LuckyScent

At the heart, and visualy it reminded me of Costes. The tartness of Magnifique reads to me as a commercially branded feminine with a taffeta quality rather than the androgenous plush velvety softness of the spices of Costes, but they share a similar spirit, and like all fragrances it could be worn by either sex. Sharp up front, moving to plush, Magnifique Christian Louboutin stiletos sinking into a red carpet.

For me, it's the bright tartness that sets this one apart and makes it so curious. The dry down gets spicier and finally it fades into a soft cashmere woods scent not unlike Estee Lauder's Sensuous.

The bottle is striking from a distance but like many mass-market scents has a plastic top. It's designed to look like a classic boudoir item, but lacks the heft of niche-market packaging, and I do love a heavy glass apothecary stopper.

Jammy, tart, spicy woods? What's not to love? I'm looking forward to the official launch.

Hermes Ambre Narguile giveaway

2008-07-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Edie took us out to a few leather bars on SoMA, and I was very proud of Dave when he took off his shirt to reveal his own natural sweater. Although I'm one chromasome off from most of the patrons, I would guess we all appreciate some of the finer things in life including bears, beers and pinball.

It's harder trying to share someone else's fantasy that is not your own. That's the case with Ambre Narguile. Acknowledged as a masterpiece by monsieurs Burr et Turin, it is a prime example of a beautiful scent that simply does not work on me. I know that Turin claims that "personal chemistry" is a load of nonsense, but from experience I find that my skin magnifies ambers and musks to Japanese Disaster Film proportions. Sweet, decadent, and exotic, Ambre Narguile looms very large olive skin. With this baby cranked up to eleven I smell like fresh baklava in an opium den.

So please give it a good home! A 4ml glass vial just for you. Tom? Gaia? My numerous teen groupies? If you'd like it, post a comment, and I'll pick a lucky recipient at random.

Happy to be back home scents of the week: 7/16/08

2008-07-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

1. the Muir Woods
2. YOSH - U4EAHH!: light, happy, fresh, surprising, and representative of SF Boutiques
3. Landscape Lavender Hydrosol: the hay end of the lavender spectrum
4. Hermes Poivre Samarcande: it just arrived in the mail
5. Terre d'Hermes: a summer cousin to Poivre Samarcande

On the plane back to JFK I read about our favorite boys from Forest Hills, Queens (besides Kevin and Dave) in Nicholas Rombes' Ramones 33 1/3. Looking on YouTube for old footage of the boys in Arturo Vega's loft I stumbled upon the Speedies, perhaps the best teen band to come out of Brooklyn Heights. (Check out the Montague Street Burger King that I once ate in as a kid which is now a Banana Repubic).

Today's equivalent might be Fiasco. God loves Fiasco? Well Spin, and the New Yorker seem to. Those junior varsity noise-punk kids from Park Slope may be hot right now, but I heard they aren't nearly as young as they claim to be. A friend of a friend told me that their drummer Julian is actually 24 and has an MBA from MIT. I'm just sayin'.

Yosh Ginger Ciao & U4EAHH!, Landscape Lavender Hydrosol

2008-07-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

Hello Smell-o!

I'm back from my honeymoon on the Barbary Coast. I've been very naughty, playing hooky from blogging, but my friend Ambrose has been blogging like a fiend in Matt Drudge drag over at bravo.tv (while physically stationed around 16th and Guerrero) so I'll consider her blogging for the both of us. But here at last is a little about the local flora and fauna.

Dave and I were in SF to check our our friends Julia and Caitlin's art show at Rare Device. You can see more pictures of the show at Apartment Therapy (where these lovely pics are from) and at Grace's blog design*sponge. San Francisco is full of these cute boutiques selling lovely stuff for the home, crafts, essential oils and art.

Another one of these cute shoppes is CandyStore on 16th street, where they carry the Yosh line. Like the crafts on display the scents are sweet but clever, with notes that seem to pop up unexpectedly. U4EAHH! has this very charming quality with cucumbers, pears and leaves poking their heads out throughout the day. Ginger Ciao is a delicious gourmande Thai Curry scent that I hadn't fully appreciated before. It uses black coconut instead of musk as the base, and combined with ginger and basil it has the same edible quality I adore in Frederic Malle's Carnal Flower. It's the distillation of a vacationer's vision of tropical sexy.

Musically I would say that the scents and crafts has the spirit of The Hidden Cameras - hand crafted refinement, glowing like a precious opal.

Landscape makes a line of hydrosols as well as essential oils and they are truly fantastic. I'd never encountered hydrosols before, but they are the aqueous/hydrophilic portion of the fractional distillation - the skim milk to the heavy cream essential oils if you will. To me it was like finally hearing the left channel of a favorite album I'd been listening to on my old stereo that only had a right speaker. The lavender hydrosol is soft and sweet with predominantly honey, hay and vanilla notes, and plays beautifully with the astringent qualities of the essential oil.

