Many have accused Guerlain of being more interested in commerce than artistry. I would respectfully disagree. I think the great houses do have to make an attempt to try and curry favor with the generation of young women who choose to shun fine fragrance for the latest celebuscent;
Here I sit, willing and foaming at the mouth to share my delight in the newest fragrant release from a very old Firenze brand: Fiore di Riso
Farmacia SS. Annunziata dal 1561 has been said to have been housed in St. Nicholas’ Benedictine monastery for years and years, for Heaven’s sake.
So, why should you want to smell Fiore Di Riso?
It is a glorious bridge between classic and contemporary, that’s why.
There is a certain belief among many that any attempt to create a flanker of a legendary perfume like Shalimar is a crime against perfumery. Thierry Wasser, the current in-house perfumer at Guerlain, was approached by his young niece to create a Shalimar for her. The result of that conversation is the new release Shalimar Parfum Initial.
It is always an interesting process to see a haute couture design aesthetic rendered as a fragrance. What will the perfumer and designer come up with to represent the fashion in a fragrant way? Working with Evelyn El Koubi to create her first two signature fragrances Marie Saint-Pierre chose to break her strong but feminine aesthetic in half. B is a strong spicy unisex fragrance and C is a floral enticing feminine fragrance.
Odin New York has launched their fifth fragrance but are calling it Odin 06 Amanu. While there is no explanation for why they are skipping 05 one hopes it isn’t because Chanel beat them to it. The first four Odin fragrances were very good with Odin 04 Petrana being a truly spectacular piece of perfumery.
It has been a successful first half of 2011 for Joseph Quartana the mind behind Six Scents. Six Scents: Series Three just won the Fifi Award for “Best Indie Perfume”. His store Seven New York is one of SoHo’s most forward thinking boutiques
