Promotion for fragrances don't have to involve much to be suggestive and to stir the imagination. Forget bimbos rolling on the bed, blinged out couples coupling amourously and lots of skin display; forget long tirades extolling the virtues of precious ingredients and mellifluous emotion. A mere suggestion and a quote from a legendary celebrity saying they found a fragrance to have an influence in their lives is enough.
Behold a photo shot by Peter Lindberg for Guerlain's classic masculine fragrance Habit Rouge, genre: (tres) masculin. [translation: Gender: (very) masculine].
Habit Rouge refers to the red riding jacket donned by gentlemen in equestrian days. Of course!
And then you have Keith Richards, of Rolling Stones infamous celebrity, reminscing in his memoirs about choosing Guerlain'sHabit Rouge as his signature scent [Mick Jagger prefers Chanel Cuir de Russie]:
"One minute no chick in the world. No f*cking way, and they're going la la la la la. And the next they're sniffing around. And you're going wow, when I changed from Old Spice to Habit Rouge, things definitely got better."
~Keith Richards, 'Life'
L'Artisan Parfumeur fragrances are designed to arouse emotions and the company would like you to express yours as part of the new LOVE MESSAGES ‘happening’.Visit L'Artisan in their boutiques and corners from January 30th, pick up paper hearts and compose your heart-felt or amusing love messages, then place them in the giant bottles. The more the merrier; as for every 20 love messages received, a tree will be planted in Mali. And by the way, you will also have the chance to win fragrances! (for yourself or loved ones.)
Again this year (2011 saw 500 trees planted!), L'Artisan Parfumeur is working in partnership with TREE AID, an NGO that supports development and reforestation in Mali. The company chose this West African nation in honour of the iconic fragrance Timbuktu: this warm, sensual and bewitching elixir was inspired by Bertrand Duchaufour’s journey to this fascinating country.
Who, at the first sign of frost, doesn't long to be wrapped in an oversized cashmere throw, sit by the fire, grab a good book, and sip something spiked and fragrant while the snowflakes outside are dancing the polka? January's chilly winds and all too brief days call for heavier knits, formal furs to banish the cold and an inferno of fragrance to get through it all; and cold it has been, unusually so this year for this corner of Europe!
Seeking warmth in your perfume can be a subtle reassurance in cold weather, but it can also be fun to try to match, getting the fragrance notes to smell painstakingly pure as if emerging out of a snow bath Venus-like off the waves. There is indeed a two-pronged approach to choosing personal fragrance for winter wearing:
One is to go for traditional oriental elements, warm resins and balsams, rich florals and amber blends; creating contrast and invoking via perfume-magic mellower lands where the night is always warm and bodies radiate the heat of blood rushing to the skin's surface. Another, more unusual one, is akin to homeopathy: inject a bit of cool silkiness to the routine, letting the outside cold enhance the silvery, metallic qualities of the perfume. Therefore throw in a mix of irises, artemisia, wormwood, angelica and gentian essences, cool celebral notes, and sour frankincense smoke that trails behind like the ashes off an extinguished censer...
It's also just the time for precious vintages (do a search on PerfumeShrine for plenty of ideas on those) and for parfums fourrure, since putting these perfumes on is as enveloping as donning my fur jacket and you wouldn't don a fur jacket in August, would you?
Monica Belluci and Alain Delon forAnnabella
Here are some of the fragrances and other stuff in my rotation this winter to stir the senses and banish (or embrace, if you like!) the cold.
Guerlain Tonka Impériale
Wearing it on winter sweaters and scarfs (where it clings for days, radiating seductively) is akin to getting caressed by a honey mink étole, smelling fine cigars in a salon de thé serving the most delicious almond pralines on panacotta.
Caron Poivre
As warm as a fur coat, as arresting as pepper spray, a pas de deux on clove and carnation blossoms; or the scent of Cruella de Vil. I bring out the sable and pretend I'm wicked!
Armani Prive Bois d'Encens
A clean smoky incense that wafts from the forests on the cool wintery air, gloomy cedars silently silhouetted in the distance.
