If you could only bring them back……… The Perfumed Dandy’s Weekend Forum

It occurred to me recently, dear friends, that one of things I like to do best here is talk, chat, discuss, converse confabulate and cogitate with you.

So, it struck me on a moment, why not do this more regularly and in greater depth?

Create a space in which we can throw around perfumed ideas!

And what better time do do this than at the weekend, when taking a break from perfume shopping, gassing with real-world chums and wading through those endless papers.

But what to talk about?

Well, the recent outpouring of passion for Guerlain’s Parure (on which more to come this week) gave me an idea for a starting point…

Which deceased and discontinued scents would you most like to see restored to life?

And then I got to thinking and as a supplementary question thought…

And what do you think moved the perfume companies concerned to do away with them in the first place?

I’ve a few ideas of my own I’ll happily share… but I’d love to your views first.

Go on, strike a pose, commit your opinions to prose!!!

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

64 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

An Old Acquaintance Ne’er Forgot… Parure by Guerlain The Perfumed Dandy’s Scent Today

New Year. Old Love.

This coolest of chypre roses was neglected in life and soon passed away.

Yet since Parure was discontinued demands for its return have grown to a clamour

So much so that in the recent poll of what The Dandy should wear on Christmas day this lost Guerlain classic tied in first place.

What better way than to start the new year proper with a piece of perfume history and something of a mystery!?!

Following its selection by your good selves, The Perfumed Dandy will now take a few days to deliberate and cogitate the merits and mischiefs of this fragrance fair or foul and will, in due course, provide his report on relations with the new discovery by means of a scented letter.

Another opportunity to place a new perfume on The Dandy‘s skin will arise with the next instalment of The Perfumed Dandy’s Hit Parade.

In the meantime if you would like to thrust forward a fragrance for future fame on The Hit Parade simply visit ‘Suggest and old scent or recommend a new one’ and leave your suggestion there.

Have an especially fragrant day.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

The Perfumed Dandy’s Classic Collection: Bal a Versailles by Jean Desprez

Happy New Year once again! If you’re clearing up after a party today, this sumptuous slice of sheer sacrilegious decdence shows the way. Don it an be damned says I!

theperfumeddandy's avatarThe Perfumed Dandy.

1789

The floor of the Hall of Mirrors is filled with fractured glass.

Marie Antoinette skips gaily across the shards in untied ballet shoes and bonnet atop her seventy two inch face: six feet from chin at base through powdered visage and scaffolded hair above.

The queen and women of her toilette encased in immense dresses a la Polonaise are costumier conjurers’ sleights of hand in damasks, plain silks, laces, bustles, embroiders, and petticoats, petticoats, petticoats.

They have come to disdain the deliberately deranged destruction of the night before. To review the revels and not speak of revolution.

Around them a haze of powder hangs in heavy air. They beg to deceive with orange blossoms, roses, jasmines and musk. But the nose cannot be fooled.

Despite their perfumed protests this place is menagerie not orangery.

Their very gowns give them away: nothing can counterfeit the crust of human excreta…

View original post 337 more words

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

For Auld Lang Syne and All That………. A Very Happy New Year To All!

Pop-a-those-corks chers amis!

Yes indeedy, the time has come to see the New Year in and as a part of my preparations I shall be dousing myself – quite literally – in Caron’s Champagne (as it was to be called until those nasty viticulturists raised threatening legal eyebrows).

Though not, apparently, in spite of that delicious name, originally intended as a bathing aid, this is this perfume’s most perfect application.

A desert spoon or two in a steaming tub sees ablutions transformed into something quite transfixing.

Lilac and incense, vanilla, musks and a note a little like antique make up dust, combine to turn one’s bathroom into a sublime collision of boudoir and nursery.

For the child and debutante turned harlot in all of us.

Be decadent, take a glass of something sparkling in with you and, no sooner are you dried and dressed in your finery than this fleeting fancy will have fled.

Time then for something more fragrantly substantial to see you into the New Year…

But what will it be?

Do share your olfactory accompaniment to the evenings celebrations…

What will you (or did you) wear to see in 2014?

Do tell!

With all best wishes for sensationally scented and prosperously perfumed year ahead.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

22 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

White Christmas / Black Orchid by Tom Ford The Perfumed Dandy’s Christmas Day Scent

Season’s Greetings my Little Scented Wonders!

