Molton Brown – Mesmerising Oudh Accord & Gold Eau de Parfum A golden haze of the exotic and opulent
There are fragrances that whisper luxury – and then there are those that sing it in deep, resonant tones. Mesmerising Oudh Accord & Gold by Molton Brown is unapologetically in the latter category. This is not a scent that seeks to please everyone – and that is precisely where its allure lies. Bold, brooding, and lavishly gilded, it’s an ode to the mysteries of the East, swirled in shimmering glints and shadows of spice.
From the first spritz, the tone is set: davana and black pepper lift off the skin with a warm, almost smouldering intensity – never sharp, but instead richly rounded. There’s a suggestion of something sacred here, like a temple at dusk. The opening notes wrap you in a cocoon of heat and intrigue, a prelude to the darker heart that awaits.
Then, as the scent unfolds, the signature oudh accord emerges — deep, resinous, and enigmatic. Molton Brown have chosen their oudh carefully: not medicinal or overwhelming, but sensuous, smooth, and enveloping. At its core, this is a wood-driven scent, but not dry or austere. Rose adds a supple, velvety softness, while tobacco lends an air of smoky mystery. There’s also a tinge of honey enriching the blend with golden hues.
Perfect for any climate or any occasion, Mesmerising Oudh Accord & Gold is a scent that makes a statement — not of loudness, but of presence. It doesn’t follow trends; it carves its own path through the perfume world with quiet confidence and lavish depth.
For lovers of oudh, spice, and sensual woods, this is a fragrance to return to again and again – each time discovering something new beneath the adventurous surface.
For your chance to receive Molton Brown Mesmerising Oudh Accord & Gold Eau de Parfum 100ml (limited edition bottle), Bath & Shower Gel 300ml, Body Lotion 300ml, Liquid Hand Wash 300ml, Hand Lotion 300ml, Reed Diffuser 150ml, Reed Diffuser refill 150ml and Scented Candle 190g.
As the festive season approaches and we prepare to welcome in the new year, there’s nothing quite like the warm embrace of a cosy, fragrant home to lift our spirits and create a welcoming atmosphere for family and friends.
The power of scent to evoke memories, comfort, and joy is particularly potent during this time of year, and many of us turn to fragrant candles and diffusers to infuse our living spaces with delightful aromas. But which are best, where should you place them, and how can you make them last longer? Read on for a fuss-free fragrant guide…
Candles vs Diffusers:
Scented candles have long been a favourite for creating a cosy ambiance, especially for those of us who don’t have the luxury of a real log fire. The soft, flickering light combined with a carefully chosen fragrance can transform any room into a snug haven. There’s something inherently comforting about the warm glow of candlelight, and when paired with seasonal scents like woods, cinnamon, forest-y notes like pine, or warming, creamy ingredients like vanilla, it can instantly transport us to a world of festive cheer.
While candles remain a popular choice, scented diffusers have been gaining significant traction in recent years. Their appeal lies in their convenience and longevity. Many modern diffusers are refillable, making them a more sustainable option for the environmentally conscious. The beauty of diffusers is that you can simply place them in your desired location and let them work their magic, continuously releasing fragrance without the need for constant attention or the worry of an open flame.
Perfect Placement:
To get the most out of your home fragrancing, consider strategic placement of your candles and diffusers: For maximum impact, place them in areas with good air circulation – near doorways or in the centre of a room often works well. However, avoid placing them directly in the path of air conditioning or heating vents, as this can disperse the scent too quickly or unevenly.
In the living room, consider placing a candle or diffuser on a coffee table or mantelpiece, where it can become a focal point and spread its aroma throughout the space. For a subtle yet effective approach in the bedroom, a diffuser on a bedside table can create a relaxing atmosphere conducive to sleep.
The kitchen is another excellent location for home fragrancing, especially during the festive season. A well-placed candle or diffuser can help neutralise cooking odours and infuse the space with inviting scents that complement your culinary creations.
Make Them Last Longer:
To get the best from your candles, always trim the wick to about 6mm before lighting. This ensures a clean, even burn and helps prevent smoking. Allow the wax to melt all the way to the edges of the container on the first burn to prevent tunnelling and ensure you get the most out of your candle.
For reed diffusers, flip the reeds every few days to refresh the scent. If you find the fragrance too strong, simply remove a few reeds to reduce its intensity. Conversely, add more reeds if you want a stronger scent throw.
