Doing a combination post to reduce the smell traffic on my blog...

( In related news, I apparently like beaver's behinds. )

Okay, rather a lot of perfume reviews lately, but anyway...

( The eccentric synthetic called Nostalgia )

The first batch of samples has arrived from The Perfumed Court, so it's that time again...

( Malmaison, by Floris. Created in 1830. )

Well, last review for at least a couple weeks.
Unlike most of my previous reviews, this is less than on-the-spot as I've tried this a couple times before.
First of all, this perfume has the most glorious top note I've yet smelled; rich, sweet, dew-covered tuberose flower. Nothing artificial about it; it's as good as holding the real thing. Then things settle down a bit, and green scent gets mingled with a slightly different tuberose note mingled with muguet; cool "white florals". As lovely as it is, it can't help but feel a little pale compared to the incredible top note. This blend, rather like some of the other Frederic Malles I've tried seemed to fade rather than develop after the initial burst. There's no sense of previously unknown base notes emerging, but on the good side, there's no nasty surprises either. Like walking away from a garden, it just slowly disappears.
Very beautiful, very direct; not as unbelievably fantastic as the top note suggests, but even without that note this would be a first class perfume.

Grape crush and marzipan with mimosa. I could go on, but really, why should I when one sentence pretty much sums up how it smells on me? Yes, there's a tiny, tiny bit of the floral velvetiness I ran across in the other Carons, but overwhelmed by that olfactory trio. The percentage of each changes as time goes by, but no new player enters.
Fourteen down, one to go.

...and seventeen more coming in the mail.

Uh... What? An opening blend fruity florals and then... soap. No, seriously, soap and nothing but soap as soon at it's on my skin. Not a soapy note; soap. Within fifteen to thirty seconds any trace of anything else disappears.
I don't know what else to say. Maybe it's my skin chemistry?

Wow. Sometimes more really is more!
When I first put this on - more accurately, on my mother - I only used a tiny bit. The effect we both agreed on: an old-fashioned flowery perfume, warm, but not terribly interesting. Tonight, I put a whole bunch on as second try. The effect? It might as well be an entirely different perfume.
If I had to describe it as anything, I'd call it Knize Ten in drag on a date with Poivre, but really, it's entirely unique.
The first blast is complex and unmistakable but equally hard to define. There's carnation, spice, incense, a rich blend of flowers and a dark leathery note. Gradually a benzoin note extremely similiar to Knize Ten's emerges and starts to dominate the blend, but it it too merges with the rest. The background "velvet" is there, but as a fairly minor component.
I've begun to realize that the description of leather perfumes isn't necessarily the cow itself, rather a subset of dark, animal-like notes that are in the same ballpark.
This is the least sweet of the Carons I've tried, and would be beautiful on either sex. My second favorite of all the perfumes I've tried after Knize Ten.
Now if only I could figure out why my initial impression was of an old-fashioned floral...

After the last feminine Caron, this perfume surprised me a great deal, not least because it's something I could wear.
Poivre hits with its namesake note very much in evidence; the smell of pepper is strong, along with a dose of carnation and rose. Gradually some other spices emerge - cinnamon and cloves to my nose, though the latter might just be more carnation - and a touch of the powdery-rose note from Pois De Senteur. The Caron velvetiness is strongly present, but I find it nicely balanced here by the sharpness of the pepper. However, the other spices combine with the sweetness of the flowers to give a bit of a hot apple pie impression, so I'd recommend that anyone thinking of buying this to keep the gourmand element in mind.
All in all, a rich, spicy-floral concoction that would be good on a man or a woman. Right now it's not what I'm looking for, but I'm glad to know it's out there.

First of all, bear in mind I've never smelled acacia, so I'm hampered in my review here. There is one strong floral note that dominates the blend, with others in the background. I get a bit of citrus - perhaps orange - and a bit of orange flower. Most important to my nose is a weird murky note that's buried under the others: I can only describe it as smog, and it rather ruins the naturalness of the scent for me. Otherwise, a fairly unremarkable floral with a few vanilla-ish base notes later on.

Insomnia says it's time for another review!
Well, I've run through the manly scents and I'm now in the girls' changing room, and nothing says that better than Caron's Pois De Senteur.
This perfume starts out with a very strong rose scent to my nose. Not rose as in the flower, but rose as in rose oil; if you've smelled it, you'd know what I mean. There are a bunch of florals I can't identify, though I'd swear I spotted a bit of orange-flower in there. Gradually the powder part of the rose begins to dominate, and the baby-powder effect is quite noticeable.
This stuff is intense. I put it on in the living room, and five minutes later, went to my bedroom for a while. Half an hour later I walk back into the living room and I'm over-powered by the cloud I left behind! Like Tabac Blond - which I'll review once I'm brave enough to try it on - it has an unusual velvety quality that's difficult to describe.
Though this is a nice perfume - but really not my kind of perfume - it fails to do what it says in the name: it smells nothing like sweet peas.

