News: 582 posts

Guerlain recently launched the parfum version of its highly successful La Petite Robe Noire.  La Petite Robe Noire L’Extrait was created by perfumer Thierry Wasser and is described as “sophisticated and intense.”

La Petite Robe Noire L’Extrait includes notes of bergamot, black cherry, iris, black rose, patchouli, black tea, tonka bean, and vanilla. 7.5ml/94,50 €, available from Guerlain boutiques and department store Guerlain counters.

More on how perfume is made. The International Fragrance Association of North America (IFRANA) has recently released the first in a series of several short documentary-style films.“Designing a Fragrance: From Idea to Scent” features interviews with perfumers like Carlos Benaim, Christophe Laudamiel,  Steven Claisse and Mark Banwer. It’s a short 3 minute film that outlines how a scent concept takes shape.

From February 26 to May  27, 2013, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will present its new exhibit, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.  This exhibit was unveiled at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris last year, and I highly recommend this beautifully curated look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. The exhibit is complemented by masculine and feminine costumes, period photographs, illustrations, and rare Guerlain perfume bottles*. It truly gives you a unique glimpse into late nineteenth-century Parisian life and society.

Highlights of the exhibition include Monet’s Luncheon on the Grass (1865–66) and Women in the Garden (1866), Bartholomé’s In the Conservatory(circa 1881, paired with the sitter’s dress), Monet’s Camille (1866), Renoir’s Lise–The Woman with the Umbrella (1867), Manet’s La Parisienne (circa 1875), and much more.

To find out more, please check the Met website.

Update: the exhibit will also travel to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it will be shown at Regenstein Hall from June 26 to September 22, 2013.

*as seen at the similar exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Painting: Claude Monet, Women in the Garden (detail), 1866, via wiki-images, some rights reserved.

For its new scent, Mérida, French candle maker Maison Cire Trudon collaborated with the niche perfume house Arquiste Parfumeur. Arquiste’s fragrances capture specific historical periods and personages, and with Mérida, the house was inspired by Charlotte, Princess of Belgium and Empress of Mexico, and the town of Mérida situated in the Yucatan peninsula.

The fragrance exudes a rich guava smell, alongside touches of mahogany and “palo primavera”. A subtle touch of firework powder perfects this creation that brings warmth and color to the haciendas of this colonial city where Charlotte, Princess of Belgium and Empress of Mexico was magnificently welcomed in 1865.

Mérida is going to be available starting this month in the Cire Trudon flagship store situated in the rue de Seine in Paris as well as other Cire Trudon boutiques, Barney’s New York, and Aedes. Via Cire Trudon blog.

Etro will add another travel inspired perfume to its collection this March. Rajasthan pays homage to India and includes notes of lemon blossom, damascus rose, pink pepper, labdanum, amber, and white musk.

“Rajasthan, the new fragrance by Etro suggests heightened nomadic and yearning femininity, the hypnotic dance of eternal desire, a wild gypsy poetry set in colorful jeweled Maharajaha’s cities which are eternal like the breathing of the earth and the energy of the desert. A poetic and seductive fragrance that suggests an impatient prophecy, the fresh aroma of a winter lemon flower combined with the sweetness of the strong damask rose and the languor of mimosa. The skilled sensuality of amber and white musk are enlivened by a strong pink pepper bite, which gradually gives way to the delicate notes of labdanum which then turn to the magnificence of sweet acacia. A fragrance that promises another summer enclosed in the yellow corollas which are as velvety as talc and as sweet as honey.”

100 ml Eau de Parfum/£112. Via cosmoty.de