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 Givenchy just released their new perfume EauDemoiselle which after "reading" it in between the lines seems to want to do for young women's skins and perfumed trails what Chanel is currently attempting to do for young women's lips this spring 2010 with Coco Rouge: offer them a rite-of-passage transition fragrance and lipstick to allow them to move on to classical heavier textures while stealing their attention away from kiddish perfumes and Lancôme Juicy gloss tubes, respectively. The task in the case of EauDemoiselle is complicated by an advertising message selling aristocracy and the attempt to nail down what this age of innocence might smell like. "Between tradition and modernity, eaudemoiselle de Givenchy is
for a young woman of subtle sensuality and an affirmed personality,
like this very personal scent, whose freshness already has the presence
of a perfume."...
Continue reading "Givenchy EauDemoiselle (2010): Looking for its Motto {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
Oriens is the latest feminine fragrance launch this spring 2010 by Van Cleef
and Arpels who stress that they were the first jewelry house to
associate their name with a perfume named First, introduced in 1976. The brand is also
readying for a masculine release later this year. Oriens comes after a more youth-directed composition, Féérie (2008) while borrowing from similar codes, i.e., fruity-floral notes. Like for Féérie and pushed to a greater degree, the bottle of Oriens takes center stage and offers the vision of what you could call a "statement bottle." It is hefty, its cabochon is huge and expertly colored by designer Joël Desgrippes to imitate a watermelon tourmaline
While there are no doubt
marketing reasons for the introduction of a perfume which pays homage
to the Orient as Asia and the Middle East are revealing themselves to
be emerging dynamic markets, I prefer to concentrate for the purpose of
this review on the manner in which the idea - and as it turns out - the
purported tastes of the Orient, have been interpreted into a perfume composition with a global reach.
The
tension one feels readily in the composition is the one existing
between the oriental motif which has its tradition and
expectations in Western perfumery and the tastes of the potential
wearers from the global arena. It might sound pretentious to attempt to
discern a planetary trend developing across all markets, but I am ready to bite the bullet
by saying that if there is a universal one, that would be the greater
seriousness accorded the creation of lightly textured perfumes.
Since perfumery, like its companion fashion is both commerce and art, it ensues inevitably that
there are both money and aesthetic interests developing around that
future of perfumery. It is as if the prescience that world demography
is going to explode is bringing new realities in, like the collective
need to tune down our scents so as not to stifle the atmosphere and
deplete both the good-will of planet earth inhabitants and the
soundness of the atmospheric layers. Despite strongholds of potent
perfumery, we have seen more and more a perfumery that becomes ever
more polite and self-effacing. If Serge Lutens is calling his latest bath-time inspired opus L'Eau an "anti-perfume", Oriens without the same pamphlet overtones is pretty much nodding its head in approval at the core ideas spelled out by L'Eau...
Continue reading "Oriens by Van Cleef & Arpels (2010): Not Just Another Light Perfume {Perfume Review and Musings}" »
©Etat Libre d'Orange
Actress Tilda Swinton just launched her debut signature perfume called Like This, Tilda Swinton last weekend in Paris. The event took place at the boutique of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs on Saturday March 13th, 2010.
The Background Story: How it All Came About
Before the launch took place (please check back for an upcoming perfume-launch post by guest-writer Yasmine), the story of the scent starts with Tilda Swinton deciding one day to look at the world in a slightly different light and to leave a state which she describes herself as one of prolonged "olfactory laziness." In this case, the inspiration came from perfumes worn by people close to her.
The Scottish actress happens to be friends with one of director Pedro Almodovar's fetish actresses, Rossy de Palma, who herself developed a perfume with Etat Libre d'Orange called Eau de Protection (Protective Water) in 2008, one of those confidential, arty-celebrity fragrances which are the purview of niche fragrance houses as the genre is now not confined anymore to the mass-market shelves. A second source for the new-found interest of Tilda Swinton for perfume was the sillage left by her agent who also happened to wear yet another Etat Libre d'Orange scent, Tom of Finland, another celebs scent of sorts (inspired by Tom of Finland's erotic art.)
The dices of fragrance fate were cast in this way and started rolling in the direction of the perfume house both conveniently and naughtily located at 69, rue des Archives in the Marais district in Paris...
Continue reading "Like This, Tilda Swinton by Etat Libre d'Orange (2010): Aphrodisiac Pumpkin {Perfume Review} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
 My first impression smelling it on someone else: space My impression upon smelling it on my skin: a crystalline white citrus with a dirty undertone of sea-floated gray amber. If it is about a voyage, it is certainly not a disembodied one; you can elect to think either about making love or having to share the scents
of the bodies of your fellow travelers on an overcrowded steamship. In another sense, in a perfumery sense, Voyage is an olfactive summary, a shortcut taken between the bitter and sparkling purity of Orange Verte by Hermès, created by nose Françoise Caron, and the scent of the sheets of a sieste crapuleuse or afternoon lovemaking bespeaking of time-off and holidays, which is to be found in the sweaty cumin note of Eau d'Hermès by Edmond Roudnitska, the ex-mentor of Hermès' in-house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena the author of Voyage....
