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subscribe to beauty counter blog via RSSOh, That Holiday Smell
November 5, 2009 5:01 pm
I just finalized my December travel plans—Christmas in Montana, very excited. It took actually purchasing said plane ticket to conjure that warm and fuzzy holiday feeling, but there’s an easy and significantly cheaper way to get a jumpstart on some Yule-time glee if heading to Big Sky country isn’t in your future: Jo Malone’s limited-edition Pine & Eucalyptus collection. One whiff of the extra-large luxury candle’s crisp, fresh scent and you can envision what few moments of Zen you may be able to steal away in between the endearing familial arguments that are sure to come. The range also includes bath soaps, a bath oil, and a cologne.
When Makeup Begets Fragrance
November 4, 2009 5:02 pm
With news that prominent fashion brands with fragrances, like Burberry and Michael Kors, are turning to color cosmetics for some good old-fashioned revenue-boosting, it’s perhaps not surprising that well-known makeup visionaries are now launching their own signature scents. We’re all for spreading the wealth, aren’t you? Bare Escentuals founder Leslie Blodgett introduced Bare Skin last month. The first fragrance from her eponymous Perfume Diaries collection, the anise, vanilla, and labdanum eau is based on scent memories of a sun-drenched trip to Mexico. The idea of revisiting pivotal moments through fragrance also fueled QVC darling Mally Roncal’s fruity-floral venture, which officially went on sale last week. Mally Beauty Fragrance pays homage to Roncal’s Filipino roots and uses the country’s night-blooming sampaguita flower as its heart. If only they’d add haircare to their product offerings, they’d have the whole brand-loyalty thing all sewn up.
tags: Bare Escentuals, Bare Skin, Fragrance, Leslie Blodgett, Makeup, Mally Beauty Fragrance, Maly Roncal
Angel, The Digestif
November 2, 2009 2:59 pm
As many devotees of Thierry Mugler’s Angel will recall, the 1992 gourmand oriental sent shock waves through the smelling establishment, indoctrinating a new scent family and securing a large group of lifelong fans. For the holidays, the French designer is indulging his penchant for mold-breaking once again, putting a personal spin on the season’s limited-edition flacons and reformulations. His Angel Superstar Eau de Parfum collector’s bottle, for starters, comes equipped with a 38mm Swarovski crystal dangling at the center, and the popular juice itself has been given an equally bourgie revamp. Liqueur de Parfum, as its name suggests, is inspired by cognac production techniques and is the result of placing the chocolate, caramel and patchouli fragrance in a cherry wood casket for eight weeks. Soft honey overtones and essences of candied fruits now pepper the familiar vanilla and amber notes. Alien, his woody jasmine sambac scent, has been paired with oak wood to achieve a similarly distilled effect. While it won’t give you the same kind of “cheer” as kicking back a few snifters of Rémy Martin, it’s still worth adding to your shopping list.
