For those who celebrate...

Happy Christmas!

And if you don't, or you celebrate something else, here's Sending You Random Cheer Day!

I know it's the day after but what's time to us?


Considering the sheer nothing we did this Christmas, other than eat, drink, binge-watch The Witcher and eat some more, it has been lovely.

I watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time ever, cos you know, I got sick of the Muppets a long time ago (sorry Kermie!) I loved it, just perfect, Gonzo reaching the pinnacle of his career and melons complaining about being stolen. I feel better now.

I tried to go back to a film that actually scared me in the 1980s, The Woman in Black.
Oh dear. I well remember that drama as afterwards I fell asleep and suffered from my only experience of real sleep paralysis. When I woke up, I couldn't move, and stayed that way for hours. While I have had other experiences of the classic nightmare, the weight on the chest etc, this was so horrible I never forgot it. But I didn't blame The Woman in Black for that, all she did was entertain /freak me out.
Not any more though. Now time and technology reveals a lady wearing very strange make-up and the sounds of a script creaking. I abandoned it in favour of The Last Train to Christmas and a queue of terrifying mullets. Marvellous.


My husband got me a piece of digital art I have wanted for ages, and a very cunning gift indeed;

Testers for perfumes, many of them posh and little known. He was all about buying me a perfume, but I like to test for ages before I buy. The last perfume advert that tempted me was the Audrey Tautou Chanel No.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5r5PXBiwR0 , and that's just because I want to be travelling the world and stopping off in Istanbul. I like the perfume too but am not sure the Hubby is quite up for the aldehyde explosion of it. Yet.


Anyway, now I indulge myself with Pointless Perfume Reviews!

Pointless Perfume Review: Areej Le Dore Russian Musk II

With the tester coming in at £20 for 1 ml, I thought I would try this first. But see! I fall over at the first hurdle. Maybe I'm not really going to do a review; maybe I just want to point and laugh at other people's reviews. Very charitable, Boot, Merry Christmas!

Here we go courtesy of a reviewer who calls themselves Stinkyriddle, and deserves some kind of perfumery trolling award. I hope.

"Russian Adam has chosen to highlight the animalic aspect of Deer Musk by macerating both the grains and the skin of the Musc sack. With deer musk, dried grains typically have a smooth minty/fuzzy/chocolatey aspect to them while the skin contains the urinous elements that are found within the opening blast of intense deer musk when spraying Russian Musk II.

So let’s talk about the scent! For starters let’s clarify a few terms. RMII is a classic animalic Chypre with a heavy emphasis on urinous musk laden bubblegum florals, pissy lime notes and bitter oakmoss steeped Mysore and Oud in the drydown. Imagine the scent of unwashed jeans where maybe a little bit of dribble runs down your leg after shaking yourself off (this is genderless by the way ANYONE can get dribble on their leg pissing ANYWHERE). Now take those same jeans and wear them for a few days in a row. You’ll have a good idea how the musk note in this fragrance smells. It’s alittle pissy, alittle primal and a little raw.

Now that we got that out of the way and have determined what “musk” means in this fragrance RMII showcases a glorious musky bubblegum floral accord of a bygone era. Patchouli lends a dry powdery aspect to carry the musk through the base where we see a warm, furry drydown that feels ever so vintage yet entirely “old world”. Depending on who you ask will depend on old world meaning “old man with pissy jeans” or the old world before deodorant and regular showers/clothes washing was a norm and people doused themselves in aldehydes and oakmoss. Regardless, this is musky all the way till the end baby!

I’m sure the folks who regularly dose themselves in animal secretions will be rolling their eyes at my review but I promise you the average person will think you haven’t washed your undies in awhile. Now personally I think this smells great. I love it. BUT it’s been said to smell like urinal cakes so I want to be objective about my love for this kind of perfumery.

Someone who’s never smelled this kind of musk might be put off especially if they weren’t expecting something so animalic. However if it you WANT to smell like a deer’s sex secretion THIS is what you want to put on. This is the scent of nitro musk boosted Siberian musk."


Gad.

At the risk of tremendous tameness and evidently soul-destroying levels of hygiene, all I got was a blast of spice and wood. I did detect a momentary chocolate note, but that hovered briefly before dying. RMII stays the same for a long time then dries down to an amber/patchouli/oud combination plus florals and musk. Now, the musk is gorgeous and deep, almost hypnotic, but the mid-note effect is soapy, not exactly unknown or expensive in perfumery. This stuff stays, oh how it stays! But no-one is going to think you smell like dirty laundry, for all there are doubtless some interesting body chemistries out there. I hope never to meet Stinky Riddle, but suspect I will know if I do.

Investigation finds the perfume contains the note called 'natural musk' and a little checking up shows why it is expensive. Looks as though, yes, we are talking musk from the sac of the deer, though the levels of maceration claimed by Stinky Riddle are beyond me to argue for or against.

This is a beautiful musk note, but there are plenty of cheaper synthetics out there that do just as well, cost much less, and leave our musk deer populations alone. And with that, the RMII adventure ends.

Or will end. Serious longevity here, can't get this stuff off for love nor money.

https://areejledore.com/collections/all
Limited edition, so probably sold out.