From Astier de Villatte, Orange Amere Body & Hand Cream: "Fresh, silky and non-greasy, it absorbs immediately, leaving the skin soft for a long time thanks to its jojoba and rosehip oils. The exquisite bitter orange fragrance creates a delicious sensation of freshness as soon as it is applied." 350 ml for $70 at Luckyscent.
Astier de Villatte Delhi & Mantes La Jolie ~ new fragrances
French ceramics brand Astier de Villatte has launched two new fragrances, Delhi and Mantes La Jolie…
Astier de Villatte Trois Parfums Historiques: Le Dieu Bleu ~ fragrance review
Coming from the depths of the Egyptian age, Le Dieu Bleu exhales its divine and mysterious perfume, as if extracted from a supernatural universe. Intended for the gods, rising up are heady scents of aromatic herbs, saps, roots, and bark, destined to induce a meditative state, with powers of the beyond…its wonderful lively, intoxicating scents of woody honeyed broom, mystical and heady myrrh, green and fresh lentisk, and fruity opoponax, carry us away to the colorful splendors of the temples and frescoes of…Ancient Egypt. — Astier de Villatte
Le Dieu Bleu (one of Astier de Villatte’s Trois Parfums Historiques; see Les Nuits and Artaban) was inspired by kyphi (which I’ve written about before on Now Smell This). Many recipes for this storied scent include: Cyperus longus (with a ginger odor), juniper berries, raisins, wine, honey, resin of the pistachio tree (mastic), Calamus odoratus, broom, rose-scented grass from Egypt, myrrh, henna and mint. To this list, Greeks added cinnamon, nard (spikenard), cardamom, sesame and saffron.
Kyphi, apart from ceremonial and personal use as incense, was ingested as a medicine and made into breath-freshening pastilles…
Astier de Villatte Trois Parfums Historiques: Artaban ~ fragrance review
Hailed for the incredible lavishness of its formula, no less than twenty-four herbs imported at great expense from the most distant lands, this “royal perfume” was the idol of the wealthy Romans. They enthusiastically soaked themselves with it at every opportunity, as was the fashion of the time. Reinterpreted by Dominique Ropion, Artaban is a pure concentrate of the wonders of the plant universe. Delight in its fragrant scents – bitter and sweet marjoram, cardamom with a spicy fruity taste, nard with earthy, resinous and woody accords, and green and herbaceous calamus with multiple fragrant facets. — Astier de Villatte
Artaban, one of three fragrances in Astier de Villatte’s Trois Parfums Historiques collection (the others are Les Nuits and Le Dieu Bleu), was inspired by a recipe recorded by Pliny the Elder of a lavish perfume created in Parthia (and used with gusto by ancient Romans). The perfume’s list of ingredients was long: ben nut juice and oil (extracted from the Moringa oleifera), wine, honey, costus, cinnamon, cardamom, mint, myrrh, cassia, styrax, labdanum (rockrose), balsam, aromatic reeds, fragrant rush from Syria, oenanthe (water parsley flower), henna, broom, opoponax, saffron, souchet (tiger nut), marjoram, lotos (the yellowish resin provided by a ferrule from Syria or the seed of the lotus from Egypt) and spikenard (also known as ‘nard’ or Indian lemongrass).
Ancient Romans went even further than today’s biggest buyer of perfume…
Astier de Villatte Trois Parfums Historiques: Les Nuits ~ fragrance review
A hot summer’s night in 1838 at…Nohant, the setting of…famous and decadent late-night parties where all of Paris’s intellectuals and artists throng: Alfred de Musset, Franz Liszt, Marie d’Agoult, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix. Inveterate night owls, George Sand and her lover…Frédéric Chopin, stroll languorously through the gardens till dawn. The air is saturated by the opulent trail of the novelist’s sumptuous perfume. — Astier de Villatte
That’s the description of Les Nuits, one of three perfumes in Astier de Villatte’s new Trois Parfums Historiques collection; the other two are Le Dieu Bleu (representing Ancient Egypt) and Artaban (giving us a sniff of Ancient Rome). After a lifetime of MAJOR perfume mistakes (blind buys) and disappointments (blind buys), I was STILL ready to buy Les Nuits without smelling it first — could this fragrance bring me closer to one of my idols, George Sand? I’m a perfect example that “live and learn” is a hope, not a certainty…