Questions about commenting on the Perfume Shrine

One of the constants I receive in emails is from people who sometimes have difficulty commenting on PerfumeShrine.

It would be practical for all if there were a "sticky" post up, so here we are.

First of all, Perfume Shrine has always been (and will continue to be) an online platform where anyone can comment. You don't need to be in any specific Group or Community, you don't need to have a Blogger account or Facebook or anything, you don't need to be "knowledgeable" about perfume (there are no silly questions or comments in my books) and you don't need to publicize your name or ANY other identifying data about yourself; your privacy is respected at all times.

Comments are non moderated for current posts which are a couple of days "old". Anywhere beyond that time limit however and I need to moderate them,  as I try to answer them all.

Any comment is acceptable, be it negative or positive. But obvious spam is pruned. Sorry, if you want to advertise your business or affiliated content, do it openly; it's very annoying for both readers and myself to read pretenses of a comment.
Insults to our readers are also pruned. This is a civilized community and we can agree to disagree with dignity & respect.


So ....what do you need in order to comment successfully? If you want the official Google help, hit this link and read for yourself (with pics). Otherwise read on.

IN ORDER TO COMMENT click on the "Comments" link AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST you want to answer/comment to. The Comments link is right besides the "Posted by PerfumeShrine at so & so day" (which serves as the Permalink of any given post) and just over the Labels/Tags.
Clicking the Comments link opens a box space BELOW the post (so scroll), integrated through the Blogger platform which controls it.

Sometimes Blogger acts funny. It's not my fault, I swear. Give it a couple of minutes and try again, please. Good things come to those who wait.

When you have the Comment window in front of you, there's a box to write in:

an older box window actual screenshot and here is a borrowed image

You see a box where you can type your comment. Under it there is a word verification code to type to prove you're not a robot spammer. (I had resisted this -annoying to some- function for very long, until one day I got about 46 spam comments which I had to manually delete one by one...).
If you have trouble "getting" the words, try again or click on the "soundbox" icon to hear them instead.

Under this word verification there is a "Choose an Identity" menu. The menu has as first option a "Google account" which takes you into a Blogger signing in page. This function allows your comment to have your own Blogger identity and link, which is useful if -say- you want to make people aware of your own blog! HOWEVER this is where most people trying to comment stumble: they just don't know what happened and they got redirected to what looks like this! They think they're comment is lost forever and resign (Shame on Blogger for not explaining in detail). Or perhaps they don't desire to sign in as a Blogger user this time or don't want to register on Blogger at all!

This is where the OTHER options (apart from option 1 "Google Account") come in.

Option 2:
"Open ID" which allows Livejournal, Wordpress, Typepad and AIM users to comment linking their own data/pages/blogs from these other, non-Blogger platforms. Cool!

Option 3:
You choose a Name/Alias. This may include an external URL to your site (a blog, a Facebook account, your Twitter handle, whatever you want). Again, hit Publish after you're done; you should see your comment published right away.

Last but not least...
Option 4: the Anonymous option at the very bottom. Just click that Anon option, type your vitriol (just kidding!) and hit Publish. Again, you will see your comment published right away, unless it's for an older post in which case I need to moderate it first.

You can Preview you comment at all times and edit yourself to your heart's content.

With the Nest/Threaded format, you can also REPLY under anyone's comment and pursue the conversation. It should look a bit like this.

borrowed from Google search

I hope I have answered that pesky question that crops up so frequently and have enlightened you satisfactorily. If you have any further problems, please don't hesitate to let me know by email using CONTACT (perfumeshrine AT yahoo dot com)

Chloe L'Eau de Chloe: fragrance review

Cast your eye back to the days when you were a kid in a floral print sundress, pig-tails hanging down the sides of your face, flowers pinned carefully on the hair by an older sister or attentive mother, and selling lemonade off a kiosk outside your school or terraced porch to amass money for summer camp (or something along those lines). I hear this gets done a lot in America. I can only tell you that I hadn't had any of those experiences, but lemonade drinking I did as a kid. A lot. It was the official drink of summer (along with sour cherry juice which is just as delicious, if not more) and gulping it down, all thirsty after a run in the fields cutting off wild roses & poppies or a swim in the sea, was one of the major joys of careless late spring and summer days. Perhaps there's something of that ~childhood-reminiscent, innocent and eager about it all~ that is so very refreshing and uplifting when we encounter a citrusy smell. Perhaps that's also why perfume companies are sure to bring forth a slew of citrusy colognes and fragrances into the market with the regularity of a Swiss clock, each spring as soon as the caterpillars turn into butterflies. There's just something optimistic, open and joyous about them, isn't there. Which is where L’Eau de Chloé comes in; from its frozen lemonade top note into its rosewater heart and down to its cooling, mossy base, it's an improvement on the previous Chloe edition* and a scent which instantly puts a smile on my face, even if it doesn't really mesh with my style, having no dark nor serious intentions.

