Holiday Gift Guide 2010 part2

Continuing on the theme of fragrant gift giving, more ideas on things that will delight those who receive them.

• For the hostess:

Ormonde Jayne Navidad Candle: A limited edition candle for the holidays, fragranced with warm notes of clementine, cardamom, amber and tonka, the candle has an embossed gold lid and is housed in an antique gold box. Every Ormonde Jayne candle is hand poured in their London laboratory and follows the high standards of the niche brand.
Weight 290 grams Burning Time: over 60 hours. Retails for £60.00 and you can purchase on the official Ormonde Jayne site.
Now is your chance to buy as the company is offering complimentary worldwide shipping with every order £60 or over* Enter promotional code 'SANTA' at the checkout.
(*Offer open until 20th December 2010)

• For the gourmet-loving friend:

Perfume & Chocolate: Canadian chocolatiere Rachel Sawatzky of CocoaNymph, collaborated with artisanal Canadian niche perfumer Ayala Moriel to make fine Belgian dark chocolate bars beautifully designed to match three perfumes from the latter's collection: Espionage (64% cocoa with smoked salt, jasmine & juniper), Guilt (64% cocoa with orange blossom, blood orange & wild oranges) and Roses et Chocolat (72% cocoa with rose, saffron & chilli). You can find the marching scents on Ayala Moriel's official page. And for cuddly evenings around the fire I highly recommend her Sahleb, while for the mysterious, bewitching femme fatale you hide inside, Film Noir seems tailor-made!

• For yourself!

A Perfume Organic hosts free shipping through January 2011, making all your holiday last-minute gifts easy to cram into your schedule. Their Mejica is the latest fragrance, a blend of three vanilla types, spices and rare resins for a warm wintery experience! Available online for 65$for 12ml roll-on bottle.

I must say I'm intrigued by their wine-inspired scent, though: Sommelier Katherine Marlowe collaborated with the brand for The Perfumed Wine Trio, in which the first release - Rosé - combines fresh berry, crisp apple, dark oaks, and rich spices with hints of clove and nutmeg, warming into a peppery finish: like a good full-bodied wine sipped during a holidays feast!

• For those who want to be spoilt for choice

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz holidays coffret: For many years now, DSH has created a unique fragrance each year to capture the magic of the Holidays. This year a collection gift box of favorites from the series as well as a Sampler Set are available so that you can enjoy them all! Included in the Holiday Collection box are (6) EdP mini flacons ~which are super cute, let me add~ of Winter White, Twelfth Night, Hanukah Cannelle, Lumiere, Nourouz and this year's December. Plus, the Sampler Set contains an EdP vial of all (11) scents since DSH started in year 2000: Festive, Twelfth Night, Cathedral, Winter White, Marzipan, Ma Folie de Noel, Lumiere, Silver Fir, Nourouz, Hanukah Cannelle, Silver Fir and December. Available on the DSH site.


If you missed our Holiday Gift Guide part 1, you can access it by clicking on the link.

Anya's Garden Light and Amberess: fragrance review & bottle giveaway

In the season of thanks, I'm especially thankful for being part of a discourse on perfumery which takes diverse and interesting turns all the time. The Outlaw perfume project was one of those moments in time which I feel might kickstart something bigger soon. And I'm hopeful! For now, I'm thankful that I got sent samples of two outlaw perfumes created for it by its instigator, Anya McCoy, president of the the Natural Perfumers' Guild: Light and Amberess.

I will come back for Amberess soon because it's so very snuggly and unusual for an amber-based scent (an amber mix that's not too sweet and is more spicy-rosy than most, yeah!), but Light just needs to be brought into the light (ha!) now that the natural light is diminishing in the Northern hemisphere and we tend to hanker after it. It's no accident the feast of St.Lucia (which means..."light") is on the shortest day of the year...

Anya based the composition of Light on the flower absolute of a Chinese perfume tree with beautiful yellowish blossoms belonging in the family of mahogany, named Aglaia odorata (also known as Chinese Rice Tree). Originally she meant to call the perfume Aglaia after it; a Greek name which comes from the verb αγλαΐζω (ah-gla-EEzo); it means "to beautify", to "aesthetically enhance" and is literally the origin of the english word "glamour" (nifty, eh?) In Greek mythology, Aglaia is one of the Three Kharites (the Three Graces) symbolising splendour, glory, magnificence and adornment. I personally wish Anya would have kept it, for reasons of uniqueness and...well, fitting the spirit of the perfume! But hey, I know most people would have a hard time manipulating their tongue over those heavy Greek ls and the most difficult γ for which is there is no English sounding equivalent, really... The name change into Light came naturally: The fragrance is luminous and breezy!

It's built on a "cologne style" (lots of that neroli and citrusy-woody-musky impression you get when you use a really good traditional Eau de Cologne), floral and citrusy and admist it all, the aglaia flower is the soliflore which sings the beauty of "less is more". Aglaia smells between neroli and a light, green jasmine to my nose in this mix and it's an absolutely delightful impression. Frankincense lends beautiful citrusy aspects with a gentle bitterish smokiness which couples very well with the slightly tarry-cool note of broom (that's what the French call genet); the combination makes the whole quite sophisticated!

How is Light, so delicate, so innocent, an Outlaw? The notes that are either limited by, or untested by IFRA are shown in red:
Top notes: Sicilian cedrat, Israeli yellow grapefruit, French juniper berry.
Middle notes: Chinese aglaia flower, French genet flower, North Carolina
ambergris.
Base notes: Hojari frankincense oil, edible frankincense sacra resinoid.

