Bois de Jasmin

The Price of Luxury Perfume

Last year the weekly French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur published an interesting article about perfume creation called La Guerre des Nez (The War of the Nose). It featured a candid interview with perfumers Dominique Ropion and Anne Flipo and provided a table outlining the price breakdown for an average prestige brand perfume. The revelation is that in a bottle of perfume that costs 100 euros, the value of the fragrance concentrate is only 1-1.50 euros, or about 2-3 dollars. The rest is for marketing and distribution: 19.6 euros for value added taxes, 36 euros for distribution, 25 euros for ads and so on. I know all too well the economics of making a perfume, but seeing this table was still a shock.

Persian Beauty Rituals & Fairytales

Every couple of weeks, I devote an evening to beauty rituals. They are not fancy, nor do they require an appointment at a spa for an expensive treatment, but my evenings of beauty, as I’ve taken to calling them, are just as satisfying. I make a sugar and lemon juice scrub, a yogurt and rosewater mask and a colorless henna treatment that leaves a sweet leathery scent on my hair and everything else it touches. Sometimes I listen to music as I wait for my treatments to work their magic, sometimes I read, but most often, I simply lie down and fall into a daydream.

As I carefully apply the sticky brown paste to each lock, I remember my mother and aunts sharing their beauty secrets and relationship advice as they painted their nails, mashed strawberries for a gentle facial scrub or applied a chamomile and egg yolk mask to enhance blonde highlights in their hair. The taste of strawberry as it dripped from my cheeks and the stickiness of honey on my fingertips is how I remember those long summer evenings. I hope that when I have a daughter, she will instinctively know, just as I now know, how long one needs to rub honey into the skin to make it glowing and how to listen to a story of heartbreak before offering words of support.

Sweet Honey Water : Perfume Recipe from the 17th Century

Despite the name George Wilson gave to his book, The Complete Course of Chemistry, he was not a chemist by training. Instead, the volume first published in London in 1691 and subsequently reprinted contained an impressive collection of recipes for herbal preparations, elixirs and alchemy experiments. Glancing through this fascinating compilation, I came across a recipe for Sweet Honey Water that Wilson used on King James II. He describes it as having many wondrous effects on one's well-being, but it was his remark that this water "gives one of the most agreeable scents that can be smelt" that finally caught my attention. Honey, vanilla, coriander, cloves, and musk certainly sound wonderful together, don't you think?

Perfume and Romance : Top 10 Valentine’s Day Favorites

What is a romantic perfume? A few years ago, I structured my Valentine’s Day post around the perfume notes that I found romantic and seductive: jasmine, saffron, sandalwood and furs & ambers, leather, honey, fig. I still like the idea of conveying a certain mood through scent, but I realize that there is much more to the romance of perfume than its list of notes. The most romantic perfume is not a magic potion designed to seduce him, but rather a fragrance that makes me feel beautiful. An opulent composition like Annick Goutal Grand Amour does the trick on some days, while on others the austere Bulgari Black seems more appropriate.

However, a range spanning Grand Amour to Black encompasses just about all fragrance genres. To narrow them down to a list of ten, I included those perfumes that both make me feel good and elicit compliments from my friends, family and my Valentine. In other words, they are the fragrances I enjoy wearing and sharing with those around me. And what is more romantic than sharing pleasure!

My Sultry Valentine : Dark Rose Perfumes

There is something captivating about darkness. It conceals, it frightens, it beguiles. In perfumery, dark notes like smoky woods, balsams and leather can give a new dimension to familiar impressions. Nowhere is this more obvious than with rose. Infuse the rose accord with patchouli and amber and the composition suddenly smolders, taking the rose out of the conventional prim and pretty territory. Instead, the sensuality of dark rose blends evokes a film noir set with a brooding femme fatale in the leading role.