Fragrances Boutique

Hi Friends! Thank you for all of the wonderful comments, and for being so understanding of my absence from the blog during my wedding and honeymoon. Many of you have been kindly posting links in the comments to Mrs. O’s various appearances, but I thought we could all use a quick catch up of the first lady’s recent events in addition. Mrs. O debuted a few fabulous summer skirts below, which I’ll work to identify this week.

Hope everyone (in the U.S.) had a great July 4th holiday. While the wedding and honeymoon were quite magical, it’s good to be back!

xo Mrs. T

Image by Mandel Ngan / Getty Images

July 3: The President and First Lady Mrs. O returned from Camp David, where they spent part of the July 4th weekend. Mrs. O paired a fabulous green print skirt, featuring oversize stud trim, with a white tank, metallic flats and gold accessories. Her lime green tote added a final punch of color.

Update: Thanks to the always reliable chrystelle for informing us that the skirt is Comme des Garcons. A similar version can be seen here.

 Image by Mandel Ngan / Getty Images

July 4: On July 4th, Mrs. O wore a fittingly patriotic ensemble, pairing a red, white and blue wrap halter top with white cropped pants and ballet flats.

Update: The first lady’s top is Suno.

Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton

July 6: Mrs. O met with Mrs. Netanyahu, wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House. I believe the dress is the same Narciso Rodriguez tulip patterned frock that Mrs. O wore on the campaign trail in 2008, also seen on the cover of the Mandi Norwood book “Michelle Style” here.

Image by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Image by Jason Reed / Reuters

July 7: The first lady appeared at an event at the Treasury building, where Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke at the economy and 2008 financial crisis. For the event, Mrs. O paired a white top and cropped cardigan with a fabulous metallic floral skirt. A thin silver belt at the waist and magenta heels completed the look.

Is men’s fashion keeping up with our imaginations?

Next up from Comme des Garçons will be Wonderwood, due to launch in late June:

An evocation of exuberance…

A short (and appropriately weird) film by the Brothers Quay for the upcoming Wonderwood fragrance from Comme des Garçons. Many thanks to Mary for the link!

So designer Jun Takahashi of the ‘cult’ fashion house Undercover makes dolls. They’re called Graces, and he makes them out of metal and teddy bears and light bulbs and other things. According to Takahashi,

The Graces spontaneously come out of me, genuinely, while making clothes is something more calculated, an entire process that requires teamwork. But doing both allows me to keep a balance in my creativity. Therefore, it makes sense to me to have everything linked.¹

You can find detailed articles about the Graces here and here, and you can watch a video made in conjunction with the launch of the new Undercover fragrances, Holygrace and Holygrapie, here.

The fragrances, made in collaboration with Comme des Garçons, are conceptually linked to the dolls, and there are reportedly limited edition bottles (you can see them here if you scroll down) decorated with similar fabric elements. Holygrace (shown below right) is for the mother doll, and is supposed to be “a perfume of elegance, soap freshness and poison”. It starts with citrus and hot peppery spices (the notes: bergamot, ginger, pink pepper, cardamom, jasmine, frankincense, pimento, ambergris, vetiver, vanilla and styrax), and dries down to a softly spicy, somewhat clean incense with amber and light hints of vanilla. It’s quite wearable and perfectly unisex…

Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 9th. Get cracking on that shopping!

From Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, the Les Rouges collection, with miniatures of Piment et Chocolat, Poivre, Fleurs d’Oranger and Oeillets Rouges. $50 at Beautyhabit…

Undercover, the “cult label” of designer Jun Takahashi, has launched a debut duo of fragrances with Comme des Garçons:

Holygrace (shown above) ~ “a perfume of elegance, soap freshness…”

Image by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

A surprise announcement out of the White House today — Desiree Rogers will step down from her role as White House Social Secretary next month. The always reliable Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times has the full story, here.

Following the announcement, the President and First Lady released this statement:

“We are enormously grateful to Desiree Rogers for the terrific job she’s done as the White House Social Secretary. When she took this position, we asked Desiree to help make sure that the White House truly is the People’s House, and she did that by welcoming scores of everyday Americans through its doors, from wounded warriors to local schoolchildren to NASCAR drivers. She organized hundreds of fun and creative events during her time here, and we will miss her. We thank her again for her service and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”

This calls for one last look at the greatest fashion statement of Desiree Rogers’s White House tenure – the blush chiffon and pearl Comme des Garcons gown worn for the state dinner in November, above.

