What a great giveaway!! Special thanks to Le Cherche Midi for their super generous support of APJ by providing these giveaways, there’s another one coming very soon for another of their gorgeous fragrances so look out for that.
This week there are three winners, each will receive
1 x 5ml Manufacturers Travel Spray of 28 by Le Cherche Midi
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DID YOU WIN?
To be eligible for the draw you had to go to Le Cherche Midi<<JUMP find a fragrance NUMBER and ONE INGREDIENT IN IT.
NO DOUBLE UPS
Then leave a comment with NUMBER + INGREDIENT and how you follow APJ.
HOUSEKEEPING
Entries Closed Monday 21st October 2013 10pm Australian EST
Winners will be chosen by random.org
Photo Stolen berryreview
Martin, Cheri, DkChocoMan
The winners will have till Thursday 24th October 2013 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.
The imagery this fragrance conjures is surprisingly specific. I almost always completely dismiss the stories and not-so-covertly imposed imagery fragrance houses like to peddle. Seldom does a fragrance actually evoke any imagery in my minds eye, but this one certainly does.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Pear, lemon Heart: Carnation, iris, heliotrope, rose, lily of the valley, violet leaf Base: Patchouli, vanilla, musk, cedar
So, Stilettos on Lex by Jul et Mad…….WOW! Now, the images are mine to keep ☺ but in essence there is a woman (not a girl) and she is absolutely sexy and feminine – certainly in nylons and heels and wearing elegant designer clothes, make-up and lipstick.
Stilettos on Lex possesses a combination of olfactory impressions that somehow manages to take what is ultimately a fruity floral (which I usually abhor) and make it interesting and different by making it smell luxurious and lived in. It’s obviously musky, but it’s neither the pristine cleanliness of white musks nor overtly carnal musks that are present. Instead it smells lived in. That perfect balance of muskiness that’s almost of human skin – wonderful and so seldom used. There are some high pitched notes that give me the impression of worn stockings.
There’s also that rose, violet, vanilla combo that smells ever so slightly augmented by aldehydes and gives the impression of expensive lipsticks and make-up. Texturally it provides subtle impressions of both butter and powder which adds to the lux feel. Patchouli, cedar and some subtle spices are perceptible in the base adding some contrast and further texture without being overtly noticeable.
In terms of performance, on my skin, longevity is excellent and sillage is medium to high.
Aedes de Venustas have Stilettos on Lex Parfum $280/50ml Fragrance & Art do Stilettos on Lex Parfum 2000 Swedish Krona (around US$305)/50ml + 7ml (and samples) First In Fragrance has €235/50ml (and samples)
Honestly, I don’t want to say much more. I wrote three pages of notes and impressions as I tested this fragrance but please, just go ahead and try it. I’d love to know what you think. Just don’t blame me if the men start following you around all starry-eyed.
Well, a fruity floral done right……who would have thought it……
Until next time
M
Hi There Indie Perfume Ho’s and lovers of the finest fragrance,
I like to think that Liz Zorn, the perfumer behind the Soivohle range, artist and general creative genius and guru, and I are buddies. I adore her perfumes and own quite a few now, also recently she put some of her artworks up for sale and I was lucky enough to grab the one made for this fragrance, Jasmine Summer. It is a fabulous little painting and reflects the perfume excellently.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Jasmine, lime, fruity notes, white lily, orchid, vanilla, musk
Jasmine Summer is a sheer, very slightly fruity, floral that creates an elegant soft nimbus of the real deal of jasmine, as if you have it growing outside your window and in full bloom. It is heady and intoxicating but not indolic, not a sign of breath or animal. Though Jasmine Summer is sheer it has terrific sillage and projects fabulously for the first few hours. Through the whole fragrance life jasmine is front and centre, it opens sizzling and citric before mildly warming, it does sweeten up a bit but it’s not till a couple of hours have passed that vanilla comes out to play and then it isn’t fully featured till the end dry down where the jasmine and vanilla get funky with the musks.
For anyone who eschews jasmine or big white florals for their nasty sensual breathy indoles then Jasmine Summer could be a good place for you to come and sniff, this is super soft and clean jasmine with plenty of air around it. It is a little like sitting in a wedding in India with all the women sitting with jasmine in their hair and the cool of evening after everyone has eaten their fill and is now sitting around eating fruits and chatting quietly, awaiting the next event.
I also love how Jasmine Summer lingers, around 6-7 hours with the second half softer and more intimate, a come hither fragrance. Sweet sixteen or septuagenarian will love wearing this beautiful fragrance.
We do a full Voyage d’Hermes review<<<JUMP but I thought you may like to watch the mini movie again, I think it supremely beautiful and love coming across it.
