Recently, I’ve come across many articles online and in magazines informing me that the scents men fancy most are (in no particular order): vanilla, cinnamon, licorice and pie (apple and pumpkin being favorites). Though I will happily eat a cinnamon roll, a slice of apple pie and/or a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream, I avoid sweet-foody room fragrance products that smell of cake icing, lemon sorbet, or crème brûlée. (The gist — dessert on a plate: GOOD; ‘dessert’ in a bottle or candle: BAD.) So when I received Antica Farmacista's Vaniglia, Mandarino e Bourbon room spray as a Christmas present, I was tempted to leave the box sealed and regift it or exchange it for another of the company's fragrances. Curiosity and post-holiday laziness kept me from doing either: I unwrapped, I sprayed…
Fragrance of the day: Musc Maori by Parfumerie Generale
Musc Maori is fragrance no. 4 in the Parfumerie Generale line up. The notes are bergamot, Cumaru wood, coffee tree blossom, white musk, cocoa bean, abstract flower accord, tonka bean, vanilla scented musk and amber.
Musc Maori starts with, as promised, bergamot, wood, and coffee, but I don’t notice them as separate entities…
Vanilla perfumes from Montale & Parfums de Nicolai
The weather here today is cold and grey and dreary. We still have a few inches left of last week’s snow, and there are light flurries swirling outside my window as I type. It is the kind of day when you reach for a comfort fragrance, and so I am wearing two vanilla scents: Vanille Tonka by Parfums de Nicolaï, and Vanille Absolu by Montale.
Vanille Tonka was released in 1997, and has notes of tangerine, lime, cinnamon, Mexican vanilla, tonka bean and frankincense. It starts with dry citrus, very heavy on the lime. The citrus notes fade into a cinnamon sugar accord; the vanilla and tonka bean intensify over the next hour, and are joined by smoky swirls of frankincense…
Ambra del Nepal by i Profumi di Firenze ~ fragrance review
We have been extraordinarily lucky with the weather this month: it has been unseasonably warm up until today. Today, it is cold. I am not ready for cold, but it does give me an excuse to reach for one of my favorite winter fragrances: Ambra del Nepal by the Italian apothecary line i Profumi di Firenze. The notes are amber, cardamom and vanilla.
Ambra del Nepal is probably the only amber fragrance I really adore. The amber smells pale rather than dark, but at the same time, it is deep, rich and resinous, with a whisper of dry incense smoke. It is sweet, but the smoke and a generous dash of cardamom temper the sweetness so that it never feels heavy or cloying, even as the vanilla intensifies on the dry down. It is one of very few ambers that doesn’t turn sour on my skin after an hour…
Laura Tonatto Plaisir, with an aside on Sage Pearl
Italian perfumer Laura Tonatto has been creating fragrances since the early 1980s. In addition to the scents marketed under her own name, she has developed fragrances for Carthusia and Kerastase, among others. Her own line, which includes Plaisir, has recently been streamlined and repackaged. The notes for Plaisir are orange, pink grapefruit, rose, cinnamon, patchouli, vanilla, amber and musk.
The first few minutes of Plaisir are dominated by sharp citrus notes…