Senyokô: Reviewing Madama Butterfly II, Duo des Fleurs, Migration de L'Arbre and La Tsarine

Senyokô, a Paris-based brand that fuses French elegance with a touch of Japanese refinement, was brought to The Scent Room in Dallas in 2019, and this is where I first became familiar with the line. There are currently four very different fragrances and each perfume comes with a story. I was unsure what theme tied these together, so I spoke with Miaojian Zheng, Senyokô Project Manager, to get the idea behind the perfumed stories.

Senyokô was introduced in 2016 by Joseph and Eglantine Berthion to celebrate the birth of their beautiful daughter Emilie. Eglantine had immigrated to France from Japan some years before and married Joseph. The name Senyokô is a reference to two of Eglantine's childhood friends; one whose family name was Senda, and the other who was Yoko. She combined these names, then added the French circumflex accent mark to give the Japanese sounding name, Senyokô, a French influence.

The founders use elements of inspiration from the fine arts, including musical and literary references, and even tales told to Joseph or Eglantine at bedtime when they were young. Through these perfumes Eglantine hopes to illustrate "the texture of life". The idea of torn paper is used in both the beautifully illustrated boxes and the perfume caps. This reflects the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi, beauty in imperfection. The Senyokô idea is that "A piece of torn paper is certainly imperfect, but is no longer meaningless, just like life. Life is all about uncertainties and full of ups and downs, ... the texture of life." These words seem very prescient in light of recent dramatic world events.

The first two perfumes I want to review were both inspired by opera.

MadamaButterfly II

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Madama Butterfly has inspired fragrances in the past, and most have focused on the femininity of the beautiful geisha involved in the opera's tragic love story. In the opera the feckless Lieutenant Pinkerton turns his back on Cio Cio San, breaking her heart and her spirit, and she dies by her own hand. But pay attention to the II at the end of Madama Butterfly II. Here her story has been rewritten and she gets a second act. The betrayal does not kill her, but in fact makes her wiser and stronger, and she goes forward to continue to live life with strength and a renewed confidence. The fragrance reflects this growth in Cio Cio San's character. No longer is she a helpless geisha dependent on the love of her man, illustrated by light and whispering florals. Instead this new version of Madama Butterfly shows strength, steadiness, and contemplation. Her future story is unknown but she faces it bravely.

My experience with Madama Butterfly II is very different than that of some other reviewers. The notes appear out of sequence from their top, heart, or base position. On my skin a dry rooty iris (a heart note) is immediately apparent. It feel austere, woody, and earthy. It sets the mood: elegant restraint, contemplative, and reserved, rather than emotional. Next I get a whisper of the tagetes, or marigold to those in the Northern Hemisphere. Living in India for four years, marigold is a note I became very familiar with as it is revered there and used widely in religious ceremonies, its bright color representing the very vibrancy of life. The smell has a rugged dry and dusty earthy tone. Tagetes are popular throughout all of Asia and on my skin, which loves and amplifies woody notes, the dryness and a slight bitterness is emphasized. The opening of Madama Butterfly II also contains the tickle of pink pepper and a slight dusting of tart quince. Angelica adds even more to this dry earthiness, which is becoming the theme of this scent on my skin.

Then the galbanum slowly filters into the fragrance, but discreetly. Galbanum can be overpowering when used with a heavy hand, but here it is just a dusting of woody green. I smell a slight thread of incense, a smoke on a distant horizon. As the scent mellows the woody cedar and sandalwood only increase the dry melancholy and meditative aura. Eight different musks were used in the creation of  Madama Butterfly II, so that hopefully those with anosmia to musk would be able to pick up at least one of these. The musky notes carry the perfume through to its eventual ending.

It is worth noting that I never really smell several of the notes mentioned by others who have tried the perfume: raspberry, tulip, sakura blossom, and even the tonka bean. I'm sorry about that, as it sounds like these were included to reflect that more innocent side of Cio Cio San's personality. I put this down to the different way perfume can react with skin chemistry.

One of the themes of the Senyokô brand is chiaroscuro, a contrast of light and dark, and here possibly a contrast of French and Japanese elements.  Madama Butterfly II displays French elements in the sophisticated blend of numerous notes into an elegant whole. The Japanese aspect, at least in my story with this fragrance,  is the slightly bitter note from marigold, or tagetes. This note stands out to me. It's slightly bitter and sharp, yet compelling. In the fabric of the story of Madama Butterfly it could represent the difficulties faced in life--betrayal--tragedy. These are the experiences that offer a chance for growth and renewal. It also represents the idea of wabi-sabi which Senyokô embraces as the idea of imperfection in beauty. It is very French in those layered, blended notes, but the Japanese aspect --for me at least-- is this slightly bitter note of imperfect beauty, that one note that  stands out through the journey of the perfume, yet lifts it from being predictable.

