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 Ed Hardy, following their debut perfumes, Ed Hardy by Christian Audigier for Women and Men, have introduced a second her-and-him scents named Love and Luck by Christian Audigier for Women and Men. This time the positioning is not just the youth market but the Japanese one as well. According to WWD, "Love & Luck was inspired by an oversize painting by tattoo artist
Don Ed Hardy. The work features 2,000 dragons on a 4-foot-wide,
500-foot-long scroll, which he painted to commemorate the start of the
millennium eight years ago."
Zalman Lekach The CEO of New Wave Fragrances added,
"I came across this scroll when I was researching his art and it was
the perfect inspiration for fragrances based on Japanese tastes." [...] "This is a very visual brand,"
In
case you are imagining Lekach had to dig deep into the archives to bump
into the scroll and exhumed it covered with dust and near-oblivion,
this is not quite the case as the 2000-dragons scroll is available in
book form published by Smart Art Press and listed on Amazon. The fast-paced research perfectly mirrors the fast-paced
perfume-making that presided over the creation of Love & Luck
issued only 10 months after the release of the Ed Hardy scents in
February 2008. This just comes through in the scents. While the Ed
Hardy for Women and Men had their moments of weakness, they refrained
from overt exploitation of young consumers' naïveté and reliance on visual cues. With Love &
Luck, inhibitions have been set aside and the creative team seems to
have gaily sailed into marketing waters by 1) congratulating each
others for their commercial successes with the debut scents and 2) wondering how
to benefit from and ride on this unexpected wave of luck: Oh, yes, I
have an idea, let's call the new fumes Love & Luck (you can love us
and we can still be lucky), then tap into the Japanese market which is
white-hot and ready for Ed Hardy. No need to think too hard about the fumes
themselves because, anyway, all available reports say the same thing: the
Japanese hate perfume. But they love to offer it - and super boon -
they never even open their packages. What we have to worry about though
is the packaging...
Continue reading "Ed Hardy Love & Luck for Women & Men (2008): Japanese Taste Taken Hostage or The Art of the Generic Scent {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 Un Matin d'Orage, the latest Annick Goutal perfume to be launched, offered a dreamy soft-focused description of their newest creation in the press release lulling us into anticipating a scent of superlative " delicate sensuality" illustrating a morning after the storm. The description of the gardenia accord in the perfume made it to feel like it was arachnean and kissed by dew drops: " Fragile and pure, it does not immediately reveal its voluptuous character." That summary, we are now able to report, skipped on a whole section of the story of that gardenia, maybe the full first part and last part of a small novel broken down into three or four parts, thereby significantly changing the meaning of the story and its scent. For one thing, the storm has not abated fully it seems and still discharges some of its ozonic furor, or at the very least, tension. Initial clues had led me to wonder how different the new scent would or could be from Songes or Gardenia Passion from the same brand. Official notes include: Sicilian lemon, shiso leaves, ginger, magnolia, jasmine sambac, champaca. Un Matin d'Orage is a completely different breed of "gardenia perfume" while still attempting to recreate the scent of the flower. It is as if the gardenia character were a main actor onstage motivating, anchoring the dramatic tensions. This is not a gardenia soliflore, nor a bouquet of white flowers with gardenia in it, but long dramatic natural moments in time and eternity captured through the olfactory lens and the vision of a primeval gardenia battling against the elements... 
