With sleek curves and sensual scents, this week’s latest launches are certain to tempt. Surrender to the allure of Jean Paul Gaultier La Belle, and let yourself fall into the arms of Byredo Slow Dance. With smoky layers of woods and coffee to follow, we declare them all irresistible!
ABERCROMBIE & FITCH
AUTHENTIC WOMAN
Drenched with lusciousness all the way through, an opening banquet of juicy pear atop mandarin orange trickles to the mouth-watering sharpness of redcurrant to spike the floral heart. Airy petals of magnolia unfurl to reveal yet more freshness, jewelled segments of nectarine drifting to a bouquet of lily of the valley, soft ambrette, and a hushed woody base. The olfactory equivalent of a cashmere cardigan worn over a flirty dress.
£45 for 50ml eau de parfum
debenhams.com
BYREDO
SLOWDANCE
BYREDO founder Ben Gorham has captured all those feelings of teen slow dances – exhilarating intimacy and crippling awkwardness – and created a remedy in olfactory form. A unisex scent that evokes a tranquil moment, it cocoons the wearer in a comforting amber-like blanket. A honeyed, smoky, opopanax is blended with labdanum and peppered with a tingling geranium. Vanilla and violet sway together, before everything is softly swathed in a veil of patchouli.
£110 for 50ml eau de parfum
byredo.com
JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
LA BELLE
Would you Adam and Eve it? Gaultier’s only gone and encapsulated the world’s first celebrity couple in fragrant form. That so-familiar curvaceous bottle is ‘butt-naked, and not even cold’, and no wonder with a salty lick of vanilla caressing her form. Echoing the va-va-voom shape (and feminine inspiration), the fruit plucked is ripe pear, and far from being forbidden, you’re encouraged to gorge on it, then relax in the cool shade of the vetiver base.
£49 for 30ml eau de parfum
theperfumeshop.com
MAISON MARGIELA
COFFEE BREAK
Coffee Break feels like a warm oasis where you can snuggle up in a chilly room. A smooth, rich coffee begins this scent, for an energetic but enveloping top. Lavender and green mint echo the frost outside, orange blossom petals fall, while sandalwood gives the creaminess of frothy milk within a cosy café, cedarwood adding to the cocooning base and giving it the level of snug you’d associate with a cashmere blanket.
£96 for 100ml eaux de toilette
selfridges.com
ISSEY MIYAKE
L’EAU D’ISSEY POUR HOMME WOOD&WOOD
Sitting alongside Rose&Rose (see The Scented Letter No.38) is this intensely woody incarnation of Issey Miyake’s masculine classic, a woody-citrus that would equally complement a Richard James suit or cord trousers and a country tweed jacket. Grapefruit essence ebbs to an intensely woody core, pulsing with sandalwood and Virginia cedarwood essences, with patchouli for back-up. ‘An invitation to experience nature’s generosity’, as Issey Miyake put it – but equally at home in the city.
£51 for 50ml eau de parfum intense
johnlewis.com
