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 Penhaligon's have re-issued two fragrances initially introduced as limited-editions for Valentine's Day, LP No.9 for men and LP No. 9 for women. They are named after the song originally performed by The Clovers, Love Potion No. 9 written in 1959 by Leiber & Stoller (check out the video after the jump). It was a huge hit then and became another hit again with The Searchers in 1965: " it smelled of turpentine and looked like Indian ink, I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink". The Penhaligon's scents were discontinued in 2006 according to Badger and Blade and are now back by popular demand (see, you just need to ask for your old favorites until perfumers finally relent). About LP No.9 for women, "Strange & beguiling, LP No. 9 for ladies is potent and addictive brew of
sweet floral notes, spices and musk. ...
Continue reading "Penhaligon's LP No. 9 Men & Women Are Back (2008) {New Perfumes}" »
 A late link to an article published in September 2008 in the Wall Street Journal on current research on the development of air fresheners, the thinking and science behind the venture, "Traditionally, air fresheners have tried to cover bad smells with a
blanket of stronger but more tolerable ones. IFF believes that by
charting the chemical properties of select odors, it can make the fight
more focused. The idea is to assail an offending molecule with a
fragrance--included in a cleaning product, for example, or an air
freshener--that can counter or cover it.(...) Next, an extreme tobacco addiction is heartily sought out, found, and embraced,...
Continue reading "Atypical Research on Air Fresheners {Fragrant Reading}" »
 Mane has announced the sad news of the untimely death of young perfumer Laurent Bruyère, aged 43. His creations include, Thierry Mugler Angel Innocent (1998)
Lalique Le Baiser (1999)
Ralph Lauren Polo Blue (2002)
Costume National Scent (2002)
Escada Sentiment for Men (2002)
Cacharel Amor Amor (2003 with Dominique Ropion)
Salvatore Ferragamo Incanto (2003)
Rimmel Beat (2003)
Lucienne Eau de Parfum (2004)
Costume National Scent Gloss (2004)
Lacoste Lacoste Essential (2005)
Thierry Mugler Alien (2005 with Dominique Ropion)
Paul Smith Floral (2005)...
Continue reading "Obituary: Perfumer Laurent Bruyere Passed Away Today" »
 With the glut of celebrity fragrances in the market, launching a new scent in that category can feel like playing with the lottery or taking that opportunity just to garner publicity on the pretext of a new bottle of exquisiteness. You create an event and people talk about it and it is all good, even if, secondary concern, the juice suckeths big time. Who cares about the quality of the contents as long as it is a good brand-name carrier, a question some innocent people might still ask?...
Continue reading "Prince Sued for Not Participating in Promotion of 3121 {The 5th Sense in the News}" »
 London-based niche perfumery Ormonde Jayne has introduced a new men's perfume called Zizan. It is the eleventh composition by perfumer and owner Linda Pilkington and her third men's cologne after Ormonde Man and Isfarkand. The new scent rests on a main vetiver and citrus accord and aims to be rich and complex enough to be entirely satisfying on its own - no suggestion of layering here as you can see, and in fact, quite the reverse, "Zizan, a perfume like no other because it has everything a man could possibly want in a single spectacular scent. This is a powerhouse perfume."...
Continue reading "Ormonde Jayne Zizan (2008) {New Perfume} {Men's Cologne}" »
 Last Saturday November 8th 2008, a ceremony was held at Wingen-sur-Moder in the Bas-Rhin region of France to set the first stone of the building that is going to become the Musée Lalique, a new French state museum, which will house the most important collection of René Lalique's works... 
Continue reading "Lalique Museum to Open in 2010 at Wingen-sur-Moder {Fragrance News}" »
 To celebrate its 180th anniversary, Guerlain has launched a limited-edition of L'Instant Magic originally introduced in 2007 as an eau de parfum (see our review of it) and pure parfum. The composition has been revisited for this fall and winter seasons to become, paradoxically, a lighter, in principle, eau de toilette...
Continue reading "Guerlain L'Instant Magic Re-Visited (2008) {New Perfume}" »
 • Origins is offering a Friends and Family 25% discount off your online purchases. Just use offer code: FriendsFB. Good through 11/19/2008. • Ormonde Jayne is now offering 10% discount online and by phone from Monday November 17th until 27th November 2008 inclusive. Enter the promotional code 'THANKS' on the checkout page to activate your personal discount....
Continue reading "Perfume & Beauty Coupons & Deals {Shopping Tips}" »
 Agraria, which is a treasure trove of decorative home fragrance objects each more alluring than the others, has come up with a luxurious collection of wooden pot pourri boxes shaped and detailed in the forms of classical Italian Tuscan villas reminiscent of the Roman antiquity. They house their signature Bitter Orange Potpourri which is aged for 6 Months ..
