Perfumer Laurent Bruyère has passed away. Bruyère worked at Mane (and previously at IFF), and was 43 years old. His creations included Thierry Mugler Alien and Cacharel Amor Amor (both with perfumer Dominique Ropion), Thierry Mugler Angel Innocent, Ferragamo Incanto, Lalique Le Baiser and Costume National Scent…
Van Gils Puur ~ new fragrance
Dutch fashion house Van Gils has launched Puur, their latest fragrance for men:
Van Gils is an intensely sexy and masculine fragrance.
This juice combines a hint of citrus and aromatics with essential woods and musks…
Cynical bean-counters in Paris and Zurich
One reason why truly great smells are so often undervalued is that they are today made and distributed under the not particularly watchful gaze of a few large corporations. The cynical bean-counters in Paris and Zurich do not hesitate to tamper with old formulas, insisting on the substitution of cheap chemical compounds that approximately resemble rarer, better ingredients in an effort to reduce the dizzying cost and increase profits. They do not tell their customers when or how they do this, indeed they presume we won’t notice the difference, so fine perfume is now hopelessly entangled with the international cosmetic dollar, and ill-served by marketing and public relations. It is also manacled to crude presumptions about what is acceptably feminine or credibly masculine.
— From Smelly masterpieces, a review of Perfumes: The Guide in the UK Times Online.
Ormonde Jayne Zizan ~ new fragrance
Ormonde Jayne has launched Zizan, a new fragrance for men:
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. Expect a deluge of boisterous Sicilian lime, lemon and bergamot but to smooth the biting edge, a brilliantly refined concentration of vetiver…
Byredo Pulp & Boudicca Wode ~ fragrance review
Ok, raise your hand if you'd like to see a moratorium on new niche brands? At the very least, I'd like to see an independent judging panel evaluate each line, sniff a sampling of their wares, and determine if they have anything to offer that the world really needs. Given how much product is already out there, we don't need much, do we? More product makes it harder to find the perfect scent, not easier.
I used to define a perfumista as someone who wants to smell everything, but I can't say I fall into that category anymore. I don't want to smell everything if that means smelling 1500+ new fragrances a year, and that's my (obviously unofficial) estimate of what we're going to see before 2008 is over*. More and more often, new niche lines launch, and after reading the fragrance descriptions, I decide I'm just going to save myself some time and trouble and not smell them at all.
Byredo was one of those lines. They launched five fragrances earlier this year, and as I said at the time, none of the fragrance descriptions made me drool on my keyboard. So I didn't chase after them. Luckily, a kind friend sent me a sample of Byredo Pulp so I could see what I was missing…