#heck i don't even own Swarovski

[parfumieren]

Amanda (Amanda Lepore)

Of all the celebrities in the world, I chose her. I could have had Britney, J.Lo, Maria, Fergie, Celine, or Elizabeth Taylor-- heck, even Tilda Swinton, if androgyny was so compelling….

But no. My very deliberate first choice of celebrity perfume came from an aging transgender socialite with a rampant cosmetic surgery addiction and four dance-mix EPs that can best be described as unlistenable.

Why her? Why Amanda Lepore?

For those not in the know, Amanda Lepore is the steely-yet-vulnerable, thoroughly unshockable, plastic-fantastic queen of Manhattan's stygian depths. During the legendary '90's, Amanda ran with the likes of James Saint James, Richie Rich, DJ Keoki, and the Club Kids' notorious Svengali, Michael Alig. Her über-smooth, surgically-enhanced visage -- complete with cherry-red lips pumped full-to-bursting with collagen -- provided photographer and lifelong friend David LaChappelle with decades of inspiration. On the other hand, it's also attracted a particularly nasty brand of social editorial, scathing in its rejection of the blurred gender line.

But rest assured, I am not here to wield that weapon.

On the surface, Amanda's world is as far from my world as Pluto is to the sun. But I have been attracted to it all my life. I myself have walked the gender identity tightrope, as have many of my idols: David Bowie, Patti Smith, Nico and Candy Darling, Lili Elbe, Justin Vivian Bond, Kate Bornstein, Charles Busch, John Cameron Mitchell, Eddie Izzard, Divine. I identify more with these outlaws of the gender frontier than I do with Britney & Co. any day. And because of all this, I desperately wanted Amanda not to fail. I longed to see her perfume blow away all the haters and baiters and nasty naysayers.

Due to its limited production (only 5,000 bottles released) and prohibitive price tag ($900+), it appears that precious few samples of Amanda ever made their way into the hands of reviewers. Most journalists, online and off, merely recycled the most shocking snippets from the office press release. Its bottle (encrusted with 1,000 Swarovski crystals!) and its preposterous ingredients (red lipstick! Steamed rice! A dash of real Cristal® champagne"!) set Amanda up to be a magnificent train wreck.

Yet Luca Turin swore up and down that the damned thing had merit. He raved about the marvelous job done by Christophe Laudamiel to harness and tame its sizable iris content (which -- more than any amount of tacky bling -- surely accounted for that massive price tag).

If this was the Holy Grail of trash fragrances, loyalty drove this kitten to undertake a quest. In the end I found a tiny decant listed at a 60% percent discount-- perfect for me, since naturally I don't have a month's rent to spend on a single perfume. What else could I do? I snapped it up.

While waiting for its delivery, I confess I began to suffer from buyer's remorse. Had I really stopped to consider what a former Club Kid's perfume might smell like? I envisioned sweaty cleavage encased in a cruelly boned corset, whose black organza and lace had absorbed an evening's worth of subway stench, cigarette smoke, spilled bubbly and lightly toasted ketamine. (What can I say? I've read AND watched Party Monster far too often for my own good.) Even worse, I imagined the smell of the corset's matching black lace panties. A boozy, sexy, sticky, spent-all-night-at-the-club-and-can't-be-bothered-to-shower-now sort of smell. An ANGEL sort of smell.

What the hell had I done?

When Amanda arrived, I sat staring at the spray sample vial as if it held Eau de Kryptonite. I decided to apply it after a shower, not bothering to dress in case I found myself forced to break a land-speed record to get back under the hot spray.

Please, god, please-- don't let it be a scrubber, I found myself chanting. Come on, Amanda….

The first note shocked me cross-eyed. Are you fucking serious? I heard myself saying aloud. Apparently, yes she is. Delicate, delicious, and without a doubt feminine, here was the scent of steamed rice. When I first read those words in the press release, I'd thought it was a joke. But what now rose from my wrists was a remarkable facsimile of steamer-cooked Japanese short-grain brown rice, bran-rich and faintly woody. A mandarin note rode atop it, veiled as daintily in curls of steam as Lady Godiva in her long golden tresses. (Again, Amanda: are you fucking serious?)

A faint hint of fruity plastic -- the so-called "lipstick" accord -- followed, tailed by a tinge of something alcoholic. Cristal®? More like Gekkeikan. Yes, it was the unmistakable scent of warm plum sake. After expecting to be clocked in the head with a disco ball, to be ushered instead into the tatami room of a traditional kaiseki restaurant was near about the limit. The repast Amanda set before me was simple, impeccable, refined-- but she wasn't finished with me yet.

After ten minutes, the iris kicked in. The scent of iris shares so many olfactory characteristics with the notes that came before it -- rice, steam, gluten, wood, even plastic -- that I found myself whispering, Yes, yes, of course, I see it! It's not listed, but I trusted my own nose and that of Luca Turin: there's iris in here, all right. (In fact, I think that perhaps it alone creates that starchy-steam accord.)

After an hour, I was still fully engaged with the interweave of Amanda's three main accords: iris, rice, mandarin. At any given moment, one seemed more prominent than the others-- but a moment later, it gracefully ceded the foreground to another. I kept expecting a hostile takeover by something loathsome a la Angel, but it never came. Over and over, eternal, tranquil, they braided closely around one another - iris, rice, mandarin.

The watershed moment came when my spouse came home from work. I'd warned him that morning that my pulse points would be the staging area for an experiment-- possibly hazardous. Now I held my arm out to him. Correctly gauging the smile on my face as a green light, he leaned in cautiously to inhale, then nodded.

"That's really nice; what is that?" he said.

"It's Amanda," I replied.

"It's quieter than I expected," he said. "Pleasant."

"A keeper?"

"A keeper."

That night I wore it to an art gallery opening. With my spouse by my side and Amanda on my skin, I felt as though I was in the best of company. How does that song go?

Well she's all you'd ever want; She's the kind you'd like to flaunt and take to dinner. Well she always knows her place; She's got style, she's got grace-- she's a winner. She's a lady… and the lady is mine.

--Tom Jones "She's A Lady"

Scent Elements: Iris, mandarin, strawberry, woods, cucumber, "red lipstick", "steamed rice", and "champagne" accords. And Amanda. Beautiful, fascinating, unforgettable Amanda.