La Myrrhe by Serge Lutens Myrrh gum is part of ecclesiastical incense alongside frankincense for millenia. You would expect an oriental, full of resinous mystery, going by the name, right? Lutens goes one better and infuses the bitter ambience of myrrh with candied mandarin rind and citrusy aldehydes which bring this on the upper plane of an airy aldehydic. Somehow it wears lightly but solemnly too and it resembles nothing else on the market. Cool days bring La Myrrhe's attibutes to the fore and it remains amongst my most precious possessions.
And of course, Bottega Veneta Eau de Parfum
If you yearn for the sweetly pungent and at the same time totally "fabricated" smell of a good, old-school leather fragrance...then the fragrance release introduced by the Bottega Veneta brand (the apex of leather luxury) is set to stir your heart with unbridled longing. And deservedly so: Bottega Veneta Eau de Parfum is unquestionably "mighty fine"; it made it both to my Top 2011 Best Fragrances list and my Autumn Sensuous Discoveries list. Now it's on my Top Winter things list too. Figures...
I'm also crazy about discovering Nostalgie by Sonoma Scent Studio. There's a sheen sans pareil about wearing a graceful floral aldehydic smack in the middle of winter, everything just seems to sparkle brighter under the tentative sun! In that vein, expect a review of the graceful L'Ame Soeur by Divine and an update on its slightly re-orchestrated reissue shortly on these pages!
Winter is also the time to indulge in some body pampering. Heavy oils and unctuous creams suddenly seem welcome, decadent, like a deserved small luxury.This winter I have seriously lost myself into the scentscape of vanilla pods, almonds & toasted cereals of Cacharel's Gloria Bath & Body Oil. I also regularly turn to L'Occitane Creme Ultra Riche, crammed full with shea butter, for all topical dry skin emergencies.
Food-wise, winter weekends is the time to make time-consuming, elaborate dishes like Armenian "manti", called Tatar Böregi in Turkey (recipe to follow on subsequent post), full of the warming aroma of all spice, cinnamon, cumin and clove. I also love to prepare home-made halwa with semolina, raisins and roasted pine nuts. Yum!
pic via mantrakina.blogspot.com
Intellectually I have been stimulated through work mainly this season. But off-work hasn't been totally idle.
I took an interest to John A. Hall’s “Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography", recounting the exiling of intellectuals of Eastern Europe because of communism and Nazism. The relaxed pace of an evening by the fire also perfectly fits reading poems by Emily Dickinson and Kostas Karyotakis thanks to their slow pace and melancholy. I also caught The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo in cinemas this winter: It's atmospheric and suprisingly loyal to the original Swedish version, so if you need a rec, go watch it!
The clip comes from the 2004 film "Weeping Meadow" (Το λιβάδι που δακρύζει) by Greek film director Theo Aggelopoulos, who died last Tuesday. Music by Eleni Karaindrou.
original photo on top Winter Leaves by Eric Begin/Flickr, some rights reserved
Iris Silver Mist clearly isn't for everyone. Balls to the wall iris, carrot dirt rootiness, bread sourdough and raw potato starch are attached to every drop of this crepuscular, bellowing Lutensian opus, turning urban life into a gothic tale where the heroine is carried away dead in a grand duc. Iris Silver Mist is unsettingly unusual as if you looked into the abyss once and now the abyss is looking at you. How can you not love it?
In a rare dicrepancy with the tenure to follow of Chris Sheldrake at the helm of perfume development at the Salons du Palais Royal Serge Lutens perfumes, perfumer Maurice Roucel was instructed to compose an iris fragrance to eclipse all others.
The year was 1994 and Iris Silver Mist came out on the skies like Phaethon to cast a prolonged, melancholic shadow over mortals. But the perfume is in discrepancy with the Lutensian style up to a point as well; eschewing the opulent orientalia of dried fruits, resins and creamy notes, it goes for a wonderfully weird effect that is loud even though it appears to be the silent type; a sort of Schopenhauer being recited off the rooftops, for modern Emos romanticizing depression.
Years later Lutens softened the pitch and caressed the iris into a greener, silky hush in his enigmatically sensuous Bas de Soie fragrance.
The power of the fragrance is deceptive: you'd think that iris is a shy, pale note that rings metallic and sits meekly at its corner, but no. Orris absolute (the product from the iris rhizome) can run the gamut from floral to woody to gourmand to powdery smelling. Iris Silver Mist beats with a thunder drum, thick as fog you'd need to cut through with a knife; powdery and cooly rooty, eating away every other scent it co-habitates with, be it skin, potion or foe.
