Valentine's Day: Personal Perfume Picks for Different Looks

Classifying preferences in fragrances is relatively easy compared to classifying styles of romance. Everyone seems to pepper their behavior with a mix of the flirty, the sexy and the erotic (there's a difference, I swear) before they entangle themselves in the intricasies of the human condition that is. So contrary to yesterday's post about different styles of scents for St.Valentine's according to personality from nuzzling to naughty, I am now offering the theory none of us could really peg themselves a certain way all the time, all the way, with all our beaus over the years. We just want to smell good!

My personal picks for Valentine's Day Fragrances (os shall I say Valentine's Night) do not err much from the troden path of tried & true "recipes" working on my own man. So what follows here ~contrary to other venues where I might have suggested things to suit a multiple variety of taste~ is intensely personal. And illustrated according to my tastes. See if you agree or not.

Guerlain Shalimar Eau Légère is for winged eyeliner, scarlet lipstick and a proper guêpière.

Thierry Mugler Angel Innocent is for tiny whites which belie their womanly appeal.

Chanel No.19 (eau de toilette or vintage parfum) is for classic raincoats and vertigenous black stiletto heels.

Ormonde Jayne Ormonde Woman is for when you're caught in the rain. Damn transforms to wham!

Caron Tabac Blond is for androgynous black leather days.

Agent Provocateur Eau de Parfum by Agent Provocateur: This naughty rose deserves a red dress with a cinched waist.Chocolate nibbled on the bed can follow.

And finally the promising Flashdance sweatshirt invites the cozy appeal of Guerlain's Cuir Beluga.

What are YOUR picks for Valentine's Day fragrances??

pics via LA times magazine, thehairpin.com, cineacademy.blogspot.com, mindfood.com, pop-eat.com

The Avengers: Smell Like your Favorite Hero

To coincide with the release of The Avengers movie (scheduled to be open on May 4), JADS has teamed with Marvel Entertainment to bring out a line of colognes and perfumes inspired by the comic-book characters. The fragrances make their debut at the Toy Industry Association's (TIA) Toy Fair in New York City on Feb. 12-15.

"Everyone has a favorite comic book hero, right? Now fans can experience what they love about these iconic characters in a much more personal way," says JADS COO Andrew Levine to Digital Journal . JADS line for Marvel's The Avengers includes The Avengers Cologne Set, Black Widow Perfume, Infinity Formula for Men, and Mischief Cologne. "The scents are bold without being intrusive, distinctive and empowering,” adds JADS president John McGonigle.

Black Widow eh? I guess the trademark for the all naturals perfume by the same name has expired and someone grabbed it. 

Read the whole article here

pic via wikimedia commons

Valentine's Day Perfume Suggestions

"When I think of flirty scents, I imagine something that combines youthful innocence and purity with a more carnal sophistication. To me, that's what tuberose smells like. It's the Lolita of the fragrance world."

Revisiting some of the older Allure magazine articles I came across this interesting take on scents for Valentine's Day classed by their projected character (sexy fragrances, flirty scents, romantic perfumes, secure etc) by none other than Frederic Malle himself, of Editions des Parfums.

Of particular note is how he classifies tuberose as flirty (rather than femme fatale) and therefore recommends a liberal use of it, something with which many perfume enthusiasts might argue for or against!

Read the whole article here.

Also catch Allure's slideshow (with short descriptions of many fragrances we have reviewed on Perfume Shrine already) of the top 10 Sexiest Fragrances.

painting of Eros & Psyche by Jacques Louis David via wikimedia commons

JLo Glowing: A "Clean" New Fragrance

I had heard Jennifer Lopez giving an interview on american TV (I think it was Larry King?) sometime back whereupon she replied to being questioned about issuing so many fragrances (it was about 10 at the time) "They just keep making me make more!" with a look of mock despair on her face. To which NST yesterday tweeted back to me "and then they keep making her collect the money". True...
Now the fragrance portfolio by none other than the bootylicious ms.JLo and American Idol judge counts no less than 18 fragrances, the latest being Glowing, for the advertising campaign of which JLo shows off lots of glistening skin, encircled in an orgasmic O. Subtle, eh?

According to WWD reportage quoting Lopez "Glowing is such a clean fragrance. That's what I've always been about. I like soapy, clean smells. This is a very woodsy scent. So it's not exactly what I created 10 years ago - it's the evolution of that. At the essence, it's still natural, earthy, clean and real, but a little different side of that. It's the woodsy side of it, which I think is kind of New York-y, darker and sexier."


