Wandering Wonderland (Game & Giveaway)

Indie perfumer Roxana Villa of Roxana Illuminated Perfume has created a trial version of a green fragrance with rose at the heart titled "Smell Me". She will be giving away five samples of the fragrance as part of this blogging collective inspired by the tale of Alice in Wonderland.
GAME: To be entered to win a sample of "Smell Me" please visit each participating blog and determine which character from the story each blogger has assumed. E-mail your guess to Roxana (at) IlluminatedPerfume.com. Five winners will be chosen to receive a sample of the first edition trial of the fragrance!

"They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs"
~T.S Eliot Morning at the Window

Years back when I started perfume blogging I began with the enthusiasm of the passionate collector who was trying the plethora of new juice on the market as soon as they were available. Even though it was plenty, it was nowhere the sheer mushroom-sprouting-quality that has sprung lately. It was impressive just how involved and meticulous I had been in the project, first and second and third chorus echoeing in my ears "try this", "try this", "try that"... It was hard finding one's way into this enchanted land of fragrance, but once one did, everything began to have meaning and a passionate discourse among aficionados began concerning the relative merits of this or that. I recall I was grinning on several pretensions, as I continue to do. Some call me stregatto, others prefer to call me sane. The crux of the matter is that several things have changed as online perfume writing and online discussion of perfumes has evolved and we're seeing an expansion from all strata. I continue to file all in my big library and note little cryptic notes, which might make no sense, in the borders. Can I help anyone find their way in the entangled fragoland? It all depends on where you're going. And if you don't need to delineate a specific course, then it doesn't really matter which way you go and you're in for the ride down the rabbit's hole if you walk long enough. It's all good!


Check for hints of the other characters:
Roxana at Illuminated Perfume Journal
Heather at Memory and Desire Won't be participating after all due to personal reasons
Lucy Raubertas at Indie Perfumes
Beth Schreibman Gehring at The Windesphere Witch
Tom at PerfumeSmellin'Things: The hint is "quote the raven: 'teatime'"

Picture stills from the Disney film Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Mia Wasikowska courtesy of the guardian.co.uk for entertainment purposes. Alice illustration by Roxana Villa.

Parfums Piguet Re-issuing Another Classic

Robert Piguet is known for their excellent reconstructions of their old vintage portfolio, from Fracas and Bandit all the way down to the more recent Baghari, Cravache, Visa and Futur. It seems that the committee at Fashion Fragrances and Cosmetics and Joe Garces, who own the licence for the Robert Piguet brand of perfumes, have scored on the perfect resurrection: the magnificently individual and long-lost Calypso, on which we had rhapsodized in a manner befitting the ancient bard theme a while ago, is being re-issued with much fanfare. The official site declares: "A unique and powerful fragrance from Robert Piguet will be unveiled soon - check back often for release announcements."
Calypso then, you might as well get all revved up! Can you colour me super-excited!

The information is concrete, corroborated and beyond any doubt.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Robert Piguet news and reviews

Thanks to youstink and neoty26 for drawing my attention to it.

Jacomo Art Collection: Awakening of the Sleeping Beauty

The luxe brand Jacomo, which has graced us with the liquid emeralds of Silences and the elegant Anthracite pour homme and pour femme is back after its acquisition by the group Sarbec Cosmetics which had put it to slumber. A new art-inspired collection, of which the three first instalments ~in proper niche numerical fashion~ are being issued as we speak, is promising to put Jacomo back on the map of luxury perfumery where it deserves to be. Established in the 1970s, Jacomo has always travelled a bit under the radar for those not immersed in French perfumery. Yet their undeniable attention to detail in composing their perfumes has created a mini-cult.

Now, Jacomo hopes to revive the name by inviting artistis to paint for the packaging of the new perfumes, named 09, 02 and 08.

Gourmand 09 is packaged in orange and is a spicy fruity woody formula that combines notes of citron, orange pulp, pink pepper, mango, cinnamon, vanille, praline and sandalwood. The artist creating an aquarelle for the box is Stina Person, who drew women's legs in heels and fishnets to denote the playful character of the juice inside.
Oriental leathery 02 is packaged in yellow, encompassing notes of bergamot, lily, amber, vanilla, patchouli, and tonka bean. The illustrator Cecilia Carlstedt gives it a face of a bohemian woman from the 1970s, flower in her hair and all; perhaps as a nod to the past of the brand?
The aromatic 08 is embottled in shocking pink (the emblem of India) and illustrated by Daniel Egnéus in green sketches of ganesh protectors, an allusion that refers to the composition inspired by India's Massala tea, with its accords of cardamom, ginger, and black tea. The formula is extending it with notes of freesia, a milk accord, and dried fruits. Honey, cinnamon and amber contribute to the base notes of the third Jacomo fragrance in the triptych.



