Frankincense, Myrrh, DSH, and other scented Christmas gifts

Have you ever heard it said that the gifts given by the three wisemen are representative of perfume? Or is it only perfume people who start making connections like that?
Frankincense and myrrh are both heavily fragranced incenses, and the third gift was the gift of gold (given by Caliban? I have no idea), signifying the flacon, or the vessel for the perfume.

I am very much not a Christ child, but scented gifts do tend to figure prominently in my Christmas wish list.
I haven’t tried any of the following, but here’s an inventory of what I received (you’ll be happy to hear that it involves a lot of DSH and Zoologist, two brands that I’ve been meaning to explore and have a tendency to go on about).

From DSH:

• Tsukimi, Foxy, Au Lait, Musc al Madina, Indus, La Belle Saison, Reveries de Paris, April, Poppy, Peony, Habibi (I want to name my next pet Habibi or Rasputin), Chinchilla, L‘Etole de vison, Chataignes du bois, Arabesque, Rendezvous, Une Robe de Zibeline, and Mirabella.
• As well as a few exciting extras, Dawn is super generous with samples!

From Annick Goutal:

• Ce Soir Ou Jamais

Zoologist:

• A mini bottle of Hummingbird ( ❤ ), having drained my previous decant
• Camel, Elephant, Civet, Dragonfly, Nightingale

Everything is a sample size unless otherwise stated. So excited to play with these ^.^

Last Night/This Morning and Samples (of Perfume)

I think yesterday may actually have been my first all-nighter? To the extent that I have been awake since 8 am yesterday morning (it’s now three minutes after 4 pm, today). And I spent the night hanging around outside in Paris, so I don’t think you can really ask for a better first nuit blanche (all-nighter in French). Interestingly, this also coincided with Paris’ Nuit Blanche music and light festival, so there was lots to see and do. And the Marais is always pretty active on Saturday nights.

I have many more things to say about French Tinder (Did I already mention that there are SO MANY PEOPLE NAMED QUENTIN?) like I now know how to say mind games. These are the important life skills.

But in the meantime I just want to talk about perfume.

As in if I could magically have the samples that I want most (that aren’t on m decant wish list) what would I pick? (Also I bought Rose de Nuit by Serge Lutens on eBay recently and I’m super excited! I have been wanting that perfume for quite literally 6 years.

Also did you know there are more Dior Private Collection scents in the stores in Paris that aren’t available in the US? I have to say I didn’t find any of them particularly enrapturing, but they were fun to visit. My favorite would have to be Jasmin des Anges, which was much more a tart blackberry than a jasmine. But it was a pretty nice blackberry.

Okay, back to the topic at hand.

• Ce Soir ou Jamais- Annick Goutal: A super nice and musky overblown rose that I haven’t yet had the chance to try in any meaningful quality. I think I might love it.
• Rose Trocadero- Jardin Retrouve: I seem to be in a rose mood. I want this to be the fresh green garden rose of which I have been dreaming.
• Kingston Osmanthus- Eric Buterbaugh: Too bad 10 mLs costs three weeks of groceries.
• Equestrian- Sonoma Scent Studio: Obviously I can’t leave alone anything doing with horses.
• Miyako-Auphorie: This one got a whole lot of buzz not too long ago and I still haven’t tried it. But I’m here for fruity suede osmanthus vibes.
• Onyx- Sage Machado: Musky coconut? Neat. I want to try.
• Noir Exquis-L’Artisan Parfumeur: I tried a bit of this in store and one point and think I may be very much a fan. SO cozy!
• A bunch from Zoologist. But if I had to pick it would be Nightingale or Civet. Followed by Dragonfly, Panda 2017, and Elephant.
• Suede de Suede and Dojima- Mona di Orio: There are two new Mona di Orios and I haven’t smelled them yet. Shame.
• Mardi Gras- Olympic Orchids: Speaking of Civet.
• Acqua Celestia- Maison Francis Kurkdjian: I keep smelling this in stores and wishing for a bit of my own.
• Joyeuse Tubereuse- Guerlain: Only if I can’t find my sample. I have the sneaking suspicion it’s still in the USA.
• Tabacca-Costamor/Frank 3-Frank: You know you need to smell it when you’ve been waiting so long the brand and scent name changes.
• Tabac Tabou- Parfums d’Empire: Tobacco, honey, narcissus. Give me.

By the way also all of these from DSH 😛

DSH Perfumes: My Dream Sample Order

DSH is one of my favorite fragrance brands despite being relatively (I own Mahjoun) under-represented in my collection.  What I like about DSH is the independent brand’s spirit, proliferous output, and the wide range of styles covered by their offerings.  They have beautiful florals, cozy gourmands, deep orientals, and lots besides.
And many of the scents are a bit inventive- which is really up my alley, as I’m likely to prefer ‘interesting’ to ‘easy to wear’ 9 times out of 10.  Not that DSH fragrances are hard to appreciate- but they have what seems to me to be more dimension and direction than many modern fragrances.

So that was all just a long-winded way of introducing the brand and justifying the large number of fragrances from it’s range that I want to try.