Continue reading "Annick Goutal Un Matin d'Orage (2009): Elemental Gardenia {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
 Musky cherry on a bed of both candied amber (Flowerbomb) and old-school ambergris ( Zibeline) with a dash of civet, moist chewy almond and praline macaroons, a gogo, a whiff of Mitsouko's signature in the base, with tart berries and fleshy mango...Each time that I try the latest perfume to come out of the Guerlain stables, La Petite Robe Noire, whimsically drawn for the younger generations, I am compelled to experience a different less-than-easy-and-lazy nuance, going from slightly trashy to elegant. The fragrance is incredibly well engineered, has visibly been perfectly thought out to mesh diverse anticipated degrees of maturity in taste and to bridge generational sensibility gaps. The newest Guerlain has some ambition of being a one-stop fragrance. Reading the description of the notes in the initial announcement may have opened up expectations in the direction of a fragrance born to become a simplistic crude gourmand commercial hit, but LPRN is more like a three-generation-women-in-the-same-family perfume, maybe even four actually. It can be seen to pander to the tastes of ideal perfume-crowd types: the 2008 Hello Kitty crowd, the Insolence one, the Chamade one, the Mitsouko one and even the Zibeline one. La Petite Robe Noire comes across as a perfume of highly intelligent design in which significant intellectual and material resources were obviously invested. It stands as a beautiful and efficacious industrial perfume which could conceivably be exhibited at a 21st century Universal Exhibition with the following slightly naïve caption underneath " Come ye marvel at the progresses of modern perfumery."... A Madeleine Vionnet LBD, 1923. She is credited by fashion historians as the inventor of the little black dress. Drawing by Thayaht, allposters.com   A Chanel LBD from 1927 © The Met
Continue reading "Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire (2009): The First Multi-Generational Guerlain {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 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?...  Cellophane Show Girls, Rara Avis
Continue reading "Serge Lutens Nuit de Cellophane (2009) {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 The Hermessence Collection in 2009 Vanille Galante: The Olfactory Report and Review As pointed out earlier in the first part of our review of Vanille Galante by Hermès, although perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena voiced his personal issues having to tackle vanillin in the past, this did not prevent him from creating a vanilla perfume in 2009. Further back in his career, in 1993, and to reveal how ineluctable the scent of vanilla is for a modern perfumer, Ellena wrote an article on vanilla entitled "Un parfum fatal de vanille" (A Fatal Perfume of Vanilla) in the book Vanilles et Orchidées (Vanillas and Orchids) edited by Marie-Christine Grasse and the Musée International de la Parfumerie which is based on an exhibition organized by the museum. In that article, the perfumer drew a contrasting historical comparison between vanillin and natural vanilla pointing to the marginalization if not downright possible disappearance of vanilla absolute from contemporary perfumery due to its astronomical cost compared to vanillin, an aromachemical synthetized by Wilhelm Haarmann and sold from 1880, as recounted by Ellena. Yet at the end of the 19th century, vanillin used to be much more expensive than natural vanilla extracted using alcohol ("vanille naturelle alcoolée"). The author gives the price of 2000 Francs per kilogram for Vanillin as opposed to 30 Francs for the alcohol extract of natural vanilla. The article of the 1993 edition concludes with the following sentence, finally explaining the title of the article,...
Continue reading "Hermes Hermessence Vanille Galante (2009) {Perfume Review & Musings} - Part 2" »
 Vanille Galante: Reflections, Musings & Notes on Context Vanille Galante is the latest addition to the Hermessence collection by the house of Hermès, a more selectively distributed collection of "niche" perfumes composed with the olfactory connoisseur in mind; it is purchasable only in the venues of the Hermès boutiques. Hermessence, a collection of "olfactive poems" was inaugurated in 2004, the very year perfumer-composer Jean-Claude Ellena became the house's exclusive in-house perfumer. The series started with an initial quatuor of scents: Rose Ikebana, Ambre Narguilé, Vétiver Tonka and Poivre Samarcande. All four were united by a common tactile thematic exploring sensations associated with four different textiles.These compositions were followed later on by Osmanthe Yunnan (2005), Paprika Brasil (2006), Un Brin de Réglisse (2007) and now the soon-to-be-introduced in February of 2009, Vanille Galante. To better understand the spirit that presides over this particular body of works, it might be useful to quote what the house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena had to say in 2007, À chaque fois, j'essaie de raconter une histoire courte autour d'une matière que je transforme et d'un voyage. » Each time, I try to tell a brief story revolving around a raw material that I transform and a journey...
