Top Ten Summer Perfumes

Can there be a list of summer perfume recommendation without boring myself silly and/or mentioning Eau d'Hadrien? I'm going to try. Some of these are new(ish), others are perennial favorites. In no particular order:

1. Reverie au Jardin- Tauer
Midsummer afternoon dream. Will transport you to a magical alpine garden.

2. Amethyst- Olivier Durbano
Slightly sweetened pencil shavings, clean incense and a touch of vanilla. Surprisingly refreshing in the heat.

3. Un Matin d'Orage- Annick Goutal
Green gardenias drenched in rain without an ounce of sweetness until the musky drydown.

4. Monyette Paris *
The other side of gardenia. Tropical, sweet with a touch of nag champa incense. Put a flower in your hair and go dancing on the beach.
*I think it's the first fragrance review I've written here. It's magnificently bad, but kind of nostalgic in a campy way.

5. Nuit de Cellophane- Serge Lutens
Osmanthus flowers with a hint of apricot. Like drinking iced peach tea on a beautiful Cape May porch.

6. Italian Cypress- Tom Ford
Is it an homage to Eau d'Hadrien (so I lied. It had to be mentioned)? Maybe. But the cypress is a darker green and the feeling is more pulled together.

7. Encre Noire- Lalique
Or any other vetiver, really. I've chosen this one because it's a bit softer while still dry and grassy.

8. (Vintage) Vivara-Pucci
I'm talking about the original 60s formula. A salty chypre that belongs with the jet set in San Tropez. White pants, a Pucci scarf and oversized sunglasses are essential.

9. Bois Blond- Parfumerie Generale
A roll in dry hay on a lazy Sunday afternoon. You can smell the earth and trees baking in the sun.

10. Figuier- Heeley
Like lying in the shade of a huge, old fig tree next to a running stream.

What are your summer favorites this year?

art: Embarkation by Dan Dahlke

Bad Influence- Alexander McQueen Kingdom & Heeley Figuier

I'm experimenting. I was wearing my beloved Heeley Figuier, which is an ultimate summer scent in its clean and green freshness when I felt a need to seriously spice it up. And I mean it when I say seriously.

My hand reached for my bottle of Kingdom (Alexander McQueen's first fragrance). If you follow the discussions on perfume blogs and message boards you know that it has a very questionable reputation and that it's often talked about in terms of body odor, truck stops and a high school locker room (the boys one, I presume). I have no idea why.

Honestly. I get the cumin note, but to my nose and on my skin there's nothing offensive about it. Or dirty, for that matter. It's a floriental, somewhat off-center, but blending cumin with orange blossom isn't that revolutionary, is it? It's a strong and quite bold scent. I used to think that it's more suited for cold weather, until I discovered that it really blooms in warm weather, and it's perfect for those steamy NYC nights when you need something that distracts the senses from the city's distinct aroma.

Layering Kingdom with the clean and pristine Heeley might have mellowed the former a bit, but it adds an edge to the latter. It loses the innocence and makes you think at what's hiding behind that fig leaf. I like it. A lot.

Absolved- Heeley Figuier

I'm not a forgiving person, and I certainly don't forget offenses. Even perfume ones. Interior designer James Heeley has created the second most horrible scent I've encountered recently: his Eau de Bengay, Spirit of the tiger. That one would have been enough to make me give up on his creations (I wasn't overly impressed with his popular Cardinal, either). But the temptation of a fig fragrance was too great, and I'm very happy that I gave him another chance. I also went to check his web site and was blown away by the beauty of some of his work. His designs put his fragrances in context and help understanding them. His very clean and cold lines might not be my personal choice in home decor, but I can't resist their beauty.


Figuier is a beautiful, lush, fig scent. If most fig fragrances are kept green and cool to the point of being watery, this one is the opposite. It's full of body, like an old fig tree bearing almost-ripe fruit and heavy with green foliage. Its sweetness is very light and subtle, mostly in the creamy opening (the part that has a slight coconut note, but coconut haters shouldn't worry, it's really not 'nutty or tropical in any way, and it's over quickly). It doesn't develop much, only dries down to a cooler, darker fig that blends heavenly with my skin. It feels like sitting in the shade of such a lovely tree, inhaling its aroma. Figuier is much longer lasting than its L'Artisan competitor, and it's somehow figier. I love it.

