New year revolutions, 2015

Happy New Year to everybody! I hope 2014 left you with the right amount of bittersweet after-taste to make you long for everything 2015 is bringing.

I spent a nice, long break away from Geneva and work in Athens, and I was planning on writing and posting during this time. As you might have guessed life had different plans so I didn’t manage to fulfil my end of year blogging resolutions. Instead I spent some leisurely and some not so leisurely time with family and friends. Hence my new year resolution No1, to say exactly what I am thinking, as people who do the same will appreciate it and people who don’t will be put to their place!  Practising this during my holidays in Athens resulted in a weird mix of sitcom moments and family drama. Imagine Martin Scorcese doing a 180 minute family biopic based entirely on edited out scenes of Fran Fine in her family home, and you get the idea. Best moment was an all-cousin night where I got to see almost all my beloved first cousins.

This post however is about my new year revolutions, the perfume bottles that I had been longing for consciously and the ones that unexpectedly stole my heart. All the perfumes that made me want to return to my collection.  I wore a lot of Aromatic’s Elixir Perfumer’s Reserve, Muscs Kublaï Khan and Montale Royal Aoud. This one has a strange invigorating quality, deep, fruity and slightly animalic. I love it and I wore it for a New Year’s Eve party. I didn’t pack it in my suitcase though. Sadly its nuclear strength and regal disposition kept it low on the practicality list. Higher on the list was Grey Flannel, because it is such a beautiful and historically revolutionary perfume. I have wanted to write about this for a long time and let’s hope its time will come soon. Lancôme Sagamore also hopped into my luggage effortlessly. This is the kind of classic (semi)masculine fragrance that fits the Geneva understated elegance. R’oud Elements will be spending the rest of its sprays in Geneva too, I like its transparency and its orange-in-the-swimming-pool note. Spicebomb was the mainstream addition because I found myself thinking about it a lot over the past months. So easy to wear and cosy like a thick shapeless sweater. Donna Karan Chaos is a perfume I remember smelling but had never actually seen a bottle of. Imagine my surprise when I found a bottle of the 2008 Donna Karan Collection re-release in a perfume shop next to my parents’ house (I know…., what was I doing in yet another perfume shop….?). I had to buy it and the price was very good! Etro New Tradition was an unexpected re-discovery. I bought it blind on-line many years ago, collecting vintage Etro perfumes, the ones with the antiquated labels and colourful paisley decorated boxes. I admit the current black-and-white boxes don’t do much for me. It was a cheap acquisition and when I smelled it for the first time I didn’t get. My current appreciation however is very different, influenced by my search for the new Aromatics in White, a flanker to the original Aromatics Elixir. Smelling New Tradition in the light of patchouli brought a completely new appreciation. More about this later, when I receive the samples of Aromatics in White I bought, because strangely it is available in Greece, but will appear on Geneva shelves in March. I am most happy to be reunited with Le Labo Oud 27 however. Long before I had it in my hands again I knew that I had missed it like a friend. Oud or no oud aside, beast or beauty aside, this scent has the power to breathe life and energy into me. It is the most expressive perfume for me at this time and I dowse myself in it with abandon. Honourable mentions, the scents that made me revolve around them in my days in Athens, My Opium pour homme eau de parfum , Daim blond, the sensual and stylistically classic Van Gils Strictly for Men, and the always uplifting Pomegranate Noir.

My oldest perfume bottles are still in Athens and I feel that they are neglected friends. I don’t like this idea. I gave away a couple of Serge Lutens bottles, hoping that they will find new love and bring beauty and memories to their new partners.

 

 

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