From exploring perfume as a novice this past year, these are the fragrances I enjoyed the most and that I would re-buy once my sample has evaporated. I have sampled so many random things and it is really the only way to learn. The more you smell and compare, the more you know when you […]
Celebrity death match
“Two households, both alike in dignity”:Shalimar, Guerlain 1921 versus Opium, Yves St Laurent 1977. I thought it would be fun to play off pairs of iconic fragrances and see what I make of them. These are two big hitter, famous oriental* fragrances from two of the huge French houses, created 56 years apart. (*The term […]
Mon Parfum by Paloma Picasso – a Halloween scent for Anjelica Houston in The Witches, 1990
Happy Halloween 2020 everyone. Now is the winter of our collapsing health service. Brits grit our teeth for covid-19’s second surge (flu season, cold weather, schools back, universities back, continued incompetency and contemptuous scapegoating from Boris Johnson). However I am relatively cheerful as I love Halloween. I love watching seventies and eighties horror films under […]
Dryad by Papillon Perfumes
Dryad is my favourite of the set. It is a dry, bitter, earthen, green scent. To me it feels introspective and quiet; old, yet natural and alive. There is a freshness to it, but it is the earthy dark freshness of damp leaves on a forest floor, and of padded cushions of moss and lichen on tree trunks. This is not the freshness of breezes and open green spaces in bright sunlight.