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For almond perfume lovers, L'Occitane en Provence has a scent that is both pretty and comforting. It feels as comforting as a drink of Turkish sahlep sipped in misty autumnal Istanbul. The fragrance is called Blossom Dew in English and Rosée de Fleurs in French. The packaging gets high marks from us as the flacon is charming with the perfume itself offering a lovely milky and opalescent color due to the use of almond proteins in it........
Continue reading "Blossom Dew/Rosée de Fleurs by L'Occitane {Perfume Short (Review)} {Bath & Body}" »
Hubert Maes is a French indie perfumer based in the north of France, in Lille. He has created a collection of three perfumes, each telling a story of a different woman, called Histoire d'Un Rêve (The Story of a Dream), Histoire Charnelle (The Story of the Flesh/Carnal Story), and Délicieuse Histoire (Delicious Story). His creations are going to be more widely distributed in the By Terry boutiques........
Continue reading "Histoire d'Un Rêve, Histoire Charnelle, Délicieuse Histoire by Hubert Maes {New Fragrances}" »
Gwen Stefani L and Dior Midnight Poison -- we hesitated between categorizing them as "New Perfumes" or "Fragrance News". Technically speaking they are 2007 new launches, but the real news are not that they are new perfumes but rather copies of previous fragrances poured into new bottles. This is going to make our task easier but less fun also if all we need to do is type an = sign between two different packages. Alfred de Musset once famously wrote "Qu'importe le flacon pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse!....." calling attention to the effect wine has as being more important than the bottle containing it......
Continue reading "Gwen Stefani L & Dior Midnight Poison: When Bottles Matter More Than Perfumes {Perfume Short (Reviews)} {New Fragrances} {Scented Images} {Celebrity Perfumes}" »
Kate Moss' new perfume started selling yesterday in the UK and already it is number 1 at Superdrugs, topping Stunning by Jordan aka Katie Price. The celebrity perfume culture seems so alive in the UK! Anything to do with the equally alive British tabloids? You can watch the launch party for Kate Moss in Morocco with excerpts from the TV ad. More info available at Female First.
Nicholas Jennings is a young perfumer originally from Great Britain who is now established in the south of France in the lovely village of Aniane. He has created a line of four eco-friendly organic fragrances, which includes three women's scents, Floriental, Potion d'Amour, Méditerranée, and one men's cologne, Rhapsodie under the brand name Sharini: Parfums Naturels. This year he also added a line of "precious flower oils" to his offerings. Here are descriptions of the notes for the perfume compositions.....
Continue reading "Floriental, Potion d'Amour, Méditerranée, & Rhapsodie by Sharini {Fragrance News}" »
Molinard is one of the oldest French perfumeries in existence, established in 1849 in Grasse, in the ancient European capital of perfumery for raw materials. Jasmin is a jasmine soliflore, whose first embodiment appeared in 1860 at the time when Molinard, following the fashion of the times, was building its reputation thanks to its eaux parfumées and soliflores. The scent is part of the collection Les Fleurs de Provence (Flowers of Provence), which to this day continues to propose a range of soliflores. It continues a cultural tradition that associated the personality of a woman with her particular bloom of choice. Like a medieval lady exhibiting her personal colors, a 19th and early 20th century lady would have left her signature trail of violet, heliotrope, rose or tuberose........
Continue reading "Jasmin by Molinard (1860) {Perfume Short (Review)}" »
Gap, one of the temples of ready-made wear for the young and the slightly less young (portraits of actors Liev Schreiber and Ken Watanabe in the store's men section added a touch of maturity to the brand's image as we noticed in passing), has launched two new lines of fragrances. The one we are reviewing today includes six eaux de toilette which are called Lavender Tea No. 362, Coconut Tuberose No. 821, Mandarin Jasmine No. 094, Velvet Bloom No. 695, Washed Cotton No. 784, and White Amber No. 541. The other one is conceived more as an after-the-bath line and proposes a range of body mists. Over the past, Gap has launched several lines of easy-to-wear fragrances, which were always laid-back, unpretentious, fun, and often better than expected. The popular yet discontinued Gap Grass for example has generated a discreet cult following and can now be found for upwards of a $100 on auction sites and Ava-Luxe offers a Gap Grass type of scent.......
Continue reading "Gap Lavender Tea No. 362, Coconut Tuberose No. 821, Mandarin Jasmine No. 094, Velvet Bloom No. 695, Washed Cotton No. 784, White Amber No. 541 {Perfume Short (Reviews)} {New Fragrances} {Scented Thoughts}" »
Singer Christina Aguilera had already previously released an eponymous fragrance with a retro flair in which she was dressed in an emerald-colored dress looking very much like her model, Marylin Monroe. A new perfume also called Christina Aguilera will launch in October of 2007, which explores the pin-up theme anew and seems inspired by the sexy dress with black lace made by Marcel Rochas for Mae West, which appeared on the Femme packaging afterwards. Christina Aguilera explains that for her jasmine is a symbol associated with old-style Hollywood glamor and so she wanted this note in her perfume from the very beginning......
