Oranges and marmalade

In some ways the use of citrus notes in perfume is so ubiquitous. We almost take it for granted that an opening in a perfume will contain a citrus accord of some sort. Yet very seldom are we able to define it, or at least I'm not. For example, I often write down, when trying to document a fragrance on my skin, "starts with a burst of citrus", or "a vague citrus note", or something equally mundane. I'm not quite sure, but I think a lot of us are lead to believe that a citrus note is merely a bridge to something more important or profound, where the star players come to the fore. Is this because we think citrus smells are simple?

Which brings me to the main topic of this post - oranges and marmalade. On paper, marmalade is quite simply an orange or other citrus jam, or to list the ingredients at their most basic, orange rind, water and sugar. And yes, that is all that there is to it! But I defy anyone who has made or eaten marmalade to claim that it smells or tastes simple. January is the month for buying Seville oranges, used to make proper, bitter marmalade. I make jars of this stuff at this time of year, snapping up any that come to our local greengrocer. As some of you may know, certainly in this part of the world at least, Seville oranges have a very short season, usually hitting the shops in early January and gone before the month is out. My recipe for marmalade is simple. I simmer the oranges whole until they are softened and have collapsed slightly, then cut open, scooping out all the fruit, seeds and pith. I then slice the rinds thinly, and bring to the boil in the cooking liquor with a muslin bag full of some of the reserved seeds (pectin for set). I then add the sugar and boil until a jammy consistency and bottle. Voila - simple! I should point out that when it comes to jams and preserves I prefer less sugar. I hate cloyingly sweet jams, and much prefer the fruit to stand out, with that delicious tang to the extent that the sugar is only just enough to counterbalance the acidity. I also dislike a very set jam. Jam aficionados seem obsessed with the set, whereas I prefer my jam to be more like a conserve, ever so slightly runny. I can't stand trying to spread a jam that is more like toffee or a fruit cheese. 

But getting back the the smell - to me there is something so satisfying about the smell of simmering Seville oranges. They fill my house with a wonderful aroma of citrus that is at once both very citrusy and yet surprisingly sweet. The smell is a little like that when making caramel, which might be the sugars in the fruit dissipating into the water. What amazes me most is that cooking Seville oranges smell so aromatically sweet, yet when you taste the water or their skins, the result is the most bitter taste you can find. No wonder then that you need to add loads of sugar to counteract that bitterness. Like a lot of things in life, everything needs a balance, a counterpoint, a yin and yang. The delight of eating marmalade is that contrast yet balance of bitter aromatic fruit and satisfying caramel sweetness. And the delight of making marmalade is taking a fruit that is inedible in its raw state and turning it into a culinary marvel, at least in my eyes.

So to my final point - the smell and taste of marmalade is very complex to me, and that proves that citrus can be a complex smell, so why not in perfumery? I'm sure there are orange perfumes out there that are complex and wonderful, and I expect you to tell me which they are!

Image credit - http://d2eosjbgw49cu5.cloudfront.net/liketocook.com/

Scentless Saturday

I hate days when I go scentless (commando is another story...). It's been a frigidly freezing day here in old Blighty, with an icy wind out of the north east, and I've pretty much sat indoors all day, thinking about Spring, which still seems so far away. Daffodil leaves are tentatively pushing out of the cold earth, but I need a lot more assurance that those warmer days are not that far away.

I didn't wear any perfume today, which kinda bugs me. It will probably do me good to have an olfactory break for a change.

DSH Vintage Patchouly

In my experience to date, the DSH perfumes I have tried have been very nice, but rather fleeting on my skin. I'm dabbing from vials, so that might be part of the reason, but I feel like I want more from them, and in order to do that, they need to hang around a bit longer.

I think I've found one that ticks the right boxes in Vintage Patchouly. The notes (from DSH website) include bergamot, rosewood, East Indian patchouli, Moroccan rose absolute, Mysore sandalwood, amber, Australian sandalwood, ambergris, benzoin, ciste absolute, Himalayan cedar, moss and tobacco absolute. Now this is quite a list of notes. To be honest, thinking about it now I can detect the sandalwood and tobacco, but to my mind the patchouli is so beautiful and distinctive that it easily overshadows everything else in the composition. When I think of some of my favourite patchoulis, I think in particular of Borneo 1834, Lui, Patchouli Noir and to a lesser extent, Coromandel. Vintage Patchouly to my mind takes the best of all of these, and then in the dry down exhibits some of the more animalic characteristics evident in Lombre Fauvre. 

