On anosmia and other stuff.

By Get Lippie

The sharp-eyed amongst you might have noticed that I've been doing fewer perfume reviews than usual, and for that I have to apologise.  I'm ill.  I've been ill for a while now, and whilst it's nothing life-threatening (or even anything painful for that matter), it has been life-changing.

It began inauspiciously - as these things tend to - with a severe cold back in May, and I had no sense of smell for around six weeks after.  If you read my piece for Basenotes around this time: Anosmia - Don't Take Your Noses For Granted! then you'll know how heartbroken I was by this turn of events.  Since then, I've started to recover, and things have got better in that respect, but in a few ways, they've also got worse, in ways I wasn't really prepared for.

My sense of smell has been returning for a while now, and I'm what is termed "hyposmic", ie I now "merely" have a diminished sense of smell, rather than a complete lack of it, but alongside that return of smell have been some pretty horrendous side-effects: namely "phantosmia" and "parosmia".

Phantosmia is where you can smell things that aren't there, either things that don't exist, or you react to smells that aren't actually there.  In my case I could smell burning meats, specifically that red-lacquered pork belly you get at Chinese restaurants.  Imagine smelling burning, slightly sweet from the red-laquered meat, but also deeply charred and smokey from the carbonisation of the rind, 24 hours a day, to the exclusion of all other smells.  Even applying neat lavender oil to the inside of the nostrils doesn't help when this happens. It's maddening and distracting, and there's no relief when it occurs

But worse, oh so much more worse, has been my experience with parosmia.  Unlike phantosmia - where you are reacting to smells that aren't there - parosmia is where you are reacting to smells that are happening (and do exist), but they are distorted by the time your olfactory system registers them properly.  And, of course, they are not distorted in a nice way, where roses might smell like daisies, or peanuts suddenly taste like chocolate. No, everything, and I do literally mean every single thing you encounter literally smells and.or tastes completely disgusting.

Imagine, for a moment that, you have the worst halitosis ever (you know those hangovers where you wake up wondering if an elephant took a dump in your mouth when you were asleep? That), and now further imagine that every thing you encounter smells like that, and purely of that, with nothing else.  That you can't recognise the scent or flavour of anything you encounter as itself, everyday smells are filtered through this smell, so that you can't recognise any smell individually, they just smell bad.

Imagine that every single thing you taste, even your own saliva, tastes like that. Constantly. 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. Sometimes it's only a noticeable hint, but occasionally, like playing Russian Roulette, something you encounter either nasally or orally will be like a nugget of raw, pure sewage, topped with a sauce of slimy rotted onions,  mustard gas, and well-rotted swamp.  Chocolate, coffee and cigarette smoke make me sick with monotonous regularity. Water, even - which had been a revelation during anosmia, owing to it not having any taste to miss - tasting rotten.

Well. That's my life right now. And has been for a little while.

Nothing I eat, drink or smell tastes like it should, and there is little joy in my life as a result.  I don't know, when faced with foods I haven't prepared myself, whether I can eat them.  Supermarkets are a form of torture, as I can't identify which items will set off the "sewage" nausea reaction rather than simply the "elephant halitosis" smell, which I've simply had to learn to live with.  Kitchens.  Well, let's not even talk about kitchens, okay?  I used to love to cook, let's leave it at that.

It's heartbreaking.  Over the years of writing this blog, perfume and fragrance have been an intense pleasure to me, and something I'd learned a lot about. However, I still have hopes that smell will come back properly, that the parosmia will pass. An ENT surgeon I saw recently confirmed that there is nothing physically wrong, and that the parosmia could be a sign that any nerves which were killed by the infection back in May (which would have caused the initial anosmia) are regenerating, but he also warned that these things are unpredictable, and confirmed that there is no current treatment which will lessen my parosmia symptoms.  This wasn't good news for me, as the parosmia is currently one of the worst things I've ever suffered, and I can't deny that I'm finding it very difficult to deal with.

In the meantime, I'm spending a lot of time talking to Fifth Sense, in the hopes that my troubles may help other people who are affected by any of these symptoms, and I'm hoping to be able to attend  their annual conference in November, in order to meet more people who know what this condition is like.  In the meantime, however, in the words of my surgeon, I'm just going to have to ride this out.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.  Getting it down - and out! - has been helpful.

