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Browsing by category: perfume talk

Aedes de Venustas Pelargonium ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 17 July 2017 46 Comments

Aedes de Venustas Pélargonium

I bet my first experience with pelargoniums — the flower — was like yours. I mistakenly called a pot of vivid red blooms “geraniums” and was promptly corrected. The bright pink and red flowers I’d seen in window boxes and on porches everywhere were pelargoniums. As my non-gradener mind understands it, geraniums are more sedate, with less showy flowers and, sometimes, scented leaves. Pelargoniums are the cheerful annuals sold by the flat at Home Depot.

So, what does this have to do with Aedes de Venustas Pélargonium? Like its namesake, Pélargonium is vibrant, with crisp edges and big presence…

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Escentric Molecules Molecule 04 & Escentric 04 ~ fragrance reviews (sort of)

Posted by Kevin on 12 July 2017 37 Comments

Escentric Molecules Molecule 04 & Escentric 04

Let me state the obvious to anyone who has ever read my posts: I am not a chemist! If you are, and have more scientific information on what follows, don’t be shy about commenting (I won’t take offense).

Escentric Molecules’ latest creations, Molecule 041 and Escentric 042, are about the aroma chemical Javanol — a sandalwood-type molecule prepared from turpentine obtained from pine trees.3 Molecule 04 is “just” Javanol (diluted, of course); Escentric 04 is a more complex composition built around Javanol.

I can’t smell Javanol…

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Papillon Perfumery Dryad ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 10 July 2017 40 Comments

dandelion seeds

Soft, soft, soft. That’s how I’d describe Papillon Perfumery Dryad. When I was a kid, we used to pull cattails from the creek bed and twist their velvety tops open, releasing clouds of “fairies” into the breeze. Smelling Dryad is like chasing these seeds as they float in a meadow. It’s all about texture.

Papillon’s founder Liz Moores created Dryad, and its notes include narcissus, oakmoss, jonquil, costus, galbanum, clary sage, deer tongue, cedrat, benzoin, lavender, thyme and orris. When Moores describes Dryad, she talks about the aroma of the forest surrounding her home and mentions that Dryad will smell familiar to lovers of Miss Dior and vintage Vol de Nuit…

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Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Bluedaisy & Poppy ~ fragrance reviews

Posted by Jessica on 6 July 2017 4 Comments

poppies and daisy

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz has been around longer than most indie perfumers — long enough, in fact, that she recently began a “retrograde files” fragrance series, relaunching and re-imagining discontinued scents from her back catalog. She wrote in a recent blog post, “Passionflower Perfume Poems was a small collection that I started releasing around 1999–2000 with a young, ‘millennial’ audience in mind.” Well, the Poems are back, with slight reformulations and name changes. I looked forward to trying a few because I remember them from the mid-2000s but I drained my sample vials years ago.

First, here’s Bluedaisy, formerly known as Daisy or Daisy Be Young. (I can guess why it would be difficult to re-release a fragrance under the name Daisy in 2017…)

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Vilhelm Parfumerie Harlem Bloom ~ fragrance review

Posted by Jessica on 29 June 2017 8 Comments

Vilhelm Parfumerie Harlem Bloom

I’ve tried a few fragrances from niche house Vilhelm Parfumerie, and although I often enjoy their names and descriptions, the scents themselves have never quite hit the emotional sweet spot that makes me want to own them. However, Kevin and Robin have both praised recent releases from Vilhelm, so I’m back to try Harlem Bloom.

This fragrance is inspired by Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood and “depicts blossoms in an urban jungle, intertwined among the brownstone buildings that line upper New York City.” (Um, or upper Manhattan, at least.) It includes notes of saffron, angelica leaf, violet, damask rose, ebony and “wild leather.” I haven’t been able to find out which perfumer developed it for Vilhelm, but I’m guessing it may have Jérôme Epinette…

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