Narcisco Rodriguez Musc Oil for Her

  
Musk-based fragrances have really, really grown on me this year, I came within a whisper of wearing Serge Lutens Clair de Musc for my wedding (choosing to wear Khiel's Musk body lotion with L'Artisan Safran Troublant instead, but it was an extremely close-run thing), and my musk obsession started with re-discovering the Body Shop White Musk Oil around this time last year.

Narcisco Rodriguez Musc for Her is a new range from NR, and there's a  musc oil released too (limited edition), which I was sent to try.  Now, I wasn't a particular fan of the original For Her fragrance, so won't be bothering comparing the two scents, but this is a very pretty, lightly floral scent, which I've enjoyed wearing a great deal.  

It's a warm scent, which stays very close to the skin. Clean, and slightly sweet-smelling, that isn't entirely a million miles away from the slightly more diffusive Clair de Musc (the two layer extremely well, in fact, the RM anchors the CdM to the skin, making both last longer), it's exceedingly pretty.  I find it also makes a good layering scent for other fragrances too, like the Tom Ford Plum Japonais that I'll be telling you about on Friday.

Narcisco Rodriguez Musc Oil for her is a limited edition (the rest of the range is a permanent line), and will cost £66.

The Fine Print: PR Sample.

This post: Narcisco Rodriguez Musc Oil for Her originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

I want to: Smell Like a Hug ...

 For all that I love my avant garde niche perfumes (and I do), there are days when all you want to do is smell loveable, the olfactory equivalent of a quick snuggle on the sofa.  For those days, all you need is musk, for musk is the scent of skin and so these are the products I pick:

I'm a big fan of layering my scents, so I start with:

Philosophy Amazing Grace Shower Gel

A softer scent in the shower gel form, than the rather sharp scent you get in the eau de toilette form, this is a gentle, almost flowery form of musk that is, in it's slightly laundry-soap kind of way, rather loveable in itself.  I have a hard time keeping my bottle away from MrLippie.

Khiel's Original Musk Body Lotion

Not all hugs are innocent, are they?  So I follow Amazing Grace with a light slathering of Kiehl's Original Musk Body Lotion, for that little hint of naughtiness under the light and bright musk scents I'll be following this up with. I can't speak for the formula's moisturising properties, as I don't use body lotion as a rule, it's generally something I only use for layering scents with.  That said, this is a nice formula, and I used it for scenting my skin on my wedding day (layered underneath L'Artisan Perfumer's Safran Troublant).

Body Shop White Musk Perfume Oil

Most definitely not the spray eau de toilette!  I find myself using this as an anchor to many floral fragrances, and occasionally as a perfume in it's own right.  It moisturises the skin somewhat, and allows your fragrance "proper" to have something to grip to, moisturised skin holds fragrance better.  In it's own right, this is soft, powdery and rather delicious, and it helps give a sensual base-note to whatever you apply afterward.

Which is (in this case):

 Serge Lutens Clair de Musc

 A bit of an overlooked fragrance from the Serge Lutens line, this sweet, fragrant hug-in-a-bottle reminds me of childhood cuddles from my female relatives.  It's not ground-breaking, it's soft and gentle and rather lovely.  Longevity isn't the greatest, which is why I like to layer it.  This was this close >.< to being my wedding fragrance ...

The Fine Print: Mixture of samples, purchases and gifts.
 
This post: I want to ... Smell Like a Hug ... originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Just Cavalli - Bite Me

No one who writes a blog called Get Lippie could possibly resist a campaign called Bite Me ...! Did you guess what the teaser was for the other day?  It was, of course, for the latest fragrance from Roberto Cavalli: Just Cavalli which features notes of bitter orange, tiare, alongside woods, and is, apparently, the "scent of youth and seduction".  Being neither a youth, nor a seductress, I can't possibly vouch for that, but it's a cute and funny campaign!

Gotta love a bit of pink snakeskin - I certainly do!  The ad campaign features Georgia May Jagger, and the beautiful print ads have been shot by Mario Sorrenti.

There's a playful Just Cavalli Bite Me Facebook app too, where you can "bite" your friends for the chance to win Just Cavalli prizes. I've already bitten MrLippie (well, you know, it is Valentine's Day very soon, and I can't afford to be buying him a wedding present, we make do in this household ...) so, will it be love at first bite for you ...?

 Roberto Cavalli Just Cavalli will be available at all good fragrance retailers very soon.




The Fine Print: Sponsored Post.  I'll send you a postcard from my honeymoon ...
 
