This week’s latest launches are a feast for the eyes as well as the nose. With bottles as beautiful as this, you may find it impossible to stop at one (and why should you?) Guerlain Shalimar eau de parfum celebrates the Shalimar gardens that inspired it with an opulent limited edition bottle, whilst Bvlagri le Gemme Erea feels like holding precious treasure. Resistance is futile.
BVLGARI
LA GEMME EREA
A collector’s edition bottle (looking for all the world like a precious urn unearthed by Indiana Jones) was inspired by the protective powers of New Caledonian green agate. Wonderful wafts of lemon-infused incense are spiked with cool cardamom and swirled through with silky ripples of vanilla – the sweetness and tartness perfectly balanced, provoking dreams of treasure that prove to be mouth-watering in more than one sense… and we’d definitely be protecting this fabulous flaçon!
£255 for 100ml eau de parfum
harrods.com
DOLCE & GABBANA
VELVET MUGHETTO
Joining the exclusive Velvet Collection, the vibrant green of the bottle and velvet-trimmed cap perfectly capture the floral freshness within. This is the moment in a woodland when a clearing of verdant white swathes of lily of the valley shivering in the breeze make you gasp. Tender magnolia unfurls with a fruity delicacy, to rest on a woody base of santal essence, cypriol essence and Cashmeran wood, and together it’s pure pleasure, bottled.
£165 for 50ml eau de parfum
harrods.com
GUERLAIN
SHALIMAR EAU DE PARFUM
The wondrous Shalimar is all dressed up and deserving of some place special to go. This limited edition, created to honour the Gardens of Shalimar (which inspired the fragrance), is exquisitely adorned with flowers and fruits to echo one of the fragrance’s central accords. Often cited by perfumers as one of the fragrances they would most love to have put their names to, has there ever been a better excuse to lose your Shalimar virginity?
£81 for 50ml eau de parfum
guerlain.com
NINA RICCI
NINA ROUGE
We’ve always loved the apple bottle for Nina Ricci Nina – but this shiny red version is our favourite yet, we think, looking exactly as if Snow White might just have taken a bite out of it. The fragrance is as juicy as the flacon implies, meanwhile, with its overture of raspberry and zesty citron, its floral heart of ginger flower and gardenia giving way to a sweet, mouth-watering base of vanilla and caramel. Marvellously moreish.
£67 for 80ml eau de toilette
fragrancedirect.co.uk
JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
LE MALE PARFUM
‘The world’s sexiest sailor has just been upgraded,’ says the ever-cheeky Jean Paul Gaultier. ‘Now he is a Captain!’ A cool breeze of cardamom and lavender billows the scented sails of this ship, brilliantly steered into new shores by the perfume duo of Quentin Bisch and Nathalie Gracia-Cetto. Spiced vanilla feels sophisticated, more mature somehow, but of course there’s always that naughty wink. Aromatically alluring, a brilliant journey into unventured waters, we’re definitely all-aboard.
£56 for 75ml
boots.com