Although Madama Butterfly II  has a very feminine name, I find this scent to be very unisex. On my skin the florals are muted to transparent traces in the drydown. It is more about the musky and woody notes. I have a feeling that this is a perfume that could vary widely, according to skin chemistry.

Duo des Fleurs

This perfume is based on one of the most famous songs from any opera, The Flower Duet from Lakmé. The song is a beautiful blending of the soprano and mezzo-soprano voices, which in the perfume is illustrated by blending the lighter jasmine with  the deeper note of rose. The story of this opera is similar to that of Madama Butterfly, except this time it is a young Indian woman who falls in love with a British colonial soldier, with a similarly tragic ending. The Flower Duet is sung just before Lakmé meets her true love. She has come to the river with her maid to bathe and is charmed by the beautiful flowers. Here are a few words from the aria. Have a listen; I think you will recognize the song.

OpusBoa on www.youtube.com

Flower Duet  Excerpt (English Translation)

Under a dome of jasmine

With the roses entwined together

On a riverbank covered with flowers, laughing in the morning

Let us descend together

Gently floating on it's charming risings

On the river's current

On the shining wave, one hand reaches

Reaches for the bank, where the spring sleeps

And the birds, the birds sing

Under a dome of white jasmine.

Duo des Fleurs  opens with an achingly beautiful wisp of jasmine. I love jasmine and in the past I've favored indolic-heavy jasmine florals with skank aplenty. Maybe it is that these times are challenging enough without my perfume being confronting, but I find that what my heart searches for now is beauty, and oh my, the jasmine in Duo des Fleurs is that!  The fragrance opens with a delightfully spring like jasmine which literally seems to flit and drift on gentle breezes. There is a lot of green in it, and as it settles into the skin it's intensity builds, flirting toward that more sultry jasmine scent but always falling back on the side of innocence.

As pretty little jasmine twirls around the stage she is joined by another, beautiful rose. The rose is a deeper floral note, more serious than the playful jasmine. But when they twirl and blend together their scent becomes greater as a whole than with their two separate entities. The jasmine becomes less green and the rose becomes more playful. One seems like a fresh young girl. The other like an alluring woman.  Senyokô used 400 jasmine sambac and 100 Bulgarian rose flowers in each 50 ml bottle of Duo des Fleurs, and their quality and intensity is evident from first sniff.

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Interestingly, if you look at the top and middle notes of this perfume they are very similar, emphasizing different varieties of jasmine and rose. I suppose this is what helps the scent build in its intensity. Top notes are: rose de mai, jasmine sambac, davana, and datura leaf. Heart notes are: rose otto, jasmine flexile, rose petals, and jasmine buds. So as you can imagine, we have the interplay between these two notes of jasmine and rose carrying on for some time. On my skin the jasmine dominates, and if you are a jasmine lover you must try this.

Base notes are musk, Mysore sandalwood, and mitti attar. The Mysore sandalwood and mitti attar are of course references to the opera's setting in India. A few years ago I did a series on travels to India, you can read about it here, and I picked up some local mitti attar. It is supposed to impart the smell of rain striking earth, but to me its strongest elements were that of the dusty earth before the rain pelts down. At the end of the perfume's life on the skin the flowers are gone and we are left with these earth elements and a gentle sandalwood accord.

Migration de L’Arbre  

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My first introduction to Migration de L"Arbre was at Scent Room in Dallas. The lovely Deborah Turner had received the Senyokô perfumes to try and to consider adding to the store's stock. She sprayed a big cloud of the scent around her, then used her hands to waft the fragrance toward her face. "I love this," she said.

I had a similar reaction when I tried Migration de L'Arbre. The scent immediately spoke to me, stirred some long forgotten memory I have yet to place, and just felt right on my skin. I confess it is my favorite from the Senyokô line, and there will be a bottle of this for me in the very near future.

The story behind this perfume is a rather sad one, Nankichi Nimi's short story, Last Year's Tree. A migrating bird rests on a beautiful tree, making his home here for some time. When the bird returns to the forest on its return migration, the tree is gone and has been turned to matchsticks. The matchsticks are used to light a lantern, and the bird sings a sad song to the flickering light. Eventually the stump generates new saplings, the tree grows again, and eventually the bird returns to die in the renewed glade. The idea here is the cycle of life, rebirth, and regeneration. The mood of the scent is the serenity that the smell of a walk through the forest imparts, but with joyful notes in the form of ripe fruit scents. The yin and yang of this scent is woods/fruits.

The opening: joyful yuzu, sharp pungent clary sage, aromatic juniper, and a dusty cedar. It is the scent of walking into a particularly aromatic forest, a dusty trail underfoot. We are only on the opening of this fragrance but it is already a glorious symphony of disparate notes, somehow blending together to offer magic. There are so many things going on; brightness, sharp pungency, woods, dust. Then a rather strong fruitiness emerges from the heart. Let me list the heart notes because they are just as much of a concoction as the top notes: elemi, mastic, guaiac, magnolia, osmanthus, pomegranate, and nigella damenscena absolute. The elemi and mastic intensify the pine, green, and woody notes and offer resinous tones. Guaiac is described as having properties that are sweet and deep, sour and fresh. The pomegranate is the first fruity note I smell and it is pulpy and ripe, succulent almost, yet subdued amidst all the green and wood notes. Then osmanthus comes in with its leathery apricot accord. Osmanthus doesn't always work on my skin, but here it is perfect— fruity, dry, and hypnotic.

The scent continues in this vein for some time, a magical forest of aromatic and fruity scents. Gradually the fruitiness recedes and the base notes of ambergris, vetiver, various woods, tobacco, and patchouli deepen and darken the scent until it gradually fades away.

I can't leave this perfume's description without naming the perfumer, Euan McCall of Jorum Laboratories in Edinburgh. He is responsible for all four of Senyokô's creations, and also has his own line. He is a very talented young perfumer and I will be writing more about him in the future.

La Tsarine

This take no prisoners scent is inspired by Catherine the Great, ruler of Russia from 1762 to 1796. Catherine managed to wrest the title from her despised husband who was the rightful heir to the throne but not loved by his people. She was a strong leader who could show both enlightened views yet be casually ruthless. But perhaps she is most known for her romantic exploits. She had a stream of young lovers during her reign and as she aged her lovers remained young, emulating a pattern of powerful men throughout the ages. She was a complicated and intelligent woman who lived life with passion and power. Catherine the Great's legend is explored in  the perfume, La Tsarine.

Here again Euan McCall weaves his magic. Using top notes of blackcurrant, honey, saffron, petitgrain, and clary sage, he manages to cast a perfumed smell where I am picturing a Russian forest. But then stronger notes are rising. The heart notes illustrate the feminine side of Catherine the Great: notes of tuberose, narcissus, jasmine, orange flower, dried fruits, and some cumin. But before I really even notice the heart notes, the base notes of civet and castoreum lend an animalic blast.  There is a pungent whiff of sweaty sheets and carnal knowledge. Costus, another base note, has been compared to the smell of a wet dog, so there's that. This all sounds shocking and perhaps unpleasant, but there are only a few moments where the notes are loud, then as if a switch has been flipped, everything calms down to a quiet purr. Now I begin to smell the floral notes. No one particular flower stands out, but I can smell a crushed mishmash of these blooms, all known for their sensuality.

Eventually an animalic leather note dominates. It is pleasant and mild on my skin, but wear may vary. I've read some reviews where users felt overwhelmed with the sexual aspect of this perfume, but I didn't find that to be the case and I enjoyed wearing La Tsarine. There were a few moments where it gave me a giggle and I wasn't sure I could wear this out of the house, but everything settled down and it became a skin scent and very subtle.

Senyokô's collection is worth exploring and each scent is unique.  I asked Miaojian Zheng what Senyokô has in store for us next. She says the new scent will be based from a book by famous Japanese writer Yukio Mishima and I can't wait for this interpretation.

In closing, Senyokô offers a very cute and reasonably priced box of samples. It is unique in that the cylinders are very slender and delicate with little rubber stoppers, like a little gothic chemistry set.

Excuse me, now. I have to go smell my arm with Migration de L'Arbre. Heaven!

Photos of bottles from the Senyoko website. I purchased the sample set used in writing this review.

Chloe Sevigny Little Flower by Regime des Fleurs

Chloe Sevigny, the indie-film actress with an off kilter beauty is not the normal Hollywood actor and one wouldn't expect a perfume she helped create to be a mainstream scent either. My greatest familiarity with her was years of watching Big Love where she played a prickly character, one part sugar to two parts venom. Her namesake perfume, Chloe Sevigny Little Flower, is a bit the same, a rose perfume with a twist.

Sevigny has a personal friendship with Alia Raza and Ezra Woods of Regime des Fleurs and was able to work with them to create a personal vision of what she wanted the perfume to be. She was a part of the testing process from perfumer Jerome Epinette's various formulas, but it was always going to be based around rose.

