Love is in the Air

February has landed and with it all the corny yet weirdly enticing thoughts of love potions and amorous gifts. So in the interests of brightening up your days and helping you dream a bit, Perfume Shrine will devote posts up till Valentine's Day to scents of love.

Many fragrances, especially feminine ones, include "love" or "amour" in their name. Whether they represent the romantic idea to your nose is another matter. For what is worth, here are some.



Kenzo Amour is one of the cuddliest offerings recently and the beautiful, design lacquer style bottles in white, fuschia or orange are enough to make you want to own one. The notes are: top of cherry blossom, rice and white tea; heart of frangipani and heliotrope, and base of thanaka wood, vanilla and musk. The whole smells slightly powdery and fluffingly vanillic with the merest hint of oriental sakura (cherry blossom).
It also ran a beautifully shot, romantic commercial in Bali, which you can watch here:


(uploaded by Julie73b)

This year they have a new variation, a limited edition with graphic designs on the bottle called "Indian Holi" (click to see).

The most wonderful boxed presentation with lovely fragrances inside is by L'artisan Parfumeur: Les épices de la passion trio of 15ml/05.oz bottles of eau de toilette.
Safran Troublant (saffron, vanilla, sandalwood and red rose), Piment Brulant (hot pepper, poppy, chocolate and clove), and Poivre Piquant (white pepper, creamy milk, liquorice and honey)



Available from Lucky Scent for 75$ and lovely to look at it is also a collection versatile enough to be worn in different occassions and various weather conditions (the Poivre is very nice in the heat)


Other companies also explored the love theme with varying results.



There is Amor Amor by Cacharel in its deep red bottle, bursting with fruity sweetness; if you are after that sort of thing, that is. It is pretty popular. Notes include: pink grapefruit, blood orange, sweet mandarin and black currant, apricot, red rose, jasmine melati flower, lily of the valley, vanilla. In 2006 they came out with their first flanker, Elixir Passion with a thorned rose depicted in white on the bottle and a rather more orientalised base. This year they have adorned the bottle with tiny silver diamanté in the shape of hearts:kitschy and cute.


Much obligingly they have also issued a men's version, Amor Homme (which isn't half bad! In fact I prefer it myself): a traditional introductory fougere.


Estée Lauder launched a variation on Beautiful last year, called Beautiful Love which plays into the lushness of tuberose with good results, as you can read here.



Guerlain have gone the Barbie way with their Colors of Love fragrance, "a powdery floral, the juice opens on notes of grapefruit, kiwi, passion fruit and violet, leading to a heart of rose, mimosa, cassia flower and iris. The base is a blend of musk and ambrette seed". Barring the promising ambrette seed there, I have failed to see the appeal of this one which is an uncharacteristic to Guerlain as is George Lezenby to the James Bond canon. If you want to get a Guerlain to celebrate Valentine's Day, get your man some <L'instant pour Homme: purring sex....



Or if the recipent is a lucky female, the iconic Shalimar , "the scent of temptation" inspired by the most romantic tale of them all, has a glorious Black Mystery version out: a limited edition in a collector's bottle in deepest black.




Last but not least, Ayala Moriel, the natural perfumer from Vancourer, has a great idea for a shared loving potion: Immortelle L'Amour perfume and scented tea that you can both sip to bring on the amorous mood...
Immortelle L'Amour is a lovely fragrance that merits its own review soon, but suffice to say that it plays on maple-like nuances of immortelle absolute, paired with delectable rooibos touches and vanilla capturing the aroma of Tire d’Erable.

There is also a special offer for the upcoming days taken from her site:

Immortelle l'Amour Parfum + Tea Gift Set

Now on special discount - when you buy both, receive a $20 discount Original price $140 - now priced at only $120! - Essentially, you are getting the previous price for the parfum ($100) and tea ($20).

There are of course more traditionally "valentine's day" offerings, like Roses & Chcolate, although I haven't tried that one and can't vouch for how it smells. What is more interesting though is that she also offers jewelry with solid perfume captured inside, such as poison rings or pendants that make for a wonderful adornment, to be dabbed on when the crucial moment arises...




In the meantime and if you have a couple of minutes to click away, you can do a psychology test about your level of love on this site here.

Pics from ebay, parfumdepub, flickr, scandelines.de, luckyscent and ayalamoriel.com

The Cult of the Celebrity Scent: perfume history

We have been led to think that celebrity perfumes, that is perfumes issued under the name of a well-known fodder-for-the-tabloids real person, were a recent phenomenon, established by Coty with Jennifer Lopez's trend-setting Glow in 2002. Which led to the current avalanche of so many derivatives, versions and interpretations that every possible Z-list actress, sportsman, media-celebritoid-du-nanosecond (Jane Goody) or indeed writer (Danielle Steel) has one issued under their belts. However, today I am proposing that it is actually not so!

