Scent of Spring

I just wanted to share this with you, a bird cherry tree (hägg in Swedish) growing by my balcony. The scent of the flowers is honeylike and intoxicating at the same time. In Sweden, this is the scent of spring.

Bird Cherry Tree

Close up of the flowers

Rahät Loukoum by Serge Lutens

This is one perfume that forever will rub in the fact that the smell that comes out of a bottle might be very different than how that perfume will smell on your skin.

When I open my vial, out comes a strong whiff of bitter almonds. On skin the bitter almond note lasts only for a second or two. Then there are toasted almonds for about 10 seconds. These turn to sweet marzipan, but within a few minutes the whole almond thing dissappears, making place for cherries. The scent keeps on morphing, inpersonating among others cherry liquorice, cherry liquor, marshmallows, cherry nougat and vanilla pudding. This lasts for about two hours. After that there is mostly musk and vanilla. Rahät Loukum is the arab name for Turkish delight, "Candyshop" would also be a decent name for this scent.

My first thought when trying this one was "Oh my god, this is way off my sweet-o-meter, far into diabetic zone, I can't wear this". But since then, I've found myself reaching out to this scent several times. Today I wore it after first using a coffee scrub, leaving faint bitter-sweet notes of coffee and dark chocolate all over my skin. In my opinion, that bought out the best in the Rahät Loukoum. Layered like that, I got deeper and darker notes like cherry tobacco and Kriek, Belgian cherry beer, two party staples when I first started uni. I'm no big consumer of any of them nowadays, but I loved catching a whiff every now and then, reminding me of happy, carefree days :)

Rahät Loukoum is most wearable gourmand scent I've tried so far, but still, I wouldn't wear it out of the house. Or, well, actually I did today, and I felt rather uncomfortable doing it. This is not a scent when you want people to take you seriously, but great when wearing your slouchiest clothes, realxing around the house. So, I'm rating this a 4 out of 5.

Picture: Cherry Almond Nougat, yum

Boxeuses by Serge Lutens

There is no label like Serge Lutens  to create vivid vignettes in my mind when I try one of their creations. Boxeuses is no exception.

When I was 17 I lived in Thailand for a year as an AFS Exchange student. At that time Thiland did not have it current day status as a holiday paradise but was viewed with a bit of suspicion. I stayd in the smallest province, named Samutsongkhram. The only tourists ever to come there were safely enclosed into air conditioned buses, heading for the beaches further south.

It's difficult to describe the culture shock I experienced. Everything was different from home. The lush vegetation. The spicy food. The Buddist mindset. And there were  temples all around, serene at day, loud and crazy at night hosting fairs full of song and dancing performances - and also Thai boxing matches.

The first 30 minutes of Boxeuses take me right back to one of those fairs. It opens with a bang, the initial notes are jumping one off another. There are mothballs, camphor and wood. There is an extremely life like smoke note that only lasts for a couple of seconds. There is leather and lots of sweet incense. I think it's the incense that does it, it smells exactly like I remember the incense from those temples. The smoke reminds me of fire from burning dry palm leaves and the wood comes from all those huge tropical trees that grew all around.

When the scent calms down, the incense stays. It's now a sweeter than I remember from Thailand. There are prunes and leather as well.

I'm rating Boxeuses a 4 out of 5. I love the beginning, just as I came to love Thailand and its people. But I'm not yet ready to smell like a prune yet. Sorry!

The picture above is of Parinya Charoenphol. He became a Thai boxing champion in order to pay for a gender change. It's a true story and there has been a movie made about it. See trailer below for more of the atmosphere I'm associating with the Boxeuses scent.

Chergui by Serge Lutens

Chergui is named after a wind that blows in the Moroccan desert. It is supposed to be persistent, very dry and dusty, hot in summer, cold in winter. I think the idea to create a perfume inspired by the chergui is stunning. Before I've tried on the perfume my head is full with vivid pictures out of Arabian Nights; rubinesque harem ladies cooling off by the pool, bedouin musicians playing intricate tunes outside their tents at night, camel caravans carrying riches beyond imagination... 

