Apollo Hyacinth by Alberto Morillas for Eric Buterbaugh Florals 2015

December 12, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 15 Comments

Post by Portia

Hi there Fragrant Family,

There are some perfumers whose name will make me prick up my nose in anticipation. A name that I know, though usually cannot pinpoint what it is they did that I love. Alberto Morillas is one such, he has done some of my all time favourite fragrances and a slew of my mates signatures through the years. Let’s talk Byzance by Rochas, M7 by YSL, Mugler Cologne, Kenzo Flower, BVLGARI BLV Pour Homme, BVLGARI Man, Lanvin Oxygene and the original Salvador Dali. These are just my favourites from the plethora of major blockbusters and some very good, well created flops and some absolute shite that I wouldn’t clean my driveway with.

Apollo Hyacinth by Eric Buterbaugh Florals 2015

Apollo Hyacinth by Alberto Morillas

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Neroli, pear, galbanum
Heart: Hyacinth, lily of the valley, angelica
Base: Haitian vetiver, oakmoss, cedar

Apollo Hyacinth opens with unruffled calm. Natural fresh cut fruit sweet and the pear smells cool, ripe and juicy: there’s even a hint of the dry and tarter skin. Galbanum smooths the opening giving green resinous porcelain, breath steals in and suddenly the sweetness becomes a litle candied.

Our heart has arrived and it’s a bouquet, fresh, green and stark. An angular, other worldly bouquet that says broken twig, lichen, moss and the gel like sap of aloe vera. There is peace and calm in Apollo Hyacinth, a breath of fresh air and a humid hothouse in the cool of evening. The energy of healthy soil and growing plants. The angelica adds a wild waywardness that the other flowers never possess, it’s enchanting, riveting. Like hyacinth is all grown and ready to rock.

Lasting power is unbelievable, though after 4 hours you have to be close to notice. Next day, 20+ hours later I can still smell the tiniest trace of sweet oily green that is only smellable with my nose against my arm. If it was a sexual tryst though whoever my lucky partner was would be getting a waft from me that is freaking gorgeous, I’m me and I want to root me.

Apollo Hyacinth is 100% unisex, a beautiful, billowing cloud of fresh green and white flowers. I cannot think of a place where you would feel mismatched were you lucky enough to own this glamour frag. SERIOUSLY WANT!!

Further reading: Perfume Posse and Scented Hound
Eric Buterbaugh Florals has EdP $300/100ml
Surrender To Chance has samples from $5/.5ml

Aren’t the bottles stellar? How lavish. Do you want one yet?
Portia xx

Shalimar by Guerlain: Back To My Favourite

December 11, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 33 Comments

Post by Portia

Hiya Frag Fiends,

Shalimar has been my enduring fragrant love. Since it was the fragrance of my Mum for years and some of her friends continued to wear it right through our childhood. Then working a couple of summers at the fragrance counter in a suburban mall, Carlingford Grace Bros. and getting to know a slew of fragrances it still held sway as the most beautiful of them all. Even now after being down the fragrant worm hole for years I still come back to Shalimar regularly and every time I do I quietly ask myself why I ever needed to stray from its billowing extravagance.

Shalimar by Guerlain 1925: Back To My Favourite

Shalimar by Jacques Guerlain

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Citruses, mandarin orange, cedar, lemon, bergamot
Heart: Iris, rose, vetiver, jasmine, patchouli
Base: Civet, musk, tonka bean, opoponax, leather, incense, vanilla, sandalwood

All I knew of Shalimar through my childhood was that it smelled incredible: its sweet, lemon ice-creamy vanilla over a hefty dollop of animal warmth, woodsy incense and plush leathers was so alluring and engulfing.

Named for the Shalimar gardens of Lahore (and Kapurthala’s homage) but the back story is of the love of Shah Jahan for a princess from the Persian nobility who he fell in love with, married and made her his favourite queen, after she died giving birth to their 14th child he nearly bankrupted his kingdom building the Taj Mahal as her crypt. The second time I was at the Taj Mahal the whole experience was so overwhelming that I needed to sit on the steps leading into the park and have a little moment. Yes, I was wearing Shalimar.

Above is a picture of my Shalimar collection. Only the bottles of open boxes are shown, quite a few remain unopened because they are doubles, I have decants or they are discontinued and having/holding/looking at them is as good as smelling them. One of my parfums is not parfum at all (maybe EdC?) and another smells like it has been stretched with perfumers alcohol. The rosebud bottle is still sealed as are the 16oz watchface bottle and the little parfum on the navy box. The batwing bottle that is 1/3 full is my 4th bottle of EdT over the years, I really want to buy one of the newest but feel naughty as I have 2 backups bought at extremely reasonable prices when buying this one. What is interesting is that though the Shalimars are all different, they are so similar that if you’re wearing them for pleasure rather than parsing and blogging they are all pretty much one. No matter what era though the lemon ice-creamy fizz with the vanilla and an animal growl fits me like a glove. My number one.

