2012 launches: 129 posts

Natural perfumer Mandy Aftel created Sepia out of an exchange with fellow California perfumer Laurie Erickson of Sonoma Scent Studio.  This, the third installment of Nathan Branch’s Letters to a Fellow Perfumer project, involved each of the perfumers working with a material they had not used before.  Erickson chose black and blue hemlock spruce absolutes for a perfume that became Forest Walk.

Aftel originally selected natural alpha ionone (a violet-like smell) and a fire tree absolute for an idea she had to depict her feelings about California’s Gold Country and its ghost towns, of “the beauty of what remains after something is ravaged by time.”  Shortly into the project, Aftel abandoned both of these original materials, replacing them with flowering tobacco absolute and blond cedarwood and from this built her fragrant tone poem of both an imaginary past and a present reality.

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Gucci has launched a new fragrance called Gucci Première. It was inspired by the couture gowns from the Gucci collection shown at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Created by perfumer Nathalie Lorson, Gucci Première is a soft floral perfume, and it includes notes of bergamot, orange blossom, blackberries, leather, myrrh, fur accord, patchouli, sandalwood, and musk.

According to Gucci creative director Frida Giannini, “For such a successful woman, something equally remarkable was required. Gucci Première is womanly, intriguing and as seductive as the perfect couture gown.” The ad campaign is fronted by Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively.

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After months of media buzz, Lady Gaga Fame has finally been launched.  You probably know by now how this celebrity perfume thing works.  Some celebrities—like Sarah Jessica Parker—get down and dirty in the design process, vetting the concept, going through the mods, arguing for dirtier musk, losing argument for dirtier musk, announcing that next time things are going to be different.  Then there are those under whose noses you presume a scent strip has passed, but who have not attended that endless cycle of developmental-phase meetings.

Lady Gaga appears to be of the assertive former type.  Early reports had it that the singer wanted her perfume to be based on blood and semen.  These notes, which might seem shockingly brave, are not new: Etat Libre d’Orange has already done both in Sécrétions Magnifiques.  But as happened with Parker’s dirtier musk, these notes didn’t make the final cut.  Instead, Fame, billed as “the first ever black eau de parfum,” contains “pulverized apricot, crushed heart of Tiger Orchidea, and tears of belladonna.”

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I love Amouage, a unique perfume house that has created some of the best fragrances in the niche category. Amouage Gold is not just a grand parfum, it’s one of the best perfume symphonies.  The Jubilation duet blends wistful loveliness with edgy glamour. Wearing both Lyric perfumes, I finally grasp how it is that ‘bold and dramatic’ can also be ‘elegant and suave.’  Homage Attar transforms the lavish Middle Eastern oud and rose idea into a wearable but nevertheless sumptuous variation. Interlude, on the other hand, leaves me cold.

The fragrance opens with a sharp green, leafy note that smells at once like paint thinner and lawn clippings. It’s a bold move to overdose a fragrance with this rough and raspy note, and for a while it keeps my interest. After all, the diesel fumes that crown the top of Serge Lutens Tubéreuse Criminelle are similarly hard on the nose, but it feels like a natural part of the tuberose in the composition. Here, the green notes layered over the woods and incense feel jarring.

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Oranger en Fleurs (“A celebration of the orange tree”) is a new release from Houbigant, a perfume house with a history dating back to 1775.  The company’s perfumes have for several decades been identified with drugstores, but the release of Oranger en Fleurs signals a return of Houbigant to the luxury market.

Oranger en Fleurs is a fully realized orange blossom fragrance that presents the honeyed floral note in a tableau of leaves and twigs, jasmine, rose, tuberose, ylang-ylang, nutmeg, cedar, and musk, along with something called “eau de brouts” (an absolute with a sharp, green orange blossom aroma).  The moment I sprayed it, the resemblance to Serge Lutens Fleurs d’Oranger was unmistakable.  Substitute Lutens’ cumin for nutmeg and give the composition some airiness and you have, for the most part, Oranger en Fleurs.

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