Victoria's Secret threw a photo call / launch party for their new perfume called Velvet at VS Lexington Avenue store in NYC today featuring spokesmodel Alessandra Ambrosio. There was a giant cake in the shape of the new fragrance; now that's an idea for a perfume lover party: the flacon-cake.
It reminds me incidentally that last time I visited a VS store I came out with the most unlikely perfume purchase, one that I would have never suspected might even interest me before I stepped into the boutique. But I try to be impartial when I smell and... got won over by the ditziest scent ever. It' all conceptual. As in, it is so ditzy, it's good. Well, at least that's what I thought then. I am afraid of re-smelling it and having to face the fact that you start thinking strange things when you are lured into the ambiance of a VS temple of girlitude.
Makeup artist Mally Roncal will add a new type of beauty item to her collections and launch her signature perfume on October 29, 2009. The name of the fragrance saves on the number of letter fonts: it is just called Mally. Described as a floral and citrusy fragrance, it pays homage to Roncal's Philippino heritage by showcasing the sampaguita or sampaquita, the national flower of the Philippines...
Isabel Derroisné has launched a new fragrance for women called Gandali described as a "flamboyant fruity-floral". The name comes from Sanskrit Gandhali and means "perfumed" or "fragrance of flowers"; it is a girl's name in India...
Niche Italian brand Profumum Roma is preparing to release two new scents called Aquae Nobilis and Oxiana.
Aquae Nobilis is a blend of geranium, vetiver, musk and green faerie or absinthe.
"nobility of soul,
nobility of heart and expression...
nobility in her clearest form"
Oxiana, named it seems in reference to Robert Byron's travelogue, Road to Oxiana which is replete with sensory remarks is an incense perfume made with musk, patchouly, myrrh, and opoponax. Oxiana is the name that the ancient Greeks gave to the region around the Oxus or today's Amu Darya in Central Asia.
Tova has released a new flanker to their original Signature perfume called Signature Autumn. According to the QVC website, it is not a faux flanker (in name only) but a real one: you can still find the characteristic scent of Signature in the heart of the fragrance but it has now been embellished with notes evocative of the fall season.
"Fall is in the air--especially when you spritz yourself with this
seasonal version of Tova(R) Signature. With Signature at its core, this
lush fragrance also emits notes of cedar, peony, and golden amber.
Relish the scents of fall--all year round! From the Beauty by Tova(R)
Collection.
"
A 1.7 fl. oz. of Eau de Parfum is priced at $32.50
Other Tova Signature flankers and re-editions include:
Niche Parisian brand Memo is preparing to introduce a new fragrance inspired by the slightly Saint-Exupéry-like idea of a trip to the moon to chase animals called Moon Safari. Clara Molloy, the founder of the brand, has also written a fairy tale for kids.
It appears to be more of a fresh scent than a realistic space-age reminder that outer space smells like charred steak.
Independent French perfume house Histoires de Parfums is launching four new perfumes this fall. One, Moulin Rouge 1889, follows the main story line of the brand which is to offer a series of compositions inspired by a year and a notable personality or place or event linked to that date. The other part of the launch is more novel for the label which this year is dedicating a set of three perfumes to three variations on the tuberose flower, that "mistress of the night." The Trilogy comprises Tubéreuse 1 (La Capricieuse), Tubéreuse 2 (La Virginale), Tubéreuse 3 (L'Animale)....
This October, Finnish design brand Artek will launch an unisex fragrance called STANDARD co-created with maverick perfume brand Comme des Garçons and artistic director Christian Astuguevieille.
"The name derives from Artek's standard thinking,
based on Alvar Aalto's original idea of systems and standards in
furniture design."
The president of CDG Adrian Joffe said,
"I guess the greatest similarity between Comme des Garçons and Artek is that we both have strong vision andbelief in creativity that does not lend itself to compromise," says Adrian Joffe, President of Comme des Garçons Parfum. "We believe such collaborations create a synergy where the result is greater than the sum of its parts." Comme des Garçons is known for its experimental approach in everything it does, continuously creating things that did not exist before. "We like to question the notion of what is luxury," concludes Joffe."...
Berdoues, a French perfume brand from Toulouse established during the "Edwardian" era in 1902, to make use of a convenient English parallel, is well-known for its quaint original violet fragrance, a survivor of the craze for violet perfumes from the turn of the 20th century. It has been lately in the process of updating the original scent and adding new iterations of their famous Violettes de Toulouse to their library. One of the two latest compositions to appear this fall pushing the ensemble to form a quintet is called Violette Divine.
It turns out to be a more intense and darker version of the original while being closer to it than some of their previous flankers ...
L'Occitane en Provence will release two new perfumes this fall in their newly baptized collection Voyage en Méditerranée, originally called Notre Flore when it was launched in 2007. The packaging has also changed and become less ornate, with a simpler cap. Each fragrance in the series centers on a key raw material typically found in the Mediterranean region.
Labdanum de Séville centers on cistus labdanum, reportedly from Andalusia, a resinous plant which is used to yield a sweet vegetal amber-y substance. The scent is labeled as an unisex fragrance described as being warm and enveloping.