Continue reading "Voyage by Hermès (2010): Creativity Pause or A Voyage along Traditional Trails {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
 Balenciaga Paris is the new perfume of the renascent perfume house of Balenciaga, a project which was first announced in October 2008. The scent was launched for the press in December 2009 and released this spring 2010. Developed under the auspices of Balenciaga artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière (since 1998) and inspired by muse Charlotte Gainsbourg (in part), it would merit a more fashion-oriented report on it, but I will focus for this time on the olfactory aspects of the perfume composed by nose Olivier Polge.   The flacon nevertheless is a direct reflection of the cocoon dresses of Ghesquière which was once famously sported by American actress Jennifer Connolly. Rumor has it that she might have become the face of the new fragrance but for Ghesquière who insisted on having Charlotte Gainsbourg as its incarnation. The latter, a friend, was glad as she had secretly been wishing for it. By making this less commercial and less global choice, Balenciaga is accentuating the French context of the brand, its anchoring in Paris as a fashion capital natural to the essence of Balenciaga, founded by Spaniard Cristobal Balenciaga. This association came by through style affinities and personal ones rather than perfume connection since the French actress herself declared recently that it is the first perfume that she has ever worn and that it took her a while to entrust it to her skin. Gainsbourg is said to have had the last say between two final iterations favored by Ghesquière. There were only four perfumes developed under the tenure of Cristobal
Balenciaga before the couturier closed his fashion house in 1968 although many
more were to follow until 2000 as licensed perfumes. The four original
Balenciaga perfumes are Le Dix (1947), La Fuite des Heures (1949), Quadrille (1955) and Eau de Balenciaga for Men, his first masculine fragrance (1962). Balenciaga Paris is an interesting exercise in historicized branding for which perfumer Olivier Polge played the part of court portraitist while finding enough room to add his own interpretation especially in the final evolution and meaning of the perfume. The eau de parfum is in the end a very luminous, crystalline composition which seems to have wanted to capture only the white part of the light found in chypre fragrances and to have painted violets habitually seen as purple as the rarer kind of white violet....  Balenciaga salon in 1954 by Mark Shaw
Continue reading "Balenciaga Paris Eau de Parfum (2010): The History of Balenciaga in 3 Acts or The Pure White Violets of the Future {Fragrance Review}" »
 SJP NYC eau de toilette was developed following the resounding success of the 2008 Sex in the City feature movie which brought in earnings of $500 million globally, and to fill a commercial void. The movie sequel Sex and the City 2 is due out on May 28th, 2010. The producers - it comes down to sniffing good business in this case - regretted that amongst the franchise products which had been commercialized at the time, there had not been a perfume, for lack of time. Sarah Jessica Parker has come to be seen as having more than a passing superficial interest in perfume; we now all know about her personal homemade 3-layer combo scent that was never able to be translated into a commercial fragrance because it's too extreme involving 1 street-vendor musk, Bonne Bell skin musk and Comme des Garçons Avignon Incense. Plus, the idea fits right in with the fashion-fabulous universe of Sex and the City. Sarah Jessica Parker explained the birthing process of SJP NYC, saying, "We started with this idea that we wanted to create something fun. We
wanted to create a party in a bottle and reflect that in the packaging
with a real sense of whimsy, fun and joie de vivre. And then we took it
from there. Portability and fashion played key roles in the development
of the packaging and overall concept."....
Continue reading "Sarah Jessica Parker SJP NYC (2010): The Big Apple Becomes The Big Strawberry {Perfume Review and Musings} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
 Twilight Woods by Bath and Body Works was launched last fall and since then it has become a bestseller of the brand. The new practical-minded Scent Sampler by the chain store showcases it as one of their top ten fragrances. In Copley Square in Boston, they revealed that it was their #1 bestseller. But initially the reason I wanted to test the perfume besides the fact that it is newish and therefore a good candidate for a review, is because it features a fashionable oud wood note. A mass-marketed oud wood treatment seemed worth checking out to me, even if just out of curiosity. The ad copy says that " this hypnotic fragrance [was] inspired by a romantic walk in enchanted woods." The composition opens as - what for a lack of a set term I have called a Milka - but with a dark intensity and sugary fruity-loop overtone, at first; on paper it's prunier. Since the texture of the scent is quite thick, hesitating between the densities of a nectar and a syrup, you can only hope for one thing: that the brew will calm down on your skin and meld with it in the best possible way while waiting and crossing your fingers... 
Continue reading "Bath and Body Works Twilight Woods (2009) {Perfume Review and Musings}" »
 Flora Nymphéa is the latest annual addition to the Aqua Allegoria line by Guerlain, due to launch on March the 8th, 2010 in France. The perfume's inspiration rests on the scent of mock orange (seringa). It also benefited from an exceptional quality of orange blossom sourced from Calabria from a three-generation family of producers, per the press materials. As noted previously, the name for the fragrance this time calls attention to a more complex imagery than that of the pairing of two main ingredients: Figue-Iris, Laurier-Réglisse, Angélique-Lilas or Tiaré-Mimosa... On a semiotic plane, it is closer to such titles as Herba Fresca, Anisia Bella, Winter Delice and Flora Nerolia although it seems to put emphasis on an added poetic tonality, an impression which is reinforced by the advertising campaign featuring a nymph (model Anna Selezneva) out of a fairy-tale, and not simply a nymphea flower. The nymphea arguably appeared recently on the Guerlain Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus bottle in 2009. If Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus was a return, to my nose, to a more authentic rendition of Mitsouko paradoxically created through different paths, Flora Nymphéa conveys a similar impression: that of a more original Guerlain marrow found inside a new skeleton supporting fresh flesh dressed up in new guises but done in the same technique of vaporous, vague flou as with some of the early Guerlains. If the lotus and nymphea are the signs, inspirations and mental aids that Guerlain use to recapture their ability to compose Impressionist perfume-poems, so be it. Flora Nymphéa is a delicate, romantic, less aquatic-and-new-freshness
composition than we have come to expect from contemporary perfumes as well as most of the Aqua Allegoria line in particular.
There is also more of the interesting jolie-laide harmony found in the antique Guerlains... 
Continue reading "Guerlain Flora Nymphea (2010): A Return to the Roots of Guerlain: Anglomania, Spleen, Belle Epoque and the Poetry of the Seasons {Perfume Review}" »
 Jeanne can offer a beautiful, simple connotation as a first name. It is the feminine pendant of "Jean" which like Pierre and Paul are de facto household given names in (Christian) Europe. Jeanne is the name of historical French heroine, Jeanne d'Arc, and evokes for those who have seen the masterpiece, the beautiful cinematography of Dreyer's Protestant-looking 1927 imagery about the saint. It is also the first name in translation of Jane Austen. It is furthermore, to go back to more immediate connections, the first name of couturière Jeanne Lanvin after which the perfume is named and to whom it pays homage in an updated yet faithful mode... 
Continue reading "Lanvin Jeanne (2008) and Jeanne La Rose (2010): Part 1 - The Scent of High Fashion, Suavissime Soap and Back {Perfume Reviews} {New Fragrance} " »
 Secrets de Rose (Rose Secrets) is the 16th rose composition by Les Parfums
de Rosine which specialize in sculpturing the different facets and
interpretations of the queen of flowers. It was created in 2009 based on particular qualities of natural rose and labdanum ingredients and launched this January-February 2010. This time, one is offered a dark-rose
interpretation, the scent of " a rose
dressed in black,' which was made to feel more shadowy thanks to notes
of prune, licorice, amber resin and labdanum while being spiced up with
saffron, ylang and cumin.
It is also, as it turns out, what l would like to term an
affective patrimonial perfume, a
composition destined to noses who can appreciate the continuities
of the living history of perfume, this olfactory historiography found
throughout contemporary compositions rather than in the pages of history books...
Continue reading "Les Parfums de Rosine Secrets de Rose (2010): Dinner with Chamade, with Notes on Patrimonial Perfumes {Perfume Review} {Rose Notebook}" »
 Michael Kors starts as a big tuberose perfume with a carnal,
fleshy and gasoline character sweetened by light amber and attenuated
further by a soft velvety iris impression that the brand likes to call "blue orris"....
Continue reading "Michael Kors Eau de Parfum (2000): Chinese Spice Box Folded into a White Bouquet {Perfume Review}" »
Kim Kardashian Eau de Parfum Review: Clowns and BellesKim Kardashian EDP opens on a white gardenia note with airy
nuances and transparent orange-y overtones which evolves into a
creamier and more powdery white floral accord including tuberose and
jasmine. These are the big three white Fs...
Continue reading "Kim Kardashian Eau de Parfum (2010): Bombshell White Floral with a Touch of Sorrow {Perfume Review} (Celebrity Fragrance}" »
 Rose d'Amour (Rose of Love) is a rose composition inspired by Chanel No5 and its original dwarfing overdose of aldehydes. What I like about this perfume is that perfumer Camille Latron
managed to convey the modernist, daring and revolutionary sides of
aldehydes, the manner in which they must have exploded onto the scene
in 1921...
Continue reading "Les Parfums de Rosine Rose d'Amour (2005): Uncompromising Constructivist Rose {Perfume Review} {Rose Notebook}" »
 Ninfeo Mio is named after a masterpiece of garden art, the latter the
happenstance result of the Italian Duke Onorato Caetani having married
an English woman, Ada, with a passion for greenery. The Giardino di
Ninfa located in the vicinity of Rome appears today to be the embodiment of vegetal and Edenic voluptuousness done in the English romantic landscape style, a priori a good fit for the universe of the house of Annick Goutal
who have drawn constant inspiration from garden impressions
and a Romantic engagement with nature from the early beginnings...
Continue reading "Annick Goutal Ninfeo Mio (2010): Dual Spiritual and Gourmand Fig {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
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