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Wedding Preparation: Fragrance Profiling with Penhaligons

If you've read my last piece for Basenotes (Buying The Dress Was Easy ...), then you'll know that I'm having a hard time selecting my perfect wedding fragrance.  To that end, MrLippie and I found ourselves at the Covent Garden Penhaligons store a couple of weeks ago, to have a fragrance profile that might help us narrow down our choices.

A service that's open to everyone, for any occasion - and it is free! - I can heartily recommend it.  We were there for a couple of hours (because we were chatting so much, it doesn't have to take so long), and it's thoroughly enjoyable.  You talk for a little while about your choices in fragrance, what the occasion you want your perfume for, and general chit-chat about your life, and a little bit of the history of the brand (which is fascinating, by the way) then you're handed scent strips to sniff of fragrances in their particular families.

What made this super-interesting for us, is that we were encouraged not to sniff each others samples, and we weren't told the names of the fragrances, so that we could avoid any associations we might have already made with the scents we might have already known.  It was, in many ways, a perfect blind sampling of the Penhaligons range, and we found we picked some very interesting, and somewhat random fragrances for ourselves as a result.

Eventually you narrow your choices down to three scents, which are then sprayed onto your arm, and you make your choice once you've had a chance to see how the fragrance settles on your skin.  Only at this point were myself and MrLippie allowed to sniff each others choices!

My final three were Amaranthine, Love Potion No9, and Night Scented Stock, respectively a "corrupted floral", a "spicy floral" and a soliflore.  You'd think I like flowers, or something! MrLippie decided on Opus 1870, Juniper Sling, and Sartorial. I was as amused by MrL's choices almost as much as I was surprised by my own, Opus 1870 is a fizzy (to my nose) and spicy classic, which I'm genuinely hoping he will decide to wear to the ceremony, and Juniper Sling is one of my own favourite scents, which he's always refused to wear previously!  Sartorial, we both liked very much indeed, but it felt just a tiny bit "every day" to wear for a wedding.  It is rather wonderful though.

As for mine, well, LP No9 has an oddly masculine opening, rather fougere-seeming, but dries down on my skin into a slightly spicy floral, which has a tiny hint of shaving foam to it.  Nicer than that sounds, honest! I do like a bit of a masculine-seeming scent.  And, I can't deny it, the fact that the juice matches my dress in colour is amusing the heck out of me.  Night Scented Stock has a very different opening, reminscent of engine oil, and geraniums, but again dries down into something a little more traditionally floral.  Amaranthine (which I'm simply going to have to acquire a bottle of) is beautiful, creamy, lush and spicy, but I felt it was a little too odd for the day itself, though I'd be happy to wear it any other time. 


If you get a chance to go to the Penhaligons store, please do take advantage of the fragrance profiling service, it's a knockout.

So, are any of these the ones we'll pick for the big day?  Who knows?  Hopefully we'll have it figured out by the 16th February ...

 
This post: Wedding Preparation: Fragrance Profiling with Penhaligons originated at: Get Lippie on January 25th 2013 All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Aftelier Perfumes Wild Roses

 I don't get many emails from perfumers (and after the Thierry Wasser story the other day, I'm not expecting any more any time soon, either!), but when Mandy Aftel dropped me a line asking if I'd like to try her Wild Roses fragrance, I leapt at the chance.  Mandy and I have chatted fragrance a few times, and I always come away from our conversations with an intense impression of how much love Mandy has for her life, and for her fragrances.

I recently named Aftelier Perfume's Tango (on Basenotes) as one of my fragrances of 2012, so Wild Roses intrigued me, Mandy was inspired by walks around rose gardens, and it shows, you can smell everything in this fragrance, from the petals to the stalks, to the grass you're walking underfoot.

Opening with a dark treacle and rose petal accord, this feels a little boozy in the opening, but it's not a sharp booze, more a hint of something well-aged in oak, brandy, possibly, or a dark, dark rum. It feels almost like there is incense in there too, but I don't think there is.  The wood eventually moves to centre-stage, and there's a hint of something bitter and green underneath, which comes from tarragon.  Overall, this is a lush, rich, dark rose, jammy almost, but not sweet.  More of a rose marmalade, than a compote.  It's not sweet and powdery, but thick and deep. Concentrated and cerebral, it is more about the idea of a rose with it's thorns and woodiness, and unexpected bitterness than a photo-real imagining of a rose petal. It's about as different a rose scent from yesterday's DKNY offering as can possibly be.  Beautiful, rather than simply pretty, sophisticated rather than simple.