Continue reading "Christina Aguilera by Christina Aguilera (2007) {New Fragrance} {Celebrity Perfume}" »
Thanks to a member of Basenotes, we came across a wonderful humorous text by perfumer Guy Robert, which had us in stitches. His reflections are excerpted from the newsletter of the British Society of Perfumers of August 1998: The serious part: My most important quest was to define which are the essential "building blocks" giving its character to the most important perfumes, and which are the numerous and useless components we usually "pile up" in a formula.
Being humorous about the difficult work of the perfumer: "There are also several other ways to work:
- the lazy way : you take a classical "accord" : to work around it is easy. But the result may not be as original as the hundreds of recent creations lately appearing on the market ...
- Another way (unfortunately!) is to take the idea of a friend (preferably a dead friend).
You are there, facing two different cases :
If you are a well known and very successful perfumer, everybody will find your creation "so" original. And if somebody with too good a nose or a too precise memory complains, you could always quote our French poet Alfred de Musset who, accused to have imitated your poet Byron said
"even growing cauliflowers is imitating somebody!".......
Continue reading "Guy Robert's Thoughts On Perfumery {Fragrant Reading}" »
 Thierry Mugler Angel is periodically the object of scrutiny and attacks by a health foundation called National Toxic Encephalopathy Foundation. Why this perfume comes under attack only and in particular is not altogether clear as it would seem difficult to think that it contains such unique ingredients. A new announcement was released yesterday which addresses renewed toxicity issues and linked to that, issues of information transparency with Clarins, the distributor for the Thierry Mugler brand. What we retain from the article is the fact that two chemical analyses of the composition of the perfume conducted in 2004 and 2007 have revealed that, Based on the prior deformulation and the current listed ingredients, only 5 of the prior ingredients were incorporated into the current Angel formula.....
Continue reading "Thierry Mugler Angel's Plural Formulations & Toxicity ? {The 5th Sense in the News}" »
Since the Robert Piguet label was bought by Fashion Fragrances and Cosmetics Ltd., the company has re-introduced several perfumes from the former Parisian couture house's catalog, including two of their most famous creations, Bandit and Fracas, which have enjoyed classical status in 20th century perfume history. If you like leather perfumes and chypres, you would have to be able to speak first-hand of the rubber-boot and ashtray nuances of Bandit, even if you do not personally appreciate the perfume or it does not agree with you. If you are partial to the scent of tuberose, you would have to seek out Fracas, and if not love it, at least be able to quote your classics. Last year, a respectful, younger reformulation of Piguet Baghari was issued, which offered a retro charm while managing to smell contemporary at the same time. This time, Aurélien Guichard, the perfumer behind Bond No.9 Chinatown, Nina Ricci Love in Paris, Piguet Baghari and now Piguet Visa and Cravache in their 2007 updated versions, seems to have elected more fully to anchor the new perfume in the present. Visa (2007) smells quite modern and seems to have decided to eschew vintage references.......
Continue reading "Visa by Robert Piguet (2007) {Perfume Short (Review)} {New Fragrance/Advance Review}" »
Osmoz is raising an issue today about which we had been wondering as well. Are the newly cropping-up decanting businesses legitimate? We already know that the answer would be "no" and a zero-tolerance policy in France where perfume decanting would be considered illegal. Are the USA more lax about it? Should buyers seriously worry that they might be considered as engaging in an illegal activity? Are the sellers themselves fully aware of possible legal consequences in the US? For our part, we sent a request for clarification to Patty Geissler of The Perfumed Court a couple of weeks ago around the time of their Grand Opening, which was left unanswered.....
Photo of the different sizes offered by The Perfumed Court
Continue reading "Business Is Always Risky, How About Going Into Perfume Decanting? {Fragrance News}" »
As American young men have become apparently addicted to body sprays, Disney offers perfume lines targeting younger and younger consumers, and more and more candy-like notes crop up even in fragrances targeting more mature women, we might all be feeling the impact of an exacerbated youth culture in perfumery. Frederic Malle, an upscale elitist perfume house has even recently decided to partly dress down its brand image, in a manner of speaking, by offering a niche perfume for the young evoking jeans and clean laundry called Outrageous!........
Continue reading "The Vogue of Teens Perfumes {The 5th Sense in the News} {Scented Image}" »
As previously reported (please see story board), Diesel is launching Fuel For Life For Her and Fuel For Life For Him. The global launch is scheduled for this coming Monday. The women's scent is described as a floral chypre and was composed by team of perfumers Annick Ménardo and Thierry Wasser. The men's scent is said to be a powdery fougère and was created by Annick Ménardo together with Jacques Cavallier......
