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February 2008 Archive
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 "The Green Spirit of The Hammam" by Guest Contributor Pauline The professional trade show Maison & Objet was on last week in Paris. I decided to pay a visit to the exhibition in order to discover the latest trends in that section of the fair devoted to "Fragrances, Bath & Cosmetics." Before being completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of stands in that section, I decided to focus on beauty products that are connected to the enticing world of the hammam and in particular, the natural cosmetic oil that is the most talked about in town these days, argan oil from Morocco. Two beauty brands caught my attention as I liked the range of their products and their air of authenticity. They are both harnessing the all-natural, green ecological trend that the beauty market is developing more and more in response to consumers' demands while drawing on a very ancient heritage from the Middle East. I bought several products I wanted to try and today, I will talk about Tadé.
TADÉ, Pays du Levant (Country of the Levant) is a 100% natural line of cosmetics that draws on an original historical concept, the universe of the hammam, and proposes products for both men and women..... Copyright ©: All Photographies: Bernard Touillon, Grégoire Gardette / Propriété/Owner : Tadé Pays du Levant ®/ Tous droits réservés./All Rights Reserved - Do not reproduce without permission
Continue reading "The Green Spirit of The Hammam - Part 1: Tadé {Beauty Notes & Reviews}" »
Tocca offers a line of more sophisticated scented detergents mirroring their collection of perfumes that is called Laundry Delicate. They are meant to be used for your lingerie, hosiery, cashmeres,... anything delicate really. Florence in particular rests on an accord of rose and orris root.
According to the press fact sheet, it is about, "The sophisticated essence of the old European Garden rose known as Centifolias combined with iris root anchoring the scent." ......
Continue reading "Tocca Laundry Delicate Florence, Orris Rose Fine Fabric Wash {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 21}" »
 Mona Di Orio has released her fifth creation called Amyitis. It comes after Lux, Carnation, Nuit Noire, and Oiro and is said to have been inspired by the hanging gardens of Babylon. It is somewhat of a departure from her other fragrances as this time it proposes to explore fully the feeling of freshness,.....
Continue reading "Mona Di Orio Amyitis (2008) {New Fragrance}" »
La Reine Margot (Queen Margot) by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier is a beautiful, even stupendous jasmine fragrance with a strong personality. The scent strikingly develops both a sophisticated and frank animalic character softened down and made to feel like warm embers on the skin thanks to rich amber-y and soft honeyed nuances. The jasmine is narcotic, a bit leathery, never conjuring up the flower itself, but rather its quintessence. It is like the secret aphrodisiac weapon of a free-spirited woman, Marguerite de Valois (1553 - 1615), nicknamed la reine Margot, who was only too infamous for her unbridled sensuality and lack of conformism in her sexual life. The historian Tallemant des Réaux (1619-1692) posthumously wrote in his Historiettes that apart from her amorous excesses, she was known to be a reasonable and very witty person. But he could not but fail to transmit to posterity her extravagant quirks (he is generally thought to be correct), the fact that she was for example in the habit of carrying the embalmed hearts of her dead lovers all around herself under her vertugadin in little boxes slipped into sewn pockets. She is also reported to have regularly shaved the heads of blond male lackeys kept for that purpose, to give her the hair she lacked since she had gone bald early in her life. Her less than saintly brother king Henri III could not take it anymore at one point and threw her out of the royal court on account of her promiscuous habits (she apparently was nevertheless selective) and eccentricities. The 1994 movie La Reine Margot by Patrice Chéreau amply elaborates upon this trait of hers. Prior to that she was popularized by Alexandre Dumas' novel La Reine Margot (1845), where she is portrayed as a femme fatale. One of the first sentences in her Memoirs published in 1658 reveals her wit, "I shall begin these Memoirs in the reign of Charles IX., and set out with the first remarkable event of my life which fell within my remembrance. Herein I follow the example of geographical writers, who, having described the places within their knowledge, tell you that all beyond them are sandy deserts, countries without inhabitants, or seas never navigated." (you can download an English translation of her memoirs at Project Gutenberg)....
