FRAGments - Underground, Artisan and Indie Perfume Event/Collective

FRAGments - Underground, Artisan and Indie Perfume Event/ Collective will bring together olfactory and perfume artists from across North America in a gallery setting to present a curated selection of their work. The event will be the first in a series to be held in a unique space and coincide with the first Saturday of the season. Each event will feature a moderated salon discussion followed by a reception and exhibition where perfumer/creators will be able to present their work in a collective pop- up shop designed and styled by FRAGments.

The name for the series is derived from FRAGRANCE MOVEMENT and picks up on the slang word for perfume, "FRAG". While the event represents a collective, implicit is the recognition that independent, artisan perfumers are fragments of a whole that move in different directions. FRAGments seeks to celebrate these differences.

Artisan perfumery is a growing movement where individuals are exploring unique olfactory directions through a variety of fragrant media and palettes” says Maggie Mahboubian, founder and curator of FRAGments. “However, very few venues exist for these perfumers to present their handcrafted work. FRAGments will fill that gap”. She adds, “it will provide a small scale, intimate forum for artisan perfumers to interact directly with their audience”. Another unique aspect of this event is that it will define a community and spotlight the art of fragrance design through interpretive and experimental work.

The first FRAGments event will be held at MorYork Gallery in Los Angeles, the studio of eclectic sculptor, Clare Graham whose work visually embodies the spirit of this diverse group of perfumers, who create unique, multifaceted and experimental olfactory art. For more information about Clare Graham and this extraordinary venue please visit: www.claregraham.com

The event will begin with a salon-style discussion session moderated by Saskia Wilson- Brown. Ms. Wilson-Brown is the director of the newly formed Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles. The IAO supports the work of olfactory artists through grants, research opportunities, lectures, workshops and a materials library. For more information please visit www.artandolfaction.com

Event Details:
Summer Solstice Saturday, June 22, 2013
11am-12pm, Moderated Discussion Session with perfumers 12pm-5pm Pop-up Shop
The following artists will present their work at the 1st FRAGments event on June 22:

JK DeLapp, The Rising Phoenix Perfumery (www.TheRisingPhoenixGroup.com) David Falsberg, Phoenicia Perfumes (www.phoeniciaperfumes.com)
Amanda Feeley, Esscentual Alchemy (www.esscentualalchemy.mysupadupa.com) Lisa Fong, Artemisia Natural Perfume (www.artemisiaperfume.com)

Heather Kauffman, Jolie Laide Perfume (www.etsy.com/shop/JolieLaidePerfume) Maggie Mahboubian, Parfums Lalun (www.parfumslalun.com)
Christi Meshell, House of Matriarch (www.matriarch.biz)
Mik, MIKMOI San Francisco (www.mikmoi.com)

Ayala Moriel, Ayala Moriel Parfums (www.ayalamoriel.com)
Persephenie (www.persephenie.com)
Sherri Sebastian, Sebastian Signs (www.sebastiansigns.com)
Nikki Sherritt, Rebel and Mercury Parfums (www.rebelandmercuryperfumes.com) Meredith Smith, Sweet Anthem Perfumes (www.sweetanthemperfumes.com) Dawn Spencer-Hurwitz, DSH Perfumes (www.dshperfumes.com)

Laurie Stern, Velvet and Sweet Pea’s Purrfumery (www.purrfumery.com) Roxana Villa, Roxana Illunimated Perfume (www.illuminatedperfume.com) Shelley Waddington, En Voyage Perfume (www.envoyageperfumes.com)

Event Highlights and Notables:

*Persephenie will present an experimental olfaction project.
*En Voyage Perfume will be launching their new fragrance at the 1st FRAGments event. *House of Matriarch will spotlight their Blackbird fragrance which was just named a Top 10 fragrance for 2013 by Men's Journalmagazine, the only Indie fragrance that made their Top 10 list.
*Esscentual Alchemy will present “Moon Valley” - Featured in Vogue UK May '13 issue in their Natural Beauty Selections.
*Mario Gomez, Olfactory Ambassador will represent perfumers who are not able to attend event.

FRAGments - Underground, Artisan and Indie Perfume Event/Collective The 1st Event to be held on June 22, 2013 at MorYork Gallery, 4959 York Blvd, Los Angeles, CA.

