This years advertising is already hotting up. Donna Karan has done a super set of shots and I’ve grabbed them from my fave Fashion Forward blog: art8amby where I also lifted the below script. Do go check their stuff, right on point every day.
Donna Karan Spring Summer 2014 Ad Campaign
Brazilian bombshell Adriana Lima is returning to be the face of Donna Karan New York. The super sexy and fierce Adriana was once their campaign model for Spring Summer 2012 season. She is accompanied by top male model Andres Velencoso Segura for the images that were snapped by Russell James. (source)
As you may know I have a bit of an addictive personality, also I am a Drag Queen, so you’d think I would have box loads of make up. The answer is no. Yes, I have backups of my favourite products but everything fits into a small drawer. I do love watching makeup fashions evolve though and this season I think DIOR has hit a home run. Looking like a pastel Bambi with eyes the surprised vacant look of a bunny about to get Dunlop disease, the model is absolutely outrageously gorgeous.
Of course it is referencing Marie Antoinette but in my mind it also harks back to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. GLAM.
Like the look? Want to know how to get it? Below is a how to video.
Ava Luxe is a super surprise package of fabulous frag gems. The great news is that for a micro niche brand the prices are extremely affordable and sizes are also kept small so you can try 4 or 5 Ava Luxe frags for the cost of a mainstream offering.
Kashmir Spice by Ava Luxe
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
From the Ava Luxe site: An alluring blend of exotic spices, cashmere woods, and incense. Turkish Rose absolute weaves it way through this sensual scent. Featured Notes: East Indian spices, frankincense, myrrh, Cashmere woods, Turkish Rose Absolute, gaiacwood, amber.
WOW!! Kashmir Spice goes on hefty and gourmand, it’s a big fat glorious wander through one of the fabulous spice stores in Northern India. There is even the dry, throat raspy feeling of intense heat and spices in enclosed spaces during an Indian summer. Totally edible and smelling like a sweeter version of the first moment the spices hit hot oil in a pan Kashmir Spice is an assault on your senses that is both enticing and memorable. The amber, frankinsense and myrrh give a lively resinous counterpoint that is sweet, balmy and dusty (The dusty may be the spices actually) at the same time. The woods and rose play only background on my skin but on Jin the rose is quite prominent, maybe you have to be further than I can get to smell it, on him Kashmir Spice’s Turkish rose absolute is like honey and rosewater baklava. MMMM! I even get a hint of ginger through the body of the fragrance and it works in the heat and the cold. I’m thinking of taking it with me on my holidays next week, that’s how much I love it.
I get a medium life span of around 4 hours of fragrance but after that my skin still smells better than reality, just ever so slightly vanillic, for another couple of hours and then gone. Way too perfumed for close working, borderline for dinner and cinema but perfect for all other moments when smelling gorgeous is important. At these prices you can afford to wear it as your daily after hours go-to frag, Kashmir Spice would be on a current short list for my 10 Desert Island frags.
I have worn Kashmir Spice to my work a few times and it is a guaranteed compliment gatherer and people want to get in for a big ole snuffle of you, then they ask what it is that you smell of and where can they get it. Every time so far! It has also seen some fairly intense wear on my skin over time, there’s quite a lot of air in my 15ml and I will soon need to replace it.
Further reading: I could only find reviews on Make Up Alley and there is love and hate in equal measure AvaLuxe site has 15ml EdP/$30 and 5ml extrait/$27
Take care of yourselves,
Portia xx
Disclaimer: This is a repeat post. If you have been a long time reader and this twigged your memory. I was halfway through writing a new post about Kashmir Spice when my brain asked me to check, and yes, this was originally posted on December 30 2012. I have given it a couple of tweaks but it really is the same post.
Here is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in a while. we love One Seed and their creator Liz Cook here at APJ and when news like this hits the desktop I get very happy.
This is what I just got sent. WOW!!!
Portia xx
We are thrilled to launch our new Scent Bar online! Now you can create your own custom-fragrance using natural extracts and accords from our collection.
