The winner of the draw...

...for the Aftelier mini-atomisers is Coach Fabulous. Congratulations and please email me using Contact with your shipping data so I can have this in the mail for you soon!

Thanks everyone for the enthusiastic participation and till the next one!

May 1st: A Lily of the Valley Tradition

The charming custom of offering lily of the valley on May 1st in France dates further back than one might think: it was Charles IX who first offered these tiny bell-shaped and deliciously fragrant flowers to his mother, Catherine de Medici, as a good luck charm. The custom stuck ever since.
Happy May 1st!

For those of you so inclined, you can read about Lily of the Valley (or Muguet in French) in detail, its history, role in perfumery as a raw material, ways to render a synthetic LOTV note as well as a list of fragrances celebrating this green floral note consulting my older article: Lily of the Valley as Perfumery Material and Fragrances with this Note on this link.

 photo via hannasform.blogspot.com

Aftelier Sepia: fragrance review

There is an eerie feeling upon coming across a ghost town, the very cinematic experience of bypassing a highway into a smaller, abandonded scenic route into the vast countryside; all silence in the distance and blue skies passing you by above. In America ghost towns are something of a fixture in the collective unconscious, a remnant of the wild west past, the advent of industrialism and the building of autoroutes erasing bustling cities from the map.
The desolate beauty of the ruins, standing abandonded as if replete with tales of lives spent heard in whispers on the wind that blows amongst the delapidated buildings, inspired indie perfume Mandy Aftel (Aftelier perfumes) into creating an all-naturals perfume that would put decay into an elegant context, into a wearable form translating the ravages of time.

via lonewolfphotos.com

Sepia by Aftelier, the resulting perfume, utilizes the most refined and dignified of materials of sweet decay: oud wood mulling over floating ambergris; blanched, matured, patina-bearing, ghost-like...
The musty feel of both oud and cepes (the latter being the raw and damp smelling, peculiar essence of mushrooms, exalted in Mandy's Cepes and Tuberose) come out in the composition as seen through a sieve; their chunkier elements surfacing, while the rest is retreating into the distance like the vision of a ghost town while traversing through those abandonded roads of the west. Even though intense -typically gourmand, but not here!- notes such as cocoa, coffee and the multi-nuanced white tobacco are also featured in the formula, the weaving is tight, none of them peaking above the others. You'd be hard-pressed to distinguish one from the other. This dry woods perfume doesn't make any compromise.

Instead the floralcy of yellow mandarin along austere cedarwood and the musty notes open Sepia, predesposing someone for something strong which soon belies that impression: the fragrance becomes earthier, darker and more mysterious while continuously subtle. Aftel used other intriguing essences, such as pink lotus for a lighter feel, a hint of wine facet from berry notes, full bodied indolic jasmine and labdanum, usually the recipe for an animalic floral.

Sepia however defies such predictable seduction tricks. It is above all a play on atmosphere, an inwards  journey into what is left in our soul upon encountering a mirage, an illusion, a decaying thing of beauty. Is it there or is it not? And as such it is best savoured intellectually and with all our senses on the alert.

Notes for Aftelier Sepia:

Top: blood cedarwood, yellow mandarin, pink grapefruit

Middle: pink lotus, strawberry, jasmine grandiflorum, cocoa, coffee

Base: flowering tobacco, oud, indole, ambergris, cepes, labdanum


Sepia is available in liquid parfum (1.4oz), EDP spray and sample spray atomizer, mini bottle and liquid sample vial directly through the Aftelier site. 

A Pleasant Surprise

Ever have done something which was still in a liquid state, so to speak, walked away from it and then forgot all about it? This happened to me yesterday.

The FiFi Awaards Finalists Breakfast was held on April 27th at the Mandarin Oriental in NYC and long-distance I suddenly learn I made it to the 2012 Finalists for Editorial Excellence on my article published last December! My editor at The Perfume Magazine, Raphaella Barkley thus garnered two noms, the other being by her contributor Neil Stenberg. Congrats go to Victoria from Bois de Jasmin for her winning article. All the finalists of the editorial categories and perfume categories can be found on the Fifi Awards blog with links.

If you're interested to read my article on "On Making Sense out of Scents" (concerning the structure of perfume and why notes don't always correspond to what you smell), please refer to this link.

To friends who asked me in email why articles on here weren't in the run (never have been, actually), this is because although invited to, the blog isn't based in the US (even if it appears to sometimes thanks to readability across the pond), which is a basic requirement for entering. I have to thank Raphaella for both times picking my articles on her webzines, trusting in me and submitting them herself to such happy results. All accolades to her!

Win Aftelier perfumes: Giveaway of Sepia and Secret Garden

Here at the Shrine I have long tried to provide readers with the chance to try out expensive or rare samples on the cheap (actually for free! I pay for shipping, you don't pay for anything), knowing just how difficult it is to come across a precious vintage or how costly it is to obtain a precious, all naturals perfume. Sharing this passion for trying new things is perhaps the best satisfaction of them all. In that regard, I hope that several people have derived pleasure from the draws & giveaways hosted here and today is just another chance for one!

Up for grabs for one lucky winner are two small but substantial atomisers of Aftelier's latest Sepia perfume (review coming up shortly!) and Aftelier Secret Garden perfume. These all naturals perfumes are highly regarded and the sampling provides a chance of trying out before investing.
Enter a comment to be eligible for the draw. Draw is open internationally and expires on May 1st midnight.
And I'm leaving you with some soothing Renaissance music to savour on a Saturday morning.