Layering Home Scents:
Don’t be afraid to layer scents throughout your home. You might choose a fresh, crisp fragrance for the entrance hall, a warm, spicy scent for the living areas, and a soothing lavender or vanilla for the bedroom. This creates a journey of scents as you move through your home, each one evoking a different mood or memory.
Remember, the goal is to create an inviting atmosphere that reflects your personal style and enhances your home’s comfort. Whether you prefer the traditional charm of candles or the modern convenience of diffusers, the right fragrance can transform your living space into a cosy retreat perfect for enjoying the festive season and welcoming the new year.
We’ve so many home scents we love to use at this time of year, but here’s our fragrant festive selection for a cosy home right now…
‘Everyone in the village looks forward to the Three Kings holiday and its unique fragrances – a highlight of the winter months. We love to walk down into the village, through the woods, with their gorgeous fragrance of trampled pine needles (which smell to us like a field full of fresh Christmas trees). Then, we get to the heart of the village, where the church doors are wide open and the air is suffused with incense, as well as the warm scent of traditional, homemade turrón (almond nougat) being sold from stalls. It’s usually cold (even in Spain), so there’s much milling about with the promise of a brightening tot of brandy. What a winter treat!’
‘This luxurious diffuser combines the crisp scent of juniper with the sweet spiciness of ginger. Reminiscent of lush, green woods and exotic, evergreen mountains this uplifting scent has hints of clove, bergamot and patchouli blended with the freshness of eucalyptus. Containing the finest essential oils, Cochine reed diffusers will visually and aromatically give your room a unique and subtle elegance.’
‘A warm, spicy, zesty blend of Valencia orange, cinnamon, red apple, and clove. This is our interpretation of the fragrance of the Valencian orange harvest that takes place throughout winter, with added hints of nostalgia from the English Christmases of our childhoods. This is one to come home to after a crisp, crunchy, winter walk – cheering, cosy and comforting. A perennial winter favourite.’
For those seeking an alternative to traditional winter scents, this is still cosy but stunningly opulent, too! ‘Exclusively created with master perfumer, Maurice Roucel, this is the scent of exotic and unforgettable nights. Feminine, alluring and intriguing tuberose notes combine with rich leather and sandalwood in this intoxicating, utterly addictive fragrance.’
‘Mistela is a Valencian dessert wine usually served at family celebrations, or when lingering after a good meal; it’s a festive blend of raisins and exotic spices often served with a curl of orange peel, or even a coffee bean… The fragrance is distinctive and original yet at the same time warm and familiar. And utterly more-ish.’
‘This rich, sultry candle balances notes of vanilla bean and warm hints of patchouli with soft, sensual tones of tobacco flower. Extracts of cardamom, nutmeg and basil lend a delicate spiciness.’
In the winter we can often be pining for the outdoors but feel stuck at home, hardly wanting to crack open a window in gale-force winds, or be able to sit in the garden or take a long walk to feel at one with nature. However, we can bring the feeling and freshness of outdoors inside, and transform the stuffiness and whole atmosphere of a room simply by switching up our home fragrances via ‘green’ and woody scented candles and fragrance diffusers.
Whichever option you plump for, here’s our perfumed pick of perfect home scents to look for right now…
This rich candle combines agarwood with the warmth of white amber, tuberose and patchouli. Known as ‘Wood of the Gods’, agarwood is highly sought after due to the unique richness of its fragrance, and feels like living in a fairytale forest.
Inspired by the mountainside after a summer storm, when the rain clouds part and strong sunshine lances through, stirring up a heavy mist of fragrance. In this haze, notes from our herb garden mingle with fresh citrus. Utterly uplifting!
Uniquely splitting the notes of the fine fragrance between three candles, you can dot these around your room to create the ideal harmonious ‘scent-scape’, with velvety moss, moonlit herbs and roses, wisps of smoke and honeyed wood.
Combining the crisp scent of juniper with the sweet spiciness of ginger, reminiscent of lush, green woods and exotic, evergreen mountains; this uplifting scent has hints of clove, bergamot and patchouli with the freshness of eucalyptus.
