Today in Sydney was absolutely perfect so TSO Jin, EmmaKate, EvieC and I decided to go down to the Art Gallery of NSW and see the Eugène Atget Old Paris Photographic Exhibition which featured over 200 rare and original prints from the founder of documentary photography. He was quite a trailblazer because no one had properly recorded much of this architecture, era, or any of these rag n bone people, and Paris was making way for the grand designs of Baron Haussmann’s 19th-century modernisation program so loads of it was lost forever. After that we took a little side trip across the Domain and Hyde Park to David Jones, the world’s oldest department store trading under its original name, and slipped into their fragrance floor for a squiz.
What did I wear to look at art? What did we sniff? Below you’ll find a 3 line mini review and our ratings of a few of what we smelled today, it became a bit of an orgy of scent. Follow the jump to find our Rating System Page (<<jump).
Photo Stolen fragrantica
. DITA VON TEASE EdP 2012: Dita Von Tease has been peeking at me from her box, practically begging me to put her on, today I succumbed thinking she would be an excellent chaperone for the Art Gallery. This has a wonderful fresh opening that is citrus herbal to my nose, the pepper is wet not spicy. Warm, breathy, white flowers and rose slip in pretty quickly and tango with the wet pepper. I was still smelling a cool floral bouquet by the time I got lost in the photographs of Eugène Atget. After we lunched I was scentless, around 4-5 hours. CheapSmells 20ml/$23 S=**** L=** D=***
AQUA ALLEGORIA ???? by Guerlain: You want to know how angry I am at myself right now? I sprayed myself lavishly and didn’t get the name. WHAT AN IDIOT!!! I am going back for a bottle tomorrow, I smell AH MAY ZING. We all got coconut, white flowers, salt, honey and warm woods here but we are probably completely wrong. S=***** L=*** D=*****
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COCO NOIR by CHANEL 2012. I would like to take a moment to apologise to anyone that I have sneered at for loving Coco Noir. EvieC tried it on and it is fabulous, sexy, floral, tonka and musk. It has depth, charm, is present but not overpowering and that bottle is to kill for, don’t listen to people who say it’s not all that, it’s all that and a bag of chips. We only were together for 40 minutes while she was wearing it but, LORD oh Lord!! it smelled of a sweeter heaven: seriously impressed Chanel. S=***** L=? D=*****
WOODY 154 by JO MALONE. The SA gave Jin a spritz on each arm and told him that this arm is Woody 154. English is his second language and sometimes he misses the point of sentences but REALLY?? Woody 154? I hope the same girl is on tomorrow so I can ask her which one Woody 154 is because I can’t find that scent in the list on Fragrantica. Jin smells really good though, even after his bath I can smell it on him; tenacious much? S=**** L=***** D=****
Have you tried anything this week that you liked, loved, hated and want to share with us? Please do in the comments below.
Thank you for dropping by and being part of our APJ family, see you tomorrow.
Portia xx
It feels like it’s not a week without a L’Artisan Parfumeur review. Today we are looking at an extremely discreet fragrance from their range, it starts out super fireworks but very quickly becomes an alluring skin scent, just enough to make you smell better than ever but not enough to pick unless you are very, very close. It’s like a reward for getting that close.
Photo Stolen L’Artisan Parfumeur
The L’Artisan Parfumeur site says: Piment Brûlant was inspired by the Aztec drink of xocotatl, the bitter cocoa and chili drink beloved of the warrior king Montezuma. He was reputed to drink fifty cups a day. This is an aphrodisiac blend of cocoa, vanilla, clove and poppy all tempered with the fire and bite of chili. Surprisingly green and fresh on the skin, this wonderful study in contrasts brings the skin alive.
Photo Stolen flavors.me/marchudgins
Fragrantica gives these featured notes/accords all in a line: Amber, cinnamon, musk, poppy, vanilla, dark chocolate, cacao, clove and chili pepper
What do I smell? I love the opening of Piment Brulant, it’s like that first cut into a Bell Pepper, we call it Capsicum in Australia, a fresh green, wet and herbaceous smell. This lasts about 10-20 minutes depending on the day but is gradually joined by spicy chocolate, not a sweet chocolate, nor an edible one yet, but an unrefined cocoa-ish will be chocolate. It’s almost like the fragrance is fighting itself with a very treble capsicum and this dark undertone. As the fragrance lives on my skin the two separate shades move together as the amber & vanilla weave their way through to the top of the pile making it all smell extremely good but not bakery style, did I mention that up super close you get the cinnamon but less so from far away.
Now at about the 1 hour point the whole fragrance kind of eats itself and becomes so close to the skin that it’s almost undetectable unless you are close or you stick your head in your top and breathe deep. This stage lasts indefinitely, I can never tell when it has truly gone but TSO Jin has still been able to smell traces the morning after if I wear 5 spritzes.
Photo Stolen L’Artisan Parfumeur
I love the freshness, the sprightly, springy, gorgeousness of Piment Brulant that is absolutely guaranteed to lift my mood. It fits well with warm weather but will also sit pretty on you in cool. Not too strong for work as long as there is no ANTI PERFUME LEAGUE there and I love to wear it for dinner and date night.
What do you love in the world of spicy green fragrances? Does chocolate do it for you? Could you see yourself in this dizzying mixture? Where would you wear it?
I want to take a moment to thank you for your continued support, it means a lot to all of us at APJ that you have chosen to become part of our fragrance family, see you tomorrow,
Not so long ago SurrenderToChance had a DailyChanceSpecial on Angeliques Sous La Pluie (Angelicas In The Rain) so I got 5ml for a very reasonable price. Do check by there every couple of days because sometimes the DailyChanceSpecials are incredible, never to be repeated bargains.
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Fragrrantica gives the featured notes/accords all in one line:
Coriander, pink pepper, cedar, angelica, juniper and musk.
I love the crisp medicinal pepper and then warm woody opening that makes me think of jasmine, though there is none. I have been reading that angelicas smell like juniper and musk mainly so that’s a tick for them. I have an expectation that the corriander would smell different to this or maybe I’m missing it all together? There is definitely a wet woods smell, like you have walked out at the start or end of a shower, maybe a sunshower. There is also the feeling of that marvelous extra green almost yellow tinged air that makes everything seem more alive sometimes. They are right not to give notes in order because though the scent list is small it works like a kaliedescope, constant change with lovely segways in between that are all and nothing. I don’t understand why I get powder here? Is that usual? A very powdery woods and now I kind of get the corriander, there is something herbal and spicy here lingering and fluctuating up and through.
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Though this is light a fresh and feels amorphous there is a definite fragrance here that is quite tenacious, sillage is great leaving a lovely effervescent scent trail for people to look after at your back. Though it is soft it is intrusive and I think it may be too big for close office work but comfortable for coffee, dinner, movie and would also be a beautifully crisp and fresh scent for sport or afterwards. Though it leans toward feminine I like it for men too, almost cologne-ish and light enough for most masculine endeavours.
This is a winner for me. It fits totally with our near spring weather in Sydney and will probably work for you Northern Hemisphere lot in the coming months. Crisp, light, fresh and totally wearable in most situations, even work I think.
Have you tried Angeliques Sous La Pluie? What did you think? Is it on your list? Please comment, I love to read your thoughts too.
Don’t forget to pop over to the PerfumePosse to see my Guest post there today too. It’s so exciting and an honour to be on one of the world’s most famous and read frag blogs.
Thanks for reading through my fragrant thoughts today, see you tomorrow too,
Hey Hey All,
I am wearing one of my Shalimar 1970-80s Parfums for the last time. It came in a lovely gold tone basket weave atomiser. The parfum version of the one pictured below. Unfortunately they don’t make the parfum inserts for this case anymore, or at least I can’t find them in Sydney, Australia. So instead of Boo Hoo-ing I’m sending my Shalimar far away to a new home where I know it will be treasured and used to the last dregs.