This post: On anosmia and other stuff. 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

Storage Week! Perfumes with Laurin ...

Storage week continues, and today we're highlighting Laurin's perfume collection.  Probably best you don't show this one to your maiden aunty, now we come to think of it ....

My beauty storage is what you might term "organised chaos". I know exactly where everything is, in my mind at least. In my current flat, I'm lucky enough to have my own bathroom (albeit in two halves) and I recently moved all my cosmetics from the bedroom to bathroom as I felt the lighting was better (on second thought, it isn't, but I'm moving again soon and I really can't be bothered to drag it all back). Storage is an unsophisticated combination of an over-the-door shoe organiser and a gift with purchase make-up bag. I felt pretty fancy when I picked up some brush canisters from Muji recently. There is also a wicker basket for palette storage. Like I said, FANCY.

 

At last count, I had about eighty bottles of perfume, which technically means I never need buy another bottle as long as I live. In reality, it means I never need buy another bottle this month. Probably. Unless I have some points on my Debenhams Beauty Club Card and there's a sale. I like seeing it all in one place, so I'm afraid I store it out of its boxes (but never in the bathroom, and never in direct sunlight). Currently it resides on the top of my wardrobe, and I am forever rearranging to make room for more. 

It's roughly organised by house, although I couldn't resist giving my two penis-shaped perfumes their own little corner. What do you mean, you don't own any penis perfumes?

Click to enlarge, but not if you're easily scared/shocked/aroused

This post: Storage Week! Perfumes with Laurin 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

Guerlain L'Homme Ideal

I have said this before of Guerlain, but they really don’t like to rush fragrances out. It’s been nigh on 6 years since they released a men’s fragrance. I may be overstepping the mark here, but I often feel Guerlain doesn’t get a fair slice of attention, and this really is a shame.

Guerlain, despite having been around since the dawn of time it seems, are still relatively new to me.  It’s only recently that I have discovered that they are quite the place to go for assured quality and proper attention to detail when it comes to practically everything they do.  Even their packaging is to die for.  I am a big fan of pretty much everything, from skincare, to makeup, and certainly their fragrances.  And you should be too. They already have a stellar line up of men’s offerings that many have grown up with, and like me, some people are discovering only now.

Many of them have stood the test of time, classics such as Vetiver, Habit Rouge, and the more modern and very flirty L’eau Boisee (easily a second date fragrance if ever there was one), and I think this is testament to their integrity as far as taking time to make sure it is right before setting it free upon the masses.  The same level of attention to detail and time has clearly been taken over their newest release for blokes, which is the L’Homme Ideal (Ideal Man, obvs).  Thierry Wasser is always a bit of an innovator, and he doesn’t seem to shy away from this here either.

The top notes are rosemary and citrus, giving it the kick it needs to really launch it, but they don’t last long, as most citruses don’t on me. Not to worry though, the best is yet to come.  Now, reading the press release (as with most that are associated with men’s products) they are keen to let you know that this is a ‘masculine’ fragrance in every sentence.  So the irony of it containing nuts is somewhat of a macho giggle. Stop yourself; the nuts that I’m talking about here are almonds.  At its heart there is an ‘amaretto’ note that gives the fragrance a beautiful dry, almost sandy feel to it, not at all sweet, and it doesn’t disappear into the marzipan end of the almond-scale.  This is accompanied by sugar cane and the increasingly present tonka bean.  It really is almost good enough to eat, and a very, sexy smell indeed. Almonds. Who knew?! The only thing is, it doesn’t project terribly well on me.  But, it does last a fair while. So you’ll have to invite people to get closer to smell it.

The bottle itself is also rather fabulous.  A faceted square cut gem, surrounded by a lacquered band of black.  It almost looks like a very smart men’s watch, which is also mirrored in the cap which has the look of a dial.  The box is also a hero.  On the monochrome front, the very classic silver and black letters all merge into each other to read ‘No need to be L’Homme Ideal anymore. You have your fragrance.’

