hortus conclusus

Time to get a present for Dad, and if yours is anything like mine, that is a serious challenge. Most dads don’t want anything you can afford to get them (cars, computers, trips to exotic locales) so you usually flake out and go for the easy options (ties, food, drink, fragrance, books, gift certificates, etc.) Well, this is a fragrance blog, so I can help you with one of those categories. Here are my top ten picks for smells for Dad for this year. Some are pricey, some are cheap, some are in the middle. These are not only some of my favorite masculines, they are also all a little more unique than the ubiquitous Ralph Lauren Polo or Hugo Boss. You can also check out my guidelines for picking out perfumes for mom , but sometimes dads are a little harder to read, and give you less to work with. These are in no particularly significant order, by the way. These are not necessarily my favorite masculines of all time; they are just ones I think most men would not push away in disgust, and ...

Just another glossy irritation today. I got my copy of American Elle in the mail yesterday, and while browsing it today, I came across another one of those irritating anti-perfume mini perfume articles . You know, the kind of little blurb that starts out looking like it is pro scent, but then just panders to all the scent-haters out there. This one really rubbed me wrong.   I took a pic of the page (136) on the right, but in case   you can’t read it, it says a recent study discovered that the smell of peppermint reduces anxiety (well, that seems pretty obvious to anyone who thinks aromatherapy even kind of works) but then goes on to tell the ‘fragrance-phobic’ that they needn’t worry, since just smelling the mint for a moment had the same effect as sensing it in the air for an extended period of time. (at least I think that’s what the fairly unclear blurb is saying. It could be saying the subjects were detecting trace amounts of peppermint in the air subliminally, so ...

SO, I was bumming around in Barnes and Noble last night waiting for my husband’s history class to come back from a 4-day tour of Civil War battlefields so we could get in the car and drive back home to be together for the first time in a little under two weeks, and I came upon an article in the June issue of Allure that irritated me a little—ok, a lot! (that was way too long a sentence, I know) In this brief article, the journalist writes [and I respond in parentheses] : At what point did we start wanting our perfume to conjure a poisonously scheming man-eater or an underwear-clad model? [ um, what? Haven’t perfumes always had something to do with sex, or at least with ‘allure’?] Apparently, perfumers have been asking themselves the same questions, [have they now…?] because this summer heralds the return of the pure floral scent [has it ever been away?]. “ These florals smell like nature, like a natural flower,” explains perfumer Frédéric Malle [in the first sentence that actua...