It’s taken me three tests to wrap my head around Musk Lave from Areej Le Doré’s new S6 collection and I’m still not entirely certain what I think. The only things that I’m certain of is that Musk Lave has a number of paradoxical aspects and that I’m completely the wrong audience for this type of fragrance. 
Category Archives: Blog Features
Areej Le Doré Agar de Noir (+ Santal Galore)
Hello everyone. I hope you have been well and, above all else, safe and healthy in this utterly wretched year. No, I am not back, but I have been inspired and impelled by the latest Areej Le Doré collection, Series 6, to do pretty lengthy reviews on Twitter. And since I typed everything out via screenshot for Twitter, I figured I might as well copy and paste it some of it here for those of you who aren’t Twitter fans. This may be the only review that I’ll end transforming into a blog post, or it may not. I did a pretty lengthy review for the new Santal Galore as well, but since I stupidly deleted the source document, I’m going to be lazy and just link to the Twitter thread at the end instead of re-typing everything from scratch.
None of this will be like what I’ve written and done in the past in terms of photos or all the rest. I pecked the reviews out on my phone, which comes with a whole series of likely auto-correct and typo issues, but I figured it’s better than nothing. For now. At least it tells you something about the fragrances if you don’t read me on Twitter. (And I strongly advise you not to follow me on Twitter if you’re not interested in politics.) Continue reading
St. Clair Scents Casablanca: Sultry Darkness & Vintage Beauty
Casablanca vintage movie poster via Pinterest.
For people of a certain generation, “Casablanca” is a name which instantly evokes passion, longing, and romance. The famous Oscar-winning film starring Humphrey Bogart as “Rick” and the beautiful Ingrid Bergman as “Ilsa” was, on the surface, a war-time drama involving spies and Nazi resistance figures in Casablanca, Morocco, but it was ultimately a heartbreaking romance involving star-crossed lovers. “We’ll always have Paris,” Rick’s quiet words as he said goodbye to the woman he loved, a farewell full of sacrifice, tenderness, and yearning as she boarded a plan to leave, have become one of the most famous lines in movie history.
Photo, left: Casablanca movie still. Photo, right: Oer-Wout Photography. Collage: my own.
Le Labo Tonka 25
Le Labo recently released its first new fragrance in three years, Tonka 25. It’s an eau de parfum that was created by Daphne Bugey and it’s available worldwide (as opposed to being part of the city-exclusives line of fragrances).
Though I had high hopes for Tonka 25, I found it as dull as dishwater. There are certain aspects which I could see appealing to fans of a particular, specific genre of perfumery but, for me, it was about as memorable, distinctive, robust, flavorful, and interesting as Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti.