Describing the inspiration for her latest fragrance, independent perfumer Diane St. Clair writes,
I had been watching the snow fall outside of my window for three months, at times blowing horizontally on winds wailing down from the Polar Vortex. I tried to conjure a way to transport myself to a place far away, a place with warm air and perfumed flowers and fruit—a garden in paradise…
The result of this reverie was Casablanca, a floral chypre fragrance with a lengthy list of notes…
We have snow in the forecast as I’m writing this post, so it doesn’t feel like spring; yet here we are. Looking back at my lists of favorite spring fragrances from 2008 and 2013, I’ve decided to do something different this time. I’ll never stop loving Après l’Ondée or L’Eau d’Hiver, but I gave myself a new assignment for this round: I sampled lots of new releases and chose ten that I’d want to continue wearing in the coming months. I’ve been feeling for a long time that I just can’t keep up with the tide of new launches, but this is my deliberate small effort at feeling more current (even just for one season)!
Spring is the season when I enjoy white florals the most, and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Je Suis La Lune (I Am the Moon) is a jasmine fragrance that smells more like a creamy, slightly salty lily to me…
I’m a city person: I feel total kinship with the poet Frank O’Hara when he says, “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.”1 With the exception of occasional family visits to non-metropolitan areas, I generally prefer to limit my pastoral experiences to art and fragrances that evoke the great outdoors…