Katy Perry to Introduce Meow: Second Celebrity Fragrance

According to WWD, Kate Perry with launch her second fragrance, exclusively with Nordstoms in November, a companion scent to her first celebrity scent out there, suggestively named "Purr". According to the article on WWD, "created in partnership with Perry’s fragrance licensee, Gigantic Parfums, the scent is intended to be a companion piece to the recording artist’s first fragrance, Purr, which debuted a year ago and is now available in 54 countries.

In the countdown to the launch, like Selena Gomez, Katy is trying to get her fans involved in the process urging her Twitter followers to guess the name of the perfume. Winners will win free bottles of the new perfume as well as meeting up with their idol.  Fickle glory!

EDIT TO ADD: The new name is set to be Meow by Kate Perry, continuing on the kittenish theme started by Purr. According to the singer's twitter account: “My next fragrance & bestie to Purr is MEOW! She’s very sweet & inspired by that magical place, CANDYFORNIA!”

Gustave Alphonse Fragifert: The ill-fated French Perfumer & his Wellington Fragrances

Gustave Alphonse Fragifert was a brilliant but ill-fated French perfumer who lived from 1880 to 1911 and died under mysterious circumstances in South America. He wrote his formulas for four perfumes in code, which have now resurfaced in New Zealand after 100 years.

Sounds intriguing? This is the fictitious tale of a 12-minute-long performance in Wellington, New Zealand, but the fragrances are real*, each of them representing a season and are both art-directed and composed by Francesco van Eerd. Van Erd is Dutch-born and forestry graduate New Zealender, who has also studied perfumery in Grasse and Britain, and who acts with the aid of performing arts student Robbie van Dijk, in this amusing performance. Based at the Wellington Underground Market, Fragrifert (pronounced frah-gree- fair and I'm sure I'm missing some inside linguistic joke that is perched on Dutch, which I don't know) has been delighting visitors with live performances in a theatrette beside the stall (every half hour from 10.30am until 3.30pm) since the 3rd of September. Sounds like a don't miss if you're around!

*The Fragrifert Scents are:
Ete (=summer) has notes of grapefruit, cedar, prune, white musk, oakmoss, vanilla and ambergris. Lilac (for spring) is built on flowers, one of them being lilac: broom, mimosa, heliotrope, rose and violet, laced with tobacco, patchouli and sandalwood, as well as citruses and liquorice. Automne is a soft oriental with cinnamon, tyberose, vanilla and orchirds, while Hiver (=winter) interprets the cool, yet spicy, wintersweet shrub, adding lily of the valley and cyclamen notes.
Each fragrance at 25% concentration (potent!) is 24.50$ or 80$ for the set of four.

news via the dominion post

Hermes by Lord's Jester: fragrance review of a Brave New Scent & giveaway

You might be incredulous to see the moniker referring to Aldous Huxley's novel twisted into a perfume review, but indie perfumer Adam Gottschalk of Lord's Jester participates in a blogathon of indie perfumers which we announced on these pages recently and his scent submission Hermes indeed defies classification.

For Hermes perfume, a vividly green (literally!) perfume, Gottschalk used one of the essences which I have always been fascinated by: green cognac. Produced from the wine precipitate known as "lees", from the plant vitis vinifera, cognac essence is a winey, dry, complex note.
The vividly mossy stain of the fragrance does not bely the scent itself: it's rather mossy and quite animalic all right; musty, tart, very dry and earthy, but with a floral depth opening soon, which allays some of the gloom and animalistic character of Africa stone. (Africa stone/hyraceum for those who don't know it yet is the petrified and rock-like excrement composed of both urine and feces excreted by the Cape Hyrax (Procavia capensis), commonly referred to as the Dassie. The material can be harvested by aroma material producers without harming the animal to render a note that unites some of the facets of castoreum, musk and oud. Quite intense!) Coupling the musty with the more hay-sweetish flouve absolute (rich in coumarin) produces a loaded combo that seems to hit you on the head at first, only to mellow soon after.
Lord Jester's Hermes tricks you into believing it is all about the base notes, but the lighter elements (a very perceptible and very lovely indolic jasmine note, plus citrus essences) are welcome leverage which rounds off the perfume. Too much animal can prove unwearable otherwise!
I have tested the fragrance from a spray vial and feel that it would be better suited to a dabbing from a splash bottle instead, to smoothen the initial blast; the rest of the composition blooms wonderfully without assistance even on a mouillette, usually not the perfect medium for all natural perfumes.