“On our mountain, at first light, there’s a heavenly fragrance in the air” Founder Cassandra says. “Before anyone starts an engine, or lights a fire, the air is clear, and still, and silent.” Frosted herbs, wild fennel, and a soothing breeze. Blissful.
When Cochine founder Kate Crofton-Atkins left London (and her job at L’Oréal) and moved to Saigon, she became obsessed with the streets abundantly draped with swags of jasmine, intoxicating the air with their scent and sparking the idea for a new fragrance house that would change her whole life…
Continuing our look at Jasmine as our ingredient of the month, this time we’re seeing exactly how it shaped Cochine’s inspiration, and Kate’s whole fragrant future. As a skincare and fragrance expert, Kate was already deeply in tune with her senses, but never until that fateful day visiting Saigon, had she been so fully immersed in a scent – the hypnotic, indolic romance of the jasmine flowers calling up something in her soul.
Describing how she was ‘instantly struck by the city’s unique style, elegance and romance,’ with the evocative inspiration of Saigon filling her head and leading with the idea that she wanted to create perfumes that brought to life this special place and unique moments shared there, Kate partnered with a fragrance house based in New York to bring the dream into a scented reality.
Spending over a year just sourcing the essential oils harvested from plants in Vietnam, Kate and the perfumers spent a further year blending the perfect combinations of these precious ingredients ‘…to reflect Saigon’s diverse flora and distinctive blend of Ambrée charm.’ Furthermore, the Cochine products themselves are all made within France and Vietnam to retain the original sensorial inspiration for this perfume house.
We’re thrilled to offer full sizes of the Cochine fragrances and home fragrance collections in our shop, and take a look at three of their scented delights featuring jasmine, below – each available as a fine fragrance, scented candle or home diffuser…
Cochine White Jasmine & Gardenia
White petals of jasmine, gardenia and peony combine to unfold an enchanting aura that is soft yet elegant. Jasmine thrives in the heat of southern Vietnam where the petals are handpicked after nightfall when their fragrance is most intense.
A scent that will sweep you away to white, tropical sandy shores. This exotic fragrance blends smooth, honeyed notes of frangipani with the hypnotic jasmine and delicate freshness of neroli.
Inspired by an evening walk through a Saigon garden, this many layered citrus-noir fragrance blends rich notes of wild fig, tuberose and night flowering jasmine with the freshness of bergamot, crisp vetiver and the warmth of cedarwood.
Scent Scaping (sometimes known as ‘fragrance zoning’) is THE fastest way to change-up the feel of your home this summer – think of it like layering your perfumes, but creating a unique ‘signature scent’ for your home, instead. We’ve got top tips from an interior design expert on exactly how to do this, and have selected the perfect perfumed candles and luxury diffusers from Cochine’s sublime collection, to achieve this scented bliss with ease…
As a renowned designer, lifestyle blogger and TV presenter, Maxine Brady is always in demand by glossy magazines and lifestyle-led TV shows. A huge fan of using scented candles – for shows such as Grand Designs, Kirsty’s Homemade Home, George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces and This Morning – Maxine explains the trend for scent-scaping our homes no matter the weather, really boomed during lockdown. Indeed, according to John Lewis, during the end of 2020 ‘the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000%.’ Says Maxine:
‘It’s about using aroma and scents to zone our homes, either room by room or during differing times of the day. I like using a different fragrance in the morning to evening. I like decorating a home with candles and diffusers and arrange them much as I would art in a room, to bring them to life. I never think a room is finished until I put a candle on my sideboard… using home fragrance allows me to transfer from a work space feel to a more homely escape. It’s a very clever way to balance our mental health as well as making our homes smell beautiful.’
This ‘trend’ has continued with such an upward trajectory, to the point of becoming a perfumed ritual we can all welcome into our lifestyles. It’s not only those who continue to work from home (though there are many, many more companies seeing the sense of this) who are pushing the perfumed home product sales higher – there’s also been a dawning in our culture that candles aren’t really used for their light-giving properties anymore – it’s the ambience we seek. The way we can choose to immediately change-up the atmosphere of a space.
Kate Crofton-Atkins – founder of Cochine fragrance
It’s not all about candles, though. Reed diffuser sales are similarly off the chart, because people who are away from home, who want to continually scent an area, or perhaps have small children and are concerned about candles burning) love their ease of use, and that ‘unwrap it and forget it’ feeling. However, we promise you won’t be forgetting any of these – the fragrances are so incredible, they’ll give you pleasure every single time you waft past, or open your front door and think ‘ahhh, yes. I’m home!’
