Giorgio Armani has launched a new trio in the Armani Privé range: La Collection des Mille et une Nuits. Ambre Orient, Rose d’Arabie and Oud Royal were all given an exclusive preview last year at individual department stores before their official launch this year. As the collection’s name implies, the new fragrances were inspired by the tales from One Thousand and One Nights…
With age and experience comes the temptation of despairing prophecy. The landscape of perfumery is so ephemeral that is hard for even the most optimistic fragrance follower to not sometimes feel like Cassandra, plagued by futile visions of flaming, fallen monuments of smell. In truth, the internet has made possible the niche scent industry and new marvels are being created every month. Meanwhile, auction and fragrance decanting sites have ensured that, unlike the Library at Alexandria or the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the lost are not necessarily gone forever. There has never been a better or easier time to be a perfume lover. But the abundance and range of fragrances available to us, as well as the wealth of online information about those fragrances, has created an age of anxiety. What should we smell now, we wonder, before it’s gone?
For at least the past year, I have been campaigning for the best perfume boutique in my area to start stocking the Heeley fragrances. When the owners thought the samples I brought to the store last autumn were merely nice, I warned them: Heeleys are sneaky…
I come from a family of what you might call theatre people. In university, my mother starred in a number plays, including a nationally reviewed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which featured my mother — smoking! cursing! — as Martha as well as a young Martin Short as Nick. After school, she was accepted to train at Canada’s largest classical repertory theatre, but she decided to go to teacher’s college instead. As a drama teacher one of her most enthusiastic students has been my middle brother, who has acted and written for the stage and is now pursuing his doctorate studying Modern American theatre. Since she retired, Mom mounts annual plays or musical revues, often with a cast involving sixty or more residents of her small town. Though my father, youngest brother and I are seldom assigned lines, we are always called upon to prompt, to manage props, spotlights and sound boards, or to play corpses.
It is time to admit that we do not have “presence”. I don’t think any member of my family has ever attempted to sweep majestically into a room… unless the entrance was preparation for a pratfall. (Both of my brothers have a talent for slapstick.) I will never be the woman Angela conjured out of Jean Patou’s Que-sais je?: “elegant, with a difficult background and maybe bipolar tendencies”. There are days I am relieved by this, of course, and especially the bipolar part. Occasionally, however, it would be nice to feel a bit like Greta Garbo, and a little less like somebody from Waiting for Guffman. One of the wonderful things about fragrance is that I can scent myself as if I am the star of my own life…
Giorgio Armani will launch Cèdre Olympe, the fourth fragrance in the Les Eaux Armani Privé series:
The deep valleys and steep slopes of Mount Olympus are home to a few magnificent tree varieties: pine and cedar, exposed to the burning sun and searing wind. The lofty Cedar stands on steep paths…
Summer: it’s the best of times (fresh flowers, fruits and vegetables — songbirds and butterflies in the garden); it’s the worst of times (muggy, bug-infested days of unbearable heat). On the brightest, breeziest summer days (when the temperature is below, let’s say, 78 degrees), I feel happy and fling open the windows in my house to “freshen my life;” I listen to Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne at high volume and imagine myself running, buff and tan, thru poppy-dotted country fields in IMAX — I feel energized and immortal. Then, when the temperature soars, my spirits and outlook plummet: oily faced, limp haired, mean as a snake and with cold booze in hand, I retreat to dark rooms or my basement — and mope (when I’m not lashing out at friends, family, cats).
A summer arsenal of perfumes should make the good days better and the doldrums bearable. For me, summer is a time for sprightly perfumes, and just like I try to grow new things in my summer garden each year — I like to wear new fragrances. Here are a few of my recent discoveries:
A ‘soapy’ cologne is a must for me in summer. Balmain's Ivoire de Balmain smells like a scented summer bouquet sprinkled with pepper and dabbed with labdanum…