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Le Parfum de Pluie

Maybe it’s because I’m British and I simply have no choice, but I love the rain. My favourite moments are those cold nights when one is all tucked up in bed as the rain and wind lashes against the house. Not to mention warm summer days peppered by hot showers of rain that bring a welcome breeze through open doors and windows. These rainy moments are some of my absolute favourites and we haven’t even discussed the smell! The odour of rain is mineral, but it’s also an atmospheric adaptor that relies heavily on the landscape around it. Summer rain on hot tarmac smells different from muddy winter downpours, and so on. The one constant however, is the fact that rain always smells and more importantly, feels beautiful.

In this piece I’ve selected five fragrances inspired by the opening of the Heavens, which we’ve certainly seen a lot of in the UK over the last few weeks. They range from the grey nimbus clouds that precede and promise rain through to storms in the summer and the city, all the way to the odours left by the rain as it moves on. Each and everyone presents a different idea of deluge and downpour, crafting through olfaction, the spirit of nature’s temperamental emotions. So prepare yourself for precipitation and a veritable storm of scented rain!

Decadence
Decadence

If you’ve ever thought that the plastic flowers that adorn the bottles of Marc Jacobs’ popular fragrances Daisy, Lola and Dot were more than slightly OTT, you may want to turn away for the rest of this review. With his latest feminine fragrance, entitled ‘Decadence‘, Jacobs has pulled out all of the bottle design stops and has fashioned a flacon that resembles one of the designer’s much sought after handbags, capturing the familiar shape of his bags. After all, what is the ultimate accessory next to fragrance? Here the designer bag and the designer scent combine to create something that will have the eyes of many fashion fans bulging and their mouths shouting “gimme”! As the press release says, it’s “the ultimate statement maker”, and a statement it certainly makes.

Decadence, the fragrance, was composed by Annie Buzantian (Puredistance I & Marc Jacobs Dot) and is billed as something “glamorous and indulgent” and “impulsively luxurious”. The whole thing seems aimed at a more serious audience and isn’t as youth-courting as Jacobs’ earlier fragrances. In an industry where only the young matter, it’s good to see something that isn’t aimed at tweens, but Decadence is far from mature and appears to simply offer an alternative to the wishy washy bottles of clean florals that saturate the market. But just how decadent is it?

The Candy Perfume Boy’s Hitlist: Q3 2015
The Candy Perfume Boy’s Hitlist: Q3 2015

It’s that time again. That’s right, we’re at the end of a quarter (specifically quarter three of 2015), which means that it’s time for another instalment of The Candy Perfume Boy’s Hitlist. First things first though, an apology. Over the last month or so I have been more than a bit sporadic with updating this blog and posts have been scarce. Unfortunately, writing about perfume is a passion of mine that sometimes has to take a back seat when work and everyday life gets in the way. Right now, I’ve been going through some stressful home things (nothing bad, in fact it’s good, but still stressful), so please accept my apology for my lackadaisical approach to The Candy Perfume Boy.

Anyway, that’s enough of the apologies. Let’s jump into the hit list for quarter three, with a quick recap what this is all about for those unfamiliar with ‘how we do’. In these posts I take a look back at the fragrances, launches, blogs, books, brands or perfumers that have been taking my fancy over the last quarter. There are no rules. Well, there are three rules with this series; 1) the subjects must be linked to fragrance somehow (a rule that I’m allowed to bend); and 2) the hitlist is to be published towards the end of each quarter; and 3) the list must include my favourite things, as if I were a fragrant sort-of Oprah, which I like to think I am, but for the record, am not.

Daisy Dream
Daisy Dream

It’s hard to deny the power of Marc Jacobs’ popular fragrance, Daisy. Since its launch in 2007, the wispy floral has become a best seller and has found many fans, thanks in part to the super-cute vinyl flowers that adorn its bottle. It has spawned a family of spin offs and most of Jacobs’ fragrances since have tried to recapture the magic of the original, resulting in a family of vinyl clad bottles and airy juices.

For 2014, Marc Jacobs is launching the latest instalment in the Daisy narrative, the languid-sounding ‘Daisy Dream‘. Created by venerable perfumers, Alberto Morillas (the gent behind the original Daisy, Amouge’s Opus VII and Salvador Dali) and Ann Gottlieb (responsible for Marc Jacobs’ Lola and Sarah Jessica Parker’s Covet), Daisy Dream is a wistful and pastel-shaded perfume that seems to be made for long summer days under blue skies.

Created to present “an airy and ethereal new chapter in the story of Marc Jacob’s free-spirited Daisy”, Daisy Dream is a fruity floral fragrance with a subtle touch of gourmand. It’s accompanying film, directed by Jacobs’ friend, Sofia Coppola, is an otherworldy affair inspired by Coppola’s cult indie film ‘The Virgin Suicides’ and presents this fragrance as something surprisingly light and ghostly.