Continue reading "Agraria Villa Potpourri Boxes: For Architecture & Scent Aficionados {Fragrant Shopping}" »
 When the movie Perfume came out in 2006 (see our movie review), one knew that Thierry Mugler had been concocting an ambitious project, that of translating Patrick Süskind's narrative into real perfumes created by perfumers Christophe Laudamiel and Christophe Hornetz. The Mugler coffret, with its 15 scents (see also First Impressions on the Thierry Mugler Coffret), was the talk of the town towards the end of 2006 (and I have yet to review it fully although I will eventually get there, if only to recapture that highly exciting period of discovery)...
Continue reading "I Profumi Di Firenze Essendo (2006): Another Homage (A Lost One) to Patrick Suskind {Perfume History & Facts} " »
 Niche jewelry and perfume brand Hors Là Monde has launched a new fragrance called Lady Shiloh, following Shiloh and Lo created by Michel Roudnitska. The new composition is by perfumer Fabrice Olivieri who worked " around the idea of the illusion of time" Olivieri has also composed in the past the Huile Secrète for Ida Delam Spa, a unisex scent inspired by the myrrh from Oman...
Continue reading "Hors La Monde Lady Shiloh (2008) {New Fragrance}" »
 Annick Goutal has launched a limited-edition Collection Noël for the holiday season. New products mix with festively repackaged ones. For the first time, one will be able to scent one's room with the famous Eau d'Hadrien, Parfum Pour La Maison, which was reformulated as a home spray. A Noël Parfum Pour La Maison was also created with notes of lemon, bitter orange, mandarin and Siberian pine (currently sold out on the e-commerce site). Both can be purchased as candles... 
Continue reading "Annick Goutal Collection Noel: Repackaging, New Candles, Home Sprays {New Perfumes}" »
 Yves Rocher, after releasing a collection of re-editions for women from their archives in 2007, have now turned their attention to discontinued men's scents. This fall three colognes can be found anew on the shelves of the Yves Rocher boutiques*: Antartic (1990) , Aztec (1993) , Trimaran (1985)...
Continue reading "Yves Rocher Reedition Parfum Antartic, Aztec, Trimaran (2008) {New Perfumes} {Men's Cologne}" »
 Bath & Body Works now have a new series of indulgences for the bath. These cute bath bombs shaped like cupcakes dissolve under running water and make your bathroom smell like a pastry chef's oven. The set ($20) includes six flavorful treats: Cotton Candy, Lemon Fluff, Creamy Vanilla, Oh Honey, Fruit Sorbet and Birthday Cake. Or you can decide to go leaner and try one at a time, like Birthday Cake ($8) which " smells like yellow cake baking in the oven." They would make nice Christmas stocking stuffers too!
 "Dylan McAfee, (...) in second grade at Georgetown
Day, met Mrs. Obama last Monday and has been star-struck ever since. " I
touched her hand and she smelled like cherries,"...
Continue reading "Scented Quote / Anecdote of the Day about Michelle Obama, from Dylan McAfee:" »
Pure perfume extracts are making a comeback this fall and winter 2008 and sometimes where you least expect them to appear. Synonymous with classical luxury traditionally, the extracts this fall and winter 2008 still want to impress you, and so they dress up and heighten the concentration of their oils and change a few notes to lure you in with more promise, but at the same time they have been adopted by brands that have a much hipper and younger, even laidback image than is usual to see in this category. Chanel, Guerlain, yes, fur and perfume, yes, but Aquolina, L'Artisan Parfumeur, Fragonard, (nice) tee-shirt and perfume (?) Yet they do come on the tails of earlier this year John Varvatos for Women parfum, Mariah Carey Gold and Usher for She. This must mean that everyone is now convinced that this is the in thing to do. What you can expect from a pure perfume extract is a higher concentration of perfume oils, from about 15% to 30 %, and also a higher proportion of natural perfume oils that add that extra multi-layered effect that can only come from the richness of natural essences made up of hundreds of naturally-occurring molecules, mixed with the more stable synthetics. Pure perfumes will be longer-lasting than in the other concentrations but often have an aura, a sillage that is closer to the body, more velvety and muted in a sense. Usually the pure perfume version is tweaked and rebalanced to slightly new effect. It is not just more of the same compared to the eau de parfum, eau de toilette, as if you had just amplified the sound on your stereo. 1- Kenzo Amour Le Parfum"A woody oriental composed of rich ingredients coveted in Asia. A fragrance sculpted by the woody tones of patchouli, the sensuous richness of benzoin balm from Siam, the roundness of amber, spices and incense like an offering. Bottle: A matte gold bottle inspired by the temples of Southeast Asia." 30ml $65.00 50ml $85.00 ...
