If you’ve focused on the “poudre” part of Yves Saint Laurent Grain de Poudre, never fear: it isn’t a powdery scent. Instead, it’s a well mannered, spicy leather. Confusing the matter further, grain de poudre actually refers the stiff but smooth finish of fabrics used, for instance, in blazers and handbags.
Perfumer Quentin Bisch developed Grain de Poudre as part of Yves Saint Laurent’s Vestiaire des Parfums series…
The swapmeet (episode 15) is open for business! PLEASE read the instructions! (For those of you who refuse to read the instructions, please do not respond to anyone else’s comment except to say that their email address does not work. ANYTHING else you need to say, say it in an email. If you insist on responding to a comment, I will delete your comment. If you want to know how to swap for something, see #6 below!) For people who would like to chat in addition to, or instead of, swapping, there will be a poll along shortly.
Don’t know what swapping is, or you know but you’ve never tried it? See here. You can also take a look at the feedback from episode 3, episode 4, episode 5, episode 6 and episodes 7-8, episodes 9-10.
Please, do not participate if you do not have time to mail your items within the next two weeks! Another swapmeet will be coming up in the spring…
A collaboration with film and fashion icon Chloë Sevigny, Little Flower is Régime des Fleurs’ provocative take on Sevigny’s favorite bloom — the rose. . . . Thérèse of Lisieux, a late 19th century French nun who died at the age of 24, was referred to as ‘The Little Flower’ and became the Catholic patron saint of flowers.
Well, if you were trying to come up with a fragrance that would sound irresistible to me, you couldn’t do much better than that. I’m a life-long lover of rose perfumes and a former Catholic schoolgirl still deeply influenced by my religion’s iconography. I’ve also been following Chloë Sevigny’s work (and style) ever since her 1994 profile in The New Yorker, so I already know that she’s a serious perfume fan who used to wear Comme des Garçons Rose…
Yesterday afternoon, I walked a stretch of Paris’s gritty 19th arrondissement with a friend who lives here. “Every neighborhood has its own personality,” he said. “Yet it’s all Paris.” That’s a good way to describe the fragrances in Chanel’s Les Exclusifs line, including the latest, Chanel 1957. Each of the fragrances has its own personality, but each is Chanel. The difference is that 1957’s personality is enough like an aura to complement your own personality, too.
Olivier Polge composed 1957, and its notes include white musk, bergamot, iris, neroli, cedar, powdery accents and honey. In short, 1957 is all about layers of cloud-like musk…
This week I’ve been “traveling” cross-country with the niche line Gallivant, from Brooklyn (where I spend much of my time in real life) to Los Angeles (a place I’ve never actually visited). Los Angeles is the latest “urban exploration” fragrance from Gallivant and it’s described as “a hot and sensual woody floral, cooled with a marine breeze.” It was developed by perfumer Karine Chevallier and features notes of eucalyptus, clary sage, mandarin, pineapple, narcissus, tuberose, cade, guaiac, nagarmotha, musks and heliotrope.
I like Gallivant’s note about Los Angeles being “a neon floral fragrance,” since it feels fabulously artificial…