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LE LABO | The Gift of Love
To make for a happy Valentine, ensuring your token of love, lust or coy enquiry hits the right is chords is paramount. It’s difficult to dictate or explicitly direct your acquisition as any gift should, of course, be reflective of your feelings and be agreeable to the tastes of said Valentine. Feeling and taste are…
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L’Envol de Cartier
Cartier are renown for their prestige, their almost ethereal quality as a brand representative of that glass ceiling purchase. But as often happens when a brand releases a fragrance, that aspirational price point is temporarily relinquished in favour of a more affable one, which is – much like the low reaching branches of a tree…
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REVIEW | Encre Noire à l’Extrême by Lalique
It was 2006 when Lalique reinvented the most masculine olfactory note with their fragrance enigma Encre Noire – regarded by many as the contemporary “vetiver of reference”. Now in excess of its 10th Anniversary, Lalique challenged its nose, Nathalie Lorson to create a new chapter in the saga, aptly entitled Encre Noire à l’Extrême. While…
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Gosha Rubchinskiy Perfume + Book
Gosha Rubchinskiy’s ascent pays tribute to the organic realism that fashion can represent, with his works a true reflection of the Soviet landscape in which he learned his craft. A photographer by nature, Rubchinskiy has taken his parternhip with Comme des Garcons a step further and released a fragrance to sit with his ever-growing streetwear…
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OUD by VINCE CAMUTO
Often called “liquid gold” and derived from Agarwood, the “Wood of the gods,” Oud is one of the rarest and most expensive ingredients in perfumery, and has been prized in the Middle East for thousands of years. Vince Camuto Oud combines the elegance and luxury of Oud with the strength, confidence, and independent spirit of…
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Censer by Apparatus
Look around your room and you’ll see that in its basic element, it’s a construction of detailed shapes; complex geometry all characterised by their positioning – or lack thereof. But home inspiration can come in many different forms as demonstrated by New York based design studio Apparatus, and none more so than their simple yet…
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FLAGSHIP | retaW Store Harajuku
When I first encountered Japanese brand retaW, they were a fledgling brand, with 6 products – all shower gels – but the unique quality of these six products alone were enough to make inroads in an already saturated marketplace. Their select distribution strategy saw them introduced to the world via niche retailers such as Dover…
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Acqua di Parma | Colonia Centenary Edition
We live in an age of innovation, and this wave of entrepreneurship & creation – among many things – has further served to engage our wonderment of brands that have stood the test of time, emerging unscathed through the vicissitudes of time, and so it is with Acqua di Parma. This is a brand that…
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NEW OUD by Hayari
To understand the nature of Hayari scents it is first necessary to understand the nature of the man behind the brand, as you see Hayari is a fashion brand first and foremost. Nabil Hayari spent 5 years as creative director at a fashion house in the famous Parisian “Golden Triangle” before setting up his own label dressing top models…
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LAYTON by Parfums de Marly
It was 1743, when the French King Louis XV commissioned sculptor Guillaume Coustouin to sculpt his famous masterpiece in memory of his great-grandfather Louis XIV. Now known as “The Marly Horses” it was this magnificent work of art, that laid the foundations for the brand Parfums de Marly. Their parfums are reminiscent of the splendour…
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Frederic Malle MONSIEUR by Bruno Jovanovic
Hailing from the bloodline of Parfum Christian Dior’s Founder, Serge Heftler-Louiche, it should come as no surprise the Frederic Malle has found his home in the world of fragrance. But I’m sure despite all his grandfather achieved, he will view his grandson’s enterprise with more than a modicum of pride; in a sector saturated with ‘celebrity’…
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Magnolia Heights by Tom Daxon
Tom Daxon’s story starts with the inspiration that surrounded him. His mother worked in cosmetics and this naturally lead to a point of intrigue. One that would further serve his ability to think outside the box and treat smell as continuous development. “At Tom Daxon we simply want to make the best fragrances possible. Cost…
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Super Cedar by Byredo
The latest fragrance from Scandinavian fragrance house Byredo is quite literally the superlative of a cedar-embodied parfum. Called Super Cedar, the fragrance is constructed based on the literal meaning of the words; Super and Cedar. Evocative of log cabins and Scandinavian furniture, cedar adds warmth to the overtly modern. In the perfumer’s palette, it has the…
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L’EAU INTENSE by Carven
CARVEN menswear has had a fairly steady resurgence recently among style aficionados following the debut collection by Barnabe Hardy in 2015. With its simple, paired back but effortlessly wearable approach the brand has become cult but also mature in its approach. This synergy has also been expressed by CARVEN PARFUMS in the release of L’EAU…