Indie botanical line Roxana Illuminated Perfume has launched Gracing the Dawn:
The latest fragrance is part of a series titled Flowers of Fortune associated with artwork by her award winning husband Greg Spalenka…
Natural perfumes: a few favorites
About the author: Trish Vawter is the creator of Scent Hive, a blog dedicated to natural perfumes and beauty products. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two boys, and is a practicing nurse midwife.
I come to this guest post with sincere excitement and admittedly, a dose of trepidation. Since I write primarily about natural perfumes and beauty products at Scent Hive, I am acutely aware that discussions can get heated around the “natural” topic. While I do prefer natural perfumes, I don’t want this post to become a natural vs synthetic debate, mostly because I don’t believe one to be superior to the other. But I do have reasons for my preference which I will share with you.
Beauty is ephemeral, and I appreciate that in a fragrance. It’s not quite the first thing most people regard as a virtue in perfume, but there’s delight in reapplying perfume over the course of a day. Oftentimes it’ll be a different perfume depending on my mood or where I am going. But there’s a balance to be struck: a perfume that’s too fleeting is frustrating, so I want my perfume to last a few hours, if not longer, which most high quality natural perfumes do. Yet, I don’t like a perfume to last into the next day, or to have huge sillage. Less tenacity and more intimacy are the qualities I seek. Additionally, longevity and sillage are commonly enhanced in synthetic perfumes with phthalates, a petrochemical I try to avoid in all beauty products.
While I find the evanescence of naturals compelling…
Roxana Illuminated Perfume Green Witch ~ new fragrance
Indie botanical line Roxana Illuminated Perfume has launched Green Witch, a new perfume to celebrate the vernal equinox:
GreenWitch is a liquid, natural perfume began as a recreation of a traditional Chypre…
Hot cocoa: a roundup of chocolate-scented body products for winter 2010
I’ve never referred to myself as a “chocoholic.” I enjoy chocolate, but I’m an equal-opportunity sweets lover, and I’m usually more likely to seek out cookies or ice cream or a really good piece of apple pie than a cocoa-based dessert. Today, however, I rounded off my lunch with a slab of chocolate cake. I think the last long weeks of winter have finally gotten to me. In this spirit of unexpected cravings, I’ve rounded up a handful of chocolate-fragrance body products for your delectation.
I’m fond of Villainess’ vaguely steampunk aesthetic, not to mention its range of unusual scents. Its Dulces en Fuego (“fire candies”) blend mixes cocoa with cinnamon and black pepper and a touch of musk. The dense, sugar-based Smooch! Warming Body Scrub actually does seem to give off heat when it’s first applied to the skin, and the matching Dulces en Fuego soap (shown above) looks dangerously dark before it foams. The scent of Dulces en Fuego reminds me of the tiny cups of rich, spiced “Aztec” chocolate served at Mariebelle in New York, although it probably doesn’t taste as good…
Win a chocolate perfume from Roxana Illuminated Perfume
Roxana Illuminated Perfume wants to give one lucky reader (from anywhere in the world!) a solid chocolate perfume from her collection at Etsy. There are now 11 fragrances in the series, and the winner gets to choose the one they’d like to receive.
Update: we have a winner, congrats to Janice! Don’t forget to email me your address and the name of the fragrance you’ve chosen…