But what was the ultimate scent of the trip? Well, the Muir Woods win hands down. Walking through the forest, surrounded by redwoods and mosses is heart-stopping. One of the great side effects of using eucalyptus leaves to stop erosion is the pervasive mint breeze that floats through the whole bay area. I think I may finally have a better understanding of the California aesthetic of perfumery, where life always has this beautiful crystalline top note.

It's too hard to write about the sublime, so all I can say is that vacation was awesome. And 'Brose taught me a new song!

Yo, my dick attacks without warnin'.
Your dick's been blogging all mornin'.

Lacoste ELEGANCE

2008-07-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

I like cars. Back in college, I briefly hung out with a hot young artist who had a collection of muscle cars, and I'd drive him to the gas station for smokes when he was too f'dup to drive. So Chargers are nice. Dodge Darts give you a chance to yell "Slant-6! Can't kill that engine!". My own taste tends towards the Japanese micro-hoopties.

Lacoste ELEGANCE (or to use their typography E L E G A N C E) is actually more like an MG with wood burl all over the place. Actually, actually, it reminds me the most of the hot little red sportscar my friend's dad keeps garaged in Vermont a la Cameron's parents in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Which seems appropriate since according to Now Smell This the scent is Procter & Gamble's attempt to reach the over 30 market.

They actually do it quite well. The scent smells like it should be worn under nice custom shirt. It opens a little fruity (perhaps bergamot), very ozonic and with a touch of spice. It reminds me very much of YSL l'Homme and Stetson Untamed which also use the fresh ozonic notes that are so keyed up in the Axe scents to good effect. The drydown is delightfully weird, with what they describe as a "unique chocolate drydown". It actually smells like cocoa pods to me, with that woody vegetal quality of something straight off the tree. The wood is nicely done, which is perhaps why it conjures up more of the wood-burn English Racing Green flavor of midlife rather than the Z-series. Classy. It's something Mr. Stallone could wear with glasses.

Top 5 week of 7/1/08

2008-07-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

fierce beast by Edie Fake who tatoos at Black & Blue in San Francisco. Kitty's body will eventually be yellow.

I'm feeling a little giddy and a little queasy. A little excited to go to San Francisco and a little nervous about applying to schools. And I've consumed almost an entire gift basket of nuts and dried fruit. This is the smell-track to this week.

1. La Rose Angel - it gave me a nauseated headache, but I won't scrub it off
2. Givenchy l'Interdit 2 - classy! and sweet....
3. Absolutely Givenchy - Green Apple Jolly Ranchers meet Watermelon Jolly Ranchers. My mother asked me never to wear this again in her presence. I find it amusing except for the synth-musk basenote that turns my stomach.
4. Moschino Funny
5. Tartine et Chocolat Ptisenbon - sprayed over La Rose makes it fresh... until the beast returns.

La Rose Angel by Thierry Mugler

2008-07-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

Call me a sucker for variations on a theme. I'm not crazy about the original Angel and it's Attack of the 50 Foot Honey, especially when it strikes on the subway. But I do love a good remix.

La Rose Angel takes the beast and smothers it in Rose Petal Jam. The sweet rose and dank patchouli collide and spawn something new: a fizzy, dissonant, creepy, sexy thing.

The notes clash together, and then morph into something an iota subtler. Rose petal jam shouts at the forefront but then simmers down to a stage whisper of filthy jokes. Vanilla and Patchouli move to the front but there is still something very tangy and weird about the whole thing. The divine Marina compared it to mud on a white evening dress.

Big, sweet, earthy and utterly fucked! I love it.

Angel Innocent Fizzing Gel

2008-07-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

I just received my order from Big Discount including the Angel Innocent Fizzing Gel. The scent is less innocent than the name and it's corresponding eau de parfum, but the chilled aerosol fizz more than makes up for it. A handful of sweet fizzy goop is finally mine!

Which is really just a lead-in for my new favorite music video: Mika's Lollipop

Smellopoly

2008-06-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I am late to the table. but I just noticed that LuckyScent is posting that Nanadebarry, 10 Corso Como and Serge Lutens are available in their brick and mortar store even though they are not available in their online shop. I've noticed a number of online shops only allow ordering of Serge Lutens by phone. It seems that Barney's has the web exclusive on the line, which is ironic because Bergdorf Goodman has brick and mortar exclusives on a number of their non-export scents including the incredible Bois de Violette.

So who has the lock on 10 Corso Como and Nanadebarry? A quick search seems to indicate Nieman Marcus/ Bergdorf Goodman/the Neiman Marcus Group snatched up 10 Corso Como. Their ad copy for the classic scent reads "Corso como introduces 10 corso como, a new fragrance which is the essence of all the senses." It sounds like they are doing an exclusive relaunch of a longtime favorite scent.

I know Bloomingdales has a summer exclusive on Estee Lauder's Sensuous. What is the legality of a single online store having an exclusive on an entire line of fragrances? In major retailers, fragrance prices are fairly tightly controlled, but it seems like a small step towards an online trust for a vendor to have exclusive rights to products as popular as 10 Corso Como or the entire Serge Lutens line.

Top 35 list

2008-06-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

Meg just posted on the transformative power of KTRU 91.7 in creating an understanding of the world and how parts come together. One of my favorite parts of working at KTRU was making the top 35 with Viki.

