Comme des Garçons celebrates 25 years as a perfume house with six reissued CdG Parfums tees ($60-90). Not shown are more items in the collection, including two new 25th anniversary shirts, six collector bottles and a collection of scentable ceramics. You can see the whole collection here; available at Dover Street Market.
Just in time for the holidays, a new chocolate bar from Aftelier + Areté Fine Chocolate. (If you missed it, here is the Ginger Rose bar.) Violet-Raspberry 63% Maya Mountain Belize Dark Chocolate: "We worked again with renowned artisan perfumer Mandy Aftel to create this second collaboration bar. A magical pairing of our Belize Maya Mountain Chocolate and her 100% natural Violet and Raspberry Chef’s Essences." $15 at Aftelier.
The (perfume-free) holiday video from Hermès.
Like me, Druse finds many of the more pungent odors not only interesting but appealing. We are both fans of boxwood scent, paperwhite narcissi and oriental lilies; these have their detractors. Even the skunk cabbage, Druse says, has its allure. He calls its scent “animalic.” “I don’t want to wallow in them, but I don’t mind them,” he says. “It reminds me they’re alive.” And that he’s alive? “I’ll go there,” he says.
— Ken Druse, author of The Scentual Garden: Exploring the World of Botanical Fragrance, talks to the Washington Post. Read more in Gardens have largely lost their fragrance. Here’s how we can bring it back.
On London’s Oxford Street last weekend, you could almost forget we were in the midst of a retail apocalypse. Christmas lights and a slew of special offers marking an ever earlier start to the imported bargain frenzy, Black Friday, brought out the crowds. Similar holiday cheer and promotions have spread elsewhere in Europe too.
But European retailers face a new worry: shoppers deliberately staying away in order to safeguard the planet.
— From a UK-oriented opinion piece at The Washington Post, Boycott Black Friday and Save the World.