Opus IX Amouage

Desirability: Full bottle

Source: pinterest

"But I, I took the sweet life and never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet

I spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that cost too much to be free

Hey lady, I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me"

 Charlene - I've Never Been To Me (lyrics stolen from MetroLyrics )

Opus IX in a song. 

I've long been in love with Greta Garbo and the dashingly handsome Robert Taylor in the film Camille, based on Alexandre Dumas' La Dame aux Camélias, which  Giuseppe Verdi turned into the opera La Traviata. 

Unlike Hester Prynne forced to don the scarlet letter, Opus IX wears her flaming red cloak with pride and much beauty. I am a big fan of Amouage (more correctly a fan of their dramatic and tempestuous creations that fly in the face of polite crowd-pleasers), a lover of jasmine and "stinky" scents as well as a complete sucker for romance ( I grew up on a diet of Judith McNaught). The animal is much alive in Opus IX but instead of grappling for world domination, it blends beautifully with a honeyed jasmine which provides just the right amount of floral sweetness and does magic up images of the snowy white camellias that Camille was never without, whether splurging on a massive bouquet or a stem tucked into a sash. A light layer of fine pepper breaks the lull created by the blissful union between the flowers and animals but Opus IX comes nowhere near as spicily aromatic as Nuit Noire nor as lusty. Opus IX focuses more on the highs and lows of the romance as compared to the never ending bondage session of Nuit Noire. From the first moment the scent caresses the skin so does the story unfold with bright flashes of vivacity and joy interspersed with shadows of melancholy that weigh heavily on the soul. 

I didn't delve into the story behind the creation of Opus IX before trying it on or writing this but now that I know that the inspiration came from La Traviata, it makes perfect sense . A scent of passionate love and hideous heartache that only too often go hand in hand. Artfully captured in the alluring yet tragic Opus IX. Massive projection and good longevity. This goes on the birthday wish list. 

Source: pinterest

Honour Woman Amouage

Source: www.gopixpic.com

Honour Woman isn't my most loved BFWF ( big fat white floral) nor is it my most loved Amouage but if you are into luscious white floral perfumes, you should add this to your sampling list. 

A gardenia/tuberose/jasmine delight that opens with a strong lily of the valley presence and some peppery green notes before the focus shifts to the main players, the white flowers. The flowers are lusher than in Estée Lauder's Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia which is an elegant white floral bouquet but too polite and thin for my taste. However the meatiest mixed white floral for me is the super buttery Isabey's Fleur Nocturne even though my darling tuberose is replaced with a creamy magnolia and juicy fruit notes. Honour Woman sits between Fleur Nocturne and Tuberose Gardenia in terms of boldness and the "fatness" of the floral notes (medically speaking the BMI of Fleur Nocturne would be over 30, Honour Woman would be about 25 and Tuberose Gardenia would be 20). In the drydown of Honour Woman there is a light sprinkling of the peppery notes from earlier on and a lovely warm smoky incense under the white floral notes. A beautiful rich white floral perfume with a mellower ending compared to its first hour that any tuberose/gardenia lover especially should try. 

Thanks to chronic rhinitis that has addled my snifter, I tend to gravitate towards powerhouse perfumes and I particularly love how Amouage perfumes announce one's presence before one is physically even in the room and how everyone knows you have been in that room for an hour after you have left. This isn't the case with Honour Woman which is moderate in both the scent trail and longevity departments as compared to Memoir Woman or Interlude Woman for example. 

Fate for Women Amouage

Source: pinterest.com

Fate and Beloved are two oddly comforting perfumes for me. I say odd only because I tend to view Amouge perfumes as luxurious jewels and instruments of seduction not burrito blankets( I learnt a new slang today, thank you Bella).

Beloved I group together with another beloved Shalimar under "classy classics", I find Fate to be more extroverted and gregarious compared to them. Perfume is for anytime and any place of course, but I reach more often for Fate to chill out with in a hole-y tee and Beloved to look presentable for, even though both turn me into a contented, purring cat.

