news

D&G Have It In The Bag (& In The Cards)

2009-10-29T17:26:54-07:00

D&G’s newest fragrance collection draws inspiration from the Tarot card deck, matching personality to perfume in a cosmic rendezvous dictated by the sun, moon and stars.

D&G1: LE BATELEUR
THE CARD: 1 – THE MAGICIAN
The Magician card signifies a hopeless romantic with an unmistakable power to charm and seduce; their openness casts a spell that makes them irresistible to others.
THE SCENT: Le Bateleur is a sensual blend of bergamot, pink pepper, cardamom and juniper berry, warmed by birch leaf, wood and musk.
FOR CELEBS LIKE: Grace Kelly, Heather Graham,- Kate Beckinsale.

D&G3: L’IMPERATRICE
THE CARD: 3 – THE EMPRESS
The Empress card represents a soul that is powerful and strong in character. The Empress is a true star with a magnetic, energetic quality that keeps her in the centre of everyone’s attention.
THE SCENT: L’Imperatrice is a sweet fruity-floral fragrance, mixing rhubarb, red currant, and kiwi with a rich floral heart and rounding with a soft base of sandalwood, musk and fresh grapefruit.
FOR CELEBS LIKE: Jennifer Lopez, Brooke Shields, Halle Berry.

D&G6: L’AMOUREUX
THE CARD: 6 – THE LOVERS
The Lovers Tarot card represents a confident charmer whose resourceful and passionate nature gets her what she wants, every time.
THE SCENT: L’Amoureux is a spicy and sensual scent, with spicy cardamom and juniper berry atop the freshest aquatic accords; an earthy base of vetiver and white cedarwood grounds the blend.
FOR CELEBS LIKE: Kim Cattrall, Charlize Theron, Katharine Hepburn.":http://www.perfume.com/celebrities/221-katharine-hepburn

D&G10: LA ROUE DE LA FORTUNE
THE CARD: 10 – THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE
The Wheel of Fortune card signifies luck and change, is drawn by adventurous types who enjoy surprises and games of chance.
THE SCENT: La Roue de la Fortune is a fragrance with unexpected turns and flavors, with citrusy pineapple and fresh green notes livening a lush heart of tuberose, gardenia and jasmine over a sweet patchouli, vanilla and orris base.
FOR CELEBS LIKE: Christina Aguilera,- Catherine Zeta-Jones, Hilary Swank.

D&G18: LA LUNE
THE CARD: 18 – THE MOON
The Moon card represents the creative dreamer who has a free, charming and ethereal spirit. Like the moon, this card is for someone who is radiant, inspiring and mysterious.
THE SCENT: D&G’s La Lune is a soft and subtle blend of lily, tuberose, and rose mixed with warm and sensual musk, sandalwood and leather. The slightest tinge of bergamot and apple in the introductory notes is the vibrant dusk before nightfall.
FOR CELEBS LIKE: Catherine Deneuve, Gwenyth Paltrow, Natalie Portman.

Got Me On My Knees: Lola

2009-10-27T16:02:52-07:00

Fall’s Most Buzzworthy Fragrance

Fall 2009’s most buzzworthy fragrance has just hit shelves, and the liquid gold concoction is making quite the splash for perfume lovers and trend makers around the globe.

The long-awaited new fragrance and follow-up to immensely popular Daisy perfume, Lola by Marc Jacobs, sets itself apart from the recent market return to fruity-floral fragrances, its musk-infused notes and surprise turns creating an unmatched modern interpretation of the fresh-scented family.

Lola follows the seasonal trend of girly pink cocktail mixes of red fruits and warm musks; however, Lola is also full of surprises and a warm retro glamour. Its base around a fresh, strong accord of rose is a very vintage flavor for women’s scents, and the strong tinge of oriental family notes in its base adds a unique sensual twist. Lola is thoroughly modern, but with a distinct vintage glamour. A true pace-setter for the wrap-up of 2009.

