They made a perfume smell like an Aperol spritz! It’s genius…Sunlight, daydreams, lazy weekends, bottled into a perfume. Waking up early without an alarm, the fat weekend edition of the newspaper, fresh-pressed orange juice. Savouring every second of this Never-ending Summer. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Thanks to Prada Beauty for the snacks and Banana Balm, which really does smell like banana candy in the best way.
The bottle of Prada Candy is my own and I’ve had it for many years (as you can tell). I love a quirky beauty moment.
I’m the type of person who reaches for the traditional bug spray, but I’ve been seeing these insect repellent patches everywhere, and I had to try them for myself. They’re by NATPAT, easily found on Amazon, and they work.
My favourites are the itch relief stickers, especially to slap on at nighttime. They remind me not to scratch while I’m sleeping and work to reduce the inflammation via drainage in that area. The bug repellent stickers use traditional citronella oil to ward off mosquitoes, so it’s almost like wearing a bug-repelling perfume that you don’t have to spray yourself.
I love a scented product that’s also functional, so these are right up my alley.
This morning, we treated ourselves to the multi-sensorial experience that is the @hiram_green discovery set. I say “we” because this practice of smelling and discovering attracts people every time. It’s an energizing way to start the morning when you’ve got the whole day stretched out in front of you. I read out Hiram’s descriptions of the scents as we passed the papers around. While the descriptions were short and sweet, we found that each and every one matched the scent it was describing. It’s inspiring to hear what perfume writing can be. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We leave the scented papers on the table and come back to them whenever we need to take a break. Everyone always leaves with at least a spray of their favourite vial to see how it fits them. Could you be the person that smells of an elegant chypre? Can this smoky birch tar be the Hyde to your Jekyll?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This morning, I left with a spray of Moon Bloom. I can see why this gets all the love. It’s a lush dewy green tuberose that evokes vacations in the sun. It’s suncreen mixed with verdant but sunny locales. It’s adventures in the heat. It could be Hawaii, it could even be India, a place that is perpetually green, always filled with scents and beautiful flowers never far away. I want to be this carefree everyday. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Arbole smells like your favourite art teacher, totally in her element. There’s a waxiness from drying resins, a warmth, the powder of her mixing with her golden smile that invites you to be yourself. That time you felt like you actually were good at something. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Hiram Green’s perfumes are all-natural but they don’t smell like the spa or have that cloudy, steamy base that lots of other natural perfumes have. After a while, they all seem to smell the same. Hiram says this is because he’s self-taught. That could be it, but it’s also clear that this is someone who has a solid idea of what they want to create, and so the perfumes have structure and body. They feel solid even when they’re romantic.
My warm nights are cardamom spiced. Rich and dry, wind bring in the scent of the future. Lighter days beckoning. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Earlier this year, a friendly, generous sales associate loaded me up with Loewe perfume samples. I was thrilled, but when I got home and smelled them on my own, I realized there was only one or two winners in the bunch, and most of the perfumes smelled like something I’d already smelled before. This, I’ve come to realize, is the usual. It’s almost impossible to love everything from one line, and in fact, it’s quite rare. All these perfumes also have a different perfumer, so each brings their own style to the perfume. Most of them smelled like basic designer perfumes instead of luxury designer perfumes. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Loewe 001 Man is different. Yes, it smells a bit like Dior Homme Intense, but that’s only because there’s cardamom and iris. The iris here isn’t purple, it’s just cleanly powdery. The cardamom is sweetened, and with the iris, the effect is like opening a box of doughnuts and having a bit of powdered sugar float up at you. The base isn’t vanillic, but has ambrette, warm and so skin-like so you can almost feel it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
A beachy offering from Glossier. Salty skin, crunchy hair, flowers in the wind, is there coconut or is that my sunscreen? I’ll never know and it doesn’t matter, because I’m on vacation. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I think that one of the things I heard about China, before I went, was that they don’t really love perfume and have a penchant for softer scents. But everything was scented when I was there and the scents were wide-ranging. They also had lots of perfume stores with local and more mainstream brands.
Beautiful perfume store in Shanghai. @meltseasonofficial I didn’t have time to stop in but I couldn’t leave without taking a picture.
Le Labo Vetiver is like vetiver grass on fire, dense smoke almost burning your lungs with every inhale. All this with a leathery Cade and birch tar. If I close my eyes, this could almost be an early Lush perfume, or that snake oil shampoo bar that smelled like a witch’s brew. Maybe someone put a hex on me because this perfume smells stronger as the day goes on, instead of dying away. Forget the vetiver of air-conditioned hotel lobbies, this is a vetiver that buries you.
Highlighter that looks like velvet, and even lip balms that are so beautiful that I don’t want to use them. Prada Beauty continues to earn its place on shelves and in our makeup bags.
The packaging is so understated, giving me a quiet luxury aesthetic that almost made me not want to open these boxes.
The highlighter is beautiful but and the velvet look really makes it stand out, and like all luxury products, there’s a nice big mirror inside.
I’m back from China, and there’s so much to look back on that I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it. The trip wasn’t about perfume, and I was really intentional about not seeking out perfume everywhere I went, but it was still all around me. ⠀⠀
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During a sweltering hot day, we walked around a trendy new shopping area in Shanghai and stumbled across the Amouage store. They didn’t have the newest perfume and of the three that launched last year, Outlands was missing. The sales associate couldn’t speak English but she took us through some of the scents, and I threw in what I knew about my favourites. We walked out with 4 unmarked blotters, and went to lunch. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Over tapas, our noses kept coming back to what we had smelled, and I tried to identify what was on the strips by memory. The only one I could pinpoint with accuracy was Guidance, thanks to a gorgeous sugared rose whose sweetness was augmented by a syrupy juicy pear. This shone in Shanghai heat in a way that Guidance never had on my skin. We loved it and couldn’t stop smelling it.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I realized that it was Guidance because it smelled like a new release that was in my collection at home – Lancome Idole Power. This Idole has become one of my favourite finds of the year, and because of it, I understand the hype around Guidance. Guidance is more textured with many layers – the opening is something I need to get my nose around, but Idole goes right to the heart of the fragrance with its fruity rose combo. Is this inspired by Guidance? Most definitely. If you liked the Guidance DNA, you might like this even more.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Perfume shopping in Shanghai is excellent, with lots of brands being available. They clearly love their perfume, and every hotel we stayed at was scented. Going from a perfume desert to a landscape where scents are celebrated was one thing, but shopping is hard when you don’t speak the language, and even the most touristy areas were not ready for English speakers. More soon.
