As mentioned last week, L'Artisan will be opening a new store in New York City. The opening is now scheduled for Monday, and the store will be located at at 68 Thompson Street in SoHo. More US stores are planned. (via Women's Wear Daily).
Michael Edwards recommends
Many of you are probably familiar with the Michael Edwards Fragrances of the World website that lets you specify a perfume you already like, then get recommendations for 3 other fragrances you might like. At the moment, you can narrow your choice by which site you use to access his database.
Access from the main Michael Edwards site, and your recommendations will be selected from fragrances that have won Fifi awards since 1973.
Access from this other Michael Edwards page, and get only French fragrance recommendations.
Choose from cosmeticnews.com (the link is on the left column), and get recommendations of niche fragrances.
New perfumes from Valentino, Origins and more
Valentino has released Valentino V, his first launch under new licensing arrangements with Procter & Gamble:
The oriental-floral-woody fragrance features top notes of pink grapefruit, mandarin and fig, has middle notes of rose and freesia petals and orange buds and finishes with bottom notes of cedar wood, sandalwood and gray amber…
Diptyque Tam Dao fragrance review
Diptyque launched Tam Dao in 2003, and I assume the fragrance was named for the Vietnamese hill station north of Hanoi. Tam Dao was established as a resort town during French colonial rule; the town is now inside of Tam Dao National Park and is a popular weekend tourist destination. Diptyque’s Tam Dao fragrance was created by perfumer Daniel Moliere, and the notes include rosewood, cypress, ambergris, and sandalwood.
Like many sandalwood-heavy fragrances, Tam Dao gets off to a bit of a rocky start. The top notes smell like a burst of cedar with an unpleasant, almost acrid undertone which I can’t quite pin down. It is close to gasoline, but not quite. It settles quickly to a creamy sandalwood with a distinctly resinous edge. The cypress lends an aromatic, slightly evergreen bite in the early stages, but it is still a very soft fragrance, with little to temper the dry woods…
Perfume on the radio: Nose School, Chandler Burr & Jean Paul Guerlain
Thank you to steelyglint from the Basenotes forum for finding this link to a 30 minute documentary on the perfume school in Versailles. You will need to click on the link (link expired, sorry!) under "Nose School". I haven't had time to listen to it yet, let me know if you enjoy it!
And while searching around the web last weekend for information on Demeter, I came across a link to this radio show on fragrance which was aired last year on Studio 360. Chandler Burr joins the regular show and among other things, they discuss the Demeter line and the use of smell in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. I listened to it shortly after it aired, but it was worth a repeat.
An older, shorter, but still interesting radio interview: this 2002 piece from National Public Radio in which Susan Stamberg talks to Jean-Paul Guerlain about his retirement from the company that had been run by his family for five generations.