Lush have issued or rather re-issued three discontinued perfumes from their archives in their collection of back-by-popular-demand products called Retro Lush. It comprises Flower MarketPerfume, inspired by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Ginger Perfume and IconPerfume, evocative of a "Venetian Palazzo covered in crushed velvet and gold-framed-art" and which pays homage to the spirit of Byron.
The Flower Market composition centering on carnation sounds particularly lovely. You have to love the story,
"If you know LUSH well, you'll know that founder Mark Constantine's
favorite movie star in the whole universe is Audrey Hepburn. We even
opened a shop in Covent Garden, London, where she appeared in My Fair
Lady when Covent Garden was still a flower market. Mark created this
fragrance for that vision of Audrey Hepburn; it's an unashamedly
old-fashioned floral with carnations, ylang ylang and violets. No
synthetic designer nonsense here, just a long lasting, lovely perfume."
So lovely it sounds that it is currently out of stock on their site. All the products in the Retro Lush collection are only available online by the way...
This is my favorite masculine ad so far. When Dior Sport pour Homme and Guerlain Homme are trying to capture your attention these days on the airwaves and the street even, and do by the way, but lack a little something, like a real presence, this ad for Gucci by Gucci pour Homme with actor James Franco is able to deliver a concentrate of masculinity.
This must be the first time I pay closer attention to Franco: he is charming, sexy and I realized, looks like James Dean, to whom he is made to resemble even more with his moody, brooding pose. Ah yes, he also bears the same first name. Discovery of the day.
Next month L'Occitane will add a newcomer to their select collection of fragrances titledNotre Flore (Our Flora) dedicated to praising the olfactory notes of the Mediterranean world. This time Le Jasmin - Jasmine makes its entrance with a composition centering on Jasminum Grandiflorum from Egypt.
From the press release,
"The wind rose guided sailors through the Mediterranean to explore new lands. Each land had its own unique scent that would drift out to sea and announce its close presence. After the scents of Iris from Italy, Myrtle from Corsica, Neroli from Tunisia, and Cedar from Morocco, the winds now carry us to the land of Egypt, the birthplace of perfumery. Egypt's presence is announced by the sensual, intense scent of a white and delicate flower closely connected with the greatest queens of Egypt: Jasmine"...
Prelude To Love, Invitation is the seventh fragrance under the labelBy Kilian and part of their collection titled L'Oeuvre Noire (The Black Masterpiece). It was composed by perfumer Calice Becker who signs here her fifth contribution to the line (See TSS's reviews of Love, Beyond Love). She is also the author of well-known fragrances marketed to the mainstream such as J'Adore by Dior and Beyond Paradise by Estée Lauder.
Perfumery-wise the latest By Kilian appears to be a blend in tune with this year's interest for hesperidic compositions, even flirting with the genre of the Eau de Cologne, but almost more as a passing quote than as a main focus. Like for other By Kilian fragrances, literary references are key and shape in this case the personality of this scent inspired by an excerpt from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, Bonne pensée du matin (good thought of the morning).
The perfume is best understood "read" together with the poem as it does not seem to take it as pretext for a further flight of fancy. Instead, a sense of faithfulness and interpretative effort appears to animate the composition, even possibly dictating its duration. How could a perfume be of epic-recitation length as in a cycle of retelling that lasts for 24 hours when it wishes to recreate the essence of the atmosphere conveyed by a poem, not even the whole poem at that, but a few verses that speak to its creators?...
Reviewing By Kilian Prelude To Love yesterday, I puzzled over the question of why this young and exclusive niche perfume house had decided to compose a bold citrus-y fragrance, quite literally plugging into a group of notes that from a certain perspective can smell a bit plain. Or perhaps I would not have asked myself this question had the jus smelled different.
The next puzzle I have had in mind is why they had decided to take on the added challenge of doing not only a citrus-y perfume but also do it in a rather minimalist, even straightforward style? It seems to compound the difficulty of attempting to uplift the lemons and mandarins from the level of the mundane. Indeed, the resulting impression makes you perceive the difference existing between metaphorically expensive and literally expensive...
Parlux Fragrances know about the media-attention capital Paris Hilton possesses and that's the main point,
"Katz takes a wide-gauge view of the Hilton business. To him, a
fragrance launch is a process of bringing news to the Hilton customer.
Whether it results in the sales of the new fragrance or stimulates
sales of an earlier scent is of little consequence. The object is to
energize the customer base and whet its appetite."...
