Perfume + Makeup + Essential Oils

[lunabee34]

Emma and I went to a more upscale shopping center in a neighboring town in the hopes that I might be able to smell Guerlain Vetiver at the Dillard’s counter. Alas, it was not to be. :( But I did get to smell some other classic perfumes instead.

The following I smelled on paper (which I know is not a true test as every scent morphs to some degree with body chemistry, but as we were out and about, I could only truly test one scent):

Chanel No. 5—I was given a bottle of Chanel No. 5 in 1991 when I was 12. My uncle gave me a beautiful frosted glass bottle with gorgeous Arabic writing on the label that he’d bought during his tour in Desert Storm. I started wearing it a few years later when I started high school. It must have been a knock-off because the Chanel No. 5 I smelled yesterday was very, very similar but so very, very much better and yummier. At some point I’d like to test this on my skin because I really liked what I smelled on the testing strip. It instantly took me back to being 14 and using up the last of that fantastic orange cream eye shadow that my mother must have bought before I was born and for which I have sadly never been able to find a suitable replacement. (I mean, that eye shadow was Something Special, my friends; it made me look like a goddess.) It took me back to my best friend braiding my hair during choir and watching Last of the Mohicans on VHS during sleepovers and kissing a guy for the first time out by the horse pasture while everybody at the party watched us. I can’t believe I started out high school wearing (at least some version of) this iconic scent. It’s such a grown woman fragrance. I’m certain I did not pull it off at all. LOL Basenotes tells me Chanel No. 5 is composed of ylang-ylang, aldehydes, neroli, jasmine, mayrose, sandalwood, and vetiver. I am so surprised to see how many flowers are in this perfume. It doesn’t smell flowery to me in the least. Next time we return to the swanky shopping center, I will buy something at the Chanel counter and request a sample to try on myself.

I smelled Shalimar by Guerlain on a test strip (the salesperson said, “You’re really going old school today, huh?”) and was intrigued. It smelled much woodier and astringent than I expected it to. Fragrantica says: “Perfume is composed of citrus notes; lemon and bergamot, jasmine, may rose, opoponax, Tonka bean, vanilla, iris, Peru balsam and gray amber.” I didn’t smell the vanilla at all. I’ll have to see how this one works on my skin.

Next, I smelled Angel by Thierry Mugler, and if I didn’t already know this perfume was a big deal before this shopping trip, I would have known by the way Angel and Alien dominated half a counter. Half a counter! Basenotes says Angel should smell like chocolate, vanilla, caramel, berries, honey, bergamot. It definitely smelled like caramel to me—dark sugar bordering on burnt. I expected to really dislike Angel but ended up being intrigued. It smelled a lot darker and more complex than I thought it would and while I don’t think it’s a fragrance I’d like to wear, I would like to test it on my skin eventually. For science. LOL

I did skin test one perfume: Samsara by Guerlain. I sprayed one spritz on one wrist and rubbed them together at the start of the shopping trip, and the fragrance lasted for hours. It smelled spicy and warm and vanilla-ish on me. I really liked it. (Emma did not. LOL) Basenotes tells me it contains jasmine, ylang-ylang, sandalwood, narcissus, tonka, iris, and vanilla. Once again, I’m surprised that I like all these perfumes with so many flowers in them as they don’t read as “flowery” to me at all.

