Alec Lawless: 1960-2012

An accident in late March cut off the life thread of Alec Lawless, fun personality, communication wizard, scented naturals teacher and mad professor Boris's alter ego.

Alec Lawless was formerly married to Julia Lawless, renowned aromatherapist and author of The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils and he ran an essential oil company called ‘Acqua Oleum’ which supplied companies all over Europe. He's the author of the perfume book Being Led by the Nose, reviewed on these pages, which serves as the perfect compendium on natural materials and blending.
His colourful personality and unique contribution will be missed.

FiFi Semi-Finalists for 2012

The Fragrance Foundation has announced the finalists for the awards they bestow each year to the most successful perfumes in the market. In about a forthnight, during the Fifi Finalists Breakfast, the list will be shortened to include only 5 in each category and on May 21st the final picking of winners will take place. For the moment, these are the semi-finalists.

Women’s Luxe (over 250 doors sales points)

Beyonce Pulse
Bottega Veneta
Elie Saab Le Parfum
Fendi Fan di Fendi
Gucci Guilty Intense
Justin Bieber Someday
Prada Candy
Taylor Swift Wonderstruck
Thierry Mugler Angel Eau de Toilette
Tom Ford Violet Blonde

Men’s Luxe (over 250 sales points)

Giorgio Armani Code Sport
Gucci Guilty Pour Homme
Guess Seductive Homme
Hermès Un Jardin Sur Le Toit
John Varvatos Star U.S.A
Lacoste Eau de Lacoste L.12.12 Collection
Original Penguin
Penhaligon’s Juniper Sling
Thierry Mugler A*Men Pure Havane
Yves Saint Laurent L’Homme Libre

Women’s Specialty Luxe / Nouveau Niche (sold in between 26 to 250 doors)

Bond No. 9 Madison Square Park
By Kilian Sweet Redemption
Chanel Jersey
Christian Dior Addict to Life
Dolce & Gabbana The Velvet Collection
Giorgio Armani Armani Privé La Femme Bleue
Givenchy Dahlia Noir
Maison Martin Margiela Untitled
Oscar de la Renta Live In Love
Tom Ford Jasmin Rouge

Men’s Specialty Luxe / Nouveau Niche (sold in between 26 to 250 doors)

Bond No. 9 Andy Warhol
Bond No. 9 New York Amber
Bond No. 9 New York Oud
By Kilian Incense Oud
By Kilian Sweet Redemption
Caron Yuzu
Diptyque 34 Boulevard Saint Germain
Hugo Boss Boss The Collection
Tom Ford Jasmin Rouge
Yves Saint Laurent Cologne Gingembre

This year’s Hall of Fame inductee will be Coco Chanel.
More award categories at the Fragrance Foundation blog.

Jennifer Love Hewitt Has Them Hooked from the Nose

“I carry McCormick’s Pure Vanilla — the baking kind — and dab it on my neck,” Jennifer Love Hewitt, the popular American actress and producer, tells Us Weekly. “Men are attracted to the scent! One time, I put it on and four different guys were like, ‘You smell amazing!’”

"Vanilla is the bronzer of the fragrance world. In large doses, it's overwhelming, but when used to subtler effect, it can be wonderfully sexy. [...] a great deal of what we associate with vanilla scent, in terms of perfume, is just an approximation, created in a lab, which is then usually wrapped around some other note (fruit, chocolate, musk) for a sickly, cavity-inducing effect. " writes Allure.

Vanilla cooking extract is really vanillin, not the richer, more treackly product of the vanilla pod (which is an orchid), but it has the intensely soft, cuddly scent of childhood. Could it be that the subliminal message is a child-like quality is most desirable? Or is it that triggering a happy time for most people is a feel good, win-win situation?

Guerlain Shalimar Parfum Initial L'Eau: fragrance review

Guerlain gives us a vacant eye zombie. Like Natalia Vodianova's baby blues look empty and not quite there in sepia pictures, lacking the density , the pathos, the slicing through paper that darker eyes carry, yet those vacant blues carry their own strange allure, Shalimar Parfum Initial L'Eau is a very pretty thing posing in a company that it probably shouldn't be among. Taken individually, it is a soft, enveloping, delicate scent of fairies. Taken as a member in the Shalimar company, it's too baby-ish to be taken seriously.