Well, that’s a relief for us all then isn’t it.


L’Homme Ideal is out September 1st Nationwide, and starts from £48 for a 50ml EDT.

This post: Guerlain L'Homme Ideal 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

Storage Week! Tindara

The increasingly mis-named Storage "Week" continues (sorry about that), and today we have Tindara showing you her drawers, Wednesday has Laurin showing us her ... er ... rather unorthodox perfume collection, and Friday will bring you Pro-Makeup Artist Luke showing us how we should really do it (or not ... you decide!).  Our editor, Louise, will be showing you hers next week, as she needs some time to tidy up.  Allegedly.

Anyhoo, over to Tindara:

Recently, I’ve been binge watching Orange is the New Black. It’s fantastically entertaining, really well written and also pretty funny with some proper great female characters. And another thing that I really love about it is that those women love their beauty and want to keep doing it despite their circumstances. All the way through, though, I couldn’t help wondering how the hell they stored their contraband stuff.

I love my storage paraphanalia, and tend to go as nuts in Muji as I do in a beauty hall. Their PP storage baskets are ideal for compartmentalising your haul. I also use their acrylic storage for lipsticks and glosses etc. I even recycle old Eucerin Hyaluron Filler Concentrate lids as liner/mascara pots, they’re clear plastic circular containers that would be good for brushes too, and since I use this product all the time, I assume I will always have lots. Recycling containers is useful, don’t spend money on new when that little rectangular thing that used to house cotton buds is exactly right for all your chunky lip pens.

As you can see my dressing table is pretty crowded. All my perfume, jewellery, daily skincare, current nail polishes and this week’s make-up are piled up on here. But believe it or not, it’s in some order. My fave things are my Muji clear jewellery box and the knock off Eames hang-it-all for my necklaces. Clearly, I need a larger dressing table; I’m working on it, but I’m also really fussy and am waiting for the perfect vintage piece to turn up. In the mean time, the drawers are pretty organised.

The first is blushers, lipsticks, eyeliners and mascaras.

The second is skincare and perfume samples, beauty tools, essential oils, glitters, eyeshadows, nail polishes and wraps.

The third drawer contains, glasses paraphanalia, hair accessories and brushes, and scarves.

I also have an excellent IKEA Lillangen tall slim bathroom cupboard in my hall with more Muji acrylic storage dividers inside for hair and body products, hair dryers and straightening/curling irons, brushes and rollers etc.  My husband gets a shelf here and a little more room in the small bathroom cabinet that has a few travel size toiletries, tweezers, wax strips, stuff I might need in the bathroom basically. Dunelm Mill do a great extendable bathroom caddy for shampoos and shower gels and we also have this in our bathroom. By my bed I have night creams oils and balms and a bag containing all my mani/pedi tools.

And that’s about it. My dream is a bathroom with amazing floor to ceiling storage built in. One day, grasshopper, one day. In the meantime I have a ‘mid century chest of drawers with mirror’ alert on ebay and a serious Muji habit.

This post: Storage Week - Tindara 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

Storage Week! Nails ...

We're a nosy bunch here at Get Lippie, so when we were mulling over makeup storage recently, our editor requested - nay, demanded - we all get out collections out for the lads, as it were.  So this week, sit back and enjoy perving over total strangers' makeup collections.  On the internet.

We're kicking the week off with Emily, our nail-obsessed newest addition to the team:

Disaster struck this week in the form of me returning to the gym for the first time in FOREVER and donning my boxing gloves again. Of course I had forgotten that long nails and boxing don't mix and an hour later I had broken pretty much every goddam nail, resulting in me having to cut them incredibly short.

I KNEW exercise was bad for you.

So, while my nails are pretty much out of action I thought I'd share my DIY nail storage solution with you. Now, my collection isn't HUGE (yet) but probably bigger than average and I got rather fed up with various boxes and bottles lying around my flat and never being able to find the colour I wanted. IKEA came to the rescue in the form of this set of storage drawers, which of course I painted in pretty pastels and embellished with pearls. Because, why not?