Yes, Perfume Shrine is proud to propose that the celebrity scent is not a phenomenon of the too recent past after all! Although famous people had been used to promote scent since the concept of perfume as the aspirational ticket to a more glamorous life, with most notable example the classic stint of Catherine Deneuve for Chanel No.5, there was a very distinct phase during the 80s in which famous people agreed to licence fragrances bearing their own name and into the early 90s. I came across a very interesting article from the New York Times, as far back as 1989, which talks about several of them in relation to male celebrities selling perfume to women and it has striken me as astonishing that they describe the process of celebrity-named perfume not as revolutionary, but as "evolutionary" (their words). That's back in 1989!!
I especially liked how they ended the piece:

''The name and the personality can sell the fragrance the first time,'' Mr. Shore said. ''But it's up to the scent to sell the next bottle.''

Tell me about it...

The most impressive aspect of them all is that several of those celebrities from all walks of fame did not only issue one fragrance under their own name, but as is the case with Delon, Pavarotti, Liz Taylor and others, they embarked on a whole series of them in the following years (which of course shows something about the initial reception).
Of course the main difference with today might be that all those people had a definitive body of work behind them to back up their fame...which is arguably not the case with today's celebrities ("Posh" Beckham, anyone?)

This post is far from being the definitive resource on the issue, nor does it intend to; yet some of those ads and bottles, characteristic of that era, have been chosen for your enjoyement.
Some of these fragrances, notably most of those issued under French actors' names, were quite good and they all became collector's items after discontinuation. Which is not as uniformal as one might think: some are still in production!

French actors have shown a special interest in perfumery, perhaps through osmosis, usually to very good results ~like in the line of perfumes under Alain Delon's name.




In some cases, the results have been fabulous and legendary indeed, as in the case of Deneuve, the eponymous long since discontinued scent by Catherine Deneuve circulating under an Avon licence in the 1980s.


Other French actors have also dabbed their hands with the magic of perfume. Jean Louis Trintignant for instance, who will be indelibly remembered by romantic souls for his role in Un Homme and Une Femme from 1966.



Italians couldn't have been left out...Sophia Loren was the first to strike a deal with Coty as a matter of fact.


As well as those of a more exotic lineage...may I present you the feminine oriental by Egyptian hearthrob Omar Shariff, whose deep, mysterious eyes have promised so much in Dr.Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and ~my personal favourite A-list actor fest from the 60s~ The Night of the Generals.



American cinema idols couldn't leave this promising field out of their business aspirations.
Liz Taylor had a go with what proved to be an enduring bestseller: White Diamonds.



The enterprise spawned numerous products...



Others created more inspirational fragrances, with a shorter shelf-life however. Uninhibited by Cher is discontinued, but available through online discounters.


Some of the actresses have had a long stint at another brand that produces perfume, yet decided to also launch their own upon completion of their contract. Isabella Rosellini couldn't have had a better initial launch of a fragrance after her name: Manifesto is an unusual feminine laced with basil and tonic herbs redolent of an open window to the view of the island of Stromboli, where her parents met.


Others yet were just incredibly famous models. Ines de la Fressange was quite a myth during her Lagerfeld collaboration for Chanel. She still is a most impressive human specimen and a very pleasing, kind personality to get to know. Her fragrance is also quite good.

Having a huge fortune came with many business ideas. One of them was perfume: Gloria Vanderbilt.



The art world of course has its own accolytes. From the sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle and her eponymous mighty chype with the mating serpents...




...to the much more commercialised Marilyn by Andy Warhol project. Clever concept exploiting two celebrities in one fragrance, or is it?


The music world is diverse.
The late opera superstar Lucianno Pavarotti has had at least 2 fragrances in his name, a masculine and a feminine one. Very good too, actually!



The mega-super-giga star who has fallen, Michael Jackson had one issued when he was a little...darker. The packaging however is resolutely white: was he trying to tell us something even then?


French pop stars also had to get involved in this: et voilà Johnny Halliday. From the looks of it, a whole line of fragrances in fact.


Who would have thought that even The King had one bearing his name? Yes, there is an Elvis cologne out.


Some people are famous by association: Elvi's wife is perennially pretty (minus a surgery or too) and had a series of fragrances out, the nicest advertisement of which is the one for Moments.


Classical ballet seemed like a very disciplined world to be associated with frivolous commodities like perfumel, especially as its most brilliant stars in the galaxy hail from the former Soviet Union, which let's face it, wasn't exactly the most inviting market for perfume or luxury goods....
Pavlova is named after the famous prima ballerina.



Baryshnikov defected and reaped the benefits of a full westernised existence, eponymous fragrance included. He also had one after his nickname, Misha. Kewl...


