Sensuous Noir is one of two flankers from Estée Lauder this summer, the other being the Pleasures Bloom that Angie reviewed yesterday. I have always had a soft spot for Pleasures: whenever I smell it I am brought up short again by how great it smells, and it’s so much better done than the many other squeaky-clean florals of its ilk. Still, I have absolutely no desire to own or wear it. Sensuous is another matter. I would not argue with anybody who said Pleasures was the better fragrance of the two, but Sensuous was the one I bought. The pale honeyed amber works perfectly as a casual, not-quite-oriental (and not particularly sensuous) fragrance and wears well in almost any weather; it is one of my (many!) “what to wear when you don’t want to think about what to wear” scents.
Sensuous Noir, I take it, is supposed to be the sexy, evening-wear version of Sensuous. Estée Lauder is calling it a woody chypre…
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Cherry Bomb Killer Perfume ~ new fragrances
Cherry Bomb Killer Perfume is a new collaboration between Maria McElroy of Aroma M and Alexis Karl of Scents by Alexis. They debut with two perfumes, Truth or Dare and Rebel Angel…
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Defining Powdery and Dry in Fragrances
“Perfume is subjective”, I hear all the time. What’s heavy to one is light to another, what is pleasantly sweet to certain individuals can be overly sweet. Probably because we haven’t really agreed on which terms to apply so that we have a codified language to describe scents. True, we use “fragrance families” taxonomy to distinguish them (floral, woody, chypre, aldehydic, leather etc.) and
New Orleans Museum of Art Curator John Keefe and his Department of Creative Arts proudly announce the opening of SCENTS and Sensibility, an appropriately-titled exhibition showcasing 125 objects covering the history of the scent bottle from its ancient origins to the present day. Scents, or perfumes, have been a part of civilization for more than four thousand years and have characterized every
The Monday Mail ~ help Melissa find a new perfume
Today we’re helping Melissa, who is looking for her holy grail comfort scent. Melissa has good access to department and discount stores, and can make it to Luckyscent’s Scent Bar if need be. She can spend about $100, but is also happy to buy decants so price should not be a deterrent. So far, she has mostly tried mainstream perfumes, and she’d like to branch out into more sophisticated niche perfumes. Here is what we know about Melissa:
She’s in her early 30s, and studying Human Development in college.
She says she’s a bit of a nut and has an odd sense of humor.
Melissa loves dessert-type scents…
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Difficult smells
And what an issue it’s turned out to be – mono.kultur #23 contains no visual imagery but clears the page for our most primary sense: the magazine will be impregnated with 12 scents curated by Sissel Tolaas. And we’re not talking about perfumes either, but what Tolaas would coin ‘difficult smells’. With a special technique called microencapsulation, the scents are literally printed into the magazine – you rub the paper to release them…
— The latest issue of German arts magazine mono.kultur features scent artist Sissel Tolaas. Read more at Life is Everywhere. (found via newslite.tv)
The 9th installment in the By Kilian line L’Oeuvre Noir is announced: Love and Tears (Amour et Larmes).The fragrance is centered around jasmine, with facets of iris, hesperides, white flowers and animalic notes garlanded around it. With such a composition, what other subtitle would you expect but Succumb? (In the manner of all the little commands of L’Oeuvre Noir scents in the By Kilian line).
Slave labour wages
Superdrug has ceased selling Katie Price’s signature perfumes, as it emerged that Indian workers earning well-below minimum wage were employed to bottle the £19.99 scents.
— Read more at KATIE PRICE’S PERFUMES AXED OVER ‘SLAVE LABOUR’ WAGES at Marie Claire.
Everyone else comes second
In this country, a lot of people wear perfume for everyone else. People wear my perfume for themselves first. Everyone else comes second.
— Hear, hear. Christopher Brosius of CB I Hate Perfume, quoted in Sniffing Out New Scents In Brooklyn’s Williamsburg at the Wall Street Journal, found via CaFleureBon.
A smaller pool of launches
In 2009, the industry launched fewer scents than it did in 2008, breaking a long streak of exponential growth. To Khoury’s thinking, this is a positive result of the financial crisis of the last 18 months. “The consumer has been overwhelmed with the number of launches, the amount of choice, and in some cases the lack of differentiation,” she says. This excess of new scents has coincided with a decline in the number of consumers buying fragrance. Khoury hopes a smaller pool of launches will feature more discerning character and “help us reconnect with the consumer.”
— That’s Karen Khoury, a senior Vice President at Estee Lauder. And I hope so too. Read the rest at Fine Fragrance’s New Reality at GCI.