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Browsing by author: Jessica

Room 1015 Power Ballad ~ fragrance review

Posted by Jessica on 9 June 2016 74 Comments

Room 1015 Power Ballad

Earlier this year, the niche line Room 1015 released Power Ballad, “a fresh, spicy and leathery fragrance inspired by the 90’s High School years.” Power Ballad is unisex and its composition includes notes of bergamot, lime, spearmint, grapefruit, juniper, cumin, coriander, anise, poplar buds, vetiver, labdanum and cedar.

Power Ballad is accompanied by plenty of promotional description, some of it written (I think) in the voice of Room 1015’s founder, a “rocker by trade” who goes by the moniker “Dr. Mike”:

The 90’s. . .Life is easy-breazy [sic], ripe for the taking, full of French kisses and chewing gum…

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Swedish Dream Sea Salt Soap and Hand Creme ~ fragranced body product review

Posted by Jessica on 2 June 2016 17 Comments

Kalastyle Swedish Dream Sea Salt

Last week I reviewed Oriza L. Legrand’s Villa Lympia, a seashore-themed perfume with Belle Epoque-styled packaging. This week I’m continuing my summertime theme with Kalastyle’s Swedish Dream Sea Salt Soap and Hand Creme, two body products featuring a “classic sea salt scent” and some very jaunty packaging of their own, with motifs of anchors and sailboats.

I’ve been using the Sea Salt Soap as a hand soap at the bathroom sink, but it would also be a fun treat in the shower and is even recommended as a shave soap. It’s a chunky circular bar that gives off generous creamy lather and an a cheer-inducing scent…

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Oriza L. Legrand Villa Lympia ~ fragrance review

Posted by Jessica on 26 May 2016 23 Comments

vi-bsi

Last month I reviewed La Parfumerie Moderne’s Années Folles, an evocation of hotel parties on the Riviera during the Roaring Twenties. This week, just as summer arrives in my part of the world, I backed up a few decades to the Belle Époque. Oriza L. Legrand’s Villa Lympia is a new fragrance evoking “an air of summer over the Riviera for the first swims of the season,” with “the freshness of a gentle breeze, with hints of sea foam and salt, wafting into the shelter of a beach cabin, mingling with scents of moistened wood and burning sand.”

I’m a little late to the Oriza L. Legrand party, but I’m smitten with the brand’s packaging and I like its concept of reviving fragrances from its archives. Oriza offers numerous nostalgic floral perfumes that I really need to try soon. However, Villa Lympia diverges from the brand’s usual path…

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Lush Sunny Day Anti-Static Hair Detangler ~ scented hair product review

Posted by Jessica on 19 May 2016 17 Comments

violet

Every spring, I reach for my favorite violet perfumes. At this point in my perfume-history, they include Guerlain Après L’Ondée, Annick Goutal La Violette, Atkinsons 1799 Love in Idleness and Balenciaga Paris. I’ve alway had a weakness for Lush’s violet-scented bath and products, too — my very first review here at Now Smell This was a look at Lush’s Bathos Bubble Bar — so I couldn’t resist a quick in-store spritz of their new Sunny Day Anti-Static Hair Detangler.

According to the Lush UK website, Sunny Day’s name is a reference to the Sesame Street theme song: “Sunny day / sweeping the clouds away / on my way to where the air is sweet.” Coincidentally (or not?), it has a weather tie-in to Don’t Rain on My Parade Shower Gel…

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Grace by Grace Coddington ~ fragrance review

Posted by Jessica on 12 May 2016 58 Comments

Grace Coddington drawing

Way back in 2009, my friend A. and I went to see “The September Issue,” a documentary film about Vogue magazine and its influential (and infamous) editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour. If you’d grabbed me on the way out of the theater and asked me to review the film in one line, I’d have said, “Go for Anna, but stay for Grace.” Grace Coddington, creative director of Vogue, was the movie’s surprise star — she impressed us with her imagination and her commitment to her work and she reminded us why we’re bewitched and inspired by fashion despite ourselves.

Coddington (now Vogue’s Creative Director at Large) has just collaborated with Comme des Garçons on a fragrance called Grace by Grace Coddington. This scent was inspired by Coddington’s “love of English roses”…

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