French eyewear brand Les Opticiens ATOL have launched a collection in collaboration with Adriana Karembeu, AK Senteurs, with scented eyeglass arms. There are four fragrances: Coquette (red, with floral notes), Ile aux baisers (mango and citrus), Chocolat (a chocolate gourmand) and Adriana (pink, spicy and sweet). (via cosmeticsinternational)
Welcome to Out of the Bottle: The Scented World! Once a month, I’ll be writing about fragrant food and plants, interviewing perfumers, artists, scientists, and other people who use scent in their work, and reporting on exhibitions and lectures related to scent. I’m currently in the process of gathering topic ideas and contacting prospective interviewees, so if you think there is something deliciously smelly I should go eat, a person I’ve just got to talk to, or you’re wondering how those magazine people out in Brooklyn who let an artist bomb their offices with oak moss are doing (and I intend to find out), please make suggestions in the comments. You can also contact me by email: alyssa at nstperfume dot com.
Four years ago, a few heady months after I discovered Now Smell This, I wrote a grateful fan letter to Robin in which I confessed I’d developed a slight (ahem) case of fragrance addiction. I also tried, with my new perfume vocabulary, to describe the scent of the Meyer lemons I had just harvested from the tiny tree in my backyard.1 So I thought we’d begin with a dish featuring those lemons — pan fried scallops with Meyer lemon glaze — accompanied by a champagne cocktail made with gorgeously fragrant elderflower cordial.2 Please put on your garden hats and white linen Gatsby trousers now…
Look for two new contributors at Now Smell This this month. First, Alyssa H (many of you know her from Perfume Smellin’ Things) will kick off (and explain) her ‘Out of the Bottle’ series tomorrow. Next week, our new book reviewer, Cheryl K, will weigh in on Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas.
I am moving at my usual snail’s pace…
I have some non-perfume / real-life things demanding my attention right now, so no review again today, sorry! Kevin will have an article tomorrow about Laura Tonatto’s Eleonora Duse fragrance, and on Friday, we’ll have our first guest author post, courtesy of Trish at Scent Hive. Hopefully I’ll be back with a review next Tuesday.
Please feel free to use this as an open thread if you like…
All of you who have taken the time to create a gravatar at gravatar.com have a new option: you can now create a public profile associated with your gravatar.1 Public profiles can include any information you want: your email address, links to your website(s), your accounts on various social media services, whatever. This should be handy for those of you who’d like to be able to share more personal information with other readers…
Last time I wrote about chocolate I promised another article about Chuao Chocolatier, mostly because I had eaten up several of the products too quickly to properly review them. So I did another order, and made myself slow down in the interest of science. Happily, in the interim Chuao had introduced two new chocolate bars, unhappily, they introduced yet another (Coffee & Anise) a couple days after I made my order. Oh well, next time.
First up: Chuao’s new CoCo bar. I’m a huge fan of coconut in chocolate, in fact, I still love a Mounds bar every so often. But let’s face it: the dark stuff covering a Mound’s bar only vaguely qualifies as “chocolate” these days. Chuao’s version, with coconut, almond, cinnamon and coriander, might be a Mounds for grownups: it’s sweet but not deadly sweet (it’s a 60% cacao bar). There’s lots of coconut interspersed with small bits of toasted almond; the bar is more chewy than crunchy. The spices are mild — much milder than in the Chinita Nibs bar. I found the CoCo bar very enjoyable, and a far cry better than the Seeds of Change Playa del Coco. I would definitely buy it again, but there’s a lot of competition for the best bar over at Chuao, and as much as I like this one, it isn’t my absolute favorite…
I’m on record as saying I’ll be the last person on earth to join Facebook. Well, you know, never say never: Now Smell This has a new Facebook page.
…be back tomorrow.
Researchers at Michigan Technological University are on to a simple, low cost solution to the complicated problem of keeping antibiotics out of water supplies. In a study of vetiver grass grown in antibiotic-laden water, they found that 95.5% of the drugs were removed from the water and taken into the plant tissue.
— From “Perfume [...]
…Sunnlitt, Creativescreenname and 734elizabeths. Congratulations!
Creativescreenname and 734elizabeths, please contact me by Friday to claim your prize. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll do a run-off for the unclaimed prizes.
Now Smell This is looking for guest authors, and guest hosts for the weekend lazy polls. We’d also like to find regular contributors to cover perfume books, home fragrances and shopping reports for brick ‘n mortar (i.e., not online) perfume stores. We’re also open to new ideas for perfume-related subjects we don’t already cover here.
A few general notes for anyone who is interested in applying…
Our policy has always been to answer all (ok, most! as many as we can) comments, and to leave the comments section open on all the articles, even very old ones. But as the number of comments has grown, it’s been harder and harder for some of us (ok, me!) to keep up.
My new policy: I will continue to answer most of the comments on the perfume reviews, but I’m going to slow down on answering the comments on new fragrance announcements and perfume news items and polls and whatnot. I will join in the conversation when I can, but I’m no longer going to try to be sure that everyone gets answered…
The polls are open for the Prix Eau Faux voting until 11 pm Thursday night. And if you were not selected as a finalist but would like to share your entry with other readers, please do so in the comments to the voting article.
Congrats to Furriner, who won the bottle of Tauer Perfumes Orange Star in our contest.
An off topic nag, brought to you by Spike Lee, Mary J. Blige, Samuel L. Jackson, Brian Greene, Susan Sarandon and Paul Auster.
Today, I’d love to hear from readers on any of the following subjects:
Any new topics or features you’d like to see covered on Now Smell This?
Any general complaints? Feel free to kvetch.
Suggested topics for the weekly lazy polls…
From Paul Smith, a “Leather Perfume Print Frame Purse” (20 x 13cm). At Asos, £235.
They’ve also got a matching wallet with the same perfume print on the back…
We don’t stray off topic too often, but it does happen: I wrote three posts about chocolate back in 2008, and I tried, but mostly failed, to talk about perfume at the same time.* After that I went on eating lots of chocolate but I kept my chocolate talk confined to Twitter where I occasionally announce my bar of the day. Then Jessica told me she was going to do a post about chocolate-scented body products and perfumes, and I figured I’d go ahead and share two recent discoveries. You have to eat to keep up your strength for all that perfume testing, right?
Some time ago I tried a Mo’s Bacon Bar (applewood bacon + alderwood salt + deep milk chocolate) from Vosges. Bacon + chocolate is not a taste combination most of us are used to…
You can donate $10 to the American Red Cross for relief efforts in Haiti by texting “HAITI” to 90999, or donate $5 to Yele Haiti by texting “Yele” to 501501.
Here are links for: Oxfam America, Doctors Without Borders, Unicef. Other organizations suggested by Charity Navigator include Convoy of Hope and Direct Relief International. Please note [...]
Flowers have long been a staple of international cuisines. Consider dried lavender blossoms in herbes de Provence or Iranian rice pudding scented with rose water. But recently, floral concoctions and aromatic blossoms have moved out of the kitchen and behind the bar, where they are deployed as much for their delicate flavors as their visual [...]
We’ll be back on Sunday. Sorry, make that Monday — we’re still recovering. See you tomorrow!
Note: image is christmas cactus by anee.baba at flickr; some rights reserved.