Seattle-based indie brand Sweet Anthem has launched Lolita and Poppy, two new fragrances in their series of “bottled stories you can read on your skin”…
There are seventy-five perfumes
In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady...
— Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes on perfume, from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Found via @hinxminx and @alyssaharad on Twitter.
Ormonde Jayne Iniquite ~ new fragrance
Iniquité is a new (very) limited edition fragrance from niche line Ormonde Jayne, created for a special auction being held by The Economist’s More Intelligent Life website to benefit literacy efforts by Shannon Trust. Iniquité was inspired by author Fay Weldon’s imagining of the scent of Becky Sharp, the anti-heroine of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair…
Lazy weekend poll ~ winter reading list, edition 2
The cold weather version of our summer reading poll: tell us about a great book to curl up with on a frosty winter night, and what fragrance we should wear while reading it.
Need more additions to your list? You can also check out last year’s winter reading poll…
Jardins d’Ecrivains Orlando ~ fragrance review
“…some we know to be dead even though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through all the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six.”
— Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Imagine living for centuries and only aging 36 years. Oh, and starting out your existence as a man, then waking up one morning as a woman (thus experiencing “love” — sex — both ways). If that scenario intrigues you, and you are also amused by or interested in Old Queen Bess, cross-dressing, the struggle to write something “worthy,” exotic locales and gypsies..and much more…read Orlando.
Since the perfume, Orlando, inspired by Orlando the book, is by Jardins d’Écrivains (writers’ gardens), I will vouch for Virginia Woolf’s green-thumb connections — both her husband, Leonard, and the woman who inspired Orlando the book (Virginia Woolf’s one-time lover) Vita Sackville-West, were serious gardeners — Leonard on a small scale at Monk’s House, Vita on a grand, aristocratic scale (visit Sissinghurst Castle, her house and garden in England, if you’re ever near it).
I like the Jardins d’Écrivains perfume line (I especially admire George), and Orlando has become my second-favorite from the collection…