The new YSL Opium advertisement with Emily Blunt has landed

Emily Blunt in a tux worn directly on flesh (very YSL), the leopard, the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem in the background, the giga cocktail ring...I rather like it all in the new commercial for the iconic Opium perfume by Yves Saint Laurent.
The only bad thing is Opium itself has deteriorated as a fragrance due to reformulation...

Karen Khoury: Perfume Inspirations for Estee Lauder & Tom Ford

"I love fragrance and I have lots of ideas. I can be inspired by a piece of art. For example, Pleasures was inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's paintings and Beyond Paradise by a painting I found in a gallery in the old section of Paris. I have fragrances inspired by travels. Fifteen years ago when I made my first trip to Turkey, I was enamoured by the spice market.

I brought some home and had them analysed and put into fragrances and in Morocco I became obsessed with the smell of thya wood and the beautiful bowls they carved out of it.
I took the pieces home and we recreated Bois Marocain for Tom Ford.

And I find women incredibly inspiring. I think women in different cultures share common threads, but the way in which they are expressed is influenced by the culture. It's so fascinating. When I start to understand that I see certain notes, certain ideas in my mind.".

Thus reminisces Karen Khoury, creative director for 27 year and Senior Vice President at the Lauder Companies Inc, responsible for the creation of numerous best-sellers in her career from Calvin Klein to Lauder to you name it.

photo of citruses & lilac flowers by Meg Smith & Associates via Laurie Arons

Aftelier Secret Garden: fragrance review

The velvet feel of rose, the sweet nectar of jasmine, the tartness of raspberry...the human presence, felt subtly like the paws of furry animals trailing amongst the fallen leaves of an unattended garden...feelings, memories, awakenings, scattered; brought back like the rays of spring sun after a long, torturous winter. The endless repetition of the cycle of life just a snapsnot in the all too ephemeral space of childhood. This is what The Secret Garden stands for.

Secret Garden the perfume is named after the homonymous 1910 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In it a young girl blossoms herself, after discovering a barren secret garden and bringing it back to life.This coming of age story and the metamorphosis of a sour, unaffactionate brat into an empathetic human being. The garden motif serves as the symbol of living things being spiritual healers. And how could this not be, as all natural perfumery, as represented by Aftelier, focuses exactly on the life force of essences derived from outdoors.

All naturals guru perfumer Mandy Aftel used two truly precious ingredients into the formula of Secret Garden, much like has been her practice in her opus, exploring the length and the breadth of the natural world. These two natural animalic essences are all but vanished from modern perfumery (except for very, very specific and far between cases): a batch of old civet, which she bought from a retired perfumer, and castoreum tinctured from the beaver. These bring out the warmth, the candied aspect of the floral notes, opening them up, citrusy honeyed backdrops of newly-discovered joy, a glimpse into a new world full of colour, of aroma, of pleasure. Jasmine and rose are the chief magicians, mingled into a duality that represents the heroine's, Mary Lennox's, past and present: jasmine sambac ~humid, narcotic, languorous, candied~ for India; rose ~satin-like, sentimental, feminine~ for Enland. The floral notes take more than a supporting role in this typically floriental composition, a classic aimed at everyone who loves perfume, boosting the generosity of the heart; hesperidic and seemingly spicy up top, vibrating with passion on the underside. The underlying sweetness is akin to opening up yourself to the wonder that is life.

Notes for Aftelier Secret Garden:
top: bergamot, bois de rose, Geraniol, blood orange
middle: jasmine sambac, raspberry (compounded isolate), Turkish rose, blue lotus
base: civet, castoreum, vanilla, deertongue*, benzoin, aged patchouli

*NOT an animal ingredient

The lasting power is quite good for an all naturals scent, no complaints there. 

Aftelier's Secret Garden is available in a 1/4 oz. bottle ($150), a 30 ml Eau de Parfum spray ($150), a 2 ml Mini bottle ($45), and a sample size ($6).
Available directly from www.aftelier.com



Painting by Marc Chagall, The Three Candles

Tommi Sooni Tarantella: fragrance review

Australian niche perfume house Tommi Sooni can be proud of one thing among many others: They don't charge premium prices for second-rate garbage. Tarantella, their first entry into the game of niche perfumery back in 2008, is a robust, confident and sparkling old-school aldehydic chypre fragrance which delights both the senses and the intellect with its grace and delicately soapy radiance. The wisdom (but also the faith!) lies in positioning their scent correctly; Tarantella, like all their fragrances, is aimed at the 25+ age group. And lo and behold, my dear readers, what makes a fragrance company insightful!

Yes, obviously this is no scent for contemporary teenagers who are totally alienated from the smell of proper perfume (proper soap too, come to think of it, everything is so tutti-fruity in this My Little Cupcake culture!), but they have the guts to offer it to the young woman who is not over the hill; the young woman who longs to find something elegant, something polished,as  unique and as smart as herself; or perhaps the mature woman who wants a new fragrance that represents quality, but who doesn't want to get stuck in a rut, buying the same old, same old over and over again (especially since retro fragrances have for the most part being reformulated catastrophically).
Tarantella does not disappoint in any of those aspects and you will find yourself nodding your head with appreciation upon discovering this gem.