Shalimar Parfum by Jacques Guerlain 1925
From Fragrantica Shalimar was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1925, as a tribute to the legendary love story between Emperor SHAHJAHAN and his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Before he became emperor his name was Prince Khurram.According to the legend, twenty- year-old Prince Khurram met a young girl, named Arjumand Banu at the bazaar where her family worked. Mesmerized by her beauty, after becoming emperor, he made her his wife as Mumtaz Mahal, meaning the “Jewel of the Palace”. After the wedding ,the prince and Mumtaz were inseparable, in war and in peace. She had given 13 children to Shahjahan and died during the birth of their 14th child at the age of 39. Her death devastated Shah Jahan and had built Taj Mahal in memory of his wife and their undying love. Shalimar is named after ‘The Gardens of Shalimar’. It was Mumtaz’s favorite garden.
In times of major events, stress, fun, worry, happiness, even going down to the shop or cleaning through the years this case and parfum have been right there with me. There’s not even 2ml left now but the juice is still perfect.
How does it smell? Well the first waft if you spray on your chest is a big fat animalic, citrus and vanilla rush so filled with the animals that unless you are prepared it can knock you a bit silly, and the rush isn’t over in a minute like many modern perfumes, no way! You get a full 40 minutes of this deliciously deranged magic. All warm and cuddly vanilla, spicy citrus and just got home from work, then gym and about to have sex manimal. GRRRR! How was this ever an elegant womens fragrance? Such raw and sexy content. Now that I know the term, “Ho Panies” I can’t get the image out of my nostrils, this is sex bottled.
As we mosey along together the rich powdery iris and vetiver take centre stage, still with all the musk and civet squaring up with the incense, resins and woods. I think I miss the patchouli because it’s so unlike the ones used today and I must be mistaking it for something else. Hours and hours of this section as the beautifully blended magic works through its own accords in Shalimar’s own time, I have never noticed a pepper note but there is definitely one lurking around and through today. In the very mild winter we are having I get nearly a full afternoon from this section before it starts heading towards the sweet vanilla, suede and wood dry down that anyone who loves Shalimar will know so well.
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You can read excellent Shalimar reviews with some fun historical data at PerfumeShrine and BoisDeJasmin
Love to you all, thanks for dropping by, see you tomorrow,
Today we are going to delve again into that magnificent La Collection Couturier Parfumeur by Francois Demachy for DIOR. Having ordered a decant set recently we will be looking at the collection over the next few weeks.
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Olfactoria’s Travels gives these featured notes/accords:
Sicilian mandarin, Calabrian bergamot, Russian coriander, Indonesian patchouli, cedarwood and sandalwood essence
My skin gives me the quickest burst of citrus and corriander before a dirty patchouli waltzes through, lasting about an hour and then my skin eats the whole damn thing and I’m left scentless. So ANNOYING! I felt as if I was going for an incredible ride and to have it so truncated was very disappointing, to say the very least.
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This is still an interesting fragrance because when I couldn’t get a handle on it for myself I decided to spray TSO Jin with it last night and the first thing he said was Old Spice!! I laughed in his face and asked him to be serious but he made me go and get the Old Spice and put it on him. I’ll be damned but it’s a darker, less sweet version of Old Spice on him. HA HA HA HA HA!! This morning there was a lovely warm, woody, suede-like extra zing to his personal body scent that I found very sexy, skin scent but SOOO good. I think I will give my decant to him, as a present to me.
Sorry I couldn’t be more help in your search for the one today but there are plenty of loving reviews for Patchouli Imperial, I just can’t be among them.
I have a super friend called Undina from Undina’s Looking Glass, (called Undinaba because she is Bloody Amazing) which is one of the frag blogs that I read EVERY installment of. We have sent each other a couple of fragrance care packages and my most recent one arrived just this week, a veritable scent filled goldmine of things long read & heard about, pored over and pondered upon while making hasty “Can I justify/afford this?” calculations in my head. Ormonde Jayne’s Champaca is just such a one. Even the frickin box looks too posh for me. This stuff is SERIOUSLY GORGEOUS!!
I must now say that having done some looking I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the affordability of the range, well within reasonable splurge range even on a way less than CEO style financial package.
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The internet tells me that the Michelia champaca is closely related to the fragrant magnolia but the flowers are yellow and smaller but their scent stronger. It is native to South and South East Asia and some of China, and has been used for millenia in fragrance.