Roucel used not only orris rhizome but also Irival (or orris floraline), a nitrile-containing fragrance compound (a perfumer's base, produced by International Flavors & Fragrances) with a stentorian voice heard over the buzz of common routine; coupled with the scimitar of galbanum, its bitter green resinous facet boosting the feel of the first hour on the skin, and a tiny hint of carnation, iris becomes truly sinister with a yeasty quality about it. The familiar cedar base of Lutens is given an extra austere profile in Iris Silver Mist, with the subdued, cooling woody backdrop of vetiver and the prolonged powderiness of musk, almost a sigh through blueish lips.
Be aware that the Irival base is moderately skin sensitising; Iris Silver Mist, alongside the equally lovely Iris Gris by Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier, have been the only two perfumes to ever give me a topical itch and redness. Use on clothes preferably.
Iris Silver Mist is a Paris exclusive, circulating in the uniform bell-shaped bottles of the exclusive line (75ml).
The photo depicts the limited edition bell jar (flacon de table) of Iris Silver Mist, showing the beating heart and veins of iris...
"Watching Alice rise year after year Up in her palace, she's captive there"
photo Ron Reeder "Death and the Maiden V4" via pcnw.org
Heliotrope is at once deep, soft and mysterious, a note traversing the rainbow from the yellow of vanilla pods and almond, to the light blue and green of anise right to newly mown hay. Kiss Me Tender by Parisian niche brand Patricia de Nicolaï feels like being submerged in a warm bathtub on a cool evening, the translucence of water clouded by the full range of the delicate, powdered notes of heliotrope.
The simplicity of structure in Kiss Me Tender shouldn't fool us into believing there is no skill involved. Heliotrope might be a full perfume in itself, but De Nicolaï weaves it both subtly and deliciously, a hint of retro without ever falling into the pit of dated. If you always liked the powdered aniseed core of the classic L'Heure Bleue perfume but found it too mature, rejoice: the main components ~anise, orange blossom and synthetic heliotropin (for heliotrope notes, as the flower cannot be extracted)~ are present in both the classic Guerlain and the newer Patricia de Nicolaï; it might all be in the genes, the woman derives from Guerlain stock after all! (For those who don't know, she's the grand-daughter of Pierre Guerlain). But it's more than that just modernising and streamlining a beloved structure and one of the quintessentially Guerlain notes. It's underscoring it with a freshness and tenderness like never before.
The almondy facets in Kiss Me Tender bolstered by vanilla overlap into the gourmand oriental fragrance group; tempered, good-mannered sweet, a touch of white pastry confectionary like marzipan accented with spicy bites that are just this side of edgy. The hay facet is clearly discernible, over abstract solar notes (salicylates) of ylang ylang and non-indolic jasmine, floating on a watery pong, the two woven in the ethereal way of Hermès Vanille Galante.
More delicate and subtle with skin-soft musky notes than livilier interpretations of the note (such as the latest versions of Guerlain's Apres L'Ondée which are eclipsing the violet in lieu of heliotropin) Kiss Me Tender comes closer to the feel of being wrapped by goose down in L'Eau d'Hiver (F.Malle) or the lighter interpetations of Shalimar and Habit Rouge; after all it shares the flou, hazy base of opoponax resin with the latter two. The deviant, fresh and slightly green, minty-anisic top note takes Kiss Me Tender on a different track than the usually opressive routes of other gourmand or floriental fragrances built on almond and gives it a unisex aspect that men might enjoy too. (The trick of coupling anise with vanilla for lightening the latter is working for Jo Malone in Vanilla & Aniseas well.)
For its elegance and versatility, Kiss Me Tender is a must-try for those who always sought for a discreet daytime heliotrope fragrance but probably a bit too pastel for those who like their floral orientals hard-core and khol-eyed.
Notes for Patricia de Nicolai Kiss Me Tender:
vanilla, aniseed, almond, heliotrope, fresh cut hay
Kiss Me Tender is available in 30ml/1oz for 39 euros or 100ml/3.4oz for 99 euros of Eau de Parfum available on the official Patricia de Nicolaï site and select stockists.
.jpg)
.jpg)
