Dior have re-looked their perfume website, as they visibly wish to reach out to online consumers. The layout indicates they are very much aware that their clientèle is part of the new-luxury trend and expect more detailed information about fragrances than just the common ad-copy fare. As already apparent in their press releases, a new attention is paid to telling the stories of perfumery ingredients, no doubt under the influence of new in-house "parfumeur-créateur" François Demachy;the perfumer previously worked for Chanel and is also the perfume supervisor, if you will, for the LVMH group which owns Dior.

Escale à Portofino, a refined, creative eau de cologne, is now available online for 83 €...

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Hope everyone is having a lovely 4th-of-July weekend! There are still fireworks planned for this evening so the festivities are not quite over yet in the part of the country where we are. The other day the countryside smelled fresh and cool in the evening mixed with gunpowder.

I took some olfactory notes on Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus Feotidus) or Swamp Cabbage. Depending on whether you smell the crushed leaves or stem, the smells differ slightly.

Despite its name, the plant is not repulsive at all, making you think more of savory culinary associations and wondering whether it might work in a recipe. This source indicates that Native Americans even used skunk cabbage as an underarm deodorant, which points in the direction of a buttery, garlicky aroma being considered attractive, as it is in some other cultures....

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Linden Blossoms in Cambridge


Thinking of Tagore I want to say, "Linden, linden, linden!"; the past few days have been an olfactory feast for linden blossom lovers. First, branches that were usually high-up in the sky have descended towards the sidewalks, escaping the confines of terracotta-colored brick garden walls as if eager to share their bounty; now they have started to reach woman height, then like an eccentric Alexander Mc Queen butterfly hat, but without any opening here to allow for normal vision, they also gradually descended upon my head, willing to coiffe me with their featheriness and ethereal pompoms and finally slapping me in the face as I walked, preferably, underneath them. At that point where the linden tree blossoms and leaves were hovering just above my hair, a cascade of pale green cotton mimicking heavy succulent grapes zeroing in on earth, and maybe before that getting off at a station to tickle the noses of children, it made me stop dead in my tracks. I was suddenly surrounded in the heat by the isolating capsule of a cool sensation smelling of fresh green melon and immediately I recognized it "Un Jardin Après La Mousson!" Then I asked myself, puzzled "who might be wearing Un Jardin Après La Mousson with so much assertiveness?" Nobody but the linden tree apparently; the blossoms were just displaying a hitherto unnoticed facet: an aquatic green melon one, which together with the natural buttery nuance of the flowers made for a sketch of a moment in the development of UJALM. Then of course I asked myself, "Was there any linden in the perfume and I mistook it for a green melon note?"...

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