What does neat indole smell like to you?Fiddly faddeling around with my table-top chest of drawers filled with little bottles of essential oils and other fragrance related paraphernalia I came across a sealed tin; curious.Opened up said tin and inside were two little bottles of 10% indole and one little bottle of absinthe. I knew I hadn't used the indole for anything other than sniffing to see what...

To the tune of Three Blind Mice, let all who plead guilty sing it:Three blind buysThree blind buysSee what you've doneSee what you've doneYou dug around in the bargain boxPicked up some boxes that matched your frocksThe smell of the fragrances gave you shocksThree blind buys.Casmir eau de parfum by Chopard I had a cute little sample bottle of Casmir edp when it first arrived to market. I loved it so greadily went ahead...

So sad. My Mac had a complete hard drive failure. I was backed up with Time Machine and found some software to get back my important documents but where are my photographs? I expect they are there but I can't find software to extract them onto my laptop. I could just cry. But crying is no use so I had better do something more productive, like buy some perfume.Did that. Still feel like crying. I guess perfume...

I have a basic approach to perfume - does it smell nice and does it lift my spirits? Basically,What I want,Is something that smells nice.Importantly,What I need?Something that lifts my mood.Unfortunately,What I get,Is something that is neither.Doggedly, What I'll do,Is test and test 'til Easter.Finding something new that hits the spot is proving difficult. I don't work in the industry,...

Yesterday, I was looking sadly at my pc screen showing a shopping basket with yet another set of 10 samples. 'What's the point? ', I thought.Looking for somethingBut I don't know whatMeans I try A lot of toot.True they were a bargain set of niche from a perfume shop, costing £12 plus post and packing but looking at them I knew there was only one that I was likely to like. Several I had tried before and disliked so all in all not such...

I have finished testing my little set of five perfume samples, perfumes noted for their tilt towards the animal. Really I am looking for something great to replace a couple of my favourite perfumes (Aromatics by Clinique and Magie Noir by Lancome) both of which are still in production but reformulated away from what works for me but none of this little set of five is what I am looking for.They were all base-note...

L'Anarchiste by CaronOld Fashioned Men's AftershaveOpens up as an old fashioned men's aftershave with loads of orange/lemon/begamot and cedar wood. I personally don't get mandarin and orange blossom as the top notes, the citrus is much more vague than that. A few minutes in sees the development of some minty, metallic, animal funky notes (it reminds me briefly of artificial ambergris funk). There is some...

Afrika Olifant opened on my skin with a very sweet feminine balsamic rich incense, animalic shoe leather, oud, bitter myrrh, nothing much in the way of wood notes and floral. And musk.The perfume spread rapidly throughout the house as I blithely gave myself four or five tiny sprays from a 2ml tester. My skin appeared lightly perfumed but the house obviously reeked as my son came downstairs to see what I was doing and put his acting...

We all like what we like and I like Caron. Just as one cryptic crossword compiler seems to sing from the same hymn sheet so one perfume house can fit like a glove.I have Parfum Sacre, Nuit de Noel, Narcisse Noir, En Avion. I have sampled Can Can, Pour une Femme, Tabac Blond, L'Anarchiste. I would like to try all of the perfumes attributed to Ernest DaltroffI like them all so when I saw the opportunity...

Eaking out my older bottle of Aromatics and feeling that I really didn't want to use it all up I decided to give the new formulation another go; my first try hadn't gone so well as it brought my wrist out in an angry red rash.I took my son to the local shopping centre to buy him glasses and took the opportunity to leave him to it so I could sneak off into the department store to try on some...

Embers by Rouge bunny Rouge opened hopefully enough with a smokey, peppery, woody, resemblance to Parfum Sacre by Caron. At around the half hour mark some rather generic 'woodsy' notes started to climb (and climb they did) and hope that had sprung eternal in my breast faded and died.These strangely generic, overly synthetic, slightly bitter woodsy notes with nary a passing resemblance to sandalwood...

Some perfumes are quite tricky when is comes to knowing how much to put on. Some start off strong and disappear with a whimper; some start off as weak as water only to ramp up in strength seemingly in direct relation to the impossibility of finding somewhere to wash them off.How much perfumeShould I wear today?One spray, two spray?It's really hard to say.I can barely smell itBut am not expecting cheekSo stow...