As you may know, Nick Gilbert, my scented partner in crime and I run a perfumed Twitter project called ‘@Fragrantreviews’, in which we review fragrances in 140 characters or less. Well, if you didn’t you do now and you’re in luck because it’s that time of the month where we round up all of the reviews from the last 30 days. Without further ado, I bring you all of our reviews posted in June 2017! They range from the sublime to the disappointing, and all that’s in between!
Oh and don’t forget, if you’re based in the UK and fancy the chance of winning a £100 voucher to be used at Escentual, then click here to enter my fifth birthday giveaway. You’ve got to be in it to win it, as they say!
Woah! I can’t quite believe it but this month The Candy Perfume Boy turned five years old. That’s right, we’ve been going at this fragrance blogging malarky for five whole years and what a wonderful time it has been. Since July 2011 we have chucked a few perfumers and brand owners onto desert islands, scented The Muppets, Björk and Kate Bush, delved deep into notes such as tuberose, violet and oud, and talked about Thierry Mugler one heck of a lot. What a wonderful five years!
To celebrate this big milestone, I’ve put together a quick retrospective of some of my favourite articles, one for each year, published on The Candy Perfume Boy since its inauguration in 2011. I’ve also asked my friends at Escentual to share some of their favourite columns AND to top it all off they’ve been generous enough to offer up a £100 voucher as a giveaway to celebrate. So let’s hop to it!
MUGLER may only have one masculine fragrance on the market, the astronomically excessive A*Men (or Angel Men as it’s also known), but they’ve certainly made up for a lack of diversity in their male lineup with a prolific number of flankers. Since its launch in 1996, A*Men has been boozed up, sexed up and made to sit down with a hot cup of coffee to recover. It’s a fragrance that lends itself very well to enhancements and MUGLER have been incredibly savvy with their many interpretations of the scent’s chocolate cacophony, always taking its signature and teasing out an entirely new and exciting facet in the way that a good flanker should.
20 years on and the latest olfactory twist in the A*Men lineup is Pure Tonka an “exhilarating fragrance for a man no one can resist” that sees a “searing fusion between the sensuality of tonka beans and the purity of lavender”. The tonka bean is a staple of masculine perfumery due to its high content of coumarin, which is a key part of the fougére accord. It has a vast and complex odour profile that ranges from hay, vanilla and marzipan to sour cherry, liquorice and clove. In the original A*Men, the tonka bean was merely a small cog within a much larger wheel, which also consisted of other moving parts such as; lavender, mint, coffee, patchouli, tar, vanilla and caramel. In A*Men Pure Tonka, the tonka bean is pulled right into the forefront and centre, and the volume is dialled way up to extreme levels to create a MUGLER fragrance that is really quite something to behold, even by their standards.
Pack your Pokéballs and prepare for a LOT of walking because Pokémon Go fever is here! That’s right, adults and children all over the world (myself included) can be found traipsing around and through fields to find some adorable but deadly pocket monsters. There will be gym battles and friendly rivalry but from what I’ve seen so far, the game has got people out of the house and talking to each other, which is not a bad thing at all.
For my Escentual column this week I have nerded out and brought two of my obsessions together: perfume and Pokémon. In this piece, I talk about some fragrances that you will need on your journey to become a Pokémon Master – scents that’ll keep you smelling fresh but will also help you out if you’re stuck between a Snorlax and a field of Pidgeys. So, if you’re Pokémon and perfume mad, click here to head over to Escentual to read ‘Gotta Spritz Them All’.
La Petite Robe Noire Intense – The Latest Addition for Your Wardrobe
GUERLAIN’S La Petite Robe Noire has quickly become a part of the fabric of the brand, taking its place next to the likes of icons such as Shalimar,Mitsouko and Samsara, and deservedly so. With LPRN, GUERLAIN took the fruity floral genre and showed everybody else just how it should be done, specifically with fizz, flair and a shedload of fun. The fragrance has been a huge hit, and whilst marketing may have played a big part in this, one cannot deny that La Petite Robe Noire is; a) an excellent fragrance (that fizzy cherry juxtaposed against that smoky black tea is just gorgeous); and b) a GUERLAIN fragrance through and through.
So with success come flankers and GUERLAIN have served us a number of delectable noire treats since LPRN’s launch in 2012 (well it’s mainstream launch, that is, the scent was a boutique exclusive launched in 2009 that was subsequently remixed for the wider market). The latest of which is La Petite Robe Noire Intense, a fragrance that evokes the idea of a breeze billowing though the pleats of a dress as it is transported around the world. That’s right, Miss La Petite Robe Noire is globetrotting and she has packed a brand new dress for her journey. But what does this particular garment smell like? Well, the answer is simple: it smells like fun!
