Perfumes tested this week

I had a bit of a protest day on Tuesday this week, because I was a bit tired of wearing all these really out there kinds of scents. I wanted something normal and perfumy. So I had a break for a day and wore Van Cleef & Arpels First. I won't even try to describe the notes for you - that link leads to a really good review of it. To me, it's one of those old-fashioned head-kicker perfumes that screams OLD MONEY. You know those rich old ladies in tweed or herringbone suits you see doing their grocery shopping in David Jones? This is exactly the sort of thing I would imagine them wearing. I love it. Anyway, on to the test subjects:

Brief words about a few perfume oils I've been testing.

As I mentioned the other day, I have finally gotten around to updating my perfume lists, and now I'm getting back to testing the ones I haven't had a crack at yet. I'm working through the oils and indies first, and then I will move on to the commercial ones. I'm going alphabetically, as that seems to be the most practical way to do it. So here are a few brief words about what I've tested in the last week or so (I wear a different one each day to get a proper feel for them).

Smellies!

While Richard Avedon had his camera out, I had him take some pics of my little perfume collections from recent purchases. I haven't bothered with all of my regular commercial perfumes, just the oils and whatnot from the discoveries I've made online over the last year.

This is my teeny tiny collection of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Hell's Belle, Black Phoenix, Snake Oil and Jazz Funeral were part of a Christmas present, and Thirteen, Soothing Systems, Diary Of A Lovestruck Teenage Cannibal and Detestable Putrescence were the ones I bought from the lovely Livejournal girl I mentioned in the earlier post. She also sent me some freebie samples of other BPALs, including one particularly gorgeous one called Love's Philosophy, a blend of vanilla, cream and saffron. Unfortunately it's no longer made and by all accounts rather difficult to find. I did happen across a bottle on eBay the other day, but I STUCK TO MY GUNS and did not bid (admittedly, I seriously considered it), because I decided to refine my NY resolution to a month-by-month thing and my first goal was no online purchases in the month of February. I really, really wanted to make an exception to bid for it, but if I did that, there would be something else and something else and something else and it would never end. So I REMAINED STRONG. I'm sure I'll be able to hunt down a bottle eventually. I hope...

These are my Wiggle Perfumes. Aren't they gorgeous? They are roll ons, and they're perfect for carrying around in one's bag. They come in bigger sizes, but I only bought the small ones because I like having lots and lots of smaller bottles of different fragrances rather than just a few big ones of the same thing all the time.

And these are the roll on perfumes from The Garden Bath that arrived this week. These are the only full size ones I have so far, but I have a list of more I intend to buy when funds permit, because I really like this lady's fragrances. I also intend to get some full size body scrubs from there as well, because I bought some samples a while back and loved them.

And these are my samples and smaller decants from various places, and Imps from BPAL. I'm slowly working my way through testing all of these and compiling wish lists for full size bottles. Hard work!

My 5 favourite perfumes in 2009.

I am more a fan of perfume oils than commercial fragrances, so this was a good year for me, because I discovered Wiggle Perfume, The Garden Bath, and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. There wasn't a huge amount that grabbed my attention in the commercial perfume world - it was pretty saturated with one cheap, tinny celebrity fragrance after another. I hate those things, and it kind of irks me that perfumiers would agree to get involved. I mean, they have to earn a living like everyone else, but it's just so trashy. When Spongebob Squarepants has his own fragrance, it's well and truly time for the trend to die. So with commercial perfumes, I mostly stuck to my old favourites this year (Miller Harris Fleur Oriental, Lolita Lempicka, etc.). I did get a few decants from The Perfumed Court and found a couple of new loves that way, but mostly, I was all about the oils.

5. Chanel Coco Mademoiselle. I was given a sample vial of this earlier in the year when I bought some foundation, and I fell in love with it immediately, which surprised me because I'm not generally a fan of Chanel perfumes (too cloying). The website refers to it as an oriental, but to me it's more of a floral with a bit of vanilla in there somewhere. It's very classy and lasts on me for hours.

4. Miller Harris Noix de Tubéreuse. I really, really, really want a full bottle of this (I only have a 5ml decant), but it's not within my budget at the moment, sadly. This is a heady floral that lasts FOREVER. Gorgeous.