In order to get the most lasting power from this Outlaw perfume it's advisable to use on hair, clothes (it doesn't stain as far as I was able to test on regular non-silk fabric) or in a perfume locket! (A romantic idea which is enthusiastically embraced by the Outlaw perfumers!)
Light and Amberess are included in the newest sample set at Anya's Garden online, ten samples of all-naturals perfumes for 65$ with the option of a 10% discount with voucher code OUTLAW used upon purchase.

Anya is doing a giveaway of both Light and Amberess in 3.5ml minis, pure perfume/extrait de parfum. She prefers to ship in the USA only at the moment. Enter your name in the comments if you are eligible and I will pick two random winners! Draw is now closed.

pic via http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/

Caron Tabac Blond: fragrance review

Tabac Blond (1919) was the opening salve of the garçonnes’ raid on gentlemen’s dressing tables. Its name evokes the “blonde” tobacco women had just started smoking in public (interestingly, Marlboros were launched as a women’s brand in 1924 with a red filter to mask lipstick traces). The fragrance was purportedly meant to blend with, and cover up, the still-shocking smell of cigarettes: smoking was still thought to be a sign of loose morals.

Despite its name, Tabac Blond is predominantly a leather scent, the first of its family to be composed for women and as such, a small but significant revolution. Though perfumery had recently started to stray from the floral bouquets thought to be the only fragrances suitable for ladies (Coty Chypre was launched in 1917), it had never ventured so far into the non-floral. Granted, there are floral notes, but apart from ylang-ylang, the clove-y piquancy of carnation and the cool powdery metallic note of iris don’t stray much from masculine territory. Amber and musk smooth down the bitter smokiness of the leather/tobacco leaf duet, providing the opulent “roundness” characteristic of classic Carons. And it is this ambery-powdery base – redolent of powdered faces and lipstick traces on perfumed cigarettes – that pulls the gender-crossing Tabac Blond back into feminine territory to the contemporary nose, despite Luca Turin’s calling it “dykey and angular and dark and totally unpresentable” in Chandler Burr’s Emperor of Scent.

Like its younger sister Habanita (1921), Tabac Blond’s rich, golden-honeyed, slightly louche sillage speaks of late, smoke-laden nights at the Bal Nègre in the arms of Cuban aristocrats or déclassé Russian émigrés, rather than exhilarating rides in fast cars driven by the new Eves…

by guest writer Carmencanada

 Notes for Caron Tabac Blond:
leather, carnation, lime blossom, iris, vetiver, ylang-ylang, cedar, patchouli, vanilla, ambergris, musk.

Editor's note on reformulation:
The current eau de toilette starts with the familiar rich, leathery, slightly carnation-floral scent, but the topnotes vanish within the hour, leaving you with the classic "vintage face powder" dry down - retro powdery vanilla and mossy notes, closer to Habanita.

"I'm a Servant to Perfume": Serge Lutens on France24

"Talking of perfume is like talking about everything. When one talks about a perfume there is usually a false story behind it. When you create a perfume it is not created for a man or a woman, it's something to be determined afterwards; it's the people who determine what it is. The sex isn't determined by perfume, choice is.

I am its servant. It's It (perfume) that I have to serve. I am its servant. If I don't serve, I'm but a merchant, making tricks with paper (blotters) like everyone does...

Perfume is not a product; it's something else, it's mystical. [...] A perfume is brilliant when it manages to create a response in itself; if it does not, what's the purpose? [...]{The business} is a vast operation...it's like Viennese waltz, it's mild and turns around and around. That is embarrassing! Before disgust, there's ennui.

If perfume becomes a discourse that is politically & sentimentally correct, it no longer holds any interest."

(NB.the translation follows the most important quotes)


thanks to Alesio Lo Vecchio for bringing it to my attention ETA: And thanks to Bela for dependable bitch-slapping spellcheck!

Knize Knize Ten: fragrance review

Knize Ten is a 1924 fragrance composed by Vincent Roubert (who worked with Coty on L’Or and L’Aimant) for the Viennese tailor Knize. The Knize boutique was famously designed in 1913 by architect Adolf Loos, whose anti-Art Nouveau essay, Ornament and Crime, helped define Modernist aesthetics with its smooth surfaces and pure play on volume.

The scent itself was introduced to complement the clothier’s first ready-to-wear men’s line and in its opening notes, it clearly speaks in a masculine tone. The leather, paired with bergamot, petitgrain, orange, lemon and the slightly medicinal rosemary, is as dryly authoritative as a sharply-cut gabardine suit. As it eases into wear, rose, orris and carnation throw in a gender-bending curve ~Marlene Dietrich (herself a Knize patron) may have well slipped into that suit… The leather itself is of that of the wrist-watchband or fine shoe rather than the pungent “cuir de russie” boot. But despite the richly animalic base – musk, amber and castoreum – hinting at bridled desires, Knize Ten retains the buffered, well-bred smoothness of gentleman who never felt the need to set foot in the cigar-smoke laden cabinet of Herr Doktor Freud…

by guest writer Carmencanada

Notes for Knize Knize Ten:
Top: petit grain, orange, lemon, rosemary and bergamot.
Heart: rose, iris, carnation, cinnamon, clove, cedar, patchouli and sandalwood
Base: castoreum, ambergris, musk and moss.