Part of the joy, is taking the scrambled collage of sound, noise, rock and stutter that went out over the airwaves and then quantifying and ranking that shit. We actually tallied the plays for every song and then juggled the mix a bit to capture the mood of that week.

CMJ gave us a lot of weight in their weekly charts because we were a 50,000 watt station. To this day, Dusted counts KTRU as one of only a few stations that inform their top 40 because clearly some opinions are more important than others.

I may not have that kind of clout at the moment, but I thought it would be fun to chart the top five scents of the week. After all, what is more personal, sensual and ultimately decadent than music? Scent.

Smell-o-vision Top Five: week of 6/25/2008
1. L'Artisan L'Ete en Douce
2. Thierry Mugler Cologne
3. Moschino Funny
4. Estee Lauder Sensuous
5. Demeter Bubblegum

Wedding scents

2008-06-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

The ladies at Seaport Flowers did an incredible job on the bouquet. I was afraid it would knock me out with a green floral scent, but maybe it was he combination of rosemary and allium, but if I leaned in very close it had a faint odor of ripe stilton. I find that surprisingly appropriate. I may be small, but I am not particularly dainty, and some of my fondest memories have been the cheese parties I had in the park with my best friends growing up. So cheese it is!

The wedding proved to be a homecoming of sorts - in the very literal sense - it was in Forest Hills, about 8 blocks from my parent's house. But it also proved that any fussy attempts at classyness will be twarted, and replaced with the real, the genuine, the fun and the awesome. I couldn't have asked for more.

The morning of the wedding, Dave and I went to the Union Square Farmer's Market to pick up some supplemental flowers. I got four bundles of lavender which we added to the existing arrangements and our friends Jenny and Renee made some crazy herbal arrangements for the bathrooms and halls.

So, while I was wearing L'Ete en Douce, the real scent of my wedding is fresh lavender, oregano, rosemary, roses, cheese, box cake and orchids.

And then Chris brought a box of cigars, so add that to the mix. It was an incredible time.

Quince by Demeter, Cute as Hell Violet Quince Body Mist by BlueQ

2008-06-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

Behold the noble quince. At holiday time my mother and her sister always quince compote which was served in their best china or sterling terrine.

Perhaps this is why my favorite layering combination at the moment is Demeter's Quince with Tarnish - to me it speaks of pure opulence. Despite the divine smell of the fruit, as a child I soon learned not to attempt to take a bite of it's rock hard flesh. Quince: it's as lushly fruity as a scent can get while maintaining a hand slapping aloofness.

I also find that it layers brilliantly to make great summer scents.

Quince + Tommy Girl = Tripp and Butsy's picnic in the Hamptons.

Quince + Gingerale = Dave's tipsy landlord painting the sidewalk blue. "Hey! We've got a pool!"

Cute as Hell makes an inexpensive quince/violet body spray that smells much better than it needs to. I assumed that the juice was merely a vector for the goth-lolita art, but th scent is fun and just odd enough for my taste, even if the look isn't my thing. They also make the Bear Naked line, who's look is precisely my thing. Awwww. Look at the little bear!
I should have known to expect good things from the makers of Vinnie's Tampon Case.

Bubble Gum by Demeter

2008-06-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hebrew Bazooka available at popjudaica.com

Ahh, back to smells.

A few weeks ago at Henri Bendel, I fell in love with Encens et Bubblegum by Etat Libre d'Orange. The scent is by Antoine Maisondieu (an excellent review is available at review at the Scented Salamander.) and I adored the bubblegum note but I find the packaging of the American edition of these scents just a little too-too. As if we wouldn't understand the double (single?) entendre titles without a graphic illustration in Adobe Illustrator.

I love Christopher Brosius's work and while ordering a gift for a friend included a little bottle of Demeter's Bubble Gum mini Pick Me Up spray as a treat for myself. Admittedly, I don't know if this is one of the pre-2002 Brosius collaborations or a newer edition.

The scent cold-cocked me with a blast of wintergreen.

It's gum allright, but not the Hubba Bubba / Bubble Yum platonic form of my youth, but the Bazooka / Double Bubble notion of a slightly earlier generation. It even recalled the old-school Beemans available at Economy Candy

It's not what I was expecting at all, but it's so brisk and cool I find it to be awesome for layering. Combined with Tommy Girl the result is so cool, fresh and weird it was like listening to some cerebral French dude channeling Yakov Smirnov to tell you about America. "What a country!"

Available at the Book Depository

solvent chemistry: makeup edition

2008-06-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

A brief deviation from the molecules of scent to look at the far simpler vectors that carry pigments.

I normally don't care much about the ingredients in beauty products. Usually, the stuff that is flaunted in ad copy (peptides, liposomes, vitamins, virgin caviar) are present in such minute quantities that if they do anything at all they do it homeopathically. (See Meg if you would like to buy some homeopathic heroin for one million dollars.) So mostly I look at the main ingredient, which is some flavor of oil (including waxes), water (including alcohols) or some modern silicone construct.