The perfumer used in order from greatest concentration to least these "wild" essences for his fragrance "notes":

for the base:
green cognac
linden blossom absolute in 30% fractionated coconut oil
flouve absolute
ambrette absolute
Africa stone

for the heart:
araucaria
rosa bourbonia
boronia
jasmine auriculatum
jasmine sambac

for the top:
linden blossom essential oil
orange essence
lime essence
tagetes

Pretty rare, huh? Indeed Gottschalk clarifies in a blog post how suddenly two of his chosen essences are becoming rarer and rarer; namely rosa bourbonia and jasmine auriculatum. Harvesting materials which are unavailable to the masses and the Big Boys (big aroma producing companies) however is at the heart of small artisanal perfumers, isn't it? In that regard, you won't be disappointed: There's inherent rarity factor in Hermes and I hope Adam finds a way to procure supply of these two rare aromatics. 
Hermes by Lord's Jester is an 15% concentrated Eau de Parfum and is quite decently lasting for an all naturals perfume.
We have a perfume giveaway for our readers (a 10ml/0.4oz) mini of Hermes, so please post a comment if you want to be eligible!  (NB.Perfumer sends prize directly to winner)

Sample provided by perfumer as part of the project. Photo found via AnyaMcCoy's tweets.

Oscar de la Renta Live in Love: new fragrance

The new fragrance for women created by a man who adores them. A young themed green floral. Illustrations by David Downton. Apparently, for the print campaign, Oscar wanted to take a different approach to some of the fragrance advertising he was seeing in the market. I think it works.



via oscardelarenta.com

Hermes Santal Massoia: new fragrance in the Hermessence line

Tenth fragrance from the Hermessence collection, Santal Massoïa belongs to one of these famous "poèmes-parfums" of the brand. The bottle, with its piqué sellier leather case, refined as usual, and containing woody scents, will be exclusively available from November 11th in Hermès boutiques.
The new Hermessence, composed by in-house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, will reprise a favourite wood essence, sandalwood: the challenge being in exploiting a material that is prized through its Mysore variety inclusion in classic perfume tradition, but now in short order due to shortages in its procurement. Therefore Jean-Claude is going to offer his specific vision, especially since it's allied in name to massoia oil, another prized aroma material: Massoia bark of Cryptocaria massoia gives an alkyl lactone (lactones are milky-smelling substances) which would naturally provide the lactic element of natural sandalwood. Massoia lactone (possessing a coconut-like, green and creamy scent) interestingly can also be found in molasses, cured tobacco and the essential oil of osmanthus fragrans, which presents intriguing hypotheses into how Ellena might weave in floral notes into what would otherwise be a woody composition. After all, he did a similar conjurer's trick with his salicylates & ylang-ylang laced Vanille Galante and also in Iris Ukiyoe with its holographic of the iris flower rather than the rhizome.In Santal Massoia Jean-Claude Ellena is quoted as wanting to evoke "what is beneath the air", and to that end he interweaves an airy fig note amongst the woody ones: fresh, rather more than creamy smelling. 

Even more interestingly, Hermès is also just now offering their own version of the "Monclin" fragrance testing "cup", using a white ceramic device that allows fragrance testing that unlocks some of the hidden aspects of the fragrances that would otherwise need full body testing to evolve.

Related reading on PerfumeShrine: Aroma material: Sandalwood (Mysore & Australian) & synthetic substitutes, Hermessences, Hermes news & reviews

photo via wadmag.com