HS3

I’d never heard of Odin before, being from small-town Washington, DC and Orlando as of late. Apparently, it looks to be a trendy store in NYC that stocks emerging designers, along with various other high-end stuff and also a newly released EDT line. It goes to show how far a good marketing plan can go for you when a small clothing retailer can release a set of EDTs and get them carried by stores like luckyscent and the like.

The bottles and packaging look gorgeous, though I haven’t actually seen one in person. I recently got the three of them as samples from luckyscent, and have been sampling them from time to time. Nomad is the one I’m sampling right now, and I really do like it. It opens a bit more “perfumey” than you’d expect, probably from a number of synthetic musks and florals. It settles into a creamy, sweetened heliotrope, with a sandalwood/vanilla undertone and the ever-present synthetic musk ringing along.

I could see myself owning and wearing this one though. It seems like a perfume scent that wouldn’t offend, but wouldn’t be boring or run of the mill either.

It’s a pity, but Serge Lutens has decided to pull Douce Amere from its export line, and only offer it exclusively as a Paris bell jar. I’m sure they have their reasoning behind all of their marketing, whether it be their exclusive Paris line, or single year limited exports, but I don’t like it. When I heard that Douce Amere was being pulled, I stopped putting off the purchase and emailed my SA at Barney’s to have her hold me a bottle until their next bag event.

Douce Amere is a gorgeous scent. It combines the familiar sweet, hay-like base of Serge Lutens that is reminiscent of the drydown of Chergui with a crisp, icy anise opening. It has a slight boozy feel to it in the top notes that might remind you of a whiff of Chartreuse liquor. It settles into a comforting, velvety middle with signature SL cues. It’s a great addition to the line, and a pity that it’ll be infinitely harder to get (for those of us outside of Paris).

I guess a set of photos of one tan labeled Serge Lutens is not much different than the next, but Serge does have beautiful bottles, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. Here are just a few that I snapped – nothing fancy, but for those new to Serge, it’s a nice way of checking out the bottle!

Oh man – it’s good to have a new camera. While my Maxxum 7D from ‘04 was nice for its time (rest its little Minolta soul), this new D90 shows that they’ve come a long way since then. I was a big film snob for a while and only used the dSLR just for little here and there photography. I think this new camera will change my mind – it’s a really great piece of equipment.

Enough of that – on to the point. I got my gorgeous new bottle of Comme des Garcons LUXE Patchouli in this past week. Franco at luckyscent personally saw to my order and really did me good for samples on this order. I was thinking about getting it from beautyhabit (another great site!) because of their 10% off sale, but he promised to make up for the difference with samples. I really wanted the pyramid bottle rather than the cube, so that’s all I needed to hear to get it from luckyscent.

I’m still just as enamored by the gorgeous scent in the bottle (it’s sprayed on my arm right now and every time I catch a whiff, I’m more and more pleased with the purchase). I managed to get it at no cost out of pocket because I sold a couple Creeds to pay for it. Creed employs some really bizarre strong-armed tactics and legal threats to maintain their questionable history story and a recent example hit close to home and made me decide to no longer patronize that company. I sold the ones I could live without and kept a couple that I or the fiance really love (hey, morals only go but so far ).

PHOTOS!

I need to set up some new sets and such for photos like Nathan Branch does (incredible photos!), but until then, I hope you enjoy the same ol’ black on plexiglass look. Oh, and for those who wonder, it’s a 2 prong to 3 prong plug converter that’s holding the box up in the first photo – it was handy.

I finally caved. It was going to happen sooner or later. I ordered a Nikon D90 this week and it will arrive on Friday. I won’t have a good macro initially for close bottle shots, but hopefully soon (I’m selling loads of old film equipment right now… and my broken old dSLR sold for $125!). I switched to Nikon for a number of reasons, but from what I can tell, the D90 is the best in its class, even considering that it was released in August of 2008. My previous camera was a Minolta Maxxum 7D, so with the fold of that company, Sony took over and continued development of the camera division. I could have just as easily bought an Alpha A-550, but the picture quality just wasn’t up to the D90, not to mention the fact that it’s missing some serious functions like Depth of Field Preview and Program Shift. Once I sell all of my Maxxum/Alpha mounts (it’s sad to part ways with the Maxxum 7 film body, but what can ya do…), I’ll get a shiny new macro and get back to taking some fragrance porn.

That needs to happen soon though, since that pretty bottle of CdG Patchouli is arriving today. Once all of my camera shuffling over the past year is complete, I’ll be perfectly happy with a Hasselblad for medium format, D90 for digital, and an old Canon A-1 for 35mm. Now that’s some efficient camera exchanging (6 cameras to 3).

Pure Oud by By Kilian. It’s expensive. The bottle’s gorgeous. I have no idea the cost of the actual formula. I want it.
It’s fabulous – it is the most natural, smoothest oud centric scent I’ve tried. I don’t know if that means it is any more or less authentic than other oud scents, but I do know that it’s wonderful. It has magnificent staying power as well. Just a few swipes on my hand and 7 hours later, it’s still going strong. It’s a silky smooth oud trip with touches of scratchy spice here and there to help out. I doubt I’ll buy it in its standard packaging, but the much better $/ml of the 100ml refill is much more appealing. Check out Pure Oud at Luckyscent.

L’Artisan Parfumeur Passage d’Enfer. Passage from Hell. It’s one of my top 5 or 6 Artisans. It’s loaded with a light, shimmering white incense and a great, dry frankincense, all smoothed with just a bit a clean musk. Does it have a slight touch of what seems like bug spray? Sure. It might. That part is not totally unlike the same experience you’ll get with Kyoto by Comme des Garcons. It’s a good bit “lighter” and vastly easier to wear though. When the GF wears it, it’s so unique on her that I sometimes don’t even recognize it and have to ask what she’s wearing. I’d recommend trying this one, but it needs to be sprayed fully rather than just dabbed to get the whole experience. This is also one of the few incense based scents that’s great in all temperatures (and also great to people new to incense scents).

Oh, and I buckled. I ordered the great pyramid Comme des Garcons LUXE Patchouli bottle from Luckyscent. I really need to buy a new digital camera so I can start putting more pics on here (and the GF’s cybershot doesn’t quite cut it ).