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La Chasse aux Papillons: prelude to summer is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Le Muguet Guerlain 2013

Notes:

• Top: Green Notes.
• Heart: Lily of the Valley, Lilac.
• Base: Jasmine, Rose.

The second of the new fragrances is Caligna from L’Artisan Parfumeur which they describe as follows: “Caligna honours an emblematic but less well-known ingredient of the Grasse region: The Clary Sage. This fresh, sensual, woody and aromatic ingredient was the starting point for this perfume. The herbal note is enhanced by the fig and jasmine marmalade at the heart of the fragrance, to give the scent a rich and aromatic effect. The warm woody base is underpinned with pine and a resin from the lentisk plant; a distillation of the Mediterranean hillsides in Grasse.”

Caligna from L’Artisan Parfumeur

The third of the new fragrances is a scented candle called Jonquille from Diptyque. Jonquille evokes the floral, green, natural freshness of a bunch of daffodils, picked straight from the garden. Like all Diptyque candles, this one lasts a long time and its scent is heavenly.

Jonquille scent candle from Diptyque

If you love new fragrances and are going to Paris, read Mapplr’s guide on Where to shop in Paris for perfume and scented candles.

Three new fragrances for spring 2013 is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Description from Diptyque website: A special fragrance which pays homage to the most celebrated fir tree in the world, it transports the user straight to the heart of a forest of golden spruce trees. Infused with balmy, comforting and warming notes, it conjures up the sweetness of festive memories.

If you prefer a warmer, more exotic scent, check out Amber Oud, a spicy Oriental blend of rare spices infused with warming resins and balsams.

Perfect winter candle from Diptyque: Sapin Dore is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Coming soon to Les Exclusifs: Chanel 1932 perfume is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

I recently attended the launch of Diptyque’s newest fragrance called 34 boulevard St. Germain at their San Francisco boutique on Maiden Lane (near Union Square). The name comes from the original Diptyque store in Paris. Since this is their 50th anniversary, so why not launch a new fragrance?

Description from the Diptyque website:

34 boulevard Saint Germain is a fragrance celebrating Diptyque’s 50th anniversary. 34 encapsulates the scent of its first boutique located on 34 boulevard Saint Germain with rare and precious fragrances. The result is a fragrance that has an innovative and complex signature. Developed around a chypre backbone, the base notes of wood and balms add comfort and create addiction. It is a rich and voluptuous fragrance which is suitable for men and women.

The famous oval-shaped label is printed on the boxes and determined the shape of the eau de toilette’s glass bottle. 34 boulevard Saint Germain engraved on the black Bakelite magnetic cap like stamp. The concave base of the bottle evokes the rounded form of the paperweights sold at 34 boulevard Saint Germain.

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The fragrance comes in different forms: eau de toilette, scented candle, scented oval and room spray.
I like the rich, woodsy scent, which like my other Diptyque favorites (Feu de Bois, Eau de Lierre, Chypre and Philosykos and Tam Dao) are much more mysterious and sophisticated (at least to me) than floral scents.

http://www.diptyqueparis.com

Diptyque’s latest scent: 34 boulevard St. Germain is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

I am absolutely addicted to Monocle’s Hinoki scent, created for MONOCLE magazine by Comme des Garçons. I simply can’t stop spritzing it all over me. It is a woodsy scent that is nothing like anything else I’ve smelled. According to Monocle’s founder, Tyler Brûlé, the inspiration for the scent came from ”a perfectly still slightly chilly spring morning spent soaking in an indoor/outdoor tub at the Tawaraya in Kyoto. It pulls together a memory of the mosses and trees outdoors and the sharp notes of the boxy, hinoki tub.”

To infuse your home with this enchanting scent, get the Hinoki candle. The MONOCLE shop did not have this in stock when I visited so this is something I’ll have to bring back next time I go to LA.

Monocle shop in Los Angeles

You can buy the Hinoki scent from the lovely little Monocle shop at the Brentwood Country Mart in West Los Angeles or online (£65). The Monocle boutique is the perfect place to get gifts for friends, relatives and business colleagues, and also for yourself. It’s a jewel of a store selling thick Mackintosh wool blankets made in Scotland, Delvaux passport holders, Porter travel bags, linen notebooks by German notebook maker Brandbook.de, menswear (Kitsune shirts, Aspesi swim trunks, Drakes of London gloves and scarves), and more.

If Hinoki doesn’t quite do it for you, make sure you try their second scent called Laurel which is inspired by a trip to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. It is a fresh clean scent that has warm laurel notes.

