Friday 31 July 2015

The Plight Of The Independent

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there was a town called "Londinium". Now, in this mystical place there were shops selling everything that a person could want. The shopkeepers knew their customers' names, their tastes, on which day the week they shopped, and never competed with each other in a mercenary way. "Competition is the way to failure. You may succeed in a sale but at the price of a friend." In 2015 this description of London is indeed a fairytale, but it doesn't need to be. At least, not totally. Come with me as I take you on a journey to see whether there are lessons to be learnt from the Plum capital of the United Kingdom.

Sunday 26 July 2015

The Wedding Fragrance

What will your wedding smell like? You've chosen the flowers and the venue, maybe even scented the church with a myriad of Jo Malone candles, but the most important decision is still to be made. What perfumes are you both going to choose for the big day? You're going to stand opposite each other for an hour, although if often feels considerably longer, so it would be a good start to the celebration if you liked each others' scent. There has recently been a boom in the fashion for speciality "wedding fragrances", but are we missing some true classics in the never ending quest for scented originality? 

Sunday 19 July 2015

The Vanishing Violet

In 1964 Pete Seeger sang, "Where have all the flowers gone?" Well, for now I'm not concerned with all of them, just one. It was a staple of male and female fragrances as far back as you can remember but this treasure has now sadly fallen out of favour. I am talking about the vanishing violet. This wonderful floral adds a depth to ladies fragrances whilst emanating femininity, hints at a dangerous note in men's scents whilst softening, and in small quantities provides the finishing touch to a perfume by seemingly pulling everything together and then exploding it outwards! It is a truly magical ingredient, so where has it gone?

Thursday 9 July 2015

The Scent Of Moving

With a life crammed full of scents, what happens when you move house and disturb your carefully stored fragrance memories? On 3rd July 2015 it happened to me. My boxed up past became alive again, and each lid that I opened brought back a myriad of emotions. They always say that the act of moving house can be cathartic, and what I found was that every item stirred a memory, not all of them good, and each of these also revealed up a scent. When I last moved in 2003 I didn't work in perfume, I was still an actor, and I didn't "think" so much about fragrance. This meant that I didn't have such a connection with my belongings.

Wednesday 1 July 2015

The LYNX effect

We've come a long way since the days of Atlantis and Inca, but the 1983 phenomenon of Lynx (or Axe if you live outside of the UK) shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Originally used with the same gusto as its older relative Brut, it was the staple of every changing room in the eighties and nineties. It's because the products were always so heavily fragranced, and were used to excess by teenagers, that the whole range still carries the unfair stigma of those early years. So, whilst it's still looked down on with derision by many people, is there a place for the Lynx body spray in the perfumed world of 2015?