Vintage Patchouly starts off as a fairly sweet, woody patchouli. This woodiness might come from the rosewood. Just underneath this, as the patchouli comes to the fore, is a wet, earthy leaves smell, ever so slightly dank and musty. The fragrance becomes very rich and almost polished in feel and I detect what smells to me like a high quality dark chocolate, lightly sweetened and even a touch nutty. The camphor-like nature of patchouli does rear its head for a short while, but ultimately this is a smooth and rich, comforting earthy scent. The rich earthiness possibly comes from the tobacco and the smooth, slightly sweet nature from the sandalwood, but as I said earlier, patchouli is the dominant note. 

In the far dry down the more animalic nature of this fragrance is revealed, no doubt partly due to the presence of the ciste. The base is dryer, and still very woody and this is the point at which Vintage Patchouly to me smells like a sexy skin scent, almost musky. The patchouli, as is often the case in my experience, toes that line between sweetly comforting and slightly disturbing, almost feral, but not quite, sexual, yet slightly old-fashioned. It's hard to explain, but what I can say is that this is a wonderful fragrance and by the far the best I have tried so far in the DSH line. It has officially joined my list of favourite patchouli fragrances. I must admit, this is full bottle worthy for me.

Image credit - https://www.dshperfumes.com/

Friday roundup

The perfume sections of department stores in my part of the world are in a state of frenzy, trying to get rid of the old stock, a hangover from Christmas time, including many unwanted box sets. It's the usual suspects in many cases, although I did see a mini-set of Estee Lauder Men's fragrances on sale, marked down from £32 to £16. I'm curious to try Lauder Man, which is one of the four in the set, but honesty, the rest don't interest me at all, and I'm not convinced I want to pay £16 for what will essentially be 5ml of juice.

I did smell one of the Estee Lauder Private Collection fragrances, Tuberose and Gardenia, and it is a lovely, pretty thing. I might check this one out again in the spring. I also smelled Cinnabar for the first time, and I actually think it smells good. A lot of people seem to deride it, saying it is another, slightly inferior Opium and Coco clone. It may be, I don't really know, but I've certainly smelled a lot worse.

It's been a good week for me, perfume-wise. I haven't tried anything new, but like last week, I have revisited some of my older samples, including Andy Tauer's Incense Rose, Incense Extreme, Lonestar Memories and L'Air du Desert Au Marocain, Black Tourmaline by Olivier Durbano, some Middle Eastern musk oils and a newcomer to my sample collection, Vintage Patchouly by Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. More to come in another review on that one.

I'm definitely ready for another sample order. I can feel that credit card calling my name and I'm hoping to try some new and exciting stuff. I've read some good reviews of Xerjoff, despite their high price tag.

I find, like Josephine over at NotesfromJosephine, that I am really drawn to incense at the moment, for some reason. I can wear incense perfumes at any time of year - it's possibly my favourite genre - but I feel the urge even more so right now.

New releases are still few and far between in my neck of the woods. I think shops are still trying to get rid of older merchandise before getting in the new stuff, although the new Jimmy Choo is sure to be here soon. Cynical me - I can't say I'm holding my breath in anticipation...

Have a good weekend all.

Abdul Samad al Qurashi - Musk a Ajeeb Oil & Musk Aoud Oil

I acquired samples of these two musk oils from The Perfumed Court in summer last year. I wrote about Musk a Ajeeb Oil in a post here. At the time I tested this I wrote that I was perplexed by this musk, as it bore no resemblance to the Western musks we are more used to. More than six months on and I don't know if my feelings have changed. I think one thing is for sure - these musk oils definitely are easier to wear in cooler weather. In summer Ajeeb was a bit of a monster on me, pungent, forceful and dark. In winter it is marginally lighter, but by no means a wilting flower.

I still feel a bit confused when comparing Western musks to Middle-Eastern musks. I think in the West we are so used to lighter and cleaner laundry musks that when we encounter something more animalic and disturbing, it's a bit of a shock. At least, it was to me. I am a fan of more animalic musks like Serge Lutens' Muscs Koublai Khan, but even that one is tame compared to these by Abdul Samad al Qurashi. I felt it last year, and I still do now, which is that these musk oils smell earthy, fungal, pungent, cola-ish, resinous, or to be more blunt, complex. They just do. It's hard to explain, but they verge on repulsive, yet are still compelling enough to keep on smelling.

Musk Aoud Oil is a thick, almost waxy oil that is an opaque white colour. It looks a bit like vaseline. It is easier to wear than the Ajeeb, as the musk smells a bit lighter and more like the laundry musks we are familiar with, without actually being that tame. The oud is not forceful or medical, but rather lends a lightly spicy, resinous and woody feel to the composition. It is almost a skin scent really, but still very long-lasting. I really like it.

