Posted by Angela
on
6 February 2012
The archetypal image of Valentine’s Day is a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Done right, the box is wrapped in lightly padded vermillion satin, and the chocolates are rich and silky smooth — no grainy cherry filling here. Of course, next to the box is a lush bouquet of fragrant flowers. It’s romantic, timeless, and sure to melt the coldest heart. To me, its perfume equivalent could only be Guerlain Attrape-Cœur.
In 1999, Guerlain released Guet-Apens Eau de Parfum as a limited edition and named Mathilde Laurent as its nose. The fragrance was reissued in 2005 as Attrape-Cœur, this time credited to Jean-Paul Guerlain. (I’ve also seen Maurice Roucel’s name tossed in as a contributor to Attrape-Cœur.) In 2007, Guerlain released an Eau de Toilette formulation in duty free shops and named it, oddly, Vol de Nuit Evasion. (To make it even stranger, Vol de Nuit Evasion was packaged in a L’Heure Bleue/Mitsouko bottle, but labeled with the classic Vol de Nuit parfum logo.)
In French, guet-apens means “ambush.” I think Attrape-Cœur (“heart catcher”) is a more fitting name for the fragrance…
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Posted by Angela
on
30 January 2012
When looking for a perfume, many people say they want something “sexy” or something “fresh.” Perfume houses are hip to that, and tend to market their wares with smoldering starlets or oceans and dew-tipped garden flowers. (That is, unless they can play both sides and put the starlet on the beach.)
The popular sexy fragrance is easy to define. Start with a friendly fruit note, add amber, vanilla, and maybe patchouli, toss in a shot of jasmine and the obligatory rare jungle orchid, and presto: sexy perfume. A clean fragrance can take a few different approaches. It can be citrusy (many colognes), ocean-like (Issey Miyake Eau d’Issey), fizzing with steamy aldehydes (Narciso Rodriguez Essence), or soapy (take your pick of the Clean line). It can finish with cool wood or vetiver, or — more likely these days, it seems — a wave of laundry musk.
Giorgio Armani has raked in good money selling fresh fragrances. Acqua di Giò, both the feminine and masculine versions, have been best sellers since the mid-1990s. Acqua di Gioia is the brand’s latest try for the “fresh” vote, and it plays up both the ocean and laundry musk angles of clean…
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Posted by Angela
on
23 January 2012
Oh how I love Frédéric Malle Carnal Flower. There’s nothing quite like its succulent gardenia and tuberose riding a magic carpet of crisp, leafy green. When I spray from my travel vial, I vow I’ll buy a real bottle soon — the big one, too.
But after an hour or so, I start to feel uncomfortable. I smell languid and romantic, bigger than life, like Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun. The thing is, I’m more like someone from a slapstick comedy. Carnal Flower just doesn’t fit me.
Thinking about it, it’s easy to match a fragrance to a persona. For instance, take aldehydic florals. Who do you see? I see someone elegant, with a profile that could be carved on a cameo. How about a mainstream fruity floral? I picture someone young with blond highlights (maybe that’s too easy). Old school green chypre? Rose oud? Classic cologne? “Concept” fragrances? They all have their types.
Perfume lovers seem to know instinctively that different fragrances go with different styles and moods…
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Posted by Angela
on
16 January 2012
The Oregon Experiment by Keith Scribner features a professor of anarchy newly arrived in a small town in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, his wife the perfumer, a “sensuous free spirit called Sequoia” and a complicated anarchist. The review copy came with a sample of perfume called “The Oregon Experiment” by Yosh Han.
Could there be a better book for me to review? I like to read and I like perfume. Also, I’m a Portlander and live in a neighborhood so liberal that my Gore-Lieberman lawn sign was vandalized for not touting Nader. Sequoia is one of the more subtle hippie-girl names within a five-block radius of my house, which includes the fabled Peoples Co-op. Scribner, I’ll see your anarchist and raise you a freegan.
So, I opened The Oregon Experiment with relish. The novel is beautifully written — polished to a high shine, and full of lush turns of phrase. But in the end, it’s like an intricately carved chair of satiny wood that is too high to sit in, or only has three legs…
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Posted by Angela
on
9 January 2012
Despite being twenty years old, Christian Dior Dune seems to be seeing a resurgence — at least in the perfume blogs. Dune has been coming up a lot in comments to posts, and I’ve seen a smattering of reviews over the past year or so. Last week, I told Robin I’d like to review Dune for today. The very next day Victoria at Bois de Jasmin posted a marvelous Dune review. Apparently Dune is in the air.
Jean-Louis Sieuzac was lead perfumer for Dune. In 1993, Dune won a FiFi for Women’s Fragrance of the Year in Limited Distribution. The Dior website lists Dune’s notes as mandarin, peony, and vanilla. Michael Edwards’s Perfume Legends adds notes of broom, wallflower, bergamot, lily, jasmine, rose, amber, lichen, musk, sandalwood, and vanilla.
Dior’s web copy could mislead a reader into wrongly thinking Dune smells like an Orange Julius at the Jersey Shore…
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