Aerin Lauder on Martha Stewart

Watching Aerin Lauder on Martha Stewart's fragrance show, the tired old chestnut of male fragrance and female fragrance was mentioned.

It's as though one must lift the lid up to see which it is,
a boy or a girl, a topic for a series of articles in the future.


 







Standing in the Mistletoe: Lura Astor

Capturing Peony Scent

Folks from Givaudan and IFF capture the scent of peony from Martha Stewart's garden for lab analysis and bottled creation.
VIDEO click to right Capturing Peony Scent


The Fragrance Show segment
Martha Stewart Show 
30 October 2009







Image: Standing Under Mistletoe Lura Astor

dispenser of sensuous delights

 












Nature anticipated the perfumery trade by mixing odors indiscriminately in the wind, and the sniffer abroad is in for delightful surprises. Unique blends are bound to occur; mixtures never before sensed by mortal man may come casually into his nostrils.

Though in our Western civilization the sense of smell has fallen from its great estate as dispenser of sensuous delights, it is a sense that can be developed.

from Your Educated Nose in Our Sentinels section, Reader's Digest
Our Human Body: Its Wonders and Its Care
 article adapted from Have You an Educated Nose? Roy Bedichek
How Your Nose Knows, Ruth and Edward Brecher

photo: Huntington Gardens Lura Astor

Congratulations & Shout oUts 2

to Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez
for their updated book
now available in paperbackPerfumes: The Guide A-Z

Check out the reviews here
about the authors here
  There is a growing platform for perfume criticism much the same way Siskel & Ebert & Roeper gave us their version of film criticism and a serious, long lasting, platform including guest critics.
In Living Color gave us movie critic send-ups with Men on Film - the manly or bitchy Loved It, Hated It, tell it like it is, 2 snaps and a rewind ratings with David Alan Grier, who now has his Chocolate News, and Keenen Ivory Wayans.

If you have problems with the art of dish and homoerotica do not open this link  as Men on Film cover the films Grease, Psycho, 48 Hours and more.

While I in no way agree with each of the final (that is, standing in print) pronouncements on the fragrances within Perfumes: The Guide A-Z, who cares? The Guide allows readers to stick to their opinions, gain more facts in the process, learn more of perfumers, houses, recipe changes and other lore, perhaps change an opinion or way of smelling/revisiting particular fragrances. Remember, perfume lovers are nothing if not opinionated.
 
This book is

So entertaining, you don’t even have to like perfume - The Denver Post
 
A wake-up call for the nostrils -The Independent (UK)

Bigoted, snarling, monomaniacal, subjective, triumphalist, and quite magnificent
 - Prospect (UK) 

As if a light has been switched on in a murky room - Philip Hensher, author The Northern Clemency

Illustration: The Two Snifftateers: ©Lura Astor
part of Perfume Series

Congratulations & Shout oUts 1

to Basenotes' Grant Osborne and Danielle Cooper's Fragrance Fridays
now on youtube  fragrance news, updates and upcoming releases and events  October 200
two - 6 November 2009 

Illustration: The Two Snifftateers: ©Lura Astor, part of her Perfume Series

win

Fabric & Fragrance & Do You Dare?

This ribbon was an integral part of a celebrity fragrance launch, an example of modern culture, in-depth, branding for a successful ad campaign. Launched by fragrance design house Elizabeth Arden in 2004, Curious perfume, for pop-star performer Britney Spears' fragrance portfolio, was aimed at the 16-24 age market, and remains popular with an older demographic as well.

Customers describe it as pretty, clean, fresh, floral, light, nice.Reps convince potential buyers to allow themselves their guilty pleasures and buy the scent because they like it, regardless of how they feel about star/brand identity.

Grossing sales of $55.4 million in 2006 landed this celebrity perfume #4 on Forbes Magazine’s top selling celebrity fragrances list.

The bottle's design, with its atomizer, lends modern recognition of Hollywood film, and film star, dressing tables.

Perfume: Curious
Celebrity: Britney Spears Design
House: Elizabeth Arden
Perfumer: Claude Dir
Bottle Designer: Jean Antretter
Ad Director: Dave Meyers Year
Introduced: 2004
Scent Classification: Floral
Range: 1.0 oz, 1.7 oz, 3.3 oz E
au de Parfum, 0.5 oz
Perfume Stick, 3.8 oz
Body Lotion, 7.0 oz
Body Polish, 0.7 oz
Body Shimmer, 6.8 oz
Body Wash, 0.16 oz/each
Fragrance Roller Ball and Lip Gloss Duo

Notes
top Louisiana Magnolia, Golden Anjou Pear, Water Lotus
heart Tuberose, Star Jasmine, Pink Cyclamen
base Vanilla, Musk, Blonde Woods, Sandalwood












Fabric & Fragrance
Instead of using paper blotters to smell and test fragrances, some companies use a cut of ribbon, spray it with the fragrance, and customers wear the ribbon on their wrist or ankle, or put it in a purse, pocket or book.