Continue reading "Hermes Hermessence Vanille Galante (2009) {Perfume Review & Musings} - Part 1" »
 Photographer Alice Austen wearing a hat decorated with white lilacs, June 1888, by Captain
Oswald Müller, courtesy of the Staten Island Historical Society
En Passant by Olivia Giacobetti at Editions de Parfums by Frédéric Malle (2000) - Perfume Review & Musings
Official notes: white lilac, orange leaves, cucumber absolute, wheat absolute
What they say: the scent of a lilac whipped by the wind and carried by the spring air near a garden; an impressionistic fragrance; a play on one note (white lilac); captured at an instant in time; a glorification of the scent of nature coupled with watery notes; radiant and serene (Source: Editions de Parfums French website).
I was probably unconsciously attracted to the words "En Passant" (While Passing By) on New Year's Day to want to review this scent. We have crossed into a new year, 2009, a symbolic benchmark which reminds one of the transiency of things and makes one think of what might lie ahead at the other end of the passage, as we come out of one little tunnel of time and enter another. En Passant is like a soliflore but with a sense of dramaturgy Although
the predilection for transparency that Olivia Giacobetti is famous for (an oversimplification in fact when you look at all her work)
is apparent in this composition it seems to play second fiddle here. The nucleus of meaning of the
scent appears more to be a paroxistic remembrance of a moment of folie
amoureuse for an aroma, a scene, a moment in a day. The white lilacs anchor the other scents that may have converged towards them (are they all real, are they imagined, we don't know and it doesn't really matter). Without that defining central aroma, the bread smell, the watery cucumber scent lose meaning. If En
Passant insists on the transiency of the event, integrating a sense of the passing of time in the composition like an olfactory clock that waxes and wanes, it by no means signifies
that the event was subtle, brief, or only partly experienced or imagined. It is the full
experience of an olfactory apotheosis as passed through the filter of the
perfumer's imagination...  White Lilacs from a Practical Handbook of Trees Shrubs Vines and Herbaceous Perennials by John Kirkegaard
Continue reading "En Passant by Olivia Giacobetti at Editions de Parfums by Frederic Malle (2000) {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
Méchant Loup by L'Artisan Parfumeur - Perfume Review & Musings
Official notes: cedar, licorice, hazelnut, honey
What they say: All dressed with the scents of the forest; a hazelnut core; a very tender woody and gourmand fragrance; for the inner unrepenting seducer found in every man (source: the French L'Artisan Parfumeur website in 2008).
My initial intention for today was to review Poivre Piquant but I became quickly so intrigued by Méchant Loup (Big Bad Wolf), also by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, that I decided to substitute a review of the latter for one of the former. A first element of surprise for me springs from the perception that this time Méchant Loup smells different from that other point in time where I experienced it in the past. Going back to it - precisely because it smelled sub-par the first time - smelling it from a different sample I am wondering now what happened to the original unpleasant astringency and the mini chemical blast I got then. It is now complex, subtle, soft and original. A second element of surprise comes from a familiar sensation lying in the heart of the fragrance which made me wonder for several hours what it could well remind me of? An Eureka moment finally occurred and made me situate the composition within an interesting genealogical map of fragrances. Magical Perfumes vs. Illusory Scents
A compelling trait of this perfume is how it manages to distill an aura of magical wonderment - which can be explained in part by an unconscious association with the liminal quality of the deep forest (here the smells of the forest) - to contrast this notion with the idea that a perfume and a good perfume at that should succeed in creating an illusion. Perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena for example promotes the latter idea often declaring himself to be essentially an illusionist. Within that worldview there is no belief nor hesitation as to what the real world is. Art and reality are two separate distinct planes in the mind of the creator. And in fact, it could be argued that these types of perfumes rely heavily on real-world scents as points of departure for the illusory construct. On the other hand, in magical perfumes there are references to real scents but those are less clear-cut and and tend to appear elusive, like uncertain apparitions and explanations. Here with Méchant Loup we enter a different dimension, one that is not wholly set within a rationalist framework but which seems to hint at a world where dark sylvan forces still lurk embodying sexual impulses in a symbolic manner, an idea which is convincingly rendered through perfumery accords. We are asked to believe rather than to be the spectators of an illusion. Perhaps the most seductive characteristic of this fragrance is its fundamental ambiguity... 
