To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of cacao beans at the port city of Bayonne, the French postal service (La Poste) is issuing a set of stamps depicting scenes from the history and manufacture of chocolate…
Czech & Speake ~ shopping for perfume in London
Jermyn Street is a famed bastion of the posher London gentleman. Traditionally, it’s been about men’s hand-made shirts and accessories, and it’s still the place that James Bond would shop for something to go with his Savile Row suit.
In the midst of all this genteel male fashion, Czech & Speake is slightly unexpected. The double windows are full of taps (faucets) and sundry bathroom hardware items. Only the fact that the shop is right next to the back door of uber-swanky Fortnum & Mason would make you pause and ask yourself what this shop is really all about.
Czech & Speake’s mission is to satisfy all of a gentleman’s bathing requirements, from the porcelain basin to the bath foam…
Online fragrance shopping
Deal at esteelauder: get free shipping and 2 samples of your choice with any purchase of $35 or more using coupon code FREE35, good through 5/25.
New at luckyscent: Miller Harris Fleurs de Bois.
Zegna Colonia by Ermenegildo Zegna ~ new fragrance
Ermenegildo Zegna has launched Zegna Colonia, the line’s latest fragrance for men:
With Zegna Colonia, the brand unveils its personal vision of ‘la Dolce Vita’. A parenthesis of peaceful happiness bathed in the warm embrace of the Italian sun. A snapshot of an elegant silhouette and the entrancing eyes of a man dressed in white linen, captured in the space of an instant…
Guerlain Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus and Pacifica Lotus Garden ~ fragrance reviews
The scent of lotus flowers is one of my favorite floral aromas, but smelling lotus in bloom is a rare treat. Lotuses blossom three hours “down the road” in Portland, Oregon, but it doesn’t stay warm enough, long enough for them to flower here in Seattle. If you want to know what lotus smells like, find a lotus pond and sniff the newly opened blossoms; do NOT rely on perfumes that mention ‘lotus’ in their ingredients or you will be a Lotus Ignoramus.
Lotus in modern perfumes has been interpreted as a “watery” floral note: light, clean and smelling like fresh, and I mean fresh, water surrounding flowering lotus plants. Describing real lotus fragrance is difficult, but pink lotus flowers smell citrus-y, “green” and “spicy” and they possess deep, sultry floral aromas accompanied by a faint scent of sweet, marsh mud. The perfume of lotus blossoms is strange and intoxicating. (Smell the “living” flower if possible; once you cut a lotus stem the flower’s fragrance fades quickly.)
Guerlain Mitsouko Fleur de Lotus and Pacifica Lotus Garden proclaim their devotion to LOTUS. Both fragrances fail to capture the scent of real lotus blossoms, but there’s more to talk about than lotus in these perfumes…