Agent Provocateur's Ménage á Trois Massage Oils

They say variety is the spice of life and I have to agree, especially when it comes to this week’s pick, Agent Provocateur’s Ménage à Trois Massage Oil set. The set includes three 30 mL bottles of rose, tuberose, and ylang ylang massage oils, making it the perfect gift for your wife, girlfriend, mistress, and bachelorettes. I love Agent Provocateur’s massage oils because they are such a nice deviation from your standard herbal massage oils. With flowery notes like rose, tuberose, and ylang ylang these massage oils provide a very sensual massage experience for all to enjoy.

TIP: You can also wear any of these oils as perfume. Dab (on wrists and neck) alone or mix with each other for a beautifully light, lingering scent.

REVIEW:
Cost: $60 (for 3 30 mL bottles)
Value: Moderate
Accessibility: Moderate
Where to Buy: AgentProvocateur.com

Diesel recently celebrated the launch for it’s new fragrance Only The Brave in New York City and Miami, with an art expo by design firm The KDU. Extremely talented artists from around the world created works that interpreted their meaning of bravery in a myriad of forms from intricate illustrations, to photographs, and the solid form.

Diesel Only The Brave Fragrance Bottle

This new fragrance was named after Diesel founder Renzo Rosso’s identically named Italian holding company and his charitable foundation, and the bottle is modeled after his fist. As far as the fragrance goes, it is said to bravely play with opposites, starting with a note of leather, but lightened with lemon and broken with dry woody cedar notes and amber. The ad campaign features hip hop favorite Common, and launched with a creative multimedia microsite, Is Brave, that evokes the aspects of bravery in your mind, heart and nerves.

But more about the art! There were works featured by Chuck Anderson, Matt W. Moore, Lynnette Astaire, Si Scott, Nigel Dennis, Sandra Chi, Ronald Wimberly, Rochambeau, Jared Ryder, Justin Maller, Holly Bynoe, Janbakon Robson, and Edgar Gonzalez to name a few, and I tried  my best to capture the artist and country of origin of every artist, but the party was so crowded I couldn’t always get to it.

Only The Brave Gun

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I’m going to start this by saying I’m not big on scents. I never wear fragrance beyond what my hair conditioner, lotion or deodorant provide, and I dunno, maybe it comes with age - but times it seems, they are a-changing. I recently had the opportunity to check out a few different fragrance collections and was pleasantly surprised to find that my super sensitive nose was stimulated in ways I’d never thought possible, and my brain didn’t react with the headache that usually follows when I overuse my smeller. Cereus Femme is a fragrance collection that comes following the success of the sleek and sexy color-coded and numbered Men’s collection Cereus Pour Homme, which was created under the direction of Bill Rosenbaum, who had previously headed the fragrance department at Abercrombie and Fitch.

The scents are light, yet edgy and “like her male counterpart, the Cereus woman is the emblem of modern femininity, strong yet delicate, the picture of modern sensuality.” My personal favorite of the three scents is #12, which I found fruity sweet, but not cloying - cut with a slight woodsy or musky note. After the jump, I’ve got some precise descriptions of the three scents, and some pictures of the sleek packaging that features sewn leather-bonded bottle tops, reminiscent of your favorite pocketbook or leather traveling case.
Cereus Fragrances are available at exclusively at Barneys in New York, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Dallas and Las Vegas, and retail for $125 for 50 ml / 1.7 FL. OZ.

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Since the M.I.S.S. Crew ladies and I have been in New York for Fashion Week, I decided to do some beauty scouting of my own along 5th Avenue. At Takashimaya, an exquisitely chic and upscale Japanese based department store, I fell in love with the following:

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John Galliano is launching his own fragrance after twenty years of having his own label.  In approaching this project, Galliano stated ”We were trying to capture the essence of the Galliano girl.”  He was inspired by romance and played a role in every aspect of developing the fragrance from sketching ideas for the bottle, to the packaging to the fragrance itself.  The scent is floral with a hint of the smell of freshly ironed shirts - a scent that brought stirred Galliano’s childhood memories.  The John Galliano fragrance will have limited distribution in select retail outlets.  The scent debuts in the U.K. in September, in France in October and the rest of the world in 2009.

