Chanel Sycomore

Sycomore is the one scent out of Chanel Les Exclusif range that doesn't annoy me by being a sheer and ethereal version of a perfume that must have been a good idea at some point. A few of the Exclusifs had previous lives when they had depth and teeth (Cuir de Russie, Bois des Iles, No. 22 and even Gardenia). The other ones never had the chance to be anything more than an EDT in a huge bottle, though both Sycomore and Beige were named after long gone Chanel perfumes from the 1930s).

Sycomore is not anyone's shadow. It is full of character and brimming with life like the green marshland it evokes. A smoky vetiver with a strong tobacco note tinged with chocolaty patchouli has richness and depth beyond many other vetiver scents. It feels a lot more opaque than one would expect from an EDT concentration, though we've seen similar inky quality in Lalique's Encre Noire.

Sycomore is a unisex perfume with masculine leaning like many vetiver fragrances. My husband was the one who fell for the complexity from the very first sniffing. He tested it a couple of times before deciding he need a large decant, which I promptly got for him (there's absolutely no chance that even with combined efforts we'd finish a 200 ml bottle in the coming decade). My own experience with Sycomore has been interesting. I love it just as I love most (all?) vetivers. It wears like a thick smoky green veil, almost  Lutensic in the way it clings to my skin. Occasionally, however, I have an off day when it feels too swampy and murky for comfort. I find that unlike many other vetivers, I prefer wearing Sycomore during the winter because it lacks the bitter dryness that cuts the heat and humidity of August in the City.

Sycomore and all the other Chanel Les Exclusifs ($200, 200 ml) are available from Chanel boutiques around the world, Saks Fifth Avenue in NYC and Bergdorf Goodman, as well on chanel.com. Samples and decants can be purchased from The Posh Peasant and The Perfumed Court.

Photo: Green Swamp by Derek Corneau on Flickr.

The Death Of Good Taste

Chanel's email newsletter this morning announced the coming release of Les Trompe-L'Oeil de Chanel, a range of (brace yourselves) temporary tattoos depicting "iconic Chanel symbols and codes".

Basically, someone at Chanel is really embracing the Heidi Montags of the world and other brilliant thinkers who love sporting commercial logos directly on their bodies. At least when celebs do it they either get paid or get expensive accessories for free. The rest of us are expected to pay for the privilege of adorning ourselves with this crap.

Photo of Mademoiselle Chanel and a model from myvintagevogue.com

Diorshow Brow Styler Ultra-Fine Precision Brow Pencil

I'm a firm believer that when it comes to filling and shaping eyebrows, pencils are not the best option. I use a short bristled angled brush with matte eye shadows in muted browns, taupe (Bobbi Brown has never failed me), or for evening drama- espresso. I highly recommend using a sealing liquid (like Paula Dorf Transformer) to avoid transferring the color to your hand or the shirt of your significant other (speaking from experience) and avoid black unless your hair is really that color and your skin is very very dark.

The only problem with the above is doing it on the go, in a hurry and sometimes the amount of extra space required  in your makeup bag. I don't even want to think about juggling my eyebrow products in the car. Which brings us to the next best thing, a really good eyebrow pencil with a built-in brush.

I was pretty skeptical when I received the Diorshow Brow Styler, because the retractable pencil is really ultra fine and I was worried it would draw a very visible line. Also, a one color fits all policy rarely works. But the Universal Brown is actually a dusty taupish brown that blends well with my coloring and filling the brows in quick short strokes and then using the brush for blending is quite effective without looking very obvious.

So the Diorshow Brow Styler worked quite nicely for me.

But.

This is touted as a universal product which I had a hunch was not the case. I needed someone with fair hair, skin and very light eyebrows to test this. Enter the long suffering husband. He has dishwater blond hair, pale skin with pink undertones and his eyebrows are very light and quite sparse. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect candidate. Now, the color of the Diorshow Brow Styler wasn't terrible on him, but it's definitely darker than his natural color and made him look frowny. My guess is that for people with this coloring, a slightly lighter shade of brown would be better.

The bigger issue, though, is the pencil itself. If you need to fill large gaps, a pencil is not the right tool. No matter how carefully you used it, it still looks drawn, and unless you're a drag queen it's never a good look. I did my best on the husband's brows, but I would not recommend it for anyone who require serious brow work. I didn't dare use the built-in brush on him, which brings us to the other problem with the Brow Styler. The brush is quite good, really, but it's a little too stiff, and with the husband's sensitive skin I thought it would be best to avoid raking his brows with it. I compared the Dior brush to an eyebrow tool from Elke von Freudenberg's line (review coming later this week), which is just a bit softer and feels better on my skin. I don't really have much of a problem using the Dior as long as I'm careful with the amount of pressure, but if you're prone to skin irritation, it might not be the best tool for you.

Bottom line 1: Works well for me, great on the go, but definitely not a universal eyebrow product.
Bottom line 2: My husband is a saint.

Diorshow Brow Styler Ultra-Fine Precision Brow Pencil ($28) is available from Sephora and most department store. I received it as a PR freebie.

Photos by me.