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Bliss! I am starting to smell the crisp cool autumnal air of New England. This sensation is a forerunner of little celebrations of warmth, hot steaming mugs of mulled apple cider, coffee that sharpens the senses, candle lighting, breaths of warmth on one's frozen fingers, cosy fluffy ample enveloping scarves, smell of leaves and walks in the forest, and best of all a cool ambient air that needs to be infused with spices and amber. Now is the season for the deepest and richest Oriental scents to reveal their mystery. I want my perfumes to feel like glowing amber, rich cognac, and dark molasses...
Continue reading "Scented Thoughts: Not Knowing How To Perfume The Season" »
 1740 is the year the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was born. As with the other eaux de parfums in the collection by Histoires de Parfums it is the name of one of their historically-inspired perfumes. The memory of the sulfurous Divine Marquis is said to have inspired the composition of a fragrance meant to convey the essence of seduction. The French text likes to stress that this is the scent of the most libertine of all the seducers and proposes itself to be the instrument of limitless seduction. This program will be carried out with the help of a "woody and leathery alchemy". Head notes are Italian bergamot, South Indian Davana Sensualis. Heart notes are patchouli, coriander, cumin, Indian cardamom. Base notes are patchouli, cedar, birch, Spanish cist labdanum, leather, vanilla, Everlasting (Immortelle)...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: 1740 Le Marquis de Sade by Histoires de Parfums" »
Vogue has an article on Five Great Custom Perfumers. The perfumers that are featured are: Miller Harris, Strange Invisible Perfumes, Creative Scentualization, Yosh, and Le Labo.
 The new perfume by teen star Hilary Duff, With Love, continues the very popular, some would say, unimaginative, trend of fruity floral fragrances given a creamy, buttersccotch-y twist. The genre was made popular by Britney Spears and is primarily destined to please a younger set of women (15-24). In this case, fine wood notes make it a more sophisticated type of fragrance susceptible to appeal to a more mature audience looking for a sensual playful, yet elegant perfume.
The perfume was created by Stephen Nilsen and Rodriguez Flores-Roux of Quest. It is a luscious gourmand fragrance with delicious fruity notes and seductive woods: sandalwood, cedar, and rarer "textured Cocobolo woods" undertones. I absolutely love the woods in this perfume; they are very finely textured. Notes are, among others, Mangosteen fruit, spices, Mangosteen blossom, Cocobolo wood, amber milk, and amber musk. I also detect a boozy note which turns out to be Champagne according to one source. There is also a rich sandalwood, cedar, and coconut milk. The Mangosteen smells more like candied pineaple than Mangosteen only approximating the delicate and subtle frutiness of the Mangosteens of my childhood...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: With Love by Hilary Duff & Some Thoughts On Its Similarities With Betsey Johnson" »
 A new men's and women's skincare line called Davi will debut at Bergdof Goodman this fall and will remain exclusive to the store for a period of 6 months. The skincare products were developed by the Modavi winemaking family of Napa Valley, California and is packed with anti-oxydants naturally found in fermented grape extracts...
Continue reading "Beauty Notes: New Davi Skincare Line from the Modavi Winemaking Family" »
 Estée Lauder will release the latest Jo Malone fragrance called Blue Agava & Cacao. It is the 18th fragrance for the Jo Malone brand and the first one since Jo Malone's resignation took place in February 2006...
Continue reading "New Perfume: Blue Agava & Cacao by Jo Malone" »
Angel Schlesser is set to launch Essential for Men. The perfume was composed by Alberto Morillas and is described as a citrusy fruity-floral. The bottle is meant to evoke the line of men's clothes from the brand.