Simply choose your favourite top, middle and base notes from those listed, and we will expertly blend them into an 8ml atomiser for only $29.95!
And for a limited time, we are giving you $10 off your first Scent Bar order!
This is a subscribers-only offer and wont be offered to the general public. It’s our little ‘thankyou’ to you!
Just use code 2Y34CQTG9R59 at checkout. (Offer expires 31st January 2014)
Here is how mine looked:
Top note: spice (clove; cardamom; fennel; nutmeg)
Middle note: white flowers (jasmine;magnolia;tuberose;champaca;orange blossom)
Base note: amber
Optional-up to 2 extra notes: Orange, Ylang
Which note to be dominant?: Amber
Annick Goutal has been covered a lot on APJ, see under the sign off for other APJ reviews, life story and stuff about this extraordinary woman and her daughter who now carries on the Annick Goutal tradition, and has done under a few owners. It must be hard to work under such conditions and try to keep a multinational brand as true as possible to your beloved mother’s vision, which started out so small, French and independent.
Mon Parfum Cherie Par Camille EdT by Annick Goutal 2011
Fragrantica gives these featured accords in the text:
Top: Indonesian patchouli, plum Heart: iris, powder, violet, heliotrope Base: patchouli
Plum and patchouli? Who’d have thought it would smell this good? Plush and plumped over a bed of the fluffiest and most powdery accords ever, I mean EVAH! Mon Parfum Cherie Par Camille is a beautiful modern perfume that nods heartily to history and gives us a full and throaty sensuality while remaining perfectly composed and restrained. Both innocent and alluring, like a girl/woman of a past era on the threshold of knowing. Still coltish but blossomed and ripe. Do you remember the early Julia Roberts, young Katherine Hepburn or even Cameron Diaz? They had a fresh exuberance that was self possessed, sensual and completely at ease. Being beautiful and unusual can sometimes give people an ease that even genius or the most moneyed can never attain. James Franco has it a little bit too and Brad Pitt fair oozed it. This is a fragrance for people who want to smell like that
What do I smell exactly? A clean patchouli with no dust or rasp, plum that is ripe but unsweet in the modern sense of sweet in perfumery, green and rooty iris/heliotrope/violet powder (I find it hard to distinguish the difference and they all add up to one scent) and down the back I hardly even notice the patchouli though I know it’s there, I get more resinous sweetness than I expect from patchouli.
Mon Parfum Cherie Par Camille will have you softly fragrant with a low sillage, it’s nowhere near a skin scent but it won’t intrude on your work colleagues or dinner either. Should someone be lucky enough to come in for a hug then they will receive a fragrant reward.
For a Goutal EdT I get about average fragrant life of 3-4 hours. Apparently the EdP survives longer but I like the short ride with Mon Parfum Cherie Par Camille so I can wear something else after lunch or before going out. I didn’t mention how much I love the plum coloured bottle and will be4 greatly saddened by the regimentation of bottles that has been put into effect by Pacific Amore. GRRRR! At least we will be able to tell vintage at a glance.
You may remember the very lovely Emma Kate who wrote for APJ for a while and did a bunch of LIVE Video Sniffs with me. She moved to another Australian city for work recently and gave me a bunch of her unloved frags. This happened to be in the bunch and I had totally ignored it till the other day. The heat was making me scratchy and the bottle looks a little like a melting ice cube. PERFECT!!
L’Eau Par Kenzo Wild by Aurélien Guichard for Kenzo 2011
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Mandarin, green lilac, wild mint, bois de roseau Heart: Jasmine, amaryllis, lotus, Guinea pepper, white peach Base: Vanilla, musk, Virginia blue cedar
This is a fresh, fruity, cool scent that is both sweet and tart. Nothing extraordinary but extremely cologne-ish with a sweet twist. I smell nothing natural and it is probably quite cheap to produce. The minty mandarine water opening, the peachy amorphous white flower bouquet has a hint of stem and bell pepper and it ends on a woodsy note that doesn’t really smell like anything particular, but is synthetically non intrusive. What I feel when I wear L’Eau Par Kenzo Wild is clean. Imagine it’s summer, you are hot and sweaty, L’Eau Par Kenzo Wild is like shaving/waxing your legs, having a beautiful soak in the pool afterwards and then slipping into fresh cool 100% Egyptian cotton sheets with the overhead fan on low. MMMMM Perfect.