Rose, Sevigny says, is her favorite scent and she was loyal to Comme des Garcons Rose Red and then tried Hermes Rose Ikebana after the former was discontinued. Little Flower is not a one-note rose scent by any means. The rose note seems to hide beneath some of the other notes, peeking out now and then but ultimately creating a beautiful base which the other notes play off of. It is an Ottoman rose oil and its scent is really beautiful. Other florals are honeysuckle, bleeding heart, and peony. It is the peony that I most smell, and I always love the way peony and rose work together to give an uplifting floral fragrance.

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When initially spraying Chloe Sevigny Little Flower, a succulent juicy pomelo note makes the scent very fresh and alive, all of which give it the perfect vibe for a spring scent. Those of you in the Northern Hemisphere approaching spring, this scent holds the promise of that upcoming season of tender greens and soft florals. This is one of those perfumes with a lot of notes that flit in and out as if carried by a breeze. There is a tea note but it is light and in the background. Black currant bud gives that tangy and slightly bitter sharp edge, and in my opinion makes the perfume more interesting and dewy, but it is a note that can often overpower a scent. Here it doesn't.

The opening and its development is what I really love about Little Flower. Truly, it is like a harbinger of spring, as if the scent is floating into the house through a cracked window. Images of a newly sprouting garden laced with roses, peonies, wild honeysuckle and with tender green accents come to mind. The scent is lively and truly smells realistic of nature.

Sadly as is common, these high notes can't be sustained for too long. Palo santo incense and musk wait in the drydown, once the florals have softly faded. On my skin this moment comes sooner than I would like, but for that opening, I'm willing to forgive.

Top photo from www.regimedesfleurs.com. The scent sample is my own.

Perfumista by Anatole Lebreton

I chose the image above to illustrate my initial feeling from a spray of  Anatole Lebreton's newest fragrance, Perfumista. The perfume is purposely intended to be a retro throwback to an age when perfumes had flair and presence. When I initially spray Perfumista it brings images of pink to mind. It feels dressy, sophisticated, and a little proper. It feels like a layer of confidence, where one spray will make you feel more polished, more elegant, like the best version of yourself.

That first smell of Perfumista takes me down a memory portal to the past, and those of us that were around and wearing perfume more than thirty years ago recognize that certain fragrance profile that signals a perfume of an older era. Perfumista fits that bill with its fuzzy florals melting into a mossy green background.

It is a subtle, very pretty chypre, but not in the forceful manner of some vintage chypre perfumes from back in the day. Perfumista has more than a nod to the past; it hearkens to some of the grand dame perfumes of a generation ago. At the same time it feels slightly modernized, acknowledging todays redrawn boundaries of not invading the user's surrounding space in a big way, or those in their orbit. How the chypre aspect of the perfume translates to me is like the quiet but persistent buzzing of a bee, cheerfully dipping in and out of petals sipping nectar, humming along, persistent but gentle.

So back to the opening. I've gotten ahead of myself. First is a pear note, juicy and sweet, which turns creamy as the opulent combination of Bulgarian rose and Indian jasmine appear. The rose is deep and rich, the jasmine sweet but sensuous. These are listed as middle notes but appear quickly on my skin. The top fruity notes— pear, plum, and raspberry— bubble up and give an effervescent quality to the fragrance. The beautiful floral notes mingle with the fruity ones and bring a joyful feel to the scent. The pear and raspberry are the stars at first, bright young things. But the plum stays longer, blending with the rose to give it a wine note.

The opulence of the florals stay present for quite some time. This is interspersed with the mossy green feel, and if you sense color from scent, this one feels very pink and green.

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The deeper notes include patchouli, cedarwood, Peru balsam, and musk. These give the florals a woody and slightly balsamic aura as the scent begins to wind down to its conclusion.

Anatole Lebreton, who is from the Brittany area of France, came to the job of perfume creator via an indirect path. His resume includes stints in the theater, as a purveyor of chocolates and tea, a collector of vintage fragrances, and a past fragrance blogger. He began creating perfumes in 2014 and Perfumista is his sixth. The whole creation of this perfume was an interactive project between Lebreton and some of his customers. He guided the process of creating a perfume which would be an ode to perfume lovers of the world and pay respect to those great vintage scents. His test group went through the process with him, giving feedback and Perfumista is the result.

If you miss the grandness of perfumes of the past, if you love florals that are lavish and miss mossy notes that are velvety and plush, then Perfumista should be on your list of scents to try in 2020.

Top photo Google image. Bottle from anatole lebreton website. Perfume sample purchased by me from Luckyscent.

Puredistance Strikes Gold

To discuss Puredistance Gold, the newest offering from the prestige brand based in the Netherlands, I would like to start at the end rather than the beginning. When initially trying out the perfume, it had been two sleeps since I sprayed Gold on my wrist. Initial impressions: Gold is a perfume that wears close to the skin and is fairly quiet in its reach. Yet as I lay with my  hand resting near my face I was startled by the most beautiful smell, a quiet imprint of Gold still present on my skin as if it has become part of my DNA. Puredistance has firmly positioned itself as a luxury perfumer and one of it's hallmarks is using a high percentage of perfume oils in its fragrances. This doesn't come at a cheap price, but here on my wrist, a full thirty-something hours later, is the result.

