Monthly Archives from March 2006

January 2009 Archive

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January 29, 2009

Best Advice for Valentine's Day: Sniff Your Partner {The 5th Sense in the News} - Valentine's Day Recap {Fragrant Readings}

 

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George Dodd answers the fundamental question of how best to reproduce your genes on the occasion of upcoming Valentine's Day 2009. Yes, I know, not very romantic-sounding, but that's what it is all about really, at a certain level of biological reality.

"On the evening of St Valentine's Day last year, I held the world's first sniff-dating event in the Dana Centre at the London Science Museum. Here are some top tips to help you sniff-out your perfect romantic partner...

With smell dating, we are effectively sniffing-out complementary genes in our partners' immune system so that we can have healthy babies. Mating and having healthy babies is crucial to survival, and part of this concerns our sense of smell.

Our personal portfolio of smell receptors will like the body odour of some partners more than others. Body odour is linked to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, a key part of the immune system that recognises self from non-self. Couples whose HLA-related body odour is too similar are more likely to have difficulties in conceiving. This is real biological perfumery - the mating instinct at the molecular aroma level."

Read more in The Guardian...

Upcoming Valentine's features on The Scented Salamander:

To help you out on Valentine's Day, I will be posting about Perfumes That Smell Unique Because You Are Unique, and deserve nothing less than not to be betrayed by your perfume. If you don't feel unique, those will help you feel the part.

That was an interesting exercise and was inspired to me by the proteian quality of Vanille Galante by Hermès. A contrario, I thought to myself, what are those perfumes that I always recognize on others and have such a strong signature, replete with olfactory integrity? You might be suprised by my choices and I will explain my selection.

Watch also for my continuing series on musk perfumes. And in particular this time, I will be focusing on comparative reviews of MUSK OILS! I have been collecting a number of musk oils from all denominations for several months now and we will see what they have to offer!...

Continue reading "Best Advice for Valentine's Day: Sniff Your Partner {The 5th Sense in the News} - Valentine's Day Recap {Fragrant Readings}" »

Serge Lutens Nuit de Cellophane (2009) {Perfume Review & Musings}

 

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Cellophane was invented in 1908 by Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger. The new term was coined as a contraction of "cellulose" and "diaphanous", transparency being one of its chief characteristics. If transparency is not a new effect in perfumery, the reference to the material cellophane is. Cellophane is used to keep food, but also flowers, fresh, and sometimes, women (certain rituals of beauty include the use of cellophane and olive oil, for example). It is both a functional and a beautifying material when wrapped around a bouquet of flowers, or candies, making them seem more fragile and precious, as if kept under crystal panes or ultra-shiny brittle silk. Its plasticky quality gives it a hard edge and a modernist sense of romanticism once you associate it with flower gifts. Even eroticism if you go farther into the night.

There is also a sexual connotation attached to cellophane as it is an erotic inspiration for some to wrap a naked body in this thin, see-through film (the clingging kind often, but not only), which can nevertheless become more opaque as layers are added onto layers. Bondage fetishists make it one of their choice toys, together with latex or leather.

But cellophane is special. Perhaps it is the most transgressive of those materials, associating in one stroke memories of cellophaned bread on the kitchen table, decent, flirtatious bouquets of flowers, and a metaphor on nudity.

Precisely. Smelling the new Nuit de Cellophane by Serge Lutens one reaches a first conclusion that this work seems to be in its most characteristic aspect a work on the sensuality of floral notes, mostly jasmine, osmanthus, with a certain undercurrent of vanilla-and-magnolia softness, and narcisuss drenched in honey (as in Ozbek by Rifat Ozbek). Followers of Serge Lutens will recognize his palette of colors, his strokes, his self-referential quotes as he opens the boundaries existing between his different perfumes. But to what effect this time?...

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Cellophane Show Girls, Rara Avis

Continue reading "Serge Lutens Nuit de Cellophane (2009) {Perfume Review & Musings}" »

January 30, 2009

Vera Wang Rock Princess (2009) {New Fragrance}

 

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In April 2009, Vera Wang will be adding a new kind of princess persona to the Princess portfolio with a new scent called Rock Princess. It comes after Princess and Flower Princess. Lori Singer of Coty Prestige Designer Fragrances said that " For example, this princess would trade her tiara for a new guitar." To create this edgier perfume, Coty turned to perfumer Calice Becker of Givaudan who knows how to thrum the popular chord and has also created a very popular perfume for younger women (J'Adore, Tommy Girl, Love, Beyond Love, Cuir, Vent Vert (new formulation)...

Continue reading "Vera Wang Rock Princess (2009) {New Fragrance}" »

January 2009 Archive

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