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Diptyque Eau de Minthe ~ fragrance review

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If I’d been presented with Diptyque’s new Eau de Minthé* in an unmarked vial, after the first sniff I’d have bet it was a vintage fougère perfume from the 1960s or 1970s. Eau de Minthé is hairy from eyebrows to toes, and brimming with testosterone.

Eau de Minthé goes on with a blast of bergamot mixing with peppery greens (geranium leaf is noticeable, too). As Eau de Minthé skids into mid-development I get scented hints of rose water, green tea(?), “chewing-gum” spearmint and Life Savers® wintergreen candy…

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Shay & Blue Watermelons & Parfums MDCI Bleu Satin ~ fragrance reviews

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The scent and taste of watermelon screams !SUMMER! to me. As a child, cracking open a chilled watermelon was a celebratory event during steamy Virginia summers. At my urging (and purchasing, I bought the seeds), my father grew all types of watermelon varieties: classics, miniatures, ball-shaped; melons with pink, red, gold, yellow and white flesh. Watermelons originated in Africa but now are grown around the world. In Japan, the Densuke watermelon is grown in limited quantities only on Hokkaido; these rare, round watermelons with almost-black rinds sell for hundreds of dollars…or many thousands of dollars at auction (for single melons). I was surprised (given the perfume industry’s propensity for “fibs” and pretension) that today’s two watermelon-flavored perfumes didn’t list Densuke watermelon in the ingredients lists. Stay tuned!

Hoping to find a watermelon fragrance that will refresh my summer, I tried two: Shay & Blue Watermelons and Parfums MDCI Bleu Satin…

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A Lab on Fire Hallucinogenic Pearl ~ fragrance review

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I like to check in with A Lab On Fire on a regular basis, just to see what they’ve been up to. This brand has won my respect over the years, not just for what they do but for what they don’t do. They work with top-notch perfumers to offer unusual but wearable fragrances with quirky back-stories — some of the characteristics that originally attracted me to niche perfumery. Meanwhile, the brand maintains an opacity and reserve that are all but extinct in 2019: no interviews with photogenic creative directors (indeed, no photos of the creative director at all!), no launch parties, no ingratiating social media presence, no peppy PR emails, no free bottles sent to “influencers.”

I’ve owned What We Do In Paris Is Secret and Rose Rebelle Respawn for a long time, and I’ve liked nearly all the other fragrances I’ve sampled from this house, even if I’m chronically lagging behind the newer releases…

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Perfume and Crime Writers

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I’m writing this from Vancouver B.C., where the mystery author-fan convention Left Coast Crime is in full gear. The hotel lobby smells of the Hyatt Regency’s piped-in rose and steam-iron aldehydes, and the 300+ authors milling in the conference rooms and draining bottles of wine in the bar smell like….well, not much.

Over the past few days, I asked a few dozen authors what perfume they wore. I got a lot of “I don’t wear perfume” and “I used to wear perfume.” For instance, Becky Clark quit wearing perfume because it rubbed off on her children “and they smelled like old ladies.” But I did get a few hits…

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Maison Margiela Mutiny ~ fragrance review

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How much does a fragrance’s “back story” matter to you? I occasionally try to ignore the promotional copy and just smell a new perfume, just experience it on its own terms, but over and over again I fail in that resolution. I love storytelling. I love visuals. I want to know why people create the things they create. Sometimes a description or advertisement for a particular fragrance resonates with me; more often, it causes me to roll my eyes. I had both reactions to the promotional messaging for Mutiny, the new women’s fragrance from Maison Margiela.

Mutiny was developed by perfumer Dominique Ropion and its tagline is “Assert your self-expression. Banish conformity. Break the rules.” In a short promotional video for Mutiny, Ropion mentions being impressed by Galliano’s “audacity to subvert, deconstruct and rebuild” traditional clothing forms and wanting to do the same thing with tuberose…

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