Deluxe jewelery designer Chopard has announced the launch of a new men’s fragrance, Chopard pour Homme:
The classic amber woody oriental, created by Firmenich’s Thierry Wasser, opens with top notes of Yuzu, cardamom and star anise, which blends into the aromatic heart of nutmeg, Bourbon pepper and clary sage. Finally the dry down comprises labdanum and cedar wood. Aftershave balm and hair & body wash are also available (via cosmeticsbusiness.com).
The Royal BC Museum’s “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” opens on Saturday in Victoria, B.C., CANADA. It will run from April 14-October 14, 2007. This traveling exhibit features nearly 300 artifacts recovered from Titanic’s undersea resting place in a series of galleries that trace the life of this majestic ship.
One of the passengers on that fateful journey was 47-year old British perfumer Adolphe Saalfeld. Saalfeld brought 64 vials of perfume with him, and 62 of the 65 vials have been recovered from a leather case on the ocean floor. Six of these small perfume vials are in display in the Life on Board Room, where you can actually smell the fragrances through holes in the plexiglass case.
What an incredible opportunity to smell genuine, turn-of-the-last-century fragrances.
And, fortunately, Adolphe Saalfeld survived the sinking.
For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit royalbcmuseum.bc.ca
A southern California niche fragrance company, IBI, has launched a new fragrance called Virtue®. Touting itself as “the world’s first spiritual perfume,” it is “based upon an inspired Biblical formula.” The perfume contains top notes of apricot, pomegranate and fig; heart notes of iris; and base notes of frankincense, myrrh, aloe and spikenard.
What I found most noteworthy on this company’s website were its instructions for the spiritual use of perfume. A shortened version is as follows:
• Begin your spiritual practice
(prayer, meditation, contemplation, etc.)
• Establish your desired spiritual state.
• Smell your wrist, maintaining awareness of your spiritual state.
• Keep repeating this association.
• In the course of your day, let it remind you of your spiritual state by smelling your wrist.
These guidelines seem to have real merit. As most of us have discovered in our own lives, our sense of smell is closely tied with our memories and emotions. For instance, the scent of geranium leaves always reminds me of summertime on my grandmother’s deck, overlooking the beautiful Puget Sound. Conversely, the odor of deep-fried onion rings brings back the feelings of nausea I had during my first trimester when I was pregnant with my eldest son. And the use of incense in religious rituals for helping establish and maintain a sense of centeredness and reverence is well-known. The point is, scent and memory as well as mood are closely linked.
So, to extrapolate from that, can we use scent to consciously evoke certain moods or states of mind at a later time? Can we choose a fragrance, and, while sniffing it, link it to a particular experience and then, by simply smelling that scent at a later date re-enter that original state of mind? Makers of Virtue® would suggest that we can. And I am inclined to agree. I look forward to doing more research on this fascinating topic.
For more information on Virtue®, visit the virtueperfume.com website.
Sphere: Related ContentThis morning I chanced upon a you-tube video commercial promoting luxury goods designer Alfred Dunhill’s men’s fragrance, Dunhill Fresh, which launched in 2005.
I found this James Bond-inspired video very entertaining and oddly compelling. Be prepared to spend nearly 9 minutes of your life being captivated by what is surely meant as a spoof. Best line in the video:
“Now you know, Agent Dunhill, it’s all about the fragrance.”
To see the Agent Dunhill Perfume Commercial, click here.
If the video piques your interest, there is a discounted bottle of Dunhill Fresh available at scentiments.com.
Cost: 1.7oz spray $24.99.
Parfums de Rosine has just launched a new perfume called Diabolo Rose. According to OsMoz.com:
it is a sweet and sassy rose blending rose absolute and essence with a twist of peppermint, tomato leaf, lily-of-the-valley and maté. The designer hasn’t forgotten men either; her latest men’s scent is called Twill Rose. It’s a masculine, subtly green, citrusy and woody fragrance.
Cost of Diablo Rose eau de parfum: 50ml 70 €; 100ml 90 €
To read more about Parfums de Rosine, please see my previous post.
The spicy-oriental Belle en Rykiel is slowly making its way around the world. Launched in France in 2006, this fragrance was launched in the UK in March. According to cosmetics business.com
The scent opens with mandarin, redcurrant and lavender flower, leading to middle notes of Peruvian heliotrope, coffee flower and frankincense accord drying down to a base of patchouli, amber, mahogany wood and vanilla.
Belle en Rykiel will land on American shores this summer, with an August 2007 launch; it will be exclusive to Nordstrom through the end of the year (via nowsmellthis).
