AND THE WORLD IS YOURS – Insanely gorgeous and feminine

I love Fall. It the best time of year for a sensualist. 

Colour, smell, texture, sound, light, they all change dramatically in October as the lush growth of summer starts to wither and fade and fall back into the ground. 

My birthday is in October, and this year it landed on a picture-perfect day. Warm sun, cool breeze, blue blue sky, maple and sumac trees in yellow/red/orange luminous brilliance, fallen leaves rustling, squirrels chattering and scrambling up treetrunks. We spent the afternoon outdoors, exploring walking trails and reconnecting with the natural world that is hidden in green pockets all over this huge city.

Disconnected from cell phones and crowds, surrounded by quiet and beauty, we pushed thought from our minds and relaxed into the moment, absorbing the life happening around us. We stole those few hours together, filling them with vivid memories I know we’ll revisit and share many times in the future. As fate would have it, I was wearing a new perfume that day, which will now forever replay as part of my birthday memories.

It’s called AND THE WORLD IS YOURS, a 2018 limited edition from A Lab on Fire, and it was created by Dominique Ropion. 

A word about  A Lab on Fire:

In 2011 wrote about their first fragrance, L’Anonyme by Olivier Polge. A minimalist, almost spiritual kind of fragrance that can be worn by anyone, it was a huge success for the little niche company, a company which started with the premise of making glamorous high-quality perfumes and selling them for realistic prices – see luckyscent.com. Prices are higher now but still reasonable, and the line includes twelve fragrances, all created by top-notch noses. Note: ALOF announced it will re-launch L’Anonyme in Fall 2019.

Which brings me to Dominique Ropion:

Dominique Ropion creates perfumes in the classic style – lush, dense, elegant, feminine, all with sillage to die for as well as great staying power. They are perfumes that truly are worth every penny, since a single spritz is nearly always enough, a bottle lasts a long time. We own several of his fragrances for Frederic Malle - Carnal Flower,Géranium pour Monsieur, Une Fleur de Cassie, Vetiver Extraordinaire  - as well as the extraordinary Kenzo Jungle L’Éléphant, and Lalique Le Parfum. 

And The World is Yours, an extrait de parfum, is the newest Ropion classic. It’s based on neroli, the oil produced from the blossom of the bitter-orange tree. The scent of neroli is sweet, honeyed and somewhat metallic with green and spicy facets. Ropion has captured all of this orange blossom perfection, layering it with balsamics, florals and spices to make ATWY a spectacular fragrance.  It is alternately spicy, mouth-watering, sweet, honeyed, lush, creamy and billowy, airy and green with bottomless depth. It is feminine, chic, and sexy.

The opening is dense juicy orange with spicy green notes, an insanely big and gorgeous blast of neroli. It becomes defiantly seductive into the heart, warming into a golden honeyed accord of delicious orange blossom layered with creamy florals - spicy rose and heliotrope with its cherry almond facets - plus musky vanilla and tonka notes. Into the drydown, And The World is Yours becomes radiant, undeniably and sublimely feminine. After another hour or so, sandalwood and tolu balsam add a resinous quality that makes the fragrance feel airy and unrestrained, with no boundaries, endless. I woke the next morning with the addictive aroma still on my wrists, which made me smile.

And The world Is Yours was inspired by the iconic photograph of Faye Dunaway by the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel, taken by famed English photographer Terry O’Neill the morning after she won the Oscar for her performance in Network. It shows her draped in a chair, exhausted, staring into the distance, surrounded by newspapers, still basking in the glow of her success, perhaps contemplating what comes next. Ropion's fragrance fully captures this poignant moment in her life.

And The World Is Yours is a spectacular fragrance. I’m so glad I chose to wear it on my birthday.

And The World is Yours is listed in our Decant Store. Decants are $5.00 for 1 ml.

Image - AND THE WORLD IS YOURS package - alabonfire.com

 
Vetyverio – clean and warm and woody

Fall arrives - perfumeniche.com 

The other day, I came across an article called ‘The Science Behind the Smell of Fall’. It’s good reading for anyone interested in fragrances, but the part that struck me most was this:

‘Smell happens when the receptors in your nose pick up aromatic molecules in the air. These molecules ooze out of objects and living organisms in the environment around you.

You smell more aromatic molecules during the summer because hot, muggy air holds more of the molecules and enables them to move through the atmosphere more quickly. The opposite happens when it’s cooler and drier in the fall: air molecules contract together and leave less space for odour molecules to move through.

It means we’re bombarded with smells in the summer, but are able to better pick out specific scents in the fall.’

I thought about this as I reached for Vetyverio EdT this morning.
Created by nose Olivier Pescheux in 2010 for French indie fragrance house Diptyque, Vetyverio is something I find myself craving more and more in these early days of autumn. It’s so distinctive, I could pick it out of a line-up.