I tried to find somewhere for you to buy L’Eau Par Kenzo Wild but though I could find the Homme version everywhere the Femme is SOLD OUT! I tried oodles of online sites and nothing. You may be lucky enough to find it on Ebay. Don’t worry if you can’t though, there are a million others quite similar. If you don’t have it you’re missing nothing. Having said that, it’s not going out in my cull.
Last year while in LA for the Perfume Posse ScentSation Bus Tour our last fragrant stop of the day was Opus oils. Kedra Hart was there and boy is she a knockout. We sniffed and laughed, it was fun, we shopped and then we finished the day on the bus. I bought a bottle of Isis and today’s frag…
M’Eau Joe No.3 Hollywood Whiskey by Kedra Hart for Opus Oils 2013
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Limnophila aromatica, whiskey, saffron, cognac, rice flower Heart: Tobacco, honey, rose, violet, dark chocolate Base: Amber, vanilla, tobacco, musk, moss, woody notes
The opening is FIERCE!! Do NOT put your nose near wet fragrance unless you want it completely burned out.
Once the initial screech has flown M’Eau Joe is extremely unusual. Sweet and green, a little nasty and very boozy. There is a something that feels awkward and it is hard to decide if I’m smelling gorgeous or disgusting. You know when you haven’t drunk alcohol for a while and then someone gives you a drink, or you buy one, and that first sip is both repellant and mother’s milk. I find it especially with white spirits. By the end of the first glass though it is delicious and you want more, right? So goes M’Eau Joe No.3 Hollywood Whiskey, I think it may be the Limnophila aromatica which is a plant from Asia used widely in Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai dishes with a green/sweet scent reminiscent of lemon and cumin that gives this incredibly unusual and most interesting hue to the other accords.
Sweet, honeyed tobacco and booze, the amber is very soft in the dry down on me and it’s mainly about the vanilla, tobacco and booze right to the end, around 5-6 hours tops. I adore M’Eau Joe No.3 Hollywood Whiskey and I wish that I found it more wearable on a daily basis. When I do grab it and spritz I get a splendid, thought provoking, good freaky fragrant ride. Nothing I own smells like it, sadly that is also its downfall. I must be TOTALLY in the mood for a journey, need to have the time and space to follow the story and be wowed by the development, time to really take note. Those times are few and far between lately and M’Eau Joe has been sitting in the frag cupboard for too long. I will make a concerted effort to give it more skin time this week…..
This is a fragrance I have long loved, every now and then I would spritz it in the department stores and never purchased it but often looked at it for a purchase but would be tempted away by something else, something newer or more towards the top of my list. I haven’t even owned a decant, and nowadays it’s extremely affordable at the discounters. Weird. The bottle is great with its fun pumper and I love the lilac so I bought a bottle for my BFF Kath a while back and today I’m stealing it off her to write a review.
Lolita Lempicka EdP by Annick Menardo for Lolita Lempicka 1997
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Anise, violet, green ivy Heart: Licorice, almond, orris, iris, cherry, amaryllis, heliotrope Base: Tonka, vanilla, white musk, vetiver, praline
What everyone else says about Lolita Lempicka EdP is not the way I smell it. It opens sweet sugar and almond, with a fizzy drink like Fanta bubbling over it. It’s fun, frivolous and totally fabulous. I don’t get any ivy or violet at all and cool rooty or even carroty iris seems nowhere to be found., not as I know it anyway. I do get the praline, vanilla and some resins through the heart and base though which offers some sweet depths, some heft that plays counterpoint with the lovely PEZ like fizz of the higher notes. I don’t really get a great change through Lolita Lempicka EdP but it gradually slides into the base without losing anything, just changing scent volumes. I think I need to spend some more time with Lolita Lempicka EdP, I’m sure it has some secrets hidden that only repeated wearings will unravel.
