Le Labo Geranium 30: new limited edition fragrance

Le Labo Fragrances decided to contribute to Opening Ceremony's partnership with Thierry Boutemy by creating a very limited edition fragrance (100 bottles only) for the event.

Geranium 30, developed with French perfumer Barnabé Fillion, is a haphazard-seeming but impossibly artful bouquet of flowers (geranium, jasmin...) which, in a way, is Boutemy's own floral installation style in a bottle.

"Impossibly artful" because of the dangerous balance between the flowers and the spices (baie rose, poivre long...) which brings to the one who wears Geranium 30 the permanent feeling of walking in a perfectly arranged mad, wild garden... Enjoy the wildness...

info via press release

The Lover's Hair

James Jacques Tissot, Mme & M.Mauperin en Égypte

"She came to live only through him and for him, by his presence, by the thought of him, by his future, his portrait, which she carried when she last met him. When she parted from him, she ran her hands through his hair several times and then put on her gloves quickly. All the following day she breathed, sitting next to her husband, next to her daughter, in her house, the smell of her beloved and of his hair, which emanated from her hands, which she had not washed."

Edmond & Jules de Goncourt, Renée Mauperin (1864).

The winners of the draw…

…for the Lutens goodies are Lubesa75 and periafro9 (yahoo.com). Congratulations! Please email me using Contact with your shipping data so I can have these in the mail for you shortly.

Thanks everyone for the enthusiastic participation and till the next one (soon)!

Serge Lutens Lucky Draw

A special little something today for our Perfume Shrine readers. I have one exclusive soap by Serge Lutens and two fragrance miniatures (Feminite du Bois and Ambre Sultan) for the picking for two lucky readers.

Draw is open internationally and ends Sunday midnight. To be eligible please enter a comment below saying whether you enjoy scented/matched body products and if you have a favorite.

A Life-Long Dedication to Guerlain: Famous Fans

Among perfume brands of historical lineage, Guerlain proudly stands today as it did in the previous century and the one before it, as one of the necessary pilgrimages of every devoted perfume enthusiats. But some of the perfume lovers who have come into contact with the house have ascertained a durable, unstoppable connection which moves and tantalizes with promise at the same time.

Andree Putman was one such Guerlain devotee. Known to most readers for the 2005 renovation of the flagship store in Paris (with the ceremonial "chandelier" of perfumes, which is now substituted by a newer design) and for her own Preparation Parfumee Andree Putman, a niche fragrance of cult appeal, she remained a lifelong Guerlain customer with a penchant for a particular one of their classics (completely antithetical to her own brand name one, please note!). Here is the quote I unearthed, my heart aflutter with the longing of the all powerful allure of the signature scent.

"I am a woman of two perfumes. At 16 my best friend wore Shalimar. The name fascinated me. I was more L'Heure Bleue. Twenty five years later I opened a small flacon of Shalimar and that friendship has emerged out of its scent. It has never left me since. It counts itself among those perfumes which trail long after you have left. Even if one doesn't smell them on them, they express you so powerfully to others that one shouldn't change them. At home, my children know whether I have been in or out by whether there is the trail of Shalimar floating in the staircase. For that reason alone, I'm attached to it for life."

~cited by Veronique Blamont (1998)