Fragrance Friday: ROADS
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Fragrance Friday: ROADS

You may be thinking, “yes, yes, I know, you just got back from a trip so you’re using ‘roads’ as some kind of travel metaphor.” Nope. ROADS is, in its own words, “a contemporary and highly creative lifestyle brand based in Dublin, Ireland.” I was able to buy a discovery set of ROADS’ fragrances in the lovely fragrance department of Dublin’s Brown Thomas department store on Grafton Street. I had visited Dublin’s only specialized stand-alone perfumery dedicated to niche fragrances, Parfumarija, where I bought an Ormonde Jayne discovery set. (By the way, Parfumarija is well worth a visit). The delightful sales assistant, when I asked if she stocked any fragrances that are specifically Irish, suggested that I might like some of ROADS’ fragrances and thought I might find them there. Continue reading →

Fragrance Friday: A Perfume Souvenir, Innisfree
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Fragrance Friday: A Perfume Souvenir, Innisfree

I recently returned from a trip to the UK with a mind overflowing with lovely memories and bags overflowing with lovely souvenirs: mostly books, because that’s how I roll, but also quite a few niche fragrances that are hard or impossible to find in the U.S. I bought some great ones in the lovely fragrance department of Brown Thomas, a department store in Dublin, but I still wanted something actually made in Ireland. Dublin Airport to the rescue! While browsing in the House of Ireland boutique for some last-minute gifts for friends and family, I found some scents by Fragrances of Ireland, which are made in County Wicklow. Which one to choose? I tested Connemara and Innisfree and bought the latter. Continue reading →

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A Rose By Any Other Name – Perfume Lovers London, 21st July 2016

This is a very informative post about a recent meeting of Perfume Lovers London, where they explored rose scents and the aromachemicals that make a rose, by any name, smell sweet. Enjoy!

Tara's avatarA Bottled Rose

This was the first “business as usual” PLL event hosted by Lizzie (Odette Toilette), Laurin and Callum at the October Gallery in London since taking over the group.

20160721_194551 The wonderful Nick Gilbert

Leading us through this rose themed evening was fragrance expert, Nick Gilbert. If you haven’t already checked out his YouTube channel Love to Smell with Pia of Volatile Fiction, you really should. Nick runs his own consultancy business and couldn’t be better placed to present us with the aromachemicals used to create rose scents along with examples of how each has been used in a particular perfume.

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Below is a rough reconstruction of some of the perfumed proceedings after an introduction by Lizzie.

20160721_190923.jpg Lizzie, radiant in orange.

Nick: The reason I chose rose for this evening is because although there are are 300 molecules in rose absolute, there’s only 4 that humans can smell…

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Perfume Tourism: I’m Ba-a-a-ack!
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Perfume Tourism: I’m Ba-a-a-ack!

I’ve returned from a trip to the UK that included a visit to the year-old duty free boutiques in Heathrow’s Terminals 4 and 5 dedicated to niche and high-end designer fragrances, as well as a stop at a beautiful independent perfumery in Dublin and an unexpected bargain at a VERY well-appointed fragrance department of a department store I had never heard of before. And, of course, many visits to fragrant gardens with more roses than I have seen since … well, since I visited the UK last summer.

I’ll be posting this week and in August about my finds and encounters, including some wonderful discovery sets and samples of unfamiliar or new niche fragrances, so please join me on a vicarious journey of fragrant discovery!

Storefront of perfumery Parfumarija in Dublin, Ireland.

Parfumarija in Dublin; image from http://www.parfumarija.com

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East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)

Scentbird: Asia’s unprecedented and unspoiled beauty has been an eternal inspiration to designers of perfumes, who simply cannot suppress the urge that…

via Perfumes Inspired by Asia —

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Rose-Scented Lemonade

I have a new love: Fentimans Rose Lemonade. It is pale pink, fizzy, sweet, and scented like roses. It is “botanically brewed” lemonade with the addition of rose extract, which provides a soft floral fragrance and taste. What a perfect summer drink to sip while the summer roses are in bloom!

Bottle of Fentiman's Rose Lemonade.

Image: Fentiman’s.

Update: now that I’m back home and have found a local supplier of Fentimans Rose Lemonade, I have concocted a summer cocktail based on it: Old Herbaceous’ Rose Cocktail. Enjoy!

Fragrance Friday: Perfume Tourism
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Fragrance Friday: Perfume Tourism

My family and I will be traveling to Devon, Cornwall, Belfast and Dublin this summer! I am excited at the possibility of visiting at least one perfume-related site during our trip, and I’ve identified a beautiful perfumery in Dublin: Parfumarija, which is close to where we will be staying. Doesn’t this look lovely?

Storefront of perfumery Parfumarija in Dublin, Ireland.

Parfumarija in Dublin; image from http://www.parfumarija.com

Any other suggestions for fragrance places to visit? They don’t all have to be retail stores!

