The Buzz 
The Scented Salamander Blog A Culture & Beauty Blog: from Olfaction to Imagination in Perfumes, Movies, Beauty Products, Food, Literature, & Fashion, Mostly. "Perfumes' & movies' common point: you smell and watch them better in the dark" Latest Fragrance Reviews Dior Escale à Parati Prada Infusion d'Iris EDP Absolue Ferragamo Signorina Thierry Mugler Miroir des Majestés Jo Malone Plum Blossom Madonna Truth or Dare Roberto Cavalli Eau de Parfum
Carolina Herrera 212 Sexy 8 Best Perfumes to Herald Spring Stella McCartney L.I.L.Y. Guerlain Parfum Initial L'Eau: Going Back to the Purer Language of Perfumery Guerlain Parfum Initial L'Eau: Un Langage Plus Pur pour la Parfumerie Fragrance Essays Perfumes & Candies are Kissing Cousins: Anis de Flavigny & Guerlain Anisia Bella Jicky, The Ultimate Aphrodisiac for Both Sexes? Jicky, L'aphrodisiaque ultime pour les deux sexes? Best Rose Fragrances for Valentine's Day: The 2012 Edition How I Think about Perfume when I Review Them: a Practical-Theoretical Outlook on the Perfume Shopping Culture Bint el Sudan, The Other, African Chanel No.5 - Interview with Nick Evans of IFF Smelling Tommy Girl Now: When the 1990s Smell Like The 1940s White Accords in Perfumery: So Long The 70s Liberace Wore Perfume, So What? Homosexuality as Given Away by an Indiscreet Fragrance Trail in the 50s
Reviews of New Perfumes Diptyque Eau Rose Isabel Derroisné Eclat Eternel Sisley Eau d'Ikar Mary Greenwell Plum Parfum d'Empire Azemour Les Orangers L'Artisan Parfumeur Batucada Les Parfums de Rosine Glam Rose Clinique Aromatics Elixir Perfumer's Reserve Prada No.11 Cuir Styrax 6 New Celebrity Fragrances to Try Out this Fall The Body Shop White Musk Libertine Cartier L'Heure Convoitée (English Version) Cartier L'Heure Convoitée (French Version) Karl Lagerfeld Karleidoscope Maître Parfumeur et Gantier Cuir Fétiche Estée Lauder Wood Mystique Thierry Mugler Angel with Bitter Cocoa Powder Diane Von Furstenberg Diane Bottega Veneta EDP From the Archives Bath & Body Works Warm Vanilla Sugar: An Euro-American Curio Reviews of Past Fragrance Launches First Impressions on the Thierry Mugler Coffret Based on the Novel by Süskind.
|
FEATURED ARTICLES Archive
Page 3 of 3 • 1 2 3
 I will first review the advertisement for Insolence and then the perfume. My illustrations are in reverse order though; hope you're not confused already.
So I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to review the new Insolence by Guerlain as it would help me clarify my own impressions of it. A little trip to Sephora last weekend allowed me to get hold of a generous sample of Insolence as I felt that the couple of spritzes that were drying off my hand wouldn't be enough to get to the bottom of it. After all it's a perfume by Maurice Roucel, the author of Musc Ravageur, 24 Faubourg, Iris Silver Mist, and Be Delicious, to name a few; there might be hidden complexity there. It is a also a newly heralded Guerlain generation of perfumes as the very bourgeois and posh perfume house is attempting to break its classic image and reach out to a younger set of women. With this battle plan in mind, Guerlain has decided to appeal by putting out a rebellious, insolent perfume and hiring Hilary Swank/Million Dollar Babe as its icon. Swank is perfect to embody insolence, the value, but the strange images used in the advertisement campaign seem to want to deflect the potential threat posed by the representation of an insolent young woman: the actress looks stultified, frozen, immobile; in brief, her insolence is safely put away in a place that looks like it might be a locked Swiss bank safe with the key completely lost in the netherland of aborted rebellious dreams...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: Insolence by Guerlain" »
 Red Chypre is an unusual olfactory construction, a chypre reinterpreted to the point of nearly losing its identity as a chypre and being recognized only with hesitation, seemingly serving essentially as a symbolic crossroads for Serge Lutens' memories and impressions. The perfume here is biography and quest speaking of soul-searching and soul-finding tracing a path leading us from the present to the past or, perhaps it would be more correct to state, from the author's days as an adult to the chapter of his childhood. It also reflects his life journey from West to East. How significant are these elements in his creation of perfumes is made explicit by Lutens, "A perfume can only emanate from a memory, from something you have known earlier on, or from a cultural path."