First and foremost I was entirely taken by the wonderful radiance of Tarantella, like bright early afternoon sunlight filtered through the coloured-glasspanes of a picturesque church in the South of Europe, which -much like the homonymous Sicilian dance- is ekphrastic and generous in spirit. The inspiration for the fragrance first came to the creators in a fragrant garden, filled with plants from Southern Italy indeed, in the atmospheric town of Avignon, France. "Encircled by a ring of bay laurel trees and brimming with exotic flora native to the Island of Sicily, this beautiful walled garden held the key to Tarantella eau de parfum."
Perfumer Brett Schlitter combined the bracing bitterish galbanum resin in the opening ~felt rising from the bottom of the formula, it being a tenacious grass resin ~ with shiny, soapy  aldehydes with citrusy facets; this combination instantly gives that retro elegance which we associate with such wonderful specimens of graceful femininity as Calèche, Ivoire, Private Collection and Diorella.
The floral elements, rich and indefinable, truly blended into one delightful, subtly erotic chord, are ladylike with a hidden desire beneath the soapy veneer. The flower notes do not becom distinguishable, all the essences sing in unison like a choir; the perfume doesn't "break apart" as perfumers say on the blotter or skin, it has solid structure. The overall bittersweet character of the fragrance is luxurious and sensual, like bedroom eyes that close just for you, not everyone in the general vicinity. Inside the depths of the Tommi Sooni perfume, herbal (bay, patchouli) and subtly leathery elements smoothen the proceedings, flowing like a piano cadenza from agile hands, a sophisticated halo of sultry but intelligent chords, like Charlotte Rampling herself, the icon that inspired the perfumer of this modern delight. The lasting power and sillage are satisfactory, more than average.
In a sea of "me too" fragrances, Tommi Sooni's Tarantella is a beacon that says not all is lost and the future holds exciting discoveries to unearth as well.

Steven Broadhurst, creative director of Tommi Sooni, minces no words when he comments on the meh factor of so many recent releases:

"Mass marketing has proved to be less thoughtful about art in perfume but then again our expectations are generally lower when we visit a perfume counter in a department store or perfume discounter. This is not to say art in perfume cannot be found in a department store, it can but you need a strong spirit and determination to find it.
Today we find wonderful perfumes being created in unexpected corners of the world. This simply wasn't happening not too long ago. Noses in many cultures are reflecting their surroundings and expressing unique life experiences through perfume creation. This can only be a good thing as the perfume world expands into an ever shrinking global community."

[quote from Perfumism.com]

The logo on the Tommi Sooni bottle, a nude Etruscan- looking woman carrying a faceted diamond, was inspired by a vintage perfume box etching hailing from the 1920's and was reworked by Steven Broadhurst himself into the design which characterises his whole line. It's lovely!


Notes for Tommi Sooni Tarantella:
Aldehydes, galbanum, orange blossom, French marigold, Sicilian mandarin, Frangipani, muguet, jasmine, orris, Anatolian rose, bay laurel, clove, Patchouli, amber, leather, moss, sandalwood, intense musk

Available in 50ml/1.7oz Eau de Parfum concentration for 180$.

Still from the Woody Allen film Stardust Memories, with Charlotte Rampling.
In the interests of disclosure, I was sent a sample vial by the company.

Estee Lauder Wood Mystique: fragrance review

Estée Lauder does oud. The note du jour wasn't going to escape from the giant of American perfumery that is the Lauder Group and given that the company knows how to make appealing, polished and tenacious fragrances, Wood Mystique on the surface looks like an adequate entry to the portfolio, but it's rather predictable and lackluster, exactly because it fears to use that which is supposed to be the fueling power of its core: the complex, medicinal and nutty aroma of agarwood/oud. This wouldn't be entirely significant, had it not been advertised as an entry aimed at the Middle Eastern market, by the accounts of which it seems that market has been entirely corrupted by Western blandness. I think not, but if one didn't know any better, they'd think otherwise.

In fact, Wood Mystique is in the mold of previous Lauder launch Sensuous (with less patchouli and much more pronounced flowers) and the bland Belle d'Opium, thanks to the spice-florals axis that is highlighted just like in the YSL entry.

"Wood Mystique is not just our first fragrance influenced by the Middle East. It is also our first unisex perfume. And it is for the first time that I've worked so closely with the local marketing team in the creation of a perfume — to understand the culture and history of the region and the taste of the consumer. [...] The history of fragrance usage in the Middle East being so rich … people know to appreciate the emotional value of it," says Karen Khoury [source], the Estée Lauder perfume art director, who is responsible for many best-selling fragrances.

Wood Mystique by Estée Lauder is an "oriental woody" fragrance, according to the company, that is inspired by the tradition of the East and this is immediately apparent, as it uses all the cliches we have come to expect of an Eastern-type (i.e. oriental) perfume. Polished, silky, if resembling previous releases rather too much (there's a passing segment of Black Orchid as well), it's fashioned in the successful mold of Sensuous with a more gender-neutral spin that would make it a masculine fpr men not afraid of roses or an individual feminine for women who love somber and warm fragrances.
It uses three kinds of rose that are extracted in different ways: rose infusion, rose distilled, and rose de mai absolute. This technique was opted to relay texture and add dimension.Added notes are pink pepper, which complement the rose, the spice naturally having rosy aspects.
Egyptian jasmine absolute, orris Morocco, ylang-ylang and mimosa from Provence absolute are also included, which in my opinion give an indefinable bouquet that is rather more feminine and would have some men complain about it. The spice-flowers accord seems more prominent than the woodiness, making me think that spicy floriental would be a more adequate categorisation than woody. The woody backdrop is infused with a raspberry note thanks to synthetic musks, and includes natural patchouli, extraction of cedarwood, with benzoin resin and agarwood/oudh.

The concentration is Eau de Parfum and the bottles circulate in the 100ml/3.4oz size.