This fall Christian Lacroix is releasing a new woodsy-floral flanker to their juvenile fruity-floral C'est La Fête introduced last year. It is called C'est La Fête Patchouli.The flacon is colored in plum this time, a very fashionable tint this autumn.
Citrusy top notes are followed by Clair Jasmin and heliotrope before ending on woody accords around patchouli.
A 50 ml eau de parfum is priced at 43 Euros and a 100 ml one at 54 Euros. Tel: 01 63 77 00 00
Teo Cabanel launched a new and fourth fragrance called Méloé Eau Fraîche. Described as an "Epicurian symphony" it offers light, green and fruity notes. It was composed by in-house perfumer Jean-François Latty.
Notes are initially fresh and citrusy with bergamot, mandarin, lemon, basil. The citrus fruits linger on seguing into a floral bouquet of neroli, orange blossom, jasmine and a touch of nutmeg. Deeper base notes arise with musk, amber and a hint of woods.
Les Plus Belles Lavandes de Caron (The Most Beautiful Lavenders by Caron) was announced in 2008 as an unisex Eau-de-Cologne iteration of the house of Caron's famous masculine scent Pour Un Homme (For a Man). As if to make the genealogical link explicit, it takes as a name the tag line that used to be inscribed on the labels of the bottles of Pour Un Homme (see the 1934 advertisement below).
Pour Un Homme is reputed for its characteristic aromatic freshness combining with a delicate sustained sweetness. It is a scent that manages to balance out these two facets without one overshadowing the other. Thanks to the subtle dosage of vanilla and amber, the lavender in Pour Un Homme seems to have been hand-picked as is from a dry windy hill as a representative of the sweetest varietal of the flower without ever feeling artful...
Boots Pharmacy chain has become interested in the archives of an old British perfume house from the turn of the 20th century named Girard & Cie and decided to resurrect the brand. They have relaunched two fragrances from the 1920s as well as taken the opportunity to introduce three new scents under the same historic label. Girard & Cie, sometimes with a Mme before its name originally opened a shop in London in Regent Street...
The Editions Paja will publish a new book on perfume in October-November 2008 authored by Béatrice Boissière under the artistic direction of Coco Tassel. It is entitled Plaisirs de Parfums (Pleasures of Perfumes) and proposes to retrace a world history of fragrances since the 19th century with attention devoted to the compositions of fragrances and anecdotes on the milieu of perfumers. Long-lost fragrances are also not forgotten...
Eau d'Italie is preparing to launch a new perfume with a richly evocative name, Baume du Doge. It is inspired by the vision of a past trading and thriving Venice seen as a crossroads of civilizational and material influences,
"Roots, barks, seeds, pistils, flowers, rhizomes and resins took hold of the local taste, flanking and often blending with local produce. Thus myrrh and frankincense, saffron and clove, cardamom and vanilla met sweet oranges, sharp bergamots and wild fennel in a rich and warm fusion, the use of which ranged from medicine to perfumery, often at the same time...
Fragrance aficionados will be delighted to learn that Serge Lutens has opened a new official site for the brand at http://www.sergelutens.com. It showcases a number of interesting, never-seen-before pictures, quotes, a short expressionist film that was selected for the Cannes festival in 1974, and last but not least a reorganization of the Lutens catalog of perfumes into three categories: flacons de table (the bell-jars); flacons beiges (the eaux de parfum); flacons noirs (the eaux de parfum haute concentration). The latter perfumes were thought by Serge Lutens himself to perform best at a higher concentration. The Collection Beige and Collection Noire in particular structure this universe as they offer the color theme for the new place...
A little dose of fairy-tale does not hurt in times of recession as someone was telling me off the record. Paris Hilton has thus turned into the celebrity version of a sweet Tinker Bell to promote her new fragrance Fairy Dust; she seems to have left the branch of the flacon of the latest Van Cleef & Arpels Féérie who were also inspired by the magical world of Disney's pixies this fall 2008. Meanwhile Lolita Lempicka is reactivating a scintillating version of the little mermaid franchise with Fleur de Corail...
Lush have issued or rather re-issued three discontinued perfumes from their archives in their collection of back-by-popular-demand products called Retro Lush. It comprises Flower Market Perfume, inspired by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Ginger Perfume and Icon Perfume, evocative of a "Venetian Palazzo covered in crushed velvet and gold-framed-art" and which pays homage to the spirit of Byron.
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