Interview with Mals86 of “The Muse In Wooden Shoes”!

Mals86 of The Muse in Wooden Shoes is perfume blogging’s Pioneer Woman. Mals writes from her beef cattle farm in very rural southwest Virginia, where her access to perfumes is just a little bit limited (she has to drive an hour to reach a mall with both a Belk’s and a Macy’s). Not only does The Muse in Wooden Shoes provide an utterly unique perspective (where else are you going to read about perfume and farming in the same paragraph?), Mals’ writing is also terrifically droll and engaging. Today Mals shares a tantalizing peek at her newly written novel and lets us city slickers know what country smells we’re missing out on.

Why do you write about perfume?
I write about perfume for a couple of reasons – for one thing, I love getting that huge rush of emotion from a scent that surprises me, and I totally dig writing about that.  For another, I enjoy the conversations that arise when people’s emotions are touched, the way that so many people are so affected by smells.
You just completed a staggering achievement: writing an entire novel in one month for NaNoWriMo. What can you tell us about your novel? Did you manage to work in any perfume references?

Oh, gosh, the novel… it’s hard to talk about.  It’s like it’s my baby, and it hasn’t quite got its party manners yet, and I just want everybody to be nice to it, and yet I’m not sure it deserves that at this stage.  But briefly,Bright as Day concerns a girl named Meredith, a driven college student who struggles with social anxiety.  She shines at academics, but instead of making headway on her degree over the summer break she’s pushed into going home when her internship falls through, too late to find another one.  At home and bored and frustrated, she decides to push her personal development in another direction.  She does realize that becoming familiar with new situations seems to help her deal with them, and after several years of shunning boy-girl interaction (and makeup and perfume and clothes and other “girly” things), makes up her mind to explore this facet of life new to her, with the help of her childhood friend Day.

Day, for his part, is head over ears in love with Meredith, and he’s got bigger plans than just giving her kissing lessons.  Meredith discovers Infusion d’Iris, which she likes because it’s so subtle, and finds out that smelling something nice helps keep her calm. And then she discovers a different, vintage fragrance, gifted to her by the elderly lady she has begun to assist, whiling away the rest of the summer before she goes to school.  It blows her socks off.  It changes her perspective.  She makes some risky decisions.  Then Day – quintessential Boy Scout, rescuer of stray puppies, little-kid-magnet, everybody-loves-Day – is arrested for rape, and Meredith’s life goes into another tailspin.
And that’s all you get, for now.  (Yes, I’m eeevil.)
What are your favorite perfume houses?
I think I may be all across the board with my favorite brands – there are very few houses where most of, or even a goodly percentage of, the line works for me.  I do quite well with Sonoma Scent Studio, Parfums de Nicolai, Frederic Malle, and Chanel, and I nearly always find something wonderful in my sample orders from DSH Perfumes.  Also, and this may be cheating but hey, you asked: vintage Coty.  There’s something truly delightful about finding scents that were made for a drugstore market years ago and discovering that although they were cheap when new, they smell of good materials, thoughtfully composed.  Basically, older Cotys (Emeraude, L’Aimant, L’Origan, Les Muses, La Rose Jacqueminot, Chypre, even Sand & Sable) Just Smell Good.  I’m not even talking about the original, much-coveted really-vintage Chypre, but the 80s reincarnation.

What is your favorite place to shop for perfume?

