Perfume can be more to you than a nice fragrance or scent. It can add something you crave for or lack at that moment like joy, feminity, elegance, calmness, softness, feeling beautiful or sexy.
At times when I crave for a feminine scent like Pure Distance Opardu I am not exactly wearing feminine clothes but I would like to feel more feminine. When I want to feel joyful I reach for Hilde Soliani Luce or uplifted Hermes Eau D’Orange Verte.
Before selecting a fragrance I ask myself what do I need or crave for at this moment and which fragrance can help me with this after which I select a scent. You can try this for yourself. One way to do if you haven’t a whole collection of perfumes is to use sample kits like I did with the Pure Distance sample set and Opardu and see what different perfumes can do by experimenting with them.
By using the different tags on this website you can learn more and see what different fragrances can do for you.
What is your experience. Do you feel perfume can do something extra for you?
Photographs: both were made by me. All rights reserved.
Iunx Eau Frappe was made by perfumer Olivia Giacobetti. She is one of my favorite perfumers and made wonderful perfumes like L’Artisan Parfumeur Dzing!, D’Orsay Tilleul, Frederic Malle En Passant, L’Artisan Parfumeur L´Ete En Douce. I have scented a lot of her perfumes but not a rose perfume. En Passant, a beautiful lilac fragrance was reviewed by me before.
While being in Paris some time ago I went to the Iunx shop next to the Costes Hotel. The Iunx shop sells home fragrances and perfumes solely made by Olivia Giacobetti. These are very exclusive as they are only sold here. It was owned before by Shiseido and closed for some time but is open now, fortunately.
The shop is quite small and uncomfortable, very minimalistic. All fragrances can be scented through a kind of diffusers. It is a very pleasant way to scent fragrances. Shopping in this shop is made quite interesting. Photographs of these tubes can be seen on the website of the Non Blonde. In all the excitement I forgot to make photographs while visiting. After hearing a fellow perfumista, Ron Slomowicz was visiting Paris I asked him to make some photographs. He was not allowed to make photographs inside the store but he did make some wonderful photographs from the florist next door.
After reading about the fragrance L´Ether on several websites I tested this several times in the shop on skin and on a blotter as well. But I felt a bit like the story of the emperor not wearing any clothes. I did not scent anything, a very strange experience in a perfume shop. Fortunately I found another amazing scent, No 6 Eau Frappee.
Eau Frappee instanty gave me the feeling of what a beautiful bouquet of roses should smell like. Very fresh, slightly citrus, soft and slightly powdery. Its notes of combava (kaffir lime ), sweet lemon and citron are meant to mimic the scent of soft rose. Eau Frappee is sold as an eau de toilette in a large 150 ml very large and not very practicle spray bottle for 135 euro. My bottle was a gift from my boyfriend. The package is beautiful as you can see on the photograph.
I can imagine some will not find Eau Frappee a very interesting scent. It is not layered, does not change its scent after some time. But to me it is the interpretation of Olivia Giacobetti of the scent of a rose, soft light citrus fresh almost transparent. It would make an excellent room spray in a rose flower shop, as the flower shop next to the Costes Hotel on the photographs which Ron Slomowicz made. Roses in a bouquet in the Netherlands do not scent any more, but if they would, I would like them to scent like Eau Frappee.
Rose shop photographs were specially made by Ron Slomowicz. Thank you very much !
Photographs from the Iunx shop:http://www.thenonblonde.com/2011/09/iunx-perfumes-postcards-from-paris.html
More information on Iunx: http://boisdejasmin.com/2005/06/iunx_10_edts_sp.html
In my English Classics Bookclub we just discussed Daphne du Maurier Rebecca. I brought perfumes to suit the main caracters in the book. Rebecca was written in 1938 and filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940. I found it an interesting and at times haunting book with the dead Rebecca de Winter in the leading role. It starts with the very catching and famous sentence: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’
For the three main caracters Rebecca de Winter, Maxim de Winter and the young nameless second Mrs de Winter I choose fragrances which would suit them as a person. It was great fun to do. All of the fragrances were from my own perfume collection so I could bring the bottles for people to sniff. *
Rebecca the first Mrs de Winter, beautiful, ruthless, evil and chameleonic with the people around her. I choose the rich floral and creamy Isabey Gardenia for her glamorous evenings at the Mandeley estate in Cornwall. For her secret life in London I choose the darker mysterious Mona di Orio Oudh Osmanthus. In the book the clothes of Rebecca were said to smell of powdery of azalea (rhodondendron) but I have never found a scenting azalea or a fragrance centered around azalea.
Maxim de Winter, widower and a handsome elegant man in his forties. In the beginning of the book Maxim walks out of the bathroom while shaving to meet the young nameless (soon to be) Mrs de Winter. An intimate scene, which inspired me to look for a classic cologne like Aqua di Parma Colonia.
The second Mrs de Winter, very young, attractive, a bit of a grey mouse in my opinion but others from the Book Club saw her as girlish, pretty and not yet fully developed. As she did not have much money I chose a cheaper fragrance. There are many references in the book to flowers in the garden like azalea, roses and lilacs. The beautiful, lilac centered discontinued Yves Rocher Pur Desir de Lilas would have suited the young Mrs de Winter. The others thought so too. Maxim de Winter could have bought her a pretty fragrance like Dior La Collection Privee Grand Bal.
These are the fragrances I choose. What do you think of them? Have you read Rebecca or did you see the Hitchcock film? Did you like it?
photograph 1 and 2 taken from the Internet, photograph 3 was made by me.
*I had asked people to comment on the Facebook Fragrance forum which perfume they would chose and got wonderful ideas like Worth Je Reviens, JHAG Lady Vengeance, Givenchy Monsieur de Givenchy. But as I did not own any of these fragrances, I choose scents which I could bring for people to smell. Nonetheless I enjoyed all suggestions and will try them in the near future.
Disclaimer: all fragrances which I brought to the meeting were bought by me. The large Dior Grand Bal sample was a kind gift from Tara.
Perfume can be more to you than a nice fragrance or scent. It can add something you crave for or lack at that moment like joy, feminity, elegance, calmness, softness, feeling beautiful or sexy.
Maxim de Winter, widower and a handsome elegant man in his forties. In the beginning of the book Maxim walks out of the bathroom while shaving to meet the young nameless (soon to be) Mrs de Winter. An intimate scene, which inspired me to look for a classic cologne like Aqua di Parma Colonia.