Further reading: Erica Golding at APJ and Portia on EdC at APJ
FragranceNet has EdT $49/90ml before Coupon
Surrender To Chance has EdP samples from $3/ml

What is your number one?
Portia xx

Ballets Rouges by Ellen Covey for Olympic Orchids 2012

December 10, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 3 Comments

Post by Portia

Hi there Independent Perfume Lovers,

It’s no secret how much I love Ellen Covey’s work as a perfumer. There are numerous full bottles of her work around here but only 2 have made it to the 30ml Parfum strength spray; they are Olympic Amber and Ballets Rouges. So it’s weird for me to discover that I have only briefly mentioned Ballets Rouges and never done a complete post on it. TBH I thought I had done one.

Ellen Covey wears a lot of hats. She is a perfumer, scientist, runner, loving partner and general great girl who lives in the USAs Pacific North-West, near APJs Azar (they are great friends). I think I’ve missed a few of her astounding talents too, yes overachiever dot com. Her range of fragrances is one of the broadest, from very pretty florals through to the beastly Dev series, and so many of them speak to me. They are 100% original, even something as ubiquitous as amber becomes an intriguing and marvellous new genre once Ellen gets her teeth into it.

Ballets Rouges by Olympic Orchids 2012

Ballets Rouges by Ellen Covey

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin orange, red thyme
Heart: May rose, rose, ylang ylang
Base: Musk, oakmoss, patchouli, labdanum

Ballets Rouges is the ultimate rose soliflor for me. Yes it has the smell of roses on the bush, it also has the smell of the earth that the roses grew in, the humus, fertilisers, mulch, add to that the smell of the cut stem and the torn leaf and on top of all that it has the smell of life and living to my nose. There is something of the uneasiness of finding yourself alone in the dusk dark swampy forest and yet it has all the joyful pleasure of a sunny summer meadow. Bright and dark simultaneously, Ballets Rouges is everything I love about Independent Perfumery: it has not followed a formula, never been panel tested, is full of gorgeous ingredients that are probably banned in 27 languages and it has a wonderful big voluptuousness and scent story.

Photo Stolen DeviantArt

There was much talk around the release of Penhaligon’s Iris Prima and how it was lovely and floaty yet completely failed to capture the agony beneath the facade that ballerinas project. It was all about the pastel glamour that 6 year old girls dream of when they want to be dancers. In Ballets Rouges Ellen has captured the stark beauty of a rose, the glittering deep plum sparkle of the dream and also managed to capture the gruelling and monotonous solo hours of perfecting the art, the heartache of watching your feet turn to pain wracked bleeding caricatures of themselves, the relentless drive and dark heart of ballet. Ballets Rouges is a little insight into The Black Swan.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

It’s open of green and scintillating herbaceous citrus which quickly morphs into a dark plum and citrus scented rose, still on the bush and planted in a freshly turned and fertilised bed, you have excised some of the dead heads so there is a brittle green of torn leaf and the wet/dry oxymoron of cut stem. I am fully and divinely fragrant, Ballets Rouge is not the scent for close quarters it’s a prima and needs its space to shine. As we progress the dark heart warms through considerably. While we never lose sight of the starring rose the oakmoss, amber and musks come in and form a magnificent corps, dancing around and through till full dry down around a day later.

Orchidscents has parfum travel $18/5ml
Olympic Orchids has samples and EdP $120/100ml

Have you tried Ballets Rouges? What is your rose?
Portia xx

Christmas with Uncle Serge Lutens

December 9, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 12 Comments

Post by Poodle

When people talk Christmas perfumes, Nuit de Noel always seems to come up. While lovely, I don’t think it smells the least bit like Christmas.

Enter Serge Lutens. He’s got your holiday moments bottled.

Christmas with Uncle Serge Lutens

Baby it’s cold outside. Spritz on L’eau Froide. This smells cold like a winter night. A night so chilly that it makes your nose burn so you pull your scarf up over your face and the smell of cold mixes with your warm breath and skin. Cool notes are balanced with pepper and ginger in this one.

Photo Stolen Torange

On my skin Arabie smells like a traditional holiday candle. Or maybe potpourri. It’s warm with dried fruits and what I think of as mulling spices. I don’t really like wearing this but I do like smelling it if that makes sense. It doesn’t work on my skin but I love it on clothing and other people. If I had more than a sample I’d use it as a posh room spray.

