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Au Pays de la Fleur d’Oranger Neroli Blanc collection ~ fragrance review

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Au Pays de la Fleur d'Oranger Neroli Blanc

I’ve only recently learned about Au Pays de la Fleur d’Oranger, although the company has been around since 1998. Its founders, Virginie and Antoine Roux, take inspiration from their family’s Grasse background and longtime associations with the region’s perfume industry. As you can guess from their name, Au Pays de la Fleur d’Oranger incorporates the floral note of the orange blossom1 into many of its products. The three fragrances in its Neroli Blanc collection are all very pleasing, and they showcase this note in three different ways.

Neroli Blanc Eau de Cologne is a “refreshing” take on orange blossom, and it’s the most gender-neutral of the three compositions…

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Profumum Confetto, Battito d’Ali, Vanitas & Sorriso ~ perfume reviews

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Profumum Confetto, Battito d'Ali

Victoria’s recent post on Bois de Jasmin about Pink Sugar and the simple pleasure of gourmand fragrances inspired me to sit down with a few samples from the Italian line Profumum. Profumum currently offers more than thirty perfumes, some of them composed around floral, wood, or spice notes, but I always think of this house as being particularly focused on gourmands. I haven’t tried all of them, but here are quick thoughts on four sweet-and-desserty fragrances from the collection.

I love the Profumum website‘s fanciful description for Confetto: “Both woman and child. Capricious and gentle like a curl in the wind, like candy floss, like a black silk petticoat raised by the swirl of the merry go round…” Confetto was released in 1996 and has notes of almond, anise, musk, amber, and vanilla. I think its name is a reference to the Italian candy confetti, sugar-coated almonds that are served to signify good wishes at weddings and other festive occasions. In Confetto, we get the almond, and we get the sugar; it’s all very mouth-watering and it qualifies as a “feminine” gourmand…

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A Lab on Fire Rose Rebelle Respawn ~ fragrance review

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A Lab on Fire Rose Rebelle Respawn

Last summer, A Lab On Fire launched Rose Rebelle Respawn, a “modern, feminine” fragrance developed by perfumer Sophia Grojsman. Like everything about A Lab on Fire, it’s a bit mysterious: it’s the third or fourth permutation of Grojsman’s 100% Love, originally released in 2003 by S-Perfume (the parent brand of A Lab on Fire). The original 100% Love was followed by S-Perfume 100% Love {More} in 2006, and more recently, by A Lab on Fire Rose Rebelle in 2011, which I never had the chance to try. (I think it was available only in Paris, and it may or may not have been identical to 100% Love.)

Rose Rebelle Respawn has a composition of ivy, mint leaves, carnation, rose, musks, incense and cacao…

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Philip B Oud Royal Mega-Curl Enhancer ~ scented hair product review

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Philip B Oud Royal Mega-Curl Enhancer

Are you still following the oud trend in Western perfumery? Can we really even dismiss it as a trend anymore? I’m not sure how we should describe the appearance of oud (or oudh) as a note in perfumes in every category and at every price point. Now our favorite fungus-fighting resin has made its way into the marketing of luxury hair products: this week I tested Philip B Oud Royal Mega-Curl Enhancer, a styling product for wavy and curly hair that not only “leaves curly hair super soft, glossy and beautifully defined — and easier to control than ever,” but is “laced with Pure Oud Essence for a light, unisex, sweet-woody scent.”

First, the good news: this product is one of the best curly-wavy styling products I’ve tried (and I try many!) in a long time. It’s a non-sticky cream that applies smoothly and dries without any crunch or greasiness, and it really does define curls without weighing hair down in the process. Even though this isn’t a haircare blog, I want to give this testimonial: Oud Royal Mega-Curl Enhancer delivers beautifully on its functional promises…

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Blackbird Incense ~ home fragrance review

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Blackbird incense cones

The summer I turned seventeen, I had a new friend who liked to scent her room with incense sticks and cones, which she burned in an assortment of small pottery vessels that she had crafted in a ceramics class. I was impressed by her bohemian style — she also had wonderfully eclectic taste in clothing and music — and I soon adopted the incense-burning ritual for myself, at home and then in my college dorm room.

The incense we used in those days was run-of-the-mill stuff purchased at record stores or from street vendors, either heavy and harsh with synthetic sandalwood or sickly-sweet with fruit scents or soapy lavender fragrance. I later made the switch to candles, and I haven’t used incense cones for longer than I can remember. When I found out about the Blackbird Incense line, I remembered my teen years (and my strongly scented dorm rooms) with fondness, but I wasn’t sure whether I could pick up the incense habit again…

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