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Scented Thoughts Archive
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I thought that it would be useful for readers to better understand my thought process when I review perfumes, to lay it out explicitly. And especially, the way I compare perfumes between themselves inside categories which allow for comparison. This system rests upon the idea that there is a shopping culture with certain biases and expectations. In this shopping culture, there are high-brow and low-brow levels from the standpoint of cultural evaluation, and there are worries also around what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has termed "social distinction." From a perfume critic and reviewer point of view however, my evaluation efforts rest on a desire and an ideal to debunk myths and invite people to pay more attention to genuine olfactory beauty and originality by denouncing not just olfactory stereotypes, but cultural stereotypes as well, as I have found out it is more and more needed in a context where niche perfumery has tremendously expanded - if not developed that well - and become the official refuge against crass commercialism...
Continue reading "How I Think about Perfume when I Review Them: A Practical-Theoretical Outlook on the Perfume Shopping Culture {Scented Thoughts & Essays}" »
 The editors at the new Yahoo Shine Get It Guide wrote that they highlighted the contribution of The Scented Salamander blog on celebrity fragrances after requesting a contribution on the topic as an Insider: see the piece that made it: 6 New Celebrity Fragrances to Try Out This Fall.
Thanks for the feedback (and the link!) They also report that the new Yahoo guide has 24,134,412 millions unique visitors per month. Thanks again and congrats! We also wanted to call attention to a detailed visit of the Sensorium by The Style and Beauty Doctor blog, adding our own commentary on a well-known topic that Sephora-Sensorium picks up again, "Grandma Smell" ....
Continue reading "The Scented Salamander in the New Yahoo Shine Get It Guide & a Note on Grandma Smell at the Sensorium...Really? {Scented Thoughts}" »
 Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger was launched in 1996 and was created by perfumer Calice Becker. Re-smelling it today - now - is perceiving the fragrance in a completely different light. Tommy Girl in the formulation bought ca. the earlier 2000s smells like something my grand-mother could have worn. We know what happened.
When I first experienced it consciously, I was struck by its radiance, its freshness and its diffusive power. But smelling it at the end of 2011 is coming nose to nose with a conspicuous oakmoss accord, that you did not notice in the era which predates IFRA regulations about politically correct oakmoss dosages...
Continue reading "Smelling Tommy Girl Now: When The 1990s Smell Like the 1940s {Scented Thoughts}" »
 White Dahlia by Fred Dalkey, 2011
Lately, we have seen more and more of what can be neatly summarized as the new white accords in perfumery. Perfumers and fragrance creatives seem to be having a blast devising fragrance accords that they describe as "white patchouli", "white amber", "white leather," "white woods", "white moss", "white vetiver." Not to mention the inescapable, true and tried "white musk." What these terms signal to you in more down-to-earth fashion is that perfume notes which are traditionally dark, smoky and heavy, have been edited out of their dirty, earthy and animalic facets to make them feel more like Swedish design. They are adaptative notes, born out of necessity to please the new sensitivities more than artistic statements, except in rarer cases....
Continue reading "White Accords in Perfumery: So Long The 70s {Scented Thoughts}" »
 In 1956, wearing loud perfume for a man and especiallly one of the blindingly bright, sparkling kind like Liberace was, was thought to be a sure give-away of his homosexuality which he tried to conceal from public knowledge at all costs all his existence despite giving out all the easy, contradictory visual cues to doubt his professed standard sexual orientation.
Actress Betty White who was his confidante and "beard" de service, confirmed in an interview only in 2011 that Liberace was indeed gay. But the fact remains that the King of pastiche and Kitsch did not wish that piece of information to float its way to the headlines or be debated in public. In 1959, he however engaged in a libel suit to counteract the claim that he was less than straight, a thought, which as it turns out, dawned upon a journalist like a semi-confirmation as he was smelling his heavy perfume-wearing in an airport in Paris. It alluded to his gayness and was felt to be a give-away and code-word for his actual erotic preferences. Better still, we see Liberace balk when he reads himself being described as being "fruit-flavored" thought to be an implicit reference to his homosexuality in a newspaper article of the day...
