The times are few where my chemistry geek side and my perfume geek side overlap. One of the places has been the existence of the Mane Jungle Essence technology. When I received the new Etat Libre d’Orange Dangerous Complicity the note list led off with three notes containing the JE initials and I thought this would be a good chance to see this in action.
Christopher Brosius. The very mention of his name is synonymous with “thinking outside the box”. What this man does is simply amazing. His second newest scent, Where We Are There Is No Here (#405, his fifth from the Metamorphosis or “M” series) is no different.
“Afternoon of a Faun” has been translated into music, by Debussy, and ballet, by several, but most notoriously by the famous Russian dancer Nijinsky. His faun was scandalous, and I would have loved to see it. Now the whole package of poem, music and dance has been interpreted by perfumer Ralf Schweiger for Etat Libre D’orange
I would have to say that one of my favorite people in all of perfumery is Victoria Christian the daughter of Clive Christian. I have had the great pleasure of meeting her a few times and every time I walk away thinking what a fun, intelligent, and sophisticated person she is. There are two new Clive Christian fragrances which are named after her simply called V for Men and V for Women.
Recently it was announced that Los Angeles-based perfume emporium Scent Bar was launching a new collection of bath and body products in partnership with Target stores. I decided to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, because I know that snobbery can come back to bite you in the butt, and I’m glad I did. I received a nice array of the products to test, and I am happy to say they are really good.
Ground Zero smelled of concrete, smoke, dust, glass and death. And then, all too suddenly, it didn’t smell of anything. Perfume, I realized, is the scent of life itself: an intermingling of different smells which, at any given time, combine and pass a threshold, entering our minds as a whole.
