I have been immersed in beauty trends for a couple of weeks as part of the day job and jolly interesting it was too. Naturally there was perfume involved and I enthusiastically stuck my nose into a multitude of new smells, all in the name of research. One of the most interesting new perfume ideas I sniffed was Blood Concept, by Antonio Zuddas and Giovanni Castelli, which rejects the traditional perfume idea of smelling like a floral bouquet and hits home with the altogether more shocking notion of smelling like blood.
There are 4 perfumes, O, A, B and AB which refer to blood groups and I tried them with a group of teenagers this weekend (two girls and two boys) and we (mostly) liked all of them. None of them really smell of blood, they are supposed to have a lingering waft of metallic in the wake, which they do a bit. My favourite was O, which has a smokey thyme and leather fragrance that beds down to be warm and quite sexy. We all started off liking B until one of the boys said he could detect the tiniest trace of Mr Muscle. A smells of tomato leaves and basil and was a hit with me and the girls and we all thought AB harsh at first (gravel and swimming were the words used) but this is much nicer when it settles and would make a nice summer smell. They are interesting and very different and perfume enthusiasts need to check them out at their earliest convenience. I also love the medicine stopper bottles, the whole range is available at Liberty.
But the biggest gush of enthusiasm was expressed by the girls over Juliette Has A Gun’s new fragrance Romantina, which is a floral delight, using teenage friendly orange blossom, jasmine and rose mixed with a punchier splash of patchouli (the current go-to addition to all youthful smells apparently). After the more sophisticated Blood Concept sniffing, this really hit the spot for them in terms of instant attraction. Remember this when you are buying teen birthday presents next. Available from Harrods.
Blood Concept – cashing in on the Twee-Lite generation? (Don’t get me started on Twilight, just don’t. Utter tosh, and not in a good way).
It does sound a tad Vampiric, but then as one who is still terrified (in a good way) by Dracula (the original book, not the Hammer / Gary Oldman / etc. versions) I would be willing to sniff. ‘O’ sounds good – are you supposed to wear your own blood group?
The future Marv, is Body Shock, according to trend forecaster WGSN, so get used to it. It’s not about vampires, more about science and new horizons….And as a secret Robert Pattinson fan, stay away from Twighlight….from one art pusher to another. Ax
Am liking the sound of Body Shock, have been subjected to Firefly of late here….
Mr. Pattinson drives me up the wall, he was quoted as saying about TweeLite that ‘we’ve made vampires sexy – they’ve not been about sex before’. Oh, FFS. Vampires are ONLY about sex. Get a literary education before opening your mouth!
Read this: http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/ and fall about laughing!
Yours, Grumpy Art Pusher.
(But honestly! Even if he’s not read Dracula he might have stumbled upon Interview with a Vampire, which is even more blatently erotic than Dracula, being written many years later and in America without Victorian sensibilities! Humph.)
Sorry, I love him. A
*butts in* the last Twilight film was the biggest pile of utter tosh I have EVER seen. A wedding scene followed by a birth scene – that was it. It is tosh, but sometimes that can be a good thing – no?
Jx
Jane – I agree re: tosh, I have watched PLENTY of good tosh in my time (see ‘Firefly’ mentioned above, and I confess that ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ is one of my fave films of all time because it is such tosh). But Twilight I find to be nasty, tedious tosh with a decidedly unpleasant attitude towards women and sexuality. And awful, awful writing – it’s even more badly written than Harry Potter (which I think is good tosh, but JK Rowling really needed an editor who would stand up to her more than the one she did have managed). The best thing I can say about it is that if it gets kids reading they might move on to better stuff!
I liked RP as Cedric! It was his assertion about making vampires sexy in, I think, a Radio Times interview that irritated the hell out of me. It’s Twilight more than RP I have the grudge against.
‘Sighs’ Tosh is ESSENTIAL to life, ‘specially when it looks sexy. A