Giorgio Armani Idole d’Armani ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 21 September 2009 100 Comments

Giorgio Armani Idole d'Armani

I’ve smelled so much fabulous perfume lately. I’ve already bought a bottle of Laura Mercier Minuit Enchanté, plan on springing for some L’Artisan Parfumeur Havana Vanille, love my decant of Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée, am enjoying Natori, and am tantalized by Tom Ford Private Blend Oud Wood. I practically can’t sleep waiting to try Amouage Epic. Thinking of my pocketbook, I apprehensively dabbed a few drops of Giorgio Armani Idole d’Armani Eau de Parfum on my wrist. I needn’t have worried. Thank you, perfume gods, for a fragrance I’m not even tempted to buy.

Idole d’Armani launched this month. Perfumer Bruno Jovanovic created Idole, using — and here I lift directly from the Armani cosmetics website: top notes of “dazzling bitter orange, juicy pear, ginger and davana”; middle notes of “audacious rose loukoum and mythical jasmine blended boldly with saffron absolute, creating a honey-coloured subtle spicy note”; and base notes of “unexpected styrax, patchouli and vetiver”. (Let’s just hope the Armani marketing people don’t enter the Prix Eau Faux, or the rest of us don’t stand a chance).

Despite the Armani website’s cheesy description, Idole is built on a foundation that smells Armani perfect…

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Perfume for an imaginary autumn

Posted by Angela on 14 September 2009 133 Comments

autumn

Remember the excitement of going back to school? Summer — days of climbing trees, building forts, and coming to the table with clean hands but dirty everything else — was over and now a new year of possibilities lay ahead. Armed with a few carefully selected outfits from the Montgomery Ward catalog and a fresh notebook, I dreamed of the coming year: this year I’d be in the school play, or I’d be a smash in band with my flute, or that cute boy in 8th grade would finally notice me.

Fall is on the doorstep now. I still have dreams about what might happen as the leaves turn color, and my imaginings have become more outlandish. I’ll lay out a few choice scenarios here, along with their accompanying perfumes.

Week at an English manor: Let’s jump right in with a big one. What could be better than riding horses and sleeping in antique beds in the English countryside? Stella McCartney, Sting, or minor British aristocracy might drop in for dinner, and we’ll spend evenings in a room with worn oriental carpets, elaborate moldings, and vases crammed with dahlias…

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Laura Mercier Minuit Enchante ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 7 September 2009 126 Comments

Laura Mercier Minuit Enchante

I’ve read so many magazine articles about the building blocks of the classic wardrobe. Usually the list includes a white, button-up blouse, a trench coat, a string of pearls, and a little black dress. Except for the little black dress, my dream basic wardrobe looks a lot different: try for starters 10 cotton sundresses from the 1950s, four 1940s suits, enough vintage cocktail dresses to last a few seasons in Monte Carlo, and an armload of dressing gowns. But I do believe in a basic wardrobe of fragrances. A type of fragrance I think everyone should have is a warm, spicy, slightly gourmand scent. If you haven’t yet filled this hole in your perfume collection, you might want to try Laura Mercier Minuit Enchanté.

Warm, spicy orientals are perfect when it’s cold out and you want a scent that will stand up to the season’s thick sweaters and woolen skirts. They blend well with roaring fireplaces, counteract the damp, musty smell of the bus on a rainy morning, and bloom on skin coddled by coats. Some orientals, like Chopard Casmir, are heavily gourmand and call for a light hand and a big personality. Others, like the brand new Natori, are more light and feminine. Minuit Enchanté takes a middle course…

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Millot Crepe de Chine ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 31 August 2009 116 Comments

Millot Crepe de Chine advert

Friday afternoon I scoped the downtown department stores for something new and interesting to smell. At one department store, the sales associate showed me lots of recent but ultimately uninspiring perfumes — all Angel rip-offs or fruit-ridden musks. We ended the tour at the Trish McEvoy counter where she raved about one of them that ended up smelling like a baby-shampoo-scented candle on me. At Macy’s, the sales associate said there weren’t any new releases for women, only for men. “Maybe Shalimar L’Oiseau de Paradis?” I tried, thinking I could at least look at a pretty bottle. “We didn’t get that one,” she said and turned her back, leaving me neglected in a forest of celebrity fragrances. Discouraged, I returned home to a surefire remedy for mediocrity and bad manners: Millot Crêpe de Chine.

Crêpe de Chine is a floral aldehydic chypre with top notes of bergamot, lemon, neroli, and orange; a heart of jasmine, rose, lilac, ylang ylang, and carnation; and a base of oak moss, vetiver, benzoin, labdanum, patchouli, musk, and leather…

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Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chypree ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 24 August 2009 167 Comments

Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chypree perfume

The other night, I was talking with friends, and for the first time this year I heard crickets in the garden outside. I said, “Wait, are those—?”, and a friend cut in, “Don’t say it!” She knew I was going to say the crickets’ chirping was a sign that autumn was coming. None of us wanted to admit it. Seemingly overnight the slant of the light has changed. Mornings are cool, although afternoons can still drive you to seek shade. The air smells different. It’s a bittersweet time of year because it is so beautiful but so short and signals that months of cold rain are around the corner. Those heartbreaking few days bridging the warm luxury of summer and the woodsmoke-tinged air of fall are to me what Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chyprée feels like.

Andy Tauer, the founder and nose behind Zurich-based Tauer Perfumes, describes Une Rose Chyprée as “an oriental rose on a chypre base”. He lists its notes as rose damascena, bay, cinnamon, bergamot, lemon, clementine, green Bourbon geranium, labdanum, oak moss, patchouli, vetiver, and vanilla. In the initial announcement about Une Rose Chyprée earlier this year, Tauer said that each 15 ml bottle of the Eau de Parfum contains one pound of steam-distilled rose petals as well as rosa damascena absolute.

The rose in Une Rose Chyprée isn’t the full, fruity, blown rose of summer, but a darker, spicier rose joined by juicy citrus and definite cinnamon…

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

Giorgio Armani Idole d’Armani ~ fragrance review

Perfume for an imaginary autumn

Laura Mercier Minuit Enchante ~ fragrance review

Millot Crepe de Chine ~ fragrance review

Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Chypree ~ fragrance review