Photos

... part of a package I put together to induce local establishments to increase the value of their collections of art, fashion, costume and textiles by adding Fragrant Information, curated by yours truly.

c. 1340 defines curate M.L. curatus one responsible for the care of souls
L. curatus, pp. curare to take care of

yours truly, Translator of Things Nasal

Serendipity Rides Again

 














After posting about kerosene perfume in the Smell of Burning Books a few days ago, guess who I got to briefly meet?

Ray Bradbury, as I hold up a special edition of Fahrenheit 451. 

Mr. B wears the French Commandeur Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal.

I love my muses.

... they bring me places, bump me into people, point out humor and beauty, and insist I create.

photo: Steve Fjeldsted

Maple Sugars Serendipity

 

Sables/Annick Goutal translates from French to English as sand/s. Years back I originally read it as sable fur, getting rich browns and autumnal fireplace golden red highlights when smelling the juice. Turns out the range of sable fur colors includes blacks as well as browns.

Sables with its immortelle has a distinct nose of Vermont maple syrup. The ambrosia of unrefined, dark, grade B, maple syrup is nothing like bottled corn syrups labeled as maple syrup. Sables also reminds me of maple sugar candies shaped as maple leaf, , acorns, clover, roses, turkeys, people and more; a treat beyond buttercream dissolve-on-the-tongue.

Serendipity and Something New!
 
I tasted spun maple sugar for the first time.
The menu said,  "Only spun if Miss Dingle is here." She was.

A plate piled high was set down before us looking like a fairy's wig of cream brown.

Hands ripped wisps as the faintest burn of maple sifted into nostrils on the way to tongue melt.

It is like having a birthday treat and it is not your birthday, makes me laugh.

Summer fairs' dry hay and spinning threads of burning sugar - cotton candy
Maple sugar tapped from Vermont trees

Had gathered a few folks to visit the Norton Simon Museum's free evening; it was the first time I saw the sculpture garden at night.

The uplighting on sculptures and trees makes the outdoor sculpture path and pool even more transportive than daytime viewing. A Henry Moore nude on her side with legs flying creates a Chagall nightscape as it casts a shadow large enough to fill the museum facade. 

A lane of skinny trees with a few leaves left could have a title plate Autumn.

Illustration: Last Minute Luck Lura Astor
Photo: Maple Leaf Structure jurvetson and TED/joy of rockets

the smell of burning books

 

















 
The film Fahrenheit 451  1966 based on Ray Bradbury's book
Directed by Francois Truffaut, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Louis Richard

Clarisse (Julie Christie):  Even with my eyes closed, I can tell what you do for a job.
 
Montag (Oscar Werner):  Because of the smell of kerosene? Quite a scent, isn't it. My wife doesn't like it very much. She says it lingers. I don't mind. I think of it as a perfume.
 
Clarisse:  Perfume?
 
Montag:  Yes, a perfume, like any other.

Illustration: Context Lura Astor

on the air

our noses

keep reading the air

 - Luca Turin,  
The Secret of Scent
...the beautiful landscape of smell 


Sunday Telegraph review of The Secret of Scent

Braggathon

Quick!
Brag on 20 things
you've done
or fortuitously
missed doing.

Permission Slip
if you can't brag
to your friends
if you can't brag
to strangers
at least
take an autumn moment
and brag to yourself

catch a falling leaf
I hear it is lucky,
if nothing else,
it is fun

Illustration: leaf 44 Lura Astor

faces of things

Art does not reproduce the visible,
rather,
it makes visible.

- Paul Klee









 



Illustration: Faces of Things Lura Astor

witches' tea

listen to scent here & the six seconds frame

Listen
as we forge ways, 
new and old,
of delivering olfactory imagination
in conjunction with
other media
 
-Lura Astor

 
backstory of the Green Aria Scent Opera

 click here in this interview you will hear
perfumer Christophe Laudamiel
musician Stewart Matthew,
who played with Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson.
Neil Yule of Flaktwoods,
the company who created the scent delivery system/organ for the
Guggenheim presentation
Lovely!

if you have trouble with the link, click here "Scent Opera"

Also Check Out
preview, reviews, backstory, music
on this site's posts -
May 4, 9
June 2, 4, 2009

illustration: Shimmer Lura Astor

OR7D4 ... odor receptor 7D4

Depending on your genes, 
the smell of androstenone 
comes across as urine or vanilla, 
or for some, no smell is detected. 

How's that for a range?

I love Nature!

This picture has a wonderful story I will reveal later

Kiss the Future

U2
Pasadena, California25 October 2009
LINK to see/hear it HERE

















Production designer Mark Fisher discusses taking show director Willie Williams’ initial inspiration of the Theme Building at LAX and coming up with a structure that would fulfill the needs of the U2 360 tour.

click this blogpost talks about production aspects on tour in different venues; Berlin, Paris, Dublin, etc.)













photos: LA in LA

LAX photo: Steven Fjeldsted

Birds & Bees ... move over match.com

Smelling Others
click to read

part of
Design Interactions, RCA Degree Show
Royal College of Art, London, June 2007

following links within the coverage, you'll read of bees' nasal acuity, choosing partners based on genetic suitability (whatever this is going to mean), and paying attention to the rise of GSA/genetic sexual attraction as a consequence of reproduction techniques such as infertility treatment and genetic screening.



