The winner of the draw...

....for Enticing tuberose scent is MsIndigoLilly. Congratulations!
Please email me using Contact with Anya's Garden in the title and your shipping data in the body of the message so I can arrange for your prize to get shipped to you shortly.

Thanks everyone for the enthusiastic participation and till the next one!

Anya's Garden Enticing: fragrance review & giveaway

"The Tuberose, with her silvery light,
That Is in the gardens of Malay
Is called the mistress of the night,
So like a bride, scented and bright,
She comes out when the sun’s away.

Then, by a secret virtue, these grateful odours
will add an inexpressible charm to your enjoyment;
but if, regardless of the precepts of moderation,
you will approach too near, this divine
flower will then be but a dangerous enchantress,
which will pour into your bosom a deadly poison,
Thus the love which descends from heaven purities
and exalts the delights of a chaste passion ; but
that which springs from the earth proves the bane
and the destruction of imprudent youth."
[source]

The seduction of Polianthes tuberosa starts in the mind, even if the consummation lies on a warm bed. Destabilizing one's mind, giving impure thoughts, thoughts of opiate intoxication, of abandoning one's self to pleasures of a forbidden nature, in the words of one writer "a voluptuous intoxication from which one does not easily become liberated".

Literally "flower of the city" (from the Greek πόλις/polis for city and  άνθος/anthos for flower), tuberose has been linked with a demi-mondaine existence in the big cities of Western Europe, where courtesans used it alongside other "crass" scents, such as musk and ambergris, to infiltrate themselves unto the lives of their lovers. The Victorian abstinence from using perfume on the body itself, unless it was in the form of a lightly scented product (hair pomade, mouth rinse, linen scent and the like), made the use of intimate forms of perfume even more daring by those deviating outwards of the accepted path of manners. Perfumer Anya McCoy of Anya's Garden chose wisely when she paired the dynamo of tuberose with animalic perfume notes (among them the human-meets-herbaceous scent of clary sage, beeswax and musk tincture), thus allying the two faces of Janus into a composite that is as narcotic as a forbidden substance, as dark as the night and as addictive as good chocolate. The lady is not quite covered, rather surreptitiously revealing, and quite old-fashioned in her naturalness; then again fashions are cyclical and animalic florals are off for a revival at the moment.

When I asked Anya about the process of creation she replied: "I used a combo of purchased absolute and extrait (pure absolute) made from pomade that I made. The pomade was washed with alcohol for two weeks, chilled, filtered. Very old school." Smelling the finished product I can vouch for the old school moniker myself; in the very best possible sense, that is!

Although the scent launched last summer, it took me a while to discover its many facets and to enjoy it on the warmer days of spring that we've been having. The natural warmth of the climate ramps up the carnal aspects to the max and it hangs into the humid air with the insistence of a lover always hungry for more. Maybe this is the deep, dangerous, complicit floral for summer to come.

Ingredients: Organic Sugar Cane Alcohol, Tuberose Absolute, Scented Alcohol extracted from Anya’s handmade Tuberose Enfleurage Pomade, Butter CO2, Opoponax Absolute, Clary Sage essential oil, Terpene Acetate Isolate ex. Cardamom, Beeswax Absolute and Anya’s handmade Beeswax Tincture, Patchouli essential oil, Mushroom Absolute, Siberian Musk Tincture.

Enticing is available in both pure perfume form as a 4ml mini, and as an Eau de Parfum 15ml spray from Anya’s Garden Perfumes store available here.

For our readers Anya McCoy has generously offered a FREE 4ml extrait de parfum of Enticing sent anywhere within the USA. All you have to do is leave a comment under the review and I will draw a winner after the weekend.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine:

Anya's Garden Perfume Reviews 

Animalic & "Skanky" Perfumes

Musk: natural Tonquin musk and synthetics

The historic Animalis base

Parfums Fourrure (so called "fur perfumes")

Another niche perfume brand bought up by a giant corporation

We have been reporting this snatching up of smaller niche fragrance brands for some time now because it shows just how powerful capitalism is and just how businesses need cash to flourish and expand. Or perhaps how the dream of founding a brand is to eventually sell it to a bigger stake? In any case, the latest news revolves around an interesting (and seemingly contradictory?) acquisition.

According to Fragrantica who reports based on the Business Wire reportage:

"Estee Lauder started to build a strong portfolio of prestige perfume brands with the aquisition of Tom Ford. Recently, Le Labo and Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle have also come under EL control. Now, Kilian Hennessy -  the grandson of the founder of The LVMH Group - sold his brand to EL, although everyone was always hinting at the big support of LVMH behind By Kilian."