Let’s deck the halls and put up the tree with Fille en Aiguilles. Quite possibly my favorite foresty scent. Pine needles, fir, and incense with a tiny touch of sweetness from the stewed fruits that Uncle Serge does so well. Reminiscent of a Christmas tree but the fruit notes and incense prevents it from smelling like an air freshener.

The tree’s up. Time for a cuppa. Five O’Clock au Gingembre is on the menu. Bergamot, ginger, and honey swirl together to warm you from the inside out. I don’t find this to be a true tea scent but rather more like tea time. Evokes the scent of spicy holiday tea blends that I can’t see to get enough of at this time of year.

Photo Stolen FreeStockPhotos

Love holiday baking? Break out the Jeux de Peau. Jam filled cookies, toasted yeasty bread with butter, syrupy fruitcakes… It’s like grandmas kitchen on steroids. Jeux de Peau starts buttery sweet but ends on a spicy note. It’s everything but the calories of the holiday dessert table.

We always went to midnight mass on Christmas and that’s what Amber Sultan makes me think of. It’s not really a churchy fragrance. It’s more about amber and spice notes. This reminds me of the swirl of perfumes that I’d smell in church. All the ladies wearing their very best for the holiday. A mix of fur coats, perfumes, and that undercurrent of incense that permeated the walls in every catholic church.

It’s late. The fire’s all but gone out and it’s getting chilly. Time to rest and dream about what Santa might bring you. How can you sleep with the clatter of reindeer on the roof? How about a little Gris Clair? This perfume has the scent of lavender and smokey notes. Not a light bedtime scent really, but with all the excitement and holiday stress you might need a big lavender.

Photo Stolen Flickr

Surrender To Chance has all the Serge Lutens samples

What perfumes make you think of the holiday season?

A Merry and Fragrant Christmas to you all!
Poodle

Resurrecting RandomRec

December 7, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 28 Comments

Post by Azar

Season’s Greetings APJ!

Last year, about this time, a dear friend and I decided that we needed to clean up our lives. Our stuff was running us out of our homes and taking over every bit of storage space we could find.

Resurrecting RandomRec

We decided to put selected items, new and gently used, up for sale on a website we called RandomRec, signifying random acts of re-circulation and redistribution. To make a short story even shorter, we didn’t get far with RandomRec because all we did was stash a small fraction of our stuff in virtual storage and then promptly forgot about it, the same thing we were doing with it in real time and space! Running a garage sale online takes hours of effort and neither of us seemed to have any of that to spare in 2015. As the treasures continued to languish in our closets and drawers we resolved, for 2016, to resurrect RandomRec, rotate and add new inventory, offer sales and specials and try to create some sort of visibility for the site.

That being said we’ve decided to do a give-away to help jump-start the new, improved RandomRec and here it is: There will be two prizes, one for US residents and one for those living anywhere else on the planet. The name drawn in the US category will receive one brand new, in the box, Lolita Lempicka Elle L’aime 1.4 oz EdP. See the review here on APJ Elle l’Aime review. The winner in the “anywhere else” category will receive one brand new, in the box, Lolita Lempicka Elle L’aime 6.7 oz body milk.

We are offering a special APJ ONLY 20% discount valid through December 31, 2015. To receive the discount and a free packet of randomly chosen perfume samples with your order enter the code – APJ20 – at checkout.

Happy Holidays!

Azar xx

Photo Stolen AllSteele

RandomRec GIVEAWAY!

WHAT CAN YOU WIN?

USA: 1 x Lolita Lempicka Elle L’aime 1.4 oz EdP
Elsewhere: Lolita Lempicka Elle L’aime 6.7 oz body milk
P&H Worldwide

HOW DO YOU WIN?

Yes, you can start following to enter, in fact it’s encouraged. 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 (portia underscore turbo @ yahoo dot com dot au) so I know.

You must tell me how you follow APJ

and

USA or Elsewhere

and

Please hop over to the RandomRec.com site, check the perfume category, name one fragrance and tell us why you think you might love or hate it.

HOUSEKEEPING

Entries Close Thursday 10th December 2015 10pm Australian EST and winners will be announced in a separate post.
Winners will be chosen by random.org
The winner will have till Monday 14th December 2015 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.

Hair Removal – I suffer the pain, so you don’t have to

December 6, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 8 Comments

Post by AF Beauty

So before I start, I’ll have to give away that this post will probably contain more TMI moments than any of the others before, but have faith that I’ll not take it too far ☺

Hair Removal

I suffer the pain, so you don’t have to. (Unless you want to!)

