Columnist Bethan Cole of the UK Times Online picks the best fragrances for summer. Included in her list is Eau Emotionnelle, the new Eau de Toilette version of Agent Provocateur:
AP has taken its signature Eau de Parfum and reduced it to its bare essentials of oriental topnotes, cape snow bush, lie de vin and pink pepper, adding white tea and osmanthus to create a more refreshing scent.
Update: see a review of Agent Provocateur Eau Emotionelle.
Perfumer Jean Michel Duriez, the house nose at Jean Patou, talks to the Houston Chronicle (link to article no longer working, sorry!) about various perfume-related matters, including how to train your sense of smell:
You need to smell more every day. The nose is made to smell 24 hours a day. When you go in and (test) five perfumes and think (you can't do any more), your brain is more exhausted than your nose. If you leave the perfumery and smell coffee and cake, you don't say, "I can't smell anymore." Anyone can become a perfumer. You just have to train and (practice for years).
Many thanks to Anneliese for the link!
I agree with the comment that 'you can smell much more than you think'. Wherever did the notion start anyway, that you should only smell 3 perfumes, then stop?
I have never adhered to that. The only problem I find when testing too many at once, is that they start getting close to each other on my arms and hands, – then one scent seems to drift into the other and it's harder to differentiate and get a clear distinction between them.
Other than that, I could smell many a day (and often do, when I finally make the trip to a large fragrance counter). As long as I can keep them far enough apart from each other, all is fine with me!!
btw – I could not stand the original Agent Provocateur. It's on my list as one of the worst fragrances of all time, for me. Just horrid.
Really, horrid? I don't love it — bit too sweet and bit too powdery for me — but I do like it.
On the smelling: my sinuses just don't cooperate. I can smell more than 5 a day, but a whole day of smelling tends to wear me down, and eventually, I can't in fact smell the coffee & cake very well. I probably have some mild allergies. Reaon #258 why I will never be a perfumer
I'm very excited about their new scent (AP) since their first is one of the best rose scents I've tried (I'm a man). Absolutely stellar!
Ya, sorry R, but it really was awful to me. I don't know what it was that I intensely disliked so much, but I tried it a couple of times, and finally put it on my Top 5 'Most Dreadful' list.
It must have been either the Saffron, Coriander, Ylang, or Vetiver, – as I generally quite like all the other notes of Rose, Jasmine, Magnolia, Gardenia, Amber & Musk.
Sorry you can't smell the coffee and cake. (at least that might help curb one's appetite! ….hmmmm wish that worked for me!) I can most always detect scents, even way before others ever notice them. Guess I'd make a good human smoke alarm or such.
I too, am longing to smell the new AP, as the original is one of my all time favourites. When I first tested it I thought it was horrid,weird and couldn't imagine wearing it. A couple of weeks later I started having phantom sniffs of it, as it stirred in my memory. Not long after I purchased, and I am on my 3rd bottle!! It is not the only scent I wear, but when I need a fragrance to pull me together, I waft around in AP feeling elegant, chic and sexy. (Always get compliments on this one too). Give it a go, even if your first impression is YUCK!!
I am looking forward to it too, and hoping it will be just a bit less sweet.
So true — many of my current favorites are things I initially detested.