Aftelier Perfumes - new packaging (and a review of Honey Blossom!)

Oh, hai! Pic-heavy post here. Bringing in the freshest news from Aftelier Perfumes. Well, almost the freshest news. More on that in a bit.

Anyway, these are pictures of Mandy Aftel's new packaging. Isn't it exquisite?!

[before pic via Mandy's Facebook page]

Let's start with the bottle itself...

Pre-makeover, we had a sleekly-shaped rectangular bottle - kind of apothecary style - with a wrap-around sticker. Lovely.

Now, though, the same bottle is adorned with a gorgeous, streamlined logo, silk-screened in white.

While the name of the scent isn't featured on the bottle itself, it is present on a sticker placed on the top of the cap. So cute! It's easy to find the scent if you have multiple bottles of Aftelier (you should!) but the overall look remains subtle and pretty.

Why I really love the new bottles: I get to see more beautiful juice! I find the colors of perfume to be mesmerizing. It's on of the many pleasures to be derived from this obsession hobby.

Plus, the bottle just looks even more professional and upscale now.

On to the exterior packaging...

I'm a fan of that gorgeous mega-floral print in deep purple, ivy green, and vibrant orange that Mandy uses. I always have loved that! Now it's the main feature on the boxes from Aftelier.

My edp came in a pretty box that has no excess space. The bottle slips perfectly into the inner box, which then slides into an outer sleeve. It opens like a matchbox!

The exterior packaging doesn't give a hint to what wonders are inside save for a simple clear sticker placed on one end that tells the scent's name.

Why I love the exterior packaging: The colors! The sliding! I also adore that the somewhat busy print on the box contrasts so nicely with the minimalistic appearance of the bottle. If both were vibrant and busy or both were spartan, it wouldn't have the same delightful impact.

Overall, the packaging is incredibly well-done. I'm impressed. I'm not someone who buys a perfume just for packaging (ok - maybe the cute cats for Katy Perry's scents or the fairy on Feerie, but let's ignore that for now). And I would never skip a great scent because the bottle was ugly. But isn't it nice when a well-crafted, beautiful scent comes in well-crafted, beautiful packaging?

On to my review of Honey Blossom...

I have no stories about honeysuckle, mimosa, or linden. As far as I know, there's no linden (called "lime" in England but not actually a lime tree) anywhere around. I outlined my history with mimosa last Spring (here). To summarize: I have no history with it. My experiences with honeysuckle are the same as many people's experiences: when I was little it would be on fences in my neighborhood. We'd pluck it apart, sip the nectar. I have no recollection of how that tasted or how they smelled. So there, I'm totally not qualified at all to review this scent, but that has never stopped me before!

Scent Family: Soliflore
Beautiful honeyed floral, hypnotic with notes of honeysuckle. If there were a flower that smelled like honey, this would be it.


Featured Notes
Top: mimosa, linden blossom CO₂.
Heart: orange blossom absolute, phenyl ethyl alcohol.
Base: ambergris, benzoin.

Finalist for Fragrance Foundation 2011 FiFi Award: Fragrance of the Year - Indie Brand

Here's what I can tell you about Honey Blossom: it's a beautiful expression of Summer. And Spring. And just sumptuous florals in general. 

This perfume is the result of Mandy's Letters to a Fellow Perfumer Series with Andy Tauer, featured on Nathan Branch's blog (read the first installment here and then follow along!). Andy ended up with Zeta, Mandy created Honey Blossom. Both are worked around a linden CO2 extract, and yet they smell nothing alike. I can't really wear Zeta (I will try again this Summer, perhaps), but Honey Blossom I love. As always, I encourage you to follow along with the perfumers in the Letters... series. It's an incredible opportunity to see how creative minds work, how indie perfumers create, and how the individual perfumes evolve.

Honey Blossom opens with a beautiful floral note. "Honeyed" is the word I'd use, rather than "honey". Meaning, it smells sweetened and floral but not like the gooey stuff Pooh loved so much. It is by no means that alleged honey smell that you can find in some cheap perfumes. No. What it does remind me of, though, is a ridiculously good wildflower honey I had the pleasure of eating two years ago. Let me tell you, that was so gorgeous and rich and sweet and heady and unbelievable... And while smelling Honey Blossom probably smells nothing like that wildflower honey, the experiences are still somehow incredibly similar. 

[via]

Stretch out on a picnic blanket in the sun
next to these gorgeous flowers...
That's how Honey Blossom makes me feel.

I'll be honest: I can't pick out the mimosa or the linden. As the swirl of the opening settles on my skin, I can pick out the orange blossom, but it's not a soliflore orange blossom. It's just evident that it's there, involved in the melange of floral blooms.

This scent is warmed but not warm, if you take my meaning. It doesn't generate its own heat, but rather feels like it has been heated gently in a meadow in the sunshine. It's like basking in the sun on a Spring day. Not hot, not humid, just warm. Honey Blossom glows.