Nikiforos Lytras, The Kiss

The recent "madness" for Eaux
Perfumer Michel Almairac was commissioned with a citrusy built on "clean" rose with a dewy character. Eaux are big as a variant in existing fragrance lines lately, rather than just a rehash of the citrus-herbal Eau de Cologne recipe, with predictably good results; especially at Dior (who had it all with their classic Eau Fraîche) with their Miss Dior Chérie L'Eau and J'Adore L'Eau Florale. Other contestants in this revamped "eau" game include Chanel Cristalle Eau Verte, Chanel Chance Eau Tendre and Chance Eau Fraîche, the three Ô de Lancôme, Eau de Shalimar by Guerlain (a different attitude as this is a complex citrusy oriental rather than just a citrusy, fresh, uncomplicated splash on), Hermes Eau de Gentiane Blanche and Eau de Pamplemousse Rose, even Serge Lutens with his L'Eau Froide and the previous L'Eau de Serge Lutens. It's a good alternative for warm weather wearing when you live in a hot climate.

Perfume impressions and formula structuring
Almairac used the transparent, luminous and at the same time lightly sweet and delectable natural note of rosewater (a distillate from rose petals) in L’Eau de Chloé to counterpoint and at the same time accent, via the common elements, the tart lemonade opening and the lemony magnolia blossom in the core. What was less easy to accomplish was how to stabilize it into a formula that would retain structure. The perfumer opted thus for a mossy-musky base accord which simmers with the angular, lightly bitter beauty of chypre via patchouli and woody ambers (ambrox). The fragrance belongs in the genre of Versace Versence or a modernised/watered down Coriandre by Jean Couturier.
The effect is that of a fizzy, sparkling, tingling the nose grapefruit and citron opening, vivid, spicy and refreshing at the same time with the gusto of carbonated fizz drinks bursting on your face which is prolonged into the proceedings. The peppery, crisp freshness evolves into the bold rosy heart of L’Eau de Chloé, balanced between powdery-minty and retro; non obtrusive for casual day wear, but with enough presence to uphold itself throughout a romantic afternoon. It's because of this that the fragrance projects more as a feminine than a citrusy unisex, which might create its own little problems (i.e. usually unisex citruses are the best). The mossy, patchouli-trailing with a warm, inviting "clean musk" vibe about it is discreet and rather short-lived (as is natural for the genre) and I would definitely prefer it to be darker and more sinister, but the fragrance overall serves as a reminder that small miracles are what we're  thankful for these days.

Advertising images
L’Eau de Chloé utilizes the familiar girl in a field of grass imagery in its advertising, first used by Balmain's classic Vent Vert (which did have something very meadow-like about it!) and perpetuated into recent releases; I'm reminding of Daisy Eau So Fresh by Marc Jacobs for instance. The young sprite is mythologically loaded, reminiscent of nubile teenagers in Greek classical myth deflowered by philandering gods, and it remains a feminist concern thanks to its sheer helplessness (who will hear your cries in the distance?). But perhaps we're injecting too much into it. Perhaps just rolling on a field on a warm, sunny day is a joy into itself and in this land of perfume fantasy all the big bad wolves are programmatically kept at bay or exitinguished with a squirt of a well chosen perfume sprayer. It's a thought...

Notes for L'Eau de Chloé: lemon, peach, violet, natural rosewater, patchouli, cedar.
Available from major department stores.

*NB: I'm hereby referring to the screechy laundry-detergent like Chloé Eau de Parfum by Chloé (2008) and not the excellent, violet-tinged nostalgic powdery fragrance Love, Chloé.

Model: Camille Rowe-Pourcheresse. Shot by Mario Sorenti, Music: Lissy Trullie / Ready for the floor.
More at www.chloe.com/eau

Painting by Greek painter Nikiforos Lytras, The Kiss.

