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SmellyBlog

The Girl Who Smells Music


This Monday, on the very same day, I had two special people enter my home. One is an Iranian santur-maker, who also will install new carpets in my place after many years of begging my landlords to do something about it. I was so pleasantly surprised by his interest in the various random musical instruments scattered around the house, and his noble manners (unlike any other handyman that ever crossed my path) that I'm almost convinced that I should begin learning to play this elusive instrument. If only because they are handmade by him and can be carried around rather than be wheeled out by two bodybuilders whenever you need to move (or get your carpets changed).

The other was Dana El Masri, who you might have heard first about through her blog The Scentinel, through which she shared her adventures studying at GIP (Grasse Institute of Perfumery) and have just a little over a year ago launched her own indie brand, Jazmin Saraï, which is based out of Montreal.

What do perfumers do when they get together? Mostly smell each other's creations and more often than never also share the woes of the industry (packaging agonies, ingredients restrictions and prohibitive costs is what we tend to whine about). It was refreshing to have a lot less of the latter, and a lot more of smelling and marvelling at what came out of each of our ateliers. The whining was more about how people can NEVER pronounce our name properly (FYI: Dana's name is simply pronounced Da-na, now "Dayna" or any other Englishized distortion of these two straightforward syllables, just as we would call her in Israel). It was a fun sniffathon and I finally got to experience not only all four of Dana's creations, but also the fifth one that she's working on. They were all gorgeous, well-composed and original and I must admit that even though when I looked at the website a year ago I was a bit skeptic of the music and perfume connection, once I smelled the perfumes all my doubts have disappeared.

Otis & Me:
Smoky yet light and green. The most subtle, and the most natural-smelling of the bunch (by the way, all of Jazmin Saraï perfumes have a high proportion of naturals, which is very apparent). Unfortunately it did not fare well on my skin and with all the strong personalities next to it I was barely able to experience its evolution on the skin. This one deserves a proper sampling. But suffice is to say that it is based on coffee - a note that I feel is underappreciated in the perfume world. It is actually a lot more diverse and capable than just making appearances in gourmands.

Neon Grafitti:
Fruity yet green, floral and with an underlining musk (FYI: Dana only uses macrocyclic musks, and these are the ones that not only smell better but are also the kind that is naturally occurring in various plants and are more friendly to the environment). It smells cool and a bit metallic, but also very vibrant and colourful. It reminded me of a scentsthat I admire but can't get near anymore, unfortunately (due to negative conditioning) - l'Ombre Dans l'Eau. It also smelled like a more fleshed-out rendition of what I would have imagined Jardin Sur Le Nil should be like before actually smelling it. It has the mango - not quite ripe and overly sweet mango, but still little green, and there is a lot more body and an interesting evolution to it the Sur Le Nil (which I experience to be only an empty aura - sillage with no personality).

How You Love:
Begins very sweet with a well-rounded sweet honey note. Nothing funky there (which is always a challenge with honey). It envelopes you like a hug. It's how I would imagine the honey perfume that Alyssa Harad talks about in her book Coming To My Senses (I know she reveals eventually what it is - but I never smelled it, so I can keep imagining it as something else all I want). There is a nutty element that reveals itself as some point, a little like hazelnut, and the dry down, while still maligning a lot of the honey, also has a warm, slightly dirty musk beneath it all. Dana has graciously left a sample of this behind, so I will wear this again and write a proper "review" of this soon.

Led IV:
Olfactory portrayals of Rock n' Roll often involve patchouli. So this "translation" is not what makes Led IV original. What does is how the patchouli is played: the fermented, wine-like quality of this controversial note are amped up by boozy davana. An herb from the Artemisia family that walks a fine line between smelling like strawberry jam, to someone who puked their strawberry daiquiri... It might sound gross, but it's what makes this note both challenging and satisfying to work with. The more I let Led IV sit on the skin, the more it grew on me: the warm, spicy muskiness of patchouli mingled with this oddball of an accessory note, complementing it but also making it very clear that it's not a patchouli like all the other niche patchoulies that have saturated the market as of late.

No. 5 was the lovelies of them all. It does not have name yet, but it's based in castoereum, and both the leathery and amber qualities really stand out right from the start. These are beautifully complemented by the leathery floral notes of osmanthus absolute. It's dripping honeyed labdanum. It has a luscious, incense with smokey-honey character underlined with a subtle, slightly nutty musk. The drydown reminds me of Laurie Erickson's beautiful Incense Pure. I am pre-ordering a full bottle of this. I have forgotten to ask her what song was the inspiration for this scent. So we will all have wait patiently until its name is revealed...