Maxine Says: ‘All these tips are ideal if you rent rather than own, because you’re unable to change wallpaper and paint, or sometimes even furnishings, you can make the space your own by stamping your personality with home scents…’
Maxine’s Styling Tip 1.Use your nose as well as your eyes to decorate your home. Perhaps a hallway is where you put a lovely diffuser to welcome your guests and having it smell gorgeous at all times? As a decorating tool, home scents are a really clever way to bring up & coming trends into your home without changing all the furnishings! Use complimentary coloured vessels to your wallpaper or furnishing colours. People are loving sharing #shellfies on social media.
Maxine’s Styling Tip 2.Use aroma to mark the changing seasons. Fresher sunny scents in summer, and warmer woodier scents in colder seasons. Changing those scents and bringing them into your house really helps stop one day blending into another. According to John Lewis, the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000% A candle is an instant pick me up when you need a treat.” Michelle: “I like to use home fragrance to enhance my mood or to change up my mood.”
Maxine’s Styling Tip 3.Create an indoor garden bringing the outdoors in. We know home plants have become incredibly important – the flow between spaces can be between your garden and indoors. Dot plants and succulents around a diffuser – reuse the containers when empty as plant pots or the diffusers as mini vases.
Styling Tip 4.Press the reset button with the power of scent. After a busy and stressful day, it can be hard to mark a line between weekdays and your weekends – reclaim your home and say the weekend starts now. Clear away work things, laptops from tables, shove the kids toys in a box and light a candle as a scene-setter and mood re-setter.
Cochine’s sumptuous fragrance creations are no longer only for skin – with their gorgeous, top quality home fragrance collection, they can now whisk us to exotic Saigon whenever the mood takes us (which will be often, you will discover…) from where this exciting perfume house takes its inspiration. With over 50 hours’ burn time, Cochine candles will gently infuse any room to create a delicately evocative and inspiring atmosphere. The Cochine diffusers, meanwhile, containing the finest essential oils, and will visually and aromatically give your room a unique and subtle elegance. They easily last you four months of continual use (and we find they last even longer if placed in cooler areas of your home and away from direct sunlight!) Close your eyes, breathe the exquisite notes – and you’re half-way there already.
Now, your only question remains, where will you find best to place these stunning, summery scents in your own home…?
This elegant candle evokes the lush floral scents that infuse the sun-filled streets and gardens of Saigon. White petals of jasmine, gardenia and peony combine to unfold an enchanting aura that is soft yet elegant.
Allow yourself to be carried away to soft white sands, brushed with the shade of Frangipani trees. Smooth, honeyed tones of frangipani are combined with the delicate freshness of neroli to create an idyll of blissful tranquillity in your home.
Capturing the delightful freshness of newly cut flowers, this candle has a light and delicate tone, combining top notes of rose and bergamot with hints of violet, rosewood and the scented orchid, Delentii.
Exclusively created with master perfumer, Maurice Roucel, this is the scent of exotic and unforgettable nights. Feminine, alluring and intriguing tuberose notes combine with rich leather and sandalwood in this intoxicating, utterly addictive fragrance.
The immediately uplifting and utterly unique scent of lime blossom is combined with calming, aqueously woody notes of water hyacinth to create an invigorating and fresh fragrance reminiscent of lazy afternoons on the banks of the Saigon River.
Combining the crisp scent of juniper with the sweet spiciness of ginger. Reminiscent of lush, green woods and exotic, evergreen mountains this uplifting scent has hints of clove, bergamot and patchouli blended with the freshness of eucalyptus.
We’re currently being wowed by the new Floral Street Home Fragrance Collection – a vibrant range of uplifting candles and diffusers for instant pops of mood-changing colour, with similarly striking scents. What’s more, in a live-streamed launch event with founder Michelle Feeney and celebrity interior stylist, designer & TV presenter, Maxine Brady, we learned the BEST tips on the new trend for ‘Scent-Scaping’ your home…
London-based niche fragrance house Floral Streethave certainly been blooming since their launch in 2017. With shelves-full of awards (the current count is twenty!) and stocked around the world, including the mega global beauty retailer, Sephora; their contemporary and fully-sustainable fragrances have met with acclaim wherever the scented seeds (so to speak) have been scattered.
