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Dr. Hunter's Rosewater & Glycerine Hand Creme by Caswell-Massey - one of the oldest American brands founded by Dr. William Hunter in 1752 in Newport, Rhode Island - smells like the roses cultivated by our grand-mothers in their gardens, in the best sense possible of this representation. The scent of the cream is delicate, fresh, very realistic and refined enough to evoke the fruitiness of Nahema by Guerlain; in short, it is an impressively scented hand cream. So much so that more than a good hand cream it can double up as a fragrance cream as the perfume feels intense enough to fulfill this purpose. We noticed that it is best to apply this cream like one would a mask rather than a cream that would need to be rubbed in. The rose perfume just smells much better when left alone as much can be......
Continue reading "Caswell-Massey Dr. Hunter's Rosewater & Glycerine Hand Creme {Perfume Review} {Beauty Notes} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 12}" »
Sa Majesté La Rose (Her Majesty The Rose) by Serge Lutens is a soliflore composition centering on Moroccan rose absolute. The perfume showcases to a certain extent the brutality and rawness of rose absolute, making it only relatively tamer and more civilized, but without attempting to hide or tone down its rough-diamond aspect. It is an ode to the triumphant nature of the raw material and to an all-engulfing central presence. Apart from rose amateurs, people who like metallic perfumes and a certain measure of natural aggressiveness in their scents may turn their attention to this prima donna of a rose perfume. Once she enters the room, it is as if she expected all glances to converge towards her....
Continue reading "Serge Lutens Sa Majesté La Rose (2000): If Ivan The Terrible Were A Rose {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 11}" »
Rose Ispahan by Yves Rocher offers a filiation with Yves Rocher Ispahan in as much as it seems to belong to the same soft-oriental family. Little information is forthcoming however as the scent is discontinued. The Rose of Ispahan or Isfahan is a varietal of rose also called Pompon des Princes.
Rose Ispahan, it turns out, is indeed a pompon-y perfume, evocative of the very texture of the rose after which it was named. Imagine a downy comforter metaphorically filled with rose petals instead of goose down, vanilla beans, and amber, maybe some yellow peaches.....
Continue reading "Yves Rocher Rose Ispahan {Perfume Review In A Nutshell} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 10}" »
 After the hit that was Ombre Rose launched in 1981, milliner Jean-Charles Brosseau continued to issue feminine perfumes that were linked to the original Ombre Rose by an olfactory floral theme and the metaphor of the shade in the series entitled Fleurs D'Ombre (Flowers of the Shade or Shadow). The poetic title is an indirect reference to the Proustian title A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs and the central role that perfume plays to conjure up a lost world, a magical operation described in the most minute details by Marcel Proust. The phrase goes well with the romantic slightly nostalgic style of the perfumes, the vintage flacon reproduced from an antique mold and it is a reference also to the impression of cool shade that is incorporated in the fragrances in the series......
Continue reading "Jean-Charles Brosseau Fleurs D'Ombre: Rose (2006) {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 9}" »
Emporio Armani Diamonds is yet another example of one of the most popular feminine perfume note accords that were last year: the rose-amber-patchouli accord. You might have come across it in the major launches of Dior Midnight Poison, Gucci by Gucci, and Yves Saint Laurent Elle, which capitalized on it. Of the scents found in the series alluded to above, Diamonds is the least sophisticated one as it aims a younger age group or at least, seems to. It is a rose perfume updated to meet contemporary mainstream taste; it took a detour to the candy factory and was made to adhere to a pink-coded girlish ethos despite the fact that the juice is colored white. If you smell it, you will see that in fact it is a pink juice. One can read in the copy from Sephora, This surprising and decadent fragrance is based on the traditional symbol of femininity, the rose, but is twisted with luscious, edible notes to create a truly desirable combination. We will not linger here on the celebrity context for the scent. You can find more details about Beyoncé Knowles fronting the ad campaign in our previous post......
Continue reading "Emporio Armani Diamonds (2007): A Girly Party Rose {Perfume Review} {Celebrity Fragrance} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 8}" »
Voleur de Roses (lit. Rose Thief or "Stolen Rose" per L'Artisan's translation) was created by perfumer Michel Almairac in 1993 for L'Artisan Parfumeur. In the recently published 22 parfumeurs en création by Clara Molloy, the book opens on his interview, one of the most interesting, humane ones in it, and the one leaving one of the more lasting impressions despite the fact that you read it before all the others, as they are organized alphabetically. What makes him stand apart from the rest of the perfumers is that he reveals somewhat of an unexpected rebel's personality, not easily satisfied with his corporate lot. He acknowledges the fact that he stands firmly on the side of the raw materials themselves rather than the concepts presiding over them. This position is commonly seen to be that of the Grassois school of perfumery, which is perhaps usually less publicly articulate about its preferences than the more intellectualist one working with ideas or stories as points of departure. Hence, a sense of difference that is more marked in the current media context. Last but not least, he is the only one who confesses publicly and candidly to having been "hurt by a perfume", Minotaure by Paloma Picasso, which was not successful commercially, for reasons that are hard to decipher. His creations are wonderful and we can particularly call attention to Gucci Pour Homme, Burberry London/Classic, Rush, and Saks For Her. He himself says that of his own perfumes two that he can say he "adores" are Burberry London/Classic and Rush. He likes Casmir a lot and he likes Zino by Davidoff.......