Now, if I return to reality, I haven't been to Morocco. The only desert I've visited was in Rahjastan, in India. The major scent note I remember is dust. A dry chalky scent when the sun warms the sand to the point that it burns your skin when touching it. There are dry, scarred shrubbery smelling a little herby. Animalic scents from camel dung and sweaty camel fur all around (I was on a camel safari). Sometimes spicy curries stewing over small, wood kindled, cooking fires.

So, what does Serge Lutens Chergui have in store for me? Initially there is honey and vanilla. These are backed by traces of smoke, which adds character and keeps the sweeter notes from getting cloying. While the scent plays on, the vanilla is ever present and on and off I feel soft amber and musk. It feels like a sweet whisper, close to my skin.

So how can this have any relation to the Moroccan desert wind? I think of it as a dream of how desert life would be without all the dirt and grime. Just the sweet, soft and the pleasant remains. The honey note comes from piles of sweet confections. The smoke whirls up in the air where friends share a water pipe. The only scents coming off the camels are from their cargo of sandalwood and vanilla while musk tell tales of secret amorous encounters behind harem walls. The only one who knows is the ever swirling desert wind.

This is the most expertly crafted Oriental I've tried this far. I personally don't feel comfortable wearing vanilla, so I'm rating it 3 out of 5. That doesn't mean this is a bad scent, it just isn't a scent for me, but for anyone (of any gender) who's into orientals, I consider it a must try.

Pic: "The terrace of the sergalio" by Jean-Leon Gerome.

Spring Scent Safari, Part 2 -Trees

In the blog post "Spring Scent Safari, Part 1" I showed some pictures of the earliest spring flowers that show up around my in-laws house. But, if anyone remembers, I also said that they hardly have any scent at all. So is Sweden all scentless during spring, one might ask? No, I wouldn't say so. There are lots of scents, but at this time of the year, if you want to experience them, you have to look toward the trees.

Now, if you just stand there, pressing your nose to the trunk and leaves there are some scents, but not very strong. How do you get to the more substantial ones?  You can cut the tree down, of course. A warm chainsaw is grinding it's way through the trunk would release lots of scent. But I somehow doubt that my mother in law would still like me if I cut down the trees in her garden. And I like them myself so it would be pretty stupid to cut them down. So, what other options are there?

Well, just pick some fresh buds and new baby leaves, stuff into your mouth, chew them and pond upon what sensations you get! Most of what you think you taste are actually scents. A great way to get a close experience of the raw materials in your surrounding. Of course, be very careful to try only trees and plants that you know are not poisonous in any way.

Here are the one I tried:

Birch. This one gave me a very astringent feeling in my mouth. It was bitter but very fresh and leafy.

Spruce. Extremely resinous. Spicy and bitter. Somehow more feminine than the pine.

Pine. What can you say, the king of Swedish trees? Also resinous but a lot less acid than the spruce. Feels very manly somehow, probably as it is used mainly in masculine fragrances :)

Rowan. This was a big suprise. Hardly any astringency. A hint of soft nougat or hazelnuts. I'm dying to try putting some of this in alcohol to see what happens.

Moss. This one did not have any smell at all, nor taste. Mabye the moss I tried was dead but I wouldn't be able to tell the difference...

Blackcurrant bush leaves. Lovely, the blackcurrant note shows up in the leaves, but much greener. Like a Sauvignon Blanc. If you're into wines, this is a must try. The baby leaves might be great in a spring salad, hm, what to pair them with?

