A few years ago, I spent a day in Salem, Massachusetts with my husband. Somewhere between our stops at the town’s historic cemetery, a bookstore or two, and the House of the Seven Gables, we came across a small shop called Aroma Sanctum Perfumes, where I sampled a few “house blend” fragrances and purchased a bottle of perfume oil called Scarlet Letter as a souvenir of our visit…
Three perfumes — Le Labo Another 13, Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia and Lust by Gorilla Perfume at Lush — in search of a theme. Sorry folks, we have no theme.
Le Labo’s new Another 13, their limited edition fragrance with AnOther magazine, is one of several recent ambrox-heavy1 scents. Unlike Juliette Has A Gun’s Not A Perfume, this one is actually a perfume, that is, someone (in this case, perfumer Nathalie Lorson) took the time to mix the ambrox with other notes (in this case, apple, pear, green citrus and ambrette).
Anyone remember Escentric 02 by Escentric Molecules? That was another ambrox vehicle, and despite the completely different notes (it featured vetiver, muscone, orris, elderflower extract and hedione), they’re not as different as they sound. Maybe anything with lots of ambrox is going to end up smelling mostly like ambrox? Mind you, they’re far from identical…
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor…
— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
The home fragrance company Paddywax recently launched its Library Collection, a suite of five scents inspired by authors. Needless to say, I couldn’t resist the idea of these literary-olfactory tributes, so I ordered a few. The Edgar Allan Poe candle was ostensibly a gift for my husband, who is a longtime Poe admirer. However, he’s really not all that interested in fragrance (despite my best efforts), so I’ve been the one basking in its glow and its scent, not to mention its clever packaging (labels that look like bookplates, and a travel tin, shown below, that could be used to hold small desk items when the candle is gone).
Paddywax’s Edgar Allan Poe fragrance is a blend of “cardamom, absynthe, and sandalwood,” and it turns out to be a warm, sweetish, spicy-woody scent that suits a late-autumn evening in a darkening room…
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…
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…