Vanilla perfumes are having a moment right now. With over 437.4 million views on TikTok, virtually every niche perfume brand is now coming up with its take on vanilla. But before you write this off as a short-lived trend for the gourmand-loving girlies, it's important to note that modern vanilla perfumes have evolved far beyond the traditional, cloyingly sweet body spray concoctions of the past.
— Read more in 17 Decadent Vanilla Perfumes That Are Sophisticated (Not Sugary) at Refinery29.
“If you have bad thoughts, they disappear, if you’re angry, it disappears, because the aroma has an effect of high relaxation,” said Lucio Olmos Morales, a local artisan who often works at a table on his porch weaving vanilla pods into crowns, rosary beads and flowers.
— Read more in In the Mexican city that once perfumed the world, a push to revive vanilla at Los Angeles Times.
But for many women who came of age believing one's choice of Victoria's Secret body spray said a lot about your personality, having vanilla front-and-center as your signature is a non-starter. It suggests a certain youthfulness and unsophistication so acute that it's best found vaguely alluded to in a base note, if anywhere at all, lest people judge you at first sniff on the basis of smelling like angel food cake.
— Read more in Our Love-Hate Relationship With Vanilla, Explained at Allure.
I’ve never been a minimalist — not by nature, not by nurture. I’ll never live in an airy space with bare white walls or limit my clothing to a capsule wardrobe. My taste in perfume typically matches my taste in clothing and decor, leaning towards retro florals and cozy ambers. But in fragrance, at least, I’ll occasionally experiment to some extent.
In this spirit, I ordered a few samples from the Swedish-born, London-based indie perfumer Maya Njie, who founded her fragrance line in 2016. (It’s only recently become available in the United States, where I live.) Njie describes her olfactory aesthetic as “the spirit connected to the classic 1970s Scandinavian idyll, combined with the soul of her esoteric Gambian heritage.” That reference to Scandinavian 1970s style, plus the clean design of her perfume bottles and labels, made me expect minimalist perfumes…
You might have noticed the annual onslaught of rose-themed articles and posts in your social media feeds in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day. Well, I wear rose perfumes all year ’round, and I’m a bit of a cynic where Valentine’s Day is concerned, so this post is really business-as-usual for me! Les Parfums de Rosine was one of the first niche fragrance lines that I “studied” in the early 2000s and I still enjoy wearing my longtime Rosine favorites and exploring the house’s recent releases.
Rosine’s latest launch is a quartet called Les Extravagants that’s billed as a more “extreme” interpretation of rose’s many nuances…