Some of this information overlaps with

.... Research that has demonstrated (2001 article by Alison Motluk) that women taking the contraceptive pill decrease their ability to detect odours, preferring genes similar to their own, and eventually choose a mate who is not genetic-suitable.

Tim Jacob briefly records overlapping research by Martha McClintock on women detecting male immunotype by smell, here.

Susana Soares' Sniffing Others developed from her previous exhibit Genetic Trace, postulating that we can have, and use, tools to collect genetic material, detect one's genetic family, thus avoiding "wicked relationships" while also addressing issues specific to Donor Offspring (from donor eggs or sperm).

The collection of genetic material could be extended to physical contact like handshakes or kisses. While touching the hand of the other person you would use your "brushy" nails to scrap some genetic material from his or her palm. Similarly women facial hair would finally be useful because they would allow you to grab genetic information (saliva or dead cells containing DNA) after a kiss.  Soares












I like the idea of growing bee whisker antennae on human eyebrows, acting as additional sensors.

Why not? Women already wear false eyelashes. One can't move through a department store cosmetics area without being told you can receive a free eyebrows consultation and fix-up (at least in Los Angeles).

People can get back to fairy roots!
 
My informal research (begun in the 1960's due to circumstances of who I grew up with and who came through our home) shows that many hormone-changing birth controls for women not only affect the woman's sense of smell (thus her accurate sniffing out of a proper mate) but also makes her body think she is already pregnant. When this happens the woman's system says, "Making baby, make nest, make nest, make nest!" This is different than being on the prowl with natural hormones that say, "Mmmmmmm, sniff, sniff, are you the one? Are you the one? Are you the one who makes my blood sing?"

I would change jimi hendrix's lyrics from "Wild Thing you make my heart. sing. You make my everything, Wild Thing, I think you move me ... but I want to know for sure ...."

to Wild Thing you make my blood sing, you make my hormones sing ... I think I love you.

Enjoy the links!

Another thing about hormonal birth controls is the small print side effects lists: in addition to helping skinny girls have bigger breasts and helping some women lessen their zits, the 50+ side effects of hormonal birth controls include jaundice, nausea (prolonged morning sickness), changes in smell and taste, and ... death*. mmmmmm that'll put zip in your prowl.
 
* maybe every breath we ingest includes the disclaimer up to and including death.

When Margaret Sanger correlated poverty with unwanted pregnancies and early maternal deaths, her research took her to the development of modern day birth control. There was resistance. Her work was taken over by a consortium of men from around the world who changed her work (with end results that do not benefit women's long and short-term health). Sanger succinctly stated that the end results were absolutely not what she had worked towards and developed.

The latest advertisements for hormonal birth-controls show women in glee over having to not bleed for as many days now. Perhaps this helps not-reveal evidence that women do bleed more when exposed to toxicities, externally and internally (including side effect symptoms of medications; agricultural, pesticide, hospital and lab exposures, bleach in tampons, etc.).

Instead of women's external blood, the blood we get to see outside of bodies can come from war. #evolution ?

I know that many women, and men, want to be sexually active without human progeny the end result. I know that many men do not like wearing condoms. I know that women's birth controls insert metals or hormones; metal into areas that we know metal should not be allowed to stay and irritate; ingested or inserted hormones that change blood, body, sensing and thinking.

We'll figure it out. Or, maybe we won't.

Illustration: Continuity Lura Astor

Whisker nails for collection of DNA data: Susana Soares

Fun with the Periodic Table

click here to play Bo Jensen's game:

Twenty Questions on the Periodic Table


Science/chemistry teachers are welcome to contact him regarding this educational game.

His website:  here
 
Jensen has beautiful presentations
on fragrant ingredients:



click here: A Small Guide to Nature's Fragrances

 

Illustration: Ocean Going Ballet Lura Astor

Wasteland

Sophia Grojsman

I
love
your
Wasteland !

the scent

photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration/
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
under Photo ID: PIA08374
10 September 2007

"Dark material splatters the walls and floors of craters in the surreal, frozen wastelands of Iapetus. This image shows terrain in the transition region between the moon’s dark leading hemisphere and its bright trailing hemisphere."

This view acquired during Cassini's only close flyby of the two-toned Saturn moon

Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera
distance approximately 6,030 kilometers
(3,750 miles) from Iapetus
image scale, 36 meters (118 feet) per pixel

More Cassini imaging here

AND this photo brings to mind Alexander Calder's gouache on paper Black Saucers, 1968, part of the Norton Simon Museum collection