I have a drawer for everything: cotton wool and buds (the pointy ended ones which are great for tidying up), a multitude of files, clippers and such like and then one for nail stickers and embellishments. I used to travel to Japan for work a lot and always paid a visit to Tokyo Hands (AKA - the best shop in the world) to stock up on cute nail stickers...these doggy and rabbit ones are my favourites, I can't bring myself to actually use them.

The middle drawers house my nail art pens, brushes and larger sets (such as Ciate's awesome if short-lived Caviar and Velvet manicure sets) and then finally the bottom drawer houses all my polishes, in colour order, from reds through to glitters and top-coats. Geeky I know but it means I can find the colour I'm after pretty quickly!

So that's my DIY nail storage solution...though i'm pretty sure I'm going to need a bigger box sometime soon!  How do you store your nail goodies?

Emily

This post: Storage Week! Nails ... 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 Storage Week! Nails ...

Everyday Essentials: Dove Advanced Hair Series - Pure Care Dry Oil

By Get Lippie

I just can't get that excited about expensive hair care, I'm afraid. Give me a £36 lipstick, or a £250 perfume, and I can justify that to myself (not so much my bank manager, admittedly), but a £30 shampoo?  Something that just goes down the drain?  Man, I have a hard time thinking about that.  Ironically, a £20 shower gel (something else that just gets sluiced away), I can get excited about.  Rational?  Logical?  Not really, but, you know, no one ever became a beauty blogger because they were entirely rational about things.

Anyhoo, Dove have recently released their Advanced Hair Series, in three different types.  Oxygen Moisture for creating volume in fine, flat hair, Youthful Vitality for  ... er ... more mature hair types and Pure Care Dry Oil which gives moisture and nourishment to dry and treated hair.  I've been using the Pure Care Dry Oil range for a little while now, and it ticks all my haircare boxes, cheap (£5.99 to £9.99 at the time of writing) simple, and - most importantly - effective.

There's a whole bunch of science behind the Dove Advanced Hair series, which I had explained to me, and now can't remember, but essentially, what it boils down to is that Dove spend a lot on their R&D, and in this range, it shows.  In the Pure Care range, there's a shampoo, conditioner, mask and an oil.

You know how some shampoos leave your hair really rough during washing, and you desperately need conditioner to smooth it back down again?  Well, I've found that washing with the Dove Dry oil shampoo leaves my hair really soft, and feeling like it has already been conditioned.  As my hair currently has plans to take over the planet in this humidity, I've never tried not using the conditioner (anything to keep it tamed, ANYTHING), but I find that the shampoo and conditioner together definitely leave my hair soft and shiny, and less frizzy than usual.  The mask is good too for those weeks when my hair is dryer than usual.  I love the oil, I use it every time I wash, as it's perfect for those of us with slightly unruly locks, it beats down frizz, and helps keep things under control.

Infused with pomegranate and macademia oils, the range has an unexpectedly beige formula which is refreshing in this age of pearlised white haircare formulas, and it has a pleasant and (in the nicest possible way) inoffensive scent which won't clash with any of your body products or fragrances.

So yes, cheap and cheerful and effective, what more could you want in your shampoo?

The Fine Print: PR samples initially, but repurchases since.

This post: Everyday Essentials: Dove Advanced Hair Series - Pure Care Dry Oil 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

We Want the Funk: Ripe and Ready Perfumes for a Heatwave

By Laurin

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the predicted highs in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama and London were exactly the same – 29 degrees Celsius. The local press in Mobile referred to this turn of events as “an unseasonable autumn-like chill”. Meanwhile, in London, the headlines read “OMG HEATWAVE APOCALYPSE PREPARE A VIRGIN SACRIFICE TO APPEASE THE SUN GODS!”

In Mobile, we deal with the heat by hopping from air-conditioned house to air-conditioned car, and if we’re lucky, into backyard swimming pools. In London, our primary extreme-weather coping strategies are outrageous hyperbole and whinging. It’s one of the many ways in which I’m proud to be British.

Unfortunately, Tube travel and lack of air-conditioned buildings can take its toll on the most stringent of personal hygiene regimes. I experienced this last week as I was leaving work on an especially humid day and suddenly realised I had experienced a regrettable deodorant malfunction. Fortunately, I had a bottle of Francis Kurkdjian’s Absolue Pour Le Soir tucked away on my desk, so I was able to style out the funk with lashings of sweet honey and dirty knickers. That smell? Yeah, that’s me. What of it?

