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Elle
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
Unique Fragrances Are In—And One Cult Scent Is Now Available in the U.S.
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. Your name may not be Taylor Alison Swift, but you've gone through some eras, especially when it comes to scents. Let's recall your personal Fragrance Eras Tour: Your teenage years, puzzling over whether you wanted to smell 'clean' or 'fresh.' Then the 'School Dance Scents' era. Maybe you had a 'Sure, I'll Sample the Perfume in This Club Bathroom' era. Perhaps a CK One, Flowerbomb, Baccarat Rouge, or all-of-the-above era. And now? You have a chance to be in your most powerful scented era of all. It's never been easier, more exciting, or more thrilling to smell like nothing you've ever experienced before—and exactly what you've always wanted. 'Remember this time,' Inter Parfums, Inc. chairman, CEO, and cofounder Jean Madar boomed at me when I met him. As head of one of the biggest manufacturers and distributors of fragrances and cosmetics in the world, he was boisterous: Fragrance sales for the third quarter were at an all-time record. 'There's never been a moment like this,' he says he tells his employees, citing the past four years of growth. #Perfumetok confirms the huge surge of interest in scent, with the hashtag drawing billions of views. Funmi Monet, a fragrance and beauty content creator, describes its appeal: 'You don't have to be a certain size; you don't have to be Kendall Jenner, or even super-rich,' to put on a fragrance and feel more seen (or smelled). It's a particularly exciting time for indie brands, rare perfumes, or what I'm calling niche-niche perfumes. Franco Wright, cofounder of one of the biggest online retailers for this subcategory, describes it as 'true niche': 'artistic, independent-driven brands that are often less distributed and usually very creative and unique in their composition.' Think Byredo before it became a household name. Think of eclectic scents like the unapologetically lewd Sadonaso by Nasomatto, which smells like…well, accounts vary, but just look it up. Think of a perfume from a big house that you can only buy in certain parts of Europe and Asia that has Fragrantica in a tizzy (like Yves Saint Laurent Beauty's Babycat, which only just became available in the United States) or a specific vintage edition of a Jean Paul Gaultier scent that goes for hundreds on eBay. Think of small perfume brands that don't have to do any market testing and have to please no one but their creators—people like the visual artist Andrea Maack of Iceland, and Marissa Zappas of New York City. Zappas started her career as a receptionist at Givaudan, and now, with her legions of fans (including Kacey Musgraves), she could be the perfume laureate of downtown New York (as Tynan Sinks, a beauty writer and co-host of perfume podcast Smell Ya Later, put it, "How did we all start fucking talking about Marissa Zappas who we love?'). Her fragrances are often created for friends, like the astrologer Annabel Gat, the muse behind Annabel's Birthday Cake. Not quite Funfetti, the scent has notes of balloon, tuberose frosting, fresh-out-of-the-oven cake, and lemon sugar (with just a hint of Cabbage Patch Kids doll, according to one reviewer). Rooted in nostalgia, with inspirations like Swan Lake and Elizabeth Taylor, Zappas's creations touch on the current bow-bedecked nerve of girlhood. Zappas wants perfume to be different. She doesn't do any advertising, and not much social media, yet customers do 'tend to find me,' she says. 'There's so much potential in storytelling with perfume, because it's so abstract. I wanted to explore the possibilities and create perfumes that weren't necessarily just reiterations. I really love old Guerlain perfumes, and my goal is to reach people who might originally have reached for [it]. I certainly have worn commercial perfumes, and found comfort in the fact that my best friend was also wearing it. This is part of why we wear perfume—to share in these moments. But at the same time, I think we live in an increasingly individualist society, and everybody wants to have the most unique, the most special, the most different smell.' Wanting to smell different is becoming an increasingly ardent form of self-expression, the ultimate invisible and rare accessory. 'Consumers have gone from one signature fragrance, to a collection,' says Linda Levy, President of the Fragrance Foundation. Tom Bloom, marketing and relationships manager for Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, which has collaborated on perfumes with Neil Gaiman, makes a parallel to the search for vintage. 'It's comparable with the rise of thrifting in terms of looking for special items that are perfect and have a story.' With non-mainstream perfumes, the inspiration behind them can often be more complex and unusual, combining smell with fiction as a point of difference. Jane Dashley, the blogger known as Sea of Shoes, is a fragrance collector and enthusiast who started a niche perfume site, Fragraphilia, with her husband Jeff, followed later by a companion podcast. She tells me about Stora Skuggan, a Swedish company whose perfume Thumbsucker spins the tale of a king becoming pregnant after mistakenly drinking a potion made by sages for the queen. Its notes include honey, cherry, and Himalayan Cedar Bitter Almond—a redolent take on a hangover. The bottles, with their exaggerated orb caps, look like they could eat Harry Styles's Pleasing. Non-mainstream perfumes can also give perfumers the chance to try more unusual notes. 