3. Wiggle Little 5. This was the first Wiggle perfume I tried and I could not stop sniffing myself. It's a floral oriental that would be perfect for a night out when you're all frocked up and sexified. Of course, I don't frock up and get sexified these days, so I just wear it around the house or at work. And sniff myself constantly.

2. The Garden Bath Southern Magnolia. (I can't link to the specific perfume, as Donna is on holiday and has taken down her wares for now.) I love Wiggle Mostly Magnolia, and that almost made it into my top 5, but in the end it was pipped at the post by The Garden Bath. Southern Magnolia seems to be more of "one note" than Mostly Magnolia (which, as the name suggests, is not entirely magnolia). I don't know if Southern Magnolia has any other notes in it, but the only thing I pick up is the pure, delicious scent of magnolia. It has great staying power on me too. I now want to get the scrub and lotion in the same fragrance so I can layer myself with it. Mmmmm. (I said magnolia a lot there, didn't I? There's not really any other way to describe it, though.)

1. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Jazz Funeral. Wow. This perfume is like nothing I have ever smelled before. I described it to the best of my limited ability here, and there's not much more I can add, really. It's so unusual and intriguing, and whenever I wear it, I just sit there sniffing myself every few minutes. I just love it to death. Ha! Death! Get it? Get it?

Smells and junk

So after going a bit crazy buying loads of fragrance samples online, I haven't been able to test all that many of them properly until now. First there was the stupid heatwave - perfume always goes weird and distorted on me when it's really hot. Then I was sick for a week and couldn't smell a damn thing. It's only in the last couple of days I've been able to get a whiff of anything I've put on my wrist.

I have been curious to try some Jo Malone fragrances for a while now, because the ones I had heard about had scents I love - vanilla, nutmeg (I often stand in my kitchen sniffing whole nutmeg from the jar on my shelf), black vetyver (okay, I don't know what that is, but doesn't it sound mysterious and slinky?). I have to say I'm glad I bought samples from The Perfumed Court before shelling out for a full bottle. They have absolutely no staying power. Within an hour, they were gone. As for the fragrances themselves, they're quite nice, but nothing POW!. I tried Vanilla and Anise (doesn't smell like vanilla, very faint trace of anise, just your bog-standard nice-but-not-startling perfume, really), Nutmeg and Ginger (both scents quite faint and only detectable for about ten minutes), and Black Vetyver Cafe (meh).

I also bought some Miller Harris perfumes. I've already talked about Vetiver Bourbon, which turned out to be a men's fragrance (how on earth did I miss that?). From the half-dozen or so I received, I have so far had a proper run at the following:

L'Air de Rien: This is a very earthy, musky scent. And I mean musky in its true sweaty-people-having-just-done-the-sexuals-in-a-hot-room sense, not that froofy Body Shop White Musk. It's kind of dirty, to be honest. I still don't really know whether I like it or not, but I certainly find it interesting. It's not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. If you turn up to work wearing this, people will stare suspiciously at you as though you've just rocked in from the night before, stilettoes in hand and all panda-eyes. Best used when you want to give the impression that you put out without bothering about dinner.

Noix de Tubéreuse: This is so, so pretty. There's not really much more I can say about it. It smells exactly like you'd expect it to by the name - floral and green. I really like it, and I'd probably buy a full bottle of it if I could afford to lash out $170AUD+ on a fragrance at the moment. It's got great staying power, too.

A few weeks ago I received about a dozen or so samples from Wiggle Perfume, and had a little bit of a squeal about Little 5, as well as eventually getting around to mentioning some others. Since then I've dabbled with a few more, and I'm surprised by how many I like. I bought that many samples because I expected to like maybe two or three. There are probably about two thirds I'd happily buy in bigger sizes.

Mostly Magnolia: I don't have a huge interest in ever going to America - mostly because I don't have a huge interest in travel - but if I ever did go there, the first place I'd want to go is Savannah, Georgia, thanks to reading Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil years ago. I have this (possibly completely wrong) image of beautiful old houses, green gardens overflowing with flowers and vines, people sitting on their verandahs drinking mint juleps, and a scent in the air of magnolia. If I had a garden, I'd have a magnolia tree - I just love that smell so much, and it is most heavenly after the rain. That's what this fragrance makes me think of. It's lush and gorgeous, and perfect for the Summer. 