This is a natural perfume. As such, it does not lift off the skin and call out to strangers. Your sillage won't follow you for blocks. Honey Blossom is more of a "come to me" kind of scent. It's for you and those lucky enough to be close to you. It's neither translucent nor short-lived, however. 

The drydown for Honey Blossom is oh-so-subtle and yet exquisite. This scent melts into the skin over the course of a few hours, leaving behind the most delicious honeyed nuance to the skin. It's incredibly soft and incredibly sexy.

Honey Blossom is more than welcome in my perfume cabinet. It's perfect for almost any occasion and will never overwhelm. I wanted to compare it to MAC's Naked Honey, but really - there's no comparison. Naked Honey seems shrill and strong and a little clunky when worn next to Honey Blossom. They do not smell the same, but I suspect they wanted to have a similar feeling about them. I like them both, but Honey Blossom is truly a work of art.

You can get Honey Blossom on Mandy's website, Aftelier Perfumes.
A sample is $6 for either the perfume or edp; a perfume mini is $45; an 30ml edp like mine is $150; a bottle of the perfume (1/4 oz) is also $150. 

[via]

PS: This isn't Mandy's only new news. Or not her most recent news. She's got a new scent called Sepia and it's breathtaking. It's actually Mandy's creation from another Letters to a Fellow Perfumer series, this time with Laurie Erickson of Sonoma Scent Studios. Stay tuned for my review!

[additional image credits: linden, orange blossom, mimosa]

The next step... What is Perfume, anyway?

I have to confess: I've been stuck here for a few days. This next step is maybe the hardest: Where to go from here?

I could start talking about the classics. I could share with you my favorite fragrances and find out about yours. We could learn some more vocabulary/jargon. I think, though, the right next step is to make sure we're on the same page with some perfume basics. There are tons of resources "out there", some of which I'll quote or refer to, since they are written by folks much more qualified to explain them than I. But I do feel like I need to provide some sort of starting place; a common ground.

After this, I'll build some resource lists and pages for this site before taking the next, next step. If you have resources and links to share, please do!

xoxo,
*jen

Silly question, right? But maybe not so silly, because how can we really talk about something, become knowledgeable about it, without learning the details? Or at least that's the way I look at it.

perfume is...
Fragrance is made up of perfume oils and... stuff. Usually, that stuff is either ethanol (alcohol) or a solution of water and ethanol. One can also dilute pure perfume oils in other oils that don't add to the scent. You're familiar with the concept of mixing, right? Well, just as when mixing a color of paint, a cocktail, or ingredients for a recipe, the amounts of this and that used directly impact the end result. That's where some of the names used to describe concentrations of fragrance come in.

Here are the most commonly used names for fragrance concentrations, from lightest (least amount of perfume oils) to strongest:

• Splash / Aftershave / Eau Fraiche : between 1-3% perfume oils
• Eau de Cologne (EdC): 3-8% (usually about 5%)
• Eau de Toilette (EdT): 5-15% (usually about 10%)
• Eau de Parfum (EdP) / Parfum de Toilette / Eau de Perfume / Millésime: 10-20% (usually about 15%)
• Espirit de Parfum: 15-30% [this is rarely seen]
• Perfume Oil: 15-30% in a base of oil rather than in alcohol
• Perfume Extract / Extrait / Perfume: 15-40% (usually about 20%)

So what's the deal? Why so many ways to brew fragrance? That answer is easy: each concentration results in a different intensity of scent. Also, usually one can expect the stronger concentrations to last longer on the skin.

Of course, you've likely noticed that there's overlap with the descriptions and concentrations. One EdT is not the same as the next, just like your spaghetti sauce isn't the same as mine. EdT A may have 8% perfume oils while EdT B may have 12%.  Oh, and to make matters worse, some companies put different ingredients in the various concentrations of the same scent! So just because you want "more oomph" from a fragrance you adore in EdP form doesn't mean you'll love the extrait.

By the way, since "perfume" is really the name of a type of fragrance product; a term to signify a concentration of scent, to keep things simple I'll usually refer to fragrance products as "fragrance". When I say "perfume" going forward, it will mean The Good Stuff: extrait.

so where do the perfume oils come from?

This is super complex, and while I may go more in-depth with it at a later date, I want to touch on it now, a tiny little bit. Luckily, I'm no chemist, so this shouldn't get too hairy.

Two sources of scent...

Basically, there are two types of "odorants" that go into fragrances: natural and synthetic. Neither is better or worse, and most fragrances have some of each inside.

Synthetic scents are manufactured in a lab, as you may have guessed. Why? Well, some ingredients are so expensive or hard-to-find as natural ingredients, so a more affordable synthetic version is created. In other cases, there is no real way to capture and bottle a scent, like the crackling ozone of a lightening storm or the scent of beach air. Still other synthetics replace naturals that are not terribly earth- or animal-friendly, for example ambergris, which is a natural by product of sperm whale digestion (humanely harvested...usually, but hard-to-find), or various musks (which must be extracted from animals).