Monocle x Commes des Garçons (50 ml $120) available at:
The Monocle Shop
225 26th Street
Shop 19 B
Santa Monica CA 90402
+1 310 395 4180

MONOCLE online store

**If you are looking for other unusual, enchanting perfumes in Los Angeles, go to Le Labo on
8385 West 3rd Street.

Monocle x Comme des Garcons Scent One: Hinoki is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Hasu-no-Hana is a perfume originally created in 1888 by Grossmith, a London perfume house that was established in 1835. It is described as “a bright, radiant floral composition with pronounced Chypré and Oriental facets on a woody, dry, very sensual base.”

Grossmith has been out of the hands of descendants of the founder, John Grossmith, for 30 years. But recently Simon Brooke, John Grossmith’s great great grandson, took over the firm and brought back the old fragrances. They used the original formulae described in hand-written books rescued in 1940 from the original Grossmith premises in Newgate Street, London and reformulated Hasu-no-Hana and two other fragrances (Phul-nana and Shem-el-Nessim) for the modern age. The perfumes will not smell exactly like the original because European regulations forbid the use of certain compounds that were used in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

You can find Hasu-no-Hana in the UK and in a few select parfumeries around the world. As of this writing, the company does not have an online store yet.

There has been a resurgence in interest in old perfumes such as Hasu-no-Hana because the market is filled with vile celebrity fragrances and unremarkable scents launched by large fashion houses. Many of us are yearning for something more mysterious and unusual. That is why I am fascinated by perfumes such as Hasu-no-Hana. I’ve written a short article about perfumes with mystery and history.

Hasu-no-Hana: perfume from 1888 by Grossmith is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Ormonde Jayne Sampaguita

Ormonde Jayne is a small London perfumery dedicated to making rare perfumes and fragrances. The one I like most is Sampaguita, the name of the national flower of the Philippines. Sampaguita (jasminum sambac) is a type of jasmine that grows profusely in the Philippines. When I was young, we had a large sampaguita plant in our garden and I can still remember the exquisite scent the flowers would give off when they are in bloom. Filipinos also string sampaguita flowers into leis and place them in the home to create a distinctive home fragrance.

If you prefer a more oriental spicy scent, try Tolu (frankincense, tolu and myrrh). For those who court danger, there’s Ormonde Woman and Ormonde Man, made with the heart of black hemlock, Socrates’s poison of choice. Ormonde Jayne’s fragrances are available in the form of scented candles, bathing oils, travel purse sprays and bath cremes.

I like getting my perfume from small perfumers like Ormonde Jayne, Annick Goutal and Parfums Frederic Malle because I know I won’t smell like everyone else. I want to support small artisan perfumers who struggle against the massive marketing machines of the multinational beauty brands and their horrid celebrity scents. These small perfumers make limited quantities and use special oils that are not used in mass market fragrances.

Indeed, going into a boutique like Ormonde Jayne in London is like stepping into another world with its black glass chandeliers, ivory stone floors and black lacquered walls. You can order online, too, but it’s not the same.

Ormonde Jayne
12 The Royal Arcade
28 Old Bond Street
London W1S 4SL
United Kingdom
www.ormondejayne.com

NOTE: They now have a shop on Sloane Square: 192 Pavillion Road, London SW1X 0BJ.

Ormonde Jayne’s mysterious Sampaguita perfume is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Isn’t it refreshing to see a new fragrance without the name of an overexposed, soon-to-be-over-the-hill celebrity attached to it? [untitled] by Maison Martin Margiela is a strange but welcome addition to the world of perfume. Strange because Margiela himself is anti-publicity and would probably never attach his name to anything as pedestrian as a perfume bottle. He never allows himself to be photographed and most people have no idea what he looks like. When he gives interviews, he does it often via fax and he never talks about his private life. He only talks about the fashion house’s latest designs and he uses the words “We”, not “I”. The oddest thing about this launch is that Margiela has just left Maison Martin Margiela.

The fragrance is created by Daniela Andrier for L’Oreal, holder of the Margiela fragrance license. It is described as woodsy and green with floral notes. Galbanum is the primary ingredient, followed by  boxwood, bitter orange, jasmine, musk and cedar.

[untitled] will be introduced on 25 January 2010 in France at Colette in Paris. Then it will be sold at Martin Margiela’s boutiques in the US starting March 2010. I’m looking forward to this perfume.

[untitled] by Maison Martin Margiela is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.

Of the new fragrances launched this fall, my favorite is A Scent by Issey Miyake. It smells very clean and fresh with notes of hyacinth and galbanum, as well as verbena and jasmine. Miyake’s last fragrance launch was over 10 years ago so his design house made an effort to launch something truly unique. They asked bottle designer Arik Levy to create a bottle that looks as though it were sliced “from a single, continuous block of light-filled glass”.

How to wear this fragrance: get the shower gel, which smells divine, and layer on the body lotion (also in beautiful, minimalist packaging) and finally spray the eau de toilette all over yourself.

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Fragrance favorite: A Scent by Issey Miyake is a post by Esme Vos on Shopplr - Fashion, beauty, style and shopping.