tags: Alien, Angel, Fragrance, Liqueur de Parfum, Superstar Eau de Parfum, Thierry Mugler
At Long Last: Balenciaga Paris, The Fragrance
October 30, 2009 5:25 pm
Word that Charlotte Gainsbourg would front Nicolas Ghesquière’s first foray into fragrance for the house of Balenciaga spread like wildfire when it was announced over the summer, and finally we’ve got some more news to share about the highly anticipated scent that bows in February. Perfumer Olivier Polge—he of Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb and Eau Mega fame—has produced a floral chypre fragrance. Ghesquière apparently gave Polge a list of smells he liked, including floor wax, gasoline, carnations, and violets, and the esteemed nose chose violet as the center of the eau, grounding it in redistilled woods like cedar and patchouli. Petrol fumes didn’t make the cut, although there’s an intentionally urban twist to the fragrance. As for the prismatic bottle, it’s an homage to the signature Balenciaga cocoon-shaped cape, designed with direction from Ghesquière, who insisted that the flacon have a “head, neckline, and a body.” Gainsbourg has been shot by Steven Meisel to achieve the same effect in print form. [WWD]
tags: Balenciaga Paris, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Eau Mega, Flowerbomb, Nicolas Ghesqui�re, Olivier Polge, Viktor & Rolf
Fragrance’s Night Out
October 30, 2009 12:58 pm
It’s official: The lavish party has replaced the casual luncheon for perfume launches. Last month, Dior fêted the tenth anniversary of its J’Adore fragrance at the Boom Boom Room, and last night, two of Fall’s biggest flacons made after-dark debuts. First up, the Monkey Bar, where Helena Rubinstein celebrated the arrival of its first scent since the early eighties. All You’ve Ever Wanted, which hits shelves at Macy’s this weekend, is inspired by a woman who is “passionate, entrancing, seductive, and in control.” Naturally, Demi Moore is its spokesperson. Clad in a gray sleeveless onesie and fur-trimmed cropped leather jacket, Mrs. Kutcher talked briefly about the magnolia, iris, and cedar scent before being whisked off to Yankees Stadium for Game 2 of the World Series. That was our cue to head downtown to the Angel Orensanz Foundation, where YSL had staged a large-scale masquerade ball to usher in its new eau, Parisienne. Kate Moss, who fronts the campaign for the damask rose, violet, peony, and vetiver scent, was sadly not in attendance, but a ballroom full of masked revelers made up for her absence. Parisienne also boasts what its perfumers have dubbed a “vinyl accord,” which is intended to evoke the idea of gloss, varnish, or metal—and spinning records, one might assume. Fittingly, the MisShapes climbed behind the decks and turned the party out.
tags: All I Ever Wanted, Demi Moore, Dior, Helena Rubinstein, J'Adore, Kate Moss, MisShapes, Parisienne, YSL
Estée Lauder’s Holiday Roar
October 29, 2009 12:50 pm
We promised you holiday baubles, and holiday baubles you shall have. Estée Lauder puts together one of the better lineups of limited-edition festive trinkets this time of year, producing a collection of solid perfume and powder compacts in a range of shapes, sizes, and bejeweled Swarovski crystals. At first, we were drawn to the Glimmering Takeout compact, a gilded miniature Chinese food delivery box from the Opulence of Asia range that houses a pan of Estée Lauder Pleasures perfume, but we ultimately gravitated toward the Year of the Tiger model, which holds the brand’s Beautiful fragrance in solid form. It’s likely the closest we’ll ever get to owning anything remotely resembling Cartier’s diamond-encrusted panther collection. Something is better than nothing, we like to tell ourselves.
tags: Cartier, Est�e Lauder, Fragrance, Year of the Tiger
Frédéric Malle, Homeward Bound
October 28, 2009 2:12 pm
First came Francis Kurkdjian’s laundry detergent and fabric softener, and now Frédéric Malle is entering the home category with the help of his frequent collaborators, the noses Carlos Benaïm and Dominique Ropion. Comprising nine new scents, the latest eaux to join Malle’s Editions de Parfums are available not only in candle form, but also as rubber incense, which is designed using a small sheet of 100 percent recyclable, fragrance-soaked plastic rubber that can be diffused for years without using electricity or a refill—RIP, tacky pine tree car deodorizers! But perhaps the most impressive piece of Malle’s new collection is Fleurs Mécaniques. The small, red, wireless cube silently dispenses scents like Rosa Rugosa, Rubrum Lily, and Jurassic Flower, and also happens to make for a great piece of sculptural apartment art if you’ve already got a midcentury-modern theme going. The home fragrance collection will be available at the new Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle boutique at 898 Madison Avenue beginning next week.