Portia xx
Voyage d’Hermès mini movie
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Fragrantica gives these featured accords: Top: Amalfi lemon, spices, cardamom Heart: Green notes, floral notes, tea Base: Woodsy notes, Musk
Another great GIVEAWAY!! Thanks all for getting on board.
Bat-Sheba GIVEAWAY WINNERS
WHAT COULD YOU WIN?
A draw for two winners, each will receive
2ml decants of Bat-Sheba Exotic Oriental.
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DID YOU WIN?
To be eligible for the draw just leave a comment on a favorite commercial perfume bottle and how you follow APJ, with an extra chance for tweeting
HOUSEKEEPING
Entries Closed Thursday 17th October 2013 10pm Australian EDST
Winners will be chosen by random.org (I’m so technically challenged that I can’t even figure out how to use Random.org. Once again B-Azar pulled the winning names, this time from a hat, while Fender the dog observed to make sure everything was on the up and up.?
Photo Stolen thegarfieldshow-diary
The winners will have till Sunday 20th October 2013 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.
Now I start to gather essential oils that I have chosen, luckily having the gift of being able to smell a combination of essential oils in my mind before I actually put them together. Of course I have worked with combining a wide variety of essential oils for 20 years and there is so much stored in my brain that this can be easy for me. Sometimes it’s a struggle creating a synergy that is pleasing. However I keep building on it until my nose takes pleasure in the scent and it reaches down to the depths of my soul.
Anointing or spraying a perfume is a ritual to me and one of my favourite times to wear a perfume is when I go to bed. I find myself smiling, my heart opens and I feel simply divine, in a place of absolute contentment, how beautiful it is to go to sleep feeling like this.
Ok let us have a peak at Portia’s perfume; I am going to share a few of the emotional representations/properties of some of the oils used in this Portia’s perfume creation.
There are 3 citrus essential oils in this blend and one of the most significant emotional and psychological properties of citrus essential oils is that they are very uplifting to the emotions, they are highly used in aromatherapy because they are what we classify as having a happy, joyful effect. Citrus essential oils lend themselves beautifully to most combinations giving very pleasing top notes that are of course the first aroma smelt in a perfume. They are fresh, clean and lively.
Middle notes include the divine exotic ylang ylang meaning flower of flowers. This is a very sweet, heady intoxicating aroma that adds elegance, sensuality and body. Combined with Patchouli they are pure eroticism.
Oakmoss and vetiver are 2 of my most favourite essential oils. I love the depth of their earthiness. Oakmoss is full of mystery and vetiver has a deep smokey aroma that I personally find very sexy! Both are excellent fixatives that linger in your heart and mind.
Cardamom is a spice and I love using it in perfumes and like petitgrain has beautiful refreshing and uplifting qualities.
Peru Balsam is divinely sweet and balsamic and has a vanilla like scent.
Vanilla co2 is perfect to combine with spices, woods, citrus and florals, it gives warmth to any blend.
Smell is the potent wizard that transports us across the miles and all the years we have lived ~ Helen Keller
I love that quote and it really rings true to me. I have spent near on 20 years working with aromatherapy and the plant world therapeutically, emotionally and energetically depending on what my clients have wanted.
Not so long ago the crew at Le Cherche Midi came to my attention through the Perfume Shrine and at the time they were doing a Kickstarter fundraising drive. The crew seemed very dedicated to producing beautiful scents and I thought it a good idea to get behind them and help with a post. Though they didn’t make their goal I have kept in touch with proprietor Nathan Motylinski and he has kindly sent us 5ml Travel Sprays of their current fragrance 28 to give away so a few of you can try their great product.
Le Cherche Midi gives these featured accords in one line:
Gunpowder, warm milk, leather flower, English pear blossom, midnight iris, amber incense
From the Le Cherche Midi site: 28 brings two opposing worlds together, combining the explosive fury of the Greek Gods with the nurturing comfort of Mother’s milk in an olfactive tour de force.
The opening of 28 is all cold oily gunmetal and something sweetly, awkwardly floral which has a hint of the metal zing of blood and a slight fruity flavour that is both interesting and unusual. There is also a wet smell, not like wet anything but as if the metal has dew upon it. I have never smelt anything like 28 but there are parts of it that remind me of other sideways fragrances like Bull’s Blood by Imaginary Authors, LEau d’Issey and , dare I say it, Secretions Magnifiques. NO, don’t get all freaked out: not the same just a couple of similarities I am wondering if it’s the milky accord which doesn’t read like milk to me at all.