I have a tiny sample bottle, but I keep getting the urge to dump it into a base of carrier oil, and simply bathe myself in it.  I would if I could.

Mandy has recently moved into making Chef's essences too - we have the one in cocoa. It smells so good, it's practically a perfume in itself!  Almost a shame to cook with it.  But we will ...


The Fine Print: Sample from Mandy Aftel.

This post: Aftelier Perfumes Wild Roses originated at: Get Lippie on January 24th 2013 All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

pureDKNY Drop of Rose Review

Back in the days when it was possible for a sales assistant to know every fragrance on their shelves and - even better - to know enough about them to be able to give a knowledgeable answer to any question about their wares, no matter how random the request (so, about twenty years ago, then),  I obtained a bottle of Brousseau's Ombre Rose simply by asking the question: "Can I have a perfume that smells of baby powder, please?".  I love me some baby powder.  Babies not so much, sorry.

Anyway, I loved that bottle of Ombre Rose, with its pale pink embossed bottle, and the idea of smelling fresh and clean and powdery-soft so much that I used it all up in a matter of weeks.  Then you couldn't get it in Browns of Chester any more, and I couldn't afford to travel to London to get a replacement (then I did move to London only to discover that I couldn't afford a replacement), so it's remained a distant memory ever since.

Until this little bottle turned up on my doorstep last week, that is:

PureDKNY Drop of Rose is a simple, sweet, powdery-soft rose fragrance that smells as if you've just rolled yourself in the finest talcum Johnson & Johnson can provide.  It doesn't smell of much other than that, but it's a pretty fine thing to smell of all the same. Well, providing you like powdery, velvety, and sweet roses, it is.  And I do. It's gentle, pretty and about the most ladylike fragrance in my collection.  You remember when you used to spend hours making "perfume" as a child with rose petals and water?  Well, this is the smell you were trying to create.

If you don't like rose, you won't like this. It smells like a hug from your favourite elderly aunty, and feels like one too. I hear it's also a dead ringer for Chantecaille's discontinued Derby Rose, so if you were a fan of that, this is one to try too. It's on shelves from 3rd February.
   
The Fine Print: PR Sample.
 
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The Anti-Perfume: Philosophy Amazing Grace

After yesterdays boggling, something a little less controversial, I think. I like my perfumes big and strong (like I like my men, now I come to think of it*), so Philosophy Amazing Grace is a bit of a departure for me.  A light floral, with a clean musk base, it's the antipathy of practically everything in my fragrance collection.  As such, I should hate it.

But I don't.

It's the smell of towels fresh from the dryer, of sheets drying on a line on a warm sunny day, there are flowers in there (sadly indistinguishable from one another), and the smell of warm skin straight out of the shower, then fragrant laundry-musks complete the fragrance. It is, essentially, the scent of one of the more expensive washing powders on the market.  It contains the very essence of cleanliness, warmth, and cheery comfort, like taking a sweater from the cupboard and giving it a sniff and realising it still has just a hint of the perfume you wore last buried deep in its folds. Which is a neat trick, when you think about it. 

Amazing Grace is a great fragrance for those who think they don't like perfume, or aren't  allowed to wear highly fragranced products because of their jobs, but still wish to smell clean, polite, and inoffensive.  That's why I've labelled this post "The Anti-Perfume", because this is how I see Amazing Grace: a nice smell, but it sure as heck ain't a "fine fragrance".

If all that sounds like I'm damning Amazing Grace with faint praise, I'm actually not. For a long time I wore only Demeter Laundromat which really does smell like fabric conditioner (I'm weird, shut up), and Amazing Grace is also a good replication of that smell.  I genuinely like it a great deal, it's simple, easy to wear, rather pretty, and great way to smell "nice" without anyone wondering where the faint smell of burning tar/mangrove swamp/fly spray is coming from, as can happen with some of my more ... er ... avant garde scentsations.  It has the lasting power of your average mayfly though, so if you want it to last (at least slightly longer), then layer it over the matching body products - the shower gel in particular is extremely good.

Now, if I could only get MrLippie to STOP STEALING THE DAMN STUFF!  We're gonna need a bigger bottle ...


*Hugh Jackman.  MrLippie who?

The Fine Print: PR Sample.

