October 31, 2007 1:08 PM,  Dain said...

I like that, sweet without saccharine. A good amber is like that.

November 1, 2007 6:53 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Montale Blue Amber is kind of neat...although it is simplistic. It's just amber and vanilla, at least to my nose. It doesn't have enough depth imo to be worn alone. But for what it is...it's a super strong, super dry amber and vanilla...it's not bad.

October 25, 2007 3:35 PM,  Dain said...

Those Montales sound amazing... I hate weak, derivative perfumes!

October 14, 2007 7:16 PM,  Dain said...

Violets are nice. They are very motherly, though sometimes they're over-candied.

October 14, 2007 7:48 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Aoud Blossom is an indestructible violet. I put a few dabs on in the morning, and could still smell it quite strongly on myself (close to the skin) past midnight.

It isn't candied here, it's a bit powdery and soapy. It's nice but I feel it's...conservative...for me?

I tried Boise Vanille out with Aoud Roses Petals today. This just might be "it."

What's odd is ARP, which is a strong rose scent (rose, saffron and oud, bit o' cedar in the drydown) hardly smells rosy at all over the Boise Vanille. The whole works becomes one of those rose-in-the-background blended perfumes.

I'll have to see what happens tonight though...yesterday, BV faded out long before Aoud Blossom (hence the last x hours of almost pure soapy violets).

October 14, 2007 9:05 PM,  Dain said...

I can see that... violets also make me think of Victorian sentimentality, which is pretty conservative. Maybe you can get Boise Vanille and a couple to layer over it as the mood strikes you?

October 14, 2007 11:02 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

They are so...expensive. The price here appears to be fixed. I checked all of the sites I could think of that carry Montale...parfums raffy, aedes, luckyscent, four seasons, there's a Canadian etailer too, theperfumeshoppe.com (which is cheaper, but who knows what the shipping's going to be)...

The cheapest place is Suravi, but only because they have a 10% Basenotes and MUA discount. They don't have the scents I want up, but it's probably a matter of emailing them and asking.

Other than that, there is theperfumedcourt, but all I saw there was an 8-ml decant.

I've heard you can order it from Paris and it's cheaper that way, but more aggravating.

Haven't decided yet which I like better, Aoud Roses Petals or Aoud Blossom (White Aoud is out of the running).

October 15, 2007 3:03 PM,  Dain said...

But if they last as long as they do, and unfold in such a complex fashion, you can consider them like "parfum", which are around $200 for a tiny bottle anyway. Imo, though, parfums don't need layering.

October 15, 2007 4:56 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

What I've read is the Aouds keep very well, but the regular EDP's don't necessarily. In short if I got one Aoud, it would be fairly safe to say it wouldn't go bad. For the regular EDP it would be a decision between 50-ml and 100-ml, but it might depend how fast it goes.

These don't need layering...I like to layer. I have it in mind to get two scents that could work on their own, or else be layered together to create a third scent. Besides, I like the idea of wearing something next to unique. Unless I bump into someone with the same notion of the same two scents, applied in the same proportion, it's unlikely I'll smell this on anyone else. To me there's nothing sacred about perfume; if it works, it works.

Aoud Blossom is pulling ahead, if only because I still don't think of myself as a rose scent person. They don't seem to sell the Aouds in smaller bottles, so the Aoud factor is key here.

October 13, 2007 6:59 AM,  Dain said...

We shall not see their likes again. I've heard that Lindsay Lohan is the "Marilyn Munroe of our day", and in a sense I can see a slight similitude, in that Lohan is also a tragicomic beauty, a girl who wants desperately to be loved, who seems inevitably destined for a bad end, but it's like comparing water to wine.

On a superficial note, I've been thinking of silver glitter polish, and those shoes of hers have confirmed it.

October 13, 2007 7:09 AM,  Dain said...

What's with the timing?

October 13, 2007 10:21 AM,  Chez Moi said...

Boise Vanille layered with just the slightest hint of rose sounds like something I've been dreaming of. Again, where'd ya get yer samples?:)

October 13, 2007 10:29 AM,  Dain said...

Carol (forgive me if I'm wrong)? How've ya been?!

October 13, 2007 1:52 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Dain: Marilyn Monroe was a fans' actress, I think, more than a commercial success. For example, Elizabeth Taylor got paid one million dollars for Cleopatra...I read Monroe was making a fraction of that, even though her films were as well-attended.

I'll go so far as to say she's still a fans' actress, that's why her image has survived. If you look at it, she was very strong, she came from nothing and nowhere, she hung in there longer than the next person would have. They say a weaker person would not have been able to live as long as she did, with that level of pills and booze. I don't think she intended to die, she just miscalculated how much of this and that. Maybe she was over-confident.

The Net has probably only created more fans, because Monroe posed for thousands of still pictures. People get hold of them and digitize them... Again it could be said, she was simply harder-working than other actresses or models of the time who were more commercially successful. She was an interesting broad, people are still trying to figure her out.

Carol: Hey! :) These samples came from luckyscent.com. They're more expensive than aedes.com, but they carry some scents aedes doesn't. I got Boise Vanille, Aoud Blossom, Intense Tiare, and Blue Amber...and these are the last perfume samples I'm planning to buy.

Montale is expensive...they had a big blowout sale at the Swiss Montale a while back (apparently they were closing the Swiss branch), and it would have been worth the hassle of ordering from an overseas site, but I'd only just gotten into Montale and didn't want to buy unsniffed. As it is, I'm really trying to narrow down which Montale's to buy.

Imo, Blue Amber is genuinely better than Tabu. But it is also quite similar. It's drier, more vanilla, a bit softer, but basically it is strong amber, and vanilla.

Boise Vanille is already on my short list. I'm going to try it out today with the Aoud Blossom layered over it.

BV is drier and less sweet than other woods-and-vanilla scents I've tried, it's next to unisex and I think a man could actually wear it. But it's not sharp enough so I'd dismiss it as man's scent. I don't do men's scents well.

I'm warming to the idea of getting this and a floral scent to combine it with. Expensive, yeah, but ultimately it might be better, in the sense of being able to "tune" the scent to exactly what you want, and being able to wear each on its own (and the cost is the same as buying two higher-end perfumes, which is what I was thinking of doing anyway).

October 13, 2007 1:55 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

Ugh I screwed up the time on this. I have to add three hours, half the time I get it wrong.

October 13, 2007 2:11 PM,  Dain said...

Lol. It's funny to have comments that come before the post.

Marilyn Munroe is fascinating without even trying. I'm partial to the poise of Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor, because they are much stronger, self-possessed, graceful women, compared Munroe's sort of helplessness to make your heart break. I find her, oddly enough, a rather bad actress, but I don't begrudge her for it. I think if I could really name anyone contemporary who has that level of charisma, it would probably be Justin Timberlake. He's not the most attractive or the most talented, but he has some genius for selling himself.

October 13, 2007 10:17 AM,  Chez Moi said...

Interesting!
I happen to like Tabu. I'm guessing I'd like this one too! Where did you get the sample from?

October 13, 2007 1:08 PM,  Colleen Shirazi said...

See ya in the previous comment box. ^
:)