Too Many New Fragrances and Stagnating Sales Lead Some Brands to Go Upscale

Eau de barrel scraping was the big fragrance of the year, with notes of Z list and undertones of desperation combined to create a new low in celebrity-endorsed perfumes.

Perfume-Smellin' Things Perfume Blog: Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh: The Gifts of the Magi in Perfumery

Wouldn't you like to smell like the Pope? Well, you can! Apparently, The Pope’s Cologne is a classic Old World cologne made from the private formula of Pope Pius IX (1792-1878). It is, they claim, made from an exclusive 150 year old formula, using the original essential oils as were used by the perfumers of old, creating a fresh fragrance with "surprising" notes of violet and citrus. (I can't imagine what's so surprising about violet and citrus, other than possibly it being a suprise that a Pope smelled like flowers and fruit?)

You can even get a free sample (USA only, I would imagine, given postal laws regarding shipping hazardous goods and flammable liquids). The website even has a collection of interesting pictures of the Pope you can smell like!

Well, I don't know how I missed this, but I was just spending some time looking over the content at PerfumesPedia.com and I must say, it's really good. I came across it looking for a review of a new fragrance (still haven't found that review), though I'm not sure why Google thought it was a good match (the search terms would seem not to be a likely), but I'm glad I found it, anyway.

There are so many products on the market to make your home smell fresh, clean, and lovely that it can be hard to choose the best one for you. Here are some hints about some of the most popular home fragrancing options. (Basenotes article)

Well, I haven't got a proper blogroll thingy set up here (I really probably should do that at some point, though), but I thought I'd pass on a link for a very good perfume blog: Fragrance Bouquet. I love her reviews! I particularly enjoyed the review of Donna Karan "Cashmere Mist", which starts off with: "It is not surprising to me that Cashmere Mist was released in 1994, the same year CK One was introduced. The market was ripe for perfumes that were clean, unobtrusive and almost asexual – perfect matches for the heroin-chic, boyish figures that were advertising clothes at the time."

The world's first spiritual perfume - Virtue(R) - was premiered this week by IBI, a niche fragrance company in Orange, CA. Based upon an inspired Biblical formula, the perfume is designed to be a reminder of God, Christ, spiritual self and soul.
 
Virtue - (c) Send2Press"We turned to the Bible to seek inspiration about which items to include and became convinced that a formulation would reveal itself," explains Rick Larimore, IBI's chief executive officer. "Creating Virtue(R) has been an adventurous journey through fragrance and scripture, with remarkable miracles confirming our choices."'
 
Virtue®’s subtle blend includes top notes of apricot (the real “forbidden fruit”), pomegranate and fig that transition to a gentle heart of iris, warming to a golden base of rich, exotic woods of frankincense, myrrh, aloe, and spikenard. Several ingredients cost up to $4,000 per kilogram, making Virtue® a truly precious mixture of oils. It is available in a 1.7-fluid ounce French bottle and over cap with 24-kt gold raised lettering on the bottle and embossed gold foil lettering on the box, pamphlet enclosed.

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Having not smelled it, I can't comment on the actual fragrance, but the marketing is... interesting. Who knew God wore perfume?

From the wonderful Now Smell This, a full and interesting article on how (and why!) to decant perfumes. Great reading (and it's a great site).

Archaeologists have unearthed the world's oldest perfumes on the island of Cyprus - 4,000-year-old sweet smelling concoctions brewed from lavender, bay, rosemary, pine or coriander, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The man who created David Beckham's aftershave claims he has never been paid for the scent that has made the star more than $39m (€29.7m).

Fashion house and perfumer Chanel, famed for its iconic, $300-an-ounce No. 5 scent, announced that it has created a cost-efficient fragrance for the Third World, one specifically designed for the rigors of dry, dusty, less glamorous environments in the Southern Hemisphere.
Chanel Develops

"Smelling positively bewitching should be the right of everyone, not just a privileged few," said Chanel CEO Maureen Chiquet at the gala launch for the new scent, Chanel 3rd, in Paris' Centre Georges Pompidou Monday. "It is our hope and belief that this new fragrance will bring much-needed panache to the Third World."

(Okay, the article is in The Onion, so take it with a grain of salt, heh)

Move over Ralph Lau­ren, Dol­ce & Gab­bana and oth­er pur­vey­ors of gla­m­or per­fumes. The next rage in fra­grance may be Eau de spi­der mon­key.

