Niche line Heeley has launched a new trio of fragrances in Extrait de Parfum: Bubblegum Chic, L’Amandière and Agarwoud…
Heeley Hippie Rose ~ new fragrance
Niche brand Heeley will launch Hippie Rose, a new rose and patchouli fragrance for women. Hippie Rose was inspired by the hippie movement — ‘peace, love and better days’…
5 Perfumes for: a Mint Refresher
Smell is the most associative sense. For years, they have dyed both men’s colognes and sports drinks like Gatorade the exact shade of blue of the absorbing liquid in maxi pad commercials and nobody seems bothered by this, except me — and, well, maybe now you as well. Something I never overhear: “I can’t listen to Bartók anymore, because John Bonham of Led Zeppelin has ruined me for timpani.” Yet every scent enthusiast is familiar with the type of scenario where you apply careful dabs of your most cherished new sample and you are snuffling away at the baptized spot on the back of your hand, squinting and considering every facet, when your spouse breezes in and announces casually: “It smells like Lifebuoy soap in here.” And you are NEVER ABLE TO WEAR IT AGAIN. The band-aid aspect of fragrances with black pepper, the ham in lily soliflores, a whiff of Creamsicle wherever and whenever it is found: once smelled, it haunts you forever.
Perhaps no note in perfumery has suffered more for its associations than mint. The cost of our modern obsession with smelling fresh has been that there are some of us who regularly wear fragrances that evoke the burnt dust of a blown computer CPU, but refuse to wear minty scents on the grounds that we are reminded of toothpaste, mouthwash and chewing gum…
5 Perfumes for: Holiday Zen
Perhaps, like me, you’re finding the mall especially trying lately. Maybe it’s that my family had a recession-friendly homemade Christmas in 2009 or maybe it’s because I now have a breastfed infant to accompany me, but the shopping trips I’ve made during the last few weeks have turned me into a sweat-soaked, cuss-word-using, stroller-ramming fanatic. Our visit for the annual Christmas photo happened to fall on Pet Day and the woman in front of us spent half an hour and more than $100 on many, many photos of her dog with Santa. Afterwards, I felt like spray-painting anti-consumerist slogans on mailboxes….except I didn’t have any paint and the craft store was at the other end of the mall. ‘Tis the season for none of the elevators to work and a shopping cart to be abandoned in the last parking space and for the exact Zhu Zhu Pet you need to be sold out when you’re not even sure what a Zhu Zhu Pet is. (Here.) On Monday evening, as my children looked on with alarm, I collapsed into an incredibly rare seat in the food court and vowed with a grimace: Enough. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. I will go home to make a donation to MSF/Doctors Without Borders, warble along festively with Yoko Ono and spray on something beautiful that I already own.
In truth, I love this time of year and the smells I associate with it: pine, mandarin oranges, mulling spices, incense, smoke, peppermint, wet wool, candle wax, lemon and brandy sauces, latkes or donuts frying in oil…
5 Perfumes: to Smell Now
With age and experience comes the temptation of despairing prophecy. The landscape of perfumery is so ephemeral that is hard for even the most optimistic fragrance follower to not sometimes feel like Cassandra, plagued by futile visions of flaming, fallen monuments of smell. In truth, the internet has made possible the niche scent industry and new marvels are being created every month. Meanwhile, auction and fragrance decanting sites have ensured that, unlike the Library at Alexandria or the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the lost are not necessarily gone forever. There has never been a better or easier time to be a perfume lover. But the abundance and range of fragrances available to us, as well as the wealth of online information about those fragrances, has created an age of anxiety. What should we smell now, we wonder, before it’s gone?
For at least the past year, I have been campaigning for the best perfume boutique in my area to start stocking the Heeley fragrances. When the owners thought the samples I brought to the store last autumn were merely nice, I warned them: Heeleys are sneaky…