Caldey Island - Island Lavender

Some time ago I was looking for perfumes at Ebay. one headline captured my attention, "Rare, niche, Caldey Island lavendel, made by monks". I read the descrition and found a lot of interesting information. Luca Turin apperantly called Caldey island lavender "The best lavender soliflor on earth". Which of course, didn´t make me less curious, even though I haven´t read The Guide.


start searching on internet and soon realised that Caldey Island perfumes wasn´t that hard to get. Caldey Island is a small island situated off Pembrookeshire, Wales coast. The first monastery on the island was founded way back in the 6th century and since then several different monastic orders have had monasterys on the island. During some periods the island have been abandoned.


The recent monks are cistercians and arrived to Caldey Island in 1929. During the 50'ies the monks started selling lavender bunches to visitors. Some time later they start making their own lavender perfume as well, made of lavender and other herbs picked on the island. The perfume become very popular with visitors.


During the 70'ies the monk decided to outsource the perfume making. Today, the belgian perfume Ivo jacobs is the nose behind the present formulation of Island lavender. The island today have no actual perfume making, but the monks fill up the bottles on the island and make the outer packaging and so on. However, the monks have start growing lavender on the island again, and sell small bunches of it to the tourists...


I really find this story to be both touching and interesting, a bunch of monks on a far away island making a living of selling perfumes and chocolate(!). From Easter time and until autumn it´s possible to visit the island. Besides the monastery, Caldey Island also have the best sandy beach in Pembrookeshire, and the whole island is as a peaceful retreat. there is also a small village at the island. I would really enjoy visiting Caldey Island some day. You can read more about Caldey Island, the monks and a little this and that here: http://www.caldey-island.co.uk/


For about 10 € I got my very own small bottle of Island lavender, and of course the monks have a webshoip where you can buy it and other things such as soaps and chocolates as well.


But what about the fragrances it self? well, I´m not a big consumer of lavender scents, but occationally I just need to have a lavender soliflor to calm down and relax. At those moments Island lavender is just right. The opening is clear, fresh and yet not cold. During development, the lavender becomes dryer and softer and I also detect other herb, even though I can´t say exactly what other herbs. it has also an airy feeling.


Caldey Island lavender is mostly a lavender soliflor and smell as one shortly spekaing. If it´s the worlds best I can´t say. It´s good for what I want it to and that´s enough for me. Longevity is short, really, but at that time I´ve allready fallen in sleep. :P


I do recommend Caldey Island Lavender to everyone. Not because it´s the most amazing fragrance ever, but because "everyone" cab afford a bottle of their own, for about 10€ (comes in different sizes, very moderate prices and low shipping rates as well). And because it feel very pleasant to support a gang of hard working monks on a small island...


Pic: Caldey island

Atelier Cologne - Vanille Insensee

I hadn´t tried anything from Atelier Cologne, but I got a sample of their latest offering, Vanille Insensee in a recent swap.


Mmm, mmm and... mmm, this is really thrilling. Somewhere hiding in all the dark smokiness of Vanille Insensee there is actually some vanilla. To find it I have to be a smoke-fireman for a while...


i don´t have any good smoky fragrance in my collection. Smoky notes are a bit difficult to me. Smoky smoke, often with birch tar can easily become to sharp and even headache inducing on me. Incense smoky can turn in strange directions, like Messe de Minuit that becomes sweet coca cola on me, Comme des Garcons Insence line smells more like room fragrances then perfume to me and my latest finding, Oriental Lumpus have so much insence in it that it turns on my insence allergy leaving me with my eyes all watery and red. Serge Noir is to dusty and grey and Patchouli 24 (27) from Le Labo becomes very monotone after about 18 hours and have to be put down by a dip in the water.


Vanille Insensee might be the perfect smoky frag for me! I don´t know why it becomes SO smoky on me, the name isn´t related to insence, apperantly it means something like Vanille Insane.


Notes of lime, coriander, jasmine, vetiver, oakmoss, oakwood, vanilla. Probably it´s a mix between really smoky vetiver and a grey, duty oakmoss making the smoke soft, comapct, on the border to dusty/powdery and very comfortable. i belive jasmine and vanille contributes with a little sweet softness, but over all this is an unsweet, dark, saturated and very smoky scent.