James Heeley, come home. All is forgiven.

Eau de Eww

This hasn't been the best of weeks as far as fragrance sampling goes, and not for lack of trying. The two new-to-me scents that I tested ended up being horrible scrubbers, of the kind that still linger even after you actually scrubbed yourself silly, and their memory is enough to make me shudder. We all know that fragrance is all about body chemistry and that there's a skin for every scent. I'm just not sure that I want to meet the skin that can make those two work.

Heeley- Spirit of the Tiger
The problem begins with the inspiration for this scent, the Chinese pain relief ointment Tiger Balm, which is more or less like Bengay. Do you want to smell like Bengay? Didn't think so. What made the noses and minds at Heeley think that this was a wonderful idea? Your guess is as good as mine.
The fragrance starts with sharp mint oil that is soon joined by camphor, to give you that medicinal touch. And if that wasn't enough, there's nothing warm and spicy in the clove note. I love clove when it's either in a gourmand gingerbread-like blend or accompanies carnation, but here it smells exactly like my late grandfather's dentistry clinic. A perfume that makes me think of the drill and of backache is definitely not a good thing.


Profumum- Fumidus
There's no nice way to say this: I hate this one. The listed notes sound quite lovely: Essence of distilled scotch, vetiver root and birch bark. The reality is that this is liquid smoke. The babble on the website says something about castles and owning a forest. The only forest here is a forest fire, and it stinks to high heaven. It was very persistent and took some work to scrub. A trace of really bad bbq remained for a while.

I think I'm going to be wearing some sweet and feminine stuff in the next few days.

The Nose Plays Funny Tricks

My love of the not-quite-feminine woody fragrance has been growing exponentially this winter. It's not that I'm not rocking some powdery vanilla scents or ambery roses, but some days it's all about bark, resinous sap and evergreen treetops.

Heeley's Cardinal isn't supposed to be in the evergreen category. The notes as listed on Luckyscents are incense, cistus, grey amber, patchouli, vetiver. Reviews all over the net talk about darkness and church. Being Jewish, I'm not exactly the biggest authority on such matters, but I swear, on my skin it was just pine. My skin has eaten every note and all the depth and left me with nothing but the memory of pine-scented liquid soap from my childhood (to which I developed a terrible itchy allergy). It wasn't so bad once I layered it with my beloved Anat Fritz, though. It added a much needed dimension.

Woody fragrances are perfumes that I try to share with my husband. Sometimes with interesting results. The first time I tried Anat Fritz he quite liked it on me. What's not to like? Lavender, cedar, sandalwood and a few other dry woody notes. I've talked about it here and have gotten a full bottle that I enjoy very much. I still need to decant it into a spray bottle, so I can use it on my sweaters and coats, but in the meantime I enjoy wearing it. A few weeks ago, I asked my husband to wear it. I figured that he'd enjoy it just as much as his beloved Gris Clair.

The results were quite surprising. To my nose it was stunning. Lavender loves him. However, The Blond hated it. With a passion. He grew up on a dairy farm and has spent way too much time unloading wood shaving to line the ground for the cows, which was exactly what this fragrance made him think about. This is the farm boy who didn't flinch when smelling Ferme Tes Yeux. He just couldn't stand the cage lining note here.

It is no wonder that the first time I tried Diptyque's L'Eau Trois he had a similar reaction. So much so, that I washed it off immediately, not letting it go past the opening, which is very cedary in its most woody interpretation. But I had to try it again. I put it on one day when The Blond was still at work. The wood chips were quickly gone, replaced with this gorgeous aroma of sun-soaked Mediterranean shrubs and herbs. I could smell the dusty green quality of the green, the crispness of the twigs, and the feeling of a long sunny afternoons.

The beauty of this drydown was not lost on my husband. He approves a full bottle. Maybe I'll even share it with him.

(A big thank you to March from Perfume Posse for the sample and this new love)