We’re dazzled by the colourful stories behind this week’s latest launches. Take the Parisian spas of the Golden Age add the music of Glenn Miller, a dash of Australian Springtime and some Italian glamour. We love everything about these sensational scents!
FRENCH CONNECTION
FEMME
All come-hither jasmine with luscious mandarin and crisp apple up front, there are hints of luminescent neroli and a final dry-down that gets all smoochy with soft musk and warm amber. French Connection’s in-house team worked on the project with renowned perfumers Philippe Romano and Corinne Cachen as the project’s noses, and it shows. A chic little number with impressive staying power – we still smelled this in our hair the next day – it’s a pocket-friendly treat.
£14.99 for 30ml eau de toilette
boots.com
GOLDFIELD & BANKS
SOUTHERN BLOOM
This Australian niche house showcase rare Antipodean ingredients previously unexplored in perfumery, here highlighting the tea-like boronia flower as homage to Aussie springtime – native to Tasmania and notoriously tricky to harvest, weighing in at $10k per kilo. They prefer an unconventional labelling of your fragrant journey, thus ‘sunrise’ instead of top notes – green mandarin and piquant cassis berries – then the ‘summit’ – boronia absolute, jasmine and ylang ylang – and stunning ‘sunset’, of iris, vetiver, sandalwood and amber.
£160 for 100ml eau de parfum
fortnumandmason.com
JUSBOX
GOLDEN SERENADE
This latest offering from the musically inspired niche house pays tribute to Glenn Miller and his Orchestra’s ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’, which was awarded the first ever gold record. Enchantingly uplifting, a blast of saffron and clove blow away the blues with a lyrical embrace of cool incense infusing the resinous warmth of the patchouli heart. For the base, a sweet hay-like oudh is swirled through with vanilla, opopanax and glowing amber for non-stop foot-tapping, wrist-sniffing exuberance.
£250 for 75ml eau de parfum
Selfridges.com
VALENTINO
NOIR ABSOLU MUSC ESSENCE
Valentino have unveiled two innovative products designed as ‘fragrance enhancers’ – simplifying the concept of layering for those who want to experiment and create personalised blends by offering scents that can be worn alone or with any Valentino creation to boost intensity and staying power. Noir Absolu Oud Essence features alongside the Musc – a more masculine option than this, which combines rose and orange, aldehydes and tonka with the signature muskiness.
£122 for 100ml essence de parfum
harrods.com
LES BAINS GUERBOIS
2013 RÉSIDENCE D’ARTISTES
A riot of impressions jostle: drifts of musk that suddenly become sandalwood, papyrus cushioning violet, cumin and cardamom studding a juicy seam of succulent mandarin segments. There’s some booziness, too – perhaps an echo of the artists that met when this Parisian spa was first founded in 1885 (Manet, Renoir and Proust were regulars), which then became a night club notorious for its illicit shenanigans – and is now an upmarket hotel frequented by the crème de la crème.
£149 for 100ml eau de parfum
lessenteurs.com
