When it comes to fragrance that is as lively as my bottle of Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame there are two I like quite a bit. Interestingly they share the same home bases, France and California, as my favorite bubbly.
The fragrance line bearing the JPG line has been one of the best masstige fragrance lines as LeMale continues to be a big seller. This is why any news that a new JPG fragrance is coming creates a bit of buzz around it. The latest release Kokorico is currently available in France only and will also be available in the UK later in 2012 with a 2013 release slated for the US.
As the end of the year arrives it is time to look back over all that the last twelve months have produced and list the best of the year. In 2011, I tested 471 new releases and reviewed 207 of them. Even those numbers didn’t allow me to test half of the new releases for the year. The fast and furious nature of these releases makes it difficult for anyone to truly have a handle on everything that came out in any given year. That being said out of those new fragrances I did try there were some pretty amazing releases.
Both Isabey and Carthage survived being lost only to arise again. The Isabey perfumes are being slowly re-created and released and in 2011 we get the third reconstruction L’Ambre de Carthage.
I often say that my earliest perfume memory is seeing my mother’s little black bottle of Joy, and it instilled a love of that fragrance, in me, that my mother nurtured by gifting me with the parfum. I was mentioning that to her not long ago, and she said “You know, it wasn’t me that got you into this perfume thing, it was your FATHER!”
As we entered the fall I heard a rumor that Czech and Speake was going to be adding their first new fragrance since 2003 and it was going to be a vetiver based fragrance. As we moved further into the fall some of the UK based members of the internet forums got a chance to try Vetiver Vert and the verdict was it was good and in some of those early tester’s words it was spectacular.