This, then is my plea to you: when the heat is on, be a lover not a fighter. Save the sunny citruses for your gin and tonic. They’ll evaporate within hours during hot weather anyway. Instead, reach for one of these out and proud animalic fragrances:

 Serge Lutens Mucs Koublai Khan, £79 for 50ml at Fenwicks of Bond Street. I can’t find it online, so you’ll just have to come to London.

This is what Frederic Malle’s Musc Ravageur would have been if it had been raised by hyenas in the jungle (note to self: find out if hyenas live in jungles; do hyenas prefer orientals to chypres?). Instead of the come-hither bedroom eyes, we have the flasher on the street corner in the stained trenchcoat. But if you’d just get past that, you’d see he’s a really nice person, okay? And as it turns out, he is. Though the unwashed combination of civet, musk and caraway is a bit seedy at first, the composition is beautifully softened out with amber, rose, patchouli and vanilla. Highly wearable, though still not suitable for a blind buy.

Le Labo Oud 27, from £45 for 15ml at http://lelabofragrances.com/uk_en/

There is no way to pretty this up: this is the filthiest porno-perfume that ever was. Although the official notes are oud, civet, cedar, patchouli, ambergris and rose (so, noble rot, cat bum, whale vomit and FLOWERS), whatever, this fragrance ain’t never seen the inside of Jane Packer in its life. Oud 27 will never turn up on your doorstep bearing a bouquet, but if you ask it nicely, it just might let you see what’s in the black bag at the bottom of the closet. Wear with a fur coat and crotchless knickers.

Robert Piguet Fracas, £95 for 50ml at www.lessenteurs.com

A big stinking heatwave calls for a big stinking flower. Creator Germaine Cellier was something of an enfant terrible of the 1940’s perfume world. In Barbara Herman’s book “Scent and Subversion”, we are told that Cellier’s first fragrance for Robert Piguet, Bandit, was inspired by the scent of models changing their underwear during fashion shows. Had I read that about her other masterpiece Fracas, I’d believe that as well. This is the Vagina Dentata of tuberoses: all soft, inviting flash with a deadly bite. Fracas is tuberose shorn of its angular, camphorous top note and instead given bombastic T&A with jasmine, rose, carnation, ripe peach and even riper musk. Wear this for taking a lover back to your web for the first (and maybe last) time.

Frederic Malle Le Parfum de Therese, from £80 for 30ml at www.lessenteurs.com

Michel Roudnitska, son of Le Parfum de Therese’s creator Edmond called this “the masterpiece of my father”. Considering that he was speaking of the man who created Rochas Femme, Diorella and Eau Savage, this is high praise indeed. Exclusively worn by Roudnitska’s wife Therese for nearly fifty years, it was only released after his death in 2000, when Frederic Malle persuaded Therese to allow him to publish it as part of his Editions de Parfums line. I hesitate to describe this as “animalic”, for it is actually a placid, watery fruit accord that preceded the fresh aquatic fragrances of the 90’s by over forty years. But laid over the plum, melon, mandarin and vetiver that forms the heart of this quietly confident work is a note of leather that transforms it from the coldly beautiful to something altogether more warm and intimate. I have no idea what the Roudnitska’s marriage was like, but when I smell the perfume he made for her, I can only imagine that this was a man who deeply loved and understood his wife. It manages to be dark and light and human and ethereal all at the same time, and I would wear it any day over the hundreds of candyfloss concoctions proclaiming themselves the essence of the eternal feminine. Wear this when you have nothing to prove to anyone.

Better You Magnesium Oil, £9.29 for 100ml at www.amazon.co.uk

Not a perfume, but a neat trick if you’d rather funk by choice than out of necessity. A quick slick of this after a shower and before deodorant somehow seems to neutralise body odour on hot days. I have tested this extensively on the Victoria Line in July and it never once failed me. You're welcome.

This post: We Want the Funk: Ripe and Ready Perfumes for a Heatwave 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