There is a mall within about 20 miles of my house, but for perfume it’s pretty lame.  The better mall is in my hometown, 50 miles away, but its best well-stocked perfume counter is at Macy’s, which doesn’t carry higher-end fragrances.  So I shop online a lot.  It’s probably one reason that I was so willing to try independent perfumery houses like DSH and SSS, so I can’t complain about that too much!   Also, I’m cheap: I like the online discounters.  I’ve found a lot of wonderful fragrances at bargain-basement prices, by being open to buying inexpensive bottles unsniffed: Gres Cabaret, Hanae Mori Haute Couture, Cuir de Lancome, the first Ines de la Fressange.  I have recently taken to stalking the perfume counter at Walgreen’s, because they have testers.  I haven’t bought anything there, but I like to know what’s available at the lower end, too.
You live on “a beef cattle farm in Southwest Virginia”. What country smells are us city slickers missing out on?
Oh, farm smells!  They run the gamut from sublime to truly disgusting.  On the sublime side: whole fields of newly-mown hay drying in the sunshine, masses of honeysuckle in full bloom, recently-split firewood.  Other lovely rural smells might include sheets dried on the clothesline in the sunshine, the fresh dewy quality of the air on a clear day, and woodsmoke drifting through rainy evening air.  The milk replacer powder we mix up into bottles for orphaned calves smells a lot like custard, sweet and creamy and not much like powdered milk you can buy at the store. The CEO is fond of alfalfa hay in particular, and of the smell of corn silage, which is sweet and greenish and aromatic.
On the disgusting side: burnt hydraulic fluid and dead animal.  Somewhere in the middle are manure, iodine, wet animal bodies, and the smell of hot machinery.  (I wish to point out that our cattle are eating grass and hay, and their manure is less odoriferous than that of dairy cattle or pigs or chickens, because those animals are fed a lot of grain.  I mean, sure, manure is poo.  But manure from grass-fed beef has a very grassy smell.)  Oh, and the smell of the farm pickup is absolutely distinctive!  My grandfather’s pickup smelled exactly the same as The CEO’s truck: engine oil, diesel fuel, cattle smell, dried manure, old sweat, cow medicines, iodine, old cracked vinyl, and dust.
What are some of your other interests outside of perfume?

Interests outside of perfume include marathon novel-reading, writing about whatever’s on my mind, and singing in my local community chorus.  I love to cook, but I live with a couple of mildly-picky people, one fairly-picky person, and one insanely picky person*, so of necessity my cooking repertoire is somewhat more limited than I’d like.  I used to cross-stitch and crochet, but incipient carpal tunnel syndrome has nixed those hobbies.  I don’t watch a lot of TV, although I have recently discovered reruns of The Big Bang Theory.  And I just freaking LOVE marching bands.

* There was a period in my youngest son’s life during which he lived on only milk, red food and chicken nuggets.  He’s better about trying new things now, but not that much better.  I can forget about trying to cook that recipe for scallops in coconut milk.

What perfumes are you hoping to find under the Christmas tree/Menorah branches this year?

Perfumes I’d like to find under the Christmas tree?  Well, assuming that some magic philanthropist sneaks into my house in the middle of the night to leave me fragrance (it certainly won’t be The CEO), I’ll put in an order for a full bottle of Iris Poudre and/or Guerlain Vega.  But maybe I’d trade them both for a bottle of Carnal Flower.  However, there won’t be any.  (We don’t really do Santa at my house – not that we’re opposed philosophically, but we prefer to not give credit for gifts to some imaginary dude in velvet pants.)

Alas, The CEO and I need a new bed.  The antique rope bed that my grandmother had had refinished and retrofitted with siderails in the late 1940s, the one that I’ve owned since I was twelve?  Well, those siderails are starting to crack.  And because the metal fittings that hook the rails onto the head- and footboard were specially made, I can’t use a standard set of rails or a standard bedframe with my bed.  We could probably find someone to make us new rails, but in the meantime we’d have to put the mattress on the floor – ergo, it’ll be a new bed and no new smellies for me this year.  Update: we just found a guy who’s willing to make new rails for us.  That’ll be in January.

You didn’t ask, but I have both a cat and a dog.  The cat is 18 years old.  Her name is Silvia, after a character in a Scott Turow novel, and she is The Queen.  The dog is 7 and a half; her name is Hayley and she’s a beagle-lab mix, a rescue dog that is so! happy! to be here!  (wag wag, bark of affirmation)  I would have included a picture of all three of us together, but Silvia refuses to acknowledge that Hayley exists, so I didn’t even bother to request a photo op.  Besides which, neither of them seem interested in fragrance at all.  Silvia has arthritis, but she can still hop off the couch and zip into the kitchen in under 3.2 seconds when the molecules of tuna scent the air.  Hayley loves to go out into the pasture and roll in things better not discussed here, and she has the annoying habit of stealing and hoarding dirty socks, especially The CEO’s because he is her Favorite! Person! in the WORLD! (wag wag, bark of affirmation).

