Omni

You say it best when you say nothing at all, so the song goes, and this is Noa. Spray it lavishly, this is one that you can go nuts with. I get the world's best cold cream, French of course, as if I'm lathered in it. I love this feeling, my imaginary beauty therapist is at my side and in a little while she will leave me with cafe au lait and something else that I couldn't quite identify at first and then I got it. Fur. It's a cat, a white persian, very fluffy. Or it's an angora sweater that has absorbed the soft, slight scents of the treatment room. Or it could be mink..but then fur coats are polarizing so I won't go there. I hate the bottle. Kokichi Mikimoto would have had a burning ceremony if he had ever seen the bottle. I love pearls, I hate the vulgarity of the Noa pearl and the fake Mother of Pearl top. Grrr. At 4.40 a.m. this morning I rose to cross town before traffic problems escalated in order to pick up my eighty six year old Mother and take her to a routine eye surgery. At that time of the morning you don't get out the heavy hitters, even the florals are just too much. Noa was perfect. I love Noa, cold cream, cafe au lait, cats, dogs and old trouts. It's a Noa day

"Let them eat cake" The utterance is attributed to Marie Antoinette upon hearing that the peasants were rioting due to the scarcity of bread. Let's attribute it, equally falsely, to Jean Paul Guerlain. Boil a lb of sultanas for five minutes, strain off water and allow half a pound of chopped butter and three quarter pound of sugar to melt in the hot fruit. Let it cool to tepid. Add 1 tsp each of almond essence, your best Madagascar vanilla essence and lemon essence and a pinch of salt. Breathe in the perfume of Eau de Shalimar. Yes, it's the batter. Add three well beaten large eggs together with three quarter lb of standard flour and a tsp of Baking Powder. Lift your perfume bottle high in the air and spritz it three times.( assuming there are no babies present) Bake in two loaf tins or one large extendable one in a moderate oven for 1 and a half hours. When cold serve with a pot of Earl Grey tea in an elegant salon similar to the one I saw Jean Paul interviewed in when the BBC screened their Perfume Series. You and the cake will be as one, better than sex, better than perfume alone

The reinvented Ivoire deserves to have its praises sung. An Aston Martin is still an Aston Martin whether Sean Connery or Daniel Craig is behind the wheel. I’ve taken Ivoire for a spin and she’s still a classy number. For those who don’t know the original, the best comparison, to my nose, of the new incarnation, is Noa by Cacharel. Ivoire’s new bottle will stimulate style comparisons with Chanel 19 Poudre and Elie Saab’s creation by Francis Kurkdjian. The success of Ivoire will be due to Michel Almairac’s interpretation which retains the integrity of the original. Top marks for my favourite perfumer (in collaboration with Jacques Fiori) It's also an amazing price!

I was raised in an urban environment but I wouldn’t be a Kiwi if I didn’t know the scent of wool, rich in lanolin, off the sheeps back. Lux Soap. Sink a lightweight merino sweater into a gentle woolwash and the heavenly scent of clean and natural rises with the ribbons of steam. The temperature has to be just right. This is Ivoire, delicate but strong, simple but elegant. She’s homespun but electric with curiosity. This would be quite virginal on a man. It’s possible that Ivoire and a spray of Molecule 01 could raise the birth rate. I’ll pass the baton.

They take the seed of the rapeseed plant and coat it layer by layer in aniseed flavoured candy, finishing with a dark brown coating of gobstopper lustre. This was one of the most common sweets of my childhood and probably explains why I associate the herbal influence of LL with the seed and the sweetness of the concoction with layers of aniseed balls.

Cadbury's Milk Chocolate is wrapped in a glossy overwrap of thickly coated 'Cadbury's' Purple (Pantone 2685C) over a tightly stretched foil layer. There's a fragrance when the packet is opened that is only vaguely chocolate because it's heavily masked by the covering, the indigo smell of purple and the zinc of the foil. This is the second element of LL to my nose.

I don't know if I consider Lolita Lempicka a fragrance because sometimes I smell Christmas Ham.
The bottle could indeed double as a Christmas tree decoration and if it was musical it would sing 'When you wish upon a Star'
Gourmand anyone?

Mitsouko is not a fragrance but an experience. This is mine. Take an eight week old baby from it's crib at 4 pm. It's bathtime. Droplets of breast milk have run down into the creases of his neck where they smell interesting but not offensive. The soft scent of cotton wafts up from baby's skin and there is just the faintest trace of fudgy excrement on his bottom, mixed with the protective barrier cream, Amolin, I think, slightly almond, the kernel of the peach. His wispy hair smells divine and he burps a tiny hiccup of gripe water and you recognise the dill and fennel. In spite of the active biology of his skin you desperately love and desire what is so unique and you know that in minutes he will smell of sudsy baby soap and talcum powder. Mitsouko in repose, after the initial burst has gone, smells of love, breath, breast, sleep, innocence and desire, milk, cotton, fennel, almond and urea.