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Browsing by author: Guest Author

5 things to think about before you start a perfume blog

Posted by Guest Author on 9 February 2012 126 Comments — Comments are closed

About the author: By profession Vanessa Musson is a freelance market researcher, specializing in industrial products. Her work involves a lot of overseas travel, to places as varied as chemical plants and wind farms, oil fields and cotton fields, stately homes and sewers. In her free time Vanessa writes the blog Bonkers about Perfume, which combines lighthearted perfume reviews with zany travelogues and the occasional post on beauty products for that unfortunate crossover condition of “problem mature skin”.

I am a relative newcomer to perfume: for most of my life I was largely indifferent to scent, occasionally succumbing to the heavy sell tactics of sales assistants at airport duty frees, and politely wearing whatever anyone might think to give me as a gift. Not very often, mind, for when I was struck down out of the blue by “sudden onset perfume mania” in 2008, I had just one rancid bottle of Estée Lauder Intuition to my name, barely touched in the seven years I had owned it.

But all that changed, and within weeks I went from zero to raging “fumehead”, and I’ve never looked back. 18 months on, I decided to start a blog. For the previous eight years I had written a humorous column for a business magazine, based on my misadventures on overseas work trips. Its sudden closure prompted me to seek out another creative writing outlet, and my newfound interest in fragrance provided the perfect vehicle. Bonkers about Perfume was born. And now another two years or more have passed, and here you have it: 5 things you might wish to consider if you are thinking of starting a perfume blog of your own…

Do you have anything new to add to the conversation?

A while back, there was a post on Grain de Musc about the recent proliferation of perfume blogs. Denyse used the colourful phrase: “metastasising like crazy”, which troubled me at the time, though I don’t think the analogy between newbie bloggers and rampant tumours was meant to be taken too literally…

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A brush with fame: perfume at the Oscars

Posted by Guest Author on 25 February 2011 36 Comments — Comments are closed

Oscar statue

About the author: Diana is the author of the Feminine Things blog. She works in the insurance industry to support her art projects and perfume habit, and at any given time is probably the best smelling person with a law degree in the Pacific Northwest.

I love movies.

Don’t get me wrong. I love television. I love books. I love live theater and concerts and musicals and live dance productions, from Bill T. Jones to the London Ballet Company. I even have affection for the symphony, the opera, and live ice skating.

But there is little I enjoy more than seeing a really good movie. This Sunday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will come together for the 83rd time to celebrate the movie industry’s best and brightest. And one of my friends, by virtue of a parental connection, gets to go see The Academy Awards live and in person every year. Since I have been watching them from afar all my life, this makes me positively chartreuse with envy.

For my dear friend, though, the thrill wore off a few years ago. So she and her siblings, bored from their oh-so-many star sightings, decided to raise the stakes. They invented a game they call “Brush with Fame.” The goal is to see who, by the end of the night, can come the closest to an honest-to-goodness world-renowned celebrity — possibly even brushing against or bumping into them — without that star noticing. I believe there are bonus points if the famous person in question is also one of the night’s winners. The sibling pack are the arbiters of which star shines the brightest, and the winner gets family bragging rights for the year. Last year my friend, the baby of the group, beat out her siblings by getting close enough to ‘bump’ into Rob Pattinson, the world’s most famous sparkly vampire.

Upon discovering this game, I did what any obsessive film geek would do: I began imagining who I would try to ‘bump’ into. But as a diehard perfumista, I was equally enamored by a concurrent mystery: if I did get that close, close enough to touch them, what would they smell like?

If I were in my friend’s shoes, here’s who I’d be aiming for this Sunday and what I’d hope to smell as I was passing by…

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Dior Illustrated: Rene Gruau and the Line of Beauty ~ exhibit in London

Posted by Guest Author on 12 December 2010 24 Comments

About the author: Nina is our guest shopper for London. She’s on the road this weekend, so will be slow to respond to comments.

Once upon a time, print ads for Christian Dior perfumes consisted of beautiful illustrations, rather than photos of Jude Law.

If you love those illustrations, then you’re a fan of René Gruau, who drew them all.

Somerset House in London is currently hosting an exhibition of most of Gruau’s original artwork for the House of Dior, including several drawings that were never used. It’s a joyful insight into the shared vision of Gruau and Christian Dior, who were close friends as well as colleagues.

Dior and Gruau (it’s pronounced Grooh-oh) were both illustrators when they met on the fashion desk of Le Figaro in 1936. They seem to have taken to each other at once, coming from similar bourgeois backgrounds, with the same wistful attraction to the memory of Belle Epoque elegance.

When Dior launched his New Look in early 1947, he asked Gruau to illustrate his designs. Launching Miss Dior, his first perfume, later that same year, Dior called on Gruau again. “Do exactly what you want,” he said. “We speak the same language.”

It became one of the most fruitful relationships in the history of illustration. In fact, so successful was Gruau’s work for Dior, he continued to illustrate for Christian Dior Perfumes for over twenty years after Dior’s death in 1957. His last work was the 1984 campaign for Jules, for which the company had originally commissioned photographers; inspired by the challenge, Gruau produced a series of illustrations anyway, and the company were so impressed, they used his work rather than the commissioned photos….

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Jean-Paul Guerlain & Thierry Wasser at The Perfume Diaries, Harrods

Posted by Guest Author on 19 September 2010 43 Comments — Comments are closed

Thierry Wasser & Jean Paul Guerlain

About the author: Nina is our guest shopper for London. If you missed her review of the Perfume Diaries exhibit, you can find it here. She took all of the images for this article.

The Perfume Diaries season at Harrods is not just about the exhibition. Throughout September, there are a number of evening events featuring some of the people and processes involved in the production of perfume.

For me, the most exciting of these was ‘The House of Guerlain’ on 9 September, with Jean-Paul Guerlain himself, and current in-house parfumeur, Thierry Wasser. I went along with my friend and neighbour Stephanie, fizzing with excitement.

All of the events are first-come-first-seated, apart from this one, which was a very hard gig to get into. On the night, the exhibition area was packed, with guests being checked off carefully on a list and absolutely no interlopers allowed to gatecrash…

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The Perfume Diaries at Harrods, part 3

Posted by Guest Author on 7 September 2010 47 Comments — Comments are closed

Harrods Perfume Diaries exhibit

About the author: Nina is our guest shopper for London, and she not only kindly wrote up the Perfume Diaries exhibit for those of us who can’t make it to London, she also took all of the images with the exception of the one just above, which is courtesy of Harrods.

Throughout September, Harrods is hosting a presentation of perfume through the ages. The Perfume Diaries is ‘an exhibition celebrating the past, present and future of the perfume industry.’

It’s on the fourth floor, in a long white space which has been put together with care and considerable style by Emma Jane Hockley (Harrods’ buyer for perfume and cosmetics — what a job!), and Harrods’ own Professeur de Parfums, Roja Dove. With this kind of clout, they’ve been able to pull in an amazing range of objects from all over the world.

Harrods generously invited perfume and beauty bloggers to a private viewing, and Robin equally generously allowed me to go instead of her. (And if you saw the quality of the patisserie offerings, you’d know how big a sacrifice this was.)

Racing in from a magazine interview, Roja Dove guided us round the exhibits…

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