Honey by Marc Jacobs

This week on Escentual I review the brand new launch from Marc Jacobs – ‘Honey’. Like most Marc Jacob scents Honey is a competently produced and fancy-free fragrance that matches cutesy styling (those vinyl flower/bees) and a sunny, sweet scent that is as wearable as it is joyful.

Please click on the image above to visit the Escentual Blog and read my review. Feel free to leave a comment there and share your thoughts about Honey!

The Simpsons
The Simpsons – The world’s favourite family.

The Scent a Celebrity Series is my vain attempt at picking perfumes for those who don’t know any better, yes I mean celebrities. Let’s face it, most celebrities are incapable of choosing decent clothing/boyfriends/girlfriends/movies/insert-celebrity-mistake-here let alone having the ability to make decisions about something as important as their scent – that’s where I come in. Never fear my dear schlebs, I will ensure that you are appropriately scented, all you need to do is listen.

So far the series has touched upon a variety of famous names including; those fuzzy-wuzzy comics The Muppets, the Icelandic super-talent that is Björk, schizophrenic female (but kinda-male due to her alter ego) rapper Nicki Minaj, the maniacal monarchs that make up the Royal Family and super-glam pop tour de force Scissor Sisters. Joining this patchwork quilt of celebrities is everyone’s favourite dysfunctional TV family, The Simpsons.

I am a die-hard The Simpsons Fan and I confess to having seen nearly every single episode at least twice. The colourful inhabitants of Springfield, or predominately-yellow inhabitants should I say, each provide a large dash of humour to a town that you wouldn’t really want to live in but are quite happy to watch from the comfort and relative safety of your own sofa.

Marc Jacobs

I don’t know about you, but when I wear fragrance I wear it for myself and myself alone. Sure, I love to share my passion with others, that is a huge part of my hobby, but when I wear perfume, I wear it because I enjoy it.

And I wear what I like!

Ever since I bought my first proper perfume (Kingdom by Alexander McQueen) I have loved ‘feminine’ fragrances. Looking through my collection it’s obvious that the ratio of feminine and masculine is weighted considerably towards the feminine. To this day I find myself drawn to the feminine releases much more than masculines. Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy wearing masculine fragrances but they just don’t wow me the way a lot of the feminines do.

I guess that I’m the King/Queen of fragrant gender bending.

Bang Bang

Those of you who read my review of the original Bang on Wednesday will know that I found it to be a thoroughly well executed masculine fragrance for the mass market, so you can imagine that I was quite looking forward to Bang’s first flanker; Bang Bang.

The name is amusing, ‘Bang Bang’, I thought; ‘Double the Bang? This must be a more intense version of Bang’, are you with me? Well you may be, but Marc Jacobs isn’t, Bang Bang is described as a ‘refreshing and dynamic’ version of the original.

If the thought of a ‘refreshing and dynamic’ masculine sends you into a dull-perfume induced coma then I promise to wake you at the end of this review.

Bang

This Friday I will be reviewing Marc Jacob’s latest fragrance Bang Bang, so for the sake of continuity I thought it would make sense to review the original Bang fragrance, which in my opinion is the better of the two, but we shall get to that on Friday!

Bang is Marc Jacob’s second masculine release after the eponymous Marc Jacobs for Men (the less said about that the better). It was released in 2010 to a lot of fan fair and positive criticism from the perfume blogosphere. Bang was a big launch for Jacobs, the fragrance was accompanied by a rather aggressive marketing campaign, which showed Mr Jacobs in all of his, ahem, glory.

Us perfumistas/fumeheads/fragonerds/whatever it is we call ourselves are keen followers of the mantra ‘It’s all about the juice’, meaning that we don’t care about the marketing, the bottle or any of the other stuff that comes with a fragrance. We just care about the smell!

It seems that we may differ from the mainstream consumer.

In the mainstream perfume industry the bottle is seen as the key marketing tool for a fragrance. Those of you who watched the recent BBC4 documentary ‘Perfume’ would have seen that in the case of the latest Tommy Hilfiger fragrances (Loud for Him and Her) the bottle and the marketing were the prime focus of the development team and the juice very much seemed like an afterthought.

So how important is the bottle to a perfumista?

I asked my Twitter followers whether they were swayed by the bottle design when purchasing a fragrance. The general consensus seemed to be that no, the bottle doesn’t matter, however an attractive bottle does help. Some even mentioned that if the fragrance was good and the bottle was bad they would decant the juice into something more aesthetically pleasing. We kept coming back to the same conclusion – it’s all about the juice…

I feel that I may buck the perfumista trend slightly, if I love a perfume I will buy it, regardless of whether it has a nice bottle or not. That said, I do like a nice bottle and have on occasions found myself wanting a fragrance because it’s housed in a nice bottle (Hello Lola by Marc Jacob!) I can’t help that I’m drawn to shiny, pretty objects can I?!

There are some brands out there with some really fabulous bottles and in this post I would like to highlight just a few of my favourites.