I love it when a fragrance house offers the choice of small bottles. My last purchase was a 10 ml travel spray of Musc Ravageur, bought on ...

La Danza delle Libellule by nobile 1942. Bonkers. And very, very sweet. 

I hadn't planned to write about Maai. Highly praised, this recreation of a classical chypre by Italian artisan house bogue appeared in...

If you google the words "Ragu recipe" and read everything that comes up at least 4 pages in, you will find yourself puzzled and p...

I am just back from 2 weeks in Thailand and the cold weather is really biting. Post holidays blues - here we come... But I won't bothe...

Byredo, the Swedish perfume house was one of the first niche brands I encountered and sampled in full, thanks to the generosity of the Byre...

     First things first: Happy New Year.  I haven't posted anything for a while, a fact for which I can partly blame an ove...

Adding a new perfume bottle to your collection is always exciting, but sometimes there is a level of anxiety involved. Will I still like it...

Sometimes you don't need many words to describe a perfume. The kinkiest scent around is probably all you need to know about Absolue Pou...

Once a hippy, always a hippy? I do have pictures of me wearing purple, hand died dungarees, a Palestine scarf and about 2 dozen badges sho...

This Pure eVe (pretentious spelling alert!) by The Different Company was originally released as Pure Virgin , a name that probably only Eta...

I am just back from a holiday in France where the temperamental weather meant that we spent most of our time with eating, drinking and visi...

Different cultures have different rules as to what is considered an unsuitable topic for polite conversation around the dinner table. In G...

I used to be a smoker and I am sure the habit has done unspeakable things to my sense of smell; just how much it improved after quitting wa...

It's not going to surprise anyone that I enjoy a bit of media cross over. Visual art, cinema, patterns, performance art, design and arc...