Reality TV show popular actress Kim Kardashian of Keeping Up with the Kardashians has now a completed product: her eponymous, debut fragrance. The budding fragrance developer believes in participatory perfume designing and asking for feedback from her fans on her own blog; she was thus asking at one stage of the process,
"Without naming specific brands, what types of scents are you most drawn too--vanilla, musk, fruity, floral, other?
"
At another step of the development, she asked for what color people preferred for a detail on the bottleneck of the future fragrance and while her blog readers favored dark pink, her Twitter and Facebook fans suggested light pink. She went for the last option as it was her favorite one too...
KK holding the unfinished product at an earlier stage of the development process.
Here are some upcoming and recently released fragrances not mentioned previously on the blog. For more details, you can go to the index of new perfumes for 2009 which is listed alphabetically by perfume brand.
• Berdoues, the specialist of the violet from Toulouse, have released two new flankers: an extrait or pure parfum and a richer and deeper version called Violette Divine. The first one is housed in an amphora-shaped flacon with a topper reminiscent of a drop and the second one comes in the usual retro atomizer bottle. I only had a quick sniff of the latter but came away with the impression of a dark fruity violet. Their perfumes tend to be better the more concentrated they are.
• Byredo after launching already two perfume portraits this year, one inspired by Josephine Baker, Bal d'Afrique, and the other, Blanche, by an unnamed personal acquaintance will issue a new fragrance this fall continuing to take the route of personality referencing with a perfume inspired by a founding father of olfactory musings, Baudelaire. The scent is simply called Baudelaire and will be found at Barney's in the US...
Les Sens des Fleurs (lit.The Meanings of Flowers), is a French eco-certified bio cosmetics brand founded by Stella Mordocco-Menendez. They just released a new collection of perfumes based on the principles and ingredients developed by Dr. Edward Bach and his famous flowers. The wellness theme is taken to heart here as each fragrance is not only an olfactory composition that smells good but has a flowers-of-Dr.-Bach formula included in it to help elevate the moods of women (some would say, good luck with that!).
The series is called Actes de Fleurs (Flowers' Acts) and includes E'Sens, Idéel des Sens, A Double Sens...
If I had
stayed with my first impression of the perfume upon smelling it casually in a
department store, I would have had to write that the new Guerlain Idylle is
incomprehensibly devoid in creativity, originality and personality.
A superficial take on it will make you believe initially that this composition
is yet another variation -- barely -- on the tried-and-tested
musk-rose-patchouli standard ensconced in the young and foolish (in a good way)
neo-chypres that have been put out since Narciso Rodriguez for Her EDT. It was
then closely followed by Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely which managed to fly under
the radar of copycatting and pass as an endearing novelty thanks in part to
SJP's lovely pink tulle dress. Later, it was succeeded by the noteworthy Gucci
by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent Elle and Dior Midnight Poison. Caresse by
Fragonard is also a take on this accord. It is these days the ever-popular
accord, that is, if you pay attention, and has become one of the significant
olfactory signatures of the times. What will one day bring tears of nostalgia
to the eyes of the future generations because it smelled so much like the end
of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, for now can make you grind
your teeth at so much unoriginality when encountered one time too many.
My initial reaction to Idylle was disbelief: I just felt like throwing my arms
up in the air and shaking my head at so much ineptitude. Really, for one of
their major mainstream launches couldn't the house of Guerlain do better than
this? This, to just reheat the Narciso Rodriguez for Her brew courtesy of
Francis Kurkdjian, Christine Nagel and the majority's approval on a gas burner
and serve it as if piping hot in a new vessel?
Incidentally, the flacon by Ora Ito is more beautiful in person than on any of
the pictures I have seen. It is a much more subtle form in reality.
I was apparently able in some vexing way to perceive only the shell of the
perfume rather than its internal nuances. Retrospectively, it feels a little as
if the real story of the perfume was taking place inside a snow globe and I was
only able to feel the outer surface. Even on the street, the sillage continued
to murmur to me all the sweet expected nothings from a rosy young chypre
desperate to follow the trend rather than set it.
Krigler is a New-York based perfume brand taking pride in having been established as far back as in 1904 in the city of Saint Petersburg in Russia before the torments of the revolution which led the Kriglers to take flight. The house boasts a catalog of more than 200 perfumes that were created over the past decades of the 20th century. What is a characteristic trait of the house is the geographic inspiration for their fragrances as each and everyone of them are attached to different, evocative locales in Europe and the USA, reflecting the peregrinations of the Krigler family from the Russian empire to Berlin then going through Monte Carlo, Cap d'Antibes, Paris, and finally New York. There are new creations as well inclusive of yet more exotic locales like India and Japan. Krigler reopened this year at the Plaza Hotel in NYC.
It is hard to gauge independently what was the history of the brand because no immediate historical records seem to have kept their name. According to some French perfumistas, they were available at the Bon Marché a couple of years ago.
Sparkling Diamond 22 is a nectar de Champagne and strawberry blend enlivened visually by the presence of Swarovski crystals in the bottle. It is a reminder of the original gesture by one of the Kriglers who once dropped a diamond in a Champagne bottle in Monte Carlo in 1922.
The numbers on the flacons refer to the year of creation of the scent it houses...
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