Etat Libre d'Orange Bijou Romantique: fragrance review

~You let yourself be impressed by that sailor with the pierced ear?

~But no...

Caïn to Pandora Groosvenore (nicknamed "bijou romantique" by said sailor) in Hugo Pratt's La ballata del mare salato/ La ballade de la mer salee comics book starring Corto Maltese

The French have a saying "le parfum bijou" denoting both the literal sense (a perfume carried in a jewel receptible) and the metaphorical (a fragrance that adorns and highlights the beauty of its wearer). Bijou Romantique by Etat Libre d'Orange comes with little of the irreverence that the French brand exhibits and plenty of the beautyfying factor. I'd call it féérique myself (fairy-like, fairy-made). It's delicate, lovely, and oddly savoury, breaking the impression we have of oriental gourmand (i.e. dessert-like) perfumes into tiny slivers, much as it was done with Etat Libre d'Orange Fils de Dieu, their other new release for 2012. Bijou Romantique stops just short of being "skanky" or "dirty" (in a good way) -see Amaranthine by Penhaligon's- offering a deceptive "bombshell" fragrance for those women (and the adventurous men sharing it) who demand that their perfume acts as morale boosting for those approaching them. An appeal as timeless as the beauty whose virtue has a "price far above rubies", a Scriptures phrase that serves as the motto for the company.

Composed by perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui it's no wonder; it was Mathilde who signed the critically acclaimed Tilda Swinton Like This, you see, and she's also the composer of that controversial ~but eminently interesting~ accord of fig and caviar in Thierry Mugler's Womanity.

With Bijou Romantique Bijaoui offers a nuanced composition that hovers on the precipice between savory and sweet, rich and satisfying, exploiting the subtle chocolate-like facets of iris and vetiver and contrasting them with the natural creaminess of vanilla and benzoin resin with a fresh lemony top note. Laboratoire Mane’s captive Evee ® molecule bridges the gap between the sweet elements and the soft rosy spices. As Bijaoui explains herself in an interview on French TV: "My luck at Mane is to have an important team of researchers constantly developing new molecules and finalizing new extraction techniques. Thanks to their extraction technique called "Jungle Essence" we perfumers at Mane, were able to create a new olfactory family, the sweet/savory family. The Jungle Essence technology allowed us to extract scents never extracted before: fig and caviar. Jungle Essence offers new possibilities, new scents, using ingredients non extractable through conventional methods. (nuts, coconut…) The Jungle Essence process produces a natural extract. This extract can be directly used in perfumed or flavoured compositions."
In Bijou Romantique the proceedings take on a darker, more complex character in the main plot, thanks to the inclusion of a musky-woody background where the sweet-liquorice note of patchouli is clearly detectable. Patchouli is of course a beloved niche fragrances element, coming back from the hippie 1960s with a vengeance, but in contrast to Nobril Immense by the same company where it's too potent, too sweet, here it's nuanced with the protagonist: the ripe fruity note of tropical ylang ylang and the soft rosy nuance of pink pepper.

Tender, inviting and multi-facetted, Bijou Romantique is like a nostalgic cameo pinned on the edge of a low neckline. Farewell Pandora!

The transparency and cozy gourmand factor of Bijou Romantique is sure to entice those who liked The Different Company's Oriental Lounge or Fendi's discontinued (but marvellous) Theorema and might be of interest for anyone exploring niche gourmand perfumes (such as the Micallef line Les Notes Gourmandes or those by Les Néréides)

Notes for Etat Libre d'Orange Bijou Romantique:

Bergamot, Italian lemon, pink pepper essence, ylang-ylang, clary sage, Tuscan iris, Jungle Essence coconut, Haitian vetiver, patchouli, benzoin, vanilla.

Bijour Romantique is available as Eau de Parfum 50ml at the official site, Henri Bendels, MiN New York and online from Luckyscent and Les Santeurs.

pic via http://ilmioblog-lu.blogspot.com and http://avozportalegrense.blogspot.com

Burberry Body: fragrance review

A shame the appearence is betraying a fragrance so much. The gorgeous electric-car charger looking bottle (or a crystal baton, if you prefer) encased in a leather pouch in beige tones is far sleeker and classier than the soapy, synthetic and rather dull floral musk hiding inside the container. The name and commercial hinted at some tryst conducted in the aftermath of a spring shower that necessitated the wearing of a Burberry trenchcoat. The fragrance however is akin to sprikling yourself in sudsy water rather than bodily fluids...