Synthetics get a bit of a bad rap. While many synthetic replacements are widely considered by fragrance fanatics to lessen a vintage scent after reformulation  (a whole can of worms I'll open at another time), they do have their place elsewhere, in my opinion.

image via essentialoilsaromatherapyinfo.com

Natural ingredients come from the source material...somehow. Heat, solvents, and other processes are used to extract oils ("essential oils"), absolutes, concretes or butters from the source. Solvents can be used in a process called "maceration" to create concretes. The source, usually a wood or dry plant fiber, is submerged in a solvent for a length of time (which varies). The solvent then leaches the scent out of the source and can be used or further processed. Other raw materials, like soft flowers, are heated (directly, with steam, or with machinery) until condensation is created, then collected. Still other raw materials get a big squeeze!!! By compressing or squeezing materials like citrus peels, their oils can be obtained. Then there's enfleurage. A fancy name for letting fat or wax suck up the scent of the raw materials, though this method isn't used so much nowadays. (um...good?)

Natural ingredients can be pretty expensive, which is passed along to the consumer in the final fragrance price. Don't be fooled, though! Some synthetics are mighty pricey, too.

image via commons.wikimedia.org/

so how does it all pull together?

A perfumer usually starts with a concept, and that concept may come from the perfumer or a corporation. He or she will use anywhere from one (rarely) to a bajillion (also rare) ingredients to create a fragrance. The main scent is built, then modified (brightened, made deeper, etc). Other ingredients may be added to make it smoother or "more flowy" (a technical term... not). Fixitives are added to stabilize the scent and give it a base. Then the alcohol and/or alcohol solution gets mixed in.

The array of ingredients in a perfumer's aresnal is usually set up in a semi-circle and referred to as a "perfumer's organ".

building a fragrance

Many consumers have heard of "perfume notes". This is a way of talking about how a scent presents itself. They are often displayed in the form of a pyramid. The notes are top notes, middle or heart notes, and base notes. Essentially, they exist because different molecules evaporate at different rates - and evaporation is how the molecules make it to our noses to be smelled.

• Top Notes evaporate first, so they are the first scents you smell. They are a fragrance's first impression. Top notes are most often fruity or citrus scents or light florals.
  
• Middle Notes show up five to ten minutes after application, just after the top notes start to fade. They also overlap the base notes, smoothing out or hiding any rough start those notes might have. Heart notes are often, but not always, florals.
  
• Base notes evaporate last. They appear anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour into the development of a scent. These are the scents that linger. They are often described as "deep" or "rich" and tend to sit closer to the wearer's skin (can't be smelled from as far away as the middle and top notes). Base notes are often woody, resinous, or earthy.

A note on notes: when you see a list of notes for a fragrance, don't focus on them too closely. Listed notes are best thought of as a guide, not a final answer. Some notes might not be listed, might be a generic term (like "lilac" may be an accord of ingredients that mimic the scent of lilac or two lilac ingredients, one natural one synthetic). There's a great article here I encourage you to read that explains more about this.

The middle and base notes are really what makes the bulk of the scent, since the top notes are fleeting.

classifying fragrances

There are more ways to talk about fragrances. Many people refer to fragrance "families". These are broad classifications for scents. To complicate things, there are two or three ways to look at these fragrance types.

Here are most of the commonly used terms:

• Florals: flower scents
• Soliflores are scents in which the fragrance is predominantly one flower. 
• Other florals are based on multiple flowers ("floral bouquet").
  Florals are sometimes additionally classified as "florals", "soft florals" and "floral Orientals" (AKA "floriental").
  
• Orientals: tend to have ambergris or other animal scents, and woods, sometimes with vanilla and spices. The modern Fragrance Wheel method of classifying scents breaks down Orientals into "soft Orientals", "Orientals," and "woody Orientals".
  
• Woods: shockingly, these have woody notes.
  Woods can be further broken down into "wood", "mosssy woods", and "dry woods".
  
• Chypre: follow a bit of a pattern, typically with citrus top notes, floral middle notes, and oakmoss and/or musk base.
  
• Fougere: these are herbaceous and woody scents (fougere means "fern").
  
• Green: cut grass, cucumber, leafy scents
  
• Aquatics, Ozone: a synthetic air + marine scent
  
• Gourmand: foody, edible-smelling
  
• Animalics: leather perfumes; musks; scents containing civet, castoreum, maybe ambergris depending on whom you ask
• Citrus: self-explanatory

 Whew. That's a whole lot of info, isn't it? I'm exhausted. Time to go spritz myself with something good-smelling. :)

and the next, next step?

What is that next step (after this one), you may be wondering? Our first review! Suggestions for scents to go up on the block are encouraged. I've got a small aresenal at hand, but it's a good one. :)