26 Sunday May 2019
Posted in Advertising and Scent
Headed out of town this weekend?
On May 27, 1910, an ad for the Rosenbaum Company store in a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania newspaper made some suggestions for toiletries that its customers might want to pack for their Memorial Day outings. These items (on sale!) included facial cream, hydrogen peroxide, “Lusterite” emery boards, and tinted face powder (and “powder leaves,” which do sound useful for travel, if they’re similar to the “papier poudre” blotting papers still available today)…
20 Monday May 2019
Posted in Passing Fancies
Tags
Reading: Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny
Audio: The Police (my brother occasionally reminds me to go back and remember how great they were)
Video: The final episodes of “Game of Thrones,” of course. Valar morghulis.
16 Thursday May 2019
Posted in Perfume Reviews
My latest post on Now Smell This is a review of Boxwalla’s new Perfumer Series project, featuring fragrances by Sigil Scents.
You can read it here.
Image via Boxwalla’s instagram.
13 Monday May 2019
Posted in Advertising and Scent
Emporio Armani, the diffusion line from Giorgio Armani, released this duo of his-and-her fragrances in 2017. Are they still around? I haven’t even bothered to check. The scents themselves were pretty run-of-the-mill. Their promotional image is the only reason I remember their launch, since it seems to be a nod to an iconic New York City photograph…
10 Friday May 2019
Posted in Perfume Bottles
Tags
PRADA PINK FLAMINGOS
Style/art/fashion news from earlier this week:
“The Costume Institute’s spring 2019 exhibition [CAMP: Notes on Fashion] explores the origins of camp’s exuberant aesthetic. Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay ‘Notes on “Camp”‘ provides the framework for the exhibition, which examines how the elements of irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration are expressed in fashion.”
Could we also look for camp (both intentional and intentional) in the visual presentation of perfume? I think we can.
Here are a few examples, paired with quotes from Sontag’s landmark essay…
03 Friday May 2019
Posted in Perfume Reviews
Tags
atelier des ors, eau d'italie, ex nihilo, mcmc fragrances, now smell this, perfume review, roses
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My latest post on Now Smell This is a review of four rose perfumes: Eau d’Italie Rosa Greta, MCMC Fragrances Maine, Ex Nihilo Rose Hubris, and Atelier des Ors Rose Omeyyade.
You can read it here.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
29 Monday Apr 2019
Posted in Advertising and Scent
It’s amazing how many different fragrance brands exist or have existed, even in the not-so-distant past. For example, this ad caught my eye when I was browsing the results of some random image search, but I’m not familiar with the name “Marta Harff.” I looked her up and learned that she’s an Argentinian entrepreneur who has run several fragrance/toiletry brands, including a namesake line of “Aguas Florales” (“flower waters”). This one is “Manzanilla.” (Chamomile?)
What really interested me in this ad (which seems to date to the 1990s) was the image it used on the bottle label and in the background…
24 Wednesday Apr 2019
Posted in Art and Scent
A pleasant surprise during a hectic day: I found out that my presentation “Frida Kahlo: A Perfumed Portrait” had been covered by two writers for the All Arts website.
I’m grateful to Gillian Edevane and Britt Stigler for attending last Thursday’s event and writing such a detailed and observant summary of my talk and Kahlo’s taste in fragrance.
You can read it here!
22 Monday Apr 2019
Posted in Passing Fancies
Tags
Reading: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Audio: Finally getting into St. Vincent, a decade or so after everyone else
Video: The final season of Game of Thrones
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