"Angel Schlesser Essential for Men launches in Spain this month, followed by Russia and Asia later this year, then remaining markets in 2007. The 50ml EdT spray is priced €48 and the 100ml EdT spray is €65". Source: Cosmetic News
The latest creation by Serge Lutens and nose Chris Sheldrake is called Mandarine Mandarin. The lilting name given to the perfume reminds one that the mandarine fruit originally meant "the orange of the mandarin"and originates in East Asia. The historical evocation of an official from the past eating delicious oranges conjures up all the more golden yellow images of Imperial China. A sumptuous blue celestial Chinese dragon decorates the 30 copies of the limited edition of the perfume which will be available for 800 Euros from November 2006 at the Salons du Palais Royal. The price for a bell-shaped flacon of Mandarine Mandarin, without the blue engraving, is 100 Euros. Notes are Chinese orange, nutmeg, candied orange, peels of mandarins of Sicilia, Black Mandarin, Cashmere musk, clove, honey, beeswax, smoked Chinese tea, thyme, labdanum, rock rose, Tonka bean, and ambergris.
The perfume evokes to me a slightly complicated atmosphere of both intellectual and sensual exoticism. The perfume wearer is invited to travel on the notes of crystallized Chinese orange peels, Lapsang Souchong (black smoked tea), and the drool of the dragon or ambergris, amongst others...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: Mandarine Mandarin by Serge Lutens" »
 Coach, the top American leather goods brand will partner up with Estée Lauder to launch its first ever fragrance since the establishment of the house in 1941. The perfume is expected to be out in March or April 2007...
Continue reading "Fragrance News: Coach to Launch Its First Fragrance" »
 Sali Oguri is a New York based singer and musician. She is a multi-talented artist who has managed aside from her activities as a composer and singer to dedicate herself to creating a perfume which has generated a cult following. Called Pink Manhattan, it was named after her song album. She is also the popular TV host for a Japanese weekly satellite TV-show called “New Yorkers” that boasts an 11 million-strong fan base. We love her blog Pink Manhattan. Her fluid style of writing and her thoughtful posts about music and perfumes are a treat to read. Sali’s personality comes across as a mix of excess and balance if that makes any sense to you, it does to me. Her view of life is very personal and we wanted to get to know her better, understand a little bit more what makes her tick. We think it is perhaps the fact that she seems to re-work endlessly the material that life is. For The Scented Salamander Sali has accepted to answer questions about her work and ideas as a perfumer and an artist. TSS – Sali, you are a musician, a songwriter and singer, a perfumista who writes regularly on fragrances on your blog Pink Manhattan, and last but not least, a perfumer, the creator of Pink Manhattan. In what order did these interests or rather passions of yours arise in your life?
Sali Oguri - Music first; everything else comes after. What connections do you see between them? Do you think they are part of the same creative process? Writing music and making perfumes can be similar in that they're both about creating compositions with notes. Music differs from perfume in that music consists of many more notes and not just notes but rhythm, which means in music, we also play with time. You can't time the evaporation rate in perfumery yet so there's no rhythm to speak of. Where there's no rhythm and no upbeat, it's static. Where the upbeat is, there is movement and life...
Continue reading "Passion for Perfume - Portrait: An Interview with Sali Oguri" »
René Shifferle's long-standing passion for perfumes has led the businessman hailing from Switzerland to finally pursue and concretize his dream of creating a series of perfumes he felt were lacking from the contemporary scene. The result is an unconventional series of three fragrances with dreamy poetic names created in collaboration with Isabelle Doyen, the nez for Parfums Annick Goutal.
Shifferle told us earlier that although he started with the idea that the perfumes would be the results of a classic collaboration betwen a customer and a perfumer, he quickly came to revise this view after a few months. The founder of Les Nez realized then that the most important person in the process was the creator, that is the perfumer. Shifferle adds that the concept of the perfumer as author developed by Frédéric Malle, who sees himself as a perfume publisher after the model of a book publisher, inspired him to go in that direction.
The Unicorn Spell is described as a green floral. In Isabelle Doyen's own words, "If by dawn still linger on your skin mixed scents of leaves, frost and violet blooms, and that relentless yearning for stellar sights, you will know that, at night, you felt the milky breath of a unicorn"...
