Friday scent of the day 10/16

Posted by Robin on 16 October 2015 222 Comments

Molinard Habanita poudre

Happy Powder Puff Friday! Our community project for today: wear something powdery!

What did you pick? As always, do chime in with your scent of the day even if you’re not participating in the community project.

I’m in vintage Molinard Habanita. Quoting my review: “If you can imagine dousing yourself in baby powder, donning an old leather jacket and then smoking a cigar in a closed room with a single rose in a vase 10 feet away, you’ll get the general idea.” I would imagine it’s been cleaned up for modern times but I haven’t smelled a new bottle in eons…

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Nina Ricci L’Extase ~ fragrance review

Posted by Robin on 23 June 2015 23 Comments

Nina Ricci L'Extase, brand images

Nina Ricci’s perfume distribution in the US is spotty. You can find the old classic L’Air du Temps at Nordstrom or Macy’s, and Macy’s also has the youth-oriented Nina. That’s about it. Bloomingdales, Saks and Neiman Marcus don’t have anything (although Neiman Marcus has some lovely items from the fashion line at the moment), nor does Sephora. I never saw Ricci Ricci or Mademoiselle Ricci here at all, although admittedly I did not look all that hard.

I was curious about L’Extase, the latest, which is geared older than Nina but younger than L’Air du Temps. +1: it’s a musky floriental from perfumer Francis Kurkdjian. -1: the advertising, with Laetitia Casta, is the usual drearily predictable writhing we’ve already seen a million times over…

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Gabriella Chieffo Acquasala & Camaheu ~ fragrance reviews

Posted by Jessica on 18 June 2015 7 Comments

Gabriella Chieffo Acquasala & Camaheu, brand images

I’ve been trying another new niche perfume line this week — Gabriella Chieffo, a collection that comes to us from Lecce, Italy (way down in the “heel” of the “boot”). Chieffo herself is “a mother and environmental engineer” who “makes her debut as a fragrance designer with the intent to recapture the colors and materials of her beloved land.” She also appears to be interested in weaving tales of feminine emotional experience into the fragrances. So far, I’ve tried two of them: Acquasala and Camaheu…

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Chanel Misia ~ perfume review

Posted by Robin on 11 March 2015 62 Comments

Chanel Misia, brand banner

Misia did not create anything, but, through the people she met throughout her life and her magnetic presence alongside artists of the time, she became a muse, a patron and an arbiter of taste for several decades. — Musée d’Orsay

My intention for this fragrance wasn’t so much to recapture Misia herself, but her role as a turning point in the life of Gabrielle Chanel. Misia introduced Gabrielle to a number of new things. With this fragrance, I wanted to convey the atmosphere of the Ballets Russes [of which Misia was a patron] and the smell of makeup from that time. — Olivier Polge¹

Misia is the latest from the Les Exclusifs collection at Chanel, and the first release from perfumer Olivier Polge. You may remember that Polge has been named as the successor to his father, Jacques Polge, who has been the Chanel house perfumer since 1978. The fragrance was named for Misia Sert, a friend of Coco Chanel, but I am not going to belabor the backstory — Misia Sert was fascinating, but really “Ballets Russes” and “the smell of makeup from that time” tells you most of what you need to know about the fragrance…

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Salvatore Ferragamo Emozione ~ perfume review

Posted by Robin on 20 February 2015 28 Comments

Malgosia Bela for Salvatore Ferragamo Emozione

Salvatore Ferragamo’s new Emozione is geared towards older women — older, of course, in the relative sense, since fragrances geared towards really older women are as rare as unicorns. Anyway, it’s geared towards older women, and you’d know this even if Women’s Wear Daily hadn’t said so.¹ Exhibit A is the model, Malgosia Bela, who at the ripe old age of 37 is a good 10 years older than Bianca Balti was when she introduced the brand’s 2012 pillar, Signorina. Balti turned on her pink radio, danced around on the bed in a pink dress and talked on her pink telephone before sitting demurely in a chair to wait for her man to arrive; Bela’s ad is slower and calmer, and according to the model is “about laughter and tears and everything that is important in life” — “I can be seen in reflections of cities“, she says to the camera. There’s no pink (it’s shot in black and white) and no man, or at least no man we can see.

Exhibit B, the juice…

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Now Smell This

a blog about perfume

Friday scent of the day 10/16

Nina Ricci L’Extase ~ fragrance review

Gabriella Chieffo Acquasala & Camaheu ~ fragrance reviews

Chanel Misia ~ perfume review

Salvatore Ferragamo Emozione ~ perfume review