Puredistance is one of those rare perfume houses that doesn't flood the market with something new every quarter. Usually once a year a release that has been thoughtfully curated and tweaked will be introduced and in late 2019 this release was Puredistance Gold. The introduction of gold completes Puredistance founder Jan Ewoud Vos' vision of a trilogy based on the brand's three signature colors: Black, White, and Gold. Vos created his own Golden Mondriaan, a term coined to reference Dutch painter Piet Mondriaan who had a huge influence on modern art using a limited palette of colors and brush strokes. Vos wanted his perfume to display "a rich and harmonious fusion of gold tones", and I do find the perfume moves seamlessly through various stages, as if displaying various aspects and hues of the golden color.

When I hear the word gold in relation to perfume I tend to think of glitz and an almost gaudy display of wealth. Puredistance Gold takes the meaning of gold in its original connotation; a measure of something fine and rare. A perfumer has their vision when they create, but a beautiful perfume will connect with users on their own personal level. For me, Gold presented itself as the splendor and beauty of the color gold in the natural world. Gold represents warmth, be it a setting sun or a crackling fire. As the sun hits the water it can glisten and shimmer. This is what the fragrance of Gold suggests; shimmer, sparkle, warmth, glow.

The thing that cannot be argued when you smell a fragrance from Puredistance is the quality of the ingredients. A card came with the Gold sample, listing the top, middle and base notes along with their country of origin. It looks like a tiny menu in a haute cuisine restaurant and it is obvious that much pride is taken in the listed oils. Like all Puredistance perfumes, Gold has a high oil content, this time it is 36 percent.

Let me be honest. I've waited for a while to write this review because although I found the scent of Gold to be beautiful, it didn't initially move me, as when I first sprayed Puredistance Warszawa and heard church bells ringing, angels weeping, and fireworks exploding. Gold was undeniably fine, but was it me? But I kept thinking about Gold and spraying it again and each time I appreciated its beauty more and more. I enjoyed the way the fragrance kept unfolding literally hours after initially spraying. Gold has a certain fluidity as it gently changes and morphs ebbs and flows.

Image photographed by Anh Hoi from web.500px.com

Let's start with the top notes. At first spray, the green mandarin essence from Italy comes out singing. Green mandarin essence along with the Calabrian bergamot essence are front and center but they smell more zesty and green, rather than of lemons or oranges. Pink peppercorn, rosemary essence, and clove bud essence also appear in the opening. Do you know how the clove smell in carnation scents can be slightly powdery — emphasis slightly. I get a sense of that powder feel, a softness. The overall opening is uplifting and energizing, but also soothing and smooth. At this point it is quietly spicy.

Middle notes are jasmine absolute, geranium essence, cinnamon bark absolute, and cistus absolute. I never clearly smell jasmine. I do catch a touch of cinnamon and ciste absolute. The ciste labdanum is what begins to take this fragrance in the direction of a soft oriental perfume. It adds an amber and slightly fruity element to the scent. Gold is not about picking out individual notes, however. The development of this perfume is slow and unhurried and the various notes blend to a harmonious whole.

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Base notes further increase oriental aspects of Gold. There is styrax essence, benzoin resins, myrrhe, vanilla green beans, tonka beans, castoreum, and vetiver. My experience was that the perfume became pretty faint for quite some time, only to surprise me later with alluring aromas that were quietly intense. Benzoin, labdanum, and myrrhe are someof my favorite notes, but rarely have I seen them so masterfully hum with a soft warm energy.

Jan Ewoud Vos turned again to perfumer Antoine Lie to create his latest visionary scent. Lie is also the perfumer for Puredistance White, Black, Warszawa, and Aenotus. 

Don't try Puredistance Gold expecting a pyrotechnic display. Gold doesn't need to call attention to itself. It is pure class and elegance. The scent stays close to the skin, and in my opinion is worn for the wearer's pleasure rather than to elicit comments from those in your orbit. I am far too fickle and too much of a thrill seeker to ever have just one signature scent. If I were so inclined, however, I can see Gold's quiet charm and surprisingly seductive allure persuading me that it could be that one!

Thank you to Puredistance for the sample of Gold. The photo of the bottle is from the Puredistance website. Any other pictures not labeled are Pinterest images.

