We Three Kings - Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch

This whole joint blogging process has made me really nervous. Usually my posts are for me alone and anybody else who cares to read them. As it's only me that's culpable I don't feel that I've let anybody down, or made an obvious blunder with my very patchy perfume knowledge. Knowing that this post is contributing to the We Three Kings joint blogging project has rather prevented me from putting metaphorical pen to paper. What shall I say and how shall I say it? I caught myself seriously contemplating the idea of writing a whole post in rhyme. Enough is enough. I'm just going to pile in and apologise in advance for any mistakes or omissions.

First of all, Gold, brought by Caspar of the Three Wise Men or Three Kings. Gold had me slightly foxed as a theme. I couldn't think of anything other than Gold by Donna Karan. I wish I could say that I love this Donna Karan number, but really, I'm not crazy about it. It's pure lily, and to my nose, pretty much unadulterated. It's fresh and green and wholesome, but not something that I could fall in love with. In my book it's an 'interview scent'. You're not going to offend anybody wearing this, but it would be a great leap to feel passionate about it.

I toyed with some other perfumes linked to gold. Gucci Guilty springs to mind, largely because of the packaging, but also because I mistakenly think of it as 'Gilt-y'. However, my children unceremoniously wrote off Guilty, saying that it smelt like custard. I know what they mean, although perhaps that's not the exact description that would have come to my mind.  I will persist in my quest for another gold related scent over the next few days, to find out if there's something more befitting of Caspar.

Onto frankincense, brought by Melchior. I found selecting a good frankincense fragrance much more enjoyable. Frankincense is churchy and religious in a good way to this devout non-believer. It's more tricky to single out an individual frankincense fragrance, as there are more than a handful of beauties.

My local SpaceNK store has recently started stocking some of the Comme des Garcons fragrances. I've been nipping in regularly to test and retest Comme des Garcons Series 3: Frankincense Ouarzazate. Firstly, the name, for anybody who's visited Ouarzazate in Morocco, is incredibly evocative. Ouarzazate is a remote desert town, surrounded on every side by sandy wilderness. The local film studios also happen to be the location for a whole load of block busters. It's intriguing to drive to somewhere so remote and for it be still strangely familiar from a whole host of major films, including Indiana Jones, Prince of Persia, Gladiator, The Mummy and a stack of others that you can see here.

My husband and I were on holiday in Morocco years ago where we'd hired this most ridiculous new car. It was so factory-fresh that we practically had to strip off the packaging before getting in. We may as well have been wearing signs saying, Mug us, we're new here. Heading out of Marrakech in the direction of Ouarzazate, we got hopelessly lost. In a moment of blind panic, my husband wound down the window at a roundabout and shouted "Qu'est que ce Ouarzazate?" (What is Ouarzazate?) to the bemusement of the driver in the car next to us. A bit like driving round Piccadilly Circus and shouting out, Wherefore Brighton? Classic holiday-maker idiocy. 

With all that in mind I wanted to love a perfume that brought back such happy holiday memories. Initially I thought I did, and was all set to write a shiny, happy review of Ouarzazate. Lucky Scent's description is "a crossroads of perfectly blended, spiced incense of the Middle Eastern variety" with which I can agree to an extent. It is spicy and exotic and complex. Everything you hope for from an incense fragrance. And yet, and yet...

So, yesterday I rummaged to the bottom of my sample collection and came across an untested sample of Heeley's Cardinal. And blimey that's good stuff. In a review from 2006, Robin at Now Smell This compares Cardinal to Comme des Garcons Avignon, which he labels 'industry standard', so perhaps I've been sniffing the wrong Comme des Garcons all along. Like several other excellent Heeley scents that I've sampled, Cardinal is not subtle. As a rule this brand tends to be more of a smack in the face rather than a whisper in your ear. For me, this is  no bad thing, particularly when it dries down relatively quickly to something more subtle and equally enjoyable.

The Heeley website gives the following official notes: baie rose, black pepper, aldehyde, labdanum ciste, frankincense, vetiver, gray amber, patchouli. Whilst I can't smell all of those notes, I think it's the frankincense and patchouli mix that gives the ethereal frankincense an intriguing earthy tone. It's a bit of a perfume ying and yang, which I'm really enjoying.

And finally Myrrh, brought by Balthazar. Hmm. Honestly speaking, I wasn't aware of myrrh being in any perfumes. But I was so wrong, it's in an awful lot. Myrrh, like frankincense is a dried resin. Roja Dove, in The Essence of Perfume says of myrrh, "..it has the slightest hint of warm, soft liquorice. ..myrrh rates as one of the best fixatives available to the perfumer". So it's a useful element of perfume as well as having a charming smell.

Grand Amour by Annick Goutal was to be my selection for Balthazar- bringer of myrrh. As far as I'm concerned Annick Goutal can do no wrong. So many of her perfumes, as I've written several times before, are absolutely gorgeous. They particularly appeal to me because so many of them are floral, with little hint of much else. And ultimately I'm the biggest floral fan. A lot of other fragrances really pass me by.

This is the list of notes that Annick Goutal's website use to describe Grand Amour: "Floral, green, soft amber, White lily, hyacinth, honeysuckle, hint of Turkish rose, jasmin, base notes of amber, vanilla and myrrh, musky note". Which all in all creates a pretty, pretty perfume.

But we're talking about the Three Kings here. Does Grand Amour really give any perfumer lover an idea of what myrrh really smells like? I'm sceptical. Something much more atmospheric is needed, and I think I've recently found it in Caron's Parfum Sacre. A small sample of Parfum Sacre has languished in my sample collection since I bought the Make Up Alley's Top 25 perfumes from The Scented Court about a year ago. I can't even remember if I properly tested this fragrance at the time. If I did, then I was too dumb to realise that Parfum Sacre is an absolute classic. It definitely includes myrrh, and almost reminds me of frankincense and it is 'churchy' as the name suggests. It's wintry, aromatic and spicy. I'm gutted that I've just finished my sample, having taken so long to properly discover it.

So that's it, We Three Kings. I'm delighted to be part of this joint blogging project. Please check out the websites of all the other bloggers involved:

All I Am - A Redhead

Bonkers About Perfume

Chicken Freak's Obsession

EauMG

Notes from Josephine

Parfumieren

The Perfume Chronicles

Scent of the Day

Redolent of Spices