In preparation for my nuptual face spackling, I have picked up a few industrial strength products, and I've been impressed with the chemical compositions of these newfangled things.

1. Napoleon Perdis China Doll Foundation: Isododecane
The name reminds me of my dearly departed goth roommate in college, who loved Bowie and was on a perpetual quest for the whitest foundation around. Despite the name, this foundation provides coverage and looks extremely natural - it was even undetectable to Dave. I had assumed it was silicone based but now looking at the ingredients I see the main shmutz is isododecane. Should I be worried that an aliphatic 12 carbon chain will clog my pores? It looks fantastic, and it is half off at Sephora right now so I'm not going to worry about it.

2. Revlon Moondrops: Lanolin
It's been around forever, but the color saturation for colors like Persian Melon and Peach Silk is out of this world. The base is lanolin, or sheep sebum which is both conceptually gross and a known allergen. Although lanolin is extracted from the sheered wool of sheep, I imagine that much like human sebum it is an apocrine secretion made from fatty cells lining the oil gland that committ suicide and rupture and spill out their waxy black-head forming goodies. Lanolin happens to be the only thing I know I am allergic to, and wool sweaters and lanolin skin products will both give me hives within a few days. Bummer. For some reason though, all the lipsticks with fantastic pigment suspension and color saturation (MAC, YSL etc) are lanolin based, and I don't know what makes this particular solvent better than any other saturated fat like cocoa butter or even crisco. If you know why it's so beloved by the cosmetics industry please let me know.

3. Perfekt: isododecane, polysilicone-11, dimethicone
All primers are made from different compositions of silicone polymers. As far as I am concerned they are magic. I really know very little about silicone based compounds but I assume they are amphiphilic, and thus double their chances of a date on a Friday night. It seems they work well with water as well as non-polar (generally speaking, oily) gunk, and actually seem to suck the oil from my skin. Awesome.

The state of the world

2008-06-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

Now that the heatwave has ended I can finally open the windows for some ventilation of the phenol smell that has overtaken our apartment. Dave got me a wonderful perfumery course for my birthday and of all the bottles, phenol is the one that is leaking. Hey, it could have been civet! I've developed a fondness for the scent, and though my nose isn't sensitive enough to pick it out in different scents yet, I find I have a new appreciation of the big orientals of the 80's, specifically Opium, Obsession and the many variations on Poison. Midnight Poison seems to have phenol and menthol up which gives me a little shiver of delight like a particularly perverse joke.

L'Ete en Douce by L'Artisan Parfumeur

2008-06-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

I was initially tempted to mock this scent and it's too sweet name (Summer of douche. Huh huh.), and then I smelled it. It was a Proustian moment, and instead of madelines I was hit with the rolling hills of hay, herbs and climbing roses of my dear auntie's summer house up Lexington, NY. She lived next to this building which was adjacent to a barn labeled the Blue Moon Saloon in the catskill mountains.

I think this used to be the Art Awareness Gallery in Lexington where I once saw a show of sculpture made entirely of human hair. I have no idea who this woman is, but her friend was kind enough to post my childhood memories on his Flickr account.

L'Ete en Douce is beautiful. It starts with a brisk mint jostling you to wake up before the heavy lidded hay comes in telling you its okay to go take a nap in the grass. The drydown is subtle, sweet hay that stays close to the skin, more for personal enjoyment than broadcast. An appropriate song might be wind chimes.

Blue Moon Saloon circa 2006

Such is the nature of trying to relive your own lost memories through the recordings of others. Sometimes they include a fresh coat of paint and a writer's workshop that wasn't there 25 years ago. Olivia Giacobetti, the creater of L'Ete en Douce has brought these memories back so eloquently. She and Christopher Brosius are memory interpreters.

Peau de Peche by Keiko Mecheri

2008-06-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I swung by Takashimaya and sniffed around. I had tried Peau de Peche once before and hadn't been particularly impressed, but Luca Turin rather had nice things to say about it, so I gave it another shot. Maybe I had Debby Harry on the brain, but this time the scent was wonderfully vicious and pulpy, like ripe peaches and plums that get stuck between your teeth. It had some of the woods that I like in Ume that keep it purring like a jungle cat rather than the peach fuzz kitten I was expecting.

The next day I found myself in the same neighborhood and thought I'd try it again, and maybe even get a sample to review. his time, it was smelling different and when I asked for a sample, he sales clerk said "We don't get samples. You have it on your skin, why don't you just smell that?" Well then.

Now maybe it was the brush off, or possibly the fact that I am premenstrual and my sense of smell is affected, but it smells radically different to me. As my boyfriend will attest, just before my period I complain that the scents of the world are keyed up. During this time otherwise innocuous things can smell distinctly like "raw chicken", "pools of blood" or "dead rats".

Peau de Peche's fate was less dire, but rather than the fierce fruityness of the day before I was hit with a loud waxy synthetic musk. As I sniffed it got a little funky and ultimately butyric.

And that was the final dry down, Molly McButter. Perhaps this is what people mean when they describe scents as "lickable". Perhaps we Molly McB lickers are Keiko Mecheri's target demographic.

