Coming this October from L'Artisan, Aedes de Venustas Eau de Parfum:
Close your eyes, and imagine yourself entering a mysteriously beautiful world where the magic of scent stirs the imagination and evokes wondrous dreams. The doors to the temple open, and the intoxicating scent of ancient Japanese incense rushes to envelop you, intertwined with the softness of leather…
Bertrand Duchaufour might be my second favorite (living) perfumer at the moment (you regular readers know that Jean-Claude Ellena is still at the top of the list), so Magnolia Romana by Eau d’Italie was one of my “most looked forward to” fragrances this year. I was a little worried about the “summer ozone” and “water” notes (other notes include purple basil, lemon leaves, neroli, nutmeg, cypress, magnolia, Bulgarian rose, tuberose, lotus, cedar, hay extract and white musk), and I was right to be: I don’t like synthetic “fresh” notes, and while Magnolia Romana isn’t overwhelmingly “fresh”, it’s just fresh enough to bother me…
Perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour has been hired by niche line L'Artisan Parfumeur, but he will not be the “house nose”. He will be in “in charge of creating bespoke fragrances and of other olfactory projects for the brand”. L'Artisan will continue to use a variety of outside perfumers to develop new fragrances, and Duchaufour will continue to work for other brands as well. (via osmoz)
Duchaufour's past creations for L'Artisan include…
The Reg Vardy Gallery at the University of Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, England, will host If There Ever Was: an exhibition of extinct and impossible smells:
In his book of essays entitled, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the physician Lewis Thomas wrote, “The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking itself.” And it is with this appreciation of smell as comparable to thought and interpretation that the exhibition If There Ever Was considers scent as integral to the perception of abstraction and representation…
I am very fond of Amouage Gold (as fond as I’m willing to be given the price), and might be the only person who laments the passing of Amouage Ubar, but their more recent offerings have mostly left me cold. So when I read Luca Turin’s latest article in NZZ Folio, which talks about the recent launch of the line’s Jubilation fragrances and concludes…
To my relief both were very good. The feminine is a Diorella with tuberose. The masculine is a lovely incense composition, by Bertrand Duchaufour.
…I was dubious…