Last but not least, even tennis stars deserve their own: Gabriellas Sabatini is a household name in Latin American, not less so because of her perfumes still circulating, such as Magnetic.



Do you recall of more? Let us know in the comments.

Pics courtesy of okadi,parfumdepub, Ebay, edirectory.co.uk, toutsurdeneuve, aunt judy's attic: For entertainement purposes only.

Et Lux in Tenebris: Incense Rosé by Andy Tauer

How could all the autumnal joy of eating a bright citrus fruit marry to the somber ambience of incense? And how does this immerse itself in the heritage of centuries and centuries of aromatization and meditation through fragrant smoke?
Incense Rosé the new fragrance by Andy Tauer is a proposition towards this very end.


Incense Rosé was announced as

"A fragrance that breaths
in the tradition of perfumery,
capturing the floral beauty
hiding in smoking frankincense".

Andy Tauer spent months measuring CO2 extracted Frankinscence (Boswellia serrata)in large cylinders, the shining golden viscous liquid aromatizing the Swiss laboratory into an immense church. And out of the shadows, there came light: lux in tenebris.


(uploaded by Catholiques)


A big dollop of clementine, juicy, dribbling down in all its exhuberant glory is greeting me as I spray Incense rosé on. Sustained for the length of its life span much the same way carbon deteriorates little by little in all living matter to leave but a whiff of its quinta essentia . Floral elements of a rich, lush and dark rosiness (never too sweet and with no powderiness or makeup feel) emerge from the depths of the woody and resiny embrace of viscous labdanum and bitter myrrh. Labdanum resin, the dark brown material of an illustrious past and the reigning star of many quality orientals was a first for Tauer as he had never included it in one of his unique fragrances before per his words. Here it makes for a 4% diluted slowly in ethanol, which acts as a counterpoint to the brighter, hesperidic elements, anchoring them and giving them a soft darkness like the velvety glove of an approaching night.

Complex, with a spicy herbal touch like bay, consisting of 35 materials of an inherently multinuanced character as they are natural essences, Incense rosé takes one into the crepuscular trail of light that illuminates a sunny autumnal afternoon. Its warmth and radiance are especially simpatico to those cold, cold days we are having, lending them a bit of its mirth. The more the fragrance stays on the skin the more it melds into frankincense smokiness. Much more orientalised and opulent than Incense Extrême of a lone monk chanting under his horsehair shirt (but I personally love it so!), Incense Rosé is intended for those who are not quite willing to leave the earthy delights just yet.

In the Eau de Parfum concentration it has very good tenacity and is quite unisex, although at the same time rounder than Incense Extrême which might be perceived as more masculine.

Official Notes for Incense Rosé:
Clementine, bergamot, castor,
Bulgarian rose, orris, Texan cedar wood,
incense, labdanum, myrrh, patchouli, ambergris.

Front cover illustration of flyer: by Dezsö Bödi, hailing from Eastern Europe is a good friend of Pascal, the shop owner of the Medieval art & life shop in Zurich. "When he is bored he makes arabesque drawings", according to Andy, just like the one on this flyer for Incense Rosé.

I especially like and respect Andy's thinking:

"I start wondering where we are heading with all these luxury things going on around us and that maybe it would be time for a contra punto. Something subversive, like a fragrance that everyone wants, that is selling for almost nothing, but that you can not get if you are an oligarch or otherwise rich.
And I think about another contra punto: Make a really good, rich fragrance, with lots of really good rich ingredients, reduce the entire packaging to a glass bottle and nothing else. The simplest bottle you can get. And sell this as zero fancy line".

His fragrances are indeed quality potions in spartan packaging with zero fluffiness: to the point!


For Tauer's other incense fragrance, Incense Extrême click here

For an in depth examination on Incense fragrances, please check our Incense Series, clicking here.

Incense Extrême has juct launched.
Incense rosé will come out in March.
Available through Andy Tauer site, Luckyscent, Luilei and First in Fragrance.

Pic of clementine by citrusboy/flickr. Flyer from Andy Tauer's site.

A reminder and a short announcement

May I remind you that the lucky draw for a free sample of Nombre Noir is still running. If you want to have your name entered, please leave a comment saying so.
Closing day: 31st January and the winner will be drawn on 1st February, to be announced shortly thereafter.

Please visit back tomorrow for the first review on the new Andy Tauer fragrance Insence Rosé, due out in March.

Unveiling a myth: Iris Gris by Jacques Fath (fragrance review)

 A fragrance history snippet cum fragrance review on the "best perfume ever" according to the legend...

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu

The day I finally smelled the peach in Mitsouko – a full-fleshed downy peach bulging through the seamless composition – was the day after I smelled the mythical Iris Gris, by Jacques Fath. As though the latter had opened up an unknown dimension in the former: the same peach note, known as undecalactone or aldehyde C-14 (though it technically isn’t an aldehyde), pushing itself through once I had grounds for comparison.