My original perception was along the lines of Blondie's "Rip her to Shreds" but the final drydown on the second day was much more Backstreet Boys, simultaneously synthetic and a little greasy.

Gucci by Gucci

2008-06-03T06:05:00.000-07:00

Gucci by Gucci is a beautiful example of the collaboration behind an new fragrance launch. Most of the actual collaboration is on the corporate side, and I'll post some notes from my new favorite magazine, Perfumer & Flavorist later on. But the commercial acts as a beautiful microcosm of the industry. I adore the David Lynch commercial, the artifice, the play on the narcotic qualities of scent. Debby Harry like Lynch perfectly embodies this electric wisdom, they can both play with art on the border of drugged out madness because they clearly have their shit together. Lips together, teeth apart if you will.

The "making of" video:

The original video opens with NYC instead of LA.
I love Debby Harry's teeth.

A blast from the past: a David Lynch ad for Opium.
The score is Badalamentastic.

Oh, the scent itself? Nice, woodsy with honey and fruit. A powdery drydown. It realy does come across as Opium remade for today's youth's, a remake of 1980, almost as loud and much sweeter, with all the rough corners smoothed away by nostalgia and VH1.

Did you hear MTV's Real World Brooklyn is filming in the BellTell condo lofts at Jay Street Borough Hall? A rock aesthetic constructed from luxury condos and smiling celebrity Lolitas gets old fast. Bring on the Blondie.

Eau de Victoria's Secret

2008-05-22T17:54:00.000-07:00

Image by j. morrison

The fact that their best seller is called Dream Angels(TM) should have clued me. Nearly everything is a loud gourmand Angel knock off. Fruity Sparkle Angel, Watermelon Lysol Angel, Sexy Powder Depilatory Angel, etc. No matter what's on top, everything has a strong vanilla base-note to go with their vanilla-pink-thong kink.

Actually I take that back. Their Beauty Rush line lacks vanilla and smells more like old Laffy Taffy stuck under a school bus seat.

The least offensive were the Pink (TM) body mists which smell like Bonne Bell lip gloss and lemonade. I find that endearing.

And their Sexy Little Things (TM) is an amusing fruity/marshmallow/wood thing that would be a perfect scent for Hello Kitty. It's what Momoberry should have been.

But I still give the props for understanding scent as an accessory. After all, what scent would you say goes best with sparkle shorts in imported polyester/spandex?

Please pardon the hate. Finals are almost over and with their passing I can return to the scents I love (such as Frederic Malle's French Lover which I had to try after reading Marina's fantastic review. For our moment of Zen, a reminder that Eros and scent have been linked since time immemorial.

Eau de Vie - Pina Colada

2008-05-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

I found this one on sale at Sephora for $5 and almost bought it unsniffed because at $5 the price was right. There was no tester so I opened up a box, sprayed a blotter and sniffed. Nice enough if a bit sweet. I also tested out the coconut on a blotter and found it to be sweet and creamy with toasted notes. Not bad.

I browsed a little, and then thought, do I really want to smell like a cocktail? Lets see what emotional response I have to actually wearing it.
This is where the magic happened! Trust me, Eau de Vie is a party in a bottle if you fancy the Roman sort.

On skin the sweet pineapple notes morphed into an impressive gastric juice accord. And the coconut had a new phlegmatic meets semenic tone. Secretions magnifiques indeed!

I was initially surprised that something so corporeal could come from the Luxcon Group - makers of Aquolina Pink Sugar, and the Chocolovers line. I actually find inexpensive Chocolovers to be one of the better chocolate accords - the orange notes prevent it from the synthetic tootsie roll scent many chocolate accords fall prey to. Still, their official ad copy is special:

"Its chocolate for the entire world, waiting to be enjoyed by you and your partner. Blended with sex notes of bergomot, orange, hazelnut, parchouly, vanilla, malt, and vanilla absolute. Enjoy it alone or share it." (sic)

Luxcon Group seems to be something of a renaissance company. According to their website they also manufacture something called Lubrigyn.

In the spirit of the Classic approach to understanding the body, I guess a classic song would be appropriate.

Escada's Chiffon Sorbet

2008-05-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

Macaroons from L'Epicerie.com.

Chiffon Sorbet was launched in 1993 as the first of the Escada seasonals. Considering that "Grunge" was in full swing at the time, this sweet meringue accord seems like an odd choice. It smells like something that would make an excellent corporate gift in Paris or Tokyo. All sugar fluff, vanilla and almonds it seems innocent enough, but there is a lychee note that foreshadows the "fruitini" years of the late 90's. Following on the heel's on 1992's Angel, Chiffon Sorbet is a quiet step in the direction of Escada's current neon bombast.

I found that it went on initially fruity for about 15 seconds and then faded down to an invisible musk that I thought might be Dave's beloved "sexy butts" accord. When Dave came home he said the house smelled very fruity so I might be anosmic for whatever this stuff is, but Dave said it smelled distinctly like the white powder coating on generic gummy fruit candies.