Theda: I tried this because although I don't like old-timey silent movies, I love old-timey silent movie actresses. They always look so shifty and dirty, in a good way. I wore this a few weeks ago and really liked it, though I couldn't put my finger on any particular note. It was just a really nice fragrance that I kept sniffing through the day. I have since worn it a second time, and I like it even more, though I still can't detect any particular notes. It could be the cold I am still not quite over, or it could just be that I know about as much about perfume as I know about wine - not much at all, but I knows what I likes. And I likes this a lot. It's on my list of future full-size purchases.

Maggie: When I Googled for reviews of Wiggle Perfumes before I bought my first lot of samples, this was the one that was mentioned favourably most often. And it's also the one that got the most oohs and aahs and "Oooh, that's lovely!"s when I wore it to work. It seems to be a universally-liked fragrance. It's mostly floral (a gentle rose), but with a distinct note of lemon and a lighter, harder-to-catch note of sugar. I would not have thought lemon and roses would be particularly good together, but it works beautifully.

Zooey: I tried this one out last night. The first thing Noodle Arms said was, "Smells like pencil shavings", and then tried to get me to bite into a Jelly Belly Beanboozled Bean to prove her point (I'm not falling for that one - I know she's trying to slip that vomit-flavoured one in there!). My first impression was one of those car air freshener things. We then looked it up and found it has notes of chypre and pine, so we were both right. At first, I didn't think I liked this at all, but as it wore down, it became more interesting. It's not really me - I'm not that big on the woody family, but it's a pleasant fragrance, and could probably be worn by either men or women.

Having been so pleased with my first lot of samples from Wiggle, I ordered 9 more, and three 5ml sizes of the first few I liked - Mostly Magnolia, Little 5, and Du Bois. They took just over a week to get to me, which I had not expected at all, given that I ordered the week of Thanksgiving. So not only does this lady make some really lovely perfumes, her customer service is just superb. Thumbs up!

Phew. That went on longer than I had intended, and I only touched on a few of the ones I wanted to talk about, so I guess there will be another post along these lines in the next few days. I have four weeks off (woo hoo!), so plenty of time to do some testing and playing and reviewing and writing. I just got a warm 88 palette from Coastal Scents this week also, so I'll be talking about that when I've had a proper crack at it.

Review of some Wiggle perfumes.

Although I've struck a couple I really didn't like - for reasons I shall explain in a minute - overall, I'm really impressed with these perfume oils. They have a great kick to them, they last, and some of them smell utterly divine. I can only stress again, in the words of Molly Meldrum - do yourself a favour, get some samples and start playing.

Du Bois is a floral/musk, but more of a day time scent, whereas Little 5, which I raved about in my last post, is definitely a night time scent. Du Bois is for Spring, when the floral dresses and kitten heel shoes and soft twinsets come out. Very pretty, and sexy without being trampy. I will definitely buy more of this one.

The first thing I thought of when I smelled Persephone was fly spray. That sounds like a criticism, but it isn't. I really like it, but I did get a distinct whiff of citronella. Noodle Arms thought it smelled like orange and lemons. Are citronella and citrus related? I didn 't think so, but I know nowt about that sort of thing. We're heading into a stinking Aussie Summer, so if there really is citronella in this one, it would be great for keeping the mossies away!

Pumpkin Amber and Noemi. Years ago I used to work with an awful woman who would talk constantly about her sex life with her husband - whom she referred to as Gorgeous Boy. They reminded me a lot of this:



She also poisoned neighbourhood cats with asprin-laced bowls of milk, and thought it was funny. Horrid, horrid person. The other thing I couldn't stand about her (as if her animal cruelty and creepy sex life weren't enough) was that she reeked of one of those old lady perfumes. I never could put my finger on what it was, but it's quite a common fragrance - it smells the same as Vaseline Intensive Care Hand and Nail Lotion.

Unfortunately, both Pumpkin Amber and Noemi have this note somewhere in the background, and I just can't get past it. It's a shame, because the spice notes in Pumpkin Amber in particular are lovely. Makeup BFF and Noodle Arms couldn't stand that floral note either. I wonder what it is?

I should stress that perfume is such a personal thing - I hate ocean scents and light, airy floral scents, but they're hugely popular, so obviously a lot of people like them. A review of a fragrance is always going to be subjective. I think it's great that you can get samples from this site for that very reason. Then I know when I am coughing up for the full sizes, I'm getting the ones I really love.