Art Collection by Jacomo will be available at Beauty Success, Passion Beauté, some Sephora stores and select department stores in eau de parfum in 50 ml (54 euros) and 100 ml (72 euros).
Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Jacomo Silences review, Upcoming releases

Midnight Gardens: the Inexplicable Pull of Nocturnal Blooms

"Daphne du Maurier’s nameless heroine in Rebecca describes the blooms at Manderley estate as “crimson faces…slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic…monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful…too powerful…not plants at all.” With this in mind we’ve decided to design our own haunting garden, one that smells sweetest, like cloves and honey, and whose flowers only come to life in the darkest hours of the night".


Part of an exciting article by Jaclyn Gallucci on Longislandpress.com which you can read here in its entirety, it reprises the haunting nature of some of the headiest and most impressive blossoms around: the night-blooming flowers! Moonflowers, night phlox, tuberose, four o'clock, woodland tobacco, August lily, evening stock and ebb tide rose all make an appearence with little snippets of history, gardening info and olfactory descriptions. Recommended reading!

Photo collage by Jessica on Polyvore

Etat Libre d'Orange Like This Tilda Swinton: Musing on a Muse

Etat Libre d’Orange, the brand of interesting scents and provocative names, takes on another unusual muse; after Rossy de Palma, the cubist-looking Spanish actress renowned for her work in Almodovar films, the visually striking and fiercely talented Tilda Swinton is their next "muse". The enigmatic, ambiguous, eternally pale and socially provocative actress (living a polyamorous existence in Scotland) broke into the scene with Virgina Woolf's Orlando film adaptation in 1992 never to divert far from our attention span ever again. Even though Tilda is not exactly beautiful (or pretty, in the conventional sense of big eyes, round contours, flowing mane) she is arresting and compelling to watch, making the camera love her. Etat Libre d’Orange dedicates their latest fragrance, inspired by the verse of the Persian poet of the 13th century Rumi and named Like This to Tilda Swinton, rendering the most unexpected "celebrity scent" in a long while. Perhaps the choice wasn't really that unexpected: Several perfume enthusiasts in the online community when asked which celebrity should have their own fragrance mention her name, adding that Etat Libre would do her justice (that remains to be seen, but I am willing to test the theory out!)

So what is it with unusual, non silicone-friendly beauties that could be termed jolie-laide lately? We had noticed the phenomenon when Balenciaga had chosen Charlotte Gainsbourg a while ago for their new violet-laced steely scent Balenciaga Paris. Even though Charlotte, Gainsbourg's daughter by Jane Birkin, has known controversy since infancy (Lemon Incest is a hard act to follow!), somehow her contemporary profile minus Antichrist is rather tame. Her family life, married to director Yvon Attal, is steady, even bourgeois. Tilda on the other hand enjoys a much more controversial profile, a patrician background and her Celtic features and high colouring are unpredictable and more distinctive than Charlotte's. The White Witch part in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) was plenty memorable.

What is more interesting is that there seems to exist a brave new frontier in fronting fragrances through faces that communicate a certain intelligence (Tilda has been involved in installation art and cutting-edge fashion, notably for Victor & Rolf) and visual bravado. The audience has been tired of mainstream predictability and needs new "flesh". Is it also an indication of feministic streak that re-awakens through a bras-de-fer with the cemented ideals of Hollywood-esque attractiveness? Tilda is a creature of subtle and underground sexuality, which highlights the mystique that fragrance can inspire admirably. And perhaps the female buyers of fragrance long for it to be again -after decades when it was forgotten- a discreet game of mapping their own identity, intelligently and cohesively. In the words of Tilda herself: "I'm basically interested in identity, and I still find fascinating the question, 'How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?' "

Like This was composed by perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui, including notes of yellow mandarin, ginger, helicrysum (everlasting flower/immortelle), neroli, Grasse rose de Mai, heliotrope, musk and vetiver, as well as the new synthetic Potiron Jungle Essence (Mane laboratories) reinforcing the smell of pumpkin. The word pumkin ~alongside its echolalia and the findings of Dr.Hirsch about its scent augmenting penile blood flow~ makes me giggle a bit when contemplating the polyamorous environment of Tilda. Is this intentional? It would be fun to think that it were!

Like This by Etat Libre d’Orange will be available in Eau de Parfum 50ml and is launching on 13th March 2010.
Photo of Tilda Swinton via papercastlepress.com/blog