Niche line Arquiste will launch Boutonniere no. 7, a new green floral…
Scentings Elizabeth Bennet ~ fragrance review
Scentings is a small company specializing in handcrafted aromatherapy products with charming packaging and literary themes. Two of Scentings’ essential oil blends, Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet, are inspired by the heroines of Jane Austen’s novels. I’ve tried Elizabeth Bennet, named for the leading lady of Pride and Prejudice; it’s an all-natural mix of clary sage, palmarosa, ylang-ylang, lavender and bitter orange.
My first impression of this blend is the earthy, slightly musky clary sage — clary sage has plenty of personality, and it tends to dominate a bit here, so you’ll need to like clary sage if you’re going to love this blend. However, it is lightened by the floral-herbaceous lavender note, a citrusy edge of orange peel, and the warm, woody-floral palmarosa. The various oils or notes are combined smoothly, so that the result is a sophisticated blend, with a certain amount of depth from the more intense ingredients…
We see things as we are
Britney Spears, for her new Fantasy Twist launch.
Update: this video is no longer available, sorry!
Undergreen Pink ~ new fragrance
Top 10 Fall Fragrances 2012
I have been known to change my mind. Still, as far as my love of autumnal perfumes goes, it seems I am as constant as the northern star. I kept thinking of fragrances to include in this post and then realizing, blast, I’d already listed them the last time I covered fall favorites for Now Smell This in 2009. A few of the previous ten are my all-time, all-year darlings, but the fall always casts them in a particularly poignant and profound light for me. As October starts, I often think of lines from John Cheever: “and who, after all these centuries, can describe the fineness of an autumn day?” (via The Stories of John Cheever). He gives it a shot anyway:
The clear and searching sweep of sun on the lawns was like a climax of the year’s lights. Leaves were burning somewhere, and the smoke smelled, with all its ammoniac acidity, of beginnings. The boundless blue air was stretched over the zenith like the skin of a drum.
That ammoniac acidity has always given me pause — ammonia is alkaline, isn’t it? — but the sky and the sun and the lawns are all perfectly right. And then, using his characteristic contrast of the ecstatic and the everyday, he deflates that golden description with: “It was the day to canvass for infectious hepatitis.” Well, of course it was! For autumn is not only the season of reflection and melancholy, a time to moon about in cable-knit sweaters through the mists of the dying year. It is also a practical season, a time to make school lunches and Halloween costumes, to bustle along the sidewalks through gusty breezes on charitable errands. As Cheever wrote, beginnings are in the air.
So okay, you say… begin already, please! As I rounded up the usual suspects three years ago, the following list includes some of my favorite newer scents. (Surely my “Best of 2012” picks will be predictable enough to excuse a spoiler.) There are a few of my old standbys that got missed last time, too…