Musk a Ajeeb Oil looks frightening even in a vial. The oil is dark and treacly, and looks like what you would get if you reduced Coca Cola to a thick syrup. When applied on skin it is an orange colour, like the fat you get from minced meat cooked with tomatoes. The longevity of Ajeeb is staggering. On skin it does mellow and meld to an extent, but if you get this on fabric or anything else, you are set to have it stick around for a long time. To give you an example, I kept on smelling a weird musky smell in my car for a couple of months. Perplexed, I eventually opened the glove compartment to find a pair of sunglasses that I had misplaced. The smell was emanating from these and when I smelled them, I remembered that I had kept them in a bag with the musk oil at some point previously. Some of the oil had obviously rubbed onto the glasses and two months later the smell was still tenacious enough to scent my vehicle! So a word of warning there...

Ajeeb is by far the more complex of the two oils. It starts quite sweet and cola-ish, then progresses to a deep, resinous earthy-musky-dank accord that teeters between  repulsive and compulsive. There is something in there that almost catches in the back of my throat, yet for some strange reason it still draws me in. I want to describe this in more detail, but I'm struggling. There is something about Ajeeb that smells like decay and yet sexy-erotic at the same time. 

In summary, if you are looking to explore musks in more detail and would like to find something challenging, I would strongly urge you to try these. I know there are lots of other Middle-Eastern musk oils out there and it's a complex field, so I don't even know how good the quality is, but irrespective, I am still fascinated by both Ajeeb and Musk Aoud.

I'd be interested to hear if any of you have tried these or any other musks like this, and whether they confuse and fascinate you as much as these do me.

Image credit  - http://images.pictureshunt.com/pics/

Andy Tauer revisited

Like Gaia over at The Non-Blonde, most of Andy Tauer's fragrances feel like they could have been made for me. The incense-based ones in particular wear so well on my skin, if I may say so myself. There are a couple that just do not agree with me at all, namely Reverie au Jardin and Vetiver Dance. For some reason they make me retch, which I hate to say, but it is thus.

The others are a different ball game altogether. I wore Incense Extreme and Incense Rose the other day, one on either wrist, for comparison. They are strikingly similar - if one were to remove the rose note from Incense Rose they would be an extremely close fit indeed. I think of the two I prefer Incense Extreme. It has a gorgeously true and striking incense note, with supporting notes of iris, cedarwood and ambergris. There's a lot more in there I think, but one is never left in doubt that this is all about frankincense. In a way it is quite straightforward, but the smoky incense is sweetened slightly and has a waft-like character, like smoke drifting on a breeze. Although a strong fragrance, it is not cloying and is well-balanced.

Incense Rose is a lot sweeter than Incense Extreme, with a strong rose element to it. It is possibly the most powerful Tauer I have worn. Without wishing to exaggerate, Incense Rose has a staggering longevity on me, lasting the whole day, through a shower and to the next morning. I would strongly advise not using more than a couple of sprays in this instance, where less is definitely more, if you know what I mean! As the fragrance progresses, the incense takes more of a starring role, but the rose is never far away. However, as I said before, these two perfumes are sisters and very alike.

Although I personally prefer Incense Extreme, I would not hesitate recommending you at least sample both. I wouldn't personally see a need for a full bottle of both in my collection but you might feel differently.

Image credit - http://www.thedifferentscent.de/

Agent Provocateur - Agent Provocateur

I'm often surprised by how little I read about the original Agent Provocateur released in 2000. It is a wonderful, slightly dirty, rose fragrance, with saffron to start, and ends up smelling like a modern rose-chypre in some way.

Reading the reviews, this perfume seems to really divide opinion. Those that don't like it seem to be turned off by the perceived 'dirty' note, which some people have described as dirty sex, unwashed vagina and two-day-old knickers. Woah. In truth, unless I'm missing something obvious, Agent Provocateur does not smell anything as sexual as the above, in my opinion at least. Yes, it does have a slightly kinky, dirty element, but these descriptions verge on the ridiculous.

The notes from Basenotes include saffron, coriander, Moroccan rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, magnolia, white gardenia, amber, musk and vetiver. There are some serious florals in the heart, but on my skin I detect mainly the rose, and a wonderful, spicy rose it is too, no doubt amplified by the saffron and coriander. I don't find the florals overwhelming at all. Agent Provocateur manages to be simultaneously fresh and dark, clean and dirty, all at the same time, which is quite a feat.

Agent Provocateur made their name, if I'm not mistaken, by selling sexy women's underwear, so perhaps it is tempting to take the obvious step and assume the perfume will evoke sex. In a way it does. This is a sexy fragrance, but entirely unisex in my opinion, and while it does bring to mind the boudouir, I don't think it is as overtly smutty-sexual as some reviewers make it out to be.

If you enjoy rose fragrances, particularly slightly darker ones, for example Paestum Rose, Rose Poivre, Le Labo Rose 31, etc, I think you might like this one too, at a much lower price, I might add.

Image credit - http://www.cheap-perfume.co.uk/