A Day And A Night Out On The Town

The Blond and I have been hermiting it since we came back from vacation, but today we broke the spell. We had tickets to see Patrick Stewart and T.R. Knight in David Mamet's A Life In The Theater. I'm perfectly happy to watch Sir Patrick just stand there and read the NYC phonebook, but an actual play, with a dialog and everything is even better.

Grandaisy Bakery and dinner at Cafe Blossom, but I know you're not here for the cake. Obviously, in between noshing and admiring Sir Patrick's accent there was some serious perfume sniffing and shopping.

Aedes has the newest Serge Lutens export, Bas de Soie. I didn't expect to love it, but I sprayed it before the show and by the time we were done applauding I was head-over-heels. Uncle Serge knows his iris, but this isn't that rooty carrot and damp dark soil of Iris Silver Mist. Instead, this is dry and piercing with its hyacinth note. Bas de Soie is a lot more sophisticated than it seems at first sniff and proves our favorite uncle hasn't lost his touch just yet. Have I said love already?

The Blond played happily with some CdGs, wasn't too impressed with Diptyque Duelle, but he's just not a vanilla person. I actually liked it, but it reminded me of Le Labo's Paris exclusive, Vanille 44. Well, maybe Vanille 44 on a diet, but still. It's not very tenacious, which is a problem I'm having with most of the newer Diptyque perfumes.

We headed uptown for the Triple B tour (Bergdorf, Barneys and Bendel). A couple of the brands formerly found across the street at Takashimaya have migrated to Henri Bendel, so we can still get our fix of Ineke and Histoires de Parfums. The newest Bendel private label scent, Wild Fig, did nothing for me, and I'm a fig freak, so you know something is amiss there.

The L'Artisan boutique there has one of the two new scents,Traversée du Bosphore. I don’t know if the Blond didn’t spray enough or what, but I could barely smell anything. I’ll have to seriously test again before making judgment, but at this point I was going to give up on L’Artisan. It’s a good thing the day wasn’t over (spoiler alert!).

I never payed much attention to the Profumi del Forte line, but that's probably because the samples I had were of the masculines, which I've found boring, at least from casual sniffing. This time something compelled me to look further and I absentmindedly sprayed my wrist with By Night (White). Oh.

By Night, the feminine version, is a gorgeous orange blossom and vanilla over a sensual wood-musk base. Not the most innovative idea, but it works for me. Added to the wishlist. Because, really, I need more vanilla perfumes.

Speaking of which, Bergdorf will be getting the new limited Edition Shalimar Ode A La Vanille on October 23rd. I'm ridiculously excited, but then again, I've never met a Shalimar I didn't like. Sadly, this is the only exciting perfume thing going on at Bergdorf these days. They don't have the new Serge yet and it looks like they're stocking less perfume brands than ever. The young ladies ready to spray you with Balenciaga don't contribute much to the atmosphere, either. But the other aspects of the beauty level are still as fabulous as ever and maybe more. Le Metier de Beaute will have some new and exciting items soon, and if you haven't seen the latest Cle de Peau eye palettes yet I highly recommend them (a review of Malachite is coming as soon as I give mine an adequate testing).

Barneys has both Bas de Soie and Coeur de Vetiver Sacre, the other new L’Artisan. We both tried it on and were stunned to realize how much we liked it. Of course, one can never have too many vetivers (or leather scents, or dirty musks), but this was different and intriguing enough neither one of us felt it was redundant.

We came back to Barneys after the show and before heading west for dinner to buy our newest loves. Or tried to. The L'Artisan is peacefully resting in our cabinet now, but somehow the SA and I didn’t notice, but he grabbed Ambre Sultan instead of Bas de Soie. I didn’t realize it until we got home, so there’s an emergency  trip to Madison Avenue in my immediate future. Like most Serge groupies, I love Ambre Sultan, but I don’t need a backup bottle just yet. But I do need my iris fix, so there.

All in all and wrong Serge aside, it was a great day.
How did you spend your weekend?

Image: The Swinging Sixties Blog.