Scent Trunk's December by Dawn Spencer Hurwitz: A Russian Fairytale

The prolific perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz recently created a fragrance for Scent Trunk, released in December, and fittingly named December. It is such a distinctively beautiful scent perfect for cold weather wear that I wanted to write about it while the Northern Hemisphere is still experiencing winter.

Dawn lives in the Colorado mountain town of Boulder and the surrounding forests have inspired perfume creations for her own brand, DSH Perfumes. She also creates a new fragrance centered around holiday themes every December and these also feature winter vibes with Christmas or Hanukkah references, but with December for Scent Trunk she has created something especially haunting and evocative.

From www.scenttrunk.com website.

Scent Trunk commissions perfumers to create scents that focus on a particular ingredient  and provenance. For December, coriander is the spotlighted note, and St. Petersburg, Russia is the provenance. Dawn really nailed the Russian references. When I first sprayed December I got images of deep, dark Siberian forests and visuals from folkloric fairy tales, where there is usually the suggestion of something dangerous awaiting in the woods.

When I was young my father would read bedtime stories to me, and two books that always delighted me  with shivery excitement  were fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson and also the Brothers Grimm. These were not Russian fairy tales but originated in countries not too distant and contained some of the same dark elements. In these tales threats were waiting for the unwary, children faced danger with uncertain outcomes, and life didn't always offer a happy ending. Today's children read the Disneyfied cleaned-up fairy tales but in my generation the little mermaid never got her prince, her feet were a source of pain, and she died a mournful death as she turned to sea foam in the ocean waves. I would pull the covers up to my chin and shiver with gratitude that I lived safely in a house guarded by my parents and that my sister slept in a bed an arm's length away.

December gives me that shivery feeling of entering a dark woods, wild beasts possibly hiding in the shadows. The forest smells resinous with sappy pine cones and frozen spiky fir and spruce needles. It is as if we are already deep in the forest and far away from civilization. But there is another element that makes the scent whimsical, slightly mysterious, and takes you on a magic carpet ride to the icy cold forests of Russia. A cocktail of notes: bergamot, black hemlock, clary sage, vodka, cardomom, and most of all coriander, combine to achieve this alchemy.  Picture forests more foreboding than welcoming, large furry creatures, icicles hanging from shivery pines, and a spicy melange that does somehow impart a romanticized vision of the East.

The first time I tested December on my skin the scent quieted after a while. I half forget I was wearing it. Then later, and I mean hours later, suddenly it revived like a campfire whose spark had been fanned by the wind and burst into gentle flame again. I smell a deep wine rose and a rooty orris that combine to form a rich velvet against the now dim forest notes. New notes of leather and musk bring visions of bundling up against a white snow storm with leather coats and big Russian fur hats.

Scene from the movie, Dr. Zhivago

Other notes I smell are wisps of smoke, traces of tobacco, and soft leather. Now the scent feels more tamed and civilized. We've moved away from the dark, dark woods and are now cozily ensconced in front of a fire, a small tumbler of icy vodka awaits, and our warm clothing and thick walls keep the cold at bay. I feel enshrouded in my own version of a Russian fairy tale. 

Notes:

I have used photos from Russian photographer Margarita Kareva, who specializes in these fairy tale images, as for me they perfectly captured the feeling that December conjures.

I am not very familiar with Scent Trunk. I believe it previously had a bespoke element to it, but currently they seem to be commissioning fragrances from indie perfumers in which they feature a certain provenance and highlight a certain note. As far as I know this scent is only available via Scent Trunk, and comes in a very reasonably priced 100 ml bottle or a 5 ml sample spray.

This is not to be confused with the scent called December Holiday No. 10 that is on Dawn's website. I will correct this if I find I am wrong.

Serenity Now: Parfums Dusita Le Pavillon D'Or

If you've read my most recent posts, I mentioned that 2019 was not the easiest year. My hope for 2020 is a year of serenity and spending time with those things that give me happiness and optimism. There is no better perfumer than Pissara Umavijani to reflect these qualities, and no better perfume with which to christen the new year than her newest, Le Pavillon d'Or.

Ms. Umavijani goes to a contemplative and serene place with this newest introduction. She again uses one of the poems of her father, Montri Umavijani, who was a lauded poet in Thailand, as an inspirational springboard to interpret into scent. She states that Le Pavillon d'Or was "inspired by a very human quest for happiness and inner peace," and "to evoke the sheer joy of serene self-confidence and peace of mind." 

