French niche line Anatole Lebreton has launched Perfumista, a new fragrance…
Top 10 Summer Fragrances 2018
I have never done one of the spit-or-scrape genealogical tests, but I have always suspected that my family has secret Nordic or Baltic blood, as both my brothers are enthusiastic enough about outdoor swimming that they’ll do it in early May or October… in Canada. While I hesitate to frolic in 50F waves, I do sport sandals until snow accumulates, drink Arnold Palmers in January and I’m the only non-menopausal female in my XX-dominated workplace who enjoys our arctic air-conditioning. In a similar fashion, I wear citrus colognes all year. When it is my turn to list summer fragrances around here, I remind myself that normal people generally turn to crisp, refreshing eaux only when the temperature rises. Having exhausted my stable of favored classic colognes in previous posts, though, I thought that this time I’d highlight some atypical choices. Please bear with me. I did test these on myself in the heat, but YMMV…
Anatole Lebreton Cornaline ~ new fragrance
French niche line Anatole Lebreton has launched Cornaline, a new fragrance named for the stone carnelian…
Anatole Lebreton Grimoire ~ new fragrance
French niche line Anatole Lebreton has launched Grimoire, a new spicy incense fragrance. A grimoire is a book of magic or spells…
5 perfumes: Indie Greens
Once, when I was shopping at a perfume discounter, the owner brought me a fragrance and said: “You’ll like this. You’re a throwback.” I was taken aback. Was I? And was it so obvious? The suggested scent was a crisp green one, with the bite of galbanum, and I did like it, very much. I moved down the counter and snuffed the dusty tester, a bit embarrassed, while the owner helped a new customer pick out a bottle of Armani Code for women.
Pickings for the bitter green fiend are rather slim at department stores at present. Counter sales assistants will tell you that such scents are now old-fashioned and do not sell well. I imagine those last crisp green floral buyers, stately and melancholy as they have always been, at home with their Lauren Hutton cheekbones and maybe the accouterments of WASP style mentioned in Angela’s Estée Lauder Private Collection review: boat sneakers, gin martinis in iced silver carafes and small, strangely dignified dogs. (Of course, I still buy these perfumes and I am short, roundish and never to be found in tennis whites, alas. I would like a schnauzer, though.) Shopping at the mall these days, one worries that such green fragrances will go extinct, like the serious hats men used to wear in Cheever short stories. As with many holes in the market bemoaned by the fragrance obsessed, however, indie perfumers have leaped in to fill the galbanum gap…