As someone who adopted a Goth style in her late teens and early twenties, and who is still obsessed with early American gravestones, I couldn’t help being intrigued by Skin & Bones. It’s an all-purpose, oil-based moisturizer made entirely from natural ingredients, and it caught my eye because it’s packaged in a dark glass bottle with calligraphic lettering on the label (shown below); the company’s logo (shown above) is a winged skull of the sort you’d see carved into a very old tombstone.
Skin & Bones’ ingredients are jojoba oil and essential oils of ylang-ylang, frankincense, myrrh, grapefruit, jasmine, lemon, rosewood, cedarwood, and sandalwood. As the Skin & Bones website explains, the essential oils were chosen for their aromatherapeutic properties as well as their benefits to skin. The one that dominates the overall fragrance of Skin & Bones is ylang-ylang. I enjoyed Erin’s recent post about ylang-ylang fragrances, and I recommend it as a primer on this note’s background and characteristics. I’m another person who fell in love with ylang-ylang during my early niche-fragrance sampling days, and I’m still happy to encounter it. Skin & Bones’ ylang-ylang has a brightness that is enhanced by the accompanying lemon notes, and a sensuality that is reinforced by the rosewood and sandalwood. It’s a linear, versatile blend. Incidentally, the dark purple “Violet-Glass” bottle is functional as well as cool-looking…
Like many others who share my hobby, I believe, I was wary of florals when I started my perfume education. I was willing to countenance many a gourmand or woody amber barbarity, but I avoided flowers — and especially white flowers. I was going through a phase of sampling niche series perfumes — the Comme des Garçons incense fragrances, the Bois line of Serge Lutens — and I regarded white flowers as unsuitable material for such elaboration. Comme des Garçons White, purporting to be a more floral alternative to their original Eau de Parfum, instead smelled quite properly of sour spices and wood, and I viewed Lutens’ Un Lys and Tubéreuse Criminelle as singular and humorous experiments, fascinating to sniff on a blotter, I thought, but created with a kind of magisterial, Gallic indifference towards anybody wearing them. As a smell, white floral notes were heady, insistent and complex: in a word, “perfumey”. In perfume, didn’t that make them too, well… obvious?
But I couldn’t help noticing I was drawn to ylang-ylang. I had dried blotters all over my place at that time, and still do: I use them as bookmarks, clothing or car fresheners and post-its. Though I was doggedly wearing my modern roots and resins, my incense and tea scents, I was forced to admit that I stood transfixed when a lush tropical cloud of ylang breathed up out of my reference books, purse or underwear drawer. There were so many facets to the smell…
The Bubble Roome is a Brooklyn-based company offering handmade bath and body products in a range of five natural fragrance blends; my favorite for this time of year is the Ylang Ylang & Cinnamon blend, which is sensual and cozy at the same time. To date, I’ve tried the Bath & Body Wash and Hemp Oil Lotion in this scent.
The Bubble Roome’s entire line of bath and body products is paraben-free; the body wash is also sulfate-free, and includes chamomile and allantoin to soothe the skin, as well as fruit- and sugar-based alpha hydroxy acids and salicylic acid for exfoliation. It’s a gentle, low-lathering formula, and I find that it works best if I shake it before using. The lotion contains aloe vera, glycerin, coconut oil, and hemp oil to nourish and protect the skin, and it has the perfect consistency: easy to dispense and quick to absorb, but just thick enough to feel luxurious. The fragrances are all composed of essential oils, and they have various aromatherapeutic properties. Ylang-ylang, as The Bubble Roome reminds us, “is considered one of nature’s aphrosidiacs.” It’s the small but intensely scented flower of the cananga tree, native to the Philippines and Indonesia, where it’s traditionally spread on the marriage beds of newly-wed couples…
The Bubble Roome is a Brooklyn-based company offering handmade bath and body products in a range of five natural fragrance blends; my favorite for this time of year is the Ylang Ylang & Cinnamon blend, which is sensual and cozy at the same time. To date, I’ve tried the Bath & Body Wash and Hemp Oil Lotion in this scent.