I also picked up a sample of Tresor at the Lancome counter after stage one of Operation Femme. (I must digress here for a bit and tell you that I have a plan for the summer. Swimming season just started, and we go swimming every day if it’s feasible. So I generally get a gorgeous tan despite liberal application of sunscreen, and I generally get nice and lean because swimming is great exercise. I’m also planning to do some additional exercise because I haven’t exercised at all since Fiona was born and I miss being strong and having physical endurance. Operation Femme consists of femme-ing it up with nail polish and some new makeup and all these perfumes I’m testing and the smashing chin length bob I got last week to go with my new tan and my new swimmer’s build. I have always enjoyed makeup and the like, but I tend to enjoy it in fits and spurts rather than on the regular. I am indulging myself this summer!) After stage one—purchasing some bronzer and pressed powder and receiving the free gift with purchase which included The New Pink Lipstick, a fantastically flattering color; it is vying with Vintage Rose Lipstick as my new favorite; both of these colors seem universally wearable to me, Vintage Rose in particular; as someone who struggles with finding lipstick that feels comfortable and wears well, Lancome’s lipsticks are clear winners for me—the salesperson gave me a sample of Tresor. After I used up my bottle of Chanel No. 5, I started wearing Tresor in tenth grade and wore it until I graduated. Fragrantica tells me it is an oriental containing rose, heliotrope, orris, apricot and iris. Tresor I do not like nearly so well now as I did then. It doesn’t smell like flowers to me, but I can smell the apricot very strongly, and it’s fairly powdery—not like it’s gone to powder but that there’s a soft, sweet, powdery note underneath. Somebody told me (Minim_Calibre, maybe?) that Tresor and Exclamation contain similar notes, and I can totally smell that now. Pressing my nose to my wrist doesn’t bring back the memories I expect—dating the same guy for two years, figuring out how orgasms somebody else gives you work, wearing crop tops that threaten to show Star Trek levels of underboob. No, smelling Tresor makes me think of going to Walmart and buying a bottle of Exclamation, spraying myself down with it and waiting for the same magic that happened to all my friends to happen to me and scrubbing my wrists with Irish Spring when instead all I got was rancid fruit. Tresor doesn’t smell rancid on me; it’s Exclamation that works with my chemistry, and I probably loved it so as a teen because it fulfilled that middle school dream. Unlike Chanel No. 5, Tresor smells like it was age appropriate for a 16 year old to wear, and I probably rocked it as hard as I was rocking those crop tops. I just don’t like it much now. I know you can get this at any department store, but I’ve got a lovely spray vial sample free to anyone who wants it.

Moving briefly away from scent to stage two of Operation Femme (don’t worry, we’re coming back), I also bought Urban Decay’s Naked Palette Number 3: a glorious palette of rose tinged neutrals that finally end my quest for the perfect neutral eye shadow. Seriously, y’all, I am so pleased with this purchase, I can’t even say. Tucked inside the packing were four samples of different kinds of eye primers that Urban Decay makes; I’ve tested one of them, the original one, and it made such a difference in the way the eye shadow wore. Eye makeup tends to cake up in the crease on me and this prevented that entirely. I will probably purchase one of these primers eventually.

Okay, back to fragrance. Our aesthetician started using DoTerra essential oils in her practice, and one of my best friends in RL is a firm believer in the homeopathic properties of essential oils. So we decided to purchase the Family Physician Kit which contains lavender, lemon, peppermint, tea tree, oregano, and frankincense essential oils plus the proprietary blends Deep Blue (for muscle pain), On Guard, Breathe, and DigestZen. We also bought a bottle of White Fir. In addition to slathering on some lemon and lavender at bedtime (yum yum), we’ve been using these oils to treat/prevent various ailments on ourselves and the children. I maintain a degree of skepticism about the efficacy of essential oils; the DoTerra promotional material lists all sorts of illnesses and which oils you should use to treat yourself, including such maladies as amnesia and pulmonary embolism. I kinda think if you’re using rosemary as your sole line of defense against amnesia, amnesia is not your only problem. LOL That being said, Fiona started coming down with a cold, and we dosed her up with essential oils in response. While her nose runs a little during the day, she does not wake up with a snot-crusted nose and she does not spend all night hacking her sweet baby lungs out in contrast to every single other sniffle she has ever gotten ever which has been so damn many, y’all. So many.

So to conclude, adventures in makeup and perfume were had, and every night, I go to bed in a waft of essential oils that smells divine. It’s good to be me this summer.

Comments

[archersangel]

even if you can't keep up operation femme beyond the summer i've heard that, for some women, just wearing lipstick & maybe some blush does much as a mood booster.

BTW i got 404 errors for the links.

[lunabee34]

thanks for the heads up! I wrote the post in Word which I haven't done in ages, and I forgot it always borks the quotes in html. :) Fixed now.

I hope I will be able to keep it up beyond summer because my schedule is super sweet next semester. I usually teach 8:00 classes and don't feel like I have enough time for any flourishes in the morning, but next semester, I am teaching later in the day.