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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Posted by Robin
on
8 November 2011
Angie’s post yesterday on celebrity fragrances she’d like to see reminded me that I have fallen woefully behind this year on reviewing celebrity fragrances — the real ones that she’d rather not see. So, in the interest of catching up before it’s too late, here are four celebrity fragrance reviews, listed in order from not so very bad to not so very wonderful. In other words, we’re going to start out lukewarm and things are going to go downhill from there; consider yourself warned.
Taylor Swift Wonderstruck
I was wonderstruck reading the recent New Yorker profile on country pop star Taylor Swift. I had heard her name, but had no idea — number 7 on Forbes’ list of Most Powerful Celebrities? More albums sold in the last five years than any other musician? Who knew? Anyway, her debut perfume came out this fall under a licensing deal with Elizabeth Arden, and it’s about what you’d expect: a “charming and sparkling surprise of vibrant fruits, kissed by a bouquet of soft petals and a touch of sweet indulgence.” In other words, it’s a sweet-ish fruity floral with plenty of vanilla in the base, along the lines of Britney Spears Fantasy, and while there’s not much to distinguish it from the two bazillion other variations on Britney Spears Fantasy, it’s perfectly wearable and it’s reasonably age-appropriate for the target market…
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Posted by Kevin
on
19 October 2011
Keith Urban, judging from photos anyway, seems an unpretentious, casual-comfortable type of person. I don’t know much about contemporary country music or Urban but after smelling Phoenix I feel we have at least one thing in common — a love of desserts. If Urban had input in Phoenix’s development, and didn’t just slap his name onto a “made-by-committee” fragrance, the man has a major sweet tooth.
Phoenix was developed by perfumer Loc Dong and features notes of blackberries, cognac, plum, suede accord, dates, dark chocolate, fir balsam, musk, cashmere woods, tonka bean and “amber gourmand.”
Phoenix starts with boozy aldehydes, leather and cocoa (smelling quite a bit like the Thierry Mugler A*Men “Pure” fragrances), and segues into a sheer suede-plus- “blackberries macerating in sugar” note…
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Posted by Robin
on
5 August 2011
Country music star Keith Urban will launch his debut fragrance, Phoenix for men, in September:
I’ve always loved symbolism and mythology…
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Posted by Robin
on
28 July 2011
International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) has created BlackRider, a new limited edition fragrance to benefit The Watermill Center (“Watermill is a laboratory for performance founded by visual artist Robert Wilson as a unique environment for young and emerging artists from around the world to explore new ideas.”). BlackRider was named for the musical fable The Black Rider…
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