This post: The Anti-Perfume: Philosophy Amazing Grace originated at: Get Lippie on January 22nd 2013. All rights are reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Guerlain Eau De Lingerie

Confession time: I recently spent some time having tea with Guerlain's utterly charming, handsome (and funny with it) Thierry Wasser, and, to my complete chagrin, after an extremely pleasant, and polite, question and answer session, I - for it was, of course, I - managed to drag the conversation down so far into the gutter that Thierry ended up miming how to get into a pair of Spanx for the delight and edification of our tea-partners.  I'm not proud of myself*. If, however, Guerlain ever do produce a fragrance named "La Petite Spanx Noir", I want commission.

Which brings me politely (or not - your mileage may, as they say, vary) to this:

Perfume for your knickers.  From Guerlain.  Guerlain say:

"Close to the skin, in the very place where fragrance settles, our lingerie lies... and this inspired Guerlain to conceive of an innovative beauty ritual. A delicate new fragrance to spray onto lingerie, creating a special moment of sensuality in which women are invited to indulge..."

To which I say: " ...er ... does it come with a free tube of Canesten?"  Now, admittedly my "special moments of sensuality" these days usually involve a jammy doughnut, a nice cup of tea, and a brief half an hour with the Hugh Jackman DVD+ of my choosing, but still ... a fragrance too far?  I think I'd rather scent my drawers than my "drawers", personally.  What say you?

It'll be available exclusively in Harrods from February.  The perfect Valentine's gift ... 
  
* This sentence may be a lie**

** IS a lie.  It may be the single proudest moment I've ever had as a blogger.  I am, however, now banned from the Connaught Hotel tea-rooms as a result.

+ Paperback Hero, seeing as you didn't ask.

Image shamelessly stolen from Basenotes.
  
This post: Guerlain Eau De Lingerie originated at: Get Lippie on 21st January 2013. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Sneaky Peek ...

My desk fills up with random beauty clutter throughout the week whilst I'm figuring out what I want to be writing about.  I wander around the flat, picking things up as inspiration strikes, and it all ends up here. Along with random wrappers and press releases and, well, stuff.  As you can see, perfume and skincare have been on my mind at the moment.  All this (and a tiny bit more ...) coming up on the blog this week!  If you have any specific requirements, then now is the time to let me know ...

This post: Sneaky Peek ... originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Andy Tauer's Advent Giveaway

I'm a massive fan of Andy Tauer, I was lucky enough to meet with him recently (more about that anon), and I enjoyed a great deal hearing about how he is inspired to create his perfumes, and to be able to smell some of the ingredients that make up his creations. He is certainly an artist of perfume in an increasingly corporate bland and fruity-smelling miasma.  If you're interested how perfumes are created, rather than designed, then you should certainly read his blog.

Anyhoo, this year, he's having an advent giveaway, with a chance to win a scent every single day, and it's something I'll be entering at every opportunity (I have some samples of his fragrances here that I'll be reviewing very soon) how about you?  It's 24 opportunities to win a wonderful prize!

Click here for details of Andy Tauer's Advent Giveaway

YSL Belle D'Opium

Launched in what must be one of the prettiest bottles I've seen all year, Belle D'Opium is the latest fragrance from Yves St Laurent.

A "sister" scent to the original Opium, this is lighter, and designed - I guess - to be more of a complement to the current trend for the fruity-musky-woody stews that are all you can smell in modern fragrance these days.

Which is a shame.  I loved the original Opium, my father used to buy it for my mum by the bucket load (in massive duty-free flacons), and the heavy, heady, spicy oriental scent of carnations and smoke perfumes many of my memories.  Belle D'Opium has, sadly, about as much in common with the original Opium as I do with Cindy Crawford.

It starts off well, not too sweet, slightly dry and a bit flowery, but not overly so, and for the first 15 minutes or so it's perfectly  ... pleasant.  Inoffensive. No spices, no headiness, no intense desire to keep sniffing, and work out what the notes are, as you get with some perfumes, just ... niceness. A little warmth, maybe, but it's hard to tell how this is supposed to remind you of Opium at all, outside of the name.

Then, on my skin, it simply  ... disappears.  Completely.  Totally.  Utterly. It disappears with such a total and abrupt thoroughness that upon occasion I've completely forgotten that I'd applied it in the first place and then an hour later I've applied something completely different. And, get this, when I have, the scents have never clashed, that's how thorough a nothingness is left behind once the top notes wear off.

It's a shame that such a beautiful bottle with such a historic name behind it smells so  ... gone.

The Fine Print: This was a PR sample I wanted to love.  Sorry peeps!