A sweetsy musical analog might be Juliana Hattfield, but let's fast forward a few years to a different sweetness, an age of Go Sailor, Cub, and across the Atlantic, the polymorphously perverse Momus.

Axe Phoenix, Clix and Kilo

2008-05-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

My friend said her boyfriend wears Axe body spray, and knowing him to be a man of refinement and taste (not to mention a world class ukulele collection) I sniffed down the deodorant Isle at my local CVS.

I was surprised at how likable most of the axe scents were. Sure, Vice smelled like the custom van my ex-con school bus driver used when the bus was in the shop. But none of them were any weirder than the Chai Latte Secret women smear in their armpits.

Ann Gottlieb is the nose behind Phoenix and Kilo as well as Calvin Klein's Euphoria and Sara Jessica Parker's Covet. It seems she has either personally created or art directed several scents at Estee Lauder, so it's not surprising that a few of the Axe scents are quite wearable. Phoenix and Clix are very similar - Phoenix is more of an abstract ozonic/aquatic style of a classic cologne in the early 90's style of Acqua di Gio, Cool Waters or Eau d'Issey. The semiotics are a little confusing to me: does a phoenix smell like water? Maybe someone put him out with a garden hose. According to Basenotes.net the top notes are: Citrus, Lavender, Geranium middle notes: Warm Violet, Earthy Notes, base notes of: leather and musk. As far as I can tell, Clix is the same thing with more citrus and possibly some mint.

Kilo smells pleasant, though I am also confused about the name. It smells of sweet leaves with possibly a hint of coconut. What is the intended visual association? The vast jungles of Columbia? Piles of powdered sugar on a glass coffee table? Who can say. Either way it smelled of teen-boy video-game fueled rebellion.

Bois 1920 Sushi Imperiale

2008-05-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

From William Eggleston's Graceland, 1984

Amidst the woody leather scents at Bergdorf Goodman, this one stood out. Rootbeer! Or more precisely it smells like a cold glass of Dr. Pepper, consumed in the wooded study of Graceland.

From William Eggleston's 10 D.70.V2 portfolio

This is what I wanted to smell in Andy Tauer's Lonestar Memories. Sushi Imperiale is a cold Dr. Pepper at a Dairy Queen half way between Houston and Austin, in a small dusty town where the low scrub grows. It's sugar sweet brightness in a dark library. It would be camp if it weren't so fantastically good. I don't quite understand the sushi reference, my guess is that it's supposed to be like eating pickled ginger in a Kyoto temple because I get a variety of spices including ginger, cinnamon, pepper, orange, verbena, vanilla and woods. It manages to be cozily familiar and refreshing at the same time, just like my lonestar roadtrip favorites the Old 97's and the King himself.

Cereus Pour Homme No. 4

2008-05-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine was looking for a good gastroenterologist. She finally found one near Prospect Park, the archetypal old man in a white lab coat. He told her to eat nothing but grated green apples for two days. She's had diarrhea for the past three weeks, and presumably the pectin will help the contents of her bowels congeal like strawberry-apple jelly.

And speaking of apples: Cereus makes some lovely light mens scents. Number 4 is a fresh green apple accord with the strange tart crunch of a slightly under ripe Granny Smith. Perfect for summer, it's cool, almost chilly and precisely the sort of thing I would like, except that for some reason it doesn't quite work. Chandler Burr thought it was a rehash of D&G Light Blue. I thought it was an off key combination of bright citrus notes, like listening to the Go-Go's coming from the iPod of the person sitting next to you on the subway. It's a fresh green apple that's being chewed near our ear.

And speaking of diarrhea, their ad copy is fantastic. Accoording to Now Smell This their press release states that their brand targets "affluent men aged 35 and older". Classy.

Almost enough to gel your poo into soft serve.

Eau Imperiale by Guerlain

2008-05-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

Mike Kelly @ the LACMA

For a long time I couldn't remember which of the Guerlain Eaux it was that I liked. Eau de Guerlain and Imperiale are similar, but the former has more herbs that make it kind of macho while the latter dries down to a soft jolly etrog-like yellow glow that makes me smile. I was looking for one of Mike Kelly's demented bananas to illustrate the point but the images I found looked so mildew-poopy-gross that I was afraid they'd give the wrong idea.

I think New York playes a big role in my olfactory choices. In the summer, in an air conditioned subway car, it's a nice treat when someone starts eating an orange. Everyone turns around and smiles. This is a bottled version of that, an antidote to whatever else may be going on. I suppose New York is in a perpetual dialog between Mr. Happy Banana and Mr. Poopy Gross, but I vote for more Mr. Happy.

Note that Imperial doesn't smell anything like bananas. I hate the synth-banana smell, and it reminds me of the high school chemistry lab where we turned moth balls and HCl into banana scented esters. This actually smells awesome, like some kind of magical super-lemon with a goofy grin that's been cheerfully blunted.

With Love, Hillary Duff

2008-05-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

The mature wood composition is less sweet than most scents for the junior set, and it lacks the sycophantic vanilla accord in most celebrity scents. A 12 year old in heels, but she seems so blasé about it that somehow it's charming.

