Australian

Desert Rosewood by Francois Merle-Baudoin for Goldfield & Banks 2016

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Portia

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Hi Fumies,

Australia has had a few niche perfume lines. The first I fell in love with was the Tommi Sooni range, which I only bought two of the bottles and now wish I’d bought the range and backups. We also have a few very talented natural perfumeries like One Seed. So it’s exciting when a new brand comes along and brings a very Australian feel to the noble French art of perfumery. Goldfield & Banks are named for our historic goldrushes and first European botanist Joseph Banks. Did you know that Australia’s sandalwood (Santalum spitacum) used to be a marker for gold rich areas? Me too. Continue reading →

Tacit by Céline Barel for Aesop 2015 + GIVEAWAY

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 22 Comments

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Portia

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Hey Crew,

Sweet Fern is a perfume store in Australia’s town of Ballarat. Kate the proprietor (who seems absolutely beautiful from the little I know her) got in touch recently and asked if we’d like to smell some of the stuff she stocks. Sure, send it through.

Aesop, the Australian cosmetic house was founded in 1987 in Melbourne by Dennis Paphitis. I was particularly glad Kate sent us some of this through because a bunch of my friends rave madly about the product and even Val the Cookie Queen  and Judith her BFF paid full retail for some skincare from the Milan store earlier in the year.

Tacit by Céline Barel for Aesop 2015

Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Citrus, yuzu
Heart: Basil
Base: Vetiver, cloves

Smells like I’ve walked into a spa. Incredibly hesperidic with a herbaious back beat and florals. This smells like one of those all natural essential oil compositions from an aromatherapist. Its light, zingy, energizing. Scent of basil is really strong – I can smell basil! Tina can smell basil too! Actually she smelt it first…. Tina thinks the citrus smells like yuzu but I’m not sure as I don’t know what yuzu smells like, but I do smell citrus. On Tina Tacit smells much more like clove, on me it smells like dry, fresh cracked pepper and oily, grassy vetiver.

Who would wear this is my question. I reckon it would be fantastic on someone who would put a fragrance on to keep them buoyant through the day, but didn’t need to worry about their fragrance, just wanted to smell fresh. Perfect for Mums or Dads, great for the weekend. I can imagine wearing this on a yacht having lunch with my mates.

I particularly like the sample application method with a swab, would be fantastic for travel and unexpected booty calls. The scent stays beautifully in the swab itself for a couple of days so you could apply and then put the perfumed Tacit swab in your wallet or purse, very fragrant.

Tacit by Aesop GIVEAWAY

WHAT CAN YOU WIN?

This week there will be 2 winner3 who will receive:
Aesop Collection of Beauty & Fragrance Samples
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.

You must tell me how you follow APJ

and

Please go to Sweet Fern and find a product you like the look of. Put it in the comments. NO DOUBLE UPS!

HOUSEKEEPING

Entries Close Sunday 24th September 2017 10pm Australian EdsT and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by random.org
The winners will have till Sundayday 1st October 2017 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

Fire Amber Baby by Jocelyn Fullerton for Cult Of Scent

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 10 Comments

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Post by Portia

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Heya Perfume Peeps,

One of the most gorgeous things about living in Sydney is the frag culture. We are not a huge section but we are all quite friendly and try to get together sometimes to sniff and laugh. Have you noticed that most perfume people are fun & gregarious and also it feels like most of us have known hard times but prefer to rise above them with humour & scent? I also love that we can do our connecting over the internet with the whole world at different times, perfect for anyone with sleep problems, new pets or young children. No one can judge your track suit or lack of clothing when you’re online at midnight in your time zone catching a breather from whatever has you up.

One of the women I really love to spend time with is Jocelyn Fullerton

Fire Amber Baby by Cult Of Scent

Fire Amber Baby by Jocelyn Fullerton

fire-amber-baby-by-cult-of-scent-picCult of Scent

Cult of Scent give these featured accords:
Amber, Labdanum, Incense resins

Thick, toffee, animal, vanilla, warmth like smoky fireside, fatty, deep, smooth, scratchy dry heat, beeswax, tree sap sweet like maple syrup.

