28 by Cecile Hua for Le Cherche Midi 2013

October 18, 2013 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 47 Comments

Hello Niche Nerds,

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.

28 by Le Cherche Midi 2013

Photo Stolen Le Cherche Midi

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.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

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

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.

Extra Chances?
Tweet: @OzPerfumeJunkie Le Cherche Midi 28 GIVEAWAY http://wp.me/p3PURw-26b #Perfume #Giveaway @lecherchemidi

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.

L’Occitane: Divine Cream

October 18, 2013 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 22 Comments

Hello Fabulous Fragrance Fiends,

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.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

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.

L’Occitane: Divine Cream

Photo Stolen L’Occitane

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.

Photo Stolen Alain C. Flickr

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
.

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.

Judith Muller: Bat-Sheba

October 14, 2013 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 91 Comments

Post by Azar

Judith Muller: Bat-Sheba

Three Legendary Women and a Perfume Bottle

International Flavors and Fragrances (through various incarnations) has been in the business of creating scents and tastes for every imaginable application since 1833. In the late 1960’s the Hungarian born, Israeli perfumer, cosmetologist and entrepreneur Judith Muller (1935-2012) chose IFF to develop a fine fragrance designed for the mass market as well as for her personal and business clients (including El Al Airlines). Her flagship fragrance, Bat-Sheba, named after the biblical beauty, would be one of the first perfumes created by the IFF employee, soon to be super star perfumer, Sophia Grojsman.

Photo Stolen hetek.hu

Bat-Sheba appeared as two distinct scents, Exotic Oriental and Woody Modern. A number of other fragrances, including Judith, King David and Shalom, were produced in Muller’s Mt. Carmel plant and exported to 17 countries.

Judith Muller’s perfumery enjoyed over twenty years of success until the sudden death of her husband/business partner forced her to stop production and close her Haifa operation. She moved to Tel Aviv in the late 1990’s where she continued to create bespoke and private label fragrances for personal and corporate clients. Eventually she relocated to Budapest, remaining creative and vibrant as ever, returning at last to Israel just before her death in 2012.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

Sophia Grojsman, the nose who is credited with the creation of Bat-Sheba, was born in Belarus in 1945. She was educated as a chemist in Poland and immigrated to New York in1965 where she began working for IFF as a lab assistant to Ellie Fox. Eventually IFF realized her talent. She was encouraged and mentored by world-renowned perfumers Ernest Shiftan and Josephine Catapano. Her long and productive career at IFF included her appointment as corporate VP in 1998 and the creation of over 30 of the most successful and well known fragrances of our time, including Eternity by Calvin Klein, Prescriptive’s Calyx, Paris by Yves Saint Laurent and Tresor by Lancome.

So much more can be said of these legendary women and we all know the story of passion and betrayal, murder and atonement surrounding the biblical legend Bat-Sheba. Now what about the Perfume Bottle?

Judith Muller designed gorgeous, collectable bottles for her exotic, evocative perfumes.
Most of these bottles from the Haifa period were shaped like tiny, ancient amphorae painted with one of a kind, watery, organic patterns. The patterns and coloring of every bottle was different, ranging from muted and silky mauves to brilliant, sparkling purples and golds.

I have several full bottles of different Judith Muller perfumes and perfume “trinkets”. These lovelies should have been displayed but instead have been squirreled away for years in my cool, dark perfume storage. The Exotic Oriental fragrance has been described as a dry, dusty floral chypre with a honeyed heart.

Photo Stolen myprettypaints