Continue reading "Maître Parfumeur & Gantier La Reine Margot (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {Historical Fragrance}" »
A 1954 ad for "La Rose de Rochas"
This review ought perhaps to go under the heading of "antiquing" as we have only sparse information available at this point on this relatively little known fragrance by Marcel Rochas called Eau de Jeunesse La Rose (Youth Water, The Rose, in that order). It was a find and we decided to include it in our Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge Series.
What we know is that La Rose was created by perfumer-composer Edmond Roudnitska and launched in 1949, the same year Caron released Or et Noir and Rose. The perfumer himself recounts in a 1993 interview published on the site Art et Parfum owned by his son Michel Roudnitska, who is also a perfumer, that it was then the pretext to - we can imagine at least - a lavish launch party that took place at the rose garden of L'Hay-Les-Roses, near Paris. This rose garden was bought in 1894 by Jules Gravereaux and landscaped in 1899 by Edouard André. They claim that it was the first rose garden ever to see the light of day in the Western world, but this is somewhat of an exaggerated claim as Joséphine de Beauharnais is known to have helped found a roseraie or rose garden at the Jardin des Plants in 1805 and was herself the founder of an important rose conservatory at Malmaison. Rose gardens have existed since times ancient. L'Hay-Les-Roses is more prudently characterized sometimes as the first modern rose garden. A view of the rose or greenery theater In 1905, a Théâtre de la Rose or Theater of the Rose was added to the garden that allowed for performances to take place, which contributed to the popularity of this elegant site during the Belle Epoque. The Rose Theater no longer stands as it was demolished in 1970. Edmond Roudnitska recounts that the launch party was accompanied by a music by Henri Sauguet. The bottle is the trademark voluptuous feminine form reported to replicate Mae West's curves. The cap of our bottle appears to be an early plastic, maybe bakelite, with the words Marcel Rochas Paris forming a circle on a pink painted background. The cap is black. The outer packaging was at some point made of a minimalist pink cardboard and at another featured the Rochas lace on a pink background....
Rose garden of L'Hay-Les-Roses today
Continue reading "Rochas La Rose Eau de Jeunesse (1949) {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 22}" »
June Jacobs is a brand of Spa Products that has decided to officially adopt an ecological policy in this beginning of 2008. For those of our readers who insist on using ethical green brands, this is one more buying option (we should probably devote a special section to natural perfumery as this is becoming more of an important sub-section of the market). They are releasing a new reformulated perfume called Better Love™ Naturel whose description sounds complex and interesting enough. According to the press release, "...as of the first quarter in 2008, all June Jacobs Spa Collection products will no longer contain parabens and all chemical preservatives will be replaced with natural ingredients that provide optimal benefits for healthy skin.".....
Continue reading "June Jacobs Better Love Naturel (2008): An Ecological Perfume {New Fragrance}" »
Jo Malone Red Roses is like a fastidious gardener's dream of a red rose scent. It is the second red-rose composition included in this series after Comme de Garçons Red Series: Rose. Of the two it is the less apparently stylized and the more natural-smelling one. If Comme des Garçons Red Rose appeared to be a hyper-realistic rose in the sense of conveying the impression of being intellectually constructed and painted with progressive, economical little touches, Jo Malone Red Roses just feels as if you had crushed crimson rose petals on your skin in an attempt to release and retain their scent.
The scent evokes the sensation of smelling ripe red roses in a dewy garden in the early hours of the morning. The flowers are fragrant, subtly spicy, crisp and heady as when one is struck by the natural richness of a cut flower scent rather than the headiness of a perfume. The accent here has been put on freshness thanks to the balancing out of the floral, fruity, and metallic nuances of red roses by green sappy ones. The perfume is included in the family of light green florals by the brand and like their other perfumes offers a clean signature......
Continue reading "Jo Malone Red Roses (1996) {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day - Day 23}" »
Estee Lauder have released a new bottle packaging for their classic fragrance Youth-Dew released in 1953. They re-edited the bathroom tile blue flacon of the 1950s according to the Estee Lauder website. Advertisings from that era show that actually, the small-waisted bottle was also commercialized in the late 1950s some time after the initial introduction of Youth-Dew as a bath oil and beauty product......
