It’s National Fragrance Day, and we at Arielle Shoshana are nothing if not observant of this great nation’s holidays! So we’re celebrating this worthy occasion with a fragrant giveaway. We’ve got a full bottle of the wonderful Lubin Gin Fizz for 1 grand prize winner, and L’Artisan Parfumeur The Perfume Box sample sets for 3 runner-ups!
Photo credit: Catherine Romatowski!
To enter the giveaway, please join the Arielle Shoshana mailing list. If you’ve already signed up, you’re already in the running! If you’re not already signed up, just scroll down to the bottom of the Arielle Shoshana website, type your email address into the bar, and click the purple “Sign Up” button.
We’ll choose the winners by random raffle using random.org on Friday at noon. The giveaway is only open to U.S.-based entries. I can’t apologize enough to those of you outside of the U.S., but we are currently unable to ship internationally due to USPS restrictions on perfume.
Disclaimers: Email addresses provided to our mailing list are used to send you information about store events or new product launches ONLY. We do not use your email address for any other purpose. We do not provide your email address to any other parties. I do not know how to do anything illegal or unethical with your email addresses.
Despite the “Monsieur”, LJdML is by far the most feminine of the Hermes Jardin series. In direct contrast to its bracing, green ancestors, LJdML is a sweet, delicate floral. The star is a bright, fresh jasmine note, completely stripped of jasmine’s usual headiness. It’s a Baby’s First Jasmine jasmine, which just so happens to be the only kind of jasmine I can tolerate. Oh, Jean-Claude, you shouldn’t have! (In all seriousness, Jean-Claude Ellena is my Imaginary Perfume Bro. He spends half of Diary of A Nose talking about how much he loves Japan, so you just know he’d be totally down for a Studio Ghibli marathon. Let’s make it happen, JC.)
This face is CLEARLY saying, “Hey girl, it’s Kiki’s Delivery Service time.”
I have no doubt that I would wear LJdML, especially on these gorgeous 70 degree days that we’ve just started having, but I don’t think I would actually buy a bottle. There are so many fresh jasmine fragrances out there, even if this is one of the prettiest.
The winner of last week’s Chanel Misia giveaway, as determined by random.org sequence generator, is commenter 14, Undina! Congratulations, Undina! Please email me to claim your prize!
Jenn! Yaaaaay! Jenn, please email me at scentsofself@gmail.com with your mailing address so that I can send you your prize! Please note that I will not be sending it until next week, as my summer course finals are this week.
This also seems like a good time to remind anatu13 that she never sent me her mailing address for the Illuminium giveaway! Please do so, anatu13!
Thank you so much to everyone for entering and for sharing your 21st birthday stories!
Yes, yes, there’s a giveaway. But first, I want to talk about what you have given me.
This is an unforgivably blurry picture of the perfumes that you have sent me in the last year. They have come in gloriously overstuffed packages from Australia, England, California, Tennessee. You didn’t want payment. You just wanted to share them with me. I have also received three handmade cat toys (long since lovingly destroyed by Zelda) and funding for a cat stroller.
I’m trying not to get my sap on, but this blog has honestly given me so much. You have made me stronger, happier, more sure of myself. Thank you so much for all of it.
So today is the actual date of my 21st birthday, and I have a rather exciting party favor for y’all! In keeping with the whole 21st theme, I will be giving away samples of 21 of my favorite fragrances. These include L’Artisan Safran Troublant, Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille, Etat Libre d’Orange Bijou Romantique, Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose, Ormonde Jayne Woman, Kai, Lolita Lempicka, L de Lolita Lempicka, Bond No. 9 New Haarlem, Guerlain L’Heure Bleue, Guerlain Après l’Ondée, Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Mokha, Jo Malone Black Vetyver Cafe, and eight others that I haven’t thought of yet because 21 is actually a pretty big number when you really think about it.
To be eligible for this giveaway, you must be an email subscriber or a Twitter follower. (Sorry, y’all, it’s my Blogging and Online Writing class homework!) If you are not already a subscriber or follower, please scroll down to the bottom of the blog and click either follow button. (Or maybe both?)
To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment telling us how you celebrated your 21st birthday!
The giveaway will be open until 8 AM Monday morning. Good luck, y’all!
Baltimore has been in the throes of a city-wide Adderall shortage for several months now. No one seems to know how or why. I blame Woody Allen. This means that for the first time in five years, I am now without ADHD medication. This is bad news bears for someone whose unmedicated attention span and long-term memory would make a goldfish look like a goddamn Ent.
In the absence of Adderall, I have had to turn to some of my pre-medication ADHD coping mechanisms. These include, of course, coffee! Today I’ll be briefly reviewing five fragrances that claim to contain coffee notes. I will also be giving away a sample set of all five scents! To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment sharing your favorite coffee perfumes or your favorite perfumes that help you stay focused. This giveaway is open to anyone, regardless of location. I will close the giveaway on Monday, April 2nd.
Plume Perfume Coffee and Cedar
Coffee and Cedar is the richest, darkest coffee fragrance that I have ever had the pleasure of trying. There’s no misguided sweetness or extraneous notes here, just pure, true coffee. The warm cedar note is a natural match for the inherent woodiness of coffee beans. I would also like to point out that Plume Perfume founder Tara Aveilhe, who donated a bottle and solid perfume locket of Coffee and Cedar to the recent Smell Good Do Good fundraiser, is an utterly lovely person inside and outside.
But mostly outside. DAYUM, girl!
Jo Malone Black Vetyver Cafe
You know how some perfumes just seem made for relaxed, casual days spent in sweatpants and flip-flops? Black Vetyver Café is resolutely not one of those perfumes. Instead, Black Vetyver Café is the finishing touch to a suit of urban armor: severe black dress, fearfully high heels, slash of red lipstick. Rather than a typical warm gourmand, Black Vetyver Cafe’s vetiver note makes it a cool-toned coffee scent. This is a fiercely elegant perfume. Its one downfall is its truly inexcusable lasting power (we’re talking literally 20 minutes here), but it’s so good that I don’t even care.
Comptoir Sud Pacifique Vanille Mokha
For the first thirty minutes, this perfume smells like the most delicious cup of freshly-brewed black coffee you’ve ever had in your life. After those thirty minutes, Vanille Mokha suffers the fate of all Comptoir Sud Pacifique fragrances: its fabulous top notes give way to a pleasant, standard vanilla note. That being said, those first thirty minutes are so utterly intoxicating that I own two backup bottles of this discontinued scent.
Bond No. 9 New Haarlem
It doesn’t smell like coffee, but it smells pretty great. Unlike more obvious gourmand scents, New Haarlem does not smell like any particular food. Instead, New Haarlem is a warm, sparkling amber fragrance. I once read in an interview that Bond founder Laurice Rahme kept pushing perfumer Maurice Roucel to reduce the vanilla in this perfume. I don’t doubt it for a minute; New Haarlem is far less sweet than many of Roucel’s other creations. As a result, this fragrance is slightly too masculine for me, but I’d be the first one to tell you that New Haarlem is positively delectable.
Parfumerie Generale Coze
If there is coffee in here, I can’t smell it. What I do smell is some terribly dark wood and spices. For a perfume with a note list that alleges chocolate and vanilla pods, Coze is surprisingly devoid of sweetness. With its austere bitterness, Coze evokes coffee only in concept, not in actual smell. Perhaps if I had witnessed the dishy Parfumerie Generale founder Pierre Guillaume literally licking Coze, as did the London Perfume Lovers folks, I might be more convinced.
SCENTS OF SELF 