When I bought my first bottle of L’Heure Bleue parfum as a teenager, I remember a sales associate, a tall woman with an impeccably coiffed chignon, mentioning that in her opinion Guerlain women fall into two main categories–those who wear Shalimar with panache and those on whose skin L’Heure Bleue smells like hot kisses and orange blossom marshmallows. I have worn my way through the whole Guerlain collection, including Vétiver and Habit Rouge, but L’Heure Bleue and Après l’Ondée are two fragrances that make my heart skip a beat. They are polished and elegant, but at the same time, they feel like a second skin.

This year L’Heure Bleue celebrated its 100th anniversary, and Guerlain and its perfumer Thierry Wasser decided to create a a new interpretation of the classical fragrance in three different concentrations. The velvety Eau de Parfum called Le Zénith eventually ended up as L’Heure de Nuit, and this fragrance is now a part of Guerlain’s Les Parisiennes collection. Why is there a need for another take on L’Heure Bleue, you might wonder, as I did. Don’t we already have Insolence? But for perfume wearers not used to the plush, heavy retro style, even Insolence is too rich.

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I was a late convert to Miss Dior Chérie (2005), the Coco Mademoiselle sibling-scent that expanded a green patchouli note with sticky carnival accords like strawberries and caramel popcorn.  Miss Dior Chérie is aimed at the young; I was converted to it by a nineteen-year-old girl who owned her own makeup store.  She considered it the height of elegance and at first I scoffed, and then I tried.  It was too much fun to pass up, with its neon fun-fair atmosphere bopping around underneath the nose in a major chord of teenage pleasure.  Why didn’t they have stuff like this around when I was fourteen?

With the mechanisms of the perfume industry being what they are, Miss Dior Chérie was recently reformulated and renamed  Miss Dior (the “real” Miss Dior is now called Miss Dior Originale).  Sometimes the reformulations means that a “bad” ingredient was removed and replaced by a “good” (and often inferior) one, and other times it means that something that is no longer available is replaced with something that is.  The truth is, perfumes are reformulated all the time for a variety of reasons, and the differences can be subtle or striking.

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“A lot of people give Chanel No. 5  for the same reason they might buy an Apple computer—because they think they can’t go wrong,” says Frédéric Malle. “But perfume is more personal than that. It’s not about choosing a ‘good’ fragrance. It’s about choosing the one that’s a good match with the person who will be wearing it.”

Vogue.com features a fun article called Perfume by Personality: Frédéric Malle’s Guide to Fragrance Gifting.  I particularly enjoyed Malle’s choice of fragrances. For the Minimalist, he recommends Frédéric Malle L’Eau d’Hiver Eau de Parfum; The Urban Bohemian–Estée Lauder Youth Dew; The Outdoor Adventurist–Les Exclusifs de Chanel Bel Respiro; The Art Collector–Dior Miss Dior (original) and Bulgari Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert Extrême; The Vintage Enthusiast–Rochas Femme and Caron Pour un Homme. To read the rest, please follow this link.

Also, the French edition of Vogue.com includes a beautiful spread on solid perfumes, Jolies Concrètes. It’s in French, but the pictures say everything.

Edit February 13, 2014:  the EU proposal  has been significantly modified in comparison to the original SCCS document released to public in December 2012. The summary of the amended proposal can be found at ec.europa.eu.  Apart from three bans (Lyral, atranol and chloroatranol), the rest of the restrictions match the current IFRA standards. For the time being, there are no new bans or significant new restrictions on other materials, including naturals. As new information becomes available, this article will be updated.

“If this law goes ahead I am finished, as my perfumes are all filled with these ingredients [to be restricted],” said Frédéric Malle, who owns high-end perfume company Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. The impact on luxury perfume brands as a whole would, he said, be “like an atomic explosion and we would not have the means to rebuild ourselves.”

The recent Reuters article, EU threat spotlights perfume makers’ secrets, continues to explore the topic of raw material regulations and reformulations. Not again, you might think, since there was much talk about it already, but the issue of further restrictions on the usage of raw materials is sending so many waves through the industry that it’s hard to avoid. To summarize, the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS), an advisory body for the European Commission, has proposed to ban several key perfumery materials such oakmoss and Lilial and to extend the existing list of 26 allergens to more than 100. The regulations haven’t yet been adopted, and the final decision will be made next year.

I talked about the issues with escalating regulations in Is Chanel No 5 Being Banned?, and my post generated so many questions and emails that I decided to compile my answers here. The main impact from regulations is on the industry, but as fragrance consumers, we also lose out as our favorite fragrances are reformulated beyond recognition or discontinued. Also, I question the wisdom of replacing materials with a long history of usage with newly developed ingredients, the side effects of which may not become clear until decades down the road. These are good reasons to stay informed about the current situation.

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It’s called spéculoos in French, speculaas in Dutch, and Spekulatius in German, but by whatever name you call this fragrant gingerbread cookie, it will always evoke the scent of holidays in this part of the world. Speculoos may look humble, but take one bite, and you will know why it’s a favorite among Belgians. Perfumed with cinnamon, clove and cardamom, the cookie tastes of butter and caramel, and it’s impossible to have just one.

For me, speculoos is one of the quintessential Belgian tastes. Of course, there are also fries and waffles, but speculoos have their place of honor in this small country of 10 million, bridging the cultural divide between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the North and Francophone Wallonia in the South. Speculoos are eaten all over the Benelux region, with some areas such as Hasselt specializing in their own unique versions. Traditionally, the cookies were baked to celebrate Saint Nicholas Day on December 5th in the Netherlands and December 6th in Belgium, but today you can find them at bakeries all year round. In Paris you will be served your expresso with a square of dark chocolate, but your lait russe (café au lait) in Brussels will arrive with speculoos on the side.

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