Une Petite Gourmandise (more perfume, guys)

 

Gourmands are perfumes styled off of foods and sweets.  Despite being somewhat maligned in the high brow fragrance community, they’re pretty well-represented in my collection.
There is one explanation that can be applied to both statements, which is that gourmands are easy to appreciate. After all, everyone likes food (a suspicious statement coming from an ex-anorexic, but here me out).  Food scents are comforting because food is security.  And you would be hard-pressed I think to find a fragrance appreciator who doesn’t have at least one tasty perfume of which they are fond (My Mom might not actually, so I might need to take that back).
Another reason gourmands are generally frowned on is that there has been a long-running furor for them in the mainstream, which has led to increasingly derivative fragrances with less and less quality.

Spotlight on: DSH Perfumes

Evening! Or maybe you’re reading this at some other time of day, in which case ‘Hi!’

I’m ridiculously tired and I’ve used a lot of energy today to do random research (and also a very exciting job interview) so I’m going to give my brain a break and just post a list that I have on my computer- and maybe you’ll enjoy it. (I think you will, especially if you’re a perfume person).

Have you ever asked yourself, “If I had to pick only one perfume house to wear for the rest of my life, which house would I pick?”
If you’re like me, you’ve definitely asked yourself this. If you’re not like me, you probably haven’t and you may also be thing “Perfume? Why is this a big deal?”
To answer: Because I love perfume and I would die.

Or maybe I would just wear Dawn’s fragrances for the rest of my long and happy life.  Dawn Spencer Hurwitz is the mastermind behind DSH Perfumes, a company that has so many so beautiful fragrances of so varied types.

Friday Fun Links 4/14

Please excuse my very temporary hiatus- it was caused by the need to spend my meagre writing talent on a certain research paper that I just finished (On the revenant Beloved as a bridge between the divided worlds caused by personal tragedy and the tragic legacy of slavery, ultimately serving to enable reconnection and eventual resolution).

So to ease myself back into the blogging life (and because it’s Friday!), here is your weekly collection of links to odd and exciting internet locations.

A Handful of Spring Perfumes Sneaking Into My Icy Winter Heart

I’m generally feel most myself in thick and wintery fragrances- scents that wrap you up in a musky blanket or a whirl of fireplace smoke.  But we always miss out when we try to play exactly to type- and most often delightful things come to surprise you from unexpected directions…

That’s probably why my collection of bottles is neither here nor there- it covers a lot of bases, with little overlap in genre or category- no easily articulated cohesion beyond that indefinable something that makes them feel like me and like mine.
And that has a certain logic to it, but when you trust to fragrance love and the vicissitudes of perfume fate your collection comes together a little spuriously.  You end with more of some type of fragrance, a few of another, and none of a third. The classical spring fragrance- the fresh floral- has historically been poorly represented in my cabinet.
(Which is not entirely fair: A bottle of vintage Diorissimo holds the ‘fresh spring floral’ banner; beautiful, proud, and tragically alone. She could use a little company).

But I don’t sample much anymore, even if I do keep up a massive list (classic) of fragrances I’d like to try.  My acquisitive feelings about perfume have subsided and I feel very content with my collection as it is. But I’m lucky enough to have a few friends who look out for me and send things over, and when I travel I do try to stop by local fragrance shops: in sort, samples do somehow find their way to me.

A few of them have sort of caught me unawares, winnowed their way into my affections, particularly during this particularly cold-snappy March, when I’m most in need of a hint of spring.  So maybe I was a bit vulnerable, but isn’t so much of love finding the right thing at the right time?

That was a long-winded way of introducing these four- four underrated and little discussed fragrances this side of quirky and that side of beautiful, and sure to please you whether it’s the snows or cherry blossoms falling.

A Fragrant Wishlist

It’s a quiet evening and the school week is winding down for me (bless no-class Fridays)- I’m here in my room with the heat on and a cat, listening to ASMR and playing on Pinterest.  I’m wearing pajama bottoms, a giant T shirt some guy in Boston gave me when I got caught in the rain a few summers ago, and a leather jacket (because the heat is not enough).
Perfume: Botrytis by Ginestet, a delicious sweet autumn apple wine.

And then I started thinking about perfume and decided to do a list of the fragrances I have tried and sampled and want more of, whether that’s another sample or a healthy-sized decant.  And then I went on Facebook Fragrance Friends and discovered (GASP) that my fragrance wish list document is missing.  Let me just say that this document was the pinnacle of my perfume evolution. It’s been mutating since I first got interested in collecting- as I bought and loved or tried and discarded.  Horror of horrors, it had disappeared without a trace.
Thankfully, I had backed up perfumes that had captured my interest on Fragrantica. Whew. Crisis averted.

Decants and Minis (Part Two)

Day Two of my armory of decants, during which we roll out the big guns.  Well, not exactly… I don’t have many cannons, but I do have ‘bigger guns’ than the tiny ladylike pearl-handled revolvers handled yesterday.  No disrespect to Chanel and Dior; sometimes a dainty pearl-handled revolver is just the thing one needs to complete the mood.
Well, that was a tangent. And a tangent that shouldn’t be read as an assertion of the feminine nature of yesterday’s fragrances. Men can carry off dainty pearl-handled revolvers just as well. Handsomely.

And the latter two scents discussed in Part One are more in line with today’s offerings, which include my Amouages, among other things.