Continue reading "L'Artisan Parfumeur Mechant Loup (1997): Magical Perfumes vs. Illusory Scents {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 On April 26th, 2008 Koto Parfums, a French company which specializes in developing kids' scents based on popular movie franchises, launched two new perfumes for infants and toddlers on the one hand and little girls on the other hand called respectively Hello Kitty Baby (without alcohol) and Hello Kitty. The fragrances were created by Drom Fragrances who are also responsible for the Escada, Guess, Eden Park, Jacomo, and Olivier Strelli brands. It comes a year after a Hello Kitty scent issued by mother company Sanrio called Momoberry and created by Tristan Brando (cf. cultish Monyette Paris). There was also apparently an "original" Hello Kitty perfume before that. As one may or may not be fully aware, the Japanese kitten with a cute plump bow on the side of its baby-head-sized cranium is wildly, nay, fantastically popular with large segments of the world population. Hello-Kittified human beings are the proud owners of not only cuddly Hello Kitties, but Hello-Kitty TVs, popcorn machines, toasters, emblazoned toasts, plush toilet seat covers, faucets, sex toys, and more, many more. There are even a Hello-Kitty plane, a Hello-Kitty restaurant in Taiwan. There must be a Hello Kitty brothel where it is legal. The demographics of enraptured Hello Kitty fans are surprising to consider at first since Hello Kitty's near-universal appeal resists the normal age limitation envisioned, of say, 9 years old, and is still considered to be a thrill by older kids, pre-teens, teens, and yes, adults nearing mid-life crisis. Celebrities love her as they wish to be or can pretend to be as iconic as she is. In fact, the advances of Hello Kitty since 1974, the year it was created by Sanrio, seem unstoppable, jumping from one generation to the next as young mothers in their twenties and thirties are only too happy to initiate their daughters, and they themselves never seem to be able to shake off the addiction. Nor are they trying to. Indeed, Hello Kitty appears to elicit the love that a drug addict lavishes on his or her cocaine and similar in this regard to the sub-culture surrounding a particular substance abuse, the phenomenon may appear slightly opaque to outsiders. Another point of contact in this analogy of possible terminal depravation is that, as business authors Ken Belson and Brian Bremmer have called attention to in their book Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon, the Hello Kitty franchise makes, admittedly, the profits of a (clean) drug cartel. Deaths by Hello-Kitty overdose however have not been documented to our knowledge, although fits of intolerance have been reported... 
Continue reading "Koto Parfums Hello Kitty (2008): Hello Me, You, Everyone {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 Lyric for Man by Amouage The Skinny:
Perfumer: Daniel Visentin
Artistic Director: Christopher Chong
Gender label: masculine, but easily adopted by women
Notes: top: bergamot, lime; heart: rose, angelica, orange blossom, green galbanum, spicy ginger, nutmeg, saffron; base: pine, sandalwood, vanilla, musk, frankincense
Characteristics: a fresh and warm, dark and transparent green spicy rose oriental fragrance with a sustained aqueous facet and discreet powdery one.
Personality: subtle, elegant, offbeat
Wearability: very easy for a woman, easy for a man
Price point: $$$; worth it. Exceptional lastingness and diffusion
Bottle: an almost black-red glass (darker than on the picture) and a lighter black plastic cap than on the women's flacon but without feeling flimsy. Here the Swarovski crystal appears on the face of the cap and a crown motif appears on a metal appliqué on top of the cap.
