New from White Castle (yes, that White Castle): a candle that smells like, well, you can already guess, right?
To commemorate the 18th annual celebration of National Hamburger Month, White Castle has teamed up with Laura Slatkin, often called the “queen” of home fragrances…
There are already a few USB-powered room fragrance gadgets, but to my knowledge this is the first done up with plastic flowers.
The USB Scent Flower comes in four scents…
If you’ve read even a tiny selection of my articles on this blog, you probably know I adore benzoin. My love affair with benzoin began with incense. Long ago, I bought benzoin-scented incense cones from a company that supplied incense to churches, and I enjoyed the benzoin fragrance so much I purchased Siam benzoin “tears” (appropriately named since a wounded tree produces the scented resin). I still heat benzoin tears in little tin cups on an electric burner to release their smoky-sweet aroma throughout my house.
Diptyque’s Benjoin candle is strongly scented; even its empty box (a month after purchase) is perfuming a large closet in my bedroom. Diptyque Benjoin is a simple benzoin perfume; it reminds me of Papier d’Arménie, and it also brings to mind Guerlain Bois d’Arménie (but with less complexity, of course). Unlit, Benjoin smells like vanilla bean liqueur aged in old wooden casks…
For me, Christmas should smell like my childhood holidays; it should smell like dessert. My family’s stove was in near-constant use from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day and at least half of its output was sweets. My grandmother, with her arms of steel (she kneaded dough twice a day — all year round — so we could have fresh bread for lunch and dinner), would mix, chop, shave, dice, grate, squeeze and roll her way through pounds of flour, sugar, butter, lard, chocolate, nuts, fruits and spices; her creations would scent the house. Whenever I smell molasses, allspice, nutmeg, or ginger, I think “Christmas!” It’s a wonder I’m not the size of a house since I spent my childhood feasting on cakes, puddings, pies, candy, cookies and jams. But as much as I love to gorge on (and smell) sweets, I dislike perfumes, candles and room sprays with a pronounced “dessert” theme. I’d much rather smell gingerbread baking in the oven than the scent of “gingerbread” emanating from a candle.
To fragrance my home during the holidays, I turn to another favorite category of “Christmas” scents: evergreens…
I’ve always associated the name “geranium” with the hardy plants that my mother grew in pots on our backyard patio: red-petaled flowers, fuzzy leaves, and a slightly sweaty scent. The “geranium” most often present in perfume and other fragranced products, it turns out, is more specifically the rose geranium (species perlargonium graveolens), whose leaves can be distilled for fragrance. This smell is something much more pleasant and wearable: sort of green, sort of lemony, and yes, sort of rosey — but still more “herbal” than “floral.” I find it an easy note to wear year-round, especially in fragranced body products.
I recently grabbed a small tube of Origins Lime & Geranium Hand Lotion at an Estée Lauder outlet store when I needed hand cream, and it ended up inspiring this post. It has a quick-absorbing texture, and its scent is delightful: true geranium, with an accent on its green aspect, and an added zingy lime note…