A darker and sexier "clean". Riiiiiiight. I expect it will smell of honey and concrete (it's the first unrelated stream of consciousness thing that popped into my mind; after all the above quote isn't noted for its coherence or logic, right? It's just PST: "perfume selling talk" ).

Glowing by Jennifer Lopez is a floral woody amber concocted by Jennifer with Givaudan's Calice Becker and Caroline Sabas. (I'm willing to believe JLo was somewhat involved since her first foray into perfume clearly mirrored one of her longtime favourites, China Rain.) It has top notes of bergamot, mandarin and cypress; a heart of orange flower, muguet de bois (aka lily of the valley) and cassia flower, and a drydown of sandalwood, amber, vanilla, vetiver, patchouli and cashmere musk (read: Cashmeran, a popular aromachemical with a smell between wet concrete & wood-musks).

But "darker and sexier clean"? Glow wasn't half dirty either, I should say! Practically a an aldehydic soapy-musky rose with a white floral note thrown in and it made for a HUGE success 10 years ago which brought all the celebitoscent craziness upon us (it's enough for marketeers to see one experiment go well saleswise and then they copy the concept ad infinitum). Jennifer says she hadn't imagined the lasting influence: "You don't think about things like that- when you're creating, you're just in the moment. You're doing it right then for right then. You always hope that things have a lasting impression and you go into it with those types of big thoughts - 'Oh, this could be like Coco Mademoiselle or Chanel No.5!' You aim for that, but you don't really think of it when you're in the moment.'"
Errr, riiiiiiiiight again.

pics via Sassi Sam

Venus, Mars and the Devil's Weed (Datura): a Scented Love Story for Valentine's Day

Officially Sandro Botticell's painting "Venus and Mars" is a story which recounts the omnipotence of love that conquers even the most powerful war. However, new research suggests a daring reading: that behind the image of the blessed love, may in fact be hiding the display of sexuality of plant hallucinogens!

The art historians had overlooked one detail, and it was David Beligkcham, director of the Institute of Art at Sotheby's house who zoomed on it. Looking closely at the satyr on the bottom right part of the painting (click to enlarge), he recognized a fruit that belongs to the species Datura Stramonioum known as "devil's weed" or "devil's trumpet", a plant with a history of hallucinogenicy which induces men and women to take off their clothes and frolick away. The hallucinogenic effects are recorded in ancient Greek texts hence the use of Datura either as an aphrodisiac or as a poison.

The table set out to describe the painting by Boticelli in the National Gallery of England bears the following description: "It is a scene of adultery, since Venus was the wife of Hephaestus, the God of Fire, but it contains a moral message: the power of love to win and to civilize." Beligkcham on the other hand believes that the message is more subversive. "The fruit is offered to the viewer, so it is important intentionally," quoted in The Times. "The Botticelli is keen on plants with symbolic significance. For example, in the back there are laurels, which are references to his supporters, the Medici family whose emblem is the laurel. The Datoura known in America as "a hallucinogen of the poor" reveals the symptoms in the male figure. Inhibit the natural functions and induce excitement, so it makes you want to get undressed. It also makes you swoon. "

Toloache. Náatumush. Datura wrightii. Angel’s trumpet. Devil’s weed. Names in Nahuatl, Luiseño, Latin, and English, respectively, for the sacred datura plant. A plant to make one swoon out of erotic excitement, therefore, perhaps the sexiest Valentine's Day scent of them all!  

There are a few perfumes which are directly inspired by and incorporating datura in their composition: Perfumer Ineke Ruhland makes a sweet and mysterious datura fragrance called Evening Edged in Gold and Serge Lutens also proposes Datura Noir for a more tropical and suede-laced take. Maître Parfumeur et Gantier has Secrète Datura in their line-up, a powdery, elegant take of the herbal tinge of datura allied tovanilla-smelling heliotrope. Other fragrances include Keiko Mecheri's Datura Blanche, White Datura by lluminum Perfume and Green Datura by Voluspa.

The theory regarding the Botticelli painting goes even further as Beligkcham suggests the two figures in the table 15th century painting are not even Mars and Venus, but Adam and Eve, while the plant is none other than a stem from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the very thing that caused their expulsion from Eden; although often referred to as an apple, in the Bible it is not specified exactly. Is datura the elusive element into something even further? You shall be the judge of that.


Datura pic via Deborah Small