Fragrantica gives these main accords:
Top: Neroli, pink pepper, bamboo
Heart: Basmati rice, champaca, freesia
Base: Myrrh, musk, green tea
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That fizzy pink pepper and orange blossom opening that is so 21st century is only slightly softened by the dry light bamboo, had we not had a stand of bamboo in the back yard that we played in and around as children I would probably never have noticed its inclusion.
Basmati rice really does come through the champaca and freesia, like it’s buoying them up and they float beautifully above it. There is still a definite orange blossom through the very heart of the fragrance and still there 5 hours into my wear. I was expecting Champaca to become a skin scent much sooner than this, though the musk is making itself known. I think staying close to me rather than skin scent, Champaca doesn’t seem to need to announce itself to the room though for the first couple of hours on returning to a room I could smell I’d been there. My skin gives me no tea, everyone else raves about the green tea, I went and made myself a cup to check but to no avail, my skin drank the tea.
It’s now 8+ hours, we’ve been for dinner, watched a movie at home on TV and I’m finishing up my post, there is now a slightly musky smell but it’s a sweet sweat, the myrrh and still, amazingly, a little of that sexy neroli; but you have to be close enough to….
Photo Stolen OrmondeJayne
Above you can see pictured the ORMONDE JAYNE DISCOVERY SET 12 x 2ml for only 48 pound including postage worldwide!
If you’d rather spring for a bottle prices start at 64 pound for 4 x 10ml Travel Purse Sprays or 80 pound for 50ml EdP at the OrmondeJayne site which is a pretty good deal for such outstanding niche fragrance presented so beautifully.
Thank you for coming and wandering through my fragrant thoughts, I hope you have enjoyed yourself as much as I did to bring them to you.
Wishing each of you only the good stuff you wish for yourselves,
Till tomorrow,
Portia xx
This is Linda Pilkington chatting about Champaca from her Ormonde Jayne website.
When I finally discovered you all it was a complete revelation. My own fragrance story was so introverted and self fulfilling that though I shopped online quite a lot I had not twigged that there would be other people who were already reading, writing, exploring, sharing, corresponding and generally enjoying the community that is the fragrance wormhole, for years!! Who knew there was a world of scent-ualists online?
I don’t know about you but I am often intrigued by the people who found the scentbloggosphere years before I did. They are now an elite crew whose knowledge, entrenchment and sophistication are world renowned, as are each of their personalities. They all took their baby fragrant steps together or helped the new kids on the block towards their own perfumista status, and still do.
Today we are talking to Anita Berlanga, you may know her from PerfumePosse as Musette, with the sharp and witty wisecracks. Anita has been unstintingly warm and generous to me and I’m sure many others of you so I thought it would be fun to get into her head a bit. She gets the APJ question but just tweaked a little….
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Give us a brief history, who was young you, important you defining moments or early fragrant memories that may have herded you towards the ever moving now?
I was a typical Midwestern teenaged nerd with romantic literature leanings (windswept moors, dark, brooding heroes)…went well with my braces and zits. Early scent? Heaven Sent. Vats of it. My high school REEKED of the stuff. That, and Love’s Baby Soft. Enough to bring up your lunch. Oooh! and Coty Elan, which I liked because it smelled romantically windswept and had a cool bottle (I just scored a vintage bottle recently – it’s a greenery-yallery scent. But such a fab bottle!
Then I found that greeny galbanum Norell on my mother’s dresser, which I thought smelled so…windswept, with heathery scarves and velvet cloaks (hey! I was – what? 14? 15? And I was totally on that moor, with the wind whipping my straight, shiny, Cathy-esque black hair and sooty black lashes fringing my violet eyes, with a young Laurence Olivier striding towards me. Yah.. Except on me it smelled like I’d guzzled a bottle of Scotch. Then it was Nina Ricci Bigarade (which was the beginning of my bitter orange love, though Bigarade is, in truth, an unassuming orange blossom – but that is for Another Day). To be honest, I have NO idea how I came upon that one. But that leads us into your next question…
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What perfume started your journey?
Nina Ricci Bigarade. Well, it didn’t actually start my journey. It started my journey HERE. Blame the Internet. Blame NST. Blame …?? 40 years later, I began to wonder about that perfume, which led to the Internet to revisit (I dunno how old you are but when you hit 50 you start looking for the weirdest things from your past. Puppet Fairy Tale books from your childhood.
