We all have our “pet” perfume houses. For me, a “pet” house would be niche, and small niche at that. One of my favorite perfume pets of the last few years has been Zoologist. Late this year, two new perfumes have joined the zoo: Camel and Elephant. Each perfume gets inspiration from animals — and places — I love…
French perfume house Molinard recently launched Les Amoureux de Peynet, a fragrance inspired by French illustrator Raymond Peynet. That name didn’t mean anything to me at first, but once I did a quick search, I realized I’d seen those “lovers” before. Peynet first sketched the duo of the wispy-haired, bowler-hatted violinist-poet and his perky lady-love in 1942, but they appeared in his artwork and on countless trinkets throughout the 1950s and 1960s. (Just check eBay, and you’ll see what I mean.) The lovers often appeared together on a park bench — that is, when they weren’t canoodling in a gazebo, a rowboat, or some similarly whimsical venue…
Kerosene Follow1 conjures so many food memories for me: scents of — chocolate-coffee-caramel candy my grandmother made at Christmastime and wrapped in foil, the Nescafé Greek-style coffee a friend at work made every morning, steaming chocolate mochas with sprinklings of toasted coconut on top, Middle Eastern honey cake served with a cup of Turkish coffee, tonka bean and espresso crème brûlée…
I am late, again, but hopefully not too late to help Anna. She wants to find a daytime fragrance, something light and suited to warm weather, but with good lasting power, to replace her discontinued favorite, Montblanc Starwalker. At the moment, her substitute is Diptyque Eau Duelle, and she does like it but she finds that it starts out strong, and then wears off too quickly.
She’d love to keep the price below $150, but she might be willing to go higher for true love. Here is what we know about Anna and her fragrance preferences…
Aparatchick — her blog handle — has been a Now Smell This reader since the beginning. “In 2005, I googled ‘perfume blog,’ and the only one I found was NST,” she says. Twelve years and more than a hundred bottles later, she’s still sampling new fragrances and making friends in the community.
Aparatchick is retired from the finance and accounting industry and lives in Florida. However, she grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and it was there she developed her love of rich, deep oriental fragrances — fragrances that don’t wear very well in humid Florida, a subject we’ll tackle in a minute…