When a perfumer chooses to illustrate a color, in this case gold, it is always interesting to see their interpretation. Previous incarnations of perfumes with the name gold have often chosen the path of glitz and glitter, big and bold for a wow effect. Ms. Umavijani takes Le Pavillon d'Or in the opposite direction, choosing to illustrate gold as a more precious thing, softly glowing and fine.  I have read that Ms. Umavijani was inspired by three lakes and the feeling of contentment they gave her. Here, gold is not measured in dollars and cents, but as the highest quality of  tranquility one can achieve when finding happiness in non tangibles and inner contentment. Ms. Umavijani has chosen to make a perfume to represent happiness and inner-peace, or as expressed in one of her father's poems:

To be able to live more happily in just any confinement." Montri Umavijani

When I first read in other reviews that Le Pavillon d'Or opened with notes of mint and honeysuckle, I admit I was a bit confounded. Mint didn't fit into my mental image of what gold should "smell" like. But this is not the mint that I pluck from my garden to flavor my ice tea. This is actually wild menthe citrata, of which I knew absolutely nothing. Just as when I wrote a review on Erawan I had to research one of the ingredients, liatris, it was the same here. Menthe citrata is a hybrid of mentha aquatica, which is found in waterways. Did Ms Umavijani smell this plant as she sat beside the lake or did she pick it specifically for its properties?

In any case, it seems she found the perfect note to cast this spell of well-being. Wild menthe citrata, also called bergamot mint, is described as a complex and uplifting fragrance. The Philbee Aromatics website describes the process of collecting the mint to make a distillation as "a completely uplifting experience", and Hermitage Oils website gives this effusive recommendation of the oil: "The aroma is simply divine,...this material is bright, cheerful, uplifting, inspiring, clean and refreshing." I go on about this note only because it was not the scent I expected from something in the mint family. It's not the mint of chewing gum but appears as a wet green scent throwing herbal aspects, intertwined with a slight mint aroma for lift.

The mint and a honeysuckle extrait combine for an altogether sweetly seductive opening, a smell that demands the release of tensions and is calming to the mind. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention what to me is the bedrock of the fragrance, notes of orris root, fig leaf, and a slightly powdery note that feels green or yellow, but never like white powder. These notes hum quietly in the background, and the featured notes dance in and out, adding interesting facets. The orris note is not as evident to me, it gives an austere woody note which is subdued on my skin. The fig leaf is more evident with a sweet green scent, supporting the herbal notes. The powdery note was the most interesting to me, because it made me picture floaty yellow mimosa blossoms; this is not a face powder scent. To my knowledge there is no mimosa in this perfume, so this powdery note must be influenced by all the green notes in Le Pavillon d'Or. 

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Then we get to the heart notes. Baronia, a rare and expensive absolute in perfumery, adds rich fruity floral notes. What I find most intriguing is the addition of Frankincense Green Sacra. Again, I had to research how this differed from the frankincense I was accustomed to smelling in perfumes, and again I found effusive prose as to the positive mind bending aura cast by this ingredient. Nature's Gift, a supplier of oils, describes frankincense green sacra in this way: "Green sacara is a lighthearted delight, full of sunlight and sky. It is the happiest of our frankincense oils." The scent of this oil is described as having aspects of resinous honey, candied lemons, and sweet amber infused with wood and floral notes."

Again, Ms. Umavijani has utilized a note prized for its rich and uplifting smell as well as its mood boosting effects. White thyme oil adds delicate herbal nuance to the scent and is also prized for it's calming nature. Eventually, hours later, the scent drifts into soft notes of rum-spiked vanilla and sandalwood, like sinking into a plush feather bed.

Out of all the scents Ms. Umavijani has created, this is the one that most reminds me of her outer persona. Since she came on the fragrance scene in 2016, Ms. Umavijani has reached out to her customers and even small bloggers like me. In all her dealings she shows herself to be kind and thoughtul, and as beautiful on the inside as out. To me Le Pavillon d'Or portrays in scented form this  grace and beauty. It seems that 2020 has debuted with a lot of outward clamour. With Le Pavillon d'Or you can for a time drift in a world as soft and muted as one of the tender watercolors Ms. Umavijani paints to illustrate her various perfumes.

I find that as time goes on Ms. Umavijani's perfumes are becoming more nuanced, more layered, more surprising. I eagerly await the next. And I think that in 2020 there are going to be more than a few days that I will anoint myself in this veil of calm to breathe in its beauty and remember— it is the precious moments in life that are truly gold.

The whole time I was trying to describe the perfume in words, this song which is one of my favorites, kept drifting into my mind. It's more than the lyrics of "fields of gold", it's the tender, beautiful mood the song sets that remind me of Le Pavillon d'Or. Enjoy!



Photos from www.ParfumsDusita.com, you tube, pinterest. Thank you to Pissara Umavijani for my perfume sample.

The Importance of Scent In A Challenging World

The year 2019 was a challenging one for me, and the first thing to go was my fragrance blogging. Health challenges had to be reckoned with and resulted in missing planned trips to renew old friendships. But the punctuation mark of sad tidings was the death of our beloved family pet Buffy right before Thanksgiving. Anyone who has had a loved pet in their life knows the particularly acute pain that loss can bring.

