Perfume Bottles Auction 2020: WOW! We love these (and you can now bid online to win!)

From Mae West’s signature scent stored in a cigarette packet, bejewelled bottles from the 1800’s to novelty perfumed powder puffs chaped like 1920’s flapper girls… the Perfume Bottles Auction will delight and tempt every fragrance fiend…

The annual Perfume Bottles Auction really is a date in the diary of serious scent collectors – with the most stunning examples of artistic and rare fragrance flaçons you wever will see (outside of a museum, anyway).

Since 1979, organiser and founder of The Perfume Bottles Auction, Ken Leach, has been working ‘to create public and corporate awareness of the artistry to be found in vintage perfume presentation.’ His antique shop’s show-stopping merchandise ‘has served as a source of inspiration for glass companies, package designers, and celebrity perfumers, before ultimately entering the collections of perfume bottle enthusiasts around the globe.’

This year, because of the on-going global pandemic, it has presented something of a challenge to the organisers, but happily the entire catalogue is now online for you to view (and gasp outloud at!) with the auction to take place via live stream on Sat, Jul 11, 2020 8:00 PM BST.

What’s more, in response to the global crisis, the LiveAuctioneers website is dontaing to COVID causes such as Meals on Wheels COVID Response Fund and global relief efforts, with over $50,000 already donated.

Here’s just some of what we’d be bidding on (and would be gracing the dressing table of our dreams…) in this year’s incredible collection of lots…

 

How completely wonderful is this novelty ‘cigarette packet’ style packaging for what was Mae West’s signature scent? Made in 1933, the box is covered in iconic quotes from the bombshell movie star, and the lot includes five ad cards and a counter display. A case of ‘come up and smell me sometime…?’
Estimated price: $2,000-3,000

 

In 1937, Pinaud trademarked the name ‘Scarlett’, releasing the ‘Flirt’ perfume in 1939, with a matching Clark Gable ‘Bittersweet’ scent when the film premiered that year. The bottles were available with a choice of scents, including Apple Blossom, Maghnolia and Honeysuckle, and came with an autographed photo.
Estimated price: $1,000-$2,000

 

Lalique were instrumental in revolutionising perfume bottle design and production, and we love their contemporary fragrances (and the way they incorporate their heritage into bottle production today), but this 1929 bottle for Lucien Lelong in frosted glass with enamelled swags and silvered metal case is just exquisite!
Estimated price: $7,000-8,000

 

Our co-founder, Jo Fairley, loves Schiaparelli Shocking perfume so much she wore it on her wedding day – and did you know the pink for the box was designed by Schiaparelli herself, and gave name to what we still call ‘shocking pink’ to this day? Dating from the 1930s, the auction includes 3 figural soaps, a 1938 ‘Shock in the Box’ perfume, a Salvador Dali-designed face powder and scented boy lotion bottle. Truly, our heart’s desire!
Estimated prices from $200-600 per item

 

Fragranced dusting powders were all the rage once, and we don’t think we’ve ever seen a more fabulous version than this 1920’s Goebel glazed porcelain powder dish. Imagine being a movie starlet or ballet dancer and reaching for this to dust away shine with puffs of perfumed powder – it’s enough to make us swoon with delight!
Estimated price: $600-$800

Written by Suzy Nightingale

Experimental Perfume Club launch online bespoke service!

Experimental Perfume Club has always been about pushing the boundaries and trying new things within the world of fragrance, and now they’ve gone one step further – offering their unique ‘bespoke service’ online!
It’s been a tough time for retail, and perfume houses have had an extra layer of difficulty, given that we haven’t been able to smell their scents other than buyingtheir Discovery Sets and getting samples to try at home. We’ve seen a HUGE demand for our Discovery Boxes because of this, so that’s all well and good, but what about those houses offering bespoke, custom-blended fragrances?

 

Brilliant perfumer, and founder of Experimental Perfume Club, Emmanuelle Moeglin has managed to turn what could have been tragedy into triumph, rby eacting quickly and being one of the first in the industry to dramatically adapt her business to the ever-changing challenges.