Perfume Review - Acqua Di Gioia by Giorgio Armani

Said to resemble a mojito, with notes of mint, water jasmine, brown sugar, and primo fiore lemon, this is the latest release from Giorgio Armani perfumes.  It's meant to also have some aquatic notes, and smell very "wet" as a result.

I've seen it described as a "floral aquatic", and many of the reviews I've read describe all the notes as read in the press releases.

I think maybe my nose is broken, because I smell melon (chanterais, maybe, a little honeydew, but definitely no watermelon), I don't get any of the mint, or the lemon, or the jasmine (no flowers at all, in fact), but after a while on the skin, I can smell the sugar.  In fact, after it's rather crisp'n'fruity opening, it's really, really, really sweet on my skin, to the point where I can't stand it any more.  It's a shame really, as on paper this scent sounds like it's really my kind of thing, I adore mint in perfumes - go crazy for it, in fact, as you'll see in a couple of weeks - so I'm terribly upset that this scent, to me, just smells like another generic fruity, woody musk that you can buy by the bucket-load anywhere in the UK.

That said, it'll sell MILLIONS. Armani perfumes are always stupendously popular, and this isn't a bad one, not by a long stretch, it's purely a malfunction of my nose, I think. I do adore the wonderfully tactile bottle though, it's a delight in the hand.

The Fine Print: Samples were acquired for review purposes.  If they weren't, I'd be reviewing something else, so there.

Review - Lancome Climat

Scouting around trying to find myself a bottle of Cuir de Lancome in Selfridges (I was offered O de Lancome five times, but no matter), I came across this little beauty.

First released in 1967, it is described as a floral aldehyde, and was re-released by Lancome a couple of years ago.  I find it beautiful, it's very feminine - even ladylike - but it's another scent that's sweet without being candy-ish, and floral without being too single-note.

On first spraying, it's a very scent-y kind of scent, it reminds me in a dim and distant kind of way of Chanel No19. It's a classic fragrance in that sense, calling to mind boudoirs, and negligees and wedge-heeled mules.  And yet, when it dries down, it's powdery and warm, a little comforting, and lingers close to the skin.  It's old-fashioned, almost, in it's powdery-ness, but it's intimate and lovely, and it's been a fine addition to my perfume wardrobe.

Climat costs £38 and is available exclusively from Selfridges.

Review - Armani Code for Men

Well, it's been a while since he popped up, and I did embarrass him this week by outing his new-found love of candles, so I thought it was time he reviewed something else. Today's post is by my fluffy wuffy bunnykins Mr Lippie.  Please say hello:

***

So.

I'm not a big wearer of scents, I think we've established that. If you didn't know it from yesterday's post (rolleyes) you certainly know now. However, somehow, I seem to have been landed with a quite nifty bottle of Armani Code, and after the first experimental sniff a couple of weeks ago, I thought I could potentially give it a whirl.

Firstly, a brief look at the packaging - the bottle itself. A very sleek black bottle that curves outwards gently at the base and top, with the brand name fairly discreetly at the base of the bottle. Nice. One minor bit of criticism - the lid, whilst going for the gunmetal grey look, is still, noticeably, plastic. I admit, you don't want to spend lots on a piece of kit that is no doubt going to get dropped, scraped, possibly lost, etc, etc, etc...but it just jars a bit with the look of the rest of the bottle. Still, nevermind, onto the scent itself!

It's....intriguing. And that's not a cop-out, I assure you. It's fresh...but there's a hint of something behind it. The scent, is, I would say, very definitely masculine - not aggressively so, but more subtle. Not quite an old-school James Bond smooth scent, but definitely several leagues above the occasional nasal assaults you find emanating from salesmen. I'd normally say used car salesmen, but, to be fair, the teenage wunderkids you find in mobile phone shops tend to pile it on with little or no regard to whether the customer has an interest in staying concious during the sales pitch. Where was I? Ah yes, the scent. Smelling this puts me in mind of a cocktail bar - not one with a dress code or something, or anything horribly 80s-tastic, but somewhere comfortable, relatively unselfconcious, and with enough presence of mind to keep things low-key and chilled. I like it, basically.

It lasts quite well - I would say a whole morning - and there's still hints of it there, which isn't unpleasant. I'm not sure how much this will retail at, but it looks like it'll last a good 2/3 months, so I would say it's probably a reasonable choice for a gift/impulse buy/attempt to make your boyfriend smell nice/general hint to change his ways...I'll be using it for awhile yet, so I'm sure GetLippie won't have too many objections!