28 is so beautifully other and lasts on my skin for hours and hours, being so different from anything else I wear it catches my attention every huff and again I think how lovely it is. As if aliens had created a perfume, or if a computer wanted to take the next step into olfactory stimuli, then this is what they would create and wear. There is something clinically clean and industrial about 28 until around the four hour mark where there comes a very slight warming through bet it’s still cool as a cucumber. This is my 3rd morning in a row choosing to wear 28, that speaks volumes about its inherent enjoyability, mornings are all about my enjoyment of fragrance.
Le Cherche Midi has 28 in EdT $110/100ml or $15/5ml Travel spray
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Photo Stolen TheTruthAboutMummy
28 by Le Cherche Midi GIVEAWAY
WHAT CAN YOU WIN?
This week there are three winners, each will receive
1 x 5ml Manufacturers Travel Spray of 28 by Le Cherche Midi
P&H Anywhere in the world
HOW DO 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.
To be eligible for the draw go to Le Cherche Midi<<JUMP find a fragrance NUMBER and ONE INGREDIENT IN IT.
NO DOUBLE UPS
Then leave a comment with NUMBER + INGREDIENT and how you follow APJ.
Also get an extra chance if you LIKE Australian Perfume Junkies on FB. Leave a one word LIKE on the Australian Perfume Junkies feed on FB when you do or if you already LIKE so I can enter you.
HOUSEKEEPING
Entries Close Monday 21st October 2013 10pm Australian EST and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by random.org
The winners will have till Thursday 24th October 2013 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.
Hey there APJ Peeps, Family, Friends and all Newcomers,
We have moved sideways across the WordPress world and if you were following through WordPress you’ll have to follow again please. Sorry for the bother, this was a completely unexpected by product of the move and I’d have warned you all in advance had I known.
Last weekend I was at Melbourne airport with Jin and had some time to kill so we dropped into the L’Occitane store there. I haven’t really paid much attention to L’Occitane since 1994 while at the Cannes Film Festival I grabbed some for my Mum and Sister and sent it back to Australia. Sadly, by the time I returned from living in the UK they had finished their bottles and hadn’t kept them so I could repurchase next time I was in Europe. Since then L’Occitane has arrived in Australia and has loads of stand alone stores in large cities, airports and also in department stores. Olivier Baussan founded the company in 1976 because he wanted to create a company that celebrates and preserves the traditions of his home region of France: Provence.
From the L’Occitane site: L’OCCITANE is anchored in Provence, where fragrant fields of lavender are a continual reminder of the region’s natural bounty. Each of our ranges is inspired by ingredients harvested from the south of France and the Mediterranean. Our products offer the many benefits of these ingredients, while translating the traditional savoir-faire of the regional artisans. In the time of the Byzantine Empire, the south of France was a region called “Occitania”. The name “L’OCCITANE” is derived from this, meaning “woman of Occitania.” L’OCCITANE symbolizes this woman, her beauty and her relationship with nature.
So while we were there I spritzed one of their new La Collection de Grasse fragrances Vanilla and Narcisse and I liked it so much that I decided to get in touch with the L’Occitane crew here in Australia and ask for some review samples.
If a product or company can be judged in any way by the front line of people that you talk to on the phone then L’Occitane is a winner. Everyone I spoke to was thrilled that I would call, was interested, enjoyed their product and that I wanted to write about L’Occitane for the blog. We talked fragrance but the one thing they wanted me to try was Divine Cream, apparently the most talked about new product to hit the stores and gaining huge market share already. Sure they would send me some fragrance but even more they wanted me to try this amazing product that works better than anything else they’d tried. No, I didn’t have to write about it, yes they understand I do fragrance, please just try it and tell us how you like it. OK, guinea pig Portia into action.
I don’t know if I’ve told you before but I take extremely poor care of my skin, spending so much time with a full face of TV make up and taking it off with grape seed/olive/baby oil, in the bath I am a soap and water cleaner of my face, shave with Gillette shave products, after shave balm by Nivea and that’s the extent of my beauty routine. I have been blessed with good skin and mostly small pores. What I thought I could do though is spread the product out through some of my friends and see their reactions to it too.
There will be four of us trialling for 2 weeks and I’ll give you weekly updates, sound good?
Katie: is my office helper/life organiser two days a week, has 2 lovely daughters and an Architect husband. I think she may be just under 30.
Kath: My BFF who works as an Executive Assistsant to the CEO and CFO of a business involved in English Language Studies at Macquarie University. Kath will be 40 next year.
Natasha: Another very close friend Natasha was my Tupperware manager and mentor. She coached me to being the No 1 Tupperware Demonstrator in Australia & New Zealand in 2007. Tash is a single Mum of three mostly grown up boys and is just over the 40 mark.