The rich and famous have turned the public obsession with their lives into a highly profitable industry, with 37 celebrity scents flooding onto the market in the past 3 years and no sign of the trend coming to an end.

Quite accidently and quite happily, I stumbled on this fascinating essay on Japanese culture and the way they regard fragrances and perfumes. Really interesting read. (Especially if you're a perfume and sociology nerd like I am.)

Some thieves prefer jewels.
 
Others like cash.
 
But a thief in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood -- who police believe is the man they just arrested -- has been going for Davidoff, Kenneth Cole, Aqua Di Gio by Armani, Issey Miyake.
 
Expensive perfumes.

Chanel No. 5 is one of the best known church fumigation systems in the world. Invented by Pope Edgar during the Byzantine period in 100 B.C., the scent has been suffocating people ever since.

(Keep in mind, this link is to an UNcyclopedia...)

Well, my favorite perfume site is down due to unforseen circumstances (eek!). If you're looking for Basenotes.net, you won't be able to find it right now. There is, however, a temporary site available: http://www.basenotes.eu/.

[EDIT] Yay! Basenotes is back where it belongs.

Good perfume blog!

I admit it. I've been very remiss in adding new stuff here. I've been terribly busy with other stuff, AND I haven't really had a lot of opportunity to sample new things for review. I do have one that will be coming soon, though, as I've finally gotten a shipment that was sent back in March (heaven only knows what mysterious postal black hole it was in for months, but it showed up on my front porch out of nowhere, with not even a note of explanation!).

In the meantime, you might enjoy a visit to Bois de Jasmin.

Flowerbomb, a perfume sold in a bottle the shape of a hand grenade, has been withdrawn from duty free shops at Oslo airport so that extremists will not be tempted to use it as a prop.

Note: This is a PDF document. You'll need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader (available for free from Adobe) in order to read it. It can also be a bit slow to load, but it's well worth reading:

The Dangers of Fakes

"Counterfeit perfume can often burn your skin or leave you with a nasty rash. Tests on some fake fragrances have revealed that urine has been used as a stabiliser. Handley Brustad, Senior Trading Standards Officer at Cardiff County Council, reports:” With perfume, you really don’t know what you’re getting. We had one bottle of ‘perfume’ analysed, and found it to be pondwater with a fragrance added.”

Let that be yet another caution on the subject of fake perfumes. Only buy from reputable sellers!

I'm not at all sure how I feel about this. I've been shopping at the Body Shop for years now, and I love their attitude and their products. I don't have anything against L'Oreal, particularly (although I will say that I'm not at all keen on animal testing for cosmetics, which they have yet to ban), but I don't like to think how The Body Shop might change for the worse in the hands of a huge cosmetics corporation...

Anyway, read more if you like:

L'Oreal buys Body Shop
ROUNDUP L'Oreal buys Body Shop
L'Oreal buys Body Shop for $1.14B
L'Oreal to buy The Body Shop

Some of France's top perfume makers, from Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, have been fined millions of dollars for allegedly colluding with vendors on prices over a three-year period, the antitrust authority announced Tuesday.
 
The Competition Council said it has imposed $55.1 million in fines to 13 perfume and cosmetic brands and three perfume vendors for price collusion between 1997 and 2000.

ScentedPages is a virtual library catalogue dedicated to the culture of smell. It contains an extensive bibliography on the history and culture of perfume, a dedicated press archive, a miscellaneous collection of articles and literary excerpts related to perfumery, and a compendium with relevant addresses.

"HP has taken umbrage with a Gartner analyst who pointed out that at $2,145 per liter, printer ink is more expensive per drop than Chanel No.5 or a good bottle of whiskey. HP hit back with a prepared email statement, saying the premium pricing just reflects their investment in R&D." This isn't new, of course. We've had a few stories in the past about how ink costs more than vintage champagne and how filling a swimming pool with ink would cost nearly $6 billion.

If you haven't visited the links page, you might want to do that now. I've added a number of new links to various kinds of sites (lots of information sites!).

Fake cosmetics is a growing problem of global proportions. In Europe alone, EU customs authorities have reported that seizures of counterfeit cosmetic products, including fragrances, jumped by 800 per cent in the period 2003 – 2003, with the main hubs for the trafficking of such products found in Eastern Europe and China.