L’Artisan Parfumeur will launch Havana Vanille, a new fragrance that captures the “aged rum and sweet air of Cuba”, this fall.
Havana Vanille was developed by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour, and the notes include leather, rum, clove, dried fruits, narcissus…
I bought my first bottle of L’Artisan Parfumeur Mûre et Musc in 1990, twelve years after its debut. It’s been ten years since my last bottle of Mûre et Musc and, as luck would have it, a friend has a bottle of Mûre et Musc from 1988 — a high school graduation gift — and she let me wear the ‘vintage’ perfume; the fragrance is just as I remember it: a deep, rich smell of berries (like the scent of fresh, ripe berries cooking in sugar syrup with a whole vanilla bean and lemon rind tossed in for good measure) coupled with a lively and almost “resinous” musk. The mood of 1988 Mûre et Musc is happy, summery (and unisex).
I did a double-sniff when I recently sampled a brand-new bottle of Mûre et Musc Eau de Toilette…
Positioning itself between the bespoke and limited edition markets, one specialized perfume company, l'Artisan Parfumeur, plans to introduce in January a line of single-edition perfumes - only one bottle of each will be made - to be sold exclusively through its flagship Paris store. The work of Bertrand Duchaufour, the in-house nose hired this year, the line, Mon Numéro, will be presented in one-off bottles designed by Pascale Riberolles, an artist and master glass blower, priced at about $20,000 for a 725-milliliter flask.
— From A Fragrance to Call Your Own at The New York Times. Note that the same article says that "perfumers now bring more than 300 new scents to market every year"...uh, did somebody lose count along the way?
Update: apologies, I linked to the wrong article! That'll teach me not to post before I've had my first cup of tea. Here is the correct one: New scents crowd thriving perfume field, at the International Herald Tribune.
L'Artisan Parfumeur celebrates the 30th anniversary of their iconic Mûre et Musc fragrance with a new Parfum version (shown above) and two new limited editions:
The noblest of all, the most refined and feminine among fragrances: the extract. Created by Bertrand Duchaufour, Mûre et Musc Extrait de Parfum interprets the original by using the finest, most exceptional raw materials…
Every time I pick a vacation spot, I brace myself; I can count on friends, acquaintances, or strangers who overhear me discussing my trip, telling me what’s wrong with my choice: too dangerous, too expensive, too hot/too cold, too dirty, too far away — ‘You’re going that far for only two weeks!?’ When I announced my decision to visit Venice for the first time, a cautionary chorus began to chant: “It’s smelly!” “You should have seen it 20 years ago….” “Ah…the canals are full of floating trash!” “It floods!” and, my favorite: “It’s sinking!” (said as if Venice, and yours truly, might disappear into the Venetian lagoon during my trip). I’m an open-minded traveler but I’ll admit when I boarded the plane to Venice, I was apprehensive — could Venice live up to my high expectations?
After reading many lukewarm reviews of Eau d’Italie’s new Baume du Doge, I braced myself for disappointment as I opened my sample vial of the perfume…