Floris has launched Madonna of the Almonds (shown above left), a limited edition perfume for women. The scent is being introduced in conjunction with the novel of the same name by author Marina Fiorato — “an unforgettable story of love and art set against the backdrop of the Italian wars”.
Fresh zesty citrus notes of bergamot and lemon, so redolent of Italy, mingle with the delicate floral accord…
The building was pink stucco, big and new and ugly. It had a side entrance with “Romp Room” lettered above it in red neon…[I heard] The high titter of drunk and flattered women, the animal sounds of drunk and eager men. Babel with a wild jazz obbligato.
A big henna redhead in a shotsilk blouse was making drinks at a service bar near the door. Her torso jiggled in the blouse like a giant soft-boiled egg with the shell removed.*
The scent wafting off this dame was unmistakable: Coty Emeraude…
We already did a poll on Jane Austen (and another on Harry Potter), now it's time for another of my favorite authors: Lucy Maud Montgomery. I read the whole of her Anne of Green Gables series several times over as a child, and then I read them several times over again as an adult.
The first novel in the series, Anne of Green Gables, appeared 100 years ago, in 1908. According to Wikipedia, Montgomery “used a photograph of Evelyn Nesbit, clipped from an American magazine and pasted on the wall above her writing desk, as the model for Anne Shirley, the book's main character”, but the editions I had as a child, printed by Grosset & Dunlap in the 1970s…
That’s right: two lazy polls in a row! That might be a Now Smell This first, but I’ve been inexplicably exhausted all this week, and can’t bring myself to finish another perfume review. This poll is for any of my fellow Janeites out there, and the rest of you will find it dull as nails so please come back tomorrow when Jessica will review the new Clean Well Hand Washes scented by Mandy Aftel of Aftelier.
So…I’m sure I’m not the only one who watched much of the recent Masterpiece Austen-fest on PBS. I enjoyed it immensely, not least because it was so much fun to sit on the couch eating chocolate and muttering under my breath at the “sexy” adaptations…
“A scent always dissipates, leaving in its wake no more than a faint echo, a lingering trace. Perfume is a 'here' en route to a 'there', a today floating away in the direction of a yesterday, a possession paradoxically coinciding with an immanent loss” (Richard Stamelman, p.19).
The notion of perfume as the 'essence of absence' has always been a great source of inspiration to poets and novelists. Few, however, have taken it as literally as Italo Calvino in his tale The Name, the Nose. This short story was published posthumously in 1986, together with A King Listens and Under the Jaguar Sun, and consists of three interwoven plots in which sensuality, desire, and the sense of smell play a central role…