I hope all of you are done shopping for the year? In case not, here are some (relatively) easy-on-the-wallet gift ideas.
For the scent-memory enthusiast, a holiday coffret from Demeter, with 30 ml bottles of Egg Nog, Snow and Mulled Cider…
Compagnie de Provence 20th Anniversary Savon de Marseille ~ scented body product
Compagnie de Provence has been offering contemporary interpretations of traditional Provençal soaps and toiletries since 1990. To mark its twentieth anniversary, the company has released a limited edition of its popular Savon de Marseille, a liquid hand soap packaged in a hefty glass bottle. For this occasion, the company commissioned artist Stephan Muntaner to create bottle designs based on the culture and legends of Marseille. The result is a set of three images that look like very colorful sailors’ tattoos, with each design named for a fish that would be caught in the city’s ancient port.
All three silkscreened images are vibrant and playful, even as they refer to Marseille’s oldest customs…
Aroma Sanctum Scarlet Letter ~ fragrance review
A few years ago, I spent a day in Salem, Massachusetts with my husband. Somewhere between our stops at the town’s historic cemetery, a bookstore or two, and the House of the Seven Gables, we came across a small shop called Aroma Sanctum Perfumes, where I sampled a few “house blend” fragrances and purchased a bottle of perfume oil called Scarlet Letter as a souvenir of our visit…
3 perfumes: Le Labo Another 13, Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia, Lust by Gorilla Perfume
Three perfumes — Le Labo Another 13, Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia and Lust by Gorilla Perfume at Lush — in search of a theme. Sorry folks, we have no theme.
Le Labo Another 13
Le Labo’s new Another 13, their limited edition fragrance with AnOther magazine, is one of several recent ambrox-heavy1 scents. Unlike Juliette Has A Gun’s Not A Perfume, this one is actually a perfume, that is, someone (in this case, perfumer Nathalie Lorson) took the time to mix the ambrox with other notes (in this case, apple, pear, green citrus and ambrette).
Anyone remember Escentric 02 by Escentric Molecules? That was another ambrox vehicle, and despite the completely different notes (it featured vetiver, muscone, orris, elderflower extract and hedione), they’re not as different as they sound. Maybe anything with lots of ambrox is going to end up smelling mostly like ambrox? Mind you, they’re far from identical…
Paddywax Library Collection Edgar Allan Poe Candle ~ home fragrance review
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor…
— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
The home fragrance company Paddywax recently launched its Library Collection, a suite of five scents inspired by authors. Needless to say, I couldn’t resist the idea of these literary-olfactory tributes, so I ordered a few. The Edgar Allan Poe candle was ostensibly a gift for my husband, who is a longtime Poe admirer. However, he’s really not all that interested in fragrance (despite my best efforts), so I’ve been the one basking in its glow and its scent, not to mention its clever packaging (labels that look like bookplates, and a travel tin, shown below, that could be used to hold small desk items when the candle is gone).
Paddywax’s Edgar Allan Poe fragrance is a blend of “cardamom, absynthe, and sandalwood,” and it turns out to be a warm, sweetish, spicy-woody scent that suits a late-autumn evening in a darkening room…