Now, your home can smell just as glorious with the newly-launched Floral Street Home Fragrance collection. Spanning White Florals, Rose Garden, Urban Bloom and Night Bloom, the timing couldn’t be better. Home fragrance sales having rocketed since pandemic lockdowns, when we’ve been forced to spend more time than ever stuck in one space. And the wonderful thing about fragrance is its power to enhance your mood, encourage a feeling of wellness or even shift your focus when you desperately need to feel ‘somewhere else’ for a while.
Designed to uplift and revuive the senses and transform the space of your home, the range includes gorgeous candles (£34) and diffusers (£34) so that you can ‘bloom wherever you are’. Apart from ‘Scent-Scaping’ with a perfectly perfumed ambience, the collection has sustainability at its heart. All the Floral Street Home Collection products are made from natural cotton wicks, soy, and vegan oil. Hand-poured in the UK, each product is also free from alcohol, presented in reusable glass bottles, and responsibly sourced.
As a renowned designer, lifestyle blogger and TV presenter, Maxine was the perfect partner for Floral Street during the launch of their new home fragrance collection of candles and diffusers. A huge fan of using scented candles for shows such as Grand Designs, Kirsty’s Homemade Home, George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces and This Morning – Maxine revealed that, according to John Lewis, during the end of 2020 and the first half of this year, ‘the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000%.’
Now, we’re delighted to share with you some of the brilliant styling tips and practical advice Michelle and Maxine gave us about making your home a scented sanctuary…
Michelle Feeney: ‘We want to encourage people to bloom where they are, blossom in their home environment. In the last year our homes have become our work places, office as well as the places we live, so I think we’ve all discovered how important it is to scent our homes accordingly. The Floral Street Home Collection includes some amazing new home fragrance products, and the candles are up to 14% fragrance oi,l which means they really fill the room!’
Maxine Brady: ‘Scent Scaping is an up and coming trend I’ve seen really grow the last few months. It’s about using aroma and scents to zone our homes, either room by room or during differing times of the day. I like using a different fragrance in the morning to evening. I like decorating a home with candles and diffusers, and arrange them much as I would art in a room, to bring them to life. I never think a room is finished until I put a candle on my sideboard. Lately our homes have been our whole world – that’s a lot of pressure on our surroundings, and it’s hard to set boundaries, so using home fragrance allows me to transfer from a work space feel to a more homely escape. It’s a very clever way to balance our mental health as well as making our homes smell beautiful.’
Maxine’s Styling Tip 1.Use your nose as well as your eyes to decorate your home. Perhaps a hallway is where you put a lovely diffuser to welcome your guests and having it smell gorgeous at all times? As a decorating tool, home scents are a really clever way to bring up & coming trends into your home without changing all the furnishings! Use complimentary coloured vessels to your wallpaper or furnishing colours. People are loving sharing #shellfies on social media.
Maxine’s Styling Tip 2.Use aroma to mark the changing seasons. Fresher sunny scents in summer, and warmer woodier scents in colder seasons. Changing those scents and bringing them into your house really helps stop one day blending into another. According to John Lewis, the average online searches for home scents went up by 600%. For diffusers, the searches were up by over 1000% A candle is an instant pick me up when you need a treat.” Michelle: “I like to use home fragrance to enhance my mood or to change up my mood.”
Maxine’s Styling Tip 3.Create an indoor garden bringing the outdoors in. We know home plants have become incredibly important – the flow between spaces can be between your garden and indoors. Dot plants and succulents around a diffuser – reuse the containers when empty as plant pots or the diffusers as mini vases.
Styling Tip 4.Press the reset button with the power of scent. After a busy and stressful day, it can be hard to mark a line between weekdays and your weekends – reclaim your home and say the weekend starts now. Clear away work things, laptops from tables, shove the kids toys in a box and light a candle as a scene-setter and mood re-setter.
Maxine Says: ‘All these tips are ideal if you rent rather than own, because you’re unable to change wallpaper and paint, or sometimes even furnishings, you can make the space your own by stamping your personality with home scents…’
We absolutely love the idea of ‘Scent-Scaping’ our rooms, and shall be dotting appropriately perfumed candles and diffusers amidst the potted plants forthwith!
