Day 35 ~ One Year, One Nose

Sticky notes abound. My backpack is overflowing with them -- notes, notes, and even more notes on smells and perceptions and memories and inspiration.

Today's scent is Shocking by Shiaparelli, created in 1937 by perfumer Jean Amic, a Roure Bertrand Dupont employee. Created using notes of raspberry, tarragon, deep indolic florals, mosses and vanilla, Shocking was meant for confident, outrageous, modern women, as illustrated by the original bottle design -- a silhouette of famous femme fatale, Mae West.

My small bottle isn't nearly so brave a front for a so strongly characterized perfume -- mine sits, in all its 1 milliliter glory, within a tiny square bottle with a silly little red paper label. I would love to have a bottle of the original Mae West silhouette . . .

So, Shocking is, and this is directly from my sticky note, 'almost abrasively cloying in the opening, rich, fatty aldehydes and dark florals are richly demonstrated. Thirty minutes in and the scent settles to a loud, powderiness with shades of green and lily-of-the-valley type floralness, along with a deepening animalic muskiness. I smell civet. Or something that wants to be civet. A half hour later (1 hour in) the scent turns much more animalic, and there is a deep ambery muskiness reminiscent of Youth Dew in the drydown. Hours later (5 or 6) everything is still there, the distinctive 'classic' feel of a well made perfume redolent of musky animalics and a thick layering of vanilla powdery florals.'

24 hours later -- there is still a faint whisper of musky, ambery, florals -- I think I like Shocking quite a lot more than I thought I would.