Fragrances by Ivy

 Frederic Malle is a house that the more acquainted with it I become, the more I love it. It's a house dedicated to luxury and the idea that perfume shouldn't just be a product to be marketed to people, but rather a piece of art curated by a master artisan. To that end, Frederic Malle encouraged guest perfumers to create as freely as they desired with all the ingredients available to them, resulting in a lot of very complex fragrances. I took a class recently taught by an ISIPCA graduate and during the history of perfumery part of the class, she mentioned that when perfumery really took off, especially with the rise of Guerlain fragrances, it was common practice for these perfumes to be incredibly dense, with upwards of 90 ingredients comprising them. This would lead to an insanely complicated notes list, but also create a perfume with remarkable lasting power, a unique profile, and a very meandering unfurling of the notes. In this school of thought, many perfumes published by ...

 It's fall which means it's almost winter which means it's the time of the year to wear your vanilla fragrances. Personally I can't wear vanillas for most of the year, due to the fact that I live in a hot climate, I usually find them pretty heavy, and also I don't like vanilla. I know, sue me. I just cannot find it in me to enjoy a plain vanilla, it's such a bland note. I can't deny it's a very widely popular base, generally inoffensive, and plays well with lots of notes, plus it's something that many people know. It's an easy touchstone when it comes to notes.  Having said that, I am not immune to a vanilla fragrance. Despite a paragraph saying I don't like the note alone, I can appreciate it blended into a perfume and see merit in the scents. It would be unfair of me to say all vanilla forward scents are bad, just like not all rose scents are good. While I mostly prefer it as a base note and blended in under other notes I do like, let's...

 Reminiscing today on a few of my favorite scents that have been changed or retired, I started to wonder, which is worse? Is it more heartbreaking to find out a beloved scent has been altered or that the company has decided, for reasons they usually never disclose, that they are sending their work of art to the great beyond? Naturally whichever direction they go in, I have always found it disingenuous for companies to not make their client base aware. I understand that companies reserve the right to change their formulations at any time, given the ever changing nature of inflation, ingredient availability, global political shifts, and constant emerging research on ingredient and formulation safety, but given what an incredibly personal and emotional item fragrance is to many people, it just seems a little cruel to not let the die hard lovers know when their baby might be taken away. In the spirit of solemn reflection that autumn always brings me, let's look back on some of my favor...