Perfumes discussed: Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet, Czech and Speake No. 88, Un Jardin Après La Mousson, Fabergé Brut, Yves Saint Laurent Paris, Lyric for Woman, Yohji Homme.
Lyric Rose, The Men's Version, and Gender
Amouage, as is their habit, launched at the same time a duo of fragrances for women and men which in this case turns out to be a dual homage paid to the rose. They being a perfume house shaped by the culture of the Middle East (and that of Oman in particular), it was interesting for me to anticipate how the creative team would work on a masculine version of a rose perfume that would be made, in principle, to stand a few degrees of virility apart from the feminine version while, one could surmise, taking into account the cultural heritage of the rose traditionally considered to be a popular scent in Arabic men's perfumes. By opposition, modern Western perfumery broadly defined tends to interpret the lushness and floralcy of the rose scent, whenever it is showcased prominently, to be women's appanage; it was not so in the 19th century (see for example the literally sulfurous Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet) and even today Czech & Speake No. 88, a men's perfume showcasing a dark even sombre incensey rose belying these proclivities. It may be due perhaps both thanks to the colonial history of Great Britain and the country's traditional inclination for floral fragrances including soliflores that this cultural perception of the intensity of the rose otto was never completely forgotten. For it is a given that the rose in such cases will be masculinized.
The Western history of beauty reinforces the feminine attributes of the rose as this most desired and cultivated of flowers has been made to become in the end a stereotypical symbol of feminine beauty since the antiquity when the rose was sacred to Aphrodite. In the Islamic tradition however, the rose's aroma has been exoterically endowed with religious meaning, and if there is any gender association, it might be considered to be just as masculine as feminine through its connection with the figure of the Prophet Mohammad. It is thus said that the emanations of the rose are derived from the very sweat of the Prophet who invites "whoever" wishes to smell his person to drink it in. According to this tradition he expresses his own transfigurative mystical experience by referring to the intoxicating olfactory power of the rose, pointing at the same time possibly to a favorite perfumery accord: rose and musk,
"When I was taken up into heaven, some of my sweat fell upon the earth, and from it sprang the rose; and whoever would smell my scent, let him smell the rose."
The mystical use of the rose trope to express the exquisiteness and ineffability of the divine, further popularized by images of Sufi poetical transcendance. It carries therefore a priori an universalistic message despite the fact that Arabian feminine beauty, as in the West, is also unavoidably and classically compared to that of the rose. Of the rightly-named Rose-in-Bloom in the 1001 Nights, it is thus said that
"her name was Rose-in-Bloom; and the reason of her being so named was her excessive delicacy of beauty and her elegance."...
 October rose by Catmadogma: this picture is cool and warm like the perfume with a similar effect of watery transparency
Continue reading "Amouage Lyric for Man (2008): Unusual Rose {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance} {Rose Notebook} {Men's Cologne}" »
 Lyric for Woman by Amouage
The Skinny:
Perfumer: Daniel Maurel
Artistic Director: Christopher Chong
Gender label: feminine
Notes: top: bergamot, spicy cardamom, cinnamon, ginger; heart: rose, angelica, jasmine, ylang ylang, geranium, orris; base: oakmoss, musk, wood, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, vanilla, tonka bean, frankincense
Characteristics: a deep dark fruity and resinous rose encased in a classic oriental structure offering a nod to Shalimar and the guerlinade
Personality: opulent, rich, luxurious, classic, politely transgressive
Wearability: easy in the evening; you will get more noticed during the day
Price point: $$$; could have had more originality for that price, not just richness; sorry to haggle
Bottle: very nice; the cap is in a heavy good-quality plastic topped with a Swarovski crystal. The flacon is made of hefty dark, almost black-red (darker than on pictures). The
Perfumes discussed: Joy, Shalimar, Habit Rouge, Parure, Musc Nomade
This review is a composite picture of several impressions of the scent.