Vanille Insensee is a cologne absolut 15%, I´m not totally sure what that is. But probably diluted to 15% fragrance essences. Yet, vanille Insensee has a really good staying power, after 12 hours I still smell some smoky vanilla. The sillage is great (I´ve only got a dab on sample). Maybe you can guess it´s a cologne thnaks to it´s airy and somewhat light character even though filled with such heavy notes. How a scent can be both heavy and airy at the same time might be a contradiction, but Vanille Insensee is that!


I´ve always thought of smoky notes to be a little thrilling, a little film noir and kind of mysterious. Vanille Insensee fullfils that with ease. Vanille Insensee is really nice on women, but I think it would be great on men as well. If you´re looking for a smoky fragrance with some sweetness, you should give this a try.


Do you have any favorite smoky fragrances?





Pic:beneaththerose.blogspot

We have a winner!

List Randomizer

There were 16 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

Pärlbesatt
Ylva
Bellatrix
solocha
Maria
kjanicki
a.k.a Warum
Alice
Carina
Cymbaline
Hanna
Natalia
Ann
Nilla
Ann (E)
Catterina
Timestamp: 2011-03-24 07:19:14 UTC


Congratulations to Pärlbesatt that have won a bunch of samples to test.


To comfort the rest of you I think there will be another drawing soon and mayvbe another small surprise for faithful readers. Don´t miss that!

Untitled - No 8 (Brent Leonesio)

Luckyscent have given 8 perfumers the possibility to create 8 different scents. Brent Leonesio is the nose behind Untitled No 8 and also the creator of indie brand Smell Bent. Smell Bent has a wonderful, humoristic style and offers perfume oils and also eau de toilettes to really great prices. I´ve tried and also reviewed some Smell Bent fragrance and you can find some of them here: http://perfumenerd.blogspot.com/2009/12/smell-bent-hungry-hungry-hippies-and.html
Since Smell Bents perfume oils was such a pleasant surprise, I was of course curious about Untitled No 8 as well.


With notes of narcissus, fur, feral musk, oud and leather you expect an animalic fragrance and that is what you get and plenty of it too. It´s like being trapped inside Noah´s Ark with all the animlas and all their poo too.


usually I´m not that sensitive to animalic notes in perfumes. Muscs Koublai Khan becomes a well behaved and easy to handle champion horse compared to untitled No 8. Untitled No 8 is foamy sweaty, pungent leather and if that isn´t enough top it of with a heft dose of shit. And not just some dry horse manor with the smell of half digested hay, this is real shit. I have spend time with my youngest grand child toay and he pooped 4 times, and that smelled very much like the dominating note in untitled No 8, but Untitled No is a little more complex and mixed with other strong, animalic notes besides the shit.


Untitled No 8 is too much feces for me to feel comfortable. In a distant it smells kind of good, but any closer sniff makes me almost nauseous.


After a while the smell of poo becomes more in the background and Unititled No 8 becomes a soft, yet erotic and still dirty animalic musk fragrance. Untitled No 8 is a perfume oil, with good lasting power but not so big sillage. Even though the base is quite pleasant, the road leading to it isn´t worth it to me.


Even though Untitled No 8 doesn´t really working on me, I still recommend it to anyone curious about animalic notes in perfumes. I´ve tested it on both husband and oldest son and the shit was quite dominant on them too. Still I belive it could smell quite nice on the right person...


Have you tried it? What do you think about it? Do you tolerate animalic/dirty/skanky/body odour notes good or bad? I´m somewhere in between, some work really magical on me, while others (like the musk note in L'Air du Rien) become so unpleasant.


Today I´ve got a parcel from a fairly new French perfume house, so I´ll try them out and then review them here. And soon I´ll be reviewing a really pleasant smoky fragrance and also so indie scents all the way from USA is coming up shortly...


Pic: Noah´s Ark, Edward Hicks.

A small draw to celebrate the spring!

Finally it feels like spring it´s on it´s way. I really hope this lovely sunny weather stay with us for a while. Now it´s time for springflowers and no more snow!


Now, when winter is going towards it´s end, I also start to feel for some other kinds of fragrances. Today was the first time since last summer I longed to wear Bond No 9´s Coney Island. Do you have any spring or summer fragrances that you feel it´s finally time for?


Some of the scents I´ve been writing about from around Christmas until now I won´t use as much during spring, while others will be so nice to wear in warmer weather. I belive I´ll use Cruel Gardenia with pleasure during april as well as several of Ormonde Jayne´s fragrances. Frazer parfum have several perfumes with a kind of refreshing feel and I think they´ll be beautiful during summer. When (or if) I comes to London I´ll go to Roja Dove´s at Harrods and ask how much a bottle of Frazer Parfum is...