Continue reading "Precious Pure-Parfums Trend, Fall-Winter 2008 {Trend Alert} {New Perfumes}" »
 Bond Girl 007 is the latest feminine celebrity fragrance by Avon. Fronted by British actress Gemma Aterton, it was released at the same time that the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace debuted, a film in which she plays the role of agent Strawberry Fields. The scent was created by a team of three perfumers: Olivier Cresp (see interview), Frank Volkl and Harry Fremont. While the fragrance is advertised as being a woody-floral-musk, the perfume could be seen rather as a sort of hybrid, chypre-cum-oriental composition. Fragrance families can be played with and often are as it is even considered a safe way to play to try to please the most potential customers possible with the same perfume by mixing typical attributes. In this case however, there was a creative anthropomorphizing idea behind this insistence on duality. Re-watching the interview with Olivier Cresp one realizes that he mentions that there is an attraction-and-danger duality to the composition which corresponds to the personality of Strawberry Fields, but this comes across empirically, and even if you did not know that, as a tension between a luminous chypré effect and a more opaque and vaporous oriental vanillic sensation. The technical tour de force of this perfume is that this tension never subsides... 
Continue reading "Avon Bond Girl 007 (2008) {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
 Youth apparel brand Mark Ecko have announced that they will start venturing in the world of fragrance development with perfumes for both men and women. The first one will be a masculine debuting in the fall of 2009. Their fragrance licensee is Parlux Fragrances ( Maria Sharapova, Paris Hilton Can Can, Fairy Dust...). Parlux chairman and ceo Neil Katz said, "With the Marc Ecko addition to our fragrance portfolio, Parlux will
target yet another consumer group," "We see Marc Ecko's appeal as worldwide and a key
part of our strategic plan." (Cosmetic News)
 Photos courtesy of the Society of American Perfumers
This year, the Perfumers Choice Awards 2008 wanted to place their event under the guidance of two inspirational quotes from two women captains of industry to help members of the profession make the final selection of the winners for the PCAs awards (please see previous list of nominees). One is a reminder about the necessity to be creative and is from Coco Chanel who said " In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different," and the other is about the simple pragmatic reason for promoting standards of excellence and is by Estée Lauder who liked to remind people that " If you put the product into the customer's hands, it will speak for itself if it's something of quality." Perhaps these remarks intervened in an era when advertising for beauty and fragrance products was less important than it is today and image less critical, but one can still, despite this evolution, and in fact, more so than ever precisely because of these new developments, agree with these premises. The winners for 2008 are: November 12, 2008
The American Society of Perfumers
2008 Perfumers Choice Awards Winners AnnouncedBest Fine Fragrance Women's Classic Beautiful Estee Lauder IFF Best Fine Fragrance Men's Classic
Fahrenheit LVMH Symrise...
Continue reading "Perfumers Choice Awards Winners & Party Pictures {Fragrance News} {Perfume Images & Adverts}" »
 Sean "Diddy" Combs who has a reputation as being a cocky personality is going to fuel further this perception when people read what he had to say regarding his new fragrance I Am King, "When you see Barack Obama, you see a strong, elegant black man and
when people see my ad, it's almost like that's the trend," he said in
an interview." (WSJ)
 Just reading what I have to admit is the very effective (for me) ad copy for the new duo of fragrances by Boots for BBC 2008 Children in Need called Hug for Her (gold) and Hug for Him (silver) makes my heart melt! The aromas recreated for the fragrances are meant to capture the essence of happy childhood memories, "Hug for Her is all about the familiar smell of bath time; the smell of warm towels with a hint of baby powder, whereas Hug For Him has the scent of wood shavings overlaid with the sweet scent of cola,
to represent a school pencil case that contains everything from pens
and pencils, through to sticky sweets."... 
Continue reading "Boots Hug for Her & Hug for Him (2008) {New Perfumes}" »
 Penhaligon's has commissioned a reinterpretation of its classic men's rose fragrance Hammam Bouquet first issued in 1872. For doing so they have turned to none other but to mistress of pale watery effects, vapory H20 and subtle nuances of life perfumer Olivia Giacobetti (she is known for collection interesting smells in tight-shut jars). The end-result is an opulent oriental incorporating a realistic hammam-atmosphere touch, that of the perfumery rendition of steam as revealed by the presence of a note of "eucalyptus steam"...
Continue reading "Penhaligon's Elixir (2008) {New Perfume} {Men's Cologne}" »
 Following the recent launch of their first fine fragrance composition called Pearls, bath and body brand Carol's Daughter, who might be looking to emulate a brand like Fresh purveyor of both bath and body and fine perfumes, is preparing to launch their first celebrity perfume inspired by singer Mary J Blige and named after her album entitled My Life. The artist has been working as one of the brand's celebrity spokespersons and is apparently thrilled by the project as she confesses to being a hard-core beauty junkie, "I am Carol's Daughter and my fans are Carol's Daughter users so it
just made sense to partner," Blige said in an interview last month.
"Ever since I was a child, I loved buying products that made me feel
beautiful and clean," said Blige. "I'm a total beauty nut -- you should
check out all the junk in my bathroom." (Via WWD)
Photo credit: Mary J Blige official site
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