Serge Lutens offers us clues that reinforce the mystery and secrecy of Chypre Rouge. It is a perfume that will offer its wearer the charm of strangeness; it exudes it. 
The scent refers to a red oakmoss that is half-dreamed, half-remembered and that we are not sure is really present as a significant chypre ingredient...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: Chypre Rouge by Serge Lutens & Sample Giveaway" »
 Lonestar Memories is the latest creation by Andy Tauer. People who are familiar with his first two perfumes, both introduced in 2005, Le Maroc pour Elle and L'Air du Désert Marocain, will find that it departs from the previous two in that it is not a perfume with Oriental references but rather an ode sung to the naturalness and freedom expressed by the myth of the American West. I will add that it is also, to me, a perfume that contributes to defining without any ambiguity or restrictions a classic ideal of rugged masculinity as conveyed by a fragrance; it is rather efficient. In case we had forgotten, Tauer reminds us that certain perfumes just might smell more erotic on a man's skin than on a woman's if we are to recognize that to be able to provoke "trouble" (in French) could be a perfume's ultimate mission...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: Lonestar Memories by Andy Tauer" »
Andy Tauer is an independent perfumer from Switzerland. He has already made his mark on the world of niche perfumery within a very short period of time by launching three fragrances to connoisseurs' acclaim, Le Maroc pour Elle, L'Air du Désert Marocain, and most recently, Lonestar Memories. Tauer came relatively late to perfumery, yet he did not start his journey on this new path completely unprepared as he is a doctor in chemistry. He is also one of the perfume bloggers that I like and esteem and am glad to have as a neighbor in cyberspace. His always sincere and sometimes very funny posts on his blog, Perfumery, are recommended readings.
Please tune in again tomorrow or the day after tomorrow as I will review his latest release, Lonestar Memories. I am hereby inaugurating a new series on TSS which bears the title Passion for Perfume - Portraits and which will be devoted to offering portraits of people who are passionate about the fifth sense and all things perfumey and aromatic.
TSS - I am struck by how the sense of place as well as your travels are made to be an integral part of your work... Morocco, Texas, not Switzerland. Is this distancing from the familiar necessary for you to create perfumes? [Note: In a way, I am reminded of the quest for light and colors by painters like Van Gogh or Gauguin -- northerners travelling to the south or to exotic lands for inspiration.]
Andy Tauer - Not really, part of my inspiration is based very much on my immediate surroundings and is nourished by jogging trips in the woods nearby for instance. Of course, the exotic ambiance of the uncommon helps trigger associations and sometimes is finally closer in memories than the settings of everyday...
Continue reading "Passion for Perfume: A Portrait of Perfumer Andy Tauer" »
 The latest release by Bond no 9 is called Fire Island and was created by Michel Almairac of Robertet. It is the 26th fragrance issued by the New York-based perfume house. Almairac also composed their penultimate fragrance released last spring, The Scent of Peace. Almairac is the author of the wonderful Burberry London for Women, Lumière by Rochas, Voleur de Roses by L'Artisan Parfumeur, Cabaret by Grès, and Minotaure by Paloma Picasso, amongst others. Like almost all of the fragrances issued by Bond no 9 the name of the new scent refers to a New York neighborhood or exceptionally, as in this case, to a place intimately connected to the history and pulse of the city. Fire Island, located on the southern shore of Long Island, is a favorite getaway for New York weekenders who regularly escape to its shores and frequent its beaches with much devotion and affection, despite the fact that they have to forsake their cars to go there.
Fire Island conveys a simple message in the sense that it is a beach scent, but it also contains a hidden level of olfactory meaning which makes it a pleasurable beach scent with an important twist to it. The complexity of the scent comes not so much from its notes as from its hidden and very effective ability to play with our memories while purporting to bottle future memories of happy vacations as well. Introduced just a fortnight ago in the middle of summertime, Fire Island, according to Bond, aims at "...bottling the scent of bronzing" and beyond that at capturing the scent of happiness and of the relaxed mood commonly experienced during leisurely vacations spent sensually on the beach with our bodies half-naked basking in the sun. Fire Island is a beach scent-cum-comfort scent and illustrates a popular trend in perfumery nowadays.
What is to me the most striking element in this fragrance is the manner in which it stands out as an olfactory monument dedicated to the memories, not only of upcoming, full-blown summer of 2006, but going deeper back in time, to that of the European seaside vacation experience of, roughly, the last quarter of the 20th century. During that time, virtually millions of people from Europe and outside of Europe spent their holidays on the French Riviera seeking a much sought-after fashionable dark tan. The perfume thus may be called Fire Island to pay homage to New Yorkers and to express Bond's love for the Big Apple while reinforcing its myth but what it conjures up to my nose, as I freely bet it will for others with a similar experience, is Saint Tropez...
