Posted by Anjali
on
25 March 2007
Serena Ava Franco has quickly cultivated a reputation as one of the best perfume e-tailers out there with her line Ava Luxe, which features a wide range of creative, thoughtful, elegant and affordable scents. Along with perfumes, she offers a selection of bath and body products that can be ordered unscented or to match any fragrance in her line. I recently sampled her Ultra Rich Body Lotion in two of my favorite Ava Luxe scents, Sweet Almond and Red Carnation, and found that the quality of her body line is just as high as that of her fragrances.
The quality of the lotion itself is amazing — shea butter, Vitamin E, sage, honey and yarrow provide excellent moisture — and it carries the fragrance very well for up to five or six hours. Sweet Almond has a luscious doughy, sugary scent, with a hint of cherry-almond or amaretto sweetness in the background, perfect for layering with almond fragrances like L’Artisan Jour de Fete and Etro Heliotrope (in fact, this is far better than Etro’s own matching lotion, which I personally feel bears an unfortunate resemblance to wet dog food on my skin), and of course, the original Ava Luxe Sweet Almond perfume…
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Posted by Anjali
on
11 March 2007
Robin has already made a brief mention of how lovely she found Crème d’Ananas, the matching body cream to L’Artisan Ananas Fizz, but I couldn’t help writing more on the subject. Not being a fan of the original Ananas Fizz (too little pineapple, and far too much grapefruit and cedar for my tastes), I hardly expected to warm to the lotion. I probably wouldn’t even have tried it had I not decided to buy a jar as a Christmas present for a friend. Once I idly sampled the contents of the jar at the countertop while the sales assistant was ringing up my purchase, my friend’s needs suddenly receded to the background and I decided that perhaps the cream should be my Christmas present instead!
I’m not sure that I can adequately describe just how wonderful this product is…
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Posted by Anjali
on
24 February 2007
The creamy gardenia, lily, vanilla and Nag Champa fragrance of Monyette Paris has become a favorite of both floral and non-floral lovers alike, making Style Magazines's illustrious 5 Great Cult Perfumes list and even winning the hearts of Hollywood stars from Oprah to Cameron Diaz and Gwen Stefani. It's the only gardenia scent I can bring myself to wear (besides Chanel Gardenia, which I maintain is a jasmine fragrance in disguise): normally I find white florals too sharp and angular on me, but Monyette is a pleasantly “round” floral, lush and creamy to the extreme.
Nonetheless, I rarely reach for Monyette, because not only is it a perfume oil roll-on…
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Posted by Anjali
on
4 February 2007
Eau d'Italie, the debut perfume release from the Eau d'Italie line of Le Sirenuse Hotel in Positano, Italy, is an elegant composition of bergamot, magnolia, honey, amber, resin, incense, musk, blackcurrant, tuberose and clover, directly inspired by the mythological sirens who lived off Italy's Amalfi coast and gave the hotel its name. Based on the notes, I was never tempted to try the Eau de Toilette and repeatedly passed on sampling it. Recently however, I've had the opportunity to try some of the products in the matching body line and I've been kicking myself for not having experienced this lovely scent sooner.
On my skin, Eau d'Italie is a soapy-clean magnolia and white pepper scent, with a hint of honey and bergamot and the barest smoky edge of incense…
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Posted by Anjali
on
27 December 2006
Claus Porto is a Portuguese soap manufacturing company that, since its inception in 1887, has become one of the most prestigious soap makers in Europe. As of recent years, they have began to offer their products to American consumers in fourteen fragrances ranging from Favorito (Red Poppy) to Lelite (Orange Amber) and Ilyria (Honeysuckle), all encased in the most beautiful vibrant art deco packaging.
Being somewhat of an almond addict, the first scent I had to try was Alface. As Kevin found in his experience with the Alface candle, it is actually quite an unusual almond fragrance…
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