I have a very light hair removal/tidy routine, half legs, underarms, eyebrows (tidying, not removal).
I am not very daring or extravagant, I can tolerate pain, but rarely when others inflict it, so these are a couple of hair removal techniques I’ve tried – along with varying levels of success and pain scales.

Starting at the top – Eyebrows.
I used this Nad’s Natural Hair Removal Facial Wand Eyebrow Shaper. It’s odd – it’s very little like wax. It has the texture of a thick glue. The pen has a nib of sorts through which the wax comes through like a globby ink. It has a squareish end that is useful for smoothing out the wax across the right spot of the eyebrow. It comes with cotton strips, cut with pinking shears to minimise fray. You simply apply the wax, smooth the cotton over the wax, then strip (in the direction opposite to hair growth – for eyes that’s usually toward the middle of your face).

Nads

The wax washes off the cotton strips, super easily and they dry quickly to be re-used. I find this pretty easy to use. The wax comes out a bit uncontrolled with the way you need to turn the twiddle at the end to get it to come out – I always end up with a bit more than I’d ideally need. But it’s easy enough to apply once out. I’ve been using this for about a year, and so far I’ve not ripped off an entire brow! ☺
Success rating – 9/10 depending on skill of wax application.
Pain scale – 7/10

Down at the bottom – Legs.
I either shave – because it’s quick – or use an epilator, if I have time and want to be hair free for longer. I use this epilator but looking at the website, there are a load of new versions, which look very exciting!

Braun

The epilator is a unique beast. Basically it has rotating wheels which create tweezers that pull out each of your hairs, one by painful one. If you’re reading this and you’ve involuntarily crossed your legs and winced, then you’ve correctly determined the appropriate level of pain. The epilator *is* effective – if you can tolerate the pain. No question there are times when pain is more tolerable than others, choose that time to use the epilator, choose other times to shave. One other thing to note, use the epilator in the brightest light you can find, preferably natural light. Take this as a free lesson to not walk away “finished” only to discover that patch of hair you missed just as you walk down the street on your night out or at work when you look down during an important meeting!
Success rating – 8/10 depending on diligence to cover all areas
Pain scale – 200/10

Obviously the easiest option for hair removal is shaving, but depending on your skin type and hair type it can be uncomfortable or cause ingrown hairs. What do you do to control hair?

What do you do with your excess hair?
AF Beauty

So…? + So…? Kiss Me by So…?

December 4, 2015 / australianperfumejunkiescom / 13 Comments

Post by Portia

Recently I was contacted by Tara of Portobello PR who are looking after the So…? range in Australia. This is not a brand I’ve heard of though they have been around for 20 years. Tara asked if I’d like to try any of the range and I really am overwhelmed here at the moment with releases but there was something super friendly and engaging about her email that had me replying, “Yes, send me some through.” They arrived the other day and Scott & I had a sneaky spritz, we went in with no expectations and…..

So…? and So…? Kiss Me by So…?

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

So…? by So…?

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Tangerine, orange blossom
Heart: Rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang
Base: Sandalwood, vanilla, amber

SURPRISE!!! Balmy resins, orange blossom, creamy ylang and vanilla. So…? smells a LOT like something my Mum wore at some point. I can’t place it as any of the regular scents I remember her owning or spritzing but the scent jolted me back to her warm embrace faster than the speed of smell. Even though you can tell So…? is a reasonably priced fragrance up close with your nose to your arm from a short distance it all combines beautifully into a smooth, satin soft Fl-Oriental with a slightly dressy overtone. It’s better than some of the $150+ niche being brought out and is basically free. Beauty HQ has $13.50/30ml

Photo Stolen So…?

So…? Kiss Me by So…?

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Blackcurrant, pineapple, citron
Heart: Lily of the valley, freesia
Base: Vanilla, musk, woody notes

Remember the opening of Enchanted Forest by the Vagabond Prince? Imagine that but toned down for a mass market youth audience. While not being something I want to wear I can tell that it will go down a treat with the younger crew. It’s a freaky synthetic screech of fruit at the top with pineapple and blackcurrant vying for which is sweeter, the heart escapes me but I do get a squeaky vanilla and some generic musks in the base. Not groundbreaking but quite nice, especially for the price. To be fair, it’s similar to many of the current designer and mid market beauty offerings and I bet it grabs compliments.

So…? can be purchased at Beauty HQ http://www.beautyhq.com.au/, and instore at larger Priceline.
Check out their UK website

Want to try them? See below……
Portia xxx

Photo Stolen AllSteele