Fragrance Friday becomes Scented Saturday...

Bonjour, I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend as I welcome you to a scented Saturday on the blog. Usually my perfume posts appear on a Friday, but this week a combination of a hectic Friday and having lots of samples I wanted to get through meant I pushed my perfume post back a day but kept the alliteration.

Why so many samples; well, it's a combination of samples ordered from Les Senteurs which I've been trying one by one since they arrived at the start of the week and a charming, generous charity idea on the part pf my local department store. So, this week I ended up with a box of samples and decided to combine them into one post. 

Let us begin then with something rather stunning: Etat Libre d'Orange's Hermann A Mes Cotes. This sample was ordered after I saw The Candy Perfume Boy's recommendation on Facebook and his fabulous review (Candy Perfume Boy's Review). Oh, this perfume is so gorgeous! I'm not even really going to try to review it, I'll leave that to the maestro, what I am going to say is this: if you have not tried Hermann yet then do! It's the deepest red rose with a truffle heart and wonderful longevity. It's dark, mysterious and ideal for winter. I'd also like to add how much Etat Libre has impressed me lately. I have loved a number of their perfumes and I never thought that was going to happen back in the days when I started getting into perfume and their brand was known primarily for the scandalous and highly unsuitable as a Christmas gift, Secretions Magnifique (just an interesting note, I recently chatted with a lady who loves it by the way, described it so beautifully too). 

But let us move on, my second perfume sample was La Religieuse by Serge Lutens. If anything this perfume is the opposite of Hermann, whilst H warms you up, La Religieuse is the chill snowstorm raging outside with only the comforting scent of incense from a local church breaking through the ice to  remind you that the cold of winter will soon pass. Again, this one is beautiful. It captures the story it sets out to convey in a few divine notes of musk, incense and jasmine and lingers beautifully on skin (less so on a blotter but perfume was meant to be worn against the skin, against the pulse). I suppose it was always going to work for me as I adore incense perfumes. Comme des Garcon's intense and beautiful Avignon is one of my all time favourite perfumes, an acknowledged instant classic. 

 However, I think the time has come to explain my other samples of the week a little more. So, I popped into afore mentioned department store last weekend to have a sniff of Anais Anais by Cacharel and noticed they were selling bundles of four samples for £1.00 for breastcancernow.org I have no intention of going into detail here but it's a charity I have good reason to support and obviously I love perfume samples so perfect match. So, I bought £10.00 worth of samples and have found some real gems amongst them: Million by Paco Rabanne turns out to be far nicer than I had expected, Pop by Stella McCartney is a lovely heavy tuberose but my absolute favourite so far has to be: Givenchy's Gentlemen Only Absolute. 

I am a firm believer that there's no such thing as a gendered perfume so the fact that this is marketed as a men's perfume does not up me off in the slightest. Would Marlene Dietrich have walked away from such a perfume? Non.

Gentlemen Only Absolute is a heavy, spicy Oriental with a heart rich in cinnamon, saffron and nutmeg. The cinnamon comes through strongly on my skin entwined with the base notes of vanilla and sandalwood whilst the bergamot top note proves fleeting (fine with me, it's the spices I love most about this composition). It's certainly not a tweeds and brogues fragrance, more of a velvet tuxedo and brocade waistcoat perfume.

I've fallen in love with it! In fact I'm wearing it right now

Finally, my last perfume sample, La Fille De Berlin.

Simple, spicy, rose and pepper that conjures a snowy rose out of simplicity and presents it in a rose jam red juice. I think I may be as in love with the colour of this perfume as I am with it's smell! I'll be wearing this again at the close of the month when the chill of winter begins to bite and a sharp red rose is called for. 

Okay, I'm all perfume sampled out now! I shall be off to a cup of tea and my writing, have a wonderful weekend, a wonderful week and I'll see you all again on Wednesday for Writing Wednesday unless that becomes Literary Thursday?