Yves Rocher Iris Noir ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 6 July 2009 125 Comments

Yves Rocher Iris Noir

Maybe more than any other flower used in perfumery, iris is a chameleon. In Chanel No. 19 or Hermès Hiris, iris is as elegant as a beautifully dressed woman in a Mercedes sedan you admire from your seat in the bus. In Le Labo Iris 39, iris is as earthy and inviting as a rundown house with a wild garden and The Decemberists playing in the background. In Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist or Prada Infusion d’Iris, iris is intellectual and absorbing. Annick Goutal Heure Exquise and Guerlain L’Heure Bleue feature moody iris, and Frédéric Malle Iris Poudre and Gianfranco Ferré Ferré are infused with iris that oozes dressing room glamour. Yves Rocher Iris Noir is Party Girl iris.

With so many perfume lines to explore, I never spent much time with Yves Rocher. Yves Rocher fell between the cracks of the high-end niche lines and fêted perfume houses that are so alluring and the drugstore fragrances with their bargain prices and reverse snob appeal…

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Yves Saint Laurent Opium ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 22 June 2009 257 Comments

Yves Saint Laurent Opium advert

Few fragrances induce the instant love-it-or-hate-it response of Yves Saint Laurent Opium. Right now, you’re probably either thinking, “Opium! I’ve had some of my most memorable nights wearing that perfume…” or “I can already feel the migraine coming on.”

When Opium hit the market in 1977, women bought it by the gallon. Opium was so much more than a fragrance. It became an identity. Just as Chanel No. 5 showed its wearer as someone elegant and timeless (or at least trying to be elegant and timeless), the woman who wore Opium signaled that her life was rife with exoticism and secrets, even if she lived in a split level in the suburbs. The Yves Saint Laurent marketing machine fueled this image with print advertisements of mostly naked women surrounded by crimson and shadows…

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An Open Letter to Michelle Obama

Posted by Angela on 15 June 2009 71 Comments

Michelle Obama Dear Michelle,

It’s all right if I call you Michelle, right? I feel like I know you well enough. After all, I’m not the only person I know who has fallen asleep and dreamt of hanging out with you and Obama. In one of my friend’s dreams, you were barbecuing and wearing a Duke University jersey. In my dream we were at St. Sulpice in Paris and a priest was explaining how we were really cousins. (Don’t worry, it was only a dream. I’m just glad there weren’t giant ducks or submarines or something like that.) But I’m not writing to talk to you about dreams. I want to discuss something more important: perfume.

I understand that you recently bought a bottle of Boadicea the Victorious Noble Eau de Parfum. I’ve been lucky enough to smell Noble, and it’s a wonderful rose scent with a sophisticated patchouli and amber dry down. I wouldn’t mind having a bottle of it myself. But since you’re First Lady, I see broader horizons for you than the perfume output of a British hairdresser. You undoubtedly have big things on your mind, what with being a razor-sharp attorney, mom, and target of public attention. So, to save you time and to bring you maximum olfactory pleasure, I’ve chosen a few perfumes for you to put in the cabinet next to Noble…

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Lanvin My Sin ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 8 June 2009 167 Comments

Lanvin My Sin

Sometimes I think we’re missing out these days by choosing the easy life. Years ago, women wore heels that demanded skill to walk in and treatment for bunions, but they looked great. The time and expense to alter a dress and the discomfort of a girdle were a small price paid for a skirt that swished easily around hips and settled gracefully as a woman sat. Corsages for travel, gloves in the city, real breakfasts, and knowing how to dance all cost time and effort, but they also brought an extra richness and discipline to daily life. Now we settle for sweat suits, crocs, and dancing like we’re having seizures in step aerobics class. For the most part, we’ve also given up lush and difficult perfumes. While I’ll take a pass on girdles, I’d happily trade this whole year’s fragrance launches for a demanding perfume like Lanvin My Sin…

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Masculines and feminines

Posted by Angela on 1 June 2009 246 Comments

Blue wood Pink Flower 1

Last week I went to Nordstrom in search of a spritz of Hermès Bel Ami. I’d recently discovered that I liked its citrus-coriander-leather goodness even better than that of Bois 1920 Come La Luna, and I was trying decide if I needed to save up for a bottle. “Bel Ami? Is that for a guy? You’ll have to go upstairs,” the sales associate at the perfume counter told me. All the masculines were on the second floor.

My first thought was, Crazy! they’re losing out on a potentially huge market for the masculines by putting them somewhere women were less likely to discover them. My second thought was, what is the difference between a fragrance marketed to women and one marketed to men?

At the back of The Book of Perfume by Elisabeth Barillé and Catherine Laroze is a chart of fragrances broken down by type — citrus, citrus spicy, floral, floral aldehyde, etc. — and by gender. A casual glance through the chart shows that the authors classify the preponderance of florals as for women. The exception is the category “single lavender floral”, all of which are listed for men. The fougères, except Guerlain Jicky and a few others, are listed for men, and the woody fragrances were also marked entirely as masculine, except for Shiseido Féminité du Bois…

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

Yves Rocher Iris Noir ~ fragrance review

Yves Saint Laurent Opium ~ fragrance review

An Open Letter to Michelle Obama

Lanvin My Sin ~ fragrance review

Masculines and feminines