Hostess cupcake packaging from the early 60s. Perfume is a biggie. Google has a LOT to answer for, lemme tell you. But in all honesty, it really was Google. I Googled Nina Ricci Bigarade, which led me to Now Smell This, which led me to the Posse. And the rest……..well, you know!Most embarrassing thing about my journey? I wasted SUCH an opportunity. At 23 I was a card-carrying moron. I didn’t know where I would be, 25 years later…… back when I worked as the Ad Mgr for Marshall Field & Company (only THE most elegant department store in Chicago -nay, the Midwest. At one point it was one of the few department stores in the country to rival Bergdorf) – managing advertising for COSMETICS AND FINE FRAGRANCES. Morong. I had access to Every. Single. House. Guerlain. Chanel. Dior. I met Karl Lagerfeld and Bill Blass and Calvin Klein – back when they were doing their own perfumes. (remind me to tell you about Herr Karl and me …and our fans….) I had No Clue. I took my first trip to Paris, without telling the Fragrance honcho I was going. He was stunned! What did I wear? Only what everybody else did. Chloe. Anais Anais. Though I did scent my sheets with Patou Vacances – but to tell you the truth that was more because I loved the little emerald-green stopper. I had scads of that stuff. Scads!! I wasted it. On sheets! 30 years later I am in tears about it. Who knew?
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How did you get your perfume education and did you have any mentors?
I’m still a student and hope to always have a beginner’s mind. Otherwise this will become a bore. This is going to sound like a cop-out but it’s true: my mentors are the perfumistas who come on the blogs and the FB perfume pages. I’m stunned at how much I’ve learned from them. There is no ‘teacher’ – we are all amateurs, in the truest sense of that word, loving and learning as we spritz. And when it comes to parsing out notes? Nobody can do it like the folks on the Posse.Speaking of notes, though, I will tell you one of my very first ‘note’ experiences. I’d just started writing for the Posse and a friend sent me several samples to try – one being Anne Pliska. So..I spritz on the AP and am immediately assailed by this…note. Can’t for the life of me figure out WHY I KNOW THIS DAMN NOTE! It teases me allll day but I don’t have time to research (aka Google) it. So time ticks by, I’m working and this note is worrying my Very Last Nerve. Finally, bedtime arrives. El O and I go to bed, the boys just outside our bedroom door. All is peaceful…suddenly, at 2am, I sit bolt upright in bed and shout ‘PLAY-DOH!!!’. Used to my craziness, nobody in my house even turned over! But that was my very first ‘note’ experience. And yes, Anne Pliska smells persackly like Play-Doh. Which is not a bad thing.
What is your current favourite mass market perfume house?
Guerlain. Even when they miss, they do it spectacularly and they get huge points for keeping the classics in their line and even showcasing some of the lesser-known perfumes of yesteryear (Neiman Marcus in Chicago had a breathtaking display of the Guerlain ‘oldies’, some in the original bottle design. It made my heart sing!) In my opinion, they are the embodiment of Western haute perfumery (non-niche). Large niche house: tie between Amouage and Frederic Malle. Both Houses are intriguing, unwilling to pander to focus groups and mass trends. And they consistently deliver stellar perfumes . I wish they were better known. I don’t understand the urge to smell ‘exclusive’ – as far as I’m concerned, a roomful of people wearing Carnal Flower or Epic is a GOOD THING!
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Do you have a favourite independent perfumer and why, or if that is too politically loaded; what makes a good indie perfumer?
I have several but my steadfast favorite is Liz Zorn – I think it’s because so many of her scents touch my core, immediately and viscerally. The first one, Historical Chypre, I thought might’ve been a fluke. But we’re well into double digits now, so obviously there’s a connection there. The first time I smelled Violets and Rainwater, I teared up! I was back on Lexington Ave in NY, in front of a florist shop, after a pelting Spring rain. Busted pot of violets on the sidewalk. Nobody loved them. Or me. I was bereft. Then I realized, if I just picked the damn violets up and put them back in the pot everything would be just fine. And it was. By the way, none of that actually happened (though there was a florist on Lex that I loved) But such is the power of Liz’s scents that the entire scenario leapt, unbidden, into my psyche and became part of my history. In one spritz.
