Sniffing Around: Fenwick of Bond Street

On my last few visits to the perfumery at Fenwick on Bond Street, I noticed that they carried quite a few brands that I hadn’t seen at other Central London boutiques. So I decided to pop in for a proper sniff around…

Angelique Perfumes and the Perfume Bombing of Los Angeles

Angelique and Company, Inc. very well may have been America’s first independent microperfumery. The below article entitled “How to Sell a Smell” from Life magazine’s 4th December 1950 issue written by Percy Knauth tells the story of how N. Lee Swartout and Charles Granville began their business on Skunk Lane in Wilton, Connecticut. Affectionately deeming it “The Skunk Works.”

The article also details the ups and downs of the brand’s early years and the various publicity stunts they attempted in order to shift their fragrances. They took perfume marketing to the next level. Swartout and Granville tried to make perfumed snow in the middle of winter and hired a team of starlets to bomb Los Angeles with perfume. Kinda love these guys.

ODOU Issue Four

If someone had told me last year when I began this blog that I would one day see an article published I probably would have cracked up laughing. So you can only imagine how absolutely thrilled I am to have been able to contribute to ODOU Issue Four.

Sampling Thoughts: Deco London

 

Sophia Fannon-Howell’s Deco London launches next month. She has translated her appreciation for history and fragrance into a well-rounded collection of perfumes, three feminine and three masculine eau de parfums developed in collaboration with Robertet. I’ve spent the past few weeks getting to know the scents a bit better.

The Perfumes of Dorian Gray: Scavenger Hunt for Scents

Watercolour sketch by Alastair

Now that I have completed the series of scents referenced in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I thought it would be fun to track down perfumes that best match the references. It’s quite a list, and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Let’s take a look at what I need to hunt for…

The Perfumes of Dorian Gray: Chapter Nineteen

“You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play – I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere, but our own senses will imagine them for us. These are moments, when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again.”

The Perfumes of Dorian Gray: Chapter Eighteen

“There was something in the clear pine-scented air of that winter morning that seemed to bring him back his joyousness and his ardour for life.”

The Perfumes of Dorian Gray: Chapter Fifteen

“The smell of the singeing clothes and burning leather was horrible.”