Ururas Tokyo Café photographed against cherry blossom by The Scent Critic The Scent Critic has never been to a real speakeasy – but (in the nicest possibly way), I’m still in recovery after a perfume...
Photographed by Jo Fairley against a vintage Sanderson screenprinted chintz One of The Scent Critic’s favourite smells in the world is a flower shop: the damp, mossy, earthy scent that assails and d...
Puredistance M photographed at Kettners by Jo Fairley on a slate tabletop Perfume doesn’t bite. It won’t kill you. So at fragrance press launches The Scent Critic is eternally gobsmacked, frankly, ...
Roja Dove Danger photographed by Jo Fairley against a vintage silk sari The Scent Critic doesn’t quite know how Roja Dove has secured some of the raciest fragrance names ever for his signature creati...
Skin. Warm skin. Warm, sexy skin. Warm, sexy, kissable skin. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we’d all like a fragrance to smell like…? And of course, they all do, after a while: bl...
First of all, I’d like to point out that despite the fact this fragrance harks back to the era of fur tippets and flapper dresses, no chinchillas were harmed in the photography of this bottle. (The ...
‘Never apologise, never explain.’ So: no long-winded justification for The Scent Critic’s hiatus; she’s simply throwing herself headlong into reviews again, before the 2012 launch season gets up a...
When a little bird at Chanel (actually, they’re all little birds at Chanel) told The Scent Critic that their next fragrance launch was based around lavender and vanilla, I said a silent ‘hmmmm’. Bec...
The Scent Critic always wanted to be older than she was. (Until recently, anyway: that ambition’s definitely lost its allure.) So, looking back, my fragrance choices were ludicrously sophist...
This latest in a trio of aptly-named Sensuous fragrances from Estée Lauder has rather tickled The Scent Critic’s fancy. And her nostrils. Really and truly tickled her nostrils. Because at first sp...
For someone who’s never taken so much as a puff of a cigarette in her life, it’s perhaps a little odd that The Scent Critic is addicted to smokiness. Give me an open fire. A steaming pot of Lapsang...
The Scent Critic has experienced one of life’s little detours, and hereby apologises profoundly for a prolonged absence. The pulse-point on my right wrist, you see – not to mention the rest of the ...
Cool as a cucumber. Cool as crisp linen sheets. Cool as an ice cube, drizzled over sun-sizzled skin. Some fragrances, The Scent Critic has experienced, have a temperature all of their own – ...
And so we come to the end of what’s turned into ‘Christian Dior Week’ on The Scent Critic. After today, I still have seven more of the Collection Privée to work my way through (and they are all wort...
It’s downright weird how one fragrance can lead you to another, like a sort of olfactory tennis-elbow-foot game. The Scent Critic would have put money on Dior’s Vétiver – the second in the Collectio...
Have you ever lost your scent mojo? Then if this has happened to you, lately, I would like to suggest – if you live within striking distance of Oxford Street – that you might like to hea...
Once upon a time, in her slightly misspent youth, The Scent Critic was an artist’s muse. (She is now slightly at that oh-heck-I’d-better-buy-up-all- those-nudes stage in life, but since the artist we...
The Scent Critic has recently been too frantic to stop and smell the roses. (Hence the lack of postings.) To be honest, I was beginning to get worried. On a crazy-busy book tour, criss-crossing th...
And now for something completely and utterly different. At first cosy sniff, Sweet Milk – the last in the Jo Malone Tea Collection – is exactly as it sounds. Sweet. And Milky. Think: condensed mi...
It’s a while since those of us in Beautyland got to preview Jo Malone’s Tea Collection, and I had forgotten my absolute instinctive reaction to Sweet Lemon – the fourth I’ll be reviewing, out of this...
Although Earl Grey is The Scent Critic’s least favourite kind of brewed tea (and just about the only one I’ve ever been known to decline), this third in the series of Jo Malone’s li...
In theory, fresh mint could be tricky, in a cologne. The danger is it could go all ‘toothpaste-y’. But I don’t find anything Colgate-ring-of-confidence about this second in the sequence of the Jo ...
Have you ever stumbled upon an entire collection of fragrances, launched all at once, that you loved…? Me neither. Until now. Although maybe my passion for Jo Malone’s new tea-inspired collection ...
Ah, Jimmy Choo. Shoes-of-choice for slinky-limbed aristos, WAGs and fashionistas. (Not for The Scent Critic, however, who – confession time – is more of an Ecco/Chie Mahara girl.) It was only a ma...
So: this is the £12,000 fragrance that The Scent Critic has been hinting at. What you’re looking at pictured here, however, is actually a big bee and a tiny bottle (no more than two inches hi...
Choice, as we all know, is a tyranny. Too many of anything to decide between, and we tend to turn on our heels. (A study once showed that if a food store samples out 26 different jams, that convert...
The Scent Critic is still having a thrifty phase. (Please note: this is because I am poised to review a £12,000 scent, so am trying to introduce a bit of yin-and-yang balance on the pricing front.)...
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but something scary has happened to the price of fragrance in the last couple of years. It’s not just raw materials increases, although those are set to soar further:...
So, belatedly, to Boadicea the Victorious fragrances. Let’s start with a confession: the packaging’s always put me off. Mea culpa. Thou shalt not judge a fragrance by its ‘cover’, is the importan...
Let me start by paying homage: the Strange Invisible Perfumes store on too-cool-to-live Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, Ca., is almost worth a 6,000 mile (carbon-offset) trip in itself. Indeed, T...
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