Lea St Barth is by Calypso St. Barth, and the notes include almond, vanilla, and musk. Background information on the Calypso St. Barth line is scarce, but it seems to be a boutique on the Caribbean island of St. Barthelemy, not to be confused with Christiane Celle’s Calypso, which also hails from St. Barth. The island is also home to Ligne St. Barth. There must be something in the water there that inspires fragrance creation…
Annick Goutal introduced Vanille Exquise in 2004. The fragrance was developed by perfumer Isabelle Doyen, and includes notes of vanilla, angelica, almond, benzoin, gaiac wood and white musk.
Back in 2004, the news that Annick Goutal would launch an almond-vanilla perfume created something of a frenzy on the fragrance board at MakeupAlley, where the Annick Goutal line is held in great esteem and where there are a considerable number of hardcore vanilla-gourmand fans…
Recently, I’ve come across many articles online and in magazines informing me that the scents men fancy most are (in no particular order): vanilla, cinnamon, licorice and pie (apple and pumpkin being favorites). Though I will happily eat a cinnamon roll, a slice of apple pie and/or a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream, I avoid sweet-foody room fragrance products that smell of cake icing, lemon sorbet, or crème brûlée. (The gist — dessert on a plate: GOOD; ‘dessert’ in a bottle or candle: BAD.) So when I received Antica Farmacista's Vaniglia, Mandarino e Bourbon room spray as a Christmas present, I was tempted to leave the box sealed and regift it or exchange it for another of the company's fragrances. Curiosity and post-holiday laziness kept me from doing either: I unwrapped, I sprayed…
Musc Maori is fragrance no. 4 in the Parfumerie Generale line up. The notes are bergamot, Cumaru wood, coffee tree blossom, white musk, cocoa bean, abstract flower accord, tonka bean, vanilla scented musk and amber.
Musc Maori starts with, as promised, bergamot, wood, and coffee, but I don’t notice them as separate entities…
The weather here today is cold and grey and dreary. We still have a few inches left of last week’s snow, and there are light flurries swirling outside my window as I type. It is the kind of day when you reach for a comfort fragrance, and so I am wearing two vanilla scents: Vanille Tonka by Parfums de Nicolaï, and Vanille Absolu by Montale.
Vanille Tonka was released in 1997, and has notes of tangerine, lime, cinnamon, Mexican vanilla, tonka bean and frankincense. It starts with dry citrus, very heavy on the lime. The citrus notes fade into a cinnamon sugar accord; the vanilla and tonka bean intensify over the next hour, and are joined by smoky swirls of frankincense…