Nina by Nina Ricci

2008-05-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

I remember Luca Turin finding this one somewhat agreeable for a fruity floral, but the combination of sweet fruits and woods is like a 12 year old in a thong. Don't bite that apple kid. It's poison!

Speaking of barf, I also tried the new Clean Wellness and Harmony - the ones in the purple bottles. Utter dreck. From the pretty purple bottle I would guess that this might succeed as part of a new age pyramid scheme.

100% Love

2008-05-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

I love it! A scent with it's own MySpace page! A delicious sticker-book accord of tootsie rolls, strawberry scratch n' sniff stickers and rose jam. It smells just like one chocolate scratch and sniff sticker I scratched an odorless groove into before I gave into just licking it.

"I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies"

Un Jardin après la Mousson by Hermes

2008-05-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize the great Now Smell This had already reviewed this one, but it makes sense since that's where I first learned of it's existence.

After dropping off my health paperwork, I took the Madison Avenue bus through the Friday fog up to the Hermes store. Mousson was a wet foggy haze. It struck me as dark and aquatic, ominous, like the sky in Houston before a flash flood. You could almost smell the wet wood of the Menil, and the people kayaking down route 59. There was even just a little touch of decayed earth, and a bit of spice but none of the flint from Terre d'Hermes. It seemed to inflate and grow and upon the dry-down I finally smelled the overripe melons. A good scent for listening to Bring Back the Guns.

future scents

2008-05-02T12:04:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about how Christopher Brosius already has accords of Doll's Head and Baby Aspirin to placate my desire for the chemical. Today I am wearing a blend of Demeter's Tarnish and Quince which read to me as a dressy meal at my beloved aunt's house.
On a nostalgia trip I thought I'd list a few more scents I adore:

dried grass
hot pavement, Queens edition
the bare paster walls of the Cy Twombly gallery
the smell of air conditioning inside Baskin Robbins on a humid day

Hello Kitty Solid Perfume

2008-05-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum combined with the pink cherry blossoms next door at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens but I have been nostalgic for the scent of Sanrio circa 1984-1994. Not too long ago they had a shop at FAO Schwartz, which in junior high was the go-to place for nylon wallets, and a glittery nailpolish color called Super Lame Pink.

I was missing that unique cherry-blossom/Smarties/vinyl smell, and was excited that the Sanrio store on 42nd street carries Kello Kitty perfume solids. I bought Rose, Lemon and Lavender, and I'm happy to say that Rose and Lavender beautifully recreate the fruity vinyl scent of Strawberry Shortcake heads, stickerbooks, Petit Nate and glow in the dark things you could send away for from the back of 3-2-1 Contact magazine.

Ananas Fizz vs. Bahiana

2008-05-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

Both Annas Fizz and Bahiana are available on Luckyscent.

I tried on both at Aedes on Christopher Street while waiting to meet up with Dave. To date, Carnal Flower and Moon Sparkle have been the only scents that really caught Dave's attention, and his preferred accord is that of "sexy butts". I thought the coconut basenote of Bahiana would be the sexy butts he describes but he said it was "too literal, too much like crushed fruits". I enjoyed both and thought they both could be the lemonade antidote to the smell of New York in summer. They were quite similar but with a sweeter guava/coconut accord in the feathered bottle compared t the abstract citrus fizz of L'Artisan. Either one could happily be the Go-Go's "Vacation", water-skis and all.

Serge Lutents: Five O'Clock Au Gingembre

2008-05-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

In high school, my friend Sophie and I once went indow shopping at the downtown Barneys. We were expecting to be ignored but instead we were swarmed by sales associates in empty palacial store. A little embarassed we told them that we were just having a look around and couldn't afford any of the Costume National and Comme des Garcons fashions on the racks. The associates giggled and started bringing out jeweled catsuits for us to try on. We got fully decked out and Sophie pointed out that the store soundtrack was the best mix of girlgroup songs we'd never heard, and quickly a dance party ensued.

The uptown Barneys is somewhat more inclined towards commerce and as such I don't go very often because the sales associates treat me like week old herring when I browse there. The other day, I stopped in on my way to Bergdorfs and mentioned to the dour associate at the fragrance counter that I had just started a scent blog. Immediatly he vanished and the sweetest, most cheerful associate appeared and started chatting with me about scent fandom, Sniffapalooza and he new scents he had on hand. He suggested I try Five O'Clock Au Gingembre. The great Perfume Smellin' Things has just reviewed this scent, but my experience was completely different. Maybe my impressions are clored by my pleasan encounter with the sales associate but I found Five O'Clock to be absolutely beautiful and a little bit rough, like crystallized ginger. Unlike most spice scents which hang close in a hot red velvet haze, this one was lovely and dry. Just a little bit dusky, it still had the fresh qualities of Ginger that I love so much in Demeter's Ginger Ale. As music it could be a harpsichord fuge or a slightly louche Parisian accordion ballad.

