Another raw materials video from Lush (see yesterday's Neroli! if you missed it), this one about lavender being harvested and distilled in Provence.
Neroli!
Harvesting and distilling orange blossoms in Nabeul, Tunisia. Video from Lush.
Update: sorry, this video is no longer available.
The men really like the smell of this
This video from the World Wildlife Federation shows Himba women in Namibia harvesting omumbiri1 and making perfume. About 4 minutes long. You can read more about this project at The Nature Conservancy.
My bff vetiver
For anyone who isn't familiar with vetiver outside of the world of perfume, here is a video (rather long, nearly 8 minutes) on the use of vetiver in erosion control in Hawaii.
And here's another, from Ethiopia.
Perfumista tip: on reformulations, or why your favorite perfume doesn’t smell like it used to
One of the many hazards of writing about perfumes is that they’re not static objects. If you pick up a new bottle of Jean Couture Coriandre, what you’ll smell won’t be at all what I smelled when I first bought it in the late 1970s. It might not even be the same as what I smelled when I reviewed Coriandre a couple years ago, and found it to be an entirely different animal than the scent I remembered. The Coriandre you smell tomorrow, or next month, or next year, might have changed yet again.
This has obvious implications for anyone blogging about perfume or reading perfume blogs. When you read a perfume review, unless it’s about a perfume that launched recently, you can’t be sure that what you’ll smell in the stores is the exact same fragrance.
This article is meant as a very basic primer on reformulation, and most of what I’ll cover is well-known to seasoned perfumistas.
Perfumes get reformulated all the time, and they always have. Why? Well, there are any number of reasons. Sometimes companies substitute cheaper ingredients as a cost-saving measure…