Roberto Cavalli will launch a new eponymous fragrance for women in spring 2012. It will be the designer’s first perfume under new licensing arrangements with Coty. The scent will be fronted by Italian actress and model Elisa Sednaoui…
Nuance Salma Hayek Walnut Body Scrub and Rosehip Moisturizing Body Lotion ~ scented body products
Considering the wave of celebrity perfumes that has submerged us over the past decade, it’s interesting that so few famous names have appeared on the labels of fragranced body products. The only examples that come to my mind are Jo Wood Organics, a high-priced niche line created by the ex-wife of a Rolling Stone, and Lisa Hoffman Beauty, a body/fragrance spa brand founded by Dustin Hoffman’s wife, but neither of these women is exactly a household name.
Now, however, we have Nuance, a full collection of cosmetics, skincare, haircare, and body products launched by actress Salma Hayek. Hayek herself is probably no stranger to fancy fragrances and indulgent self-care products, since she’s married to François-Henri Pinault, the CEO of a multinational luxury goods business. Yet her new Nuance brand is sold at CVS drugstores; as Hayek says in one of her promotional videos for the line, “I wanted to make sure that every woman could afford it.” (She also mentions the inspiration of her grandmother, who concocted homemade beauty products in her kitchen, and the long history of natural ingredients in traditional Mexican remedies.)
I picked up two Nuance body products at CVS on a whim…
Holiday fragrance gifts 2011, part 8
The 8th and last of our 2011 series of holiday gift posts. Today’s focus: budget gifts and stocking stuffers, listed in order of price (low to high).
If you missed them, here are links to part 1 (scented body products), part 2 (travel sizes & coffrets), part 3 (more travel sizes & coffrets), part 4 (home fragrance), part 5 (men’s fragrance), part 6 (solid perfumes) and part 7 (luxury).
If you know of a fabulous (scented) gift item that we missed, do post it in the comments!
From Bath & Body Works, the Signature Cello: “Your favorite pampering pair is wrapped in gingham and ready to give. Set includes Shower Gel and Body Lotion, 3 oz. each.” In Paris Amour, Twilight Woods, Sweet Pea, Moonlight Path and Japanese Cherry Blossom. $5 a pop…
Lazy weekend poll ~ your best buy of 2011
Today's poll was suggested by reader Lucasai. What was your best fragrance buy of 2011? It could be the biggest bargain, the one you're happiest with, the one you searched for and finally found, the one that garnered the most compliments, anything.
Note: top image is three cookies by blucolt at flickr; some rights reserved.
5 perfumes: Mimosa
I have always liked mimosa in fragrances. Rather, I should clarify: I have always liked Acacia farnesiana (cassie) and/or scents with heliotropin. The term “mimosa” is a bit of a moving target, even in botany, as there are about 400 species or cultivars of plants under this genus, mostly with pink or mauve flowers, in addition to many other shrubs or trees that produce poofy, cartoonish blossoms and were historically lumped in under the name by the public — silk tree being an example. The sweet, warm, powdery smell we encounter in perfumery, with its facets of almond, honey, violet, craft paste and fresh cucumber, comes from distillation of the soft, feathery yellow petal clusters of the acacia species that most of us in the West know as mimosa flowers. One of my most vivid and happy memories of visits to France is the bushels of mimosa branches tossed out during “La Bataille de Fleurs” or flower parade during the Carnaval de Nice, which winds its way along what must be one of the world’s most beautiful thoroughfares, the Promenade des Anglais.
For all its cheerful straight-forwardness, mimosa appears to be a hard note to use in perfume. There are very few credible soliflores and many mainstream fragrances with a strong mimosa presence come off as airheaded and shampoo-like. With the IFRA restrictions on heliotropin, it has become even more difficult, if not impossible, to base a fragrance around the flower. Looking to include perfumes with some availability in this list, I found that almost all the mimosa fragrances I’d enjoyed at the beginning of my perfume education in the mid-noughties were discontinued or reformulated. Caron Farnesiana, long the great classic of mimosa perfumes, has gone through so many versions that it is hard to keep track of them all…