The Perfume Society

Floral Instagrammers we love to follow…

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 06:00:45 GMT

Floral Instagrammers are on the rise – and no wonder, with all of us desperately seeking solace in gardens (if we’re lucky enough to have them) and open spaces, of late. Scroll down for some of the *most* exquisite flower-filled feeds we love to follow, and think you will, too…

Once upon a time, Instagram seemed full of pictures of avocado toast and cats, but it’s the floral Instagrammers really making it their own, right now. If you search for the hashtag #garden, it currently has over 56.4m posts attributed to it, while #flowers has 190m. And there are so many more, similarly floral-themed hashtags, each with several million posts (and counting).

So why are we seeing such a floral show on Instagram (and oither social media) right now? Well, it’s been proven that even looking at pictures of nature and open spaces can dramatically lower your blood pressure and improve your mental health. But more than that, we think people are just craving nice things to focus on for a while each day. We certainly are!

That’s why we devoted our latest issue of The Scented Letter magazine to all things bright and beautiful, inviting you to Step In To the Garden and explore with us, which you can do for free online if you’re a VIP, or in print if you want a glossy, gorgeous magazine to sit in your own garden with.

Meanwhile, here are just a handful of the brilliant floral Instagrammers we follow, and if you scroll through their feeds you’ll see exactly why we’re so in love…

@cultivatedbychristin
Christin Geall is enormously talented and here shares her beguiling ideas on design, nature, culture, horticulture. The kind of floral feed that makes you want to immediately dance barefoot into a meadow and turns floral arrangements into a pure art form.

@cnliziqi
These stunning (and so relaxing) IGTV films follow Li Ziqi’s adventures as she strolls through flower-filled meadows, picking blossoms to cook with, to arrange into stunning, so-simple floral arrangements, and even make her own floral hydrolates with a copper still in her garden.

@honeysuckle_and_hilda
A florist, writer and brilliant teacher based in Oxfordshire, Claire Victoria Bowen taught our own Co-Founder, Jo Fairley, how to create the most beautiful (yet seemingly effortless) bouquets. Truly inspirational, you’ll never look at your plants in the same way: here, everything in the garden is beautiful.

@goldfinchelson
Looking for all the world as though you’ve stumbled across some undiscovered Vermeer paintings, the work of artist and photographer Tracy Goldfinch Elson is filled with ethereal light, love and touches of great humour. We’re regularly stopped in our tracks by their other-worldly beauty.

@kristengvy
Head judge on the Netflix series, The Big Flower Fight (which we’ve binge-watched with joy), named one of the world’s top florists by Harpers Bazzar; Kristen Griffith VanderYacht’s feed is filled with the exuberance and artistry he’s become (rightly) famed for.

@swallowsanddamsons
A patchwork quilt of quintessence, Sheffield-based florist Anna Potter’s account is a glory of colour and style, featuring just the kind of artfully rumpled and ‘undone’ arrangements we favour, and providing a wealth of inspiration to brighten up your every day. How we revel in it.

@her_dark_materials
Cotswold-based Ros is one of those photographers who conjures magic from every subject she turns her camera to. From gorgeously swooning bouquets to simply capturing the cracking of an egg or pasta drying, draped nonchalantly over the back of a chair: flowers seem to glow in the gloom for her.

@tangleandthyme
A floral design studio, eco-florist (with gift subscriptions available) and cutting garden in North Essex, we marvel at the skill of show here – and how much fun they seem to be having! Also, absolutely any feed showing donkeys (and humans) wearing floral crowns gets our vote. Instantly smile-inducing!

@jamjar_flowers
A riot of colour and creativity, Jam Jar Flowers create the most jaw-dropping floral instillations, seasonal floral arran gements and dress gorgeously glam events. We dream of re-creating their coloured glass bottle-filled window (though kind of dread the dusting, so might just gaze in wonder, instead…)

@my_botanical_heart
Dianna Jazwinski is a professional garden photographer based in Sussex, and oh my gosh, her work is laden with the kind of imagery that makes our faces turn into the heart-eyed emoji. Ravishingly laid out and perfectly captured, flowers look so perfect in her hands you’d swear they were crafted by angels.

@everdandysilverfox
Alex Musgrave combines two of our favourite things – lovely reviews of fragrances, often thoughtfully themed around poetry and art, and simply beautiful pictures of flowers in various settings. Our favouites are those captured as they become blowsily over-bloomed. Always a treat to read and see.