I am no great fan of Angel but I am a fan of Lolita Lempicka EdP, it is a calmer, prettier and less strident good time, there is still the candy floss vibe but without the headache inducing size. Yes they have both become cliches but I think that Lolita Lempicka EdP is still an extremely viable fragrance choice. I get excellent projection and sillage, scent life is really good at over 5 hours before it has faded to a sweet nothing.
What an amazing response to the Angelo Orazio Pregon Interview and Peety Giveaway! I counted 55 individual entries (plus 4 extras for tweets). 35 APJs voted to personalize (of that number 18 favored “divide and pee” – thank you for that one Sally M). 19 did not want pee in their perfume (of this number two were somewhat unsure) and 1 entry avoided making any decision whatsoever. Clearly, the Pees have it! Thanks to everyone for their participation and for their interesting and thought provoking comments.
Congratulations to the winners and don’t forget to send Portia your addresses so that O’Driù can send you your prizes!
2 MAIN WINNERS who will each receive:
1 x 49ml Peety™ bottle
P&H Anywhere in the world
3 RUNNER UPS who will each receive:
1 x Peety™ Sample Kits
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DID YOU WIN?
Open to everyone worldwide who follows AustralianPerfumeJunkies via eMail, WordPress, Bloglovin or RSS. Please leave how you follow in the comments to be eligible. I must be able to check that you follow so if you have an email address on your gravatar that’s different to your follow address then please email me so I know. Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged.
You must tell me how you follow APJ and tell us would you personalise the product or not and why.
HOUSEKEEPING
Entries Closed Sunday 5th January 2014 10pm Australian EST
The winners of this smelly draw needed to be chosen in an equally smelly way. Once again I enlisted the aid of the long suffering B-Azar. This time he reached his hand down into a stinky boot that had been loaded with the names of the participants. To make the experience less difficult for him I placed a fragrant orchid, a Zygopetalum hybrid, nearby to modify the scent of the odoriferous boot.
Photo Stolen brooklodge
For the 49 ml bottles of Peety
Patty Pong and Nymphomaniac
For the sample sets
Cookie queen, Lubka K and Carolyn
The winners will have till Wednesday 5th January 2014 to get in touch (portia underscore turbo at yahoo dot com dot au) with their address or the prize will go to someone else.
No responsibility taken for lost or damaged goods in transit.
A couple of years ago now one of my besties bought me a Korres set with Body Milk and Shower Gel. It was completely serendipitous because I had run low on my shower gel at the time and didn’t have a lick of moisturiser in the house anywhere. What did I do? I used it, used it all up in record time and have always got extra on hand in case, I have also gifted this duo to a bunch of my mates, yes it’s that good….
Japanese Rose by Korres
Absolutely expecting it to be a LUSH style scent, bold, big, in your face and take no prisoners I was pleasantly surprised by the quiet grandeur yet tenacious staying power of the fragrance. Roses, roses and more roses, though I don’t get the Japanese connection. Are their Japanese roses known especially for being a spicy, boozy, citrus smelling variety? Apparently they grow in sand dunes near the seaside and have very interesting bark effects so the plant is beautiful when leafed and bare. It’s fun and refreshing in the shower and the lotion makes a fabulous base for any rose fragrance and I also use it for my ambers, it adds a glow that emphasises rose notes but also creates lovely new variants on perfumes without rose. I also find it an extra good fragrance life extender.
Loads of people work in fragrance free environments, Japanese Rose is good because it leaves you softly and subtly fragrant all by itself. After work you can add a spritz of your favourite frag and it will smell gorgeous over the top. Win Win! Today I’m wearing Guerlain’s Shalimar over the top and it gives a whole new rosy sheen to my favourite grand dame of a perfume.
Nowadays I grab mine from Bath & Unwind where you can get both Shower Gel and Body Milk for under $40 delivered anywhere in the world. So not only lovely and lavish but a cheap thrill too.
Till tomorrow,
Portia xx
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
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