Perfume Review: Teo Cabanel Alahine, or A Joyous Christmas Memory

When I was at college, my university chorus group put on a Madrigal Dinner every year.  It was a longstanding tradition that our director would prepare us to sing eight or nine madrigals, and the students would be in charge of everything else.  And I do mean everything else:  Rent the Newcomb Hall Ballroom.  Plan the menu with Dining Services and pay their employees to cater the meal.  Arrange for the medieval-music club to play instrumental music for recorder, tambour and violin, during the event. Organize the costumes - some owned, some borrowed.  Print and place flyers; organize publicity; print and sell tickets; print programs.  Write an original play set at Christmas in 15th century England; cast it and memorize lines.  Arrange for the fencing club to do demonstrations.  Give each member of the chorus a character to inhabit for the event while conversing with guests.  Learn and perform a medieval dance.  Select certain members to form small groups to roam and serenade dinner guests during the evening.  Prepare decorations, including fabric wall hangings, fresh evergreen garlands, and clove-orange pomanders, and place the hangings and garlands in the ballroom to cover up the white Federal-style mouldings on the fourteen-foot-high eggshell-blue walls.  There are 50 students and twelve weeks in which to get everything done - Ready, Set, GO!  

We called it Mad Dinner, and those four evenings were some of the happiest of my life.  (They were also some of the most stressful, especially the year I was Costume Co-chair.  I think I still have a bald patch on the back of my skull from that experience.)  I loved it - every Mad minute of it.  Pure joy, from wandering minstrels to cloved oranges to funny hats to candlelight to beautiful music.

For me, Teo Cabanel's Alahine is Mad Dinner.

Notes for Alahine:

Top: Lavender, bergamot, ylang-ylang

Middle: Jasmine, Bulgarian rose, orange tree, pepper plant

Base: Iris, cistus, patchouli, benzoin, vanilla, sandalwood, musk

I probably wouldn't have gone after Alahine on my own - I like amber, but if you've read my posts about Opium you know how I feel about resiny Orientals (hint: I'd rather slide down razor blades than spend any time cooped up in a room with them).  I'd ordered a sample of Oha, a dark spicy rose chypre that I thought I'd adore, and a sample of Alahine arrived with it in that package from The Posh Peasant.  Oha I found very beautiful but eclipsed by the stunning L'Arte di Gucci, with which I had already fallen in love; Julia, a soft floral with tangy fruits in the top, is also beautiful in a wistful, innocent way that feels a little naive for me to wear at this stage of my life.  I wasn't expecting to love Alahine, and in fact upon my first test of it, its opening notes skated close enough to "Citrus-aromatic-masculine" that I almost wrote it off then and there.  But by the end of an hour, I found it heavenly.  Upon second wearing, I knew I wanted a bottle.

If I am paying attention to the notes - to what I actually smell - Alahine opens with a zesty burst of lavender and bergamot, which is highly aromatic and therefore difficult for me.  I am coming to expect it, and I know all I have to do is wait ten minutes before a lovely, creamy ylang-ylang will appear and soften the aromatics to a level I enjoy.  Shortly after that, the curtain rises to reveal a floral heart so well-blended that I can't tease out any note except rose, and then only because I've become familiar with the deep winey rose in Caron Parfum Sacre' and Ormonde Jayne Ta'if.  Spices swirl around these abstract flowers, spinning down into the ambery labdanum that is weighty and smooth as a heavy gold-colored satin shawl.   The scent hovers over this rich amber for hours afterward, caressing it with vanilla and patchouli and benzoin, and wrapping it up with a resiny thread.  I don't actually smell any iris, but there is the effect of something cool there that I think must be due to the iris - it does seem like satin, after all, rather than velvet.

If I don't pay close attention to what my nose tells me, but lift my head and go through my day only registering my impressions, I smell this: pine branches, curried fruit, flowers, mulled cider, cloved oranges, candle wax, vanilla liqueur, and the very faint mustiness from a costume that has been stored in the basement under Old Cabell Hall for several months.  I sense candlelight, and laughter, and the faces of friends, voices raised in song, and the excellent feeling of hard work that has paid off handsomely. 

When I wear Alahine, I smell joy.

For a few other reviews of Alahine, click on these links:

March at Perfume Posse

Abigail at I Smell Therefore I Am

Brian at I Smell Therefore I Am

First image:  Natural  Christmas decorating! by LDHumes at flickr.  Second image: Medieval Group by tights&costumes at flickr.  No, it's not my group, although we dressed similarly - I haven't been able to find any photos of the Real Thing, probably because none of us could carry cameras in our costumes!

Madrigal Dinners produced by the University Singers of the University of Virginia are no more.  When Dr. Donald "Coach" Loach retired in 1994, they went by the wayside - seen, I think, as being too much work.  I raise a glass of mulled cider in honor of Coach, who was pictured recently in the alumni magazine, still looking his natty self in a pink polo shirt. 

