Free Perfume Draw

Today I have a niche offering for our readers. A decant of Via del Profumo "Oud Caravan" is awaiting a lucky reader who will comment on this post below about how they feel about oud in general and arabic-inspired fragrances in particular.

Draw is open internationally till Thursday midnight and winner will be announced on Friday. Good luck!

Jack Eau de Parfum: Withnail has a fume!

Beloved actor Richard E.Grant, the tall gaunt guy with the piercing blue gaze we have come to adore since, oh at least The Scarlet Pimpernel, Withnail & I and Track 29, is launching his very own perfume "Jack" tomorrow, April 2nd at Liberty, London, UK. (And no, this isn't a joke, though I'm sure Richard thought about launching on April 1st being rather funny in a non funny way).

Jack eau de parfum has its own dedicated site, is proudly British and contains shall we say interesting notes. Not to mention that the celebrity launching it is someone how does create anticipation, contrary to many many others in this field.

Jack eau de parfum by Richard E.Grant is a unisex eau de parfum with fragrant notes of lime, marijuana, mandarin, clove, pepper, nutmeg, oud, vetiver, white musk, tobacco absolute and olibanum resin.

Nubile Forms, Their Voices Echoing in the Woods

Cacharel produced a romantic (and I bet to be discussed) commercial for the first flanker of Anais Anais in 3 and a half decades (the original was issued in 1978), Anais Anais Premier Délice.
Sarah Moon gives her place to Olivia Bee (barely 19 herself) for this time around, shooting what looks like teenager models having a hippie good time in the woods. Dora Baghriche and Olivier Cresp of Firmenich have composed the new fragrance (eau de toilette 50 ml sells for 39,90 euros at the time of writing, international launch set for April 2014). The scent of Anais Anais Premier Délice starts with green pear, bergamot, galbanum and orange, with the heart familiarly floral with peony and hyacinth, while the anchoring notes include cocoa and cedarwood.

It's an interesting, though not novel, approach, since the flanker is supposed to capitalize on a well-established brand, which however has lost much of its fresh, youthful appeal now that its original audience is comprised of mothers with their own daughters. So, in order to capture the daughters, L'Oreal, who hold the licence to parfums Cacharel came up with this plan. After all, three quarters of the sales of Cacharel come from the perfume sector!

What do you think? Wow or Yawn? (I refer to the advertising aspect, rather than the list of notes)

Aromaforks: Scent Gadget to Enhance Food Experience

"A techy new fork boasts a special panel that can be infused with scents.
The Aromafork has a built-in spot for strips whose scents, when paired with actual food, can be registered by the brain as a new flavor combination.
The strips are made of materials not unlike facial blotting papers, and can be loaded with scents including chocolate, banana, basil, coconut and wasabi, among others."Read more on the Daily Mail.

pic via the dailymail/Molecule-R Flavors Inc.

Of course flavor is in big part smell, so this makes sense. I bet dedicated foodies however might have a dissenting voice or two among them.

What do you think? Wow or Yawn?

Win Guerlain's La Petite Robe Noire Scented Surprises

La Petite Robe Noire started as a curio a few years ago, mingling the Chanel "little black dress" concept with fragrance, illustrating the bottles with playful SATC black dresses cartoons which sorta alienated the regular Guerlain perfume die-hard yet jumping off the exclusive boutique circuit into the mainstream distribution after the scent proved a best-seller in the line. How things change, eh? Today La Petite Robe Noire boasts an entire line of concentrations and flankers with noticeable differences between the scent of each to keep women interested and buying.

Guerlain is organizing a contest which gauges your Glamourometer (yup, that's the word used) and allows you to win lots of LPRN fragrant surprises (including a large bottle of the perfume!) and you can enter it on this link, all you have to do is skip the film with the Nancy Sinatra tune. Good luck!