Puredistance I that I wrote about just days ago will be so nice during spring and summer, so will Iris Ukioje that I bought when I was in Stockholm.


Some of the fragrances I have wrote about isn´t that easy to get, so I will give away a small set of samples to one winner (here and the Swedish blog).


The winner will have: One sample (1 ml) of Femme by Rochas (vintage), one sample (1 ml) of Shalimar (vintage), one sample of Cerchi Nell'Acqua´s White Out, one sample (1 ml) of Sigilli´s Claudiae, one small sample (0,5 ml) of Guerlain´s Cruel Gardenia, one small sample (0,5 ml) of Iris Ukioje and one small sample (0,5 ml) of Puredistance I.


Leave a comment below, and I´ll draw one winner at thursday 24th of march, tell me something about spring or winter favorites.


Good Luck!





Pic: krokus i snö, J.Larsson

Puredistance - Puredistance I

Puredistance is an exclusive perfumehouse situated in Vienna, Austria. Puredistance offers three different perfumes, Puredistance I, Antonia and Puredistance M. Anne Buzantian is the nose behind Puredistance I and Antonia, while Roja Dove has created Puredistance M. I have been lucky enough to evaluate Puredistance I.


Sometimes when I encounter a really beautiful perfume I can feel that I lack words to describe it true, but with Puredistance I it´s almost like the other way around. It IS beautiful, but when wearing it I get a current of impressions, associations, thoughts and feelings that is so overwhelming it´s hard to know where to start and where it will end up...


Imagine there was a way of capturing the scent of the Garden of Eden or maybe the Elysium (Elysian)Fields and then put the wonderful fragrance in some kind of big, transcluent bubble. Something like that is what I feel when putting on Puredistance I. I am in a perfect scented bubble, a bubble filled with clean, paradisic air, like the smell of that air, but even better...!


The opening of Puredistance I is airy, light, elusive, vibrant and filled with emotions. I experience the sillage as huge, but never intrusive or heavy, it´s like I wrote before, like the air in the most pleasant garden, but better. At the same time Puredistance I is like a shiled against all surrounding scents and odours, it makes me imagine that this is the way the world smells.


But, how does it smell? The opening is slightly tart with soft citrus notes and a hint of black currant, a smallest dash of greenery and then comes the rose, the most adorable rose scent you can imagine. Roses so gentle that they are sailing on thw wind like a ballon, roses so soft as the most perfect veil, roses in a rosegarden blossoming in the faint light of dusk. Weak, but ever present, soft, but so intoxicating and so incredible romantic it´s hard to imagine, this is roses beyond masterpice, this is roses on the border to miracle...


I have allready decide which perfume to wear when the first of my children gets married. And now, I also know which perfume I should wear if I ever was to be married again (of corse with the same loving man I married almost 22 years ago). As a matter of fact we have talked about renewing our vows, and with Puredistance I it feels even more likely that we´ll do that in the future. Nowadays a lot of people spend really much money on their weddings, and I suggest them to spare a part of that budget for the perfect wedding perfume, Puredistance I.


Puredistance I never gets heavy, sweet, cloying or dominating. Still it has, despite of it´s softness and airyness, an extreme hereness. It´s floats around you as the most perfect cloud, and it does it for hours and hours.


Like some others (but only a few) fragarnces I´ve tried, Puredistance I is a slow perfume. It takes time to warm up and mature on your skin, to caress and enchant. You´ll be accompanied by the sheer and airy notes for a long time, where they eventually become more saturated, slowly colored with golden hues and a serene warmth. The airy rose gets accompanied by the softest, golden and perfect powdery mimosa. Now, the sillage also closes in, become close to skin, sensual and intimate. By now, there is several hours (6-8) since I put on Puredistance I I can almost fool myself that i smell this wonderful for real. In this phase Puredistance I is both very close to skin but also send of little, pleasant whiffs of rosy mimosa, smoth amber and light vetiver.


Puredistance I is so beautyful it deserve only to be worn at the most special occations. As a perfumista I have a big collection of different scents that I can wear depending on mood, occation or color of my clothes. Puredistance I is such a wonderful perfume it somehow deserve to be worh as a signture scent. A perfect scent, loved and totally admired by it´s owner. Puredistance I is really much to beautiful and perfect to be waisted on a volatile perfume nerd!