Vetyverio - diptyque.com

I have no resistance when it comes to vetiver-centric fragrances, but there is such an emotional tug to this crisp, clean vetiver mingling with flowers and warmed by spice that I find compelling. I wish I could say that this comes from some long-ago memory or association with some event. It doesn’t. When I smell Vetyverio on my skin, it triggers pure pleasure, and that’s enough for me.

It opens fresh and lively with sweet, succulent mandarin and tart, tangy grapefruit - perfectly balanced and wonderfully nose-tingling. The crisp citrus fruits are calmed by warm, spicy nutmeg. As it moves to the heart, a floral bouquet of geranium, ylang-ylang, Turkish rose starts to bloom. The lemon-tinged geranium and banana-faceted ylang-ylang surround the rich rose, keeping the heart light and airy, while a note of carrot seed, earthy and vegetal, tempers the feminine florals. The vetiver at the base is refined and elegant, with no sign of the vetiver’s inherent dirtiness here. Any earthiness comes from the carrot seed. Instead, this vetiver has a creaminess to it that always surprises me when I sniff it. Cedarwood at the base is clear and clean and paired with a note of reserved musk that supports the fragrance beautifully.

The drydown is refined, elegant and alluring and can easily be worn by both men and women.

What I love about it most is that this vetiver fragrance is clean and refreshing. It’s a different kind of vetiver experience for me. And, judging by the way it steals attention away from everyone else when I wear it, I’d say I’m not the only one who likes this vetiver experience.

I guess picking out this great scent is what happens when air molecules contract together in the fall – who knew?

Vetyverio is listed in our Decant Store. Decants are $6.00 for 1 ml.
 

Welcome to perfumeniche.com

"She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight."

                                                                       Raymond Chandler

We are Gwen and Kay, two perfumistas making our scent journey in the cool, clear North.  We are also BFFs - we hang out together a lot, travel together - so we try, buy and share fragrances.

What started out as a shared interest grew into a hobby, and has now become our obsession.

We’ve spent many evenings with a glass of prosecco, a little cool jazz playing in the background, spritzing, sniffing - “How does this smell on you?” and, sadly, sometimes scrubbing.

We’ve tested and tried hundreds of samples over the years, and when we deemed a fragrance ”full bottle worthy” (FBW), one of us has tracked it down and bought it. We now own a lot of really great perfumes, and we continue to buy bottles of what we think is the best of "niche" as new scents are launched.

Also, we include many perfume "classics" that are the foundations of modern perfumery - like Shalimar, Chanel No.5, Eau Sauvage - plus other perfume "gems" that have been discontinued, or were ahead of their time when launched but now fit perfectly in the Niche category. 

With so many exciting discoveries, we can’t help but talk about our passion with other friends. Wherever we go, people ask “What is that perfume you’re wearing? Where can I get that?” So we end up sharing a bit of our “juice” with friends. But the circle has grown, so we've started this website to let others buy and try samples from our collections and experience the fragrant beauty we write about.

WHAT WE DO

We blog

We blog once a week and post a story about a scent from our collections, and add it to our Decant Store. We're not scent critics, so these aren't negative reviews. We love all our fragrances  - that’s why we bought them! But we describe how we think they smell, and share our stories about why we love them - maybe you’ll rediscover an old flame, or fall in love with a new scent.

Or we post conversations about whatever has grabbed our attention recently. Or we write about a specific perfume note,  and offer a Decant Pack, which allows you to explore new territory by trying 3 or 4 fragrances in a special pack at a special discount price.

We sell

We sell 1 ml. decants - .7 ml volume once you allow for the stopper in the vial - filled from our own bottles in our collection because the only way to experience a fragrance is to try it on your own skin. We take the fragrance from its original bottle and decant it into a smaller brand-new, 1 ml sterilized glass vials so that you can try it on your skin to see if you like it.

Through our Decant Store you'll have access to some of the world’s greatest niche scents, hard-to-find fragrances, and classic favourites. 

When you click on the Decant Store tab you’ll find our personal descriptions of each of the fragrances we currently offer from our collection, then you can add them to your Shopping Cart.

Let's be clear (this is a disclaimer!!)

  • We don’t sell full bottles of any fragrance - just .7ml decants. We only sell decants  from the perfumes we've bought.... because we love them.
  • We don't re-sell manufacturers samples.
  • We don’t represent any perfumers or distributors, so we don’t have every scent from a whole line of perfume.
  • We aren’t being paid to promote any product or scent.

If, after sampling a fragrance, you decide that you must have it, i.e. it is FBW (full bottle worthy), and you can’t find it, e-mail us and we will direct you to the best source we know – retail store or online source.

We provide

A place for you to learn about scent, and to share your fragrance experience with others. Click on the section called Resources, under My Perfume Notes (see top right), where  you'll find a Glossary, and fragrance FAQs. You'll also find two great tools we've created - Handmaps and My Sample Perfume Notes - so you can keep track of, and record your own scent experiences.
 
We hope you enjoy perfumeniche.com, and visit us often. Leave your preconceptions behind, look around, see what’s on offer, read the Blog, share your experiences and discoveries, and join the circle.

It’s just us.