Friday, October 16, 2015

Halloween Preparations: Scent & Beauty

With the fun time of the year coming up soon, I have compiled an easy guide that is all treat, no trick, with various fragrance suggestions and beauty products that evoke pumpkins, ghouls, jack o'lanterns and naughty playtime. You can find it on this link on Fragrance.About.com

pic found via

If you're buying gifts for late October or November occasions there is also another guide with expert quotes from perfumer Aaron Way and niche boutique owner David Pirrota which you can access on this link. 

And since many of our readers are 80s and 90s folks, you might enjoy this slideshow paying homage to the 25 years (25, man!!!) anniversary of the airing of Beverly Hills 90210 Spelling produced TV-show. Find out what fragrance would Kelly, Brenda, Dylan, Valerie and all the other kids at West Beverly High would wear if given half a chance.

And please feel free to share your own fragrance & beauty suggestions/experiences in the comments below. 

12 comments:

  1. i'll go with the "magie noire", definitely!

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    1. That's usually my pick as well. :-)

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  2. Miss Heliotrope09:13

    I've always wondered whether those pumpkin pie theories came from purely US studies - it's hardly a common foodstuff beyond Nth America. There are other cinnamon/vanilla combinations out there.

    As an aside, during our 6 years residence in an American collegetown, I enjoyed the Halloween stuff, but noticed - students, anyway - dressing less as witches and more as ladies of negotiable affection. So maybe one of the earlier slideshows would help...

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    1. They very specifically do come from purely US studies. It's the Hirsh directed stydy at the Chicago=based Smell and Taste Research Foundation. Licorice is also quite US-centric. Not so common elsewhere though anise-scented things abound (pastis/ouzo/fennel cookies etc) in other cultures so this is yet another clue.

      Regarding the dress up codes of college students I think that leaning to dress up codes of ladies of negotiable affection (ha great euphemism!) is more like universal. It looks like anyone would like to feel like a lady of said manners for a day? Who knows.... :-D
      Great comment!! (as always)

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    2. Miss Heliotrope07:23

      Thanks - it's not mine, it's from the one & only Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. His use of language is both funny & clever.

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    3. A ha, didn't know that. Yes, funny and clever is the best possible combination. Thanks for letting me know :-)

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  3. I tried Jesus Del Pozo's Halloween in Miami. I'd describe it as a 'cool tropical', not sure why he named it Halloween.
    My Fall perfume rotation always includes-
    Laura Biagiotti's Roma - Reminds me of falling leaves, wooly sweaters, & hot cocoa.
    Lolita Lempicka- Spiced like all the goodies of from Halloween through Xmas.- When LL came out in 1997 I was working at Nordstrom's in San Francisco. On Halloween night after closing we helped decorated the entire store in a 'Winter Woodland' theme with little elves holding bottles of LL in snow covered forests with faux icicles & little cottages that lit up. SO FUN!
    Tihota- Tis the season to be gourmand-y !!! Fa la la la lahhh!!! It's the best vanilla gourmand I own & can be layered with all the above mentioned.
    OOOOooo! I just have to gloat- the ONLY bargain I found in Moscow was Houbigant's Orangers en Fleurs for $82- it will be soooo perfect in the steamy monsoon months of India next year!!!

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    1. Thanks Mimi for sharing both your memories and your new find! (wow it doesn't really look like a bargain though it is. Things have got so expensive over the years)

      Stumped on the name on the del Pozo scent; I think he wanted to evoke something that coincided with his collections. Not specifically the celebration. The scent is oscillating between warm and cool so maybe that's the "hint" of the Day of the Dead creeping below?
      At any rate....

      Lolita is a mganificent concept advertorially. I always LOVED that enchanted forest story. So cool you had the decoration set up to this script!

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  4. I used and loved Magie Noire, It was the late eighties/early nineties, and that scent went wonderfully with Madrid cool fall. Then it dissapear from my radar, I moved to warmer and more humid places and forgot about it. A few months back, when in Sephora Barcelona, I suddenly remember it and asked for it. I was told it doesn't exist anymore and if I wanted something much, much better (her words) I could try Tresor Noir. I decline the offer.
    Please tell me Magie Noire is back!

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    1. Magie Noire is available on counters I believe. I don't think it ever really disappeared though it went through a patch of erratic juice accuracy. It's right now on the Lancome website. It does smell rather different than the vintage you recall, but still much better than many of the things on counters right now. Tresor Noir is a flanker of Tresor; I can't for the life of me fathom how a SA would think a Magie Noire customer would be interested in anything resembling Tresor even one bit!! If they said they were a JPG Classique customer before, then yes, but MN? Such a very different vibe!

      At any rate please do try MN again and let me know how it feels for you now!

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    2. yes I could not understand her, why she was recomending me Tresor Noir... I have used also Tresor, many years ago, and has nothing to do with Magie Noire, so even if Tresor Noir is darker than regular Tresor (I don't know), for me Tresor was all about roses and peaches, nothing similar to the spices and woods in MN.
      I don't know if it's the same where you live/shop, but Sephora shops in Spain don't have the most knowledgeable SAs in the world. Recently, I was told there, that Eau Sauvage was an old-man's scent and that Sauvage was the thing to buy. I understand they want to move the new scents stock, but not knowing the heritage of the brands you're selling is having badly trained workers and in my book, it gives a poor impression on the shop.

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    3. The deafult setting of any SA (in any shop except a specialist perfumerie) is to push the latest edition whatever that may be.
      I think the comments (especially for Eau Sauvage) were to "guide" you into a purchase. I doubt she was criticizing the scent itself; she was selling you a demographic. What gets sold in numbers is what you must buy otherwise you're deviating from the path and risk having your intended recipient unsatisfied ("young men buy Sauvage and old men buy Eau Sauvage so do you want him to smell -God forbid- oooooold???")
      I find this transcends mentalities on many things. You're supposed to like what your peers like. If you're different worse luck to you. It's best not to perpetuate these cliches so kudos if you went on and defiantly bought the Eau Sauvage instead!

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