If you missed it, check out part 1 for more ideas.
Soaps & matching dishes from Fringe Studio, scented with a blend called Botanica (currant, blackberry and gingergrass). $24 each at Orange and Pear…
Online fragrance shopping
Deal at b-glowing: many items on clearance, including Melange Perfumes solid blending palettes, Love + Toast rollons, I Heart Perfumes solids, selected fragrances from Juliette Has A Gun & more.
New at escentual (UK): Jennifer Lopez Love & Glamour.
New at macys: Elizabeth Arden Green Tea Camellia.
Deal at malinandgoetz: get free shipping with coupon code MOMMY11, good through 5/8.
Deal at parfumsraffy: take 10% off with coupon code spring2011, good through 5/4. New items include Clive Christian C, Amouage Opus V, Xerjoff Discovery sets, Parfumerie Naturelle Ararat.
Deal at scentiments: take 5% off women's fragrances and get free shipping with coupon code mom2011, expiration date unknown.
New at sephora: Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Jasminora.
Lise Watier Bora Bora ~ new perfume
Canadian beauty brand Lise Watier has launched Bora Bora, a new fragrance for women:
Envelope [sic] your skin with the deliciously exotic…
The intense, earthy smell of oud
The designer Tom Ford can take credit for bringing the intense, earthy smell of oud, or agarwood, to the Western mass market, but his Oud Wood perfume simply tapped into a traditional scent used in the Middle East and Asia for thousands of years.
— From For a Coveted Resin, the Scent of Rarity Takes Hold at the New York Times. (But if Tom Ford can take credit for bringing oud to the Western mass market, surely it is because of Yves Saint Laurent M7, not the Private Blend Oud Wood).
Gucci Guilty Pour Homme ~ fragrance review
Gucci has just launched Gucci Guilty Pour Homme in the U.S. I always start my exploration of a new Gucci fragrance by reading Gucci PR news releases and interviews with Gucci execs; these mini-manifestos on perfume are guaranteed to prompt laughter (though they possess not a bit of wit) and a combo of shock and respect (all that Gucci cares about when it comes to a fragrance and its launch is making money…they don’t even try to convince us they regard perfume as an aesthetic creation). The pairing of Gucci with Procter & Gamble Co. over the last several years has produced some bland, inexpensive–smelling “luxury perfumes,” but the cash registers are humming. Gucci Guilty Pour Homme is expected to bring in $250 million in retail sales (globally) in its first year on shelves.1
Let’s start with humor. Discussing the success of the feminine Gucci Guilty launch last autumn, Tracy Van Heusden, senior beauty buyer, House of Fraser department stores, said, I…believe that the success of the launch is also due to the fragrance launching in [the fall]. We do see stronger results for fragrance launches in autumn and winter than in spring and summer, perhaps due to the desire for change that accompanies the change in the seasons.”2 Huh? There IS also an important change in the seasons from winter to spring…and an accompanying shift in “scent sensibilities” from dark, rich perfumes to lighter, brighter fragrances.