Fate starts a bit sharp and peppery but the sharpness doesn't last for more than it takes the spray to evaporate on my skin, before it turns into a smoky, spicy and woody balm for the soul, that envelops one in a blissful bubble, like sitting and watching firewood burning merrily on a cold weekend afternoon, a mug of something sinful in hand while one shuffles around at home still in pajamas at 4 pm. I get powdery florals as it further dries which gives Fate some vintage charm like Besame cosmetics. The floral powder, smoke, woods, resins and spices all blend smoothly into a complex and sublime scent that shares traits with other Amouage scents (Dia for floral powder, Epic and Beloved for warm spicy florals, Interlude and Memoir for smoky resins) before it but remains unique.

Source: community.sephora.com

I prefer wearing Fate when its cold i.e when the air-conditioning is on as the scent blooms beautifully whereas much of its performance is dampened in heat and curiously enough the sillage/longevity seems to be affected by temperature too. I get amped up sillage in heat but with poor longevity and in colder temperatures, the sillage is still good but the longevity is way better.

* Just to avoid confusion, I refer to the female versions of the scents mentioned above.

Turning Thirty-Three Part Trois and the Finale

Well the celebratory bottle-acquiring had to reach an end, I don't have the financial stamina to fund endless parties for a month unfortunately.. Plus one is going to New York in about two weeks and a little bit, so money has to be set aside for that trip! Osswald, MIN and Aedes deVenustas here I come! ( I got the lists from here: Best NYC fragrance stores, 23 NYC Fragrance Hot Spots and from The Non-Blonde of course.)

My package from First in Fragrance is here! Well in the country that is. The DHL tracking shows that it arrived yesterday but they haven't delivered it. Hopefully it'll arrive today, that would be perfect! That's the one containing my new love... Vero Profumo's Rozy in Voile d'Extrait as well as sample packs of Vero Kern's creations in EDP and VdE. Judging by the notes I think I will wind up liking Rubj, Onda and Kiki. I prefer the official arrangement of the notes for Rubj in the Voile d'Extrait form but according to some fragrant friends who have tried all of the line, they think I will prefer the EDP. I am looking at the EDP versions of Onda and Kiki with great interest (Onda appears to be the least challenging in the EDP and Kiki sounds really fun!).

A second package coming from a lovely fragrant friend in LA is somewhere between the US and here. That one contains a half bottle split of Le Labo's Labdanum 18, ordered and split when I was in a "I need labdanum" period. There's also lots of samples she helped me get from Luckyscent (how lovely it would be to have the equivalent of Luckyscent just down the street). While waiting for that to arrive, I have these labdanum beauties to keep me company: Solange Azagury-Patridge's Stoned (nose is Lyn Harris of Miller Harris, so you already know the quality is good. Labdanum, musk, vanilla and a buttery suede effect...gorgeous) and Habanita L'Espirit by Molinard. It's very affordable on several online stores including Fragrancex. I got mine as a tester bottle in a local store quite by chance. It's all creamy, musky and balmy creation on me, so comforting. I tested and loved Cristina by Hilde Soliani, no science needed there, patchouli, vanilla and labdanum, how could I not fall for it? It's not a well-behaved patchouli so if you like your patchouli tame and toeing the line, Cristina will not be your cup of tea. I've also got a sample of Parfumerie Generale's L'Oiseau de Nuit and I'm hoping that will be the first PG that I will get along with, I haven't had the smoothest relationship with the PG line. 

On a side note when I'm wearing one of the labdanums, I feel like a big fuzzy cat...like a Maine Coon...which kind of looks like David Bowie in Labyrinth. See for yourself...I don't know, it's something about his eye-liner.

So back to the haul...

Last night I got home to a really HUGE surprise. My family has already accepted that this perfume habit of mine isn't disappearing any time soon. I think my dad enjoys finding out where the boxes came from rather than what's in them( he's taken to asking me for the stamps on the boxes, so far I've gotten him stamps from France, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Australia, Russia and Algeria). Anyway back to the HUGE surprise. My sister got me Amouage's Fate for my birthday. How great is that?? Two Amouages in one month! Total windfall! I've wanted Fate since it came out but just like Beloved it's always been too expensive to pull the trigger and I've survived on samples and decants...but now I own not just one but BOTH these beauties! Gorgeous from box down to juice really. 