Just Kidding!

Okay, y’all, I have established the least sketchy way possible to do this Refuge fundraiser! I have just set up a JustGiving page here. When you press the Donate button, your money will go straight from your debit or credit card to Refuge. So there will be no PayPal account, and the money we raise will not be in my personal bank account at any point.

So here is the final version how this fundraiser will work: I will list all items for sale here on Scents of Self. If you are interested in any items, please leave a comment you want to purchase it and then make a donation for its asking price using the Scents of Self JustGiving page. Your purchase’s original owner will then send it to you, and I will cover everyone’s shipping costs using PayPal. Any questions or concerns?

Winners of the Stella Rollerball Giveaway!

1) The winners of the Stella rollerball giveaway are Rebecca, micaela6955, and Irina! Yaaay! Please email me at scentsofself@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can send you your prize! Thank you so much to everyone else who entered!

 

What’s Your Uniform?

Ahh, the grey-wearing days.

Perfume Posse’s March just did a great post about establishing a uniform for her new job. My definition of a uniform is a type of outfit that one tends to fall back on day after day. Identifying my sartorial uniform was relatively simple, as I only wear one type of shirt (polo), one type of dress (short-sleeved or sleeveless knee-length A-line), and three colors (black, pink, and yellow). I also used to wear grey, but was ultimately overwhelmed by having four whole colors to choose from.

Colors are for the weak.

But what of the perfume uniform? Which perfumes are my constants, wearable in almost any situation? The perfume uniform must be special enough that you are happy to wear it practically every day. It cannot make you feel under- or over-dressed. And unless you spend most of your days in dens of sin and ill repute, it is most likely not going to be your sexiest perfume.

I was ultimately able to narrow down my perfume uniform to 2 fragrances: L’Artisan Safran Troublant and Prada Candy. I honestly can’t think of a situation in which the fresh, luminous Safran Troublant would be inappropriate. As I said in a previous review of Safran Troublant, its rose note is so clean that I initially mistook it for some strange new kind of citrus! Prada Candy is the perfume I choose for nearly all social situations. I wear this sweet, light-hearted scent in the hopes that no one will notice that I am a socially inept nervous wreck who really just wants to go home and watch Star Trek with the cat.

What is your perfume uniform? (And feel free to tell us about your fashion uniform, too!)

Donate and Do Good!

So you have this perfume. You don’t want it anymore, and since you are a wonderful and highly attractive person, you’d like to find something charitable to do with it. Unfortunately, you used it once or twice (or fifty times), and most women’s shelters don’t accept used perfumes. What can you do? Scents of Self to the rescue! I’d like to host a perfume sale fundraiser for Refuge, a Captain Picard-approved UK charity that provides safe houses to women and children escaping domestic violence. I have quite a few items to donate, but to make this a really kickass fundraiser, we’ll need other donations, too! Please help me make this a perfumista’s dream event: a way to buy perfume and do good at the same time.

Now, let’s get down to the brass tacks:

How will this work? If you would like to donate an item(s) (yaaaaay!), please email me at scentsofself@gmail.com with pictures of these items. You will not be sending the items themselves to me. I will then post pictures of everyone’s items here on Scents of Self. The seller will mail their items directly to the buyer, not to me. I will compensate everyone’s shipping costs. I will be setting up a separate Paypal account specifically for this fundraiser. I will provide screenshots of the account every day or two to keep everyone informed of how much we have raised. When the fundraiser is over, I will donate every cent from that account to Refuge, and will post a screenshot of the receipt.

What kind of items can I donate? Pretty much anything is completely welcome. This is, of course, primarily a perfume sale (and both used and unused perfumes are 100% acceptable), but if you have a non-perfume item that you think others might be interested, please let me know! Some welcome non-perfume items might be books, teas, DVDs, other beauty items, cat toys, etc. I, for one, am definitely planning to sell a few books.

What is the deadline for donating items? Two weeks from now, let’s say?

