Victoria: 2669 posts

Parfums de Nicolaï’s Eaux Fraîches Collection (L’Eau à la Folie, L’Eau d’Ete, L’Eau Mixte, and L’Eau Chic) will include a new fragrance this summer, Eau Soleil. The new Eau de Toilette is based on orange blossom. Perfumer Patricia de Nicolaï was moved by a particularly beautiful grade of neroli (steam-distilled orange blossom essence) to create Eau Soleil. Eau Soleil includes notes of bergamot, mandarin, lemon, petitgrain, thyme, artemisia, neroli, ylang-ylang, jasmine from Egypt, patchouli, and musk.

Parfums de Nicolaï Eau Soleil Eau de Toilette is available in 30ml and 100ml spray bottles and can be found at Parfums de Nicolaï boutiques, counters, and at their online store. Via press release

Cacharel Noa is a little gem that’s easy to overlook on a crowded perfume counter. The bottle with its plastic top is plain, and the perfume on the blotter is sharp and scratchy. But Noa was obviously created to be worn by breathing, living women*, and not just tested on paper, because on skin, the fragrance changes dramatically. It’s a cloud of white petals softly dusted with powder, and it wears like a favorite cashmere sweater.

Cacharel has an interesting perfume collection that fits well with the quirky aesthetic of its fashion line. When you wear the ultra-feminine Anais Anais or bubbly Amor Amor, you can imagine how it might be created by the same house that become renowned for its cheerful, bright prints and seersucker dresses. Noa is likewise lighthearted and unpretentious, and its charm lies in its combination of tenderness and sophistication.

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My May column in the Financial Times Magazine is about scents with an intimate aura. In Up Close and Personal, I reveal some of my favorite skin-like perfumes. Some of them are sensual and lush, others are casual and low-key, but they have in common a cozy, cuddly sensation. Most of them are understated enough to be worn to the office or classroom, and I love catching delicate whiffs of my perfume throughout the day. They are my intimate scented talismans.

Some fragrances, particularly those rich in white flowers, woods and spices, have so much character that they enter the room with you and linger behind long after you’re gone. Others, such as citrus colognes, give an instant lift when splashed on in the morning and then vanish before you even reach the office. Since we wear perfume for different reasons — to please ourselves, to delight others, to create a fantasy or just to smell wonderful – each fragrance genre has its role and purpose. On days when I want to keep perfume as my intimate scented talisman, I reach for the skin-like scents. Please read the rest by clicking here.

What perfumes have a tender, cozy feel to you?

Painting: Woman with a Cat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, c.1875, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washingon, DC, USA, via wiki-images.

” ‘Eau Sauvage was a real chef d’oeuvre in its original form,’ retired perfume-maker Pierre Bourdon, who created Dior’s Dolce Vita and Yves Saint Laurent’s Kouros, said of the 1966 scent. ‘It used to be very green and fresh. Today, it has been replaced by something softer and duller,’ ” from EU threat spotlights perfume makers’ secrets.

All my life I’ve been hearing that things used to be better in the past. Paris used to be more exciting, Rome cleaner, New York cheaper. When I began exploring the world of perfumery on a professional level, I was told by many older colleagues that the golden age of fragrance had passed. Talk about curbing one’s enthusiasm! Despite these warnings, I persisted with my perfumery training.

But you need not be inordinately nostalgic to realize that many perfumes used to be better before many classical materials were banned or restricted and before fragrance companies started reformulating en masse. There is something fascinating about the delicate and precise balance of essences. Even the smallest changes can have dramatic consequences. Imagine what happens when a perfumer is told to remove whole building blocks of a composition or to make a chypre (a mossy perfume type) without moss.

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I am looking for a contributing author to join Bois de Jasmin’s small team of writers. The right person should be passionate about perfume and interested in trying different fragrances. Ideally, I’m looking for someone who can contribute 2 articles a month, but it’s flexible. The articles can be perfume reviews or any other fragrance-related posts, and you can draw upon your own personal interests and experience. Besides contributing a post, an author is expected to reply to the comments under their articles (I take care of the images and formatting myself).

You should be comfortable with being edited.

You will be compensated for your work (because Bois de Jasmin is not a sponsored blog, the payment is modest). The written material has to be original, so articles published elsewhere won’t be accepted. Bois de Jasmin will hold the copyright on any articles published here.

To prevent any conflict of interest situations, please don’t apply if you work for a fragrance company, retail store or blog on perfume topics. If you’re a fellow perfume blogger, you’re welcome to participate as a guest poster.

Please note that no sponsored or advertising driven articles are accepted.

To apply: please send me a short writing sample (3 paragraphs or so) pasted in the email body and tell me a little about yourself and your interest in perfume. My email address is editor at boisdejasmin dot com.

I will try to reply to each submission individually, but please give me a couple of weeks to do so. Thank you for your interest!

Painting: A Lady Writing a Letter (fragment), Johannes Vermeer, 17th century Netherlands, National Gallery of Art.