Portuguese fashion designer Fátima Lopes will launch her debut fragrance, Be Mine, in September…
Davidoff Cool Water Sea Rose ~ new fragrances
Davidoff will launch Cool Water Sea Rose, a new rosy floral flanker for 1996’s Cool Water Woman…
Versace Eros ~ fragrance review
Versace Eros (a scent for a “hero” says Donatella Versace) launched this winter; the Eros ads are hilarious (the film is over-the-top kitschy and the print ad (see below) is, I assume, “inadvertently” funny, with the model’s body reconfigured by Photoshop so a huge bottle of Eros could be inserted where his abdomen-crotch-upper thigh should be…leaving a ludicrously elongated body). Ads aside, I was not expecting much from Eros, the perfume.
Eros begins with vanilla-mint aromas, reminiscent of barbershop fragrances (Jean Paul Gaultier Le Mâle, anyone?); ambroxan with a clove-like touch appears next alongside hard-working, always-employed tonka bean. Eros’ base notes of cedar (discernible) and vetiver-oak moss are well blended to produce a standard-issue woody accord. Eros starts off as a warm fragrance, not cool or crisp or “fresh” in the sense we’re used to in men’s mainstream/designer perfumes…
Issey Miyake Pleats Please ~ fragrance review
Take a look at the output of the Issey Miyake perfume house — it’s mostly a long string of flankers and variations on 1993’s L’Eau d’Issey. I included L’Eau d’Issey in 25 more fragrances every perfumista should smell, but let’s face it: some classic perfumes smell better with every passing year, others, eventually, just smell dated. In the case of L’Eau d’Issey, I wholeheartedly second Tania Sanchez when she says it “reminds us mostly of Windex now”.1 The brand did make a recent attempt to find a new pillar with 2009’s A Scent By Issey Miyake, a nicely done if not terrifically exciting fragrance. I liked it well enough but it failed to steal my heart, and as near as I can tell, it did not come close to threatening L’Eau d’Issey’s status as the cash cow of the Issey Miyake brand.
So, on to the new Pleats Please, developed by perfumer Aurelien Guichard. I adored the bottle2 as soon as I saw it, and I adored it even more in person than I did in pictures (it usually works the other way around). The advertising is likewise perfect (here’s the commercial if you missed it). So I had sort of high hopes, tempered by the news that it was a fruity floral with pear.3 I also had a long wait; as so often happens now, we stood by while Pleats Please launched everywhere in the world but the United States…
Madly Kenzo ~ perfume review
A woman’s greatest quality is her touch of madness. — Madly Kenzo
Madly Kenzo sparked my interest when it launched last year — it has much in its favor, from the whimsical advertising to the wonderful Ron Arad bottle. And it was done by perfumer Aurelien Guichard, who also worked on Kenzo’s UFO fragrance, a fun limited edition (and limited distribution) fragrance that was sold in a more complicated metal variation on the same bottle design. I hoped Madly might be a more commercial (and affordable) version of that scent; here is what I said about UFO back in 2009:
[It is] meant as “an interpretation of the scent of skin”…That, and the fact that Guichard apparently “delved into memories of his mother sculpting in marble, a contrast between the heat of the sculptor’s hands and the coolness of the material” is really all you need to know — as described, UFO is a transparent incense-y skin scent, slightly metallic in the top notes, later, more mineral-ish than metallic, with a light, slightly milky sweetness and an almost-velvety finish.
Nope…