Continue reading "Diesel Fuel For Life For Her & Him {New Fragrances} {Scented Image}" »
After our previous excursus into some of the historic background of Knize Ten by Knize we now come to our impressions of the scent in part II of the review. Knize Ten may have have had you expectant that it would hold the door for you and show off its perfectly pressed creases on its gray pearl pants while giving off "just the proper hint of Gentleman's Knize Ten cologne" as Patricia Soliman writes in Coco, The Novel, yet it suddenly morphs into a rococo, baroque form, a whirling ball gown under which some mirror-like shiny leather patent shoes peak and it suddenly is less Knize Ten and more Bal à Versailles created much later in 1962. The kinship is uncanny. It is that same treatment of the mosses and animalic odor di femina. But it could not have happened in the order we presented it to you. So what did take place? Little by little as the perfume unfolds, another familiar dancer appears that reveals yet another layer of historicity peeling back. Knize Ten becomes more clearly suffused with the golden light and round fruity peachy and plummy accents of Mitsouko by Guerlain introduced in 1919. This is a moving moment because Knize Ten now smells more like the ancient Mitsouko than the current Mitsouko itself. It has preserved this old gilded opulence and sillage of old Europe and sense of ideal Parisian elegance that have receded from Mitsouko.......
Continue reading "The Knize Ten by Knize {Perfume Review & Musings/Part II} {Fragrances of Paris}" »
Maxim's de Paris is going to launch two collections of scented candles respectively called Sem and Belle Epoque. Sem will debut at Bergdorf Goodman in October 2007 and both lines will be more widely distributed after that. The first one is inspired by the art work of artist Georges Goursat also known as Sem, who used to draw caricatures of the restaurant's patrons and the second collection pays homage to the Belle Epoque heritage of Maxim's founded in 1893.......
Continue reading "Maxim's Sem & Belle Epoque Collections of Candles {New Perfumes} {Scented Candles}" »
Café Scribe, a site selling e-books is taking an innovative step to encourage people to buy its products. Starting in September of 2007, they will send their customers scented stickers with each purchase of an e-book. One will have to stick these onto one's computer to diffuse the fragrances. The selection comprises traditional scents associated with books, either that of musty old books or freshly printed ones.......
Continue reading "Fragrant e-Books For Sale by Café Scribe {Fragrant Shopping}" »
Lalique is issuing a limited edition of Lalique Le Parfum in a red crystal flacon decorated with a motif designed by Lalique in 1935 called "Masque de femme" (Woman's mask)......
Continue reading "Lalique Le Parfum Coffret V.I.P. by Lalique {Fragrance News} {Luxury Perfume}" »
 Knize Ten by Knize (pronounced "Kniesche") comes preceded by an aura of legend within certain circles as being one of the best leather colognes in the world, whose reputation has endured to this day and very rightly so. In some ways, it is the leather equivalent of Borsari Violetta Di Parma where violet perfumes are concerned both being confidentially, yet deeply appreciated by connoisseurs. Even more so than that, it is judged by some as simply one of the very best men's perfumes; it was in fact voted best masculine fragrance by The Best of The Best in 1989 and in 1999 it was listed (somewhere) amongst the 100 best fragrances to date. Knize Ten has enough character, complexity, yet also relaxed and comforting feel about it to become a signature perfume. That one fragrance that could not but be Knize Ten if you had to choose just one "eau de toilette" to bring with you to a desert island as writer Hans Habe once wrote, because then what would have mattered would not have been to love a beautiful woman but to strengthen one's spirit.......
 Adolf Loos in the Knize store in Paris in 1927
Continue reading "The Knize Ten or 10 by Knize (1924) {Perfume Review & Musings Part I} {Men's Cologne} {Fragrances of Paris}" »
Some good news for local perfumistas and shoppers in general; Nordstrom is coming to northern New England, to Natick, MA. Mark your calendars, the Grand Opening will take place on September 7, 2007 at 10 am! We've heard good things about their sample programs and this will widen the available selection of fragrances......
Continue reading "Nordstrom Is Coming to Natick, MA, So Long Filene's Basement {Shopping Tips}" »
Strip is the latest perfume creation by upscale whimsical lingerie brand Agent Provocateur founded in 1994 by Serena Rees and Joe Corres; the latter is the son of Vivienne Westwood another high priestess of sexiness. Agent Provocateur does not hesitate to advertise themselves as “The most erotic lingerie in the world” and it appears futile to try to argue with them after you have glimpsed at their catalog, which short of being X-rated is definitely under the auspices of Venus. They even succeeded in getting banned from the airwaves (see Kylie Minogue’s banned commercial for the brand). So when they decided to use the image of the stripper in this particular case one could anticipate that they would not only talk the talk but walk the walk.......
Continue reading "Strip by Agent Provocateur (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Perfume}" »
When we last wrote about the upcoming Tom Ford fragrances and about Tom Ford For Men in particular, Tom Ford had decided to pose himself for the ads as the subject of the signature wet yet dressed look by photographer Marilyn Minter. Now the brand announces that they will advertise Tom Ford For Men with a series of porno-chic images of the more hard-core variety going back in this manner to some of Tom Ford's roots as a communicator of provocative advertising images........
Continue reading "New Osé Advertising for Tom Ford For Men {Scented Images}" »
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