Vintage Advertising Champions: Dioressence by Christian Dior

The oriental scent which began its historical arc as a "spa" and "all over" fragrance, meant to refresh and provide the stealth mantle of "a see-through charm". Inspired by the sea-like and skin-like smelling primal scent of ambergris...
Enjoy this vintage advertising for the original Dioressence perfume by Dior. (which you can buy easily on Amazon using the link)

And please read my fragrance review of Dior's Dioressence perfume on this link.

Chanel Boy, Hermes Muguet Porcelaine, Guerlain Le Muguet 2016 : 3 Upcoming Fragrances to Watch

In the ever increasing pace of fragrance launches some catch one's eye due to either exclusivity cachet or brand awareness. This is the case with the three fragrances I highlight today. One is so exclusive and posh that it can't possibly justify the jumping through hoops to get it, yet a vision of the bottle (and a sample from a lucky buyer) is de riguer. The other two are less hard to get, though still preserving themselves for marriage, but coming from such collections as to warrant some getting all hot and bothered with. Without further ado I present them to you.

First we have Guerlain's super-limited annual Le Muguet 2016 edition: this year it promises to be a new formula, not just a different bottle and concentration game. The company itself, after all, is historic., so extra care is given to accuracy. More info on Fragrantica.

Then there's Chanel's Boy (probably going out to play with Dior's Girl, engaging in puberty love. All right, Chanel is probably the ONLY firm who can graft such a gauche name to their Les Exclusifs boutique line; Boy Capel, after whom the new fragrance is named, is canon after all.
The fact that the scent is masculine but could be worn by women as well is an added bonus, like the boyish cut styles Coco Chanel made her own.

 And last but not least there's Muguet Porcelaine by Hermes, them of the scarves fame, in the boutique-only Hermessences line, a green lily of the valley. Since perfumer Jean Claude Ellena, he of best-selling fragrances fame, has been working on this idea for a long time, perhaps longer that he has ever admitted to, taking into account that Roudnitska was his mentor, it should be interesting. Lily of the valley has served for soap-clean references for ages, so let's see what happens.

National Fragrance Day Today

The Fragrance Foundation UK is celebrating National Fragrance Day on March 21st and what better opportunity to share your scented thoughts and choices? Every day is a fragrance day around these pages, but having a semi-official excuse to celebrate makes it more palatable to the rest of the people around one's obsession.

 

Fragrance has the ability to make us feel, to make us really think, to make us believe that we can fine-tune our own personal aura and presentation to the public in a way that no other "product" can.
It's evocative, it's transporting, it is even felt in the dark.

Today I'm wearing Caron's Tabac Blond extrait, a very special perfume for me, as it paved my plunging into a house I had little exposure to in my formative years, Caron being semi-absent from the local market. It more or less consolidated my longing for things unattainable and hard to get but it also made me realize that one likes what they like and that's priceless. 

via Givaudan

In celebration, please share your own scent story in the comments, right below this post. I'd love to read your stories!!

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")