Continue reading "Estee Lauder Youth-Dew Goes Retro Style: New Packaging = Updated Scent? {Fragrance News} {Perfume Review}" »
Agent Provocateur released a set of three sensual massage oils in 2007 which includes the aphrodisiac scents of rose, tuberose, and ylang-ylang. You could have expected something magical containing a pinch of a secret ingredient, but we merely thought that the oils would smell decent albeit probably on the simplistic side. We were wrong. Judging from the rose oil, this set is really worth purchasing. Not surprisingly, it is currently sold out on their website.....
Continue reading "Agent Provocateur Rose Passion Massage Oil: A Very Sexy Green Rose (2007) {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day - Day 25}" »
 Guerlain will issue two new Aqua Allegorias at the end of March 2008. Figue-Iris offers a composition based on fig and iris and Laurier-Réglisse on laurel and licorice. This is a collection that is particularly dear to Jean-Paul Guerlain. He is the perfumer behind the first one and Sylvaine Delacourte collaborated with Marie Salamagne one the second one......
Continue reading "Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Figue-Iris, Laurier-Réglisse (2008) {New Fragrances}" »
Pierre Balmain, which interestingly Osmoz categorizes as an "alternative brand" - this made us do a double-take as cultural habits are hard to die but it is justified in economic terms - will launch a new perfume at the end of March simply entitled Ambre Gris. The mystique of ambergris is one of the most alluring in perfumery. It is also interesting to see that Balmain could not care less for the conventional seasonal divide between fresh and light for spring and summer and deeply textured for fall and winter......
Continue reading "Pierre Balmain Ambre Gris (2008) {New Perfume}" »
 This year, Frederic Malle Editions de Parfums are proposing their Test Kit in a vamped up version. It takes the shape of an art book and includes a book on the perfumers behind the 16 perfumes of the brand. The set comprises 16 x 10 ml spray flacons for people who like variety and collection sets. The coffret retails for 340 €. (via Madame Figaro)
Ed Hardy have introduced two new perfumes for women and men called Ed Hardy for Women and Ed Hardy for Men. If the names of the fragrances themselves may sound a bit staid, the packagings are definitely not. Under the stewardship of Christian Audigier, the rock n' roll identity of the vintage tatoo brand explodes. The French designer's style has been characterized as, "...fusing the best elements of tattoo, hot rod, and cholo culture along with a tinge of his native French heritage. The brand is rock and roll with soul, California through and through."....
Continue reading "Ed Hardy For Women & Men by Christian Audigier (2008) {New Fragrances}" »
Fresh off the press (release), here is some information about the special March issue of Glamour which contains loads of tips and Hollywood insiders' views about making it in Tinseltown as a woman. In partnership with Avon, a major corporate player for social and women causes, they propose the following program, "NEW YORK, NY - When Glamour debuted in 1939 as Glamour of Hollywood, it was a fashion tome devoted to getting the movie star look. Now, the magazine will honor its roots with the March “Hollywood” issue. Featuring everything from A-list actresses to female power players leading the charge in Hollywood, the March issue celebrates women at the top of the entertainment industry. The special “Hollywood” issue, which hits newsstands February 12, will be published simultaneously with the launch of glamourfilmfest.tv, an online independent film festival showcasing short films by female filmmakers......
Continue reading "Glamour & Avon Empower Women: The Hollywood Issue + Launch of glamourfilmfest.tv {Beauty Notes}" »
Les Parfums de Rosine will release a new perfume this spring at the end of April 2008 called Un Zéphir de Rose. It is said to be a fragrance based on a subtle mix of aniseed and rose. The press communication at this point does not specify whether it is green aniseed or star aniseed. It will be available in 50 and 100 ml flacons.
Les Parfums de Rosine, thus continue to develop a green aromatic rose theme. Last year they offered a composition blending mint and rose called Diabolo Rose. (via Les Parfums de Rosine press release; image: geocities.com)
February 2008 Archive
Page 2 of 7 • 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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"The Green Spirit of The Hammam" by Guest Contributor Pauline
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