Isn’t there already a beauty blogger’s auction? Indeed there is! Beauty Bloggers for Charity is a wonderful organization that benefits Doctors Without Borders. I felt that another fundraiser would not be superfluous for two reasons: the Beauty Bloggers for Charity auction mostly contains cosmetics and not perfume, and I wanted to support a cause that specifically helps women.

Will this be a sale or an auction? A sale, not an auction. Auctions stress me out.

Will you be claiming this fundraiser as a tax deduction? No, because I don’t know how to do that.

How do I know you won’t steal the money? I post on this website every day under my real name, Arielle Weinberg. I have, as they say on Law and Order: SVU, “extensive ties to the community”. I would never compromise my integrity as a perfume blogger (or as a human being!) by acting dishonestly with this money.

Perfume in the Classroom

Perfume in the workplace has been a hot topic lately, as evidenced by the trolling of the poor Candy Perfume Boy’s “Perfume In The Workplace” post by a very angry member of “The Fragrance Free Project” (which I suspect is run out of her basement). We at Scents of Self are nothing if not up on the latest haps, so I’m jumping on this bandwagon with a post of my own about the role of perfume in a college classroom. I hope that it will be helpful to any perfume lovers currently in college (curiously, there don’t seem to be many of us online, although I’m sure that they’re out there), or will at least provide a therapeutic place for all of us to bitch about that one girl who wore Dior Poison in Microeconomics.

The first issue with regard to perfume use in a classroom is space. If you work in an office, you most likely have your own cubicle, or possibly even your own office (oooh, girl, you fancy!) In a college lecture, however, you will be seated less than 2 feet away from someone for anywhere from 50 minutes to three hours. This is a very long time to be in such close contact with a smell that one finds unpleasant.

Much like that one girl who dresses like Lady Gaga for 9 AM physics class, or that group of bros who spend the whole class grunting about how they were totally about to break the Sigma Chi keg stand record last night, a loud, strong perfume can also be a distraction. As a junior at Johns Hopkins University, I have to say that it is already extremely difficult to learn anything from classes. You only have 50 minutes. The professor will mumble, or have illegible handwriting, or have illegible handwriting and refuse to use PowerPoints. Or he will be unnaturally fixated on Kim Kardashian and waste valuable class time talking about her sex tape. Or he will spend 45 of the 50 minutes recounting his glory days at NASA and then rush through the actual material in the last 5. (These are all real experiences that I have had. I’m not bitter.) Unless you are a super genius like my adorable little brother Buzz, who got both the looks and the brains in the family, you simply cannot afford additional distractions in a lecture.

I love him even though he is already taller than me.

Now, I would never advocate for a perfume-free classroom. In fact, I see the right to wear perfume in the classroom as being much like the American right to free speech. You are allowed to say whatever you want, but the law does not make you immune from criticism for what you said. Similarly, you can wear any perfume that you want, but I cannot offer you any protection against negative responses from people who find your perfume offensive.

Here is what I do recommend: small amounts of relatively quiet perfumes. Nothing loud or overwhelming. Again, it’s like freedom of speech. If you do not say anything particularly outrageous or egregious, you are less likely to encounter negative reactions. I am not going to name perfume names here, because I believe that even the most monstrous perfumes can be reasonable in appropriately tiny amounts. You are perfectly within your rights to dress like Lady Gaga and bathe in Aquolina Pink Sugar for your 9 AM physics class. However, I am equally within my rights to find you somewhat obnoxious for doing so.

What is your take on perfume in the classroom?

Tagged , , ,

The Top 20 Roundup!

While I JUST got around to posting my first review of the top 20 bestselling perfumes of 2011, the other bloggers who are participating in the project have left me in the dust. Please check out their wonderful reviews!

  • The Muse in Wooden Shoes somehow manages to not scrub off Thierry Mugler Angel and tells Taylor Swift to “grow up a little” (a girl can dream) in her review of Estee Lauder Knowing, Estee Lauder Sensuous Nude, Fan di Fendi, Prada Candy, Taylor Swift Wonderstruck, and Thierry Mugler Angel.

 

  • No Disassemble Charlie No. 5′s review of Estee Lauder Beautiful contains a somewhat worrying account of that time when she tried to pierce a cousin’s ear using an earring sterilized by a curling iron.

