Posted by Erin
on
17 November 2011
When the topic of past lives comes up, what time period do you picture yourself inhabiting? For some reason, I always regress to a city in the Middle Ages. No other era or geographical location ever comes to mind. Perhaps I was an inn-keeper, goutishly solid and pink-cheeked and wary. If gender and physical talents are passed through the centuries, then I could have been a wet nurse. If they are not, then maybe I was a monastic scribe and illuminator. (My handwriting is awful.) It is strange to feel so connected to the sights and sounds of medieval Europe. I don’t actually believe in reincarnation. I think my visions come from the more recent past, from pop culture references about the dark ages like The Lion in Winter and The Name of the Rose. What the books and movies are notably short on, however, is odors.
Most of us think of this time period as smelling pretty ripe: burning garbage, sewage in the ditches and rivers, halitosis, mildew everywhere, the sick and dead of the Bubonic plague years, all those buckets of fermented urine that alchemists were supposed to be distilling into gold, etc. But years of reading foodie articles on panforte, mead and sweetmeats have perfumed my personal medieval fairy tales with honey and almond milk, dates and chestnuts and raw milk cheese, fruit jellies and poached pears with long pepper. Most particularly at this turn of the seasons, I start to dream of the scent of mulling spices. As the cold sets in, there is something instantly cheering and sustaining in the thought of hot mulled wine or cider. And for me, no simmering pot of either would be complete without a bay leaf…
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Posted by Robin
on
13 October 2011
Estee Lauder will launch Wood Mystique, a new unisex fragrance. The woody oriental scent is meant to be luxurious and mysterious, and to appeal to the ‘olfactive palate’ of consumers in the Middle East, where it will be marketed…
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Posted by Robin
on
2 October 2011
More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US.
From Humiecki & Graef, limited edition 100 ml porcelain bottles of Bosque (above left), Clemency (above right), Geste (below left) and Eau Radieuse (below right): “Brand founders Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Müksch succeeded in engaging Dutch artist Wouter Dolk, world-renowned for his hand-painted, often floral-themed wallpaper, to create the stunning flacon designs…”
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Posted by Robin
on
19 August 2011
More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US.
Two from Estee Lauder — at left, the Beautiful Love Heart Solid…
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Posted by Robin
on
12 August 2011
More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US.
No, your eyes don’t deceive you, and yes, it’s true, it isn’t really a collector bottle. But so far, we haven’t seen the need to maintain a separate category for toy trucks, and hey, we have to post about it somewhere…
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