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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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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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Taxonomy of Design | Aesop ION
The epitome of ‘Glocalisation’, Aesop’s international expansion could almost be considered subterfuge, the way they ‘quietly’ integrate themselves into established retail districts all over the world. It would be wrong to say that these spaces were obscurely submerged within their retail communities, but their method of integration, connecting the store design with local history, always references such…
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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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The Grooming Station x Aveda Men
Scroll back a few years and you may recall a time when going to Toni & Guy was the equivalent of ‘grabbing a Costa’ and where hair straighteners were king. Those days – I’m very pleased to report – are far behind us, or at least that’s how it appears, as the art of barbering…
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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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The Copenhagen International Fashion Fair #CIFFDK
Think of a trade show, and I picture an unkempt mass of meandering stalls, incoherent in formation and extensive in their number. Perhaps I’ve been tarnished by buying experiences of times past, because the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair (CIFF[1. Copenhagen International Fashion Fair (CIFF) is the leading and most innovative platform in northern Europe, presenting…
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OPHIR by Blackbird
Launched in 2004 with a Seattle based store, Blackbird is an award winning menswear brand – and they have always had a keen eye on Apothecary. From the early incarnations of their e-store, they hosted a curation of unconventional fragrance and grooming products alongside their American-made denim, and full apparel assortment. In recent times Blackbird have…
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Ferrari Fragrance: Vetiver Essence
Say what you will about the Ferrari’s history in the automotive industry, it’s fair to say that their forays into the fragrance industry have gone relatively unnoticed by the mainstream That said their latest fragrance collection has started to turn heads – and for the right reasons. Following on from Cedar Essence by Ferrari, Vetiver…
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Ruffians, Covent Garden
Opening its doors to trade at the end of 2013, the second outlet from new grooming label Ruffians strikes the perfect balance between rough industrialism and modern sophistication, with an interior that acts equally as both meeting point and grooming destination for the growing following of loyal customers it’s attracted in the interim since opening.…
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Penhaligon’s Bayolea: Grooming Regime
Undisputed masters of the olfactory for over 150 years now, the Penhaligon’s name is one oft-conjured when prompted to recall those at the pinnacle of perfurmery. Much like the wisened owl or the omnipresent tortoise, Penhaligon’s seems to operate within its different timescales to other major players in the market. Resolute in its reluctance to…
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Valentino Uomo
VALENTINO UOMO There comes a time when a fashion house knows it’s time to embrace a new direction, a direction not obtuse for the industry, but one that is nonetheless either damning or augmenting; Fragrance. On the back of their surging men’s collections Valentino have released their first scent for men, a subtly opulent scent…