While the connection between the Santur-making careptman and a synesthetic Egyptian princess may seem only apparent to me - the connection between music and perfume is more than random. Emotions, frequencies and the same area of the brain processing both is what make these two mediums so profoundly deep and ineffable. We remember our loved ones not only by their scent, but also the sound of their voice and the music we listen to while with them. That's why we'll often find ourselves hugging an unwashed sweater while listening to old records when our baby is gone for a little trip (and of course both will trigger the waterworks if we end up breaking up).

The Sound of Scent



Fascinating short documentary with composer Stuart Mitchell in Edinburgh, who dedicated the past 10 years of his life to translating the DNA codes of plants into musical frequencies. The film focuses on the code that's responsible for the scent of rose. The code is than arranged for accustic instruments - in this case the composer felt that the scent of rose is most accurately portrayed by the sound of flute.
Thank you to Shelly Waddington for the hint!

The Perfume Suite



In  the 1960's, Duke Ellington recorded The Perfume Suite he's written with Billy Strayhorn. The music was inspired by how perfume affects women's mood and self-perception. As "out there" as some commercial perfume titles may sound, there is a fundamental truth to them. Perfume can make you feel like as powerful as a god/dess, regal as a queen/king, an unleashed animal on the prowl, as naive and playful as a child... 

1st movement: Under The Balcony Seranade (Pure Love)
2nd movement: Strange Feeling (Violence)
3rd movement: Dancers in Love (Naïveté)
4th movement: Coloratura (Prima-donna)

What persona or aspect of yourself has perfume help you to access or unleash?

Harajuku Lovers


Harajuku Lovers, originally uploaded by Ayala Moriel.

I always get lucky when I go shopping with Tamya. Last Saturday, when after we went for our weekly swim at the YWCA, I decided to overcome my inferiority complex and go check out the new member of Les Exclusifs at the Chanel boutique next door. We were both wearing our heart-illustrated gum boots and feeling great but looking everything else but glamorous. I secretly like taking Tamya to fancy boutiques, as a test to see how nice the sales people really are. I can tell you that in both Chanel and Holt Renfrew they are very, very nice to kids and usually also to adults. This time, I scored 2 “samples” from the Les Exclusifs – Sycomore and 31 Rue Camon (they really are minis). Obviously, Tamya is my lucky charm...

We than continued to a the drugstore to check out the new doll collection htat hides perfumes inside. I saw them a couple of days earlier and could not for the life of me make up my mind about one. So I thought Tamya could help me, and after all – her Bat Mitzvah was just a few days ago so she deserves to pick a perfume for herself!

I have to say, this was difficult. The dolls are all very cute. In fact, irresistibly cute. The juices, however, are not as nose-catchy as the dolls are. There was only one that I found to be really distinct – G. But I couldn’t really decide if I like it or not. The others all smelled like something I smelled before. There was Baby with a curly black hair which smells like a fancy baby powder; Music, a brunette with a fancy hairdo reeking of a non-descript musky floral; G with an overly symmetric blonde hair and smelling oddrly of coconut and something green at the same time; Lil’ Angel, dressed as a tomboy, and smelling very pineapple-y and a very MiamiGlo kind of way; and Love, the prettiest of all dolls with an asymmetric Asian-inspired hairdo which smelled like a very pretty yet quite generic light floral with a musky base (at first I had a hard time distinguishing between Love and Music).

After spending about an hour staring at them, sniffing, making up our minds only to change again two seconds later, both Tamya and I unanimously decided to adopt Love and take her home with us. We got home and almost forgot that she even existed (she’s very well behaved). We did the perfume-box-opening ceremony and from this point on I was just immensely impressed by how accessible this perfume was. This was the first perfume that Tamya really seemed to be into, spraying, sniffing her wrists AND showing off. And I suspect it wasn’t just the doll, because when her daddy came home, and I asked her to show him her new perfume – she let him smell her wrists rather than bring the doll. Love smells lovely on Tamya, by the way. It also smelled good on my wrist (though not as good as on Tamya). It reminded me very much of Spring Flower but a little softer.



Something meaningful, no words

No time to post anything meaningful yesterday or today, as I am getting ready for the open house tonight. But I did find this:



Yetserday night I finally got called from HMV telling me to stop waiting: the CD's of my favourite singer, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, which I ordered about a year ago, are discontinued and are never going to make it from Germany to Vancouver. If you know where I can find them, please let me know.

Until than, I will be frequenting YouTube I guess. The next one is sang in Azerbaijani I believe.

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