Continue reading "Perfume Review & Musings: Fire Island by Bond no 9" »
 Since with time our ideas tend to become simpler, the notion has struck us after writing our previous post on Patriotic Perfumes that a convenient way to address the question of the relationship between patriotism and perfume is to turn towards the testing of the whimsical project for now of creating a national fragrance. Countries have national anthems and flags with recognizable national colors but so far, to our knowledge at least, there has not been any governmental attempt at promoting an emblematic national scent or perfume. This may appear paradoxical because as we know, olfaction bypasses the conscious mind and is thus capable of recreating the past or transporting us to a place other than where our physical body is. This means that within the context of a nationalist project, the motherland or fatherland and the history of a country could theoretically be always present, contained in the few droplets of a national perfume and conjured up with each application. With such a powerful tool to influence people's consciousnesses one would think that it would have been deeply exploited. But, curiously enough, not really (Added: until Dec 2007 that is when the Korean presidential candidate Lee Myung-Bak is reported to use perfume as a means to influence voting)........
Continue reading "Scented Thoughts: My National Parfum" »
 Patriotism on holidays which celebrate national independence is expressed through many semiotic activities and foci of symbolic activities worldwide. In America, manifestations of patriotism vary from region to region of the American motherland (or is it a fatherland we should be speaking of?) -- in Boston for example, people feel Bostonian by going to listen to the Boston Pops -- but we can rest assured of two things: there will be national barbeque-partying and fireworks illuminating the many corners of the sky all over the 50 United States tomorrow. From an olfactory standpoint, we can muse on and say that the 4th of July smells in the base notes of gourmand smoky burgers, burning hot coal, gunpowder, tangy, sweet and sticky tomato ketchup, rich boozy beer and maybe sweet cotton candy and apple pie with spicy cinnamon and let's not forget, musky sweat. In the heart notes there are green grass, tangy-green citronnella, soft wheat, aqueous cucumber, sweet corn, iceberg lettuce notes, and a dash of car interior and car polish. In the top notes you might find fresh mint, tart pink lemonade, coca-cola, frosted ice cubes, and light, cool, and fresh baby powder notes. This olfactory rêverie may smell hellish a priori to some but since each year the same note combinations reappear and people still throng the 4th of July events, you might have a formula of success here.
Napoleon once haughtily remarked, "Impossible n'est pas français" (something like, "the word 'impossible' is not to be found in the French language.") This seems to be the motto of many a perfumer today and since many of them are French you might get a phenomenon of double-whammy hubris due to the fact that they are French and due to the fact that they are perfumers.  In any case, since no one has yet dared to combine these multifarious aromas of the Fourth in a single bottle, let's turn to alternative, ready-made solutions to express patriotism and love of the motherland through perfumes. How shall we convey that patriotic message? It is often said that olfaction is the neglected sense and hence, in our case, a clearly neglected source of rich patriotic symbols. As of today, it is not consciously tapped into by the vast majority of the population to express patriotism alongside with wearing star spangled sartorial signs. So if you contemplate wearing something more celebratory of Americaness than just deodorant, please read on and see what my practical suggestions are.
Continue reading "Scented Thoughts: Patriotic (American) Perfumes to Wear on the 4th of July, Some Modest Suggestions" »
Lux is part of a triptyque of scents by perfumer Mona di Orio. Reportedly, it took Edmond Roudnitska's disciple a decade or so to reach the artistic goals she had set for herself. The two other perfumes in the collection are called Carnation and Nuit Noire. Each fragrance is dedicated to a personality that has marked the life of Mona di Orio. Nuit Noire is an oriental dedicated to Serge Lutens; Carnation is a sensual fragrance dedicated to writer Colette, an author famous for her evocative olfactory, and more generally, sensualist descriptions of the natural world; Lux finally is dedicated to Mona di Orio's own master in the art of perfumery, the author of Femme, Diorella, Eau Sauvage, who is none other than Edmond Roudnitska........
Continue reading "Lux by Mona di Orio {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
FEATURED ARTICLES Archive
Page 3 of 3 • 1 2 3
|
All original content and translations herein copyright © 2006. All rights reserved; reproduction requires the author’s prior written consent. You are however welcome to provide a link back to the posts on this site as long as you explicitly mention their authorship, recognize the original source of the information you give, and acknowledge the site of origin.
Powered by Movable Type 4.32-en
|
Digg This
Stumble
Facebook
Del.icio.us
