Fraud police strike again

(Is it jet lag if I am awake in the middle of the night at exactly the same time I'd be up in my own time zone?)

Looking at my email, as I do, and should not do, in the middle of the night, I see that Zappos is thanking me for my order.  However, I did not place an order for $398 worth of random fragrances.  (Tommy Bahama, Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, Missoni, Carolina Herrera.  Not my style, although they aren't disastrous fragrances.)

Continuing to look at my email, I see all these fragrances weren't charged to me.  They were charged to an address in Kansas ... and shipped to "me" c/o someone else in Washington state.  I called Zappos, and they are canceling the order and taking it off my account.

Then, through the creepiness of the internet, I reverse looked up the billing address in Kansas to find who might have been defrauded to let them know of it.  I found a name and a phone number but no email address.  The name belongs to someone who is 97.

I just gave her a call, as it's afternoon in Kansas at the moment.  As would be someone of any age, she was very confused by my call.  She had never heard of Zappos and is not expecting to receive her credit card information in the mail for another 10 days.  I suggested she call her credit card company right away.  I feel bad -- I gave her my home number, and I explained that I am traveling ... but I won't be home for a week if she tries to reach me because she doesn't understand what I meant.  Maybe I will call her back tomorrow.

Green figs and wood

I went on a bit of a shopping spree at Nordstrom tonight.  I had a fairly unusual experience for Nordstrom lately: everyone wanted to help me.  Not always the Nordstrom experience; perhaps they were grateful for a customer on a Tuesday night?  And it's quite different from my experience at Saks a while back, when, on a Saturday, I was the only person in the store and all the salespeople still ignored me.

I went to the fragrance section to buy a new bottle of Un Jardin en Mediterrannee.  (Has it really been two years since I found it?  I never thought I'd finish a whole bottle.)  The young saleswoman was moving very briskly, approaching me immediately to help me, not schmoozing me at all (it turns out that she was getting off of work in 10 minutes).  She seemed to appreciate that I knew exactly what I wanted and snatched it for me from the locked cabinet.  Then I said, "Is there anything else I should try since I like this one so much?"  She thought quickly and said, "Annick Goutal's new fig fragrance."  Perfect.  Annick Goutal is always a good bet.  She sprayed it on paper, I smelled it, I asked for a sample, she gave me a sample, I sprayed it on my arm, and I was out of there.

... high as a kite on this scent!  It's called Ninfeo Mio, and I couldn't remove my wrist from my nose.  It starts figgy, citrusy, green; the middle notes intrigued me, and all I could think of was some sort of exotic tropical citrus, like etrog or persimmon (?), plus perhaps some orange blossom; it ended powdery and yet somehow a little sour, figgy, citrusy, hint of floral, complex.  So obviously far superior to the fragrances I'd explored at Sephora.

I read reviews of it as soon as I got home.  It is indeed considered a spectacular fragrance.  And I got the name of the perfumer: Isabelle Doyen.  It's so good, I want to follow her career.

Other reviewers mention the floral, and they describe the fig as milky, which does begin to nail down this ineffable smell.  The sourness I was perceiving comes from boxwood.  And some of that citrus was actually mango!  They also mention a lavender note, which I consciously missed but which must be why I found it so immediately appealing.  My favorite review compares it directly to Un Jardin en Mediterrannee as well as to the sibling of my orange fragrance, Acqua di Parma's Fico di Amalfi fragrance.  She says:

Both of those I would describe as fig fragrances with woody citrus, whereas Ninféo Mio I would describe as a woody citrus with fig, in case that makes any sense to anybody.

Makes perfect sense to me.

I'm glad I have a sample.  I don't think I could wear this fragrance regularly, but the way it excites and intrigues the olfactory parts of my brain makes me want to take this journey again.

My Insolence certainly is.

I've moved on from fragrance obsession to many others, including my current obsession with interior paint colors. But today I was at Sephora and thought I'd explore a few fragrances. Bulgari (left forearm) because I didn't think I'd tried it, YSL's Paris (right wrist) because a colleague said she liked it and I know it got four stars, and Guerlain's My Insolence (left wrist) because it's Guerlain and they were showing it in a cute little travel size.

I usually have a pretty high tolerance for perfumes, but they've knocked me over. When I got home an hour later I ran to the sink and scrubbed like a surgeon. No luck. I feel nauseated and I have a headache. The My Insolence and Paris are duking it out -- I don't think I ever smelled the Bulgari. Standing in front of a window trying to breathe fresh air. Then I sprayed my own Arancia di Capri, which is pretty strong, all over my arms to try to cover the others, which only added to the problem. Advil and lots of water (orally). Heading towards a migraine.