Wearing Fire Amber Baby on a warm spring evening and it is blossoming like something from another era, another mindset, another culture. If thick, rich and luscious amber fragrances get your heart pounding then this will send you into fibrillation. A raw and sensual fragrance that is so different from the multitude of ambers I know & love. Crunchy and crackling like honeycomb doped into patchouli toffee and rolled in the vegetal animal grown of labdanum.

If you’ve ever looked through an amber brooch, one of the larger ones with bubbles and imperfections through it, at the sun then you may just know what the smell of Fire Amber Baby smells like.

fire-amber-baby-by-cult-of-scent-jacekabramowiczPDI

At once commanding and comforting the sheer range of nuance that I am noticing tonight in the warmth that I’ve never noticed wearing it in the cool. Yes, it’s still big and intricate in the cool but heat seems to make it jump and sparkle brilliantly.

A statement fragrance if ever there was one. Confidence and comfort radiate, maybe you would need to spritz the air and walk through the mist if wearing to work. Perfect for galleries, outdoors, club life and romance, though I would definitely wait an hour before going to dinner or a movie. It has real red dress, red carpet chutzpah.

fire-amber-baby-by-cult-of-scent-jennifer_lawrence_at_the_83rd_academy_awards-wikimediaWikiMedia

Further reading: Perfumes I Love
Cult of Scent has Fire Amber Baby from $37/8ml
Cult of Scent also have a 6 x Sample Set for only $40

What is your amber fragrance?
Portia xx

Lunarii: New Australian Natural Perfume

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 8 Comments

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Post by Anne-Marie

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Lunarii is an Australian company which creates all-natural fragrances. The company sent APJ some fragrances for consideration, and I’m reviewing two for today’s post.

Lunarii Natural Fragrances

Lunarii: New Australian Natural Perfume

queen of hearts Lunarii Natural FragrancesLunarii

Queen of Hearts by Lunarii

Lunarii gives these featured accords:
Rose Otto, Rose Damascena, Rose Maroc, violet leaf, spikenard, clary sage, musk.

Described as a ‘Euphoric unfurling of a rose-laden carpet into the sky’. The fragrance opens with a sudden whoosh, an ‘unfurling’, of very vivid rose notes. There is not a lot of sweetness; rather, the effect is peppery and a little raspy. If it is a little harsh at this point, it softens as it develops. Incense is not given as a note; on my first wearing of Queen of Hearts I smelled it distinctly, but in subsequent wearings not so much. Never mind. For me, Queen of Hearts resolves into a clean, serene rose incense (-like) fragrance. It is aimed at a ‘woman of any age’, but to me it is quite unisex.

summer Lunarii Natural FragrancesLunarii

Summer

Lunarii gives these featured accords:
Frangipani, Tolu balsam, vanilla, lemon-butter

Summer caught my eye because I love the idea of gardens bright with sunshine and flowers, shaded with trees and murmuring fountains. The fragrance is described as ‘A warm summer’s breeze. Youthful and delicate’. The opening gives me a strange, earthy, almost muddy effect for a minute or so, as if I’m getting earth and roots before leaves and sunshine. As time passes, bright florals and a feeling of freshness and ease emerge. I really can see myself reclining under a shady tree sipping a glass of lemonade, and with nothing to do but read or snooze or watch the pattern of leaves against the sky. However, to my nose the muddiness of the opening leaves a trace throughout that makes the fragrance not as enjoyable as I had hoped.

Queen of Hearts and Summer are quite different, but I’ve enjoyed reviewing them together. Pursuing an Alice and Wonderland theme, Queen of Hearts is like the dim, cool hall in which Alice finds herself after she has fallen down the rabbit hole, and Summer is the garden she sees through the little door, and which she eventually finds.

Sillage and longevity are moderate in both fragrances.