An extremely Merry, nay Extraordinary, Christmas to you and yours.

And thank you too, for after a very close (tied) vote and an executive decision by The Dandy’s advisors, today’s festive fragrance is the tremendous, triple thickened, top-notch trifle of a nose tingler…

black-orchid

Tom Ford Black Orchid by Estee Lauder.

Flouncy, bouncy, floral, smoky and sweet this is a dressed up, fired up teenage expolosion of party spirit in little black bottle perfume form.

Terribly unwise, but ever so good once in a while.

What could be better today!?!

Enjoy my darlings!

See you on the other side.

Yours ever

The Perfumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

12 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Winter in July… Nuit de Noel by Caron The Perfumed Dandy’s Scented Letter

Dear All. Part XII of our Christmas adventure must be this… quite simply the most magnificent, melancholy and truly awe-inspiring scents ever to have taken Christmas’s name in vain. A lesson perhaps to think of others at this time of year. I’ll be back tomorrow (later today) to reveal what you’ve chosen for me to wear… Happy Holiday!

theperfumeddandy's avatarThe Perfumed Dandy.

Christmas is being imported this year.

It will come in a crate by boat and be brought, a little piece of Europe in a box, up from the harbour to our room at Raffles Hotel.

On opening it, I “must be careful” not to unsettle the contents lest one item has been broken and is spilt upon and spoils the others.

The pre-fabricated festivities will have as little to do with Christmas as our lives in this heat and 70% humidity have with a happy marriage.

The box is all flashes and flickers of the world I once knew, before Singapore, before the War even.

Candied fruit, heavy English rosewater – slightly turned, vanilla essence just good enough for custard and a cologne that promises Scandinavian forests and delivers the sweaty, peaty, mossy mass of wet woodland floor in early German spring.

Biscuits shot with caraway, aniseed and oats…

View original post 438 more words

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Eve Aromas: Five: The Return The Perfumed Dandy’s Twelve Days Before Christmas Part XI

cadburys-cat-cocoa-tin-sign

Good Christian hot chocolate laced with sinners’ spices and heretical herbaceous leaves.

Home. Half-cut. Happy.

In the habit of feeling merry and a little frisky.

The duty of the mass discharged, thoughts turn to tomorrow’s feasting, and whatever fun may come.

nd_11570

Yes, the morning will bring bleary eyes and a blurry head.

But in this Instant, Extreme contentment overflows and who knows how long the fun will last.

Party on.

Happy Christmas.

Yours ever

The Pefumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Eve Aromas: Four: Midnight Mass The Perfumed Dandy’s Twelve Days Before Christmas Part X

IMG_20131224_162110

Carols, an incautious sermon from a novice priest preaching abstemiousness to a half-steaming congregation.

Choir boys up past bed time, maiden aunts and old soaks.

Those with little hope and no where to go.

United at a stroke just after midnight…

commes-des-garcons-avignon

And if the church is high enough a censer may sweep past.

A vision in scent: you see a white building, it’s dark interior illuminated by the newborn.

We can all be like the boy here.

Happy Christmas.

Yours ever

The Pefumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Eve Aromas: Three: Marzipan and One Glass More The Perfumed Dandy’s Twelve Days Before Christmas Part IX

Disaronno_Originale_2

Sweet candied almonds made paste and the colour of honey.

Covering a cake of fruits fed with liquours and good spirits.

cartier-le-baiser-du-dragon

Cartier’s Baiser du Dragon is the most pleasant smelling fearsome mythical beast that one can imagine.

Here the aroma is one of romance.

Take a glass and seek out mistletoe.

Our indeed The Dandy’s full review.

Further treats to follow…

Yours ever

The Pefumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

11 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Eve Aromas: Two: Woodsmoke The Perfumed Dandy’s Twelve Days Before Christmas Part VIII

IMG_20131224_161222

Purple satin swirls emerging from the chimney of a cottage into a sky of smudged lint clouds and blue.

Around an open fire dodge sparks and stray cinders while seeking warmth.

cuir-de-lancome

Lancome’s Cuir is a triumph of the tannery and charcoal store.

There are some folks who rergard birch tar as the smell of a summer barbeque.

‘Wrong end of the year!’ Says I.

It’s logs burning in the hearth, leather boots warming through after a country stroll something sexy in each hand

Further treats to follow…

Yours ever

The Pefumed Dandy.

The Perfumed Dandy

6 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized