Hermès will launch Santal Massoïa next month. Santal Massoïa will be the tenth fragrance in the Hermessence Collection, and like the others, was developed by Hermès house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena…
5 Perfumes: Ylang-ylang
Like many others who share my hobby, I believe, I was wary of florals when I started my perfume education. I was willing to countenance many a gourmand or woody amber barbarity, but I avoided flowers — and especially white flowers. I was going through a phase of sampling niche series perfumes — the Comme des Garçons incense fragrances, the Bois line of Serge Lutens — and I regarded white flowers as unsuitable material for such elaboration. Comme des Garçons White, purporting to be a more floral alternative to their original Eau de Parfum, instead smelled quite properly of sour spices and wood, and I viewed Lutens’ Un Lys and Tubéreuse Criminelle as singular and humorous experiments, fascinating to sniff on a blotter, I thought, but created with a kind of magisterial, Gallic indifference towards anybody wearing them. As a smell, white floral notes were heady, insistent and complex: in a word, “perfumey”. In perfume, didn’t that make them too, well… obvious?
But I couldn’t help noticing I was drawn to ylang-ylang. I had dried blotters all over my place at that time, and still do: I use them as bookmarks, clothing or car fresheners and post-its. Though I was doggedly wearing my modern roots and resins, my incense and tea scents, I was forced to admit that I stood transfixed when a lush tropical cloud of ylang breathed up out of my reference books, purse or underwear drawer. There were so many facets to the smell…
Top 10 Spring Fragrances 2011
Blech. Despite being born a May baby, I have never been a fan of spring. I’m sure it’s different in the other parts of the world, but every year, people above the 39th parallel in Europe and North America stand on street corners at this time of year, leaning at a 75 degree angle into gusting drizzle, and insist: “It wasn’t like this last year!” Trust me, it was. The mud, the wind, the Easter snow or hailstorm, the false hope of that one giddy day near April Fool’s when the sun shone and the warm breezes blew, like in a laundry detergent commercial, before the rain and gray chill returned — it all happened last year. I am not a pessimist. It is merely that I believe in the motto of mothers everywhere: let’s not get worked up here. Crazed displays of Birkenstock sandals and patio furniture will only end in tears. I support measured celebrations of spring’s small pleasures. For one, it is ramp season. Perhaps you have received your tax return. The road salt has melted away and you can go to 2D movies without being subjected to aliens, robots or robotic aliens. And it is time for some of your freshest, prettiest, newest fragrances to grace the air.
Composing a Top 10 for this most uncertain of seasons, I have tried not to dwell on lost favorites or the flood of recent scents I’ve missed. Jean Patou Vacances, Gobin-Daudé Sève Exquise, and L’Artisan Jacinthe des Bois are all gone and it somehow felt irresponsible to include them in the list. I have vintage samples of the many spring classics that have been damaged or ruined by reformulation — Balmain Vent Vert, Caron Violette Précieuse, the silver fluidity of Diorissimo, the mysterious smoky-green of Worth Je Reviens, the original Dior Fahrenheit’s honeysuckle-and-wet-blacktop — and I use them sparingly and despairingly. I have not tried MDCI Un Coeur en Mai, Byredo La Tulipe, ElizabethW Magnolia or CB I Hate Perfume Wild Pansy and am trying to convince myself that I don’t need to do so. With no further excuses, my Top 10 of Spring…
Hermes Iris Ukiyoe ~ perfume review
Regular readers know I look forward to anything new from perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena at Hermès. I have called myself a fan girl in the past, but now feel compelled to point out that I just really like his perfumes; I don’t think he’s a rock star and I do not have a poster with his face on my wall. Ok? But in all truth, a rather large portion of my fragrance spending ends up in the (surely already brimming) coffers at Hermès. Many of us like to think that brand doesn’t really matter — it’s the juice that counts — but it’s hard to completely ignore brand influence even if you try. In this case, it helps that I like Hermès despite the fact that nearly nothing on earth interests me less than spendy handbags and silk scarves. I like Hermès because they consistently put out a respectable, well-made product. The fragrances are interesting and wearable, the packaging is generally worthy and sometimes it’s spectacular (Voyage d’Hermès), and their advertising doesn’t make me cringe. They don’t alternate high-end vanity projects with cynical, focus-grouped garbage designed to capture the lucrative ‘tween-to-teen market. To my mind, Hermès is the last great hope in the mainstream prestige fragrance market: let’s just hope Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy stays far, far away.
That is not to say I like everything Jean-Claude Ellena cooks up over there. Of the Hermessences, the exclusive (and expensive) perfume range at Hermès, I own five out of the nine, and thanks to the fact that it’s possible to find them in comparatively affordable 15 ml bottles, I own all of them that I want to own.1 The latest of the nine, Iris Ukiyoé, is not going to join my collection….
Hermes Iris Ukiyoe ~ new fragrance
Hermès will launch Iris Ukiyoé, the ninth fragrance in the Hermessence collection, next month. The word Ukiyoé can be translated from the Japanese literally as “images of the floating world”, and refers to the Japanese art of woodblock printing…