(I hereby remind myself to someday post about the Kamikaze Tenors.)

Perfume Review: Penhaligon's Amaranthine, or Amaranthigh, or Amaranthingy

Amaranthine by Penhaligon's London, New for Fall 2009
Amaranthine is a corrupted floral oriental for those private moments when everything is anticipation. It opens with a dramatic flourish of spices and tropical green. This unsettling lick of drama is beautifully ambushed by an unctuous accord of jasmine and ylang-ylang, a heady bloom renowned for its aphrodisiac properties, and clove swathed in spices, tea, musk and the rounded beauty of tonka bean absolute.  The perfume is reportedly “reminiscent of the scent of the inside of a woman’s thigh”. *

Head notes - Green Tea, White Freesia, Banana Tree Leaf, Coriander Seed Oil, Cardamom Absolute  Heart - Rose, Carnation, Clove Oil, Orange Blossom, Ylang Ylang Oil, Egyptian Jasmine Absolute   Base  - Musk, Vanilla, Sandalwood, Condensed Milk, Tonka Bean Absolute

You know what? For once, the ad copy is pretty accurate, although perhaps it overstates the "drama" and "aphrodisiac properties."  * The hilarious quote about thighs is purportedly from composer Bertrand Duchaufour, from cosmeticsinternational.  It alone made me want to smell this thing, and people seem to be associating the scent with the word "thigh" now.  Maybe it's just that "thigh" is a funny word, which it is.  Say it six times in a row: thigh thigh thigh thigh thigh thigh.  Kudos to you if you said it without snickering; I couldn't.

And look at those notes, too - does that sound anything like thighs to you??  The notes say "tropical floral with oriental base" to me, and that's a category I like in general.  So here it is the beginning of winter, and I've spritzed Amaranthine four days in a row, to make sure the experience isn't a freak occurrence.  I think, honestly, it would be better in warmer weather.  It's a bit light when one is wearing sweaters and shivering in a cold rain.  But even though it's been less satisfying in early December than, say, Alahine (about which, more coming next week), I say this:  Amaranthine is beautiful.

It starts out with fresh, dewy florals only lightly dusted with spices.  I get very little tea from it, although other reviewers find it more prominent; I get more general "green" notes.  And yes, there's a banana hit to it, probably from the ylang, although it's a green banana thing, not an overripe squishy vibe.  I can't identify rose in there, but the carnation is prominent, as well as the orange blossom. The jasmine is grassy and fresh, as opposed to that indolic heavy Joy-type jasmine that makes me think of dirty panties, and it doesn't stand out. 

Eventually I get down to the base, which is soft and clings to the skin, and still retains a veil of freesia and orange blossom.  I was a bit worried about that "condensed milk" note, but although Amaranthine is a little sweet, it reads as floral sweetness to me rather than gourmand.  At this stage, it smells a bit like skin smells if the weather is warm and it's been most of a day since it's been showered: not squeaky-clean, but not smelly-sweaty either.  Like, you know, skin, warm and slightly moist.

It may be my nose, but I'm not getting of the weirdness some other reviewers have discovered.  Nor do I get the smuttiness that some people have described.  Is it just too cold and/or dry? Is my brain twisted? I'm not sure.  All I get out of Amaranthine is tropical, relaxed, fresh beauty.  I'll be putting my decant away for a few months, at least, and wearing things more appropriate to this chilly weather.  When the time is right, I'll know.

On a related subject (THIGHS!), I'm going to talk about body image.  I have a daughter in her early teens.  She's healthy and fit; she's petite; she's still wearing a few things from the girls' department, particularly dresses, as she finds the juniors' department offerings immodest.  (I'm not complaining.)

But she said to me the other day after track practice, "You know, Mom, I have big thighs." I looked at them and raised my eyebrows.  "They've got muscles.  I mean, you can actually see my thigh muscles. They're runner's thighs."  I nodded.  "I think that's the reason I have trouble finding jeans that fit."  (Yeah, tell me about it.)  But I'm not going to apologize to my kid for giving her the thunder thighs genes, because - honestly? - she's got great legs.  She complains that her broad shoulders make her shirts fit funny, and her muscly thighs make her jeans tight, and how her jeans are always too big in the waist if they fit her hips.    

And she's looking around her high school at all the girls with thin thighs and thinking, How come I don't look like them?, while I'm looking at her and thinking, Hey, that is my basic body shape, just younger and shorter and much, much thinner, and it's beautiful.  It's a swimmer's body (okay, a short swimmer's body!), and it's healthy and athletic and beautiful. 

And I think I want it back.  I've been avoiding exercise for way too long.  Time to remedy that.

Ad copy from Penhaligon's.  Top image: Amaranthine in the limited edition crystal flacon, from Penhaligon's.
Center image: Shield Bug on Globe Amaranth by innermt at flickr.
Bottom image: 2008 Cross Country by nmhschool at flickr.  No, it's not Bookworm, but she runs cross-country and distance track.  I'm so proud of her.