 

  • The Unseen Censer calls me “effervescent” in her review of J’Adore Dior. She is now my new best friend. Effervescent, y’all!

Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue

Like it or not, D & G Light Blue is a modern perfume classic by now. It’s been a best-seller for over ten years, which is freaking ancient in perfume years (perfume years are like accelerated dog years). My feelings on Light Blue were effectively summed up by a Hopkins senior who declared, “I love it! But I think it’s sort of too common now.” Light Blue is indeed ubiquitous. It is the third most-reviewed fragrance on MakeupAlley, with 1,245 reviews. But while Light Blue may be a common choice, there’s nothing common about the scent itself.

Despite the name, Light Blue is not particularly light. It has the same surprisingly opaque effect as the frosted glass on its hideous bottle. Light Blue is a dense, powdery citrus fragrance that subtly hints at apple (unlike perfumes like DKNY Be Delicious, which scream “APPLE APPLE APPLE APPLE BOTTOM JEANS BOOTS WITH THE FUR”).

There is something bizarrely peaty in the dry down. I don’t know how, but this combination of apples and earthiness somehow works. What is the secret to Light Blue’s success? It’s certainly not the bottle, which looks like a brick from a very ugly house. It’s not the relatively unexceptional marketing. For once, we have a perfume  that succeeded because of what was inside of the bottle. And for that, I wish Light Blue many more years on the bestseller’s list.

Tagged , , ,

Potential Perfumed Philanthropy: Refuge

So in yesterday’s Perfumed Philanthropy post, I suggested a perfume sale to raise money for charity and asked for suggestions as to the charity. I’ve read through your comments, and several of them expressed a preference for a charity that supports women. I think that I may well have found the perfect one (and by perfect, I mean that it has a Star Trek connection).

Refuge is a UK charity that provides safe houses and legal advocacy for women and children who have experienced domestic violence. I was most impressed by the fact that several of these safe houses are culturally specific, meaning that the accommodations and services are tailored to help women who may be marginalized due to their race, nationality, or religion. I cannot stress how necessary this is. Abusers are aware that these factors can isolate women, making them more vulnerable and more afraid to get help.

My paternal grandmother experienced violence at the hands of her father, who once sent her to the hospital by punching her in the head. My grandmother and her family were part of what is essentially a self-segregated Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in New York. There is no doubt in my mind that the insulated nature of their community was part of what made her father feel that he would get away with it.

How did I hear about Refuge? From its passionate advocate, the dashing Sir Patrick Stewart. Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, spent his childhood trying to protect his mother from his father’s violence. In Patrick’s own, beautiful words: “When Refuge, the national domestic violence charity, asked me to become a patron, I accepted without hesitation. I accepted for my mother. As a child, there was little I could do to help her. But now I can give support and encouragement to women who live in the same sort of fear that she did.”

One week ago, Patrick wrote an editorial for The Guardian expressing his alarm at this year’s 31% budget cut to the funding of London’s domestic violence services. By the way, there wasn’t much to cut in the first place; last year’s 7.8 million pound budget has now been reduced to 5.4 million. (5.4 million for ALL of London???) Patrick writes that “Refuge- along with other women’s charities- is facing its toughest year to date. The gradual erosion of statutory funding has made Refuge even more reliant on voluntary income, but fundraising is an uphill battle.” Well, that’s where we come in, y’all. So what do you say? Shall we make it so?

Perfumed Philanthropy: Which Charity Should Scents of Self Support?

Ever since breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen inexplicably jumped the shark by defunding Planned Parenthood last month, I’ve been thinking of hosting a perfume sale here on Scents of Self for which 100% of the money raised would go to a charity. So I have two questions for y’all. First, would anyone be interested in donating unwanted perfumes to this sale? (Unwanted makeup should probably be donated to the Beauty Bloggers for Charity auction instead.) I was thinking that I could set up a Paypal account specifically for the sale (separate from my personal one), so that everyone could see where their money was going and there wouldn’t be issues with paying multiple people. Second, where should the money go? Please comment and suggest/campaign for your favorite organizations or causes. When we’ve got enough answers, I’ll put it to a vote!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 283 other followers