Posted by Jessica
on
5 November 2010
Earlier this year, Amouage released its Library Collection, a trio of fragrances designed as a “poetic homage to the art of living.” Opus III is a floral oriental developed by perfumer Karine Vinchon; according to Amouage, this fragrance “was inspired by the art and science of the creative process, from the darkest moments of frustration, to the brightness of enlightenment and discovery.” It includes top notes of mimosa, broom, carnation, nutmeg, and thyme; a heart of violet, jasmine, ylang-ylang, and orange blossom; and base notes of ambrette, musk, papyrus, cedarwood, sandalwood, guaiac wood, benzoin, and vanilla.
Opus III opens with a distinctive note of broom flowers. If you’ve ever tried Santa Maria Novella Ginestra, a broom soliflore, you’ll recognize this scent, something like cut hay and long grass warmed by the sun. If Opus III were visible as color, the dominant shades of its opening and its heart would be the bright, almost sharp yellow of broom blossoms and the buttery shade of mimosa flowers…
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Posted by Jessica
on
3 September 2010
If you’ve been following perfume news over the past month or so, you’ve probably noticed that Gucci Guilty is one of this fall’s major launches, complete with full-page ads and scent strips in fashion magazines, a movie-star “face,” a television commercial with a theme song, a somewhat hyperbolic press release, a tie-in to the MTV Video Music Awards, and the now-requisite Facebook page. It’s being promoted as a fragrance for a “21st Century beauty” who is “young, audacious, discerning…an iconoclast who lives life at full throttle…sexy and slightly dangerous.”
Guilty’s bottle is certainly eye-catching: it looks like an oversized, gilded (gilty?) Gucci purse clasp or belt buckle, with its unmistakable interlocking “G”s creating a window onto the juice inside. Gucci devotees will want to own Guilty for the container alone. The fragrance is classified as a floriental, with notes of mandarin, pink pepper, peach, lilac, geranium, amber, and patchouli.
Guilty seems to be more of a sheer, fruity oriental than a floral oriental…
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Posted by Angela
on
30 March 2009
It’s easy for me to bemoan the destruction of such legendary perfumes as Worth Je Reviens and Carven Ma Griffe, and to be suspicious of the reformulations of other perfume darlings, like Guerlain Mitsouko. Everywhere I turn, I hear something else alarming: that the Caron reformulations are a travesty and my beloved Tabac Blond will never be the same, or that Jean Patou 1000 may be discontinued. (I can’t speak to either of these, by the way.)
Then along comes a fragrance like Parfums MDCI Enlèvement au Sérail to remind me to chill out. High quality, complex fragrances are still being created. Some of them, like Enlèvement au Sérail, have a vintage feel that I love, while others are decidedly more modern, like Jean Claude Ellena’s perfumes from Hermès. We are lucky to experience them…
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Posted by Angela
on
12 January 2009
After giving it a lot of thought, I've figured out who best personifies Boucheron's B de Boucheron: Bree from the television show Desperate Housewives. Like Bree, Boucheron B is restrained, feminine, bourgeois, and conventional — yet with an eye on current trends. B is middle-aged, but has the smooth, porcelain skin of a girl. Oh, and they share the same initial.
B de Boucheron honors the 150th anniversary of the Boucheron jewelry house and the 20th anniversary of its first fragrance, Boucheron for Women. According to an interview with Ursula Wandel, the perfumer who created B, B contains 20 natural products*. It's also more expensive than the rest of Boucheron's fragrances. B was released in 2008.
Osmoz describes B as having top notes of orange blossom and rose; a heart of osmanthus and spices; and a base of cedar, sandalwood, and patchouli…
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Posted by Robin
on
9 December 2008
When I heard that Ralph Lauren was going to launch a new perfume in a jewel-studded bottle for some $2000+, I thought: why not — every other brand is jumping on the luxe bandwagon despite these tough economic times, why not Ralph Lauren? A week or so after I first heard about it, I spied a tester of something I didn't recognize hiding behind the tissue box on a Neiman Marcus perfume counter (always peek around the back, you never know what you'll find) and asked what it was. The sales associate told me it was to be the new Ralph Lauren, that it wouldn't launch until later in the year, and that it would be very expensive. She let me spray some on a card. I sniffed, giggled at the audacity of charging so very much for such a thing, and then promptly forgot all about it — easy enough, since Love, Ralph Lauren is not a particularly memorable fragrance.
Later, I realized that it wasn't really so expensive, or at least, it needn't be…
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