Continue reading "New Perfumes & New Line: The Unicorn Spell, Let Me Play The Lion..., & L'Antimatière by Les Nez.com" »
 The lastest creation by Lorenzo Villoresi, Alamut, is now available at Aedes and Lafco. According to Aedes, "The ancient Persian castle of Alamut inspired Lorenzo Villoresi to create a fragrance capturing the opulence of its fabled gardens. Luxurious like brocaded silk and warm like Middle Eastern nights, Alamut unfolds in layers of jasmine and osmanthus. Made intoxicating by the narcotic richness of narcissus and tuberose, the heart of the composition melds into the sensual base of woods and amber. An intriguing and striking fragrance, Alamut marries classical sumptuousness with edgy modern glamour"...
Continue reading "Fragrance News: Alamut by Lorenzo Villoresi " »
 As previously reported, Fragonard will issue a re-edition of a perfume from the 1950s called Billet Doux.
We now have received more information regarding the notes: "Recreated from a historic Fragonard Perfume, BILLET DOUX, pays homage to the most beautiful flowers of the French Riviera: Sweet William carnation, peony and frangipani with accords of bergamot, lemon and mandarin all on a soft background of cedar, vanilla and musk". The perfume will be launched in October 2006 and will be available for purchase from the Fragonard website.
Source: Press release
 A new alcohol-free version of Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker has been released. According to Osmoz, "Liquid Satin proposes a new way to experience perfume. An innovative, silicone-laced, alcohol-free formula enables a seductive satin-on-skin sensory feeling." It is recommended to apply the satiney concoction on the pulse points.
Top notes are mandarin, rosewood, lavender, Apple Martini. Heart notes are patchouli, narcissus, orchid. Base notes are cedar, white amber, musk. The perfume comes in two packagings: a serum spray in a vintage-like bottle and a serum rollerball in a golden pen decorated with gold filigree. It is a product exclusive to the US. Source: Osmoz
 In Black by Jesus Del Pozo will soon be available in France. The Spanish designer said they had wanted to take some time to prepare themselves prior to entering the refined and competitive French market. It is the designer's first scent. Top notes are black cherry, grapefruit, and rose. Heart notes are peach wine, Egyptian jasmine, violet, and black iris. Base notes are licorice wood, Madagascan vanilla, Indonesian patchouli, and Moroccan cedarwood. It will be exclusively sold at Marionnaud from October 1 2006. In the US it is available at etailers such as Perfumania. In Black was the recipient for the Best Selective Women's Packaging award at the Spanish FIFI awards. Sources: FashionMag.fr, Cosmetics, Osmoz
 Mitsouko eau de toilette is still available but I wanted to call your attention to the fact that it does not really exist anymore. What is left is the shell; the bottle reproduces the lovely inverted heart design found on the perfume bottle, the label says Guerlain Mitsouko, but the perfume itself has gone wrong, very wrong...
Continue reading "Perfume Short: Mitsouko Eau de Toilette by Guerlain" »
 Zibeline (sable) was created during the jazz and flapper era, in 1928, by Jacqueline Fraysse according to one source, or Claude Fraysse according to another (and perhaps by both) for the Weil house specializing in luxury fur coats and established at the turn of the century. Chinchilla Royal is another perfume by the same brand issued in 1927, the year of the founding of Weil Parfums by the three Weil brothers Marcel, Alfred, and Jacques. Both scents were innovative perfumes created as functional scents destined to be worn directly applied onto furs to cover the slightly musty smell that emanated from sable pelts. As an advertisement read in the 1930s, Zibeline was meant to be "Strictly an odor for furs." Indeed, both perfumes were advertised as fragrances that had been chemically treated to scent the elegant woman's furs without damaging them...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: Zibeline by Weil" »
Esteban has released a new fragrance called Secrète Afrique (Secret Africa). Notes include: hesperidic notes, ginger, cedar, and patchouli.
Source: Esteban
OK, Stephanie Morin won the Live Luxe sample and Twibbet - again! - won the Nez à Nez samples. Sorry about the delays! I have Twibbet's address somewhere but please send it back to me in case I don't find it. Stephanie, if you still want the sample, please send me your address. Thanks!
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