Perfumers Calice Becker and Yann Vasnier constructed Lola as a “shiny, glossy, saturated, vibrant, warm” brew that aims to embody a modern free spirit— with an irresistible attitude. Fresh introductory notes of pink peppercorn, pear and ruby red grapefruit are super fresh; a rich floral heart of strong rose, fuchsia peony and geranium sets the tone for the warm base with notes of vanilla, tonka bean and creamy musk.

Model of the moment Karlie Kloss is the face for Lola.

Back To Basics

2009-11-01T15:37:54-08:00

Issey Miyake Goes Simple With “A Scent”

Renowned Japanese designer and spiritually creative Issey Miyake has gone back to basics in a quest for minimalism and simplicity with his newest women’s scent, aptly named A Scent.

A Scent pays tribute to the “poetry of minimalism”, and was inspired by the fresh, clean smell of the mountains in Japan. It is a woody floral-green fragrance, with fresh hyacinth and galbanum providing the floral heart, while being enhanced by uplifting verbena and a hint of jasmine. It is housed in the most simple of bottles, created from an unadorned slab of pure, raw glass.

Issey was looking to create with A Scent a smell “as simple and beautiful as the air we breathe”. The result is a fragrance that expresses simple luxury with a harmonious and balanced blend of notes inspired by pure air.

Designer Issey Miyake fuses his spirit with an earthly harmony for life, and Issey Miyake Parfums mirrors the artist’s quest for exceptionality and balance. His minimalist view of blending one’s spirit with the environment culminates in his creation of modern, alluring fragrances, and A Scent continues this trend of refined and engaged elegance.

“Play”ing With Justin Timberlake

2009-11-01T14:49:51-08:00

Celebrity Scent Watch

There is a continual stream of celebrity fragrances into the market— but Justin Timberlake and Givenchy’s new Play cologne are changing the concept of how celebrity scents come to be.

We have seen fragrances by Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Usher, Sean John, Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce and many more, created under rule of the celeb’s own desires and designs to capture their favorite feelings, thoughts and things, and share them with the public world through scent.

But a role reversal has been seen recently with perfume makers sniffing out celebrities first, and then creating scents based around their images and personas. The latest release of this nature is inspired by Justin Timberlake, the unstoppable star whom Givenchy sniffed out to capture in a men’s fragrance. The result is Givenchy’s Play cologne, a fresh woody-citrus scent housed in a bottle resembling a glass iPod; the design represents the idea that music evokes emotion—and that the aroma of Play will too.

A self-described fan of natural scents and pheromones, J.T. worked with Givenchy to create a light, clean-smelling cologne that wouldn’t be overbearing to shy scent wearers like himself. Play is youthful and fun with mandarin orange, grapefruit, black pepper and coffee flower, with a subtle tinge of masculine sensuality from a vetiver and patchouli base.

With a stamp of approval from both Justin and girlfriend Jessica Biel, Play is sure to be a scent chart topper.

Never say Neverland

2009-09-11T11:40:13-07:00

Christian Audigier Buys MJ’s Ranch

Well it looks like where royalty reigns, it rains royalty! Rumours are circulating that the King of Jeans, Christian Audigier, just bought out the former home of the King of Pop. Indeed, the designer has said he gets the keys in the next few weeks!

Purchased for $90 million to serve as headquarters for Ed Hardy operations, the infamous Neverland Ranch boasts 2,500+ acres, a National Forest to the east and a college prep boarding school to the south—- big raised eyebrow on that little fact. The amusement park rides all began to be trucked away shortly after Jackson passed away in June, but it was only this week that plans for the land post-MJ were publicized. Apparently Audigier was originally looking to turn the property into a museum honouring the one-gloved wonder, but he couldn’t obtain the proper permits or authorization. The ranch will still be opened to the public for one day each year, on the anniversary of Jackson’s death.

