Perfume Review & Musings Archives

Fragrance Review of Balmain Ambergris The Smell of Natural Gray Amber or Ambergris {Scented Thoughts}Ambergris is an organic animalic material excreted by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). This substance in its natural state or near-natural state, i.e., as an infusion, on...

Sycomore is the latest composition by perfumers Jacques Polge and Christopher Sheldrake appearing in the collection Les Exclusifs by Chanel, which purports to offer more elaborate works of perfumery utilizing finer ingredients and proposing more delicate art-pieces for the...

 Thierry Mugler AngelMen Pure Coffee is a new interpretation of Angel Men launched in 1996, four years after the original women's Angel which revolutionized our perception of the seductive oriental fragrance by pulling all the stops on extreme edible...

 The new trio of perfumes by Annick Goutal entitled Les Orientalistes (The Orientalists) is inspired by the tradition of Orientalism and the imaginings it implied - a phenomenon at its peak in 19th century Europe. At the same time, it pays...

Summersent is the unique creation of a new niche Chicago-based fragrance brand established in 2007 called Marjorie Midgarden Fragrances. It reportedly incorporates for the first time the suave and secret scent of a bloom - name undisclosed - captured...

Bois de Turquie is the latest composition signed by Jean-Paul Millet Lage, the owner of Maître Parfumeur et Gantier. It is the first fragrance by the house since 1989 to be explicitly marketed as an unisex perfume - not...

Pure White Linen Light Breeze inscribes itself in the direct genealogy of White Linen (1978), which had a Breeze version as early as 1996 and was adapted to contemporary tastes with Pure White Linen in 2006. Like each year,...

Dirty English has been identified by Nash-Taylor of Juicy Couture as a cross between the influences of her own Anglomania (she is married to John Taylor of Duran Duran), Skaist-Levys’ “CZ Guest Style”, a dash of punk (Sex Pistols)...

Avon and Cynthia Rowley Flower and Petal were both composed by tandem of perfumers Richard Herpin and Frank Völkl who have used the word “wearable” to describe their creations destined to the mass-market. The notion of “wearability” is subjective...

Photo © Communication Serge Lutens Serge Lutens possesses this uncanny ability of turning a priori the most superficial, surface objects and sensations into an oniric walk taken down the maze of a garden as if in a daydream. With...

Cruel Gardenia is the latest installment in the Art et Matière collection by Guerlain, a line devoted to more creative perfume creations offering culturally speaking a niche, i.e. arty flavor and centering in principle on a reflection on raw...

Andy Warhol exclaimed one day, "My favorite smell is the first smell of spring in New York". With that, Union Square the latest Bond No. 9 in the Andy Warhol collection starts like a fresh spring bouquet redolent with...

Mona di Orio new Amyitis fragrance is so concentrated on the central and deep idea of freshness - one realizes after a while - quieted down by a more fluid and liquid sensation of shadowed coolness that it will...

Agent Provocateur released a set of three sensual massage oils in 2007 which includes the aphrodisiac scents of rose, tuberose, and ylang-ylang. You could have expected something magical containing a pinch of a secret ingredient, but we merely thought...

La Reine Margot (Queen Margot) by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier is a beautiful, even stupendous jasmine fragrance with a strong personality. The scent strikingly develops both a sophisticated and frank animalic character softened down and made to feel like...