The Scent of You on My Skin
The scent of you on my skin, is salty.
It attracts me – magnetises me to you.
A whisper, a trail.
The scent of you on my skin, marks me.
It colours me with invisible ink – a tattoo in vibrant colours.
A pattern of you, an imprint.
The scent of you on my skin, is violets in warm earth.
They bloom in shades of purple – statues rising from the ground.
A flower, a totem.
L’Artisan Parfumeur has been at the forefront of niche perfumery for forty years and in those four decades they have not only reshaped the landscape of perfumery, they have created a vast number of iconic and beautiful fragrances. Today, the brand continues to offer intriguing olfactory editions mixing accessibility with a strangeness that features heavily in the DNA of the brand.
The two latest launches from L’Artisan Parfumeur are Mont de Narcisse and Mandarina Corsica. They sit in ‘Les Paysages’ a collection of fragrances inspired by different regions of the brand’s native France. Here the subjects are the rustic Auvergne and the hot Corsican vistas, with two fragrances that celebrate the physical, botanical and olfactory landscapes of France.
I’m always crushing on something scented or other. My nose knows no limits. Candy Crush is where I showcase the beautifully scented things I’m crushing on right now so you can hopefully develop a crush too.
Earlier this year CHANEL launches LES EAUX DE CHANEL, a trio of cologne-style Eau de Toilette fragrances inspired by travel, taking their names from locations of historical importance to Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, the brand’s founder. From Paris to Deauville, Biarritz and Venise, LES EAUX DE CHANEL take one on a journey through the world of perfumery, alighting at familiar genres; the cologne, the floral and the oriental. It’s a gorgeous collection.
The colour white is achromatic – it has no hue. But white is not the absence of colour, it is the abundance of it. White is what the eye sees when the three primary colours are viewed simultaneously. So despite our connotations of purity, of perfect white snow and blankness, the colour white is actually representative of something multifaceted, chaotic and brilliant. For Map of the Heart, the subversive Australian niche brand, the colour white represents love.
White Heart v.7 is Map of the Heart’s latest fragrance. It follow’s last year’s Pink Heart v.6 and is billed as ‘The Heart of Love’. It’s actually a very tricky perfume to define one that seems to enjoy jumping across many fragrance families and presenting florals, woods, spices, and aldehydes in a jumbled composition that holds interest due to its contrasting and confusing nature. I bet that description has caught your interest…
Over the coming weeks I’m going to be sharing my top five fragrances from some of my favourite perfume brands in a series I’m creatively calling “Top Five”…
CHANEL – just the word evokes luxury, simplicity, and abstraction. When I think of CHANEL I think of quality – beauty presented without fuss or gimmick. The fragrances have a purity to them – a clarity that is instantly recognisable as CHANEL. Remember, this is a brand that is responsible for launching the most famous fragrance in the world, a bottle of which sells every 30 seconds. Perfume and CHANEL are linked together in the same way that couture and CHANEL are. They are symbiotic and I tell you what, they have some utter crackers in their collection.
Here’s my top five CHANEL fragrances.
Christine Nagel has fully taken the reigns of perfumery at Hermès and she is seeing in a new dawn that is at once, respectful of the house signature that Jean-Claude Ellena spent years forging, but also entirely her own. Nagel brings a bit more body to Hermès’ once pastel and watercolored approach to perfumery, evoking luxury with more vivid colours and richer textures. She has brought a playfulness (see Twilly d’Hermès) and has even subverted the very essence of Hermès’ Hermessence collection by giving it an oriental twist – all to make her own stamp. Now it’s time for Nagel to bring us a new twist on the brand’s signature masculine: Terre d’Hermès.
Terre d’Hermès is perhaps Ellena’s most iconic creation for Hermès – it’s also a big seller and easily one of the greatest modern masculines on the market. With that in mind it’s easy to see it as hollowed ground in a way – something not to be touched and tinkered with. But touching and tinkering is what the perfume industry does best and Terre d’Hermès has been reinterpreted by Ellena on two occasions (the Parfum and Eau Très Fraîche) and now it’s Nagel’s turn with Terre d’Hermès Eau Intense Vétiver. In her version, Nagel presents a rebalanced interpretation where “the initial woody and mineral balance of Terre becomes woody and vegetal.”
I’m always crushing on something scented or other. My nose knows no limits. Candy Crush is where I showcase the beautifully scented things I’m crushing on right now so you can hopefully develop a crush too.
I often feel as if I should have been born a handsome and stylish Parisian gentleman. The type of Frenchman I’d like to be is the artistic, knitwear-wearing, reflective type who absorbs culture like good wine. He loves art as much as the gym, speaks numerous languages and is an excellent cook. I’d be called Gabriel or Gaspard, or maybe Jules (can you tell I’ve not thought about this at all?) I’d actually enjoy coffee (why does it smell so good yet taste so bad?!) and I’d be really bloody cool. Oh and I’d wear GUERLAIN exclusively (Jicky I reckon) because why wouldn’t you? A boy can dream of being so chic, but sometimes a fragrance can be the closest thing one gets to making such a fantasy become a reality. Enter Le Frenchy by Guerlain.
Le Frenchy is part of Guerlain’s ‘Les Parisiens’ family – an exclusive collection of reissued masculine fragrances featuring the likes of Derby and Arsene Lupin. This one is a modern reworking of a historic lineage: Aimé Guerlain’s Verveine from 1872, which itself was reinterpreted by Jean-Paul Guerlain as ‘Eau de Verveine’ in 1983. Now we have Guerlain Perfumer Thierry Wasser’s take on ‘verveine’, cheekily entitled ‘Le Frenchy’ (The Frenchman). GUERLAIN calls it “chic and relaxed” which is so not my physical aesthetic, so perhaps Le Frenchy can help me out a bit, after I all I may not have the “bold elegance” of the fragrance, but I reckon I could pull some “natural charm” out of the bag. Let’s see…
The Candy Perfume Boy 