Update! Now available at Luckyscent

The JAR experience

2008-05-02T07:12:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I went on an excursion to Bergdorf Goodman's to sniff around. They have some of the most fun sales associates around. I was browsing the Killian scents, when I was asked ina very soft voice by a sales associate if I was familiar with... "JAR". And the JAR experience began.

Others have described the experience thoroughly, and in the interest of maintaining some mystery I'll keep it brief. It's really much more about the experience than the individual scents, though I will say that Jardinia originally reminded me of a cheese cave, but was a heady overripe floral on my hand, redolent of the browning crushed magnolia petals that collect underfoot at the end of springtime. Still, JAR comes as close to my David Lynch curtain-room fantasies as any place in NYC. (In part, because the perfume oil soaked shammies smelled to me like like kinky feet.) And along with De Verait is one of the best examples of that great New York City art form, Shopping Theater. A soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti would be appropriate.

Jardin en Méditerrannée by Hermes

2008-04-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I first sniffed this one after reading an essay singing it's praises in Fantastic Man. It's completely delicious, a mix of oranges, sage and cypress trees that smells like the interior of the temperate greenhouse at the Botanic Gardens crossed with the gray wooden slats that surround the cool airconditioned art galleries of the Menil Collection in Houston. Now if they could bottle the wet plaster of the Cy Twombley pavilion I'd be very impressed.

I don't quite know what it would be musically - catchy, a little dry, a little classic, but with the juice of a good dirty joke. Elvis Costello comes to mind, or maybe Esquivel.

Sunset Heat by Escada

2008-04-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

I actually really like the Escada scents. It's been a while since I sniffed it but Sunset Heat smelled like a noisy neon mango fruit collage to me, which is nothing but a good thing. Unfortunately the box looks like this:

( from imagination perfumery)

Now lets imagine how much better a neon mango collage would smell if the box instead looked like this:

(Art by the brilliant Donna Huanca aka Rua Minx)

Much better, no? I declare Escada scents to be noise-pop and Rua Minx as their musical patron saint.

Ume by Keiko Mecheri

2008-04-27T15:34:00.001-07:00

Takashimaya was the first pace I encountered the Keiko Mecheri scents. I remember liking Sanguine as an upbeat citrus, and this time I wanted to gobble up Ume. It's sort of a spicy pickled plum and woods scent, a little bit loud, a little bit retro like the 5-6-7-8s. It reminded me a little bit of Bulgari's BLV, but fruitier, sexier and more fun, like a fuchsia suede mini skirt.

Zephyr by Neil Morris Fragrances

2008-04-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

Today I browsed the scents at Takashimaya and found a line I'd never seen before, Neil Morris Fragrances. I was drawn to the name Zephyr. I think there was a children's book or an episode of Wonderworks about a ship or hot air baloon named the Zephyr. So I sniffed and it is fantastic. It's the sweet green smell of a summer's day, the scent that greets you if you are very lucky and exit the subway in a thicket of trees and cherry blossoms. It's a very vivid and natural scent, and rather than a pop song I'd liken it to the soundtrack of Sunday in the Park with George.

The other scents at Takashimaya fit into genres - floral, woodsy, cologne, oriental etc. But this one stood out, slightly sweet like a linden tree, very pretty and completely unlike anything else I've smelled. Actually, I take that back. It reminded me a little bit of the spring fresh frozen time feeling of Eau de Brooklyn which I've only sniffed in passing but I recall having a very visceral sensation of a sunny day at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.

The NMF website describes Zephyr as "Top Notes of Tangerine and Papaya that combine with lovely Heart Notes of Honeysuckle and Casablanca Lily, accented with Notes of White Tea. The Base Notes are a comforting blend of Sandalwood, Amber and Ocean Musk". Both scents are orange, tea, woods blends, so maybe that's the recipe for magic.

Chanel's Cologne and Moon Sparkle

2008-04-27T14:46:00.000-07:00

Turin describes Chanel's Cologne as the quintessential cologne. I finally smelled it at Bergdorf Goodman's and it is indeed lovely. It's bright, cheerful and harmonious. I got to thinking that cologne is sort of the punk pop anthem of fragrance - stripped down and up-beat like a major 5th chord. I was originally going to say that the Chanel Cologne was the "I wanna be sedated" of scent but I think it's actually more like Vacation by the Go-Go's. It's fun and pretty and it takes some serious skill to create something so effortless. It's sophisticated stuff, but I imagine Sedated would be even more stripped down and smell more like Queens.

Moon Sparkle by Escada smells like blue Hubba Bubba on a July sidewalk and I love it! This is what I imagine Wig Wam Bam by the Sweet would smell like. The name even sounds like it should be a purple flocked My Little Pony unicorn. It dries down a little softer but lasts forever - my parka still smells of it a week after I sprayed it.

Sights sounds and smells

2008-04-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

It's perverse but I love reading about smells. I just received a copy of Luca Turin's fabulous guide to perfume and his astute observations and droll bitchyness make the guide totally addictive. But it occurred to me that perfume is usually described in the language of fine wines and classical music. Which is great if you fart in Latin, but I want to describe the world of scent in the vernacular. And if that language involves references to Misfits songs all the better. So here we go, on with the blog.