It's also reported on The Street Insider. (section Acquisitions/Mergers)

The Lauder Group portfolio currently includes: Estée Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Lab Series, Origins, Tommy Hilfiger, M·A·C, Kiton, La Mer, Bobbi Brown, Donna Karan New York, DKNY, Aveda, Jo Malone London, Bumble and bumble, Michael Kors, Darphin, Tom Ford, Smashbox, Ermenegildo Zegna, AERIN, Marni, Tory Burch, RODIN olio lusso, Le Labo, Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle, GLAMGLOW, By Kilian.

My grumbling had began in 2013 when I lamented the "loss" to Big Market of L'Artisan Parfumeur and later Diptyque and Penhaligon's. And it was back then that I featured a true indie's views on how the market works and what lies in the future ahead. When Frederic Malle was bought by Lauder in 2015 the furore spread on online communities like wildfire. And Le Labo's acquisition too.

It's safe to assume that if your favorite fragrance niche brand is expanding, issuing more and more perfumes and accessory products (candles, linen sprays, hair scents etc.) it's bound to get sold very very soon! However if The Aesthetic Principle® should apply, fear not; you shouldn't feel guilty of fanning the fires of capitalism.

But let's revert to the case at hand. An originally LVMH company bought up by the Lauder Group. A company headed by someone related to LVMH bought up by the Lauder group. We live in interesting times!

Le Secret d'Arielle by Mauboussin: new fragrance & collaboration

News of a collaboration between French jewelers & fragrance brand Mauboussin and French-American actress & singer Arielle Dombasle left me with an instant feeling of heightened, impatient expectation. The reason is twofold: on the one hand the great reputation of Mauboussin perfumes (not to mention the diamond jewels!), on the other the notoriety of Dombasle as a true lover of perfume. In fact, her signature scent has long held something of a fascination to me, back when I was compiling my perfumes worn by celebrities list almost 15 years ago, being highly responsive to her personal choices.

Pierre Olivier Deschamps photography

"Whatever her raison d’être française — like playing catch-up for having been born in the United States and raised in Mexico — she has mastered that oh-so-French savoring of every delicious whiff of life that Americans, as the prejudice goes, like to turn up their noses at.
That is evident by the cloud of perfume in which she arrives for lunch; let others travel by car. “I can live without lipstick, without a hairbrush, but I cannot live without perfume,” she said. “What did the kings bring to the baby Jesus? The ingredients of perfume. It’s the basis of ... ” She trailed off, gesturing as if to indicate the whole world. [...]
Dombasle is not content just to dab on a bit of store-bought stuff, a 20th-century practice she derides as lacking in imagination. Rather, she concocts her own mixture from Cuir de Russie by Chanel, Aromatic Elixir by Clinique and a cheap off-brand white musk she stockpiles from a shop on the Lower East Side. (NYC) "
[source]

Her new fragrance, in collaboration with Mauboussin and the perfumers in charge of creating the formula, is called Secret d'Arielle and comes in a 30ml extrait de parfum. If you want to read a review of it, there's one on Fragrantica.

For those of you wondering: the star of David on the bottle probably alludes to her Jewish husband, French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, affectionately referred to as BHL by the French. Apparently my eyes are not as they were. It's a pentacle.

Revisiting the Neglected: Shop Your Fragrance Wardrobe

The notion of "shopping your wardrobe" is hot on fashion and style blogs right now. The idea of a judged frugality has something appealing to it. Like controlling someone's life, an illusion of being in control at the very least. It also makes for worthwhile discoveries at the back of the pile; that rah-rah skirt from high school can't be worn again, but looks at those leggings from the early 1990s! And the perfectly cut jean jackets from the same period, not laser-cut but just as straight and lean? (Lean and long was big in the 1990s, my friends).

Hermes campaign 2012, shot at the oldest olive tree, on Aegina island, Greece

The same principle can be applied to one's fragrance wardrobe. Imagine if we dived at the back of our wardrobes and fished the fragrances we wear little of. With huge collections for the majority of us, the loot should be highly stimulating. Thus began the "Shop Your Fragrance Wardrobe" idea!

I unearthed something truly gorgeous which I had not been wearing for a long, long time. The reasons? I'm not exactly rewriting Das Kapital, but I do breach a bit on it, in a way. Find the article on this link and please share your own neglected fragrances which you recently rediscovered in the comments.