...if you loved Fendi Palazzo. Women's Wear Daily reports that it's been axed. My advice, which nobody asked for: keep the fabulous bottle, fill it with the (also discontinued) Fendi Theorema.
Chanel Bois Noir ~ fragrance review
While reviewing Chanel Égoïste, I became obsessed with smelling its progenitor: Bois Noir. After reading my Égoïste review, two Now Smell This readers offered to send me samples of Bois Noir from their rare and precious bottles of the fragrance, and I accepted (both men had bought their bottles of Bois Noir at Chanel in Paris). I also purchased a small sample of Bois Noir from a trusted online vendor in case any of the samples had dramatically changed over the 22 years since they were bottled.
Bois Noir had a discreet launch in 1987…
Last of the Gobin Daudes…
Suzan Becker of Shop France has made arrangements to buy a few remaining bottles from the sadly discontinued Gobin Daudé line (see my reviews of Sous Le Buis & Sève Exquise). She is not sure how many bottles she can acquire, and there may not be any Jardins Ottomans left, but contact her at shopfranceinc@yahoo.com if you're interested. The bottles will be $180 each, not including shipping and a 3% paypal fee.
A bottle for Christmas
And yet my father had been buying it for years. I was resolved to get it for him, among other reasons because I had promised and had made it sound so easy. But I began to panic. I knew this was his last year, and I desperately wanted to get my hands on a bottle for Christmas.
— Columnist André Aciman goes to lengths that many of you will sympathize with to find a bottle of his father's favorite cologne, Aria di Parma. Read more at Should an Old Fragrance Be Forgot: A writer's quest for his father's discontinued Italian aftershave at the Wall Street Journal. Many thanks to Ruth for the link!
The Allure of the Discontinued Scent
Take two perfumes: both are made by luxury perfume houses, they smell very similar, and they come packaged in equally attractive bottles. One costs $75, and the other, which is discontinued, costs twice that. Which one will I buy? Assuming that my budget is up to it, chances are I'll go for the discontinued scent. What is that all about?
There's something about a discontinued perfume that makes me crazy to smell it and maybe own it, even if I never would have bought the scent were it still in production. Thanks to this illogical urge, I have enough discontinued perfume that had I saved my money instead I could have replaced my living room windows. I have bottles that I can't swap away (hello vanilla fruit of Lagerfeld Sun Moon Stars), bottles that I like well enough but wouldn't have bought otherwise (that means you, “smoking in a cafe with roses and a spicy plum tart” Guerlain Parure), and bottles that I adore (witness my lifetime supply of vintage Miss Dior, the skanky variety). And, of course, there are all the bottles I can only dream of…