Continue reading "Liberace Wore Perfume, So What? Homosexuality as Given Away by an Indiscreet Fragrance Trail in the 1950s {Scented Thoughts} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
 Black Square by Malevich
It is quite a surrealist experience to smell perfumes which are housed world aparts in different bottles and labeled under different name brands, yet smell strangely similar. The fact that the four perfumes under consideration were launched by just two houses the same year cannot be mere coincidence. Smelling La Femme Bleue by Armani Privé and Ambre d'Orient by the same brand and then discovering La Pluie and La Fumée by Miller Harris was like drawing an abstract yet exactly symmetrical diagram in mid-air....
Continue reading "Strange Olfactory Encounters Are Being Offered to the Wrong Crowd: Armani Privé La Femme Bleue, Ambre d'Orient, Miller Harris La Plume, La Fumée {Scented Thoughts}" »
Initially launched in 1946 by the fashion house of Carven, Ma Griffe (My Signature) created by the perfumer who also imagined Tabu by Dana, Jean Carles, had become barely recognizable in the recent period. The formula had been considerably cheapened. I smelled it a couple of times over the past two years at Le Bon Marché and Sephora and my reaction each time was one of disbelief and disgust. Why did the manufacturers even bother to pretend it was still Ma Griffe, or even a fine fragrance at all? Today's random sniffage yielded the fact that the perfume has been reformulated once more but this time, faithfully and up to snuff....
Continue reading "Ma Griffe de Carven is Back on Track {Scented Thoughts}" »
The heat was sweltering today in Paris. The taxi driver told me it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit and that the knowledgeable ones had said that it would be the hottest day of the year. Think hair blow dryer attack as you would cross a street. It made me think of one of my worst experiences of murderous heat in North-West China. Or think fear of a sunstroke although you're sitting under the roof of a car with a hat. Maybe the hat was to blame. I was on my way to a funeral and thought that we might well all fall on the ground like flies, as the French say, in the oppressive heat especially being dressed in heat-suscking black garb for the occasion. Fortunately, I had forgotten there are welcoming shady trees in cemeteries and so the air got gentler under their sway...
Continue reading "Fragrance of the Moment: De Profundis by Serge Lutens {Scented Thoughts}" »
I kept meaning to go back to take a picture of the linden trees on Avenue Mozart for illustration, but never found the opportunity, although it shouldn't have been challenging. Finally, I decided to use for illustrating purposes a postcard of the Worth couture workshop I bought on that same avenue, which reminded me of the period the perfume I smelled evoked. Let's rewind to a couple of weeks past, shall we, when it was still spring. For some reason, I tend to write those olfactory posts more during springtime. If I had forgotten that it this is the season for linden trees to bloom, they did not let me forget that fact. The other day, walking down Avenue Mozart in Paris was a novel experience as I distinctly smelled in the air the smell of horse stables and manure....
Continue reading "The Scent of Linden Trees on Avenue Mozart {Scented Thoughts}" »
Perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour is the new Pope of niche fragrances, apparently. His current compositions can be found across several well-respected, so-called niche brands: Frapin, Penhaligon's, L'Artisan Parfumeur, Amouage, Eau d'Italie, Parfums MDCI, and soon,The Different Company, for whom he wlll have the title of in-house perfumer. Is Duchaufour the new perfumer à la mode or the new visionary of the niche-fragrance landscape remains to be seen, and smelled. He is currently somewhat reminiscent of the former high-voltage media presence of perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, who has more recently turned to more instrospective writing as his Journal du Parfumeur is about to be published in May 2011...
Continue reading "Perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour as the new Pope of Niche Fragrances {Scented Thoughts}" »
The fashion for soliflores is seeing a reawakening in the spring of 2011. Soliflores or single-note floral fragrances were famously all the rage during the 19th century. It was so much so the default genre for floral fragrances for the longest time that in fact the term is not even used as a perfumery term until a much more recent date. A "soliflore" is originally a bud vase destined to contain a single flower. Both the historical and contemporary language dictionaries I consulted ignore its meaning as a perfumery genre. Today, soliflores continue to have a certain traction especially in British perfume culture where the Penhaligon'ses, Florises and even Marks & Spencers make sure that your vanity is plied with seemingly unassuming recreations of the scents of garden flowers; it must have something to do with the gardening passion found in the Isles. An American brand like Demeter Fragrance Library specializes in part in capturing the scent of single flowers but they do not represent the mainstream of their culture as much....