Lyric Woman by Omani niche perfume house Amouage is rich enough to support a variety of interpretations and can surprise you overtime with its different accents, although I think it is safe to try to encapsulate it as a dark wine-y rose oriental.
Although the rose is conspicuous at first, it tends to lose its centrality in the perception of the perfume as it develops further, for it is a very dressed-up rose in full regalia, bedecked with gold and carbuncles, including no doubt Burmese Pigeon Blood rubies. The rose here is less of a diva on its own than part of a general operatic atmosphere of ostentation with a decorative, ornate style although it blooms at times, especially peeking through a second layer of application.
As I said earlier (Perfumes that Sing Vs. Perfumes You Want To Eat), I am also more struck by the deep colors and tonalities of Lyric than by lyrical qualities, such as flight. The one criticism I have that stays with me with some persistence is regarding the use of a slightly juvenile, "easy" and regressive vanilla accord in the midst of rather convincing opulence and nocturnal ambiance...
Continue reading "Amouage Lyric for Woman (2008): Ornate Operatic Rose {Perfume Review} {Rose Notebook} {New Fragrance}" »
 John Galliano perfume ad featuring his muse: the fragrance just launched in Europe. Expect to see it in 2009 in the US and the Middle East
John Galliano by John Galliano
The Skinny:
Perfumers: Christine Nagel and Aurélien Guichard
Artistic Director: John Galliano
Fragrance company: Selective Beauty
Gender label: feminine; could be worn by a man in the spirit of a 19th century men's floral scent thanks to its tobacco and hay nuances; perfect for a modern dandy
Notes: aldehydes, violet, iris, rose, musks, woods
Characteristics: classic florals perceived through the filter of memory meet real-life realistic atmospheres = arty superimposition of freshly ironed couture dress on powdery lipstick-y floral bouquet and more
Personality: soft, tender, romantic and edgy
Wearability: easy - the "edge" might be too much for some
Price point: $$
Perfumes discussed: Berdoues Violettes de Toulouse, Borsari Violetta di Parma, Creed Love in Black, Editions de Parfum Dans Tes Bras, Guerlain Insolence EDP, Penhaligon's Violetta, Stephen Jones, Lalique Eau de Parfum, Caron Aimez-Moi
The Larger Context: Violets Then & Here & NowMajor fragrance and flavors producer Symrise said in February 2008 that the scent of violet would be one of our notes of predilection in the future, and indeed we have seen this forecast, or perhaps better put, industrial push come to realization. They announced, amongst other things, that there would be "... a redefinition of classic notes like vetiver or violet..." I was mildly surprised to have to imagine that one of the signature trails of the 19th century bourgeoisie, when floral bouquets and soliflores were overwhelmingly in was supposed to waft anew in the near future as if reflective of our deep hidden meaningful unconscious need for it, only it just had to be brought to the surface. Why a violet "craze" redux now? What could its meaning be? Is it simply the tail end of the 2007 iris comet (see Galore of Iris Perfumes), a note often associated with it? Was this just a fashion diktat we ought to disobey like the violet, purple and plum colors trend of this fall 2008? And are we really begging to tattoo violet perfume, metaphorically speaking this time, into our skins as was fashionable for some at the peak of the violet mania? The mid 19th century and early 20th century perfume-history chapter is full of excess and passionate addiction to this scent which was considered to be the epitomy of what "delicate" is meant to express. Violet was perceived to offer an "unsurpassed delicacy", an ideal and naturally refined aroma although many formulas were in fact attempts at capturing the illusion of the real thing. It is thus important to note that despite the label "violet" (soliflores) a good number of people were in fact aware that in many cases violet perfumes were illusory renditions of it. What I find very interesting in this case is that these original sources show that the so-called naturalism of 19th century taste in perfumes was actually linked to a higher level of perception of the abstractness of floral fragrance compositions than our contemporaries commonly think. The idea of a simple violet scent might sound charmingly naïve in retrospect but in fact 19th century perfumistas were much more astute consumers of it than we think...  The Marchesa Casati by Giovanni Boldini
Continue reading "John Galliano by John Galliano (2008): Edgy Violets {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
Dans Tes Bras by Maurice Roucel for Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums
The Skinny:
Perfumer: Maurice Roucel
Artistic Director: Frédéric Malle
Gender label: Sexless
Notes: bergamot, clove, violet, jasmine, sandalwood, patchouli, salicylates, incense, Cashmeran, heliotrope, white musk.