Fragrance Friday: Un Jardin Sur le Nil
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Fragrance Friday: Un Jardin Sur le Nil

The weather has hit the high nineties in my part of the world, complete with dense humidity and hot skies. It is steamy and hot, and we just spent a weekend with friends at their lake house. The house has a huge, high-ceilinged screened porch with two swinging daybeds suspended from its beams and ceiling fans rotating lazily above. I spent most of Saturday lounging on one of those porch swings, reading and looking out over the lakeshore where my teenagers alternately baked themselves in the sun and dipped into the water. And boy, was I in the mood for Un Jardin Sur le Nil! I spritzed myself with it liberally throughout the day and just basked in its green mango and lotus flowers. This fragrance truly blossoms in summer heat and humidity.

Bottle of Un Jardin Sur le Nil fragrance from Hermes, floating on a lotus leaf

Un Jardin Sur le Nil; photo from hermes.com

Citrus-based fragrances are not usually high on my list but perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena is a magician with grapefruit. The opening of Un Jardin Sur le Nil is my favorite part of the fragrance — a gust of grapefruit and green mango that I find very refreshing and alluring. The entire impression is very green, which likely comes from notes like bulrushes, tomato leaf and carrot, with that wonderful fruity-but-not-sweet opening. It is a different green than most “green florals”, though light floral notes emerge as the citrus dries down.

The story of Un Jardin Sur le Nil and its creation has been masterfully told by Chandler Burr, first in this story in The New Yorker and then in longer book form, in The Perfect Scent.

Book cover of The Perfect Scent by Chandler Burr

The Perfect Scent

After experiencing Un Jardin Sur le Nil on such a steamy, hot, humid day, I am appreciating its charms anew. In such an environment, it wafts off the skin in gentle waves of fresh coolness, as if one is about to sip the most delicious, refreshing drink in a green oasis. After the green mangoes and watercolor floral notes, the sycamore and incense notes at the base lightly suggest exactly the kind of setting in which I found myself this weekend: a wooden porch looking over a body of water, a humid breeze, a daybed heaped with pillows, ceiling fans turning gently above. In other words, there is a suggestion — just a soupcon, really — of this kind of room at the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, Egypt, where the Hermes team stayed during part of their exploratory journey:

Porch of the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, Egypt, looking over the Nile River

The Old Cataract Hotel, Aswan, Egypt. Photo: sofitel.com

Others have described and reviewed Un Jardin Sur le Nil in much more expert terms than I, and I encourage you to read The Perfect Scent, as it opens a window into the arcane world of perfumery in both Paris and New York. If you want to try the fragrance itself, I suggest that you try it on a hot summer day, when it truly comes into its own.

Bottle of Hermes fragrance Un Jardin Sur le Nil against background watercolor of lotus flowers

Un Jardin Sur le Nil, hermes.com

 

Fragrance Friday: Lovely Day
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Fragrance Friday: Lovely Day

Ramon Monegal is a perfumer based in Barcelona, a member of the fourth generation of the family that started Myrurgia. He started his eponymous fragrance brand, Ramon Monegal Parfums, after a long career with Myrurgia and Puig, where he helped to develop fragrances for brands like Adolfo Dominguez, Antonio Miró, Aigner, Ines de la Fressange, and Massimo Dutti. Lovely Day was inspired by his son’s wedding:

An olfactory poem dedicated to the value of love. A Mediterranean composition to celebrate my son Óscar’s wedding. Happiness, intensity, joy, light, glow, affection and lots of excitement. Inspired by the bride’s white rose bouquet, because roses are the flowers of love.

He describes it as an “floral rose aqueous-watery” scent. The notes are: Sambac jasmine absolute, tea rose absolute, licorice absolute, iris on cedarwood and cassis. He invokes a “tone” of opal on a golden background, which is interesting because Lovely Day does have the diffuse quality of an opal that flashes bits of different colors unpredictably, changing with the light.

Different reviewers have made wildly different comments about Lovely Day. Continue reading →

What Went Well: Thankful
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What Went Well: Thankful

It has been a while since I posted my weekly “three blessings” on What Went Well Wednesday, but I feel the need to do so in light of the tragedy in Orlando last weekend. It is so easy to feel overwhelmed by the evil and anger that prompt such an act. But it is better to remember to light one’s candles in the dark. My three blessings this week:

  1. I go to an amazing church that rallied quickly to hold a beautiful service of remembrance on Monday night, to mourn and honor the victims in Orlando. And it was straight clergy who did that, understanding that our LGBT congregants were so grief-stricken that they needed our community’s love and support.
  2. At that service, our extraordinary Bishop spoke eloquently, lovingly, passionately, inclusively, about how evil is real but God is much, much more real.
  3. I have been reaching out to students and getting very appreciative responses, which reminds me of what I enjoy about my work.

Do you have “three blessings” to ponder in this week of sadness?