Spring is blooming into colour and you will be too with this week’s latest launches. From the rainbow swirls of Britney Spears Festive Fantasy to Maison Sybarite Spicy Calabria, you’ll be luxuriating in an olfactory feast of sugar, spice and all things nice, and thanks to Les Indemodeables Vanille Havane a touch of rum and cocoa too!
BRITNEY SPEARS
FESTIVE FANTASY
We know many collectors of Britney Spears’s fragrances (see blogger Sarah Major’s ‘Share My Stash’, in our Issue 41) – and this vibrant flacon is destined for the limelight on their dressing tables. It is, we are told, Britney’s invitation to ‘Live to celebrate life!’ (definitely our motto for 2021). Lusciously feminine, the line-up of notes includes cherry, plum, dewberry, star gazer lily, freesia, sugar musk, sandalwood and a vanilla beignet accord (it’s a deep-fried dumpling, FYI).
£35 for 100ml
superdrug.com
LES INDEMODEABLES
VANILLE HAVANE
Perfumer Antoine Lie collaborated with founder, Valerie Pulverail, using natural vanilla to create a contemporary gourmand that’s darkly sensual rather than overtly sweet – and its outrageously addictive. Seeking to explore every nuance of vanilla, Lie says he ‘pushed the rum, cocoa, spices – clove, cinnamon, cardamom’ elements of the vanilla bean, ramping up ‘the tobacco, woods, floral and leathery facets’ until even gourmand naysayers will be begging: ‘Please, sir, can I have some more…?’
£186 for 50ml eau de parfum
lessenteurs.com
PACO RABANNE
OLYMPÉA ONYX COLLECTOR
We’ve always loved the sculptural feel of the Olympéa bottle, with its nod to Ancient Greece with its sculptural shape. But we’ve loving this limited edition incarnation, the cap fashioned to look like black marble shot through with copper veining and a sun-setting-over-the-Aegean ombré rose gradient, on the glass itself. Inside? Those familiar notes of mandarin, ginger lily, jasmine, salted vanilla, ambergris and sandalwood – a composition deserving of its copper laurel wreath adornment.
£82.50 for 30ml eau de toilette
pacorabanne.com
LABORATORIO OLFATTIVO
TONKADE
We’re delighted to showcase this in our latest men’s collection, The Super Man Box (launch 4th December): a stunner from the perfume house’s Nero collection, with an unusual opening of Christmassy dried fruits, neroli, tonka and cardamom leading to a crescendo of warm woods, patchouli and soft vanilla, which positively bursts out of the chic, moody bottle. Then as the pace slows again, enjoy a smoky-sweet base accord that swirls with soft musks.
From £110 for 100ml eau de parfum
pulseofperfumery.com
MAISON SYBARITE
SPICY CALABRIA
Celebrating the citrus notes Calabria is famed for, juicy ginger and black pepper add to the zing-appeal here while powdery orris cushions the decadently wormwood- rippled base. Cedar adds a grounding note of contemplation, but really, it’s party-central, limette thrumming with woody oudh and patchouli. All their fragrances are alcohol-free moisturising mists – created from saponine, olive oil and water – leaving a sexy sheen the Sybarites would surely have approved of!
£160 for 75ml eau de parfum
bloomperfume.co.uk