Gentleman

“Sartorial – sar-tor-ial adj. [attrib] of or relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress: sartorial elegance”

I chose not to write a post on my fragrant new years resolutions simply because I have only made three. They are; to keep producing interesting and informative content for The Candy Perfume Boy, to review more fragrances from as many brands as possible and finally, to review more masculine fragrances.

Those who read this blog on a regular basis will know that I wear a lot of feminine fragrances and my reviews reflect this. I don’t have anything against masculines at all, they just tend not to be within my bracket of taste, whereas as feminine and niche ‘unisex’ (or sexless) fragrances tend to be right up my street. So, in the interest of balance I will ensure that I review more masculine fragrances and I will start with one of my recent favourites.

Sartorial (2010) is the latest masculine release from the über-British perfume house Penhaligon’s and is inspired by the workroom of a Saville Row Tailor. Created by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour (who is also responsible for other Penhaligon’s fragrances such as Amaranthine and their Anthology Series) Sartorial is described as “a contemporary interpretation of a classic Fougère” [1]

Wardrobe

Last weekend, after much nagging from my long-suffering partner, I decided to have a tidy of my perfume collection and samples box. Now, anyone who knows me well will be fully aware that tidying is not really something I do very often, in fact, it is something that I avoid at all costs.

Anyway, during my tidy up, I totalled up the number of perfume bottles in my collection and I was genuinely shocked when I came to the nice round number of 120. “How can I have so much perfume, I never feel like I have enough choice” I thought, “Do I really need so much?” and “Do I feel like I don’t know what to wear because I have too much choice?”

This led me to think in depth about my collection of fragrances, what would I choose if I were to reduce its size considerably?

Juniper SlingI’m not a gin drinker, actually scrap that. I wasn’t a gin drinker, but on Tuesday I was coerced (there really wasn’t much coercing going on) into drinking a number of gin cocktails at the bloggers launch for Penhaligon’s new fragrance Juniper Sling. This experience has taught me three things; firstly, Penhaligon’s know how to throw a party, secondly, their gin cocktails are unrivalled and thirdly, gin and fragrance go very well together.

Juniper Sling was created by master perfumer Olivier Cresp (the man that brought Angel into the world) and it is described by Penhaligon’s as “a playful, chilled and mysterious homage to the Bright Young Things of London’s roaring twenties.” Now this may give you the impression that Juniper Sling may be slightly old-fashioned, but this is absolutely not the case, Penhaligon’s have created a modern twist on a classic theme, just look at the bottle with it’s metal bow, a purely modern take on their usual flacon.