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Mythbusters

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"I'd say there are about 5 to 10 percent of celebrities who are actively involved at all stages," says Laudamiel. "There is another 45 percent who will come in a few times during the process and offer their opinions. The rest, another 45 percent, come in at the end and choose between two or three scents that have already been developed."

— Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel with the shocking news that celebrities don't always "design" their own fragrances. Quoted in Scent of a celebrity at Boston.com.

I don’t drink, but I smell like I do.

— Amanda Lepore on her new fragrance, Amanda, created by perfumer Christophe Laudamiel. Quoted in A Buzz Without a Hangover at the New York Times.

Humiecki & Graef Eau Radieuse ~ fragrance review

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Humiecki & Graef Eau Radieuse

Humiecki & Graef advertises Eau Radieuse as a “futuristic remake of an Eau de Cologne” that will transport us (mentally, I assume) to “a wondrous place on an unknown planet”. I don’t know what’s futuristic or otherworldly about green banana, mandarin peel, lemon, mint, rhubarb, and bamboo sap (all have been Earth-bound for millennia) but the aromas of banana, rhubarb and bamboo should provide an unusual “kick” when incorporated into the venerable Eau de Cologne formula.

Humiecki & Graef was founded by Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Mueksch, and the company is based in Cologne (Köln), Germany. Fischenich and Mueksch named the company after their maternal grandmothers (using their favorite grandmothers’ maiden names). I can only imagine the family resentments — after all, the paternal grandmothers were omitted! Humiecki & Graef debuted four new fragrances in 2008 — all created by perfumer Christophe Laudamiel: Geste, Eau Radieuse, Multiple Rouge and Askew. (A fifth scent, Skarb, was originally launched in 2007.)

Eau Radieuse starts off with the scent of fresh citrus peel and a vibrant, tart-green aroma that does remind me of unripe bananas…

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If There Ever Was… a book of extinct and impossible smells, by Robert Blackson ~ perfume books

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If There Ever Was by Robert BlacksonWhat does communism smell like? How about the Sun, or Cleopatra’s perfume, or the atomic blast that destroyed the city of Hiroshima? This booklet, published on the occasion of the exhibition If There Ever Was, attempts to bring distant, elusive, and sometimes impossible olfactory experiences to life. Curator Robert Blackson commissioned thirteen fragrances from eleven perfumers and smell artists, including Bertrand Duchaufour, Christophe Laudamiel, Christoph Hornetz, Mark Buxton, Sissel Tolaas, and Geza Schön. If, like me, you missed the show at the Reg Vardy Gallery, this booklet gives you a chance to smell them all in the comfort of your own home.

Each scent of the exhibition is encapsulated in a scratch-n-sniff card, and comes with a short explanatory text. What these fragrances have in common is that they all refer to objects that are absent from our experience: they represent things that are temporally and/or spatially remote. There are no traces, for instance, of the original recipe to Cleopatra’s perfume; we can only guess what it really smelled like…

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Which would you rather smell like…

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My grandfather had a garage where he parked his Citroën. I remember it was woody, a haunting odour, he had some geraniums in there drying over the winter. It was near the airport. It’s hard to describe but I loved that odour.

— Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel on an odor from his youth that fascinated him. From Marian Bendeth's Interview with Les Christophs at Basenotes, which won Best Fragrance Editorial - Broadcast or Web at the Canadian Fragrance Awards.

On first whiff, the vanilla notes come charging at you like an out-of-control Mr. Soft Cone truck. Imagine that truck crashing into a Kool-Aid stand and you have this fragrance in a nutshell.

— From Sniff Test: Baby Phat Fabulosity, at the National Post.

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