I was introduced to the latest member of the Island Michael Kors collection, Palm Beach and realized this entry still had the same fun-loving quality of its Island stable mates but it also had some of the complexity I liked from the main line fragrances. The more I wore it the more I found more to like about it.
Joseph Quartana’s Six Scents project is always of interest to me. His stated credo for Six Scents is this:
“We choose the rising stars of the fashion industry who will one day be big enough to have their own fragrance but who are too small to have it just yet. So we steal from the future and offer it now.”
It seemed to take a long time this year for Hermes to announce that there would be a new addition to the Hermessence collection of fragrances. As the summer wore on without an announcement it seemed like 2010 would leave us without one of Jean-Claude Ellena’s minimalist studies. Then right after Labor Day I received the press release announcing the ninth Hermessence, Iris Ukiyoe. Based on the name I expected a Japanese take on Iris. In many ways it seems the Japanese aesthetic and M. Ellena’s are so similar that it seems like a logical intersection of creativity.
Belle Starr the person was a mixture of gritty legend and more polished reality. Belle Starr the fragrance, created by Lisa Fong of Artemisia Perfumes for the Outlaw Perfumes project, reflects that duality in depiction of her namesake from the gritty “outlaw” jasmine to the polished “legal” rooibos Belle Starr shows off both faces in memorable fashion.
The idea of having a perfumer take us “Behind The Bottle” and the concept of The Natural Perfumer’s Guild Outlaw Perfume project are almost a match made in Heaven.
That is why I chose to ask JoAnne Bassett to describe her creative process in the composition of Amazing. In the material she sent out with her samples of Amazing she stated that she started off with a foundation of oakmoss and over the course of ONE afternoon of blending ended up with Amazing. I had to find out the story
While the list of “outlaw” ingredients is as long as Santa’s “Naughty or Nice” list there is really one ingredient that has been restricted by IFRA that has caused the most angst among perfumistas, oakmoss. One of the things I was looking forward to when I heard about the Natural Perfumers Guild Outlaw Project was seeing one or more of these talented perfumers assay an oakmoss fragrance. JoAnne Bassett is one of those talented perfumers and her submission is called “Amazing” and her beginning point was oakmoss absolute.