Comparison Jo Malone "Orange Blossom"+"White Jasmine & Mint" vs "Tubereuse Criminelle"

When thinking about the notes in Tubereuse Criminelle, two other samples in my perfume collection came to mind; Jo Malones "Orange Blossom" and "White Jasmine and Mint". Jo Malone fragrances are made to layer, shouldn't these two add up to something similar to TC? They both have white flowers (ok, no tuberose, but jasmine will have to do in a pinch), orange blossom and mint. I decided to do a little comparison. One drop of Serge Lutens Tubereuse Criminelle on one wrist and a small spray of first JM Orange Blossom and then White Jasmine & Mint on the other.

Smelling these two next to each others is like having a chat with a seductive but slightly insane femme fatal on one side and a innocent little girl on the other. TC just keeps expanding in all possible and impossible directions. There is good, there is evil and there is the just very strange stuff in between.

JM Orange Blossom first smells exactly like when you use your fingers to peel an orange. No more, no less. A safe smell. The "White Jasmine and Mint" isn't very noticeable at first. I suspect it takes the edge of the orange but I don't really notice it. Half an hour later the jasmine is more prominent. The little mint that there is feels vaxy and plasticy, like the first seconds when you put a Mentos in your mouth. You feel the smooth surface, there is a hint of mint, but it hasn't started to dissolve yet, releasing its menthol. About an hour later, I'm getting mandarin and lemon. There might be a hint of dirtyness, but when compared side to side with TC, it's hardly worth mentioning. This is an ok scent. Relatively fresh with lots of citrusy notes. I have to try it on its own on a warm summer day. And I think I might have been very hash when I've said before that I hate orange blossoms. I now recall that I was pregnant when I formed that judgement. They are not that bad.

So, the verdict of today's exercise: The result of layering Jo Malones "Orange Blossom" and "White Jasmine and Mint" is not bad, but it's NOTHING like the legendary Tubereuse Criminelle.

"Tubéreuse Criminelle" by Serge Lutens

This one I've been looking forward to try. I've heard so much about it, it has quite a reputation, I badly want to form an opinion of my own.

First, a huge blast of...what? When I close my eyes I can almost believe I'm in the midst of a tropical night garden with big juicy clumps of flowers hanging all around me. But behind those flowers there is a hint of nasty. It reminds me of public rest rooms in Thailand. Not the piss and shit part but they use these little camphor smelling tablets to repel insects that live in the pipes, mostly roaches and silverfish. The smell of those tablets is lingering in the background. And there is gasoline, I repeatedly caught myself thinking: "I really shouldn't be inhaling this".

As the scent develops the flower part turns more toward jasmine and hyasinth. I'm also getting moththballs and lots of menthol. And orange flowers. Normally I hate orange blossoms. On me they smell dirty and remind me of tooth decay and unwashed bodies. But in Tubereuse Criminelle they fit in, making their contribution both to the flowery part and to the skanky underbelly.

Some hours later things have calmed down. There is a strong note of generic "white flower" that sometimes turns into Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum. There is also a note of mint intertwined. The mint has an interesting physical effect. As I'm not used to smell it in a setting like this I sometimes get a cold little shiver down my spine, or feel slightly unsettled by the cool sensation of it. Like I'm smelling all this flowery sweetness but I know somehow that there is something very very wrong with it. I love how the play with hot/cold adds an extra dimension to the scent.

Some associate this scent with vampires, some with a blond bombshell out of a 30ies movie. Impeccable dressed up in a black tight dress, shiny red lipstick onb but just wait for a while and out comes the machine gun. For me, I think of Snow White in her glass casket. When you come closer she opens her eyes and beckons you to open the lid. When you do, you realise there is no girl there but just a mass of crawling maggots reaching towards you. An olfactory representation of a beautiful shell with very nasty things going on on the inside.

To be honest, even if I was looking forward to trying this one, I didn't think I'd like it. There are white flowers, which I'm not to happy about, and orange blossoms that I seriously dislike. But I love it. Somehow the ugliness of each one (as I perceive it) comes together and builds a very unique and interesting whole. This is not a scent for everyday wear, it's a scent that tells a different story to every wearer. I'm rating it 5 out of 5.