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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Deep Aqua is Bath & Body Works‘ latest addition to its Signature Collection. It’s an aquatic floral scent, described as “the pure and refreshing fragrance of ocean drenched flowers inspired by a beautiful world underwater.” Its composition includes top notes of crisp melon, daffodil, violet leaves, and water blossoms; mid notes of spring daisy, cyclamen, dewy gardenia, and white hydrangeas; and base notes of musk captives and white woods.
Looking at that list of floral notes, you may not imagine anything oceanic at all, and you may wonder which seashore we’re talking about. Violets at the beach? That being said, the fragrance itself is appropriately watery and breezy, with light hints of white flower petals. It also seems to “bloom” differently in each of the products I’ve sampled. The Skin Smoothing Shower Gelée, a limited-edition formula for summer, is a gently exfoliating, sudsy gel. (And doesn’t the word “gelée” deserve to be brought back into wider circulation?). It smells as fresh and blue as it looks, but it also releases a more complex, musky note or two when it foams and mixes with the water and steam of a warm shower.
The Body Lotion was my least favorite of the three variations I tried…
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Posted by Robin
on
17 April 2009
Tous will launch H20, a new “ecochic” perfume for women inspired by the brand’s H20 jewelry collection and “born from the desire and conviction that a more just world is possible, and that the union between beauty and sustainability is yet one more step towards a more beautiful universe”. The glass bottle is 25% recycled glass, the fragrance’s packaging and handling is carried out by the Special Employment Center of the Arco Iris Foundation using materials certified by the Forest Stewardship Council…
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Posted by Kevin
on
9 April 2009
It’s apt that a company named Nautica (a Coty brand) is releasing a water-based, “aquatic” perfume called Oceans; however, the big story is not the smell of Nautica Oceans, but the way the fragrance is made. Nautica Oceans uses a patent-pending micro-emulsion technology developed by perfumer Michel Mane (Mane USA) that “allows for a concentrated oil load of up to 20 percent to be built into water-based fragrances” (water-based scents usually only have 2-3 percent oil in the formulation).1 Nautica Oceans uses a 10 percent oil load and Nautica has exclusive use of the Mane technology for two years.
Nautica Oceans has impeccable green credentials: its ingredients and packaging are biodegradable (the fully recyclable outer carton is made from 30 percent post consumer recycled fibers and is produced with wind energy in a carbon neutral facility) and Nautica supports Oceana.2 (The only non-green aspect to Nautica Oceans is its two-year exclusive rights agreement with Mane — why not let as many perfumers and fragrance companies as possible use this “cleaner” perfume technology?)3
Nautica Oceans contains ocean air, lemon tonic, sea salt rose, lavender reef, geranium, amber crystals, teak and Regatta Accord. What does Nautica Oceans smell like? I could respond in two ways…
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Posted by Kevin
on
12 March 2009
Since Hugo Boss has the sense to call Calone, Calone (and not “hydroponic melon,” “high tide accord” or “seaweed sorbet”) in the list of notes for their new Hugo Element, I wish they had gone a step further and called this product Calone Cologne — because that’s what Hugo Element smells like.
Hugo Element contains Limonene, Linalool, Citronellol, Geraniol, Citral, coumarin, and wisps of ginger, coriander and cedar wood, but Calone overpowers the other notes. For all of you who believe you may not be familiar with Calone: you ARE familiar with it — Calone is present in hundreds of masculine and feminine perfumes, especially ones that proclaim an affinity with the seaside. When the words “aquatic,” “marine” or “oceanic” are included in a list of perfume notes, or in a perfume description, the chances are good Calone is in the formula. Calone is so ubiquitous, when I smell it I think: “Department Store Perfume Counter, Anywhere, USA”…
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