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Independent Perfumery

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Neela Vermeire Creations Niral: A Review

11th April 2018

Picture a delicately carved silver dish piled high with quivering cubes of rose milk lokhoum, barely set and opalescent. This tower of pink jellies, as wobbly-legged as a newborn giraffe, sits perched on a folded suede opera glove. In the background, a complex but translucent inter-knitting of pink pepper, fruits, roses, and white tea recalls the faded-silk grandeur of both Etro’s Etra and Rajasthan,  a series of polite, sepia-toned portraits of India as seen through the rose-tinted glasses of imperialists.

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Citrus Floral Independent Perfumery Orange Blossom Review Summer Vanilla

4160 Tuesdays Freeway: A Review

10th March 2018

I was looking at some iPhone photos and videos on the TV last night with the family when a photo of our old terrace on our 13th floor apartment in Montenegro came up on the screen. Obviously taken as the sun was going down, two little sweaty faces beamed up at the camera, the heat so strong that it seemed to radiate off the 3 year-old photo and straight into our living room.

 

For a moment, there was silence as we all gazed rapt at the screen. Then, from deep within me, came a noise halfway between the groan of a dying cow and a barely-suppressed sob. “Mama, don’t,” hissed my 7 year-old son.

 

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Capsule Wardrobe Coffee Floral Floral Oriental Fruity Chypre Gourmand Green Floral Incense Independent Perfumery Leather Lists Musk Oud Patchouli Resins Round-Ups Sandalwood Smoke Vanilla Vetiver Violet Woods

Small But Perfectly Formed: Building a Capsule Perfume Wardrobe with Travel Sizes

9th March 2018

Building a Capsule Perfume Wardrobe: If you had to build, or rebuild, your perfume wardrobe using only travel sizes and minis, could you do it? What would be on your list? 

 

A couple of questions have been dogging me lately. First, how much perfume do I actually use in a year? And second, if my collection of full bottles was lost or stolen, would it be possible to build a small capsule wardrobe that covers all possible scenarios using only minis and travel sizes, and sticking to a putative budget of +/- $30 per bottle?

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Animalic Citrus Floral Hay Independent Perfumery Leather Review Smoke

Aftelier Tango: A Review

13th February 2018

 

A common complaint about natural perfumes is that they rarely, if ever, transcend their materials. That without the lifting sparkle of aldehydes or the spaciousness of white musk or Iso E Super they take up a dense, muddy form, their back flattened against a wall. To be honest, as much as I love natural perfumes, it’s hard to deny this.

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Animalic Chocolate Gourmand Independent Perfumery Leather Masculine Oud Resins Review Round-Ups Smoke Spice Tobacco Vetiver Woods

Areej Le Doré Oud Zen v. Oud Piccante v. Russian Oud

11th February 2018

 

Let’s do a little side-by-side with the Areej Le Doré ouds, shall we? It will be kind of like when Basenoters start threads pitting one fragrance against another, like prize bulls, only hopefully not as cutthroat. My reviews will be purely impressionistic – short on helpful detail and long on the images that jump to mind when I wear them, so if you’re in the market for a quick take, read on. If you’re looking for something more detailed, look anywhere else. If that’s not a fair warning, then I don’t know what is…

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Animalic Attars & CPOs Floral Independent Perfumery Musk Review Saffron Tuberose Vetiver

Walimah Attar by Areej Le Doré: A Review

7th February 2018

 

The opening of Walimah Attar by Areej Le Doré is strangely familiar to me, and it haunts me for a while until I realize that it simply shares what I would characterize as the syrupy, sepia-toned density common to all blends of natural floral absolutes in attar or natural perfumery. When you mix a bunch of floral absolutes together, they combine to make a thick, oily-muddy fug of smells only vaguely recognizable as floral in dilution. Unlike the synthetic representations of flowers in mixed media perfumes or commercial perfumery, where you can clearly differentiate one floral note from another, the flowers in all-natural attars don’t give up their individual identities without a fight. They’re melted down into the soup, so to speak. But still, there are markers that can tip you off as to what’s there.

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Ambergris Animalic Attars & CPOs Chocolate Gourmand Independent Perfumery Iris Leather Oud Review Round-Ups Sandalwood Suede Violet

Strangelove NYC: silencethesea, meltmyheart, & deadofnight

5th February 2018

 It’s difficult to figure out what Strangelove NYC is, as a brand. If you were to go by appearances alone – the fashionably minimalistic, almost text-free website, the $260 perfume necklaces with 1.25mls of perfume oil, the fact that Helena Christiansen is the brand’s spokesperson – you’d be forgiven for writing these off as perfumes for New York socialites, designed to look banging on the glossy, bronzed neck of a supermodel as she poses for a photo to go with her ITC Top Shelf interview.

 

But you’d be wrong.

 

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Floral Independent Perfumery Iris Osmanthus Review Suede

Belles Rives by La Parfumerie Moderne: A Review

4th February 2018

 

I’ve never smelled the legendary Iris Gris by Jacques Fath, but I imagine it to be something along the lines of Belles Rives by Marc-Antoine Corticchiato for La Parfumerie Moderne: the dove-grey pallor of orris warmed at the edges by a shimmer of peach.

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