The commercially successful experiment of Shalimar Parfum Initial (2011), an introductory Shalimar for those consumers who knew the brand through their cosmetics &  skincare or for the young clientele that always associated the classic Shalimar with older generations and longed for a version to claim their own (see also Shalimar Eau Legere/Shalimar Light and Eau de Shalimar for previous efforts into this arena), gave us hope. For 2012 Guerlain, as we had early on announced, was bent on launching a flanker to the modernised Shalimar Parfum Initial version (a flanker to a flanker, if you like) this spring, called Shalimar Initial L'Eau.  Now,  this is exactly why I usually tend to dislike the concept of flankers: it's so easy to lose track or confuse things, ending up discussing a completely different thing than your fellow partner in the discussion.

Shalimar Initial L'Eau is both a lighter and drier new formula on the previous experiment, not just a different concentration or a new bottle edition (Shalimar in general knows more limited editions than it can possibly count). The bottle is the exact same style as Shalimar Parfum Initial, only in a lighter hue with a baby pink ribbon on the neck (instead of a greyish blue one) bearing the familiar G medaillon. The similarity leads me to believe that they do intend to keep this version in the line as just a different concentration of the Parfum Initial, not only a one-time-thing limited edition. Especially if it proves a good seller.


Perfumer Thierry Wasser was put on record saying he chose a specific grade of bergamot from a Guerlain communelle (i.e. a special reserve that Guerlain keeps for each of their famous ingredients) which is a tad greener and zestier than usual. What is most distinguishable however, smelling the finished fragrance, is a premium grade neroli which gives a subtle, refreshing tonality, lightening the formula considerably and further making it fluffy and airy. If Shalimar Parfum Initial is a watercolour, this is a rinse. 
Despite the mentioned notes of "greenery" in the official press release, such as lily of the valley, freesia and hyacinth, the vividness of the bright citrus notes with a lightly sweet aspect is what stays with you.
The new spin doesn't really boost the green freshness (like that in Miss Dior Chérie L'Eau) but focuses on the neroli essence and a tart grapefruit top note to counterpoint the traditional carnality of the original base of Shalimar (built on opoponax resin, all powdery splendour, Peru balsam and benzoin with their rich, treackly aspect and quinolines with their leathery, sharp, disturbing bite).
Instead the leathery note in Shalimar Parfum Initial L'Eau has been further toned down than it was in the Initial (annihilated you could argue) substituted by an admittedly delicious crème brûlée note. Overall we're witnesses to the deliberate culling of the balsamic aspect that makes Shalimar so famous and recognisable.  This leaves us with a spectre; a fascinating apparition amidst the shadows, blink and you'll miss its ethereal form, but is it related to Shalimar of old? No, it's not.


What I find most surprising for a Shalimar version is the relative lack of tenacity and sufficient projection: three generous spritzes on my arm (catching my trench-coat sleeve too)  have lasted just 4 hours and no one but myself was aware of the fact that I was wearing perfume. For an eau de toilette concentration it's not totally unusual, but for Guerlain and for a flanker in that iconic oriental stable it is most peculiar. 


Notes for Guerlain Shalimar Parfum Initial L'Eau:
Top: bergamot, grapefruit, neroli
Heart: iris absolute, jasmine grandiflora, rose absolute
Base: tonka bean, vanilla. 


Shalimar Parfum Initial L'Eau is presented in Eau de Toilette concentration in 40ml (for 37GBP), 60ml (46GBP) and 100ml (64GBP) bottles. 

Flankers/derivative versions of Shalimar by Guerlain (with linked reviews & comparison with original):

Shalimar Eau Legere/Shalimar Light

Eau de Shalimar

Shalimar Ode a la Vanille

Shalimar Parfum Initial

Shalimar Parfum Initial L'Eau

Limited editions of Shalimar (without change in the perfume formula itself):

Eau de Shalimar Flower

Shalimar Charms edition & Eau de Shalimar Charms edition

Shalimar Fourreau du Soir

Shalimar extrait de parfum in Bacarrat quadrilobe flacon 2011 edition

Chanel, an Intimate Life by Lisa Chaney: book review

The ultra-patriotic French won't be too pleased with Lisa Chaney's book on Chanel and her life unfolded in intimate detail for the tome she has signed, "Chanel an Intimate Life". Not only because there is a significant deconstruction of the myth that Chanel herself (and the people at Chanel) have built about that instantly picked-up logo, but also because they're painted in truer colors than the De Gaulle resistance fighters have always strived to present the WWII heroic romance. Chaney simply puts things into an historical perspective: Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's link to Nazi officer Von Dincklage is a reflection of many common people's strive for survival through if not collaboration, then through "waiting it out". In fact the chapter recounting her passage into the war, when she closed her atelier, is titled "Survival".

