Edward Bess La Femme Boheme ~ fragrance review

Posted by Jessica on 16 February 2017 42 Comments

Mrs. Rita de Alba de Acosta Lydig 1913

Has there ever been a fragrance that you’ve just had to smell because of its name? For me, any perfume named La Femme Bohème would have been tempting. The fact that this fragrance is also one of three developed by perfumer Carlos Benaïm for Edward Bess made it irresistible, so off I went to sample it.

Aficionados of luxury cosmetics who happened to be in New York City in 2007 were caught off-guard by Edward Bess’s initial appearance at Bergdorf Goodman. He seemed impossibly young as the founder of a cosmetics line, but there he was, debuting his first collection…

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Mazzolari Vetiver Two Ways ~ fragrance review

Posted by Kevin on 15 February 2017 14 Comments

Mazzolari Vetiver

The Italian niche perfume company Mazzolari also owns perfume shops in Italy that sell other brands (so don’t be confused if you log onto their site and see lots of non-Mazzolari products listed). Mazzolari supposedly began as a barbershop in the late 1880s and became a perfume shop chain in the 1960s. Mazzolari’s own perfumes debuted in the early 1990s. Vetiver is the first Mazzolari perfume I’ve smelled, but Now Smell This reviewed other Mazzolari perfumes back in 2006: Alessandro, Patchouly and Zagara. I chose to start my Mazzolari journey with Vetiver,* since vetiver is one of my favorite fragrance notes.

Mazzolari Vetiver starts with a mossy, slightly indolic floral-citrus accord, creamy/sweet and cheerful. (Summer flashed before my eyes.) Slowly, a pungent vetiver emerges…

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Sisley Izia ~ perfume review

Posted by Robin on 14 February 2017 34 Comments

Sisley Izia brand image

I have no relationship with Sisley, as a (luxury) brand. I’ve never used the skincare. I used to adore Eau de Campagne, the first fragrance from my BFF perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, but I always thought it was too expensive for what it was, and while I was worrying over the price, and stopping by a Sisley counter every so often to avail myself of another spray from the tester, they went and reformulated it and I stopped adoring it: problem solved.¹ I never cared for Eau du Soir. I liked the Eau de Sisley 1, 2 and 3 they brought out way back in 2009, but I didn’t adore them and they were likewise spendy. I know I sprayed Eau Tropicale on a blotter once but I’ve forgotten what it smelled like.

The latest launch, Izia, attracted my attention right away. The graphics are distinctive and so is the bottle, and if I love the one and hate the other, well, that still works…

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Your Mother’s Perfume

Posted by Angela on 13 February 2017 186 Comments

Mommy Loves Arpege

When I talk to people about their history with fragrance, they almost always mention their mother’s perfume. The person’s gender doesn’t matter, either.

Sometimes the mother’s perfume stands as a point of contrast. For instance, in last week’s post Erin mentioned her mother’s love of heavy orientals, while she likes fresh and green florals and chypres. I didn’t get the impression she specifically intended to call out the difference between their tastes, or that it matters to her, but it does show how we might define ourselves in part by how we’re different from our mothers…

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Richard E Grant / Jack by Jack Perfumes ~ fragrance review

Posted by Robin on 10 February 2017 21 Comments

Richard E Grant for Jack by Jack Perfumes

I don’t review as many celebrity perfumes here as I used to, mostly because there aren’t so many of them anymore. For years, articles appeared regularly in the beauty press talking about how celebrity perfumes were over, but it took a good long while for the reality to catch up to the warnings. Even now, they’re not exactly over, but big name celebrities can no longer count on a deal with Coty, much less counter space at Macy’s, and names that used to inspire a rush to the local mall — Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, etc. — now mostly debut in discount box stores like Kohls.¹

At any rate, the backlash, if that’s what it is, against celebrity perfumes doesn’t much interest me. I’ve always said celebrity perfumes weren’t much different, either in quality or in terms of how they are made, from designer perfumes. Some designers have input into the licensed products issued under their names, some don’t, and it’s about the same with celebrities — if you wanted to make an educated guess about whether or not you could be bothered to try an upcoming perfume, knowing the company who held the license (and the target market) might tell you as much as the brand name. The truth is, there are fewer celebrity perfumes these days not because fewer people are interested in celebrities (witness the mad frenzy over Angelina Jolie’s deal to front the upcoming Mon Guerlain) but because right now, mid-priced mainstream fragrances are not where the money is…

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