@commonfarmflowers
Delivering across the U.K. – ‘Our dream is that everybody should assume that they can buy exceptional quality, British grown flowers year round, that ‘grown not flown flowers’ should be the norm,’ say husband and wife team, flower farmer and author Georgie Newbery, and artist Fabrizio Bocca. Bravo!

Written by Suzy Nightingale

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Latest Launches: La Vie en Rose

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 06:00:05 GMT

This week’s latest launches will leave you feeling rosy cheeked and petal scented. One of fragrance’s most legendary ingredients, we present a rose for every mood and pocket. Fall into Atkinsons Rose Rhapsody, or surrender to the sheer sensuality of Kilian Love Don’t Be Shy Rose & Oud. Can we say you’ll come up smelling of roses? We just did.

ATKINSONS
ROSE RHAPSODY
Taking their love of all things British, inspired by England’s national flower, this Harrods exclusive overlaps luscious Turkish rose absolute with fruity mandarin for a floral that manages to be charming while totally contemporary. Perfumer Soizic Beaucourt weaves budding sprays of sparkling jasmine through earthy patchouli, rich benzoin and a softly smoky oudh in the base. Harnessing all the fresh, fruity and powdered opulence facets, the Tudor rose-emblazoned bottle is glorious, too!
£195 for 100ml eau de parfum
harrods.com

BRONNLEY ENGLAND
ROSE EAU DE TOILETTE
Roses are clambering all over the fragrance universe right now – here, as a very affordable, long-lasting eau de toilette from a fabled British name. Fresh and sheer, almost dew-drenched, its leafy greenness unfurls to a geranium and rose heart. Bury your nose deeper in its bloom, for notes of honeyed spice, entwined with soft white musks. And how much do we love the rose-strewn bottle?
£16 for 50ml eau de toilette
bronnley.co.uk
KILIAN
LOVE DON’T BE SHY ROSE & OUD
Each year, Kilian Hennessy reworks one of his iconic fragrances – this time around, cleverly tapping the legendary Calice Becker for 2020’s spin on Love, Don’t Be Shy. She’s pushed one of Kilian’s most popular perfumes in a complex direction, layering it with the richness of oudh oil. The gourmand-floral is incarnated as a special limited edition in which rose and neroli essences lose their innocence, served up in a sexy, lacquered clutch bag.
£400 for 50ml parfum
bykilian.co.uk
YARDLEY
OPULENT ROSE
Another blooming wonderful rose scent: Yardley is on-the-money with the rose revival. Or rather, on the not-too-much-money-at-all, since Opulent Rose’s price-tag belies its elegant sophistication. Swirling with 90% natural ingredients, it has a flower-shop note of cut stems along armfuls of enchanting roses, lightly spiced by the clove-like facets of carnation. On the skin, it warms beautifully to reveal white musk, patchouli and amber. Opulent, yes. Extravagant? Refreshingly, no.
£20 for 50ml eau de toilette
yardleylondon.co.uk

ARMANI/PRIVÉ
CUIR ZERZURA
IFF’s Nelly Hachem laces leather in this latest to join Armani’s Les Mille et Une Nuits collection, inspired by the opulence and sensuality of the Middle East. Named after Zerzura, the mythical ‘oasis of little birds’ in Arabic, it’s at first fresh with mandarin, elemi and cool violet leaf accord, pulsing with a duo of roses and an iris note in the heart. Vanilla infusion and cedar make for intensity on skin, whatever your gender.
From £155 for 50ml eau de parfum
armanibeauty.co.uk

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Yardley London launch ‘Fragrance Diagnostic Tool’ to find your new fave (plus a discount!)

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 06:00:12 GMT

It can often be tricky navigating your way through a range of new fragrances, so Yardley London has launched a Fragrance Diagnostic Tool online, to provide personalised fragrance recommendations (AND a discount code!) via your favourite ingredients, and a signpost to your perfect scent…

Celebrating their 250th anniversary (an incredible heritage you can read all about on our page dedicated to their history), Yardley London’s Fragrance Diagnostic Tool is a quick and simple way to guide you to your new favourite fragrance. All you need to do is pick some of your favourite notes from a list, and the fragrances that most closely match your taste will be presented to you.