Okay, I'm not giving an entirely fair review of this perfume, as I put it on a few hours ago and now I have to wash it off ( because I need a bath, not because of any dislike ).
This is the driest of the perfumes I've tried so far: only Creed's Cuir De Russie comes close. It is also very different in other ways; where as the spice in the other ones I've tried is married to sweet incense, this is strongly herbal. I smelled pepper and something like tea tree, mixed with a bunch of intense, Mediterranean-type herbs. Really invigorating; the "butchest" fragrance I've smelled so far. After a while a kind of fresh vegetable scent appears, a little like cucumber.
Right now the vegetables and herbs are turning into a conifer forest scent, but unfortunately I won't get see where it's going.
As for the name... ouch. The name in the States is supposedly going to translate as "Thunderwood". Oh well, at least they didn't call it Schlongimar.

Least inspiring of the lot. I can't really identify much in here other than a faint honey note in the background. The front is a sort of generic masculine synthetic type smell; I can't put a name to what it reminds me of other than other scented products. I suppose it's supposed to be leather, but I'd be lying if I said it smelled anything like it. This may be a personal nasal weakness, as I'm unable to detect leather in any of the "leather" type scents I've smelled other than Knize Ten, and even there it's not dominant. Cuiron has faded quite quickly, and a hint of some flower has emerged - jasmine? - but nothing dramatic, and it remains very similar to how it started.
As an aside, I would of thought a place that pushes a lot of handbags would know what they smell like, but never mind...
On to something more cheerful, it's a kitty! Okay, it's a pretty lame dancing kitty, but it's dancing to a song that's been stuck in my head all day.

I have a bottle of orange-flower water; it's a very beautiful scent, very evocative of dew covered flowers. Take that scent, replace the orange-flower with lilac, triple the strength of the "dew" component of the scent, and you'll have a very good idea of what En Passant smells like. It's quite mild, and by far the softest of the perfumes I've smelled so far: if it was a picture it would in pastels, not oils.
As it fades, the green notes predominate, with a bit of freshly cut grass thrown in. Its after-scent is slightly disappointing to my nose ; the lush green scent disappears and all that's left is a rather ordinary floral perfume. However, this only appears after six hours, so there's a lot of green to enjoy.
Like Bigarrade Concentree - and unlike the Creeds and Knize - this gradually fades rather than actively develops, but unlike Bigarrade Concentree, the fade is very pleasant and never stale.
To sum up, a nice little fragrance; very mild, very natural; soft and green rather than big and bold. This isn't a scent I'd use every day, but if I was feeling sick and not in the mood for anything heavy and complex, it might be just the thing to cheer me up.

Another day, another Cuir De Russie.
I found this one quite different from the Piver. This opens with brandy, turpentine and nutmeg with a certain almost root-beer-like note in the background. Very fresh, but not green like the last, and the nutmeg note is powerfully odd: it doesn't smell like nutmeg, it smells like what biting into a nutmeg nut tastes like. After the initial blast, I starting smelling that soapy note I smelled in Royal English Leather - a house specialty, perhaps? - but it morphed into a much more pleasing Noxcema-like note. After a couple hours of the Noxzema dominating it's faded to a sugary after-scent that's similar to Royal English Leather's but without the soapiness. The root-beer note has remerged somewhat too.
All in all, a similar level of complexity to Royal English Leather but not quite as byzantine as Knize Ten. Still, it's far ahead of Piver's straight-forward Cuir De Russie.
Probably my second favorite of the bunch I've tried so far, after Knize Ten.
.

Probably the blandest perfume I've tried so far. Not at all offensive to my nose, but so generically "foresty" I'm a bit at a loss about what to say about it. It's green, cool, and with a bit of an earthy undertone, but not a realistic one.
I may be sounding a bit negative here, but i don't mean to: it's really quite pleasant, I just don't find it interesting, and I feel I must have smelled it a hundred times before in various shampoos. This may be because it was recently reformulated, but I won't jump to any conclusions as I've never smelled the original.

I went for a walk to the Gorge this afternoon, and saw a group of seals! Sometimes the Gorge looks so river-like it becomes easy to forget it's salt water. They were only a few feet away in the water, and weren't at all bothered by my presence; they were too busy eating some form of sea-life on the sides of the gorge. I really hope my camera gets back soon so I can catch moments like these when I'm out walking.
Anyway, on to perfume #3, Bigarrade Concentree.
There's really not a lot to say about it: peel a mandarin and you'll get the full experience. Gradually it fades and looses freshness, and it's mostly gone right now even though I put it on an hour and half ago. Compare that to the tenacious - I had to wash it off - Royal English Leather and the extremely tenacious - I couldn't wash it off - Knize Ten, and it comes across as rather feeble. It's a decent orange scent - it could be fresher - but it's never something I'd buy at the current prices.

Edited to add: A few hours later and there's definitely a whole stale fruit-salad thing going on. Insert "Do Not Want" macro here.