Niche line Oriza L. Legrand has launched Gentry Jockey Club for men and Les Tourterelles de Zelmis for women…
Oriza L. Legrand Foin Fraichement Coupe ~ fragrance review
Last week, loud thunderstorms rumbled through town for over twelve hours. For me, this was a treat; it’s rare to hear thunder or see lightning in Seattle. As my house rattled and the lights flickered on and off, as winds sent my rooster weather vane spinning, and heavy rains (and hail!) pounded the roof and bricks, I laid in bed with my cat Vanya Mandelstam and thought of the old days in Virginia when, as a little boy, I’d enjoy a good electric storm from the safety of a shed at my Aunt Lois’s house. Her home was next to fields and woods and in summer I had a good view as lightning flashed through hay or corn or pine trees. It was a sensational experience. As the storm strengthened, I would feel physically elated, jolted to life, as if I had just put a whole lemon in my mouth and bit down — my tongue would tingle, my throat would constrict; a flash of bitterness would travel through the roof of my mouth into my brain and I’d feel as if I had been scalped…the top of my head became numb.
When I described these feelings to a friend, she said: “Are you sure you weren’t struck by lightning?” I don’t think so, but the shed DID have a tin roof. ..
Top 10 Summer Fragrances 2016
I didn’t realize how much I missed summer bugs (animals, not diseases) till I left Virginia as a teenager. Living on Manhattan, then Los Angeles and now Seattle doesn’t compare to the South when it comes to insect life. My childhood summers were filled with the sounds of crickets and cicadas. Butterflies put on a non-stop show in the flower gardens. Nighttime was when my grandmother and I would sit on the front porch (swatting mosquitoes, one bug I do NOT love) and watch the fireflies as we took in the heady scent of gardenias — whose white blossoms also lit up the darkness. I’d love to see a grasshopper or praying mantis, a big black-and-yellow garden spider shimmering in the sun, or a dragonfly flitting about my yard.
Here in Seattle I do get to see some beautiful moths, living their brief moments on earth holding fast to my deck screens or circling a light bulb. Tiny spiders are everywhere, inside and out, and I would never think to kill one — they work so long and hard to live and make a living. Right now in Seattle it’s the season for ten-lined June beetles (a type of scarab beetle); my cats (to my chagrin) love to chase, torment and kill June beetles, who, as they fight for their lives, raise up their antlers (yes, antlers) and make puffing sounds to ward off attacks. Here’s to bugs! (AND summer perfumes!)
Coqui Coqui Rosas Secas ~ This wonderful rose perfume smells of dried rosebuds mixing with a fresh rose bouquet; there’s also a pinch of tobacco leaf. Rosas Secas is a great rose perfume for men…
Scented Father’s Day Gifts ~ 2016
It’s Father’s Day ALREADY? This year I’ve assembled twelve gift choices (13 counting the non-scented tie above) that can be mixed and matched: a box of soap and a shower gel, or some grooming products and a bottle of booze (there’s always food and drink on my list…they’re “fragranced,” correct?) So, buy a nice box or bag and fill it up! (If the box is a lacquered Chinese antique or the bag is a leather tote — all the better.)…
Oriza L. Legrand Villa Lympia ~ fragrance review
Last month I reviewed La Parfumerie Moderne’s Années Folles, an evocation of hotel parties on the Riviera during the Roaring Twenties. This week, just as summer arrives in my part of the world, I backed up a few decades to the Belle Époque. Oriza L. Legrand’s Villa Lympia is a new fragrance evoking “an air of summer over the Riviera for the first swims of the season,” with “the freshness of a gentle breeze, with hints of sea foam and salt, wafting into the shelter of a beach cabin, mingling with scents of moistened wood and burning sand.”
I’m a little late to the Oriza L. Legrand party, but I’m smitten with the brand’s packaging and I like its concept of reviving fragrances from its archives. Oriza offers numerous nostalgic floral perfumes that I really need to try soon. However, Villa Lympia diverges from the brand’s usual path…