Australian botanical brand Aesop will launch Tacit, a new fragrance inspired by traditional Eau de Cologne and the aromas of the Mediterranean…
Holiday fragrance gifts 2014, part 5
The ‘miscellaneous’ gift selection: today we’ve got solid perfumes, plus tea and chocolate, and a few things that just don’t fit anywhere else.
From Lush, the jasmine bomb Lust in a solid perfume tin: “It’s virtually unheard of for a perfume to be this sexy. Seriously, we have really done it this time. Lust is a heady mash-up of rich florals and a warm, woody base that lasts on the skin for hours and hours. LUSH perfume and co-founder Mark has been working on jasmine fragrances for years, and this time he’s gone all the way. Unabashedly sexy, Lust stirs an inexplicable carnal yearning. Resistance is futile.” $11.95 at Lush in the USA…
Aesop Marrakech Intense ~ new fragrance
Aesop Marrakech and Mystra ~ fragrance reviews
We all have a favorite locale (or two) where a combination of climate, landscape, architecture, and aromas makes us happy. I love stormy coastlines, with raging oceans, billowing clouds, screeching gulls, old lighthouses, and the scents of rain, salt, mossy rocks, and seaweed. But I also love the ambiance of the exact opposite of a wet beach — warm, sunny, semi-arid hilltops, covered with flowering broom and poppies, where cypress trees reach up into blue skies and fragrance the air. (Add an abandoned cemetery, the cinder scents of a nearby active volcano, or some crumbling statues and buildings — an ancient temple will do — and I’ll purr with contentment only opiates can deliver.) Two perfumes from Aesop, Marrakech and Mystra, are perfect accompaniments for bright highlands, strewn with ruins and scrub.
Marrakech, which includes notes of cloves, sandalwood and cardamom, was developed with an idea of “a city draped in colours of the desert, where artisans sit on rugs hewn by hand, and lute music mixes with the smell of spices in hot wind.” Marrakech is a resinous fragrance that smells of spicy sandalwood…
Top 10 Winter Fragrances 2010
I take advantage of the cold-weather months and pour on amber-rich, resinous, incense-y, musky, and powdery perfumes (known as “gasp-inducers” in hot weather) but I also use perfumes to help me forget winter woes — my flowerless garden, chill-induced headaches, spark-filled hair, and dry-as-bone skin (citrus and florals…come hither). My top-ten list of winter fragrances is, of course, personal, and far from definitive; these are simply perfumes I’m enjoying this winter.
I usually wear “sharp”/herbal amber fragrances such as Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan and Tom Ford Amber Absolute, but it’s nice to have a classic amber scent handy as well. Enter Histoires de Parfums Ambre 114 (with notes of patchouli, cedar, sandalwood, tonka bean, vanilla, benzoin, and musk). Like many amber perfumes of its type, Ambre 114’s soft and sweet aromas transport me to a particular “scene” (a snowy twilight landscape viewed from inside a warm, dim room) and state of mind (contented…but nostalgic too). I suppose that means amber scents make me feel safe and comfortable and, perhaps, remind me of someone time has erased from my life.
Aesop Mystra is bold — and a bit severe…