Burberry Body is rather potent, warm and woody, taking in mind the constraints of both the soapy and musky floral genre (which usually tend to lean towards coolish), but doesn't really ever become a true "skin scent" in the sense of mimicking anyone's warm, living skin -or the scent equivalent of invoking the aftermath of intimate action between lovers. It's death by a hundred little guest soaps with rosy wrapping!The chunk of Cashmeran in the base doesn't aid much.

Nor is the composition a gorgeous true floral musk the way Narciso Rodriguez Narciso For Her and its many different fragrance versions are or Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker. The effect in Body remains at all times a bit aloof, without much of the promised absinthe or the powderiness of iris compositions, the soap a little detached from the nooks and cranes it's supposed to lather up to. The sudsy floral part of Penhaligon's Castile is there, but whereas in Castile this aided the radiance of what is essentially a programmatically "clean" fragrance with lots of orange blossom, in Burberry Body we have a similar phenomenon as in the newer version of Chloé; the aliphatic aldehydes project sharp, loud and fatty, laundry-detergent reminiscent, with a hint of lactonic peach and vanilla under the rosiness, and tend to remind you of a chemical soup rather than the ouverture to some floral symphony of yore. Furthermore Body is absolutely linear and guaranteed not to offend anyone; usually that's a seal of lack of character.

I realise that "clean" and "shower fresh" are loaded and important terms in fragrance marketing, that one has to pick an unobtrusive scent for the office at times and there is a huge segment of the population who is after the perfect "just out of the shower" fragrance anyway, but I'm afraid that this is not it; their worthy goal is better served elsewhere. [Explore our Soapy Fragrances and Musky Fragrances articles linked, if you like].

Notes for Burberry Body: absinthe, peach, freesia, rose absolute, iris, sandalwood, woody cashmeran, musk, vanilla, amber.

Photo: Andrian Wilson, I need you more than you need me. 

The winner of the draw...

...for the Hedera Helix green chypre by Roxana is KKinDK. Congratulations and please email me using Contact with your shipping data so I can have this out in the mail for you soon!

Thanks everyone for the enthusiastic participation and till the next one (very soon!).

Etat Libre d'Orange Malaise of the 1970s fragrance: Change of Name, Change of Pace

Etat Libre d'Orange changes the name of their Sex Pistols fragrance (a 2010 release for French Sephora) into a more encompassing name and concept ~and please note this might be one of many to follow. The official site of the niche French brand even declares: The Sex Pistols are dead, long live Malaise (hope not, in the literal sense of the word!). "We thought it was hilarious to name a juice after a band whose stars were called Rotten and Vicious so we could sell it in a cosmetics emporium. But that’s not necessarily the whole story. In fact, we have many more in stock.
Because what is perfume, when you think of it? A potion we use to reinvent our memories. The matrix of as many stories as there are ways of getting into the scent. So what if we drew the consequence of this story-generating mechanism by dressing up the same perfume with as many names, characters and plotlines as it inspires? What if we gave it avatars? So we’re taking ‘Sex Pistols’ and giving it a new name that fits these troubled times…"

But let's see how the presentation changed:

Relive the anarchy of Britain in the punk age with the Etat Libre d'Orange Malaise of the 1970s Eau de Parfum.
Inspired by a wealth of seventies pop culture references, from Star Wars to The Stranglers, Malaise of the 1970s captures the resistant and tumultuous spirit of the times. A metallic juice that resonates like the twang of a guitar string, its sharpness reminiscent of safety pins fastened to tartan. A distillation of rebellion, music and raw emotion.
This scent from Etat Libre d'Orange blends the piquancy of black pepper and electric aldehydes with the headiness of patchouli and leather. Like an act of resistance, you cannot keep it out of your body any more than you can stop breathing. Blast off the last wafts of patchouli tailing after the Summer of Love. Growl out "No More Heroes". Take off to a galaxy far, far away. and indulge in the unique malaise of the 1970s.

Notes for Malaise of the 1970s: Citrus, Black Pepper, Amber, Prune, Electric Aldehydes, Heliotrope, Patchouli, Orcanox, Leather.

One note: Trainspotting came out in 1996. (Even if McGregor became Obi-Wan later on). Just so you know. 

Watch a clip on the brand and its manifesto/aims by president Etienne de Swardt.