A slideshow roundup of new fragrance advertising, plus a few random leftovers from 2013…
Balmain Extatic ~ new perfume
Balmain will launch Extatic, a new fragrance for women, in January. The brand’s most recent launch was Eau d’Ivoire, introduced earlier this year.
Balmain’s Vent Vert Salad and Chicken
During the recent heat wave, I spent a lazy afternoon on the couch with the fan pointed at me while I perused the July 1955 issue of Woman’s Home Companion. I was looking for the article featuring Lilly Daché’s “Secrets of Lifelong Glamour,”1 when I stumbled across these words and sat straight up:
Like most Frenchmen, Balmain appreciates good food and takes a great interest in his own table. In the warm summer days ahead you might like to try his “Vent Vert” salad. Here is the recipe he gave me—if you can’t get some of the ingredients, you can eliminate or substitute as you choose.
It was from Margaret Thompson Biddle’s column, “Companion in Paris.” “Vent Vert” salad clearly borrowed its name from Balmain Vent Vert fragrance. Here’s the recipe:
“Vent Vert” Salad
Cut young romaine into pieces to make 1 quart. Add 1 cup each of diced celery, chopped endive, thinly sliced green pepper and about 8 asparagus tips cut in half…
Top 10 Summer Fragrances 2013
Having appropriated most American technologies, cultural tics and lifestyle choices, Canadians feel we know a lot about our neighbors (neighbours!1) to the south and we tend to be quite sensitive about a perceived lack of knowledge on the other end. Canadian comedian Rick Mercer, a national hero of sorts, came to prominence with a series of television clips called Talking to Americans, where he poked gentle fun at this relationship by interviewing ordinary Americans on the street — in addition to people like George W. Bush2, David Hasselhoff and a Harvard Professor of International Relations — and getting them to do silly things on camera: to congratulate Canucks on converting to a 24-hour clock (from a 20-hour one)3, to sign a petition trying to stop the planned polar bear slaughters in Toronto, or to sing along with a completely fabricated Canadian national anthem. Once, I had an encounter in Buffalo, NY that felt like a Mercer moment: I struck up a conversation with the gentleman beside me at the mall, who turned out to believe that Canadians did not experience summer. “But I live an hour or so away from here,” I kept explaining to him. “We have summer! We have the same climate as you do!” I could not convince him…
Balmain Eau d’Ivoire ~ new fragrance
Balmain will launch Eau d’Ivoire, a new* fragrance for women, in June…