Alfred Sung will release his next fragrance, Jewel, this fall. Jewel has notes of neroli flower, pear, blackcurrant and jasmine. (via The Moodie Report) Additional notes include frangipani petals, orange blossom, plum, sheer coconut milk and acacia wood. Alfred Sung Jewel is an Eau de Parfum, and is available in 30, 50 and 100 ml and in matching body products…
Beauty Cafe: An interview with Lisa Slavik
Like many a perfume addict, I occasionally dream of owning my own perfume store. My own reverie revolves largely around having the opporunity to test lots of free perfume samples, and at no time do I bother considering such weighty issues as dealing with customers, much less actually trying to make money. I thought it might be interesting to ask a few retailers what the experience was really like.
Lisa Slavik opened Beauty Cafe in 1997. She carries Bond no. 9, L'Artisan, Eadward, Susanne Lang, Zents, and Comptoir Sud Pacifique among others.
Lisa, how and when did you first become interested in perfume?
When I was a child growing up in Hollywood, CA, there was a very elegant lady that lived in our apartment building. You knew when she had been in the elevator or in the halls because of the lingering fragrance of violets. To this day, some thirty something years later, I can still recall her signature fragrance. She was the epitome of elegance and class to me and as I grew older I swore that one day, I too would have a signature fragrance. Boy was I ever wrong on that one!
Later I discovered alt.fashion on the internet, and through that group I became acquainted with the Comptoir Sud Pacifique (CSP) line…
Online fragrance shopping
New at beautyhabit: i Profumi di Firenze Costa Mediterranea & Melograno Selvatica, L'Aromarine Eaux de Toilette, Comptoir Sud Pacifique Cool Tropic collection, Cote Bastide Ambre, i Coloniali Lotus Segreti.
New at imaginationperfumery: the 2005 summer limited editions of Jean Paul Gaultier Classique & L'Eau d'Issey.
Perfume reading in the Times: Chandler Burr, Mandy Aftel
There were two perfume-related articles in the Sunday New York Times Magazine yesterday. The first, by Chandler Burr, explores attitudes towards perfume in Japan, "a culture whose relationship to fragrance is more ambivalent than perhaps any other on the planet."
The second article is about the cookbook Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Food & Fragrance, released last year by perfumer Mandy Aftel of Aftelier and chef Daniel Patterson:
...the two connect in their longing to marry scent and taste. ''There was no template for cooking with essential oils,'' Patterson says. So they decided to create one. First came chilled carrot soup, with fresh ginger and a drop of ginger essential oil. That led to blood orange sorbet; mojitos with spearmint oil; crab salad with coriander oil; and white chocolate with sweet fennel and the essence of tarragon, which pushed the boundaries of chocolate as a comfort food. ''I remember being knocked out by how they just transformed things,'' he says.
The article includes three recipes.
Creative Scentualization is "streamlining"…
Creative Scentualization is discontinuing some of their Perfect Perfumes. On the chopping block: Perfect Chypre, Perfect Twilight, Perfect Hope, Perfect Sunset, and Perfect Tuberose.