The La Montaña Discovery Set is a cute wallet of home fragrance samples (to try at home) – a completely genius idea! Find out how to explore them all and use our discount code, below…
We’re all used to the idea of buying a Discovery Set of personal perfume samples – something we’ve been eulogising about for years as the best way to try new scents and be introduced to the style of a fragrance house before buying a full size bottle.
But home fragrances are far more difficult to try before we buy. And as the way our homes smell is such a personal choice, it’s completely genius to have the opportunity of trying the full range in the very home we’ll be scenting with a full size room mist, candle or reed diffuser.
Sustainability is another issue the fragrance industry is (and fragrance lovers) are making a priority right now, and all La Montañga products are sustainable, plant-derived, biodegradable, have a low carbon footprint, and are ‘non-toxic to humans or the environment.’
The La Montaña Discovery Set gives you the opportunity to try ALL NINE of their home fragrances in dinky little room mist form. The La Montaña fragrances are the same across their full range of candles and reed diffusers – so once you’ve tried the room mist samples and found your faves, you’ll know how how the other methods of scenting your space will smell. You can spray them onto the blotters provided, or La Montaña advise you ‘…spritz them into the air, wait a couple of seconds and step into the mist.’ But there’s a number of other ways you miught think of using them….
– Why not keep a set in your car? Much more chic than a garage-purchased novelty air freshener.
– Founder Cassandra says she even spritzes hers on to jumpers to snuggle up in the scent (only dark coloured fabrics, and do a patch-test, first!)
– If you’re lucky enough to be going away on holiday, these are the perfect size to slip into your suitcase to make a hired cottage or hotel room smell like home.
– We think this wallet of home fragrance samples would also be a great stocking filler gift – send to a friend and get them to pick a favourite, which you can offer to buy the full-size of, later.
Usually, the set costs £25, BUT for one week only, you can use our discount code to get it for only £10!
Have a browse of the evocative home scent descriptions – and the incredible reviews – on the La Montaña website – personally, we are huge fans of Winter Oranges to fragrance our homes at this time of year, though First Light is our first choice for the day when working at home, followed by Sacred Roses for a sublime way to wind down. Which rooms will you choose to sample them in, do you think…?
Acqua di Parma are launching a #StayHome charity campaign to support the fight against COVID-19. Throughout the month of April, 100% of e-commerce revenues generated by sales of the Home Collection, Barbiere and Personal Care products will be donated to support initiatives against the corona crisis.
In these stressful and uncertain times, how heartening it has been to see brands, both big and small, stepping up to provide support, making hand-santisisers, donating products and now, with Acqua di Parma’s #StayHome campaign donating an incredible 100% of their online profits to help their home country, which has been hit so hard by this pandemic.
Laura Burdese, CEO of Acqua di Parma comments that, ‘In these difficult times of suffering and strife that grip Italy so severely, it is natural and right for Acqua di Parma to make a strong gesture of solidarity. With the #StayHome campaign, we can do our part and demonstrate the love that the Maison has for our mother country.’
Explaining further why this campaign was so important to them, Laura continues: ‘Our solidarity campaign is a way to provide tangible support, be it emotional or economic, to Italy in this time of need so that in dealing with this emergency, we can preserve what we love most about our country: Italian art, nature and culture will continue to be given and shared across the globe’
Acqua di Parma invite you to help support this campaign by sharing social media posts – perhaps of cosy, scented spaces you have created? – and tagging @acquadiparma_official and #StayHome. What’s more, during this time, all Acqua di Parma online orders have FREE delivery, so even more excuse to indulge, delight and comfort yourself with scent at home…
New research shows car scents could even play a role in keeping drivers alert and preventing accidents…
Anyone who’s stepped into an Uber with a particularly pungent smell – either thanks to the novelty-shaped air freshener dangling from the mirror, or perhaps the previous occupant’s on-the-go lunch or personal hygiene regime – will be aware how imporant car smells can be: for passenger and driver alike. Now, a new study shows those car scents could, in fact, help save lives.
Experts at the University of Sussex exposed drivers during the test to rose, lemon, and civet – measuring their responses to each. The experiment was performed in a simulated driving rig, with scientists having connected a spraying device to the center of the steering wheel, which released a fragrance when the test vehicle approached any danger, such as an unpredictable driver on the road, or cyclist ahead of them.
