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

Bond No.9 Swarovski Stars

Here at M.I.S.S. we’re all about taking time to honor the women in our lives who’ve made a difference, and who’s more special than your own mother? Plus, you already know that we’ve got the scoop on the hottest products about to hit the market, so if you’ve been wondering how to show your appreciation to Mom this Mother’s Day, read on.

New York City’s own luxury fragrance brand Bond No. 9 is stepping it up double time this holiday. To start off, Bond No. 9 is offering a year’s supply of its fabulous perfumes for the very lucky winner of its Mother’s Day Raffle. To make the deal even sweeter, the winner of the drawing will get to select which Bond No. 9 fragrances she’d like to receive. The contest has already started (on Sunday, May 3rd), so if you’re interested, grab a pen and paper so you can jot down the details and make some moves ASAP!

Bond No. 9 Mother's Day

Participating in the drawing is easy: you’ll need to supply the name and contact information of the lady you’re entering. To do so, stop by any of Bond No. 9’s NYC locations - that’s 9 Bond Street, 680 Madison Avenue, 897 Madison Avenue, or 399 Bleecker Street. Don’t reside in NYC? No reason to worry. You can enter via any Bond No. 9 counter at Saks Fifth Avenue. (And remember, don’t rule yourself out - any Bond No. 9 customer is eligible, no purchase necessary! You and Mom can share, right?) Drawings will be entered into a hatbox, where the winner will be selected on the evening of Saturday, May 9th - literally, just in time for Mother’s Day. The winner will be informed of her good fortune on the same night as well. If your entry’s not selected as the winning ticket, still consider gifting Mom (or any other lady you wish to impart) with these fabulous scents: for a limited time, Bond No. 9 will offer 12 bottles for the price of 10, mailing one monthly to the recipient of your choice.

If you’re someone who’s all about planning ahead - and you’d rather not wait until Saturday night to find out whether you’re Bond No. 9’s lucky winner - there’s another gift option you should consider. Bond No. 9 understands that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and why shouldn’t a perfume’s packaging shine as brightly as Mom’s personality? The perfumer has partnered with Swarovski to deck out three of its best-selling scents to create Swarovski Stars: your favorite Bond No. 9 fragrances encrusted (completely!)  in Swarovski crystals. The glammed up editions include Nuits de Noho (sapphire), The Scent of Peace (amethyst), and Chelsea Flowers (topaz). The fragrances, available for a limited time only, will be sold in 50ml bottles and will retail for $550. Swarovski Stars launched just this month - brand new, but don’t sleep on them - we doubt it’ll be long before they’re sold out.

For more information, check out Bond No. 9’s official Web site, and act fast! Mother’s Day is rapidly approaching, and you won’t want to be left in the dust come Sunday.

As of late, it seems that every industry imaginable is putting on their ‘green’ cap and making moves towards becoming eco-friendly. When it comes to perfume, don’t be fooled by the brands that claim they were the first to institute a recycling program in efforts to make their users more environmentally-friendly. Bond No. 9, whose perfumes are each dedicated to different parts of New York, was the original brand to institute its recycling program in April of ‘07, a program that is still thriving today.

Feeding off of Mayor Bloomberg’s recycling push, Bond No. 9’s Laurice Rahme began a recycling program in 2007 to recycle not only empty Bond No. 9 containers, but any glass perfume bottle. Individuals are encouraged to bring their empty perfume containers to a Bond No. 9 New York store or to Saks Fifth Avenue. After donating your empty bottle, Bond No. 9 will recycle it. And remember, bottles are not required to be Bond No. 9 - you can bring in any brand’s empty bottle. For your good deed, Bond No. 9 will gift you with a refillable pocket spray. It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved, and you even get rewarded for your eco-friendliness.

And Bond no. 9 has answered my craving! With 18 different neighborhood scents wrapped like perfect little candy confections. I’m so excited to try them all! Each day I’m going to try a different scent and give you my take on it. Stay tuned to find out which are my favorites.

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??

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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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I’ve always loved perfume. It’s always been one of those things that I’ve associated with “being a lady”, probably because I remember my mom always putting it on and I always thought that was a very glamorous thing to do. As soon as I was old enough, I started wearing perfume. I was still pretty young, so my mom started me out on Love’s Baby Soft. Then I had all 5 or 6 flavors of Love’s (yes, they had a rainbow, lemon, orange, blue, etc). Then, it was Exclamation! When I was in about 9th or 10th grade though, I had enough of the “young” fragrances and was ready for my first real adult perfume. What did I chose? Obsession. Yep, I wore it all through high school, and I was border-line “obsessed” with the smell. I loved the musky undertones, the deep amber color of the scent and the oval-shaped bottle. I’ve stopped wearing it since then but I will always have a special place in my heart for my first fragrance. Today, I discovered that Calvin Klein is releasing an update of the fragrance called Secret Obsession and it brought back lots of aroma-filled memories.

Secret Obsession is not trying to be Obsession, rather, it’s a unique scent: It “has top notes of exotic plum, mace and rose de damas; a heart of Egyptian jasmine, French orange flower and tuberose, and base notes of cashmere woods, burnt amber, Madagascan vanilla and Australian sandalwood.” When asked to describe the difference between the two Obsessions, Michele Scannavini, president of Coty Prestige, stated: “While Obsession epitomized the overt glamour and sexuality of the Eighties, Secret Obsession will become the meaning of what is sexy today — more personal, sophisticated and intoxicating.” Eva Mendes will be the face of Secret Obsession, as well as the Calvin Klein lingerie line for fall. Secret Obsession launches in mid-September, but you can expect to see the racy ads (did you expect anything less from the people that gave you a very young, nude “heroin chic” Kate Moss??) in June. I’m a signature-scent kind of girl but I think I may have to go astray and pick up this new grown and sexy version of Obsession. Can’t wait!

Images of Secret Obsession & Info: WWD