Smelling Comme des Garçons Series 1: Leaves, Tea revved up my imagination; I’ll consult a psychologist to figure out why the following scenario came to mind:

Fresh off the assembly line, still warm from the conveyor belt, G.I. Joe and Ken (I should say one G.I. Joe and one Ken out of hundreds of G.I. Joes and Kens) spot each other.

Ken: “He’s cute…so tan….”

G.I. Joe: “That guy’s handsome. Wait, is he wearing false eyelashes!?”

After introducing themselves, the two dolls agree to meet for a date at Tango Barbie’s new Argentine café: Té!Té!Olé!

Later that day…

Smelling Comme des Garçons Series 1: Leaves, Tea revved up my imagination; I’ll consult a psychologist to figure out why the following scenario came to mind:

Fresh off the assembly line, still warm from the conveyor belt, G.I. Joe and Ken (I should say one G.I. Joe and one Ken out of hundreds of G.I. Joes and Kens) spot each other.

Ken: “He’s cute…so tan….”

G.I. Joe: “That guy’s handsome. Wait, is he wearing false eyelashes!?”

After introducing themselves, the two dolls agree to meet for a date at Tango Barbie’s new Argentine café: Té!Té!Olé!

Later that day…

Here’s a closer look at one of the adorable hats (by Stephen Jones) at Comme des Garcons, and a glove at Rick Owens that seems a blend of mitten and sweater sleeve.

The high points of the day were Rick Owens and Comme des Garcons.

The traditional, hand-made soaps of the Middle East are rustic (often brown and wrapped simply in wax paper), heavy (drop a full-size bar on your toes in the shower and you may be headed to the ER) and pungent with the aromas of plant oils and seeds — cumin, nigella, olive, bay laurel. The famous soaps of Aleppo, Syria, are olive oil based and fragranced with bay laurel (laurus nobilis), and they are one of the inspirations, along with the Lebanese landscape, for Comme des Garçons + Monocle Scent Two: Laurel — henceforth referred to as “Laurel.”

Laurel was developed by perfumer Antoine Maisondieu and contains bay laurel, incense, cedar, pepper, patchouli and amber. Laurel starts off smelling green and herbal — like a bruised or crushed fresh bay laurel leaf. Quickly, Laurel’s bracing green aroma is joined by “coarse” black pepper and smoky frankincense…

From By Kilian, the Edition Artistique de Carole Midy. The limited edition set includes a box and refillable bottle with the By Kilian fragrance of your choice. The set was designed by Carole Midy of Pietra Dura and features onyx and hematite cabochons. Available at Bon Marché in France, 1000€…

Image by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

While we don’t often cover Ms. Desiree Rogers on this blog, we do greatly admire the Social Secretary and her style. For the first state dinner, Ms. Rogers made a particularly daring choice, wearing an avant garde dress by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons. The dress, featuring layers of sheer pink and creme fabric and loops of pearls, is from the house’s Fall 2009 collection, as seen here. When speaking with Style.com about the collection last March, Ms. Kawakubo described it as “Wonderland,” continuing, “where nothing is as it seems.”

My first thought on smelling Standard, the latest collaborative effort from Comme des Garçons (it was made with Finnish design firm Artek) was: woodshop! And then: Hinoki!

Hinoki, for those of you who don’t obsessively follow the Comme des Garçons fragrance line, was officially called Scent One: Hinoki, and was a collaborative effort with Monocle magazine. It smelled like raw wood and other woodshop smells (turpentine, camphor). Standard, despite having a different perfumer (Olivier Pescheux), and different notes (Finnish Labrador tea, twinflower, metal, rust, fennel, ginger, lemon, musk, saffron and cedar) smells like a variation on that theme…

Next month, Comme des Garçons will launch their second fragrance in collaboration with Monocle magazine, Scent Two: Laurel. Scent One: Hinoki, launched in 2008.

Inspired by a trip to the Bekaa Valley…

Comme des Garçons’ new Dover Street Market fragrance is named for Rei Kawakubo’s London store of the same name. It’s the brand’s first fragrance this year if you don’t count the collaborative efforts with Daphne Guinness and Artek, but it doesn’t feel like a major launch — it’s had relatively little publicity, and as it turns out, it may or may not be the same fragrance as the limited edition scent they did for H&M last year, released in new packaging.¹

Dover Street Market is supposed to be a “modern twist on a classic woody fragrance”; the opening is a strong, spicy blend of incense and citrus…