Friday, May 24, 2013

This stinks on hot ice:

If you are a person who loves perfumes, particularly French perfumes, you'd better stock up on the current formulations of your favorites before they are gone forever.

A goodly number of perfume accords-- both synthetic and natural-- are going bye-bye, thanks to hyper-regulation by the European Union.  See this informative post from January over at Perfume Shrine.  This is not just perfume for women, by the way.

The idea seems to be that certain accords-- even stuff commonly found in common foods (cinnamon?  mace?) and other things are going to be outlawed for use in perfumes.  The whole idea of perfume is that it's a unique blend of accords that create a very specific scent profile.  Start dinking around with the accords and you will quickly have an entirely different fragrance on your hands.  And all this in the name of protecting people from chemicals which may cause an allergic reaction in a shockingly small sample of the population.

THIS.  This is how safe our lives have become-- our daily lives are so generally devoid of danger that governing bodies have to sit around and invent new ways to protect us from our own mortality.

If you pick up many classic perfumes bottled past 2013, expect them to smell very different, indeed. Many already have been cowed into shadows of their original formulae, but this could well render a great many of them utterly unrecognizable. 

Myopic bastards.
What a waste.  What a bore.  What a shame.

If you DO stock up on perfume, plan to keep them in a cool, dark place in your home where they will not be exposed to UV.   The greater the concentration of oil in the formula, apparently the greater the stability will be.  Therefore, perfume is more apt to last if properly stored.  Eau de Cologne is much watered-down, and Eau de Parfum is a greater concentration than EdC, but has less of the essential oils than the perfume.   The purest form of a scent is an attar, which is essential oil only, and if you can find these, they are generally profoundly more expensive than the other concentrations.

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Gosh, I'm tired.  Worked quite a bit this week and also had the emergency phone for the last week.
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Pet peeve of the week: asking a person a direct question and then having them launch into a 500 word ramble and then having to ask them the same question again, to which they respond with yet another ramble.  Ah, the embuggerances of customer service.

5 comments:

Old NFO said...

Bad news all the way around... and glad you're off the phone! :-)

charlotte g said...

I once bought a bottle of Joy in Paris and parsed it out for 2-3 years. No replacement, of course. It smelled so good. I have expensive perfumes I still love--White Linen, and Tea Rose. Haven't bought them in decades. Can't afford them anymore. There are plenty of US scents I can and do like for a single woman over 60.
You youngers figure it out.

charlotte g said...

Is Joy canceled? can't afford it but loved the scent. Wore it for years.

phlegmfatale said...

There appears to be a great deal of Joy to be had on amazon.com, actually. This looks like an interesting and affordable way to keep it around - at that price, I'd buy all 4 that are in stock. http://www.amazon.com/Jean-Patou-Intensifying-Shower-Women/dp/B00CNEINDM/ref=sr_1_14?s=beauty&ie=UTF8&qid=1369609090&sr=1-14&keywords=Jean+Patou+Joy

phlegmfatale said...

According to Luca Turin, a sample of Joy he tried in 2007 smelled as wonderful as ever. Apparently some longtime Joy fans don't agree, but Luca does have a very refined nose. For myself, I'll do my best not to let reformulations spoil my fun, but there are a few fragrances I want to stock up on, just in case.