Les Autres Blogs

--You owe it to yourself to check out wrekehavok's November project, which is entirely focused on egregious '80s music. It's astounding.

--I think I'm going to have to just break down and buy Kyoto. I like reading fragrance blogs, but a lot of them hate on Comme des Garcons and Kyoto in particular, saying it's "too popular." I actually fought my CDG love for a while for this reason (and because they're expensive as hell). But of all the samples I got last year, they were my winners.

I read a review of Dover Street Market from this guy, who I might actually let be my shrink if I lived in San Francisco, and was a little disconcerted when he said the drydown was like 10 Corso Como, which I hadn't liked at all. So last night after a shower, I opened the sample and gave it another chance. Wince, there I was, Lauren Bacall in the 70s in Halston silk and furs. It ain't me, babe.

I also love two from the CDG Red line, Carnation and Sequoia. Sequoia is a woods/cedar plus carnation/clove and it is perfect, it is Humboldt without skunk weed, it smells like my imagination of Viggo Mortensen sleeping in an elf treehouse; I wear it to work and out sometimes, but not around the house. DH doesn't like clove. He would be very happy if I just stuck to Comptoir Sud Pacific, which is to say smelling like a cupcake. I liked their stuff when I lived in Miami, but the vanilla is too cloying up north. I hear they're Nicole Kidman's favorites, and that fits; Comptoir's vanilla-cocoa-pineapple mixes are exactly what I imagine she'd smell like.

I like men's fragrances or unisex ones best, which also puts CDG ahead.

With fragrances, you have to take into account what makes those closest to you happy, so that means I don't indulge my clove love much. The funniest sample I got was Spirit of the Tiger by Heely, which smells like TIGER BALM! which I smell like half the time anyway.

I liked L'Artisan's Timbuktu when I tried it in Paris, but not when I got home. Maybe the falafel changed my skin composition that afternoon.

Kyoto. Kyoto.

--I miss seeing Fern, but can keep up with the omnivorously brilliant mind of this locavore here.