Continue reading "L'Artisan Parfumeur Voleur de Roses (1993): An Earthy Masculine Rose {Perfume Review} {Men's Cologne} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 7}" »
Aroma M is a small New York-based perfume house which was founded in 1995 by two artists, Maria McElroy and husband and partner Shinya Yokota. The aesthetics of the house reflect their common love of the Orient and the visual arts. Their mission as they declare it themselves is to "interpret and update the Geisha sensibility and the subtleties of Japanese incense for contemporary fragrance connoisseurs." After Japan they announce that Turkey and the Ottoman period will be their next creative influences. Amongst Aroma M's characterizing features is a great attention to the outer shell of the perfume, especially as it pertains to the all-important ritual and art of gift-giving in Japanese culture. Refined Yuzen papers and Shibori textiles, vintage ones, are used to accompany and intensify the pleasure of perfume-wearing seen as an aesthetic gesture demanding a visual preparation and heightened sense of anticipation.....
Continue reading "Aroma M Geisha Nobara-Cha (1997): A Spicy, Contemplative Rose {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 6}" »
Rose Divine was launched by Isabel Derroisné in the summer of 2006. Its perfumer is Céline Ellena, the daughter of Jean-Claude Ellena. She is known for fragrances created under the label of The Different Company, a niche perfume house where she succeeded her father after he was recruited to be the in-house perfumer of Hermès. She has already proposed Sel de Vétiver, Jasmin de Nuit, and a trio of scents inspired by gardens. Rose Divine represents thus an incursion outside of her familial territory and an opportunity for her to work on a perfume that will reach a different public, a slightly more commercial one. Being herself from the Grasse region, she would have been familiarized from an early age with the scent of the Rosa Centifolia whose absolute is used in this perfume in generous proportions, 1 %.
Rose Divine will have to dispute the honor with Thierry Mugler Rose Angel of being considered the first gourmand rose perfume ever created as Pierre Aulas, the olfactive artistic of Thierry Mugler, claims that Rose Angel, composed by Olivier Cresp, is the first gourmand rose scent ever to have seen the light of day. Both creations came out in 2006. Interestingly, each of these scents illustrate a similar category with one of the two roses used in perfumery, Rosa Centifolia for Rose Divine and Bulgarian rose for Rose Angel.....
Continue reading "Isabel Derroisné Rose Divine (2006): A Gourmand Rose Au Naturel {Perfume Review} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 3}" »
Hammam Bouquet by Penhaligon's is a beautiful intense rose perfume for men, which offers a primitivist charm mainly due to the sheer energy unleashed by the otto of rose used in the scent, while being undeniably elegant at the same time. As the rose blooms and then lightens, freshening with the lavender and some other aromatic herbs, the composition starts feeling like an unusual rose fougère. The perfume retains a somewhat ancient exotic-in-time cachet; it was, in 1872, the first fragrance created by the founder of Penhaligon's (Est. 1870), William Henry Penhaligon, a barber to the chic London establishment who debuted his career by working in the fashionable Turkish Baths in Jermyn Street after which the scent is named. Another story that circulates is that it was created for or inspired by a Turkish sultan. The scent is said to have been inspired by the characteristic smells of "sweat and sulphur of the Hammam". It remained W.H. Penhaligon's favorite. Hammam Bouquet was more recently re-released in 2003 as the masculine counterpart to a then newly launched feminine perfume, Malabah...... The Turkish baths on Jermyn Street in St James, 1862, at the time when W.H. Penhaligon was working there, Illustrated London News.
Continue reading "Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet (1872): The Gentleman With A Rose {Perfume Review} {Historical Fragrance} {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 2}" »
Spiritueuse Double Vanille, a limited edition by Guerlain, is a dark, liquorishe-y vanilla that has been rendered more animalistic thanks to a significant dose of cedar wood. Anyone who has walked on a street in a Northern America city where chips of cedar wood are abundantly used to fertilize the soil of gardens can remember how cedar wood smells after the rain; it smells like the sudden presence of a wild beast who would have escaped from the city zoo and is hiding behind the bushes, except it is just the exacerbated aroma of damp cedar wood. Spiritueuse Double Vanille thus oscillates between gentle sweetness and a more feral quality, sometimes understated, sometimes more overtly erotic. At this point of the perception, a quote by Jean-Paul Guerlain regarding the properties of vanilla starts making more concrete sense: "If a colour or fragrance were to be associated with each day, like the planets were in ancient times, sandalwood would be the Sun, saffron would be Jupiter, and without doubt vanilla would be Venus." Working with this intuition of a deeper erotic quality ascribed to vanilla -- more commonly seen as a comforting gourmand ingredient -- the perfumer has pushed some notes to the point where they feel leather-like or skin-like, as the woodsy notes of cedar start morphing into nuances of raw leather, sweat and even indoles......
Continue reading "Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille (2007): Divine Vanilla {Perfume Review}" »
 Rose is part of the Red Series by Comme des Garçons and was composed by perfumers Yann Vasnier and Françoise Caron. For those who are interested in the subtleties of authorship in perfumery, one can read about Françoise Caron declaring in the recently published book comprising 22 perfumers' interviews edited by Clara Molloy, 22 parfumeurs en création, (also available in English) that Yann Vasnier could have created Rose without her and that she just "guaranteed for it", a little bit like it used to be in a Renaissance painter's workshop. Being part of the Red Series in a creative-to-experimental line like Comme Des Garçons means that, Rose is not just about the scent of a rose but a systematic study on how to translate the red tonalities of a natural aroma so that our olfactory representation of a rose -- that indeed reveals itself to be red -- is different from a pink, yellow, or blue rose (one can dream). In this sense, Rose does not hold any surprise or drama; its name does not disguise any more complex bouquet of sensations. Even more remarkable a trait is that the perfume succeeds in creating the representation of a soliflore that is a literal soliflore, suggesting to the perfume wearer the vision of a unique stem of rose abstractly pinned to the air. If it smells red, it is because the illusion of the rose scent never feels disconnected from the color we naturally associate with it. The rose smells of red thanks to it offering lower tonalities, a certain ripeness, fruitiness, and the right degree of sweetness with an undercurrent of ruby red wine coloring the sensation...... 
Continue reading "Comme Des Garçons Red Series: Rose (2001): A Hyper-Realistic Rose {Perfume Review} - {Smell-The-Roses-Till-Valentine's Day Challenge - Day 1}" »
In 2006 Guerlain added Mayotte to its collection of re-editions called Les Parisiennes. It was made immediately clear that it was a re-bottling of the failed Mahora issued in 2000 -- an Eau de Toilette version had also been issued in 2001 -- in an attempt to propose anew this tropical, not-so-Parisian scent. (The original name was not kept due to legal reasons and the fact that it had not been officially registered.) In fact, Mayotte is arguably the most American-smelling of the perfumes created by the venerable French house thanks to its all-out tropical white-flower personality put together with its linear character.
Some questions arose on this blog as to whether it was exactly the same fragrance or a different composition claiming a link to Mahora. For US-based customers who can easily access numerous online discounters, it is an especially pertinent question to ask as the prices for Mayotte and Mahora differ vastly. The first one is 140 €, the second one can be had for cheap...
Continue reading "Guerlain Mayotte (2006) & Mahora EDT (2001) {Perfume Review in a Nutshell} {Fragrance Ads}" »
 Following Velvet Tuberose, Bath & Body Works have just released a new perfume in their Signature Collection called Chocolate Amber, which is presented as "A sophisticated and more complex version of Chocolate Amber™ than the more casual Body Splash."........
Continue reading "Chocolate Amber by Bath & Body Works (2007) {New Fragrance} {Perfume Review in a Nutshell}" »
Truly bad-smelling perfumes are a rarity. Atrocious-smelling ones even rarer. One finds many mediocre perfumes, simplistic ones, decent ones, and as Jean-Paul Guerlain remarked once, there are so many good perfumes in the world!
The two new releases by Molinard this year - admittedly in a low-priced line but it is no justification for even bothering to bottle such caricatures - Chypre d'Orient and Pêche de Vigne are positively and without ambiguity, the worst perfumes we have smelled so far this year. Molinard repackaged their perfumes into new art deco bottles, dressing them up in other words, but it seems that their efforts have concentrated on external appearance rather than on the scents themselves. The bottles are just OK and the juices are frankly absurd......
Continue reading "Chypre d'Orient, Pêche de Vigne by Molinard (2007) {Perfume Short (Reviews)}" »
Tocca released a new limited edition scented candle for the Holiday Season called Holiday Cortina Mimosa Candela. Unlike the name of the scent itself seems to suggest but better illustrated by the Champagne glasses decorating the glass container, the perfume has been studied to feel festive as it includes a Champagne top note.......
Continue reading "Tocca Holiday Mimosa Candle {Perfume Short (Review)} {Holiday Shopping Idea - $50 or Less] {New Fragrance}" »
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