What do you see as the most important trend in perfumery currently?
I think all trends suck. Truly. The one ‘trend’ (in mass market) I would like to see is a return to ‘real’, structured perfumery, for adults, crafted with quality ingredients. But I suspect that time has come and gone. There’s too much money invested in the quick ROI, ingredients are astronomically expensive and the general public’s taste seems to be devolving, with the aspiration more for the marketing image rather than what stuff smells like. Then again, I love the smell of Clinique Happy – so what do I know??
Isn’t she AH MAY ZING? Thank you Musette for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this. I feel blessed that you’d come and chat so openly, honestly and interestingly for us.
Wishing you all painless, easy and harmless world domination,
While I have never sniffed Le Nuit de l’Homme I do think they’ve done a great job with the ad. Not feminist inspired or even acceptable probably but I think it is the ultimate fantasy of most men. Wanted by 3 women at the same time, all gorgeous, all elegant all within a certain circle of society. The reality would be a disaster but it looks nice in this ad.
Out of interest, has anyone smelt this fragrance? Is it as good as the ad? Does the ad sell the correct product?I expect it to be screamingly masculine by the movie but….
Please enjoy the mini movie, even if it’s just to growl BASTARD at the computer,
I have had a decant of Borneo 1834 for some time. I would look at it and pass it over for something else. I don’t know why, clearly its pedigree is good and people rave about it but it just never got picked. An interesting name, Borneo is divided by 3 countries Indonesia, Malaysia and the Sultanate of Brunei and I think they plucked 1834 out of their arses because I can’t find anything interesting to do with that time and Borneo on the net. (edit: It was the year patchouli first arrived in Paris, and thus perfume, from Borneo)
Photo Stolen Borneo.com
So today I bit the bullet.
Fragrantica gives the featured accords: Patchouli, white flowers, cardamom, galbanum, french labdanum, cacao
Photo Stolen Fragrantica
Someone somewhere wrote that this is like chocolate covered raisins and I can’t get the scent image from my head. It’s uncanny! I love the uber bitter chocolate here with forestry patchouli, this is not sweet at all to begin with. The cardamom and crackly green galbanum work double time under the radar to keep the whole dusty, smoky, murky; like being in a cold furnace with only the memory of woods or being in an underground cellar. I completely miss all traces of white flower on my skin until about an hour into the fragrance life and then just almost wafts, like they are outside a window. The labdanum is slightly vanilla but still not sweet until about 3 hours in when it gets an extremely low hum of a bakery feel to it but very quietly, just huffs every now and then, like those chocolate sea shells that are vanilla chocolate. Borneo 1834 is gloriously bitter sweet and has a dark resinous quality that is maintained through the 7+ hours I get of real and fully apparent lifespan, I feel like I’ve made a new friend. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right time to test something.
So now it’s 16 hours after I triple spritzed, I’ve worked, slept, woken, done my emailing and breakfasted and there is still a fabulous soft spicy vanilla presence on my skin, astounding.
Will this be a full bottle in my collection? I have a feeling it will be very soon gracing the fragrance fridge here in Sydney.
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TheNonBlonde does as great review as does AnotherPerfumeBlog FragranceNet has 50ml for $112 after discount SurrenderToChance does decants starting at $3.99/.5ml but for only $12.99 you can have a 2ml spray.
Thank you for dropping by. I’m not sure if you know how happy it makes me that you do? Very Fecking Happy!
Don’t forget to come check out my Guest Post on ThePerfumePosse it’s one of the biggest frag blogs on earth and I am so proud and honoured to be a regular contributor.
If you have been anywhere on the scentbloggosphere then you’ve probably seen this, It’s been popping up all over the place. I know though that some of you read here only so this is Lady Gaga’s FAME advertisement/movie. As usual she has chosen strong visual imagery that gives more to original black fairy tales than the modern one and could even be skirting horror. I don’t think I’d have wanted to see this before I was 10 years old, I probably wouldn’t have slept for a week,
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Australian Perfume Junkies 