Apparently, the study revealed that a waft of rose reduced simulated car crashes by an incredible 64 percent, and the musky smell of civet was also found to reduce the number of accidents, this time by 46 percent. All in-car scents can help keep drivers alert to dangers around them, but these two proved the most effective by far – something to keep in mind when choosing your next car-diffusing fragrance, perhaps?
Luckily, when reaching for a scent to keep your car fresh (and your senses awake) times have moved on from the inevitable traffic-light and tree-shaped mirror swingers – now fine fragrance brands have produced fabulous looking diffusers that more resemble ornaments than functional items: you’ll definitely want to keep these on display and topped-up with your favourite fragrances…
The Un Air de Diptyque car diffuser looks resembles an Art Deco radio, using an innovative system of cold diffusion to waft your chosen fragrance. Simply attach to the car ventilation to diffuse one of seven iconic scents: Baies, Ambre, Figuier, Roses, Orange Blossom, Ginger and 34.
Looking for all the world like heirloom pocket watches, these stunningly engineered diffusers have interchangeable scents to be paired with the pomanders and mood (and journey) dictates. ‘Along the Plain of Castelluccio’ whisks you ‘Alongside a mosaic of flowering ochre, violet and vermilion, no Grand Tourer of Italy can remain immune to the bouquet of cypress and spring meadow lavender that rises up from the roadside…’
DS & Durga now create niche fragrances for your travels – Big Sur After Rain incites freshness with ‘rain water in eucalyptus groves off Highway 1,’ Portable Fireplace invites cosy, homely vibes with birch tar, cedar and pine, while Holy Ficus invokes ‘the revered fig tree of Siddhartha’ with cardamom, fig and saffron. Each fragranced card comes in a scratch-and-sniff envelope, so feel free to scent your luggage, wardrobe and life in general.
Life is a journey, enjoy the ride with this car perfume based on the energising scent of sweet orange and cedarwood. The fragrance lasts up to 6-8 weeks and is activated by the air flow from your car’s fan. The car perfume comes with a stylish wooden holder that can be reused when you purchase a perfume refill.
La Promeneuse by Cire Trudon is a brand new way to diffuse fragrance in the home – or even outside – and has to be one of the most stylish (and innovative) decorative objects for this purpose we have seen for quite some time.
A lantern designed by artist Pauline Deltour, La Promeneuse features the key style points Cire Trudon are famed for – grooved antique green glass, vintage gold colour brass, intricate wax cameos scented with eight of the house’s best-selling candle fragrances and a specially designed tea-light that sits, perfectly poised, on a porcelain base.
The scented cameos are quite unique – and although it almost feels like a sin to melt something so beautiful (they really do look just like carved cameo brooches) the way they fill the room with fragrance soon puts any such doubts to rest…
Placing the cameo onto a specially made brass ‘spoon’ that rests atop the ceramic dish, the glass cylinder is then lifted to revel the tea-light within. Once lit and the glass replaced, the cameo begins to gently warm and finally melt into a pool of molten, scented wax. We particularly like the fact that although the burn time of the wax cameo and the tea-light beneath is approximately eight hours – you can halt the process at any time, so choose to burn for ten minutes, an hour or the full amount – it’s entirely up to you. Perfect for those times you want a quick hit of scent and not commit to a longer candle burning session.
The burn times of the cameo and tea-light has been synchronised so that you never have to guess how long you have left – once the candle has extinguished itself, you know it’s time to change the cameo, and they’ve even made that a doddle: simply wait for the remaining wax to solidify, and lift the brass ‘spoon’ once more, and the whole thing will lift out, leaving a clean dish to fill with the next fragranced cameo. The initial purchase of the lantern comes with everything you need to get started, and is beautifully packaged (of course) in a Cire Trudon box.
The design of the lantern is both contemporary, with its clean lines and modern textures – and yet has that hint of history present in the deep library-esque colours and the vintage look of the cameos themselves. Because of the tea-light being protected by the glass, La Promeneuse can be taken outside, too – we’re already imagining sitting outside as the lighter Spring evenings drift into the hazy warmth of Summer, sipping a glass of wine and breathing in the scent of slowly melting cameos as we watch the flickering flame…
Cire Trudon La Promeneuse £250
Buy in store it at John Lewis
