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Browsing by tag: rose

Guerlain Nahema ~ perfume review

Posted by Angela on 17 September 2008 101 Comments

Guerlain Nahema fragrance advert

Imagine that you're standing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Behind you is an acre planted thickly with pink roses. It's the end of an August day, and the sun is setting in tones of apricot fading to purple as it bleeds into the sky. Now add a full orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing The Beatles' “All You Need is Love”. What you get is grand, passionate, lush, and faintly cartoonish. In other words, you get Guerlain Nahéma.

Jean-Paul Guerlain created Nahéma in 1979. The Guerlain website gives it a top note of hyacinth; a heart of ylang ylang, rose, and peach; and a base of vanilla, tonka bean, and wood. Osmoz builds on this description and gives Nahéma top notes of bergamot, mandarin, and rose; a heart of rose, peach, cyclamen, and lily; and a base of vanilla, sandalwood, vetiver, and benzoin. The simplest description of Nahéma would be rose…

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Roses, roses & more roses

Posted by Robin on 1 August 2008 69 Comments

rose

A handful of rose scents, although not all of them are really “about” rose…

Zafferano, by the new-ish men's niche line Odori, opens on an expansive, shimmery-metallic saffron note. It seems to bubble and dance on the skin for a time, slowly taking on raspberry jam undertones as it calms. It's fun — I kept reapplying to do it all over again. The dry down is a more standard-issue rose-saffron combination, very nicely done but nothing terribly unusual, with plenty of cedar. I hardly even notice high prices these days, but at $210 for 100 ml Eau de Toilette, this is a spendy little number. I've yet to top $200 on a single perfume myself, and while I like Zafferano, there's nothing here to tempt me to set a new record. If you like saffron and don't mind the price, do try it (and if you love iris, the Odori version is worth a shot as well). The notes: cedar, saffron, raspberry flowers, wild rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, oriental amber and rosewood.

Miller et Bertaux's new Shanti Shanti is a warmer, drier take on rose…

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Guns to roses

Posted by Robin on 15 July 2008 11 Comments

But the villagers' race against the sun to pick the moist, pink flowers that produce the oil is becoming more urgent as they say climate change is making the valley hotter and drier.

"Roses like cold nights, dew in the morning and hot days in spring," said Nedko Nedkov, who runs a research institute on roses and rose oil in Kazanlak. [...] "But now, there is not enough dew, sometimes there is none. The roses are becoming too thin."

— From Bulgarian Valley Turns From Guns to Roses in the New York Times.

Washington Tremlett Black Tie ~ fragrance review

Posted by Robin on 24 June 2008 18 Comments

Washington Tremlett Black Tie perfume

Rose and saffron make such a perfect combination; it is no surprise that perfumers return to the theme over and over. There is L’Artisan’s lovely Safran Troublant, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s Cimabue, Agent Provocateur and Ormonde Jayne Ta’if, among others. Then there are the numerous rose + saffron + agar wood (aka oud or oudh) combinations, such as the much-loved and much-missed Dark Rose by Czech & Speake (I keep hearing rumors it will relaunch, but then it never does), and A.MAZE by The Peoples of the Labyrinths, and of course, the many variations by Montale…

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Sonoma Scent Studio Velvet Rose Shea Body Cream ~ scented body products

Posted by Jessica on 21 June 2008 8 Comments

As I’ve probably already mentioned, rose is my favorite fragrance note. I manage to refrain from reviewing rose-scented products too often, since that would seem repetitious to most readers (fellow rose-lovers exempted!), but June is the month of roses so I’ll indulge myself this time around.

I often wear complex rose-based fragrances like Les Parfums de Rosine’s Poussière de Rose or Bond no. 9’s West Side, and I search out rose-scented body products to match. Sometimes, however, I just crave a pure rose without any citrus, spice, wood, or vanilla notes. Sonoma Scent Studio’s Velvet Rose Shea Body Cream delivers a rose soliflore in lotion form, with artful simplicity and high-quality ingredients. The Velvet Rose scent gives the impression of a bunch of newly picked pink and red roses, still slightly moist with dew or rain…

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