Continue reading "Your Guide to the New Soliflores of Spring 2011 and What Their Comeback Might Mean {Scented Thoughts} {Perfume List}" »
 Chiming in 2011 can be best enjoyed with a perfume which will help you save the memories of this once-in-a-lifetime night as well as add sparkle or intrigue to your reveller's attitude.
I am proposing a list of fragrances that illustrate well 4 themes and states of mind that can be seen as symbolic of the last night of the year. Champagne for Bubbly Fun The joyfulness of a champagne note can be experienced risk-free by wearing the right perfume. If Caron Royal Bain de Champagne might be out of reach for a last minute spritzing inspiration, you could also turn to Yvresse by Yves Saint Laurent or Etat Libre d'Orange Vraie Blonde or the more recent Sex Pistols, if you're in France. If you're in the US, the suggestively dry and sparkly Jo Malone Grapefruit or the warmer and sweeter Phat Golden Goddess, the latter featuring a champagne-incense accord, can usher in the new year with you. Demeter Champagne Brut aims to make you feel like you dabbed on some champagne on skin, and not just on your ear lobes. If you are in the UK, you can try to get hold of Kylie Minogue Pink Sparkle inspired by a softer champagne rosé....
Continue reading "What Fragrances to Wear on New Year's Eve 2010: A Best-Of Suggestions {Perfume List}" »
 Flor Garduno, Embrace of Light, 2000
Before I proceed to review some of the recent, new and upcoming perfumes which reveal this characteristic interest in the radiant-bouquet motif, I thought I'd organize them in the Trend-Alert section. This current of sensitivity overlaps with the Pure White Olfactory Trend, but not always. There have been a number of perfumes in the years past which have attempted to capture the crystalline texture of florals (Chanel Cristalle, Versace Bright Crystal, Omnia Crystalline...), but more recently it has struck me how a whole genre of floral bouquets is pushing the limits of expansion in space, purity, crystal clarity, and seem to be inspired by the glacial beauty of snow...
Continue reading "Radiant & Pristine Floral Bouquets Renew Our Sensations, Expand Space in 2010-2011 {Scented Thoughts} {Trend Alert}" »
A Limited-Edition of one of the most representative perfumes of the 80s, Diva, has been introduced to fête the Holidays 2010. Originally launched in 1983 and manufactured by Chanel, it has been officially attributed to perfumer Jacques Polge for the longest of time although more recently his colleague François Demachy has started calling it his own in public...
Continue reading "Emmanuel Ungaro's Diva Dresses in Gold & Silver for the Holidays 2010 + An Aside on Perfume Authorship {Fragrance News - New Flacon}" »
 Picture © The Scented Salamander
The 2010 Fall season of fragrance launches promises to be particularly rich this year with many, diverse universes of fragrance to choose from. Here is our list of fragrances to watch and give a sniff to (there are and will be more, but you need to start somewhere, right?) In the Celebrity category, we're expecting to see some ripples made around the launches of Jennifer Aniston EDP (timely US launch for the Holidays although dates remain unspecified), Halle Berry Reveal, and Mary J. Blige My Life. The latter already launched on HSN to record-breaking sales based solely on the personality of the singer and philanthropist. More than 70 000 bottles sold in the first few days. The real test of perfume popularity will be of course to see how many happy repeat customers there will be. But Blige is already benefiting from a honeymoon effect and fans are creating an I-really-want-to-love-this-fragrance momentum. Jennifer Lopez will show once more what she has learned as a veteran and marketing trend-setter in the category with Love and Glamour. Beyoncé will no doubt consolidate her fan base with a new flanker, Heat Ultimate Elixir.Britney Spears may be past the height of tabloid frenzy regarding her private life but her new scent Radiance is just the right dose of Liberace Kitsch one secretly hoped to see expressed in a bottle. One should not neglect recent summer celebrity launches which will carry us into the fall: Jessica Simpson Fancy Nights and Paris Hilton Tease. The first one is clearly a fall and winter companion...
Continue reading "2010 Fall Fragrance Trends and Perfume Launches {Scented Thoughts} {Trend Alerts}" »
Scented Thoughts Archive
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