Lunarii’s perfumer is Jason, a Sydney-based healer, artist and scientist with an interest in alchemy. His disillusionment with big-brand fragrances led to the launch of Lunarii, late in 2015. There are seven fragrances in the line-up so far, and there is a range of sample and gift sets available.

Have you tried any Lunarii fragrances? Do you have any favourite natural brands?

Tommi Sooni: R.I.P.

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 20 Comments

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Post by Portia

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Hey APJ Crew,

Recently I grabbed out my bottle of Eau de Tommi Sooni I and was happily spritzing when I thought it was time to revisit the house for the blog. They’re an Aussie crew making lovely vintage inspired fragrances for the modern perfumista and I had been a bit quiet about them, so I went looking and they seem to have disappeared. Gone!

Tommi Sooni: R.I.P.

The only person I ever had contact with from Tommi Sooni was Steven Broadhurst, he was a very pleasant man in my few dealings with him and I really got the feeling that he was 100% devoted to creating a polished, modern, high end independent Australian niche perfumery. The best way I could think of to remember them and their beautiful fragrances was to get all the Tommi Sooni artworks that I could find together and make a post about them, in their own ways as interesting and glorious as the frags.

FragranceX still has Eau de Tommi Sooni I and Jinx for sale AUD$248/100ml

R.I.P. Tommi Sooni, you were too lovely for this world and the air will be a little less fabulously fragrant without you to augment its beauty.
Portia xx

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o.18930Most Photos Stolen Fragrantica

Hedonist by Cult of Scent

/ australianperfumejunkiescom / 17 Comments

Heya Perfume Junkies,

I have a small sample of Hedonist. There is no note list online and the brand is so fledgeling that I can’t even find a website for it. There is a Cult of Scent Facebook Page but it doesn’t have a price list, just some beautiful pictures, a couple of meetups and some fragrant knowledge exchange. I don’t even have a picture of the bottle for you all. To be perfectly honest I did not even purchase these scents, my mate Casssandra gave me some tiny test samples that I have put into spritzers.

Hedonist by Cult of Scent

Cult Of Scent

So I do know that Jocelyn is the perfumer though I’m yet to meet her, she is a Sydney based perfumer and very pretty. I spent some time in the delicious citrus/white flower/green extravaganza that is Cult of Scent’s Magnolia ’13 a while ago and loved it sick.

So Hedonist, it opens slightly citrus and balmy but what immediately knocks on my olfactory door is leather. Slightly tar-ish, smoky, woodsy leather. New leather before it’s been made into its final product, the act of walking into a leather shop and being greeted by hundreds of skins in their multi-hued entirety. Hedonist is not big but it does have a fairly ferocious opening on my skin. More Lonestar Memories than Cuir d’Ange if you know what I mean, but not really like Lonestar Memories at all. Michael Borg just told me that the hefty darkness is probably oud assisted, now that he mentions it I tend to agree.

Hedonist Cult of scent VIC_River_Downs WikipediaPhoto Stolen Wikipedia

Hedonist is a bitter brew yet behind it I smell softness, a creamy something, a white flower. Michael says it’s the tiare flower, he could be correct, I am just going to say creamy white flowers and maybe some lactonic fruit like fig. No matter what it is the smell is beautiful, exquisite, both hefty and during the heart also pleasantly sheer. Wearable to most occasions where people are happy to have you scented, and not overpowering enough to preclude it from dining or the movies. Very wearable.

Hedonist Cult of scent book BonnyBBX PixabayPhoto Stolen Pixabay

The Middle East? A little tease of an introduction to it, yes. A soft core, wearable beauty. Hedonist? Not nearly as overblown or outrageous as I was expecting though towards dry down it does become quite animal and lived in but so soft that it could really be you, just warmer and sexier. GGGGRRROWLL

What fragrance would you call your Hedonist fragrance? For me I think Songes by Annick Goutal, Guerlain’s Shalimar and Parfum de Maroc by Aftelier. These hold something big, overblown and indulgent. What’s yours?
Portia x