Posted by Erin
on
7 June 2013
Having appropriated most American technologies, cultural tics and lifestyle choices, Canadians feel we know a lot about our neighbors (neighbours!1) to the south and we tend to be quite sensitive about a perceived lack of knowledge on the other end. Canadian comedian Rick Mercer, a national hero of sorts, came to prominence with a series of television clips called Talking to Americans, where he poked gentle fun at this relationship by interviewing ordinary Americans on the street — in addition to people like George W. Bush2, David Hasselhoff and a Harvard Professor of International Relations — and getting them to do silly things on camera: to congratulate Canucks on converting to a 24-hour clock (from a 20-hour one)3, to sign a petition trying to stop the planned polar bear slaughters in Toronto, or to sing along with a completely fabricated Canadian national anthem. Once, I had an encounter in Buffalo, NY that felt like a Mercer moment: I struck up a conversation with the gentleman beside me at the mall, who turned out to believe that Canadians did not experience summer. “But I live an hour or so away from here,” I kept explaining to him. “We have summer! We have the same climate as you do!” I could not convince him.
If you live in the southern U.S. — let alone in Australia, Southeast Asia or the Middle East— then you may not believe that people in Buffalo experience summer weather either. In truth, neither Buffalo nor Toronto (where I live, unmolested by polar bears) suffers from frequent Louisiana-level humidity or the week-long 100°F heat waves of Houston. Although I love classic citrus colognes and refreshing splashes, my perfume collection gravitates towards scents with enough heft to stand up to cooler temperatures. Still, we get our share of urban jungle here, normally from June until September, and though I’ve never done a Top 10 Summer Fragrances post before, I’ve written previously about my preferred remedies for when the heat is on (here and here). Below are ten more of my favorites for the swelter season; please comment with your own…
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Posted by Robin
on
16 April 2013
What is it: 7 ml minis of Lush The Bug, Devil’s Nightcap and Voice of Reason; a 25 ml oil dropper of Lush Hellstone; plus a Tilly by Rosie Jane “Summer Sleepover Bag” (gold pouch with a pair of underwear and a 5 ml roll-on of Tilly) and a sample of Tauer Perfumes Noontide Petals.
How do I get it: For a chance to win, leave a comment on the website telling me that you live in the US. Then tell me either a) your favorite spring fragrance or b) your favorite spring flower or c) something else you’ve been dying to post in a comment.
Be sure to use the “Post a comment” box; do not reply to another comment…
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I can’t believe it’s been five years since my last Top Ten Spring Fragrances list, but yes, a look back confirms that fact. My tastes haven’t shifted much since then, yet I can somehow come up with plenty of new favorites. Of course, there are the fragrances that I consider part of my springtime “hall of fame”: Guerlain Apres l’Ondée and Chamade, Frederic Malle En Passant. These come into rotation every March or April, come rain or come shine (and lately, it’s been mostly rain). But, beyond these classics, I’m easily able to compile a list of other fragrances I’ve been wearing or will be wearing over the next month or two.
What to wear when the calendar says Spring, but the weather is still chilly and damp and dreary? I love to don Frederic Malle L’Eau d’Hiver during that indecisive kind of weather, perhaps because it walks a fine line between warm and cool, soft and crisp…
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Posted by Robin
on
4 April 2013
If you had told me when I started this blog that one day in the not-too-distant future, many of my favorite oddball niche brands would be studiously courting mainstream fragrance customers with variations on clean summery colognes and that Lush — Lush! a mall chain store! — would be making some of the most daring and unusual fragrances around, I’m sure I would have scoffed. But that’s about how things have turned out. I hope that a) this last crop of Lush fragrances — so far, we’ve reviewed Furze, Sun, Flower’s Barrow and Sikkim Girls — is finding an audience and that b) the success doesn’t go to their heads. Please, no Lush Sport L’Eau or Lush Oud Noir Intense, ok?
The Voice of Reason is one of the weirder fragrances from the recent collection, and I would not guess that it’s going to be a big seller, but adventurous perfumistas will find it worth their while to give it a shot…
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I’ve been a Lush customer for over a decade, and I’ve followed the various permutations of the company’s fragrance line with interest, from B Never Too Busy to Be Beautiful to Gorilla Perfume and everything in between. Lush’s latest fragrance line has delighted me so far; as Robin has said, Mark and Simon Constantine continue to produce “unusual, well-crafted and reasonably priced perfumes whilst seemingly paying no mind to the conventions that rule the rest of the fragrance industry.”
Sikkim Girls is described as “subtle, seductive, heady, exotic, floral…frangipani, jasmine, vanilla and tuberose conjure up exotic climes and heady possibilities.” Its name comes from an anecdote related by the musician Sheema Mukherjee: Mukherjee met a café owner in Darjeeling who claimed that his son-in-law had been lured away by two “Sikkim girls,” unlikely sirens who entranced him with their feminine wiles despite being fully, even modestly, dressed. Its white floral notes, appropriately enough, are traditional but surprisingly heady, not to mention quite long-lasting on the skin…
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