I’m taking a bit of a blogging break this week to enjoy the gorgeous weather we are having, and perhaps also to play lots of Pokémon Go too… Anyway, less of the Pokémon and on to perfume. This week I have mostly been falling for Stella McCartney’s POP, which is probably the most fun a person can have with their clothes on and in olfactory form. This is watermelon bubblegum and plastic tuberose shrink wrap in neon shades of pink and green. Honestly, it’s enough to make you grin from ear-to-ear like the Cheshire Cat. Click here to head on over to Escentual to read my review in full.
One could quite easily look at Amouroud, a new niche brand that celebrates oud, perfumery’s note du jour, and feel a little bit skeptical. One might even be inspired to exclaim “oh for the love of oud” in a loud, exasperated tone. But that would be a bit OTT, admittedly. Just ask yourself this question, how many niche houuses out there are offering exclusive oud fragrances, not to mention exclusive oud fragrances in black and gold bottles? Well the answer is many, but Amouroud isn’t just another cynical brand trying to make a quick buck, they are in fact, passionate about perfume.
Amouroud comes from The Perfumer’s Workshop, who have been creating perfume since the 1970s and are most famous for their Tea Rose fragrance. They launch this month in Harrods with an initial collection of six fragrances, each of which showcases or contains oud. Speaking of oud, my good friends Nick and Pia made a valid point in a recent episode of their Vlog Love to Smell (subscribe, goddamit), when they said that oud is now its very own olfactive family, in the way that orientals and chypres are, rather than just an ongoing trend. Anyway, I digress. Amouroud are not the brand that one may think they are and what they have done is really quite intriguing.
I’ll do a bit of a topsy-turvy review here and provide my overall verdict of the collection before I do a scent-by-scent rundown. Amouroud is a very nicely pieced together brand. One can see that years of experience have been poured into each and every single detail. The bottles are heavy and luxurious, the box has a metal plaque appliquéd onto it and the fragrances themselves are well thought out, and exciting. But the best thing about Amouroud is the price. Where other brands think that £300+ is acceptable for any old scent in a blingy bottle, this one is content with marketing 100ml of interesting and enjoyable Eau de Parfum for £145. That’s practically free in this post-niche day and age! One other nice touch is the fact that the brand will give you a generous spray sample of your second favourite scent in the collection, alongside your purchase. How nice is that?
One of the brands Escentual turned me on to was Van Cleef & Arpels and more specifically, their more exclusive line of ‘Collection Extraordinaire’ fragrances. The scents within the collection are often modern takes on classic themes. I wouldn’t say that they are particularly innovative or weird, but many of them are beautiful and Moonlight Patchouli, the latest addition to the series, is no exception. Click here to read my full review of this gorgeous take on perfumery’s timeless lovers, rose and patchouli.
As you may know, Nick Gilbert, my scented partner in crime and I run a perfumed Twitter project called ‘@Fragrantreviews’, in which we review fragrances in 140 characters or less. Well, if you didn’t you do now and you’re in luck because it’s that time of the month where we round up all of the reviews from the last 30 days. Without further ado, I bring you all of our reviews posted in June 2016! They range from the sublime to the disappointing, and all that’s in between!
If last year’s Misia was anything to go by, perfumer Olivier Polge is definitely finding his feet at CHANEL, having taken over the position of perfumer-in-residence from his father, Jacques Polge, the man behind the likes of Antaeus, Coco, Coco Mademoiselle, Égoïste – need I go on? Big boots to fill, most certainly, but M. Polge Jnr certainly has a fair few hits under his own belt, scents such as Dior Homme, which, lets face it is already a modern classic, so perhaps those shoes aren’t quite so big after all?
For his second outing in CHANEL’s niche line, ‘Les Exclusifs’, Olivier Polge pays homage to Arthur Capel, Gabrielle Chanel’s patron and lover. ‘Boy’, as he was called, lends his name to the fragrance, which is a feminine take on the typically masculine fougère inspired by Chanel’s clothing, couture that borrowed heavily from the codes of menswear and tailoring. BOY the fragrance has been created to capture Capel’s “irresistible elegance” and “virile strength” and is a gender-bending scent that borrows from the olfactory codes of men and women. As CHANEL describe it, BOY is the “mark of a man on the skin of a woman”.
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