tags: Editions de Parfums Fr�d�ric Malle, Fragrance, Francis Kurkdjian
Perfume, An Annotated Guide Book
October 27, 2009 4:53 pm
Fragrance can be a mystifying beast. With all the celebrity endorsements, eye-catching bottles, elaborate marketing campaigns, and expansive ingredients lists, it’s often hard to sort out the winners from the stinkers. Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez set out to do just that with their new book, Perfumes: The A-Z Guide (Penguin; 2009). A leading scholar in the field of olfactory science (and the subject of Chandler Burr’s tome The Emperor of Scent), Turin brings his renowned expertise to the table, where it mingles with Sanchez’s witty prose for a delightful read—and an excellent resource for all future trips to the fragrance counter. Aside from providing an introduction to perfume criticism and an education in what separates feminine and masculine scents, the authors cover a brief history of perfume and also provide a thorough “frequently asked questions” section. Ever wondered about the differences between an EDT, an EDP, and a Parfum? They’ve got the answer. But the brilliance of the book is in the nearly 1,800 reviews. Turin calls Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely a “charming floral” that “makes you want to buy furry toys” and describes Paris Hilton’s namesake scent as “competent but depressing,” while Sanchez depicts Guerlain’s Champs-Elysées as “a sharp and shallow floral to go with Lucite-heeled shoes and a ditzy high-pitched laugh.” Like we said, it’s a delightful read.
tags: Champs-Elys�es, Fragrance, Guerlain, Lovely, Luca Turin, Paris Hilton, Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tania Sanchez
Prada Makes Art Out Of Fragrance
October 22, 2009 10:26 am
When Prada introduced its Infusion de Fleur d’Oranger fragrance this past spring, it was on our summer favorites’ list before we even toyed with the idea of spritzing it onto our skin. The rectangular glass flacon came housed in one of the prettiest boxes we’ve ever seen, which made us want to like the orange blossom absolute eau despite the fact that we tend to shy away from similarly scented perfumes. (Full disclosure: The entire package sat, unopened, on our kitchen table for a few weeks so any visitors to our apartment might be able to marvel at the iconic green, pink, and orange floral wallpaper print that Miuccia Prada featured in her Fall 2003 collection.) Fortunately, we liked the warm, fresh scent even more when we eventually opened it—thus marginally justifying leaving the carton around for all to see. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris apparently relates to our obsession with its visual allure and has included the fragrance in its new exhibition entitled Art Nouveau Revival, which opened this week and is dedicated to re-evaluating the impact of the movement on contemporary culture. Prada’s pattern will be shown alongside work by artists like Man Ray, Salvador Dalí, and Aubrey Beardsley through February, giving us a legitimate reason to put the box back on display in our own home as an objet d’art.
tags: Aubrey Beardsley, Man Ray, Miuccia Prada, Prada, Salvador Dal�
Juliet Has A Gun, And Now It’s Fully Loaded
October 20, 2009 11:11 am
Romano Ricci, great-grandson of renowned couturier Nina Ricci and the self-described “offbeat dandy of the fragrance world,” is somewhat opposed to conformity. That’s why he started his three-year-old rose-tinged niche perfume collection, Juliet Has a Gun, in the first place. The fragrance range is a means of exploring the multifaceted nature of Shakespeare’s heroine, who, in his estimation, embodies the infrequently explored idea of female juxtaposition—the idea that a woman can be at once innocent, sophisticated, and, above all, provocative. To wit, when conceiving a portable vessel for the full-sized flacons of his first three scent offerings, a simple miniature spray vial or solid perfume pot simply wouldn’t do. Instead, Ricci wanted something that looked both dangerous and classic, with a touch of the controversial thrown in for good measure. And so he arrived at the purse bullet, a roll-on device that fits perfectly in your bag for on-the-go pulse-point application. Each one comes with four refillable cartridges in one of three scents: Citizen Queen, which blends rose notes with a citrus, woodsy accord; Lady Vengeance, a rose, patchouli, and vanilla eau; or Miss Charming, a fruity rose offering with a good helping of musk at its base. Call it weapon or toy; just don’t call it conventional.
tags: Juliet Has a Gun, Nina Ricci
