Posted by Erin
on
16 December 2011
I have always liked mimosa in fragrances. Rather, I should clarify: I have always liked Acacia farnesiana (cassie) and/or scents with heliotropin. The term “mimosa” is a bit of a moving target, even in botany, as there are about 400 species or cultivars of plants under this genus, mostly with pink or mauve flowers, in addition to many other shrubs or trees that produce poofy, cartoonish blossoms and were historically lumped in under the name by the public — silk tree being an example. The sweet, warm, powdery smell we encounter in perfumery, with its facets of almond, honey, violet, craft paste and fresh cucumber, comes from distillation of the soft, feathery yellow petal clusters of the acacia species that most of us in the West know as mimosa flowers. One of my most vivid and happy memories of visits to France is the bushels of mimosa branches tossed out during “La Bataille de Fleurs” or flower parade during the Carnaval de Nice, which winds its way along what must be one of the world’s most beautiful thoroughfares, the Promenade des Anglais.
For all its cheerful straight-forwardness, mimosa appears to be a hard note to use in perfume. There are very few credible soliflores and many mainstream fragrances with a strong mimosa presence come off as airheaded and shampoo-like. With the IFRA restrictions on heliotropin, it has become even more difficult, if not impossible, to base a fragrance around the flower. Looking to include perfumes with some availability in this list, I found that almost all the mimosa fragrances I’d enjoyed at the beginning of my perfume education in the mid-noughties were discontinued or reformulated. Caron Farnesiana, long the great classic of mimosa perfumes, has gone through so many versions that it is hard to keep track of them all…
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Posted by Angela
on
12 December 2011
In one of my favorite reviews in Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, Luca Turin tells of seeing a busty woman on the London Underground wearing a tee shirt that read “All this and brains too.” He compares that “vulgar-but-wily combination” to Lancôme Trésor.
Trésor’s apricot-tinged rose is the pulchritude, and the vetiver is the intellect. I get it. But to me the rose is more Dinah Shore than Jayne Mansfield, and the vetiver doesn’t quite rate Mensa. That’s o.k. Trésor is entering its third decade not because it’s a sensual shock, but because it’s a crowd pleaser…
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Posted by Robin
on
26 October 2011
Grojsman never once mentions perfume’s power to attract. Instead, she emphasizes its power to make a woman feel like a goddess. “The perfume should be a mood elevator or an elevator of your femininity,” she says. “It’s medicine for the soul.”
— Perfumer Sophia Grojsman talks about her career in Perfume 'Nose' Conjures Up Perfect Scents at The Jewish Daily Forward.
Posted by Angela
on
1 February 2010
For a perfume lover, discovering a terrific scent that has flown under many people’s radar is exciting. The thrill amplifies when the perfume only costs about $10 a bottle. Now that my backup bottle is safely on its way, I’m ready to share my latest discovery: Bill Blass Nude.
I first heard of Nude years ago when I read Laren Stover’s The Bombshell Manual of Style’s chapter on Bombshell perfumes. Most of the fragrances she lists are grand old perfumes, including the numbered Chanels, Guerlain Mitsouko and L’Heure Bleue, Rochas Femme, and Lanvin My Sin. Among these heavyweights is Nude, which the manual describes as “a striking floral composition” and creating “a mental state of near undress”.
Still, Bill Blass? Wrack my brain as I might, all I could call forth were images of conservatively dressed women of a certain age with small, groomed dogs. Not really the feel I’m going for…
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Posted by Robin
on
8 October 2009
Yves Saint Laurent’s latest, Parisienne, is aimed at a woman too old for Elle but too young for the harder-hitting, from-another-era classics Opium and Paris. A woman in her 30s, in other words. What else do we know about this woman? Well, she’s free, in body and spirit. She’s not from Paris, but Paris has adopted her because she knows how to love and how to live. She’s out at the break of day in last night’s evening clothes, but that’s not scandalous, it’s free (or so says she).1 If you’re wondering what she looks like, well, she looks like Kate Moss, in black leather, writhing about in the back of a car whilst having flashbacks about writhing about on a bed.
Elle was, I thought, nice enough if rather predictable, encompassing as it did elements from all the then-prevailing trends in mainstream perfumes for young ladies. It was hard to know what to expect from Parisienne. The name and the bottle design are obviously derived from the original Yves Saint Laurent Paris fragrance, which launched in 1983, and the scent is credited to perfumer Sophia Grojsman, who created Paris (for Parisienne, she was working in conjunction with Sophie Labbé). The notes — vinyl accord, cranberry, blackberry, damask rose, violet, peony, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood and musk — sounded like they might indicate a modern variation on Paris, and some sources called it “an edgier, younger scent than the brand’s iconic Paris fragrance”.2 But mentions of Paris are conspicuously absent from the Yves Saint Laurent website and from the press release for Parisienne…
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