Caron Parfum Sacre Intense: If The IFRA Gives You Lemons….

Parfum Sacre was a spice and amber laden rose fragrance that surrounded the central rose note with a warm enveloping spicy grouping of notes. It was surprisingly light for a fragrance full of intense notes. When I first smelled Parfum Sacre it was an opulent fragrance. I was shocked to find the currently reformulated version of Parfum Sacre to be a wan imitation of the original. Once again the heavy hand of IFRA and their regulations had squeezed the lush juice out of a memorable fragrance and neutered Parfum Sacre in the process. Because of that disappointment my level of skepticism with the new 2010 release Parfum Sacre Intense was very high. What I found, instead, was a perfume House which found a way to pay tribute to the original Parfum Sacre and somehow create a new fragrance that allows it to surpass the current formulation of the original.

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NEW FRAGRANCE: Hermes Eau Claire des Merveilles- Got Milk Accord?

In 2004 Ralf Schweiger and Nathalie Feisthauer created a burst of citrus, spice and wood meant to resemble ambergris.
In 2010 Jean-Claude Ellena is once again headed back to the Merveilles well and has created a third flanker called Eau Claire des Merveilles. This time around the only similarity in the notes used comes at the end, as in all of the Merveilles flankers, it is about a woody/ambery finish. Unlike the other three versions this trip is totally different in arriving at that finish

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EnVoyage Perfumes Carmel de Ville: Olfactive Landscapes Of The Monterey Peninsula

Certainly one of the most successful examples of this kind of artistry are the first two fragrances in Hermes “Un Jardin” series; Un Jardin en Mediterranee and Un Jardin sur Le Nil. For both of those fragrances the perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena spent time in the Meditteranean and near The Nile and let his nose become the way we would experience his impressions of those locales. I am reminded of this by perfumer Shelley Waddington and her Carmel By The Sea Series for her Envoyage Perfumes label

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Parfums de Nicolai L’Eau Mixte: Mixing Up Eau De Cologne

It has been a very good year for perfumers to re-interpret the eau de cologne style of fragrance construction. Each new iteration has seen some of the most talented perfumers we have, take the classic architecture of eau de cologne and impose their own design on this venerable style of fragrance.
Patricia de Nicolai makes some interesting additions to make L’Eau Mixte an Eau de Cologne all her own.

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Bourbon French Parfums: There Is A Perfume House In New Orleans

There is a house in New Orleans, no it’s not the “House of the Rising Sun”, but a perfumery that has existed for over 150 years. Unlike in The Animals classic song, the House of Bourbon French Parfums, hasn’t been the ruin of many poor boys although they might have made a few perfumistas poor.
Since 1843, Bourbon French Parfums haven’t changed very much, although the name has. From the earliest days until the present whoever “le nez” has been, they were influenced by all that makes New Orleans a special American city.

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