Images & Info

Last year, Kate Moss released her first fragrance with Coty simply called Kate. With the success of her first perfume now comes the launch of her second, Velvet Hour, named after Kate’s favorite time of day - dusk. The tag line for the fragrance is “Embrace the Night” - very fitting for the eternal party girl. The scent combines notes from “blue pepper, freesia and cashmere incense; heart notes of patchouli and nutmeg, and base notes of sandalwood, amber, ebony and wood.” Describing the inspiration for Velvet Hour, Kate Moss stated:

There’s that feeling — ‘Oh, nighttime’s coming again, thank goodness,’” Moss said in an interview at the event June 12. “It’s like a comfort. The whole feeling changes. The sun’s going away, you can go out. It just feels more comforting to me. And it is like velvet.

Velvet Hour is set to launch in September in Europe, the Far East, Middle East and Canada. No confirmed plans for a U.S. release yet but we’ll keep you posted.

I’m a fan of Kate Moss and think she’s a brilliant spokes model but my pet peeve about Velvet Hour is the bottle. For me, a huge part of falling in love with a new fragrance is the packaging. Perfume bottles historically have been beautiful and were pieces of art in their own right. When I look at this bottle though it reminds me of a cheap Britney Spears perfume. You can see a better picture of the bottle after the jump - what do you think??

Source & Image

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Benefit’s newest fragrance, B Spot, celebrates the uniqueness of how women wear their fragrances - on their various “B Spots” of course. Women are invited to find out their “B Spots” - essentially seductive pulse points where the scent would wear the best. The scent is a sublime combination of mango, freesia, peony, amber and sandalwood. B Spot comes with a “body map” so you can find your B Spot and you can even take a quiz online to see what B Spots fit your personality. I took the quiz and it turns out I’m a “Savvy Simone” who is confident and dynamic, so naturally, my B spots are behind the knee and in my elbow bend. Find out where your B Spot is here and you can purchase B Spot here.

Milliner Stephen Jones made his first fragrance with Comme des Garçons Parfums division, which is set to release in September. It’s clear from the packaging (which I LOVE) that Mr. Jones took many cues from the materials and packaging of hats and applied them to his fragrance packaging. The grosgrain ribbon attached to the bottle references a material used quite a lot in millinery. The box the perfume bottle comes in is, of course, a mini-hat box and the filling of the box is “merry-widow” netting, a material often used for veils on hats. You’ve probably also noticed the unique shape of the bottle: The designer was inspired by an ink bottle from the 1890s and had it remade with black transparent glass.

As far as the actual fragrance, “‘It’s a violet that’s been hit by a meteorite,’ said Jones, referring to the scent’s juice, which comprises notes of violet and violet leaf, as well as ’synthesized cyber aldehyde.’ ‘There’s something innocent and romantic and otherworldly, as well.’” In addition to violet and space juice, the scent contains hints of love, carnation, rose, jasmine, heliotrope, gaiac wood, magma, black cumin, vetiver and amber. I can’t wait to get a whiff of “synethesized cyber aldehyde.” If any brand were to add the scent of space juice to their fragrance it should come as no surprise that Comme des Garçons is involved.

Image of Bottle & Info: WWD

On a side note, Jean Paul Gaultier is adding another women’s fragrance to his collection - one that’s a bit younger, fresher and stronger.  The scent is Ma Dame and the campaign features model-of-the-moment Agyness Deyn.   Ma Dame will release on September 1st.

It doesn’t seem like celebrity designers are going anywhere - they are in full force! The newest to the batch is Kristin Davis who is designing a collection for Belk. I had never heard of Belk so I looked it up and it looks like a department store based primarily in the South. Her collection launches in the fall and will be available at 125 stores and online. “The modern, feminine, style-savvy line will launch with compelling assortments of women’s apparel, sleepwear, loungewear, shoes, handbags and jewelry.” I only saw one look, and if that’s any indication, this collection looks just as bad as the one Sarah Jessica Parker did for Dave & Barry’s. I wonder if Ms. Davis will follow in SJP’s shoes and launch a fragrance as well?

Speaking of fragrances, the mighty Queen Latifah just signed a deal to release a fragrance for Fall 2009 that has targeted distribution in department stores and is aimed at the “urban market in addition to middle-aged consumers.” No other details yet, we’ll keep you posted.

Read more about Kristen Davis’ collection at Belk here.

See pictures of the store rendering and a piece from the Kristin Davis collection after the jump.

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Images

Word on the street is that Sofia Coppola will direct the new ad campaign for Dior’s Miss Dior Chérie fragrance. The television advertising campaign will roll out in September and features the model Maryna Linchuk. I’ve always loved commercials for fragrances and I hope the rumors about this one are true. Sofia Coppola has been a fashion muse for some time now and does a great job telling stories from the women’s perspective and I would love to see what she could come up with on a fragrance campaign.Here’s some previous Dior fragrance commercials starring Charlize Theron . . .