Puredistance I has a very good, without being disturbing, sillage. The lasting power is more then good, this is a fragrance that evolves slowly and still after more then 12 hours it smells quite strong on me. I think it can last at least for a full 24 hour!


Puredistance I is a must try if you get the chanse, and you must really try it if you´re looking for pure, romantic, beautfiul and well made perfumes. Also if you´re looking for that one perfume for a very special occation, such as wedding, you must give Puredistance I a try!


to me, Puredistance I isn´t an every day scent, but a scent to wear on rare and very special occations, such as wedding anniversery and like. Of course Puredistance I have made me curious to try Antonia and Puredistance M as well. Maybe some of my readers allready have tried any of them?


You can find more information about Puredistance and their wonderful perfumes here:
http://www.puredistance.com/



Pic: Macro flower, flickr.
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Guerlain - Spiritueuse Double Vanille

It´s impossible not to have expectations on a perfume that -by some- is knowned to be the worlds best vanilla fragrance. i tried it briefly during one of our perfume meetings, but all I could discover then was a pleasant vanilla. Eventually I got the chanse to test it a little more carefully.


And wow, what a total surpise it was! I´ve read about dark tobacco, even darker rhum and a smoth but unsweet vanilla, and then what I get is something totally different. Honestly, during the first half an hour-an hour of my first testing I was confused and even belived that I somehow had get the wrong fragrance...


On me, Guerlains Spiritueuse Double Vanille starts with an obvious cedar note. A very much concrete cedar note, like being very small and sit on top of a big wooden crave. The note of cedar is so genuin I can almost feel how the wood feels and hoiw it would sound if I knocked on it. Anyway, inside the wood cradle is a brimful glass of ice cold vanilla vodka. The wooden note with pencil and a thad of warmth blends with cold, pure and perfect vanilla vodka. I can even taste it in my mouth, usually I don´t drink any kind of vodka early tuesday mornings, but I´m sure feel to when I smell this fragrance...


During this phase of Spiritueuse Double Vanille, the proportions is about 90% cedar wood and 10% icy vanilla vodka. How on earth do they manage to make the vanilla so cold and refreshing??? At some point in the heart note I can smell a smoky note, or not really smoky, rather like glowing wood, the cedar wood is evolved to being inside a traditional woodfire sauna. The vanilla element is now more present, sweeter, softer and warmer.


Somehaow the glass of vodka has been transformed to a glass of smoky whisky. Some powdery notes comes alson, something reminding of powdery dark raw sugar. I can´t dicover any tobacco at all on me! The vanilla is much more full bodied now. Spiritueuse Double Vanille smells incredible good, incredible complex and constantly changing to me. It´s like heading out on adventure in a magic vanilla world without having an idea about what to come next.


Never has a vanilla scent that I tried so whole heartedly fit in to the term "a vanilla for grown ups" as much as Spiritueuse Double Vanille, it´s filled with alcohol, smoke and soft sensualism. Finally a vanilla scent I won´t pass over to my youngest daughter, at least not until she is 18 or 20 or even 35!


The powdery, smoky and extremly well made heart goes on for about 1-1½ hour, then the fragrance slowly goes to rest. But, to me it has two different bases. One of them, still very much alive, has elements of sweet raisins, dark rhum and a very soft, saturated, sweet and dark vanilla. Spiritueuse Double Vanille goies from sensual to vibrant erotic according to me. I can´t stop sniffing myself, totally enchanted by this magnificent fragrance. This hold another 3-4 hours, fading little by little.


If putting on some Spiritueuse Double Vanille before bedtime (which is actually quite stupid since I smell so good I can hardly sleep) I can still smell it softly whe I wake up. Nothing left but a subtle vanilla floral, but the fragrances lingering on my skin like a distant caress.


I have to admit that I´ve fallen hard for Spiritueuse Double Vanille, about as hard as i falled for Cuir Beluga. I´m sure my decant won´t last long and then I´ll need more of it! I "can´t live" without having a stash of Spiritueuse Double Vanille.


Sometimes I feel for a pure and simple vanilla, and then Ava Luxes Vanilla Musk is a big favorite, but when looking for a more grown up vanilla experience, Spiritueuse Double Vanille is a must try. Hefty sillage, good lasting power and I recommend it for men as well. A little warning though, I´ve read reviews and comments about it and as with other scents it´s not as good on everyone. It also seem to be very different on different person, so be sure to get a sample before buying (as usual).


For you that allready have tried it, love it or hate it?



Pic: grey goose vodka crate