COST: £29 for 40ml edp, £44 for 75ml, £59 for 100ml, £19 for body lotion.
Warning: The following post contains somewhat graphic material. Do not read while dining…
The current issue of Nature has a fascinating article about the alleged relics of St. Joan of Arc and two of the leading ‘noses’ in the perfume industry. In a description that reads like an episode of CSI, perfumers Sylvaine Delacourte (Guerlain) and Jean-Michel Duriez (Jean Patou) were invited by forensic scientist Philippe Charlier, to sniff the supposed remains of St. Joan of Arc.
Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen, Normandy, in 1431. The relics were discovered in a jar in the attic of a Pais phramacy in 1867, with the inscription “Remains found under the stake of Joan of Arc, virgin of Orleans”.
Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at Raymond Poincaré′ Hospital in Garches, near Paris, began studying the relics last year. He and his colleagues examined the remains (a charred-looking human rib, chunks of apparently carbonized wood, a 15-cm piece of linen, and a cat femur — which was consistent with the medieval habit of throwing black cats on the the pyre of supposed witches) using a battery of techniques. These included infrared and atomic-emission spectrometry, electron microscopy, pollen analysis and, amazingly, the help of perfumers.
Perfumers Durie and Delacourte were given these relics and nine other samples of bone and hair from Charlier’s lab without being told what the samples were. They were not allowed to discuss their findings with each other. Both perfumers smelled ‘vanilla’ in the samples from the relics. As it turns out, vanilla is inconsistent with cremation.
“Vanillin is produced during decomposition of a body,” says Charlier. “You would find it in a mummy, but not in someone who was burnt.”
In other words, the remains were most likely of a mummy origin, not from a cremated body. Other evidence supporting this claim quickly accumulated, thereby establishing the relics of St. Joan of Arc as fraudulent. The Church, according to Charlier, is ready to accept the results.
Let’s hear it for perfume forensics!
To read the entire article, please click here.
For those of you planning a trip to Paris in the next few weeks, be sure to stop by the new exhibit at the department store Galeries Lafayette. From April 12 to May 5, 2007:
Galeries Lafayette will be presenting a nature-inspired exhibit christened ‘Jungle d’Eden’. A garden of earthly delights, such as the Flower Bar (for tasting edible flowers and fruit-and-flower cocktails) and an oxygen bar (with six nature-inspired fragrances to inhale for relaxation). The store will also be presenting ‘Les Paradis Artificiels’, featuring virtual flowers by the artist Miguel Chevalier…(via OsMoz.com)
And while packing for Paris, don’t forget to include a copy of my e-book: The Perfume-Lover’s Guide to Paris: A 3-Day Walking Tour. This guide will help you easily locate the hippest niche and haute perfumeries located throughout the city.
Au revoir!
Michelle Krell Kydd is an independent marketing and communications consultant who also writes about perfume. In this Perfumer & Flavorist Magazine interview, Kydd talks about what it takes to be a true perfumer, the “imposter syndrome”, the importance of “unveiling” the perfumer, and the Jean Carles olfactive training charts.
In discussing the value of knowing the “nose” behind a perfume’s creation, Kydd notes the wealth of information available in the blogosphere. She states:
In the Internet age, fragrance connoisseurs and individuals with an interest in perfumery share information on blogs and virtual communities. The names of perfumers along with histories of their respective creations are now a regular part of the blogosphere—which is not always true of print media. Curiosity regarding the perfumer is a natural extension of perfume’s DNA—it is an intimate product that literally touches the wearer. People don’t let strangers get that close, so why wouldn’t one want to know more about a person who is touching their heart with something beautiful?
To read the entire interview, please click here.
Welcome to The Perfume Bee.com! I have a new look and a new address: theperfumebee.com. Please don’t forget to update this address if you have me in your blogroll or favorites.
Having switched from Blogger to WordPress, it should be much easier for you to post comments. The first time you post, your comments will be held for approval. Once your first comment is approved (this is simply an anti-spamming measure established by WordPress; please don’t take it personally!), you’ll be able to easily post comments without word verification or moderation.
In celebration of my new website and as a thank you for following me to this site, I am having a drawing for the lovely Hermès Paprika Brasil eau de toilette shown below. This purse-sized 15-ml (.5-oz) bottle comes wrapped in the classic Hermessence Collection drawstring bag. To enter the drawing, simply leave a comment below.
On Tuesday, May 1st, I’ll draw a name from a comment left on this post and send the fragrance to the lucky winner!
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