Thanks to Luca Turin’s The Secret of Scent, I knew both fragrances shared the note. His few lines on the tragically rare Iris Gris, the best iris ever in his opinion, had spurred my curiosity. But I didn’t hold much hope of smelling it outside the Versailles Osmothèque: each, rare flacon seemed to go for astronomical price… The French couturier Jacques Fath launched it in 1947: but he died at 43, in 1954, and though Fath perfumes continued to be produced, the expensive Iris Gris was soon discontinued: hence its extreme rarity.

No hope at all, that is, until I happened on an open-air flea market right next to my place, under the aerial metro that runs past the Eiffel tower. Somehow, that Saturday, I knew there was a perfume waiting there for me. Eyes peeled, I wandered from stall to stall, thought I spotted old flacons, was quickly disappointed when the seller told me they weren’t perfume… And nearly fainted when she did point me towards a table where she had a couple.

It was sitting there. Iris Gris. No more than 1/5 evaporated, sealed, with box. Impeccable colour. Reasonable price for what it fetches in auctions. I didn’t haggle, and stole away with my prize, mind reeling. I knew I’d gotten hold of a myth.


The great unsealing took place in a café right by the Palais-Royal, with perfumer and perfume historian Octavian Sever Coifan. He was the man I needed for the occasion: he’d smelled the Osmothèque reproduction and could vouch for its condition (authenticity was never in doubt, because of the intact seal).

It is impeccable. Fresh as the day it was composed, which Octavian explained to me was due to the fact that it certainly didn’t have any hesperidic top notes: those are the ones that spoil in vintage perfume.
But what jumped out immediately was the peach. As smooth and downy cheeked as a Renoir model’s, sweet without being tooth-aching syrupy.

Octavian held out blotters of orris absolute, irone (the molecule that makes iris smell of iris: the higher the concentration, the higher price the orris fetches) and ionones (the violet smell) for comparison.

And magically, iris came to the fore. Its slight metallic tinge softened by the peach, but definitely iris – and iris with a smile.

Now every time I picked up the blotter, I got either peach or iris. A bit like in those 3-D postcards we used to have as children: tilt it one way, and you get the peach. Tilt it the other way, and it morphs into the iris. If there are other notes (and there are in Octavian’s detailed breakdown), I just couldn’t pick them up. It’s that seamlessly blended: like a “gorge de pigeon” (pigeon-throat) taffetas – a comparison Luca Turin uses in The Secret of Scent ~the iris-peach combination is woven into the very fabric of the scent. Then as the fragrance evolves, the iris-peach weaves somehow tightens and melds into a single, smooth and utterly unique scent: a joyful iris, a fleshed-out iris as light-hearted as an aldehydic, but without the “old-fashioned” feel that some people get out of aldehydic scents because of their classic status, or that “hairspray” smell that comes from hairspray actually being scented to resemble the likes of Chanel N°5.

The overall effect is amazingly modern and spare: it could’ve been composed yesterday and it could be reissued with great success tomorrow, and walk rings around Kelly Calèche (which I admire, by the way). Unlike some vintage scents that feel very much of their time and need a special frame of mind to get into – much as a vintage dress does – this feels as young and joyful as the day it was composed.

Jacques Fath was indeed one of the first couturiers to think of very young women in his fresh and sophisticated designs: of course, young women of the time were quite a bit more sophisticated than they would be in the following decade. With his matinee-idol good looks, the designer to Hollywood stars (he designed Rita Hayworth’s wedding dress) was very much a star in his own right, as famous in his time as Christian Dior whose New Look he interpreted in a more supple, playful manner. A gifted colourist, he was said to favour amethyst and grey – which may have partly been the inspiration for Iris Gris…


The scent itself was composed by Vincent Roubert, who authored the classic leather fragrance Knize Ten in 1924, as well several Coty fragances, including the best-selling floral aldehydic L’Aimant in 1927 (which was thought to be Coty’s answer to Chanel N°5), but also the masculine Fath Green Water (1927), still produced but with a very different formula.

The house of Fath has recently revived its clothing line with designer Lizzie Disney at the helm. Here’s hoping they reissue the original Iris Gris, without tweaking the formula at all. In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying every drop with the tight throat that comes from releasing a long-imprisoned genie from its bottle, knowing it’ll never come back…

For another take on Iris Gris, visit Octavian's blog clicking here.



Pics: Images: Bettina in a white satin battle-dress jacket, fall/winter 1949-1950, from Fath archives, excerpted from Mode du Siècle (éditions Assouline); Jacques Fath in his studio, courtesy couturier.couturiers.ru; peach iris courtesy jupiterimages.com.