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Browsing by tag: olivier polge

Blumarine Innamorata ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 5 November 2012 42 Comments

Blumarine Innamorata advert

When I passed through Nordstrom last week looking for a fragrance to review, I sprayed on some Blumarine Innamorata and liked its peppery freshness chased by warm, chewy benzoin. A decent department store perfume! I snagged a sample and emailed Robin that I wanted to review it.

Four wearings later, and I don’t know what possessed me. To me, Innamorata is the sort of perfume that inspires others to say they don’t like fragrance. It’s the perfume that leaves you mystified: how did a company presumably aiming to launch a money-making fragrance choose something neither sophisticated nor easy to love? Worse, it’s the perfume that mimics bees loose in your skull, trying to escape through your nasal passages.

It’s my own fault for choosing Innamorata to review, and I don’t want you to suffer through another thumbs-down post without getting a little something out of it. So, not only will this review examine Innamorata, we’ll also look at what makes a fragrance annoying. I hope you’ll comment with your own thoughts on what defines an annoying perfume…

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Tasty iris

Posted by Robin on 18 October 2012 18 Comments

Perfumers Olivier Polge, Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo talk about Lancôme La Vie Est Belle. (3 of french leading perfumers? really?)

Balenciaga Florabotanica ~ perfume review

Posted by Robin on 25 September 2012 48 Comments

Balenciaga Florabotanica advert with Kristen Stewart

Florabotanica is the latest from Balenciaga, and I was fully prepared to adore it for any number of reasons, not least being the presentation: I love the offbeat advertising images and that’s easily my favorite bottle of recent memory — and it’s one of those rare bottles that is even more alluring in person than in pictures (the minute I picked it up, I started calculating how much I had just spent on jeans and yoga pants and how much I could still spend that day without threatening the food budget). They brought back perfumer Olivier Polge, who developed 2010’s Balenciaga Paris, a fragrance that seemed an excellent start for the brand’s revival as a perfume house under the auspices of Coty. Florabotanica is a great name for a perfume, and I even love the design of the outer box. Designer Nicolas Ghesquière’s concept of a strange garden with beautiful flowers, but also dangerous flowers, sounded intriguing.1

The potential bad news was that it was geared younger than Balenciaga Paris; sorry, young ‘uns, but that usually — not always! — means some degree of dumbing down or fruiting up. That Florabotanica is fronted by actress Kristen Stewart means nothing to me either way; as usual, I had to google just to remember who she was, and don’t even ask me to comment on her recent “scandal”, I don’t know and I don’t care, and will only say that the increased publicity would seem a boon for Balenciaga. I found the very untraditional manner in which she is used in the advertising to be refreshing…

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Lancome La Vie Est Belle ~ perfume review

Posted by Jessica on 10 August 2012 59 Comments

Julia Roberts for Lancôme La Vie Est Belle

Day to day, week to week, there are fragrance launches, and then there are fragrance launches. Lancôme‘s La Vie Est Belle is one of the major launches of pre-fall 2012, complete with big-name perfumers, Julia Roberts as its “ambassadress,” a gala celebration in the south of France, a soon-to-be-unveiled commercial directed by Tarsem Singh, and more. Lancôme is promoting La Vie Est Belle as its next “iconic” fragrance, hoping it will match Trésor in popularity and longevity as a pillar of the brand’s fragrance collection, and no expense or effort has been spared in this campaign.

The fragrance, whose name translates as “life is beautiful,” was developed by perfumers Olivier Polge, Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo. Its composition includes notes of Florentine Iris pallida, iris aldehyde, jasmine sambac, Tunisian orange blossom, Indonesian patchouli, and a “gourmand accord” of vanilla, tonka bean, praline, black currant and pear. According to Lancôme, La Vie Est Belle represents “a new era” and “the choice to live one’s life and fill it with beauty.” (You can find more information on the fragrance’s philosophy at the Lancôme website.)

I was immediately skeptical about Lancôme’s assertion that La Vie Est Belle is “the first ever iris gourmand”…

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Balenciaga Florabotanica ~ new fragrance

Posted by Robin on 2 July 2012 32 Comments

Kristen Stewart for Balenciaga Florabotanica

Balenciaga will launch Florabotanica, a new fragrance fronted by actress Kristen Stewart, in September. Florabotanica is aimed at “younger” consumers, aged 18 and up…

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