Coco Chanel & Salvador Dali, scanned from Chanel an Intimate Life by openwardrobe.co.za

Modern readers will also get a mixed bag of feelings reading about women in the drawing of the 19th century who activately sought to cling to men for their survival: if they were unlucky and emotional, acting desperate for men who didn't give them much of a chance and used them as both recreational ground and reproductive machines, like Gabrielle's own unfortunate mother; if they were shrewd and calculating, using their guiles and beauty as hard currency to become irregulières and in some select cases grandes horizontales, i.e. famous courtesans, such as La Belle Otéro and Liane de Pougy. It is in this dubious (but often glamorized) latter milieu that Gabrielle Chanel gets into cognizantly, as an irregulière , a kept woman, after her lonely childhood and her early cabaret days, where she meets her formative lover and "the man of her life", Arthur "Boy" Capel. The book in fact starts with one of the discussions the famous designer has with Capel after he has successfully backed her up in her initial millinery projects: "I thought I'd given you a plaything, I gave you freedom" he sighs.

Chaney goes into much detail about the emotional life of Chanel and even though this portrayal is necessarily based on letters and biographies such as the memoir taken by Paul Morand, which can only reveal so much, and second-hand testimonies, which sometimes bear the special weight of the narrator, it seems that Gabrielle was a much more sensitive, responsive and agitated creature than we take her to be, especially after Capel's tragic death. I was especially distraught when reading about her final days, when the cocaine habit had taken the worst of her and she had been giving instructions to be tied on her bed at night so that she would avoid somnambulating naked amidst the corridors and the lobby of the Ritz that was to become her permanent residence.

The author takes things at the very top; the family background in rural France and the troubled formative years of Gabrielle Chanel which end in her abandonment by her father to Aubazine, the nun-run orphanage where she acquires much of her love for austerity, sharpness of aesthetics and love for the smell of cleanness. This is where her ideal for a perfume, to be later on materialized in the stupendous Chanel No.5. composed by Ernest Beaux, first takes seed: She admires the grandes cocottes because they smell pleasant. Speaking of society women Chanel would often say: "Ah yes, those women dressed in ball gowns, whose photographs we contemplate with a touch of nostalgia, were dirty....They were dirty. Are you surprised? But that's the way it was." Instead her own perfume differentiates itself in that it is a contstructed scent, not mimicking nature in order to mask humanity, but which relays the idea of a clean human being ready to please and be pleased. The book doesn't devote as much space or interest in Chanel No.5 or any of the other acclaimed perfumes issued when Chanel was alive, such as Bois des Iles, Cuir de Russie, Chanel Gardenia or Chanel No.19 perfume (or the even more cryptic and mystery ladden Chanel No.46 issued during the war). It certainly isn't as jam-packed with theories and factoids as the rewriting of the No.5 legend that Tilar Mazzeo undertook in The Secret of Chanel No.5 book. But there are still some interesting facts about the creation of this icon in the fragrance industry for those interested.

What the book seems to be unable to convincingly showcase, much as it tries and partially succeeds into, is show the genius of Chanel's fashions. The problem is one of format, rather than of effort: Only a coffee table book format could do justice to the wonderful designs that truly liberated women from the restrictions of La Belle Epoque which relished effect rather than functionality. Chaney does give emphasis into the silhouette that Chanel established, gives plenty of insight into how the atelier worked and lots of gossip on the relationship of Coco Chanel with her contemporaries and colleagues, from Poiret (her first potent rival) and Schiaparelli (whom she loathed) to Balenciaga (whom she respected, even though she never showed him the graciousness he exhibited towards her). There is also plenty of insights into her property (with extensive references to La Pausa, the house she had built and which she oversaw herself); her conducting of business, including her turbulent relationship with the Wertheimers; her entourage of artists and entrepreneurs from Serge Lifar and Diaghilev to her confidante Misia Sert, Cocteau and Reverdy; and of course her string of influential lovers after the loss of Capel, among which feature prominently the emigré count Dmitri Pavlovich, composer Igor Stravinsky and "Bend d'Or" commonly known as the Duke of Westminster.

Lisa Chaney is thorough and if you thought this is just a book on Coco's fashions or Chanel perfumes, you're in for a surprise. The scope covered is much, much wider, taking the stepping stone of a biography into a glimpse of European history: a dying era, a mad resurgence, a world wide war and the growth that follows its aftermath. It's not light reading, but it's worth it.

Disclosure: I was sent a copy for reviewing purposes.