Characteristics: nostalgic and futuristic; a violet perfume looking both towards the past and the future, attempting to decipher the unknown, the yet-to-be-smelled.
Personality: a beautiful refined and subtle skin scent
Wearability: very easy
Price point: $$$: entirely worth it
Bottle: Editions de Parfums use a standard flacon in two sizes which resembles a modern, round inkwell; simple and elegant.
Perfumes discussed: Après L'Ondée (inspired by); Jicky
The Review:
Violets for the FutureDans Tes Bras, the latest creation by Editions de Parfums a French perfume house specializing in fragrances with a more demanding than average sense of authorship, is at its most immediate level a perfume showcasing peppery, powdery and leathery violets. In a more sophisticated fashion, the perfume manages to convey the impression that it owes its very existence to the progresses of fragrance chemistry and more particularly the presence of an unnatural-smelling aromachemical component that comes across as beautifully synthetic without losing its power of poetic evocation. The sensation of smelling an odd olfactory intruder remains a bit vague and cold yet harmonious like the atmosphere of a modern art exhibition set in an ancient 19th century factory made of concrete and steel both ancient and very current, playing up contrasts and welding them at the same time...
Continue reading "Editions de Parfums Dans Tes Bras (2008): Futuristic-Nostalgic Violets {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 As previously announced, Baume du Doge is the latest creation by niche perfumery Eau d'Italie, a brand which continues to show consistent interest in capturing the distinctive atmospheres of the Italian regional landscape and history (see our reviews of Rose Paestum, Sienne L'Hiver, Bois d'Ombrie, Magnolia Romana). The composition is by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour who is able to go on collaborating with Eau d'Italie thanks to his flexible appointment as the new resident-perfumer for L'Artisan Parfumeur. This time the source of olfactory inspiration is the merchant past of Venice, a city seen as a crossroad of civilizations where spices from the East came to mingle with the indigenous agrumes of the Italian peninsula. "Slowly making their way from India, Persia or China on the back of mules and
woolly Bactrian camels, then aboard daring merchant ships, a world of spices
found its way to Venice, their names as exotic as the languages spoken by their
traders.
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."
The wish to go back to a time when the line between a medicine and a perfume was thin is further emphasized by the beautiful name of the fragrance, Baume du Doge, which sounds like a wound-healing balm both for the body and soul. We are invited to imagine a recipe favored by one of the 120 doges that crossed history and perhaps passed on as a secret a balm imbued with the curative properties that paradoxically one always wants to ascribe to those very persons that can issue a death or torture warrant and take your lives, or at least conspire towards your demise; historian Marc Bloch studied this mystical power in Les Rois Thaumaturges. The Doge of Venice, whose title derives from the Latin Dux (Duke) remained a merchant as his salary was less than substantial and so, as in the case of the Bourreau de Paris who could also be a little bit of a cosmetician-pharmacist, he might have concocted a recipe on the side based on his experience of Oriental ingredients, sold to secure additional earnings ...  Doge Leonardo Loredan (1436-1521) by Bellini
Continue reading "Eau d'Italie Baume du Doge (2008): Renaissance Italy In A Contemporary Style {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 Prelude To Love, Invitation is the seventh fragrance under the label By 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?... 
Continue reading "By Kilian Prelude To Love, Invitation (2008): Citruses & Preciousness {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
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