I adore Google. I just realized that this is showing on my google search screen today.

and when I scroll my mouse over it, a caption with "Happy Birthday Kristine" pops up...such a nice little extra! 

Turning Thirty-Three Part Une (Amouage Beloved & Vero Parfumo Rozy Voile d'Extrait)

October has always been a favorite month of mine. Leaves turning to shades of ambers, the smell of fall in the air, the knee-high boots coming out of the closet...and my birthday! I've never needed an excuse for adding to my perfume trove but I think I might have overdone it this year. Still, how many times does one turn 33?
Anyway, on the OFFICIAL list ( ahem, there may be splits/decants/samples that I have forgotten and that are somewhere in the mail to me), these are what I got for me, myself and I.

Love is reckless; not reason.
Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,
Love proceeds like a millstone,
hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,
she risks everything and asks for nothing.
Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;
without cause, give it back again.
Rumi: Love is Reckless.  Mathnawi VI, 1967-1974


Gustav Klimt, Love 1895.

Rumi, Klimt and Amouage Beloved go well together. I've wanted this Amouage since I heard it was being released. Roses+ musky+spicy+animal? Who called my name! However the near 600 SGD price-tag dissuaded me over and over again. I fully blame my sister for wanting her own birthday dinner at a restaurant in the same building as the niche store where I feed my addiction. It's obviously all her fault that in the 15 minutes I had to wait around for the family, I forked over the 600 in a heartbeat and this pretty pink box with the champagne juice was mine. 

After confessing my guilt over Facetime with "The Organisation", I tore off the plastic wrapper(and almost the box) and spritzed cautiously in view of the ever looming humidity. Damn Amouage. Damn Christopher Chong. Where did Bernard Ellena come from, besides being the brother of JC Ellena?? This stuff is GORGEOUS. Smells like nothing else and is as BIG a scent as Amouage gets without apologies. 

I don't find this dated as some online reviewers have mentioned as well as far from the usual offerings of today. I would describe Beloved simply as a classic scent like my beloved Shalimar. Timeless. Suitable in all kinds of weather (this actually blooms deliciously in tropical heat and performs with great warmth in air-conditoning). A scent both classy and sensual at the same time, never approaching trampy nor frigid.

The 1000 odd ingredients as per your regular Amouage, starts off rosy floral and bright before evolving into a warm, spicy and musky affair on my skin with tremendous sillage and longevity. It's beyond me to tell you which note shows up before the other and in what proportions. Suffice to say the official notes are pretty much all in attendance.  

I would buy this over and over again. And again. As Robert Palmer said...

I can't recall what brought Vero Profumo to my attention but my bank account is none too pleased. The rest of me however was in olfactory orgasm over the sample I bought from Luckyscent. In the space of 24 hours from wearing the sample, I bought a bottle of the Voile d'extrait as well as sample packs of the EDP versions and the other VdE versions from First in Fragrance. If I had thought it would be possible for me to ever afford the extrait versions in this lifetime, I would have gotten samples of those too. Better not fall in love when one can't afford to pay the price.

Rozy VdE despite the name, is more of a tuberose scent with a suggestion of roses. It is an olfactory kaleidoscope with a vintage air on my skin. A complex of jammy sweetness, woods and lots of bright tuberose to my nose, slowly very slowly drying down to become a darker, slightly melancholic animal. The sillage is explosive, this is coming from a tiny spray sample, applied to the crook of my arm. It lasted the whole day and into the night. I find Rozy to be a multi-faceted personality with a bit of sparkle and a bit of darkness, like any woman who has smelt the roses and felt their thorns.

Sergio Lopez, Painted Roses .

Specializing in oil painting and charcoal drawings of landscapes and (mainly)women in his art, his mind-blowing spectacular artwork can be viewed at The Main Loop.

I will need to moonlight more if I fall in lust with her other siblings, which if the multitude of loving reviews and blogs are correct, I will.