And finally, because I said I would, the summary: 

Less whale bottom, more chilled cocktail bar. And if that doesn't make you like it, what will? ;-)

***

So there you go.  Armani Code is available from all good perfumeries (trans: department stores) and costs around £43.

The Small Print: Samples were sent for review. But actually, I take no responsibility for the content of this post anyway, as MrL won't wear the stuff when I'm near him.  I suspect he's worried about me trying to re-enact the Denim adverts. That or he drank it.

Review - Untitled by Maison Martin Margiela

I was at Selfridges last Thursday, to see the in-store launch of this new fragrance from Maison Martin Margiela, and it looked amazing, white feathers everywhere, women dressed in lab coats, and the fragrance strips are cut like hospital bracelets! Plenty more fun than the usual frou-frou frilliness, I must say.

The perfume is a little different to the norm too, on me, this is one of those rare perfumes that smells more or less exactly like it does in the bottle when it's on my skin.  That's not a bad thing, to be honest, how many times have you fallen in love with a scent from a perfume strip only to find that it smells nothing like that when you're actually wearing it?

This has resinous top notes for me, I used to play the violin (yes, it's a day of unexpected confessions from me, I'm afraid), and immediately, it transported me back to Miss Brenton's classroom for violin practice on wet weekday lunchtimes. I spent a lot of time as a youngster with rosin under my nails, I recall, and this was a very unexpected  and not unwelcome scent-memory!  I've since read that the top-note is Galbanum, which is indeed, a resin.  It's an unusual, quite sweet scent (on me), without being sugary.

Crammed full of unexpected ingredients, it contains incense and orange blossom giving it an evocative undertone.  Mr Lippie calls it "interesting" and indeed it is, green without being over-fresh or sharp, and sexy without being in your face about it.  It's a mature and confident kind of sexiness, one that grows on you the more time you spend with it, rather than the desperately waving their knickers in your face kinds of smells a lot of perfumes rely on these days.

Personally, I don't get too much smokiness from (untitled), despite it's incense base, although when I do, I'm reminded of retsina and barbecues in the Troodos mountains, it smells of long, relaxed evenings, and again, this is a scent-memory that's personal to me, but it goes to show - I think - how unusual a scent this is, you don't immediately thing "strawberries!" or the like.  This is an unusual and unfussy scent which is all the better for not smelling of fruit, ozone or sugary girly sweetness, it smells of tweed and cashmere, and closeness.

Whilst it's being marketed as a unisex scent, I'm not entirely sure about that premise to be honest (although you can bet I'll be testing that claim!), it's very definitely feminine to me, and I like it that way.

The Small Print: Samples were provided for review.  As always, opinions are honest regardless of the source of product  Whether or not the aforementioned opinions make any sense is a matter of opinion.  As this is a perfume review, you may find it smells of a different classroom entirely on your skin, I cannot take any responsibility if it's maths, but you will have my deepest sympathy.

Scents of Winter

I don't know about you, but I spent the summer drenched in sunshine! Not literally, but I did wear a lot of  Clarins Sunshine fragrance.  When I first smelled it, I had an instant sense-memory of my first ever foreign holiday, it was so redolent of Ambre Solaire, the beach, and bubblegum, that I was instantly ten years old again, right there on the shop floor. For me, its instant summer in a bottle, no matter what the weather!

Sadly, I can't keep deluding myself that it's not winter any more, and the changing season seems to call for deeper and darker scents.  My usual winter perfume of choice is Aromatics Elixir by Clinique, I love the depth and unusualness of it, and the fact that it doesn't simply smell of fruit and/or ozone like so many modern perfumes.

This year however, instead of going back to an old faithful, I wanted to try something different.  I've been wearing a lot of Kesu by Tsi-La recently, it's a lovely spicy blend of woods and incense, and  it smells like a sexy church according to those I know who've smelled it on me.  But much as I love Kesu, I think I'm going to be alternating it with Jo Malone's latest: Vanilla & Anise.  I smelled it last night, and despite being somewhat leery of vanilla scents, I fell for it.  It's not at all sweet, unlike so many vanilla-based perfumes, and it's very spicy.  It has a powdery top-note from the vanilla and has notes of cinnamon and cloves underneath it, I love it  (I may have tweeted something about a dentist covered in custard at the time, but let's keep that under our hats, shall we?)  It's just that little bit different to my more incense-y favourites, and I think it's going to become a new staple.

Do you change your perfumes with the seasons?