As we reported previously, Experimental Perfume Club now offer online classes – from a free mini session to an advanced creation course, so the learning and experimenting (that was the impetus for them launching in the first place) is now available to an even larger audience who can do the classes in their own time, from the comfort of their own homes.
Now, we are thrilled to share that Experimental Perfume Club are bringing their utterly genius bespoke customisation service online, too! The Bespoke Collection and Discovery Set allows you to create and customise you very own unique fragrance online (an opportunity which was previously only available to customers in-store at Selfridges).
We happen to know this Bespoke perfume service works perfectly, as one of the first people to try it in-store when it launched was The Perfume Society’s own Co-Founder, Jo Fairley – followed shortly after by myself. We happen to have almost identical tastes in perfume, but Jo had not mentioned a single note that was in her customised blend. Lo and behold: when we compared, we found we’d both created exactly the same scent, out of the many thousands (hundreds of thoudsands?) of possible combinations! A dark, smoky amber/incense that positvely purrs with provocation, it proved to us beyond doubt their bespoke customisation service genuinely works.
How to get your bespoke-blended perfume:
The new Bespoke Collection includes twenty unique blends, carefully curated by Emmanuelle, to sample and wear at home first. Online, you can use the LAYERS formula finder’s in-house algorithm and ‘receive a shortlist of formulas that match your unique olfactory profile.’ Finally, your favourite fragrance can then be ordered in a full size, fully personalised bottle.
Experimental Perfume Club Bespoke Collection £50
Bespoke Perfume £110 for 50ml eau de parfum
Bespoke Collection + Full-size Bespoke Perfume £150
Refill Service for 50ml Bespoke Perfume £65

Design In Scent: WIN The Wedding Fragrance Discovery Experience

Looking for a unique wedding gift or a bespoke scent for your happy day? We think we’ve found it!
What could be more special than making your wedding totally tailored to you, as a couple? For those about-to-be-weds who long for something truly memorable, Design In Scent offer Fragrance Journeys™ – not only for couples to wear on their wedding day, but with complimenting candles and ambience mists to scent the celebration itself.
And, very generously, they are giving away a Wedding Fragrance Discovery Experience for you to explore, and a bottle of your favourite perfume!
Read on for details of how to enter the competition…
Design In Scent say: ‘We are giving away a Wedding Fragrance Discovery Experience and a bottle of your favourite fragrance from the new Design In Scent Wedding Collection. Searching for your perfect wedding scent is a beautiful experience for you to enjoy with your partner during planning. When you scent your wedding venue with the fragrance you love and gift it to guests it becomes an incredibly meaningful part of your day.
The Design In Scent Wedding Collection features four Fragrance Journeys™ for couples to wear, scent their wedding with and gift to loved ones. Each Fragrance Journey™ contains three complementing fragrances – a Feminine eau de parfum, a Masculine eau de parfum and a Union ambience fragrance that fuses the two into a new but recognisable scent. Capture the precious memories of your wedding with the magic of scent…’

Founded by Gemma Hopkins in 2015, Design is Scent utilises Gemma’s early career as a multi-sensory designer, coming into contact with Heston Blumenthal’s revolutionary work and inspiring her to enrich our most neglected sense: smell. Gemma teamed up with lawyer turned wedding-planner, Meghan Fay, after Meghan attended a wedding Gemma had created a bespoke fragrance for – so taken by the scent that she tracked Gemma down, eventually becomming the Partner and Managing Director of the company.
Until this year, their work was purely for VIPs on a couture basis, creating fragrances for exclusive events at luxury venues such as The Arts Club, The Shard and Battersea Power Station. Now the fragrant duo are opening up their world of scent by allowing couples to explore four ‘masculine’ and four ‘feminine’ fragrances together, along with four other ‘Union’ scents to try – and it’s definitely a case of exploration, as they ‘…encourage people to break the fragrnce ‘rules’ and simply choose what they love A bride may wear a Masculine fragrance and vice versa,’ and of course they can be layered together.
To find out more, visit Design In Scent’s website
How to win: Simply fill in your details, below, and we’ll enter you into the prize draw.
Prize: A beautifully presented Wedding Fragrance Discovery Collection and – once you have chosen your favourite –  a bottle of your favourite perfume!
Closing date: No further entires will be accepted after 10am Thursday 10th August, 2017
Good luck!
[contact-form-7 id=”145448″ title=”Design In Scent Wedding Collection Competition”]

Terms & Conditions: No cash alternative to the prizes will be offered. The prizes are not transferable. Prizes are subject to availability and we reserve the right to substitute any prize with another of equivalent value without giving notice. Closing date for entry will be 10/08/2017. After this date no further entries to the competition will be accepted.