Samples from DSH

Well, its September, and what better way to start the month than a parcel containing loads of samples from Indie perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz.

Dawn was very generous and the package included a friendly handwritten note from her personally, which I appreciated. The samples she sent are: the New Kingdom series (there are four of them), Jitterbug for Men, Michelangelo, Prana, Kohl Gris, Matsu, Viridian, Dirty Rose, Oude Arabique, Ruba'iyat, Three Kings and Bodhi Sativa.

I have tried and enjoyed others in the DSH line, including Sandalo Inspiritu and Cuir et Champignon in particular, but these are all entirely new to me. Im going to have a go at writing down and posting my thoughts on them as I go along, hopefully.

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Cuir et Champignon

Cuir et Champignon is part of Dawn Spencer Hurwitz's Parfums des Beaux Arts line. As the name suggests, this perfume is mostly about leather and mushrooms, and what an interesting and at times startlingly realistic interpretation it is. 

I don't know if I have encountered a mushroom accord in perfume before. I've seen truffle used before, for example in Frederic Malle's Un Rose. Cuir et Champignon opens with a very smoky and leathery feel. Although it is a very sophisticated perfume, to me it is all about the outdoors, to my mind evocative of an autumnal walk in the woods, tramping over leaf-strewn paths, the smell of early season decay in the air, the smell of woodsmoke wafting on the cooling breeze. Perhaps this is fanciful, but this is really a very woodsy perfume. Leather is most evident at the start, and while it never fades, it, along with the smoke, soften and blur as the perfume progresses. 

The mushroom accord is also very realistic, mainly in the first half of wearing it. Later on, that smell segues into a more recognisable woods accord, but is anything but conventional.

I don't know what else to say about Cuir et Champignon, other than it is a fabulous perfume, possibly the best I have tried by Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. It also, unlike a few others I've tried, has very good lasting power. I'd certainly recommend this to anyone.

Image credit -   http://dshnotebook.files.wordpress.com/ 

Bath water blues and perfume prattle

In the deep and dark December (to sort of quote Simon & Garfunkel) our boiler nearly packed up. Typically it occurred on one of the coldest days of the winter, with snow thick on the ground and icicles hanging from the gutters. The boiler man came round to fix the problem, which ironically turned out to be something as mundane as a slightly loose connection and having to bleed the radiators. In the event, he also adjusted the thermostat, with the result that we now have very close to boiling water on tap. Energy efficiency and high gas bills aside, this can also be a blessing and a curse, as we found out tonight.

I was giving my two daughters a bath, as we do every evening. Lately my older daughter, Hannah, has got into the habit of putting in the plug and starting the water running. We haven't really thought twice about this. On this occasion she turned on the hot water tap and left it running, until it had got up to some serious heat. My other daughter, Daisy, must have taken a plastic cup and held it under the tap and in the process spilled it over Hannah's chest and arm. I say must have, because I had my back turned, so didn't notice anything until Hannah started screaming blue murder. We immediately ran some cold water and put some cold flannels over the burn areas and then got some special burn cream from the chemist afterwards. To cut a long story short, she seems to be fine and there is no obvious sign of swelling, blistering or broken skin, which we are hoping is a good thing, but we will monitor her closely over the next twelve hours or so, just in case.

I'm not really sure what the point is of writing about this on my blog, save to let some steam out. I was extremely angry with myself for losing concentration and not paying enough attention to what my children were doing. Part of me (my inner critic, damn him, as Josephine would say) was saying that these things happen and that I shouldn't beat myself up too much, while another part of me was cursing myself for negligence and for taking for granted the safety of my children. Whatever, the bottom line is that accidents can happen so bloody quickly, especially where children are involved, and also illustrates how easily a parent can lapse into bad habits and just assume their children can handle certain situations. I'm just very thankful that it wasn't more serious. I mean, Hannah or Daisy could have slipped while leaning over to reach a tap and could easily have fallen into the bath of near-boiling water.

So on a happier note, I did wear some perfume today. I tried Parfume De Rosine's Twill Rose and DSH's Cuir et Champignon. I will probably write about these in more detail at some point but for now I can say that I like Twill Rose, although it is slightly underwhelming. I would have preferred more dirt/skank/whatever from it, but it smells good and is perfectly wearable. Cuir et Champignon is the second DSH which doesn't fade from my skin within the hour (the other is Vintage Patchouli) so that counts as a major positive in my book. The mushroom accord in this is startlingly realistic and goes so well with leather. Who would have thought? Brilliant!

On the samples front, I still haven't purchased any. Every night I sit at my computer browsing the various sites, umming and ahhing over what to buy, but like some cold-war president with his finger hovering over that red button, I just can't bring myself to click the purchase icon. Damn... perfume purchase impotence - that's a first for me.

DSH Vintage Patchouly

In my experience to date, the DSH perfumes I have tried have been very nice, but rather fleeting on my skin. I'm dabbing from vials, so that might be part of the reason, but I feel like I want more from them, and in order to do that, they need to hang around a bit longer.

I think I've found one that ticks the right boxes in Vintage Patchouly. The notes (from DSH website) include bergamot, rosewood, East Indian patchouli, Moroccan rose absolute, Mysore sandalwood, amber, Australian sandalwood, ambergris, benzoin, ciste absolute, Himalayan cedar, moss and tobacco absolute. Now this is quite a list of notes. To be honest, thinking about it now I can detect the sandalwood and tobacco, but to my mind the patchouli is so beautiful and distinctive that it easily overshadows everything else in the composition. When I think of some of my favourite patchoulis, I think in particular of Borneo 1834, Lui, Patchouli Noir and to a lesser extent, Coromandel. Vintage Patchouly to my mind takes the best of all of these, and then in the dry down exhibits some of the more animalic characteristics evident in Lombre Fauvre. 

Vintage Patchouly starts off as a fairly sweet, woody patchouli. This woodiness might come from the rosewood. Just underneath this, as the patchouli comes to the fore, is a wet, earthy leaves smell, ever so slightly dank and musty. The fragrance becomes very rich and almost polished in feel and I detect what smells to me like a high quality dark chocolate, lightly sweetened and even a touch nutty. The camphor-like nature of patchouli does rear its head for a short while, but ultimately this is a smooth and rich, comforting earthy scent. The rich earthiness possibly comes from the tobacco and the smooth, slightly sweet nature from the sandalwood, but as I said earlier, patchouli is the dominant note. 

In the far dry down the more animalic nature of this fragrance is revealed, no doubt partly due to the presence of the ciste. The base is dryer, and still very woody and this is the point at which Vintage Patchouly to me smells like a sexy skin scent, almost musky. The patchouli, as is often the case in my experience, toes that line between sweetly comforting and slightly disturbing, almost feral, but not quite, sexual, yet slightly old-fashioned. It's hard to explain, but what I can say is that this is a wonderful fragrance and by the far the best I have tried so far in the DSH line. It has officially joined my list of favourite patchouli fragrances. I must admit, this is full bottle worthy for me.

Image credit - https://www.dshperfumes.com/