Perfumery Material: Beeswax, Sweet Animalic Intimacy

The note of beeswax is among the few natural "animalic" notes in perfumery that are totally cruelty-free, i.e. involving no harm to the animal from which they're derived. For this reason, beeswax absolute is among the most prized materials in the natural perfume palette, where the absence of synthetics can be a problem. With its naturally fixative qualities, it aids the anchoring of more volatile notes.
Beeswax absolute (Apies Millifera) has been taken from the actual beehive without disruption to the lives of the bees for a long while. For perfumery, the wax is taken from hives that have been used for more than 5 years, therefore the material retains the scents of honey, propolis and the smell of the bees themselves, which makes beeswax a pheromone-rich essence with all that entails.

photo collage: punmiris.com

The wax in the hive is collected carefully by hand and is then solvent extracted. The major countries producing beeswax absolute are Spain, France and Morocco where apiculture is ingrained in tradition, but California in the US is rapidly gaining momentum. The resulting essence is fully miscible in alcohol and dipropylene glycol, making it easy to work with.

The scent of beeswax absolute is a very pleasant, complex composite of both honeyed, sweet aspects (with floral facets) and of essences of a musky, intimate ambience reminiscent of sweet hay and cured tobacco. The essence of beeswax absolute is used in perfumery to render golden-ambery fragrance notes, and serves as a middle to base note. The honeyed aspect of the material with its background of hay serves as a good underpinning of lavender and rose and is great in juxtaposition with naturally bitter oakmoss.

Beeswax absolute has comforting, spiritually balancing and lifting, solar properties when used in aromatherapeutic blends and recalls the joyful activity of bees.

Notable fragrances with prominent beeswax absolute notes:

Annick Goutal Myrrhe Ardente
Chanel Antaeus
Demeter Beeswax
Dior Leather Oud
D'Orsay Tilleul
DSH Cimabue
DSH Parfum de Grasse
Hermes Caleche Fleurs de Mediterranee
Krizia Theatro alla Scala
L'Artisan Fleur d'oranger 2007 (limited edition)
L'Occitane Reve de Miel
Maria Candida Gentile Sideris
M.Micallef Charm
Ramon Monegal Cuirelle
Roxana Illuminated Perfume To Bee
Serge Lutens Chene
Serge Lutens Feminite du Bois
Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille
Sonoma Scent Studio Nostalgie
Tom Ford Moss Breches

CB I Hate Perfume #610 Outside: new fragrance

Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume maverick brand launches his latest ready-to-wear fragrance, #610 Outside. Formulated by founder and perfumer Christopher Brosius, Outside pays true homage to his country roots; after one too many a run-in with mosquitoes in the family's Pennsylvania garden, Christopher designed this fragrance to be first and foremost, a bug repellant. It is a fresh, vibrant scent that has notes of Lavender and Oregano, among others - and with it's bug-repelling qualities - it's here just in time for those sweltering summer BBQs.

Christopher Brosius, a cult figure among perfume cognoscenti is a Fragrance Foundation award-winner and the first perfumer to ever be recognized by the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum for the way scent is designed. He has created countless groundbreaking scents and continues his work today through his namesake label, CB I Hate Perfume.

CB I HATE PERFUME #610 OUTSIDE
A sincere disdain for bugs, especially the flying variety, is the inspiration behind the latest CB I Hate Perfume scent, Outside. More than 10 years in the making, this bug repellant perfume has finally been brought to fruition by utilizing elements organically found in plant life, and it’s been well worth the wait.
“I hate bugs. Particularly mosquitoes. So this perfume began in 1992 as a bug repellant for me when I lived in the country. I knew from my research that one of the principal reasons plants produce their essential oils is to protect themselves from insects and I discovered several essential oils that were particularly effective to protect me from insects as well. The challenge then became to blend these various oils so that they truly smelled like perfume. Which, after a period of experimentation, is just what I did.”

So forever say goodbye to chemical sprays, creams and citronella candles and embrace CB’s latest Limited Edition fragrance that just so happens to keep you smelling lovely and bug-free at the same time. CB fans might remember an original version of the scent found only in the Gallery, but the new incarnation of the fragrance is more refined, and wears ‘deeper and richer’ than the original. OUTSIDE perfume is a refreshing, lively scent that contains notes of lavender, geranium, patchouli, bergamot and a touch of Oregano, among others. It opens with a burst of freshness, and dries to a ‘soft,’ slightly floral finish.
OUTSIDE is currently available in 15ML Absolute ($115) and a 100ML Water Perfume ($100) at the CB I Hate Perfume Gallery in Brooklyn and online at cbihateperfume.com

La Via del Profumo Milano Caffe & Venezia Giardini Secreti: fragrance reviews & free bottles giveaway

I'm starting with the really spectacular: We have a giveaway on Perfume Shrine, one winner will win TWO free perfume bottles of the newest creations by La Via del Profumo straight from Italy, one of Milano Caffé and one of Venezia Giardini Secreti (the first two fragrances in the new Italian Series). The draw is open to all till Wednesday 19th midnight and all you need to do is comment in the comment section below to be eligible. The winner will be announced on Thursday.

