This week’s Latest Launches are perfect for putting Spring in your step. With new takes on classics from Chanel and Mugler, new niche from Ex Idolo and Bedeaux and an encore from John Varvatos and Nick Jonas, you’ll be spoilt for choice!
BEDEAUX
CHOUETTE
Sussex-based Amanda Beadle is a talented, self-taught artisan perfumer, artist (and Perfume Society V.I.P. Club member) whose Chienoir fragrance scooped an Art & Olfaction Award in 2018. A luscious floral-musk, Chouette (one of a trio of her fragrances) sets out to evoke balmy summer nights with fireflies a-flicker in an orchard of ripe fruits, via notes of sweet citrus, cassis, soft woods, amber and musk, garlanded by jasmine. A highly impressive debut.
From £30 for 15ml eau de parfum
bedeaux.co.uk
EX IDOLO
LUCID DREAM
An olfactory exploration of lucid dreaming – that semi-meditative state in which sleepers can control their dreams – Ex Idolo bring us fizzing citrus, pink pepper and davana that softens into softly smoked osmanthus and clouds of rose petals hovering on the updraft of white patchouli incense. Beautiful illustrations were commissioned to accompany Ex Idolo’s new collection (see them on their website), with Lucid Dream’s featuring a fox turning into a butterfly. This feels equally transformative.
£95 for 30ml eau de parfum
Fenwick Bond Street
CHANEL
CHANCE EAU TENDRE
Oh so beautifully rounded, like layers of tulle or the petals of a flower, this new interpretation by Olivier Polge envelops you in waves of deliciousness that seem to float around you in a fragrant cloud. A softly powdered, cottony yet creamy elegance follows your every step, but that opening zing of grapefruit and quince really adds energy and lifts the composition to above and beyond, ensuring it never feels heavy or too swaddling.
£67 for 50ml eau de toilette
chanel.com
MUGLER
ALIEN FUSION
One minute it’s hot, the next it’s cool. (Well, strictly, Alien is always cool.) A new addition to the Alien universe, its futuristic, talismanic bottle reinvented in fiery, translucent ruby red, this sets out to bring us ‘the power of an eclipse, captured in a bottle’, via radiant sambac jasmine and orange blossom, ablaze with ginger and cinnamon, with carnal tuberose igniting the heart before white amber and Madagascan vanilla make their presence known.
From £49 for 30ml eau de parfum
johnlewis.com
JOHN VARVATOS
JV x NJ RED EDITION
The second collaboration between the rock stars’ go-to menswear designer and musician Nick Jonas, this limited edition Cologne is one for the after-party, long after the last chord’s been played on stage. Calabrian bergamot, crushed cedar, carbonated coffee (that’s a new one!) and Cuban rum jostle for space in the deep red lacquer signature Varvatos bottle with lavender, leather, saffron, ambergris, labdanum, vetiver, salted musks and Ambrocenide®. JV x NJ fans will love this encore.
From £52 for 75ml eau de toilette
Debenhams.com