I knew the time was approaching to say goodbye to our almost sixteen year old dog, Buffy. She had Cushings disease which among other things was wasting away her leg muscles, extra sad because a Springer Spaniel's raison d'etre is the ability to perform twirling pirouettes of joy in midair with three feet of air beneath the paws. We had another year, I reckoned. I had planned the end. When she was no longer able to live her life we would gather around as she rested in her beloved and somewhat smelly bed and send her off in comfort, surrounded by love.

When you don't feel well the day-to-day bad news can drag you down more than usual, but one of the saving graces for me was an almost daily visit to online fragrance lover group sites, populated by people like me, who find beauty through scent and their sense of smell. The online fragrance community is such a warm and accepting group, at least on the sites I most often frequent, Eau My Soul  and Facebook Fragrance Friends.  Random acts of kindness are frequent. In fact, in totally coincidental timing, right after dealing with the death of my pet I won an extremely generous RAOK set of samples from a member on EMS, which she had put together to honor her friendship with the late Robert Herrman, a beloved member of the fragrance community and a writer for Cafleurebon. 

In the last year Buffy's hearing and sight had become compromised. On walks, the squirrels which she used to love to chase seemed to sense that she didn't see them anymore and would literally stroll across the path right in front of her. I wanted to get a slingshot and give them a thump for their disrespect towards my girl!

In a a world that is full of disheartening stories, seemingly insurmountable problems, and incivility like I've never seen in my lifetime, it is lovely to have an online place to go where you know people will be kind, and if they're not they will be summarily bounced out by the online moderators. Smell brings me so much joy. With a spray of  Estee Lauder Private Collection I'm that 29 year old young woman feeling confident and sexy in a leather skirt on my first date with that new Australian engineer on the sixth floor of my office building, not knowing he was my husband to be. Or a whiff of gardenia perfume reminds me of my mother, who planted a gardenia bush right outside the window in front of her kitchen sink so that she could gaze on it the rare times it bloomed in hot Texas summers, and  introduced me to that beautiful scent at a young age.

As her hearing and sight lost their power, Buffy's long nose only seemed to gain in power. Walks were no longer about exercise per se, but about just moving for movement's sake, and most of the journey was spent with her nose to the ground. Storms sometimes knocked branches from the upper heights of the trees we passed on our daily walks. These were of special pleasure, fulsome with the scent of squirrels who had frolicked in them, and were explored thoroughly as I patiently waited, happy for the joy these explorations seemed to bring.

We are lucky, those of us that for whatever reason have this desire to smell everything! Not only do we constantly seek to be delighted in the creativity of a new fragrance. There are cheap thrills a plenty; the scent of the fresh cucumber you cut for lunch as the knife pierces the skin, wild honeysuckle wafting from some unknown hiding place, or the first shovel of upturned earth in spring, after a cold winter. Finding beauty in the everyday and finding people who share that excitement is a wonderful thing.

Buffy's end was sudden, unexpected and not according to plan. Her body started swelling and she was in great pain, and a rush to the emergency clinic— it was night time— brought a diagnosis of twisted stomach, and at her age surgery was not really an option. I had to call my husband who was on a different continent and my three children who were by coincidence all in Dallas about an hour away. The veterinary had given her an injection which made her sleepy to keep her out of pain, and I waited for my now adult children to gather. They had grown up with Buffy, after all. They eventually arrived with their partners and my husband watched via Facetime as we faced this heartbreak together.

I am looking forward to getting back to writing in my blog in 2020, more for my own pleasure rather than that anyone is clamouring for me to do so. Dissecting beauty in scent is very meditative and calming to me, and I especially enjoy those times when I get to communicate with perfumers. All of those I've met or spoken to have been wonderfully generous people. Undoubtedly there will be new fragrances that will excite us this year. There will be scents of foods that will make our mouths water, and scents from nature that will bring us serenity and joy. May we experience that scent that reminds us of an absent loved one or takes us back to a happy memory in time. May we recognize how lucky we are to have the ability, because there are many who are oblivious to the importance of this sense and miss out on these charms.

Buffy's nose was her greatest asset to the end. I would like to think that in those final moments, even as she lay sleeping, that her subconscious recognized our scents and she knew we were there, that she felt the touch of our hands and it gave her comfort, and that she sensed the overwhelming love that filled that room, too big to be contained by mere walls. 

I look forward to interacting with you in 2020, sharing our new scented discoveries and rediscovering some of the old ones. Have a happy and safe New Year's Eve, and for my part, I welcome the fresh start of a new decade and year!