If you grew up in Miami and are of Hispanic descent, chances are high that you smelled like violets as a baby and sometimes beyond your childhood years.
— Read more at Agua de Violetas: A Familiar Fragrance With An Untold Story at NBC Miami.
A summer of violets
After writing last week’s review of Fabergé Straw Hat, I took a look around and realized that my violet obsession isn’t restricted to perfumes. I’m applying and ingesting and inhaling other violet-perfumed products on a regular basis, too. Here’s a quick round-up of some favorites.
Lush Daddy-O shampoo (top center image) is anything but a “shrinking violet” —its floral aroma is rich and vibrant, with added notes of ylang ylang and violet leaf to add complexity. The scent will linger in your hair all day…
Faberge Straw Hat ~ vintage fragrance review
I seem to be in the mood for vintage fragrances this summer, whether they date to the 1980s or much earlier. This week, I spent some time with Fabergé Straw Hat, a scent that was originally released in 1938 and discontinued in 1976, after being offered every spring and summer as a limited edition. I only became acquainted with Fabergé’s other fragrances a few years ago. Aphrodisia is still my favorite, but Straw Hat feels is more seasonally appropriate this week!
Fabergé (the cosmetics brand, that is — not the jewelers to the Russian imperial family!) was founded in 1937 by the Russian-born businessman and philanthropist Samuel Rubin, who sold the company to a competitor in 1963. Fabergé continued to release new perfumes and toiletries, was subject to further mergers over the years, and had most of its products discontinued under Unilever’s ownership in the 1990s. I remember the magazine ads for Babe (1977) from my youth, and the Brut men’s collection is still available…
Lush Sunny Day Anti-Static Hair Detangler ~ scented hair product review
Every spring, I reach for my favorite violet perfumes. At this point in my perfume-history, they include Guerlain Après L’Ondée, Annick Goutal La Violette, Atkinsons 1799 Love in Idleness and Balenciaga Paris. I’ve alway had a weakness for Lush’s violet-scented bath and products, too — my very first review here at Now Smell This was a look at Lush’s Bathos Bubble Bar — so I couldn’t resist a quick in-store spritz of their new Sunny Day Anti-Static Hair Detangler.
According to the Lush UK website, Sunny Day’s name is a reference to the Sesame Street theme song: “Sunny day / sweeping the clouds away / on my way to where the air is sweet.” Coincidentally (or not?), it has a weather tie-in to Don’t Rain on My Parade Shower Gel…
Diptyque + Olympia Le-Tan Rosaviola ~ fragrance review
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Diptyque has introduced a limited edition capsule collection: Rosaviola, a scent packaged in collaboration with designer Olympia Le-Tan. I’m not specially a fan of Le-Tan, whom The New York Times has praised for her “glamorous geek aesthetic” and her clutch purses that reinterpret classic book covers in fabric and embroidery — a “nod to a bygone era when people carried actual books,” the Times tells us.1 I still carry real books, rather than a $2000 clutch, but I’m not one of the well-connected Le-Tan’s celebrity clients and never will be. What I am, however, is someone who can not resist a violet-rose perfume, so here we are.
Rosaviola is composed of notes of violet, violet leaf, raspberry, iris and leather; it’s meant to evoke the scent of a woman’s handbag and the cosmetics tucked inside…