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Gorilla Perfume at Lush Imogen Rose and B Scent ~ fragrance review

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Gorilla Perfume at Lush Imogen RoseGorilla Perfume at Lush B Scent

If you’re a long-time Lush customer, you’ll recognize some familiar “faces” in the Gorilla Perfume at Lush product line: this Lush-owned company brings together a few fragrances that have been in and out of rotation at Lush, several fragrances originally offered by B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful (the now-defunct cosmetics-and-fragrance offshoot of Lush), and a generous handful of new scent creations, all of them unconventional fragrances blended from largely natural ingredients. When I visited the traveling “fragrance gallery” staged by Gorilla Perfume and began to familiarize myself with the complete line of scents, my usual instincts drew me towards two rose-based compositions…

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Bath & Body Works Halloween Anti-Bacterial Hand Gels ~ scented body products

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BBW Bat Bite antibacterial hand gelHaunted HouseBBW Vampire Blood antibacterial hand gel

Since I’m inevitably going to be worried about flu germs (again) this fall and winter, I might as well carry some anti-bacterial hand gel with me; and if I’m going to carry a product everywhere I go, it might as well make me smile when I pull it out of my purse. This is why I scooped up a few Halloween-themed Anti-Bacterial “Pocket-Bacs” (as they are known) at Bath & Body Works when they first appeared in stores.

I’ve tried four of the Halloween-season scents available as Pocket-Bacs, and all of them were fun, if not exactly the kinds of scents I would choose for other body products or actual fragrances. Bat Bite, with its bat-image label, was an irresistible selection for the former Goth in me. Its scent is “apple” — more specifically, an intensely synthetic green-apple scent that reminds me somewhat disconcertingly of green-apple schnapps and “appletini” cocktails. This is also the strongest of the scents I tried, and it lingers for a while, so you (and everyone around you) had better enjoy it if you’re using it.

Vampire Blood is sure to appeal to young Twilight fans as well as, shall we say, more “mature” readers like myself who cut their teeth (pun intended) on Anne Rice novels…

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Gorilla Perfume Gallery Exhibit in New York City

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Gorilla Perfumes Gallery exhibit: exterior and perfume display

Gorilla Perfume, the new fragrance division of Lush, has been promoting its line of scents with a traveling “fragrance gallery.” This exhibit is promoted by Gorilla Perfume as “a winding olfactory maze of wonderment,” and it was recently installed in New York City for three days of sensory delights.

The gallery was set up within a converted brick townhouse building on a cobblestoned street in SoHo, and it occupied three levels of rooms and corridors. A printed map guided visitors through the building, where the Gorilla team had utilized nine atmospheric stonewalled chambers to bring its various scents alive through decorations, lighting, and sound effects (not to mention a refreshment or two)…

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Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Vermeille ~ fragrance review

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stained glass window, rose

I wish I had a dollar for every time a fragrance salesperson has offered me a sniff of a new rose-based perfume while saying, in an apologetic, slightly lowered voice, “I’m not usually a rose person, but I really like this one.” He or she will go on to justify this unexpected liking for the fragrance by explaining, “It’s a really modern/fresh/youthful take on rose, not what you would expect.” Unfortunately, the scent in question often turns out to be exactly what I expected: a faint, synthetic-smelling rose note diluted and obscured with so much bright citrus and sheer musk that the result is, indeed, a fragrance for non-rose-lovers.

Andy Tauer makes no such apologies or justifications with Tauer Perfumes‘ Scent no. 10, Une Rose Vermeille. It is not a soliflore, but the fragrance’s overall impression is definitely the “scarlet rose” of its name, enriched by the other elements rather than masked by them — it is, as the perfumer himself says, “a true homage to rose.” The composition includes top notes of lemon, bergamot, and lavender; a heart of rose, violet, and raspberry; and a base of vanilla, sandalwood, tonka bean, and ambergris.

The opening of Une Rose Vermeille is a characteristically Taueresque twist of greenish, herbaceous notes…

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One Bath and Body Sweet Honey Soap and Honey Please Bath Fizzer ~ scented body products

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Honey comb

Now that fall is on the way, I’m ready to return to perfumes and body products with stronger and sweeter fragrances, including a few gourmand scents. In my recent review of Wiggle Perfume’s Bee perfume oil, I mentioned my occasional honey craving. So, when I found out about One Bath and Body, its honey-oriented products were the first ones that piqued my interest.

This new company has a “green” agenda: according to their website, “ONE is committed to promoting natural beauty without compromising the beauty of the earth, providing eco-friendly products in recyclable, plastic-free packaging to rejuvenate the spirit and save the planet.” Sweet Honey Soap and Honey Please Bath Fizzer both have relatively straightforward ingredients lists and simple, paper-based containers: the soap is tucked into a little hinged cardboard box, and the spherical Bath Fizzer is housed in a sturdy cardboard cylinder…

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