On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Well, it's not the first day of Christmas, but it is the first of December. The sidewalks of Paris were teeming with shoppers today. Mini trees for tiny Parisian appartments appeared overnight in front of all the florists and hardware stores. Yet the weather here is warm, around ten degrees Celsius (fifty degrees Fahrenheit) and sunny, which means a lovely temperature to wander away long hours outside while humming carols under your breath.

I did a little Christmas shopping and a lot of Christmas looking, and I got to thinking about all the gifts I would love to give and get if I could go crazy with the euros. I thought it might be fun to do twelve days of giving and getting beauty stuff, here on the blog!

I'll start out, and hopefully the other girls will do a day, too, if they feel like it. And feel free to give and get some twelve-days-of-Christmas gifts in the comments, dear readers!

The best gift from a true love is always one that takes you by surprise, one he/she thought up themselves. That's why I wouldn't actually want my baby to get me anything I might post on here. But if a secret Santa would present me with my desire of the moment, it would be a big flacon of Rumeur by Lanvin.

I tried on this scent for the first time today and it's a definite perfume crush. Like most of the other eventually-blazing-like-wildfire crushes I've fallen victim to, I started out completely nonchalant. Then something shifted and I was completely captivated. The scent in its current incarnation was launched in 2006; it's nothing new or exciting. It wasn't a perfume on prominent display, meant to move for the holidays. It was simply sitting quietly on a normal, overstocked shelf. Still, it caught my eye due to its sort of elegant, sort of feral gold lettering and the brass pull-ring decorating the nozzle cover - designed, I'm sure, for people that can't resist pulling something off when tempted. Like this young lady. Love her Elvis forelock.


I pulled and sprayed and there was an immediate blast of strong, sharp floral note. In the store, I thought, "Lily-of-the-valley?" but info on the internet tells me it was magnolia.

I thought, "Oh dear. Not so great. What have I gotten my wrists into?" but on second whiff I caught a citrusy odor that seemed to cut through the heaviness of the flowery smell and blend it with the straightforwardly musky base.

A half an hour later, walking around, I kept on smelling myself compulsively. I thought, "There has to be some sort of special, highly addictive ingredient in here that makes it irresistible! I'm not wowed, yet at the same time I have the urge to smell this perfume every three seconds..." Two hours later I was a hardcore Rumeur junkie and convinced that this was the next new scent for me. It's velvety and womanly, but spicily fresh. It's luxurious, but a bit punk. I'm not going to do a Venn diagram for this one, but let's just say if you like silver hoop earrings, leather pants on men and antique postcards from the 1910s, you should give Rumeur a try.

Ten hours later, it's still quite noticeable on my skin. This is the kind of power perfume that you'd have to spray in the air and step into to avoid pissing off the scent-sensitive on the bus.

Watch out, unassuming Rumeur testeuses. Don't say I didn't warn you.

And happy December!