Now that we got this off our chest, let's concentrate on the gorgeous fragrances themselves!

La via del Profumo, an authentically artisanal line of exquisitely crafted fragrances, composed by natural perfumer Abdes Salaam Attar (Dominique Dubrana) in Italy, is proud to present the new "Italian Series," an homage to five great Italian cities (Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples) and the Italian country as a whole.

MILANO CAFFE

A sybarite fragrance needs the proper mind-frame to work and Italy with its languid climate and smooth contours of land naturally lends itself to it. The pervading and intoxicating scent of freshly ground coffee is one small part of this luxury of letting time slip by. The mingling of chocolate in the composition of Milano Caffé recalls the dusting of cocoa powder on the white "caplet" of a hearty and filling cappuccino, drunk leisurely with a view of the impressive Duomo before taking a stroll down the Via Montenapoleone for some serious window shopping. The Milanese are nothing if not sticklers for detail, from their dog's collar to their impeccable shoes, and I can feel in Milano Caffé the vibrancy of the elegant woody and spicy background which hums underneath the culinary notes of the top. Coffee is naturally a complex smell, comprised of caramelized & smoky/acrid facets on one end, of woody, like freshly sharpened pencils, on the other.

via virtualtourist

The dry quality of the fragrance despite the tonka bean and ambery richness elevates the composition into classic resinous-balsamic level; one mistakes smelling Milano Caffé for a full-bodied vintage that peels layer after layer after layer. In fact, what is most surprising is finding a hint of the cocoa-facet of orris and something which reminds me of the fluff, the flou quality of the resin opoponax, amidst the proceedings. This caress under the dark and bitterish flavor of coffee only serves to consolidate the infiltrating appeal of that highly prized bean, that elixir of life, the coffea arabica, cutting its slightly acidic character. Although the spicy woodiness might make Milano Caffé more conventionally masculine in direction, its richness and cuddly chocolate note makes it a great choice for the woman who doesn't follow trends but rather sets them herself. After all, it is no accident that coffee and coffee shops were seen as the nursery of revolution and of anarchy, and that both Ottoman Turkey in the 17th century and the Ethiopian church banned the exotic bean's secular consumption; it's that stimulating!

VENEZIA GIARDINI SECRETI

Venezia Giardini Secreti is inspired by the small "pockets" within Venice and the tales of the very popular in Italy Corto Maltese cartoon books, specifically "Favola di Venezia" ("Tale of Venice"). Venice is also the abode of Chevalier de Seingalt, more commonly known as the greatest womanizer of them all...

The solace of the shady gardens breeds flights of fancy and the escape of the intrigue of the political world: "When the Venetians are tired of the constituted authorities, they hid in these three secret places, these doors at the bottom of the secret passages opening to beautiful places and other stories ..." Whatever the story is, Venezia Giardini Secreti is redolent of the sweetly intoxicating scent of blooming jasmine and of rose blossoming in the summertime, allied to the mysticism and the marine signature of ambergris, an emblem of the naval tradition of "La Republicca Marinara".

via 

In a way there is a kinship between Tawaf, La Via del Profumo's jasmine fragrance from the Arabian Series, which is redolent of the jasmine sambac variety, rich, heady, like an aching pleasure and a call of beauty, and the latest offering in the Italian Series. And yet in Venezia Giardini Segreti the direction veers into less of a resinous floriental, with the anchoring of the base providing the softest pungency, an animalic hint more than a mysterious, apocryphal rite. For all the secrecy of the passages under the canals—which lead to gardens of a hundred delights and of the erotically charged tales of Casanova—the elegance and grace of Venezia Giardini Segreti is manifested in a touch of soft leather, a hint of motherly milk, a whiff of salty sea ...

Recommendations, Trends & Forecasting

At the request of many of my readers, I'm sharing some previous articles and consultations in print magazines, featuring my views on perfume trends and forecasting. On Happi, Christine Esposito posed to me interesting questions regarding the direction of trends for spring-summer 2013, but she also covers many stats for the industry at large, including end of 2012 sales data in the US, celebrity scent launches and the description of a trip from Brazil to Grasse, France. Read the article here.

Beauty Launchpad, which is distributed in the Middle East and India, asked me for my recommendations on perfume ads that speak to the imagination. The article is called "Fantasy & Promises: A Selection of Memorable Perfume Ads". Obviously due to space constraints, I couldn't expand on everything that has caught my mind's RAM, but I hope you enjoy reading all the same, following this link or directly below (you will need to use the "zoom" button)

Fantasy & Promises: a Selection of Memorable Perfume Ads [Beauty Launchpad, India]

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