Portia: Me a Drag Queen, Homestay Provider and Perfume Blogger who is now 45.
You should go to L’Occitane and as for some samples so you can do the 2 week challenge too. I’d love to read what YOU all are thinking about L’Occitane Divine Cream too. At the end there will be a VERY SPECIAL PRIZE for a couple of people so get involved.
From L’Occitane site : Divine anti-aging care fights the signs of aging, so you can face up the passing of time with absolute serenity. The divine combination of organic Immortelle and Myrtle Essential Oils offers: A complete regenerating care: Combined action to stimulate the production of collagens and improve skin microcirculation helps to reduce damage caused by time and restore substance and vitality. A second youth: Myrtle essential oil stimulates within the skin, the action of the longevity protein- to help increase cellular vitality preserve the skin’s appearance.
Awarded the highest rated Anti-Aging Miracle Cream in the 2011 Anti-Aging Beauty Bible. Independently tested by a panel of women across the UK
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My question is, “Have any of you tried L’Occitane Divine Cream?” If so, how was it, did it give you better feeling and looking skin, would you purchase or repurchase? I do understand that this is a cream not surgery but did you feel that it had benefited you in any way?
Here are the most interesting to me of the Marie Clare video report on the L’Occitane Divine Cream. Enjoy.
Portia xx
I have started at #2 video because the first one was just a bit ad-ish.
#3 was about the jar that Divine Cream comes in and was boring so I have skipped it in favour of the process and studies
#5 is about sourcing and sustainability but was not in depth enough about either, sorry.
When she was younger she had to sit far away because that’s all she could afford. In her teenage years she spent hours locked away in her room listening to his albums and dreaming of what she’d say when she met him. Now she was up close and he would be right there in front of her, close enough to make eye contact. Everyone would say she was too old for a crush on a rock star but what fun is life without a little fantasy?
She brought a bouquet of roses to toss on the stage. The night was cool so she had worn her leather jacket but the rain earlier in the day was making it feel a but humid. As she was waiting for the concert to start she began to wonder if it would become too warm. The roses were cradled close to her chest now and the seats around her filled with people. She was definitely feeling warm and with the heat rising from her body she could smell the roses and the leather. Traces of perfumes she had worn before swirled around her, released from her jacket by the rising temperature.
The house lights dimmed. The scent of roses and leather intensified with the rising temperature. The music started to play and then, there he was. So close but really still so far. She lost herself in the moment. Sure, she was too old for schoolgirl fantasies but for that moment she relived them all. She’d almost forgotten about the roses which she was practically crushing now. She held them up to him and when she was able to hand him the bouquet their eyes met. He was singing to her. At least that’s what she wanted to believe, that he was hers for that moment in time. She hugged her leather jacket closer, cradling herself in its warm, musky softness.
Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Bergamot, blood orange, rose, jasmine, gardenia, iris, sandalwood, musk, leather
Whips and Roses is a perfume that I have loved from the very first sniff. When I first got a sample of it I was smitten. I tried to forget it but the memory of it stayed with me. Eventually I just broke down and got a full bottle. It might just be my favorite rose scent. It’s not a fussy floral nor does it smell like some of the classic leather scents. The name describes it perfectly. It does smell of leather and roses. It’s the first perfume that truly smelled like leather to me. It’s not powdery at all which is how some leathers are to my nose. Whips and Roses reminds me of walking into a leather goods store or the smell of looking at fine purses.
The rose isn’t fresh or powdery. It’s the smell of roses past their prime in a bouquet of flowers, some of which have wilted and died. There is an almost green, humid quality to the scent as well, maybe thatʼs the jasmine or gardenia peeking through. Something about this perfume feels almost melancholy or perhaps bittersweet. I could probably pick the notes apart more if I really tried, but I never want to do that when I wear it. It’s a scent I just like to lose myself in.
Like the other Kerosene scents I’ve tried this one has good projection and longevity, which are two wonderful qualities to me. I’ve worn it to work but I wear almost anything to work. Most people might not find this a good office scent although if applied with a light hand it might work. Give it a try if you like your roses a little darker and heavier. If you love the smell of leather but find a lot of leather perfumes are too powdery this might work for you. Probably more of a cool weather choice for most people but that green, humid quality to it makes me reach for in in summer as well and it really blooms on me.
So far I’ve loved all the Kerosene scents I’ve tried. I’m hoping that trend changes because if I keep falling in love it’s going to be tough on my wallet.
Photo Stolen Le Cherche Midi
Photo Stolen berryreview
Australian Perfume Junkies 