When it comes to the independent perfumer community, there is a group of talented artists who create interesting fragrances time and again. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz is one of the members of that group for me and her latest release Bancha rewards my assessment. Although the name did not prepare me for the fragrance I would eventually …
When Thierry Wasser succeeded Jean-Paul Guerlain as the in-house perfumer at Guerlain in 2008 we waited to see whether he would build on the success of his earlier efforts, for the House, of Iris Ganache and Quand Vient La Pluie. While the latter is a top-notch floral, Iris Ganache is probably my least favorite of …
Ahhhh, I remember my first experience creating “perfume” as a kid with a toy set. The fragrance I created had a cotton candy top note, a heart of plastic Barbie head and a drydown of playdough. I may be able to write about perfumery, talk shop with perfumer friends, but I never really learned how to created a fine fragrance from top down. …
Who among you cannot conjure an image of Shalimar’s blue-stoppered, bat-wing bottle, the myth for which it is known, or even the scent of this legendary perfume after reading the title of this article? The phrase ” Say Shalimar”, was used as part of an advertisement in the 1980’s, and assumes an intimate knowledge of the fragrance as …
For his latest fragrant endeavor he has created the first fragrance in The Beautiful Mind Series: Intelligence & Beauty. Instead of looking to the latest “no brain all physical beauty” celebrity as inspiration, he chose Christiane Stenger who at the age of 12 became a Grandmaster of Memory
If nose Geza Schoen asked my opinion as to which woman should be the next muse for his Beautiful Mind perfume series, it would be Liz Zorn. Fiercely “independent”, one of the few noses that creates both natural and perfumes that use synthetics. Liz composes her fine fragrances in her mind first, and I am reminded of the quote by Michelangelo, ” I saw the …
