hortus conclusus

Love perfume and want to start a collection of well-composed scents but get sticker shock when you look at the niche prices? Never fear, I am here to provide you with a list of really beautiful fragrances you can find for under 15 dollars a bottle. You can build your collection and still stay within budget. Geoffrey Beene Grey Flannel —one of the weirdest men’s fougeres out there. Bitter, harsh, and gorgeous. anything by Pacifica —I love this company, and think almost all of their fragrances are well-done, if a bit short-lived at times, The solid perfumes (usually $8-9 a pop) are great for a base layer to make a sprayed fragrance stick around a bit longer. Priscilla Presley roses and more --   a much more delicate rosy-floral. Ultrafeminine.   jovan musk-- If you like musk, this is for you. A straightforward musk. G reat for layering experiments as well   The Perfumer’s Workshop Tea Rose —I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now. One o...

As those of you who have been keeping an eye on this blog over time may know, this is a relatively new blog. I have been obsessed with fragrance for many years now, and keeping notes for myself, but it has only been a few months since I began making my thoughts and feelings on the subject public in this forum. I thank you for staying with me as my husband and I tweaked the format of the blog pages, and tried to get all the feeds, searches, etc. running properly. I am still feeling my way around the blogosphere, learning what works and what doesn’t and trying to figure out exactly how to tailor my own blog.   There are a LOT of really great fragrance blogs out there, and I follow and admire the work of many writers who know way more about the fragrance industry and the art of perfumery that I do. I admire them and am not trying to complete with their expertise and knowledge. I simply add another voice to the chorus of fragrance enthusiasts, and offer a focus on integrating fra...

Don’t let the cheapness, the incredibly yellow juice, or the straightforwardness of the name put you off buying this perfume. I f you want a soliflore—and sometimes nothing else will do, Tea Rose is right on the mark. It smells exactly like a tea rose, and there’s not much more to say, beyond that it is lovely, big, and bloomy, and fabulous. My husband loves this perfume on me, because it reminds him, as he says, of pure happiness, of the feelings he felt when we first began dating (for the first time around). When pressed for more details, he says it reminds him of me naked under my red silk embroidered Chinese robe, pouring tea for him the morning after, and a particularly good shower with me in my old rickety garret apartment in Missoula….enough said. No wonder he gets so excited when I wear it. But I won’t wear it all the time, nor am I eager to make it a ‘signature’ scent, as much as I know he would love that, because I find it to be, well, one...