So I googled "how to get rid of a perfume smell." And it's amazing what people have tried -- the laugh I got out of Perfumista's discussion almost redeems this situation. Acetone, Clorox bleach pens, Magic Eraser, witch hazel, Chapstick, baking soda, Mr. Clean sponge, baby wipes, a saw. I'm going to go for the original recommendation: unscented deoderant and Tide.

Update:
Paris and Bvlgari are gone! It took two rounds of deoderant and Tide to get My Insolence to a very faint level. I still reek of Arancia di Capri, probably because I sprayed it all over myself in my panic. I don't mind: so my sheets will smell of oranges tonight. Better than having nightmares of suffocating in butterscotch.

And now I find that My Insolence is only a two-star fragrance! Many expletives deleted. The upside is that I did identify its component scents.... From The Guide:

How could the brand that has made L'Heure Bleue to spec for a hundred years put out this cynical, trendy, hastily-cobbled-together cherry-almond sugary oriental? It's as if Hermes decided to sell a glitter-vinyl shoe with a lucite platform heel.

Adventures in fragrance

I'm wearing Hermes' Un Jardin en Mediterranee on my right arm, Un Jardin en Nil on my left, Dior's Miss Dior Cherie on my right hand, and Chanel No. 5 on my left.  The first two are because I needed to know what Jardin en Nil was like: when last week I fell in love with J. en Mediterranee, I felt like I'd picked the wrong one.  Karen, the Nordstrom fragrance consultant, told me that a book had been written about Nil, that everyone loved it.  I breezed right by it to Med, bought Acqua di Parma's Arancia di Capri (still my top choice) instead, and second guessed myself on the Hermes.  

Meanwhile, I bought Perfumes: The Guide, which has been a great way to learn more about what fragrance is really about.  Before heading to Nordstrom today, learned how to say "chypre" so I could ask for a fragrance that had it; I studied the guide's top fragrances and researched which I'd be able to find there.  Ten days ago I barely had a vocabulary, and all the names I knew were Chanel No. 5 and Obsession, Poison, White Diamonds -- things that remind me of Elizabeth Taylor.  Now I know the top fragrances, the top chemists/designers and perfume houses -- particularly, thanks to the guide, in a historical context.

So I went to Nordstrom with bare arms and the dual purpose of resolving my conflict about the two Hermes fragrances and of trying Chanel No. 5 (apparently one of the greatest fragrances of all time) and perhaps a Dior or Guerlain.  

The woman who sprayed my forearm with Nil raved about it, said it was her favorite.  As soon as Med hit my skin I knew I liked it better.  When I went back later to ask to try No. 5, she must have thought I was nuts.  On the way out the door I spritzed Miss Dior Cherie, which the guide gave four out of five stars.

The verdict: Miss Dior Cherie doesn't deserve as many as four stars.  It's strawberry and patchouli, mostly strawberry from beginning to middle to end.  

As for No. 5, I would have fled from it if it wasn't so important to get to know it.  The saleswoman pointed out to me that (as I had read in the guide), it was the first aldehydic fragrance.  The guide defines this as, "Characterized by the smell of the straight-chain alephatic aldehydes C10, C11, and C12, first used prominently in Chanel No. 5."  Reminding us that fragrance can really only be expressed clearly through analogy (fruity, spicy).  Suggesting that No. 5 would be over my head.

It was.  My initial reaction to it was that it didn't smell like anything I knew: I had no language to describe it, so I figured I was experiencing the aldehydes.  I certainly didn't like it.  I supposed that the marvel of that fragrance -- which was created in 1921 -- was that it did smell so abstract.  If Arancia is Renoir and Med is Matisse (and I think that's right), No. 5 is Pollack.  I look at a Pollack and I understand that something is going on, but I am not sure why I'm looking at it.  (OK, bad analogy: in Pollack you can immediately see passion; I didn't even get that far with No. 5.)

Unlike a painting, we're dealing with something that evolves.  The No. 5 on my hand has gone through many scent stages, which has kept me interested.  It eventually softened into something I could at least identify as "feminine," floral, and became more consciously pleasurable to me;  and six hours later is still around (probably another way it is marvelous) as a faint, sweet powder.  I can understand at least that this is intriguing.  

I now understand how complex a drydown phase can be.  I think the bit of Nil I can still smell is actually wonderful.  My right hand smells like old towel, which is either a really bad drydown from the Cherie or because I've been doing dishes.  Sadly, I think it's the Cherie.  

The salesperson gave me a sample of No. 5, and I'm going to continue to try to get to know this fragrance, to teach myself what aldehydic means.  Then on to the other classic, reference fragrances.  Next stop: Guerlain's Mitsouko, which is indeed a chypre.