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Browsing by author: Angela

Miss Dior Reconsidered: a reflection on difficult perfumes

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Each of the classic perfume houses seems to have a flagship fragrance that defines the house, yet would never make it past the marketing team today. Chanel has No. 5, a fusty, lovely veil-hatted scent worn by millions and probably truly loved for its scent by only a small fraction. Guerlain has Mitsouko, a perfume aficionado’s most loved and most want-to-love walk through rotting peaches, rainwater, and mold. Jean Patou has Joy, and Caron has Tabac Blond.

And then there’s Christian Dior Miss Dior, perhaps the most off-putting and, to me, deliciously irresistible icon of them all…

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Slumberhouse Grev ~ fragrance review and a ghost story

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The Slumberhouse website describes Grev as “a transparent metallic/herbal accord of star anise, crisp apple peel, spearmint leaf, ocean pine and bergamot twisted into hollowed tunnels padded in turquoise hues, dusted in sweet mossy mineral powder and blanketed with copaiba resin and sandalwood oil.” I describe Grev as a minty shiv straight from the freezer.

Grev is one of the four fragrances Slumberhouse issued when the perfume house debuted in 2011. A generous splash from my sample tube gives green apple for a split second before mentholated mint and pine trees obliterate it. After ten minutes, Grev relaxes and becomes more comfortable to wear…

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Inside the Perfume Cabinet ~ Geri

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Earlier this week, as Geri recovered from a hip replacement operation, walker at hand, she told me the story of her journey with perfume. We sat in her dining room. A vase held tight white roses with frilly pink edges that opened to blooms as big as a baby’s head. Behind us was a grand piano and a harpsichord. (Geri is an organist with gigs at churches and funeral parlors throughout town, and she occasionally hosts baroque musical ensembles at her house.)

She told me that the first fragrance she knew well was her mother’s Yardley Lavender. “It was the only perfume my dad liked,” she said. Her father didn’t wear fragrance, although he shaved with a mug of soap, and every once in a while he’d clean the family’s eyeglasses with his shaving brush…

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Bruno Fazzolari Unsettled ~ fragrance review, with an aside on Jean Patou Colony

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It was an emergency. A few weeks ago, I was decanting the last of my Jean Patou Colony Extrait into an atomizer, and the atomizer toppled. I managed to save most of it, and I mopped up the rest with my forearms, but the writing was on the wall. Before long, my beloved Colony, a pineapple chypre as goofy and glamorous as Carole Lombard jumping on the bed in My Man Godfrey and as gentle as goose down in a breeze, would be a memory. (Sob.)

I was lamenting this to Tracy at Fumerie, and she asked if I’d ever tried Bruno Fazzolari Unsettled. The Nevada Museum of Art commissioned Fazzolari to create Unsettled — the fragrance, plus a uranium glass bottle shaped like an atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud — for a 2018 exhibition on Western art…

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Love Potion Magical Perfumery Love Potion & Honeyed Love Potion ~ fragrance review

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Remember the post I did a month ago on the comic book ad for Trulove perfume? The perfumes that drive men to distraction? I just discovered its modern equivalent: the Love Potion Magickal Perfumerie.

The Love Potion Magickal Perfumerie is in downtown Vancouver, Washington, on a block that used to hum with business but is now quiet but for a bar and passersby on their way to the pawn shop on the next block. Once you’ve entered the shop, walk past the impressive collection of tarot card decks, a Star Wars teapot set, and the rack of magic wands, including reproductions of wands used in the Harry Potter movies. Tear your gaze from the glass-topped counter full of crystals and jewelry, and head to the shop’s rear.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be helped by Jennifer, a soft-voiced woman who, when I arrived, was designing perfume labels for the summer fragrance collection and who also offers psychic readings. She showed me the shelf of Love Potion fragrances created by Mara Fox, the shop’s owner (and guitarist for the 1980s rock band Precious Metal). Mara Fox’s first fragrance, created in 1986 and sold at crafts fairs, was called Love Potion. She trademarked the name…

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