I got matched to April Violets, which shows it works, as that’s one of my all-time favourites – all powdery/pretty with verdant violet leaf adding shade) – and Blossom & Peach, which I must admit to not knowing so well, but it sounds utterly perfect for me. Blackcurrant, rose, peach, lilac and geranium with woody notes, patchouli and musk? Yes please! So that’s on my must-try list.

Even better: Once the diagnostic has been completed, customers receive a 10% off discount code valid on the Yardley range of eau de toilettes. So maybe my ‘must try‘ list is suddenly ‘must buy right NOW’…

Written by Suzy Nightingale

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Penhaligon’s Language of Flowers

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 06:00:58 GMT

Love’s language may be talked with these
To work out choicest sentences,
No blossoms can be meeter
And, such being used in Eastern bowers
Young maids may wonder if the flowers
Or meanings be the sweeter.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, 1806 – 1861

With our ‘Step in to the Garden‘ issue of The Scented Letter Magazine hot off the press, and more of us craving the colours, textures and (of course) scents of flowers more than ever in these uncertain times… floral inspiration is springing up all over!

Penhaligon’s have published a fascinating guide to the ancient ‘Language of Flowers‘ – the hidden meanings attached to seemingly innocent blooms, and how these could be used to send secret messages that bypassed stringent social ettiquette in the past…

What’s more, Penhaligon’s are inviting you to construct your own virtual bouquet to send to someone special, and when you sign up to their Penhaligon’s Times newsletter, both you and your friend will receive a £10 gift voucher to enjoy.

The newsletter is always packed full of interesting scented snippets, and here is their explantion of that secret scented Language of Flowers, first printed in the Penhaligon’s Times:

‘What could be more pleasurable than receiving an unexpected bunch of flowers! A bunch of bluebells to brighten a day. Lily of the Valley to celebrate a lover’s return, or a simple rose to nurture a budding romance. How much more pleasurable may be if the flowers themselves carry a hidden meaning. From ancient times flowers have been symbolic. The Romans honoured their heroes with laurel wreaths and Greek mythology tells how many flowers were created.

Poets have always extolled the virtues of flowers, and since Elizabethan times have written on their meanings. But it was the Victorians who turned flower-giving into an art. Inspired by a book entitled Le Langage de Fleurs by Madame de la Tour, the Victorians practised the new floral code with the same dedication with which they built their cities and furnished their homes.

The choice of flower was all important, but so too was the manner of presentation. If the flowers were upside down the opposite meaning was intended. Thus tulips presented with their stems uppermost meant blatant rejection from a lover. If the ribbon was tied to the left, the meaning referred to the giver, if tied to the right, to the recipient. On the other hand, one could always respond by wearing the flower in different ways – on her heart of course meant love, but worn in the hair implied caution. Both are acceptable locations for a light mist of scent.’

So now, what will your virtual bouquet say in this secret Language of Flowers, we wonder…?

Written by Suzy Nightingale

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Stories Parfums: a guided scent discovery, LIVE online!

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 06:00:41 GMT

Stories Parfums is a house filled with evocative, emotional story-telling through scent. And now you are invited to join a private VIP Scent Club, where you can ‘…receive samples of our fragrances and learn how to connect with your own story through the art of fragrance, live online with Tonya.’

Tonya Kidd-Beggs is the Founder and Creative Director of Stories Parfums, and right for the get-go, she knew she wanted to create a house where the fragrances were unashamedly emotionally driven – reaching into the depths of mislaid memories, childhood dreams and long-forgotten hope.

Stories Parfums say this is ‘a unique opportunity to experience STORIES Parfums first hand alongside our Founder and learn a little more about the art of fragrance and the development of our gender-inclusive brand, and invite you to join us LIVE online, from the comfort of your home.’

This intimate exploration of scent with fellow fragrance lovers is £5 per person and for that, you will be sent 4 x deluxe 2ml samples of STORIES No.01 and STORIES No.02.

‘Tonya will host a guided group discovery of each of the scents to experience together the unique notes and ingredients in each eau de parfum’.

Tonya will welcome your questions and scent stories in this one-off online group session via ZOOM on Friday 31 July at 4pm BST.

In addition, there will be a sneak preview of upcoming product launches and participant exclusive offers. But hurry! There are only 20 places in this very special session, and you will need to book your ticket in time for your samples to arrive!

Written By Suzy Nightingale

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