At the time of MJ’s death he and Audigier were in collaboration to create a commemorative line celebrating Jackson’s musical fame. He describes the line as “a mix between Liberace and Elvis”, and items include a red jacket featuring Jackson’s portrait, the token one glove—laden in rhinestones, as well as pairs of rhinestone socks.

Currently though, Christian’s stuck in a legal lockdown with MJ’s estate. Knowing how the value of celebrity products jumps after the star passes, all items have to be cleared by the estate and go through a lot of red tape before they can be released to be public. There ARE a book and movie in the works by the estate already to capture (and capitalize) on MJ’s death (it’s reported that his estate has made over $100 million in the short months since his passing), but there’s no word when these designs will see the light of day.

Audigier isn’t pushing for the line’s release for the money (with over 5,000 celebrity fans, he doesn’t need any more endorsement), and told reporters “I hope they understand I was friends with Michael and this is what I want to do for Michael.” I do hope so too.

In the meantime, buy Christian Audigier and Ed Hardy products on Perfume.com!

Scent Opera

2009-09-09T11:48:39-07:00

Where Sound & Scent Align

A fragrance’s composition of top, middle and base notes is comparable to the composition of a song. Each scent note can be attributed to a single chord within a harmony of sound, like patchouli as a base note bringing depth to a top note of rich jasmine.

A group of sound and scent aficionados took this concept one step further this past summer with the creation of Green Aria: A Scent Opera, where not only are single fragrance notes like chords of a song, but full scents become audio characters. There is no script to Green Aria, spoken or sung. Instead the show tells the tale of the struggle of nature versus technology and sings the gospel of modernism through scents that “sound, touch and pour.”

Seats in NYC’s Guggenheim Museum theatre were equipped with “scent microphones”, set up to release 23 scents –from magma and steel, to fire and earth- at various intervals during the 30 minute show. “Unscented” bursts of air were released between fragrances, in order to clear audience noses for the next incoming whiff. I had the opportunity to witness this limited time phenomenon.

As the lights of the theatre dimmed, people grabbed fervently at their “scent tubes”; teenagers attempted to stick them into inappropriate places on each other. The aria began with an introduction of its five elements and eighteen supporting characters—for whom each name was projected on a video screen while “their” music and fragrance blared from speaker and tube. We met the likes of Absolute Zero, Runaway Crunchy Green and Shiny Steel; Fire + Smoke was introduced alongside crinkling electronic sounds and the piercing scent of burnt ash. In a comedic twist, it was announced that character Fresh Air had become indisposed—and since there is no replacement of such to be found in smoggy NYC, the character Clean Air would have to come stand in his place. Clean Air came equipped with soft, wistful melodies and a bracing, clinically pure scent like a freshly scrubbed doctor’s office.

Throughout the next 30 minutes, the audience in the nearly purely dark theatre were treated to an abstract, dramatic show of sound and light and scent, eclectic music flowing seamlessly from one scene and concept to the next, fragrances timed to escort your mind through the audio storyboard. At the end of the show, the characters took the usual curtain call, their names flashing on the video screens and scents pumping through the “microphones” one last time. The loudest ovation went to the faintly sulfurous, aptly named Funky Green Imposter.

The Scent Opera is the result of a two-year collaboration between writer and director Stewart Matthew, composers Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson, and French perfumer Christophe Laudamiel (who has created fragrances for Ralph Lauren and Estée Lauder). Matthew and Laudamiel work together as Aeosphere LLC, an enterprise exploring scent technology that they call a “perfume media company”.

“Perfumery should be the same kind of discipline as music or visual art,” Laudamiel told The Wall Street Journal. “You need that kind of nurturing of crazy ideas.”

Unlike the grand failing of 1960s Smell-o-Vision technology and the more recent attempt at a USB device called the iSmell (named one of the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time by PC World), Green Aria: A Scent Opera successfully takes perfumery across artistic barriers to create something new, fresh and multi-platformed.