'If you have a client who's willing to go all the way out there, you can really explore uncharted territory, and that's quite exciting,' says perfumer Frank Voelkl, the nose behind Le Labo's Santal 33 and many other once-niche scents. His creation, Mood Ring by Phlur, captured something new for me—the feeling of going into a Japanese grocery after school and ripping open a sleeve of Hi-Chew candies. Sometimes, all the experimenting can result in more unusual perfumes that take some time to appreciate and go beyond the general desire to smell good. Jeff Dashley tells me about a perfume called Ambilux by Marlou. 'I wouldn't wear it to go visit my mother. It's such an [initial] straight urinous blast. Sometimes there are things that challenge you. But you start to look past those type of things and see the elevated artistry behind it.' (It's still not a luncheon perfume, however, he confirms.) Even as everyone wants to smell different, there can be community in bonding over your favorites. When you become fluent in ambroxan and ethyl maltol and follow the creations of your favorite perfumers, you want to meet others who speak the same language. 'Among young women, niche perfume is becoming more and more an important type of social currency, a status symbol, and a great way to relate to other girls. People are genuinely making friends from this hobby,' Jane Dashley tells me. Because fragrance is so subjective, there aren't really any wrong answers, which helps safeguard against internet toxicity. Ultimately, niche-niche perfume isn't about anyone but you, the main character of your own story. 'Fragrance used to be about who you wanted to be,' says Tynan Sinks, cohost of the scent podcast Smell Ya Later. 'But now it's about who you are today, which might not be the same tomorrow.' A version of this story appears in the March 2024 issue of ELLE.
Telegraph
21-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Why perfume could be bad for you
Wearing perfume or using a fragranced body lotion could be bad for health, a study suggests. Ingredients in perfume have been shown for the first time to interfere with a protective invisible cloud around human skin that is thought to clean and filter the air we breathe. The scents are themselves harmless to human health but by interfering with the protective cloud that clings to our skin they could be diminishing the benefits it provides, scientists believe. Researchers at the University of California Irvine and Max Planck Institute discovered the skin cloud in 2022, which is technically known as an 'oxidation field'. They found that ozone in the air reacts with natural oils on the surface of our skin, such as squalene, a chemical which keeps skin supple, and creates short-lived particles called OH radicals through a process called ozonolysis, which form a protective bubble around the body. OH radicals are highly reactive and neutralise toxic molecules which has earned them the nickname 'detergents of the atmosphere' for their cleaning properties. They target pollutants in the air but also help clean surfaces. A study of four volunteers, published in the journal Science Advances, investigated what happens to the chemical cloud when people have no products on their skin, after they apply perfume, when wearing lotion and after dabbing scented essential oils on their skin. Data show that the perfume used in the study, the unisex CK One, diminished the cloud by 86 per cent, and the lotion, Unilever's Neutral Sensitive Skin, by 34 per cent. 'Affects human health' 'This study has determined that the human oxidation field generated by people exposed to ozone indoors is substantially disrupted when personal care products are worn,' the authors write. They add: 'Given that the human oxidation field influences the chemical composition of air in the breathing zone and close to the skin, it affects our intake of chemicals, which, in turn, affects human health.' Experiments found that the ethanol which makes up most perfumes diminishes the cleansing aura by converting the OH radicals into other products quickly and therefore wicks away the cloud. However, the tested lotion interferes with the cloud by preventing the crucial OH radicals from being made in the first place. Prof Jonathan Williams, of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, co-author of the study, told The Telegraph: 'For both these applications, the result was to actually suppress the OH field, but the suppression seems to occur through two different mechanisms. 'There may be other methods, maybe there's other ways you can influence it, but I think we've shown that, at least in those two cases, it reduces the oxidation field.' However, he added that it remains unknown whether the diminishing of the chemical body cloud is a health net positive or negative when considering every chemical and environment. 'What we've discovered here is really the phenomenon that there is an oxidation field and it can be manipulated by various forms – at least these two,' Prof Williams said. 'But I really, unfortunately, cannot give a clear message to the public of whether I recommend on a health basis to wear or avoid perfume or lotion because there is not enough information to base a recommendation.' The scientists found that not all nice smelling chemicals have a significant impact, however. Linalool, a citrus-scented essential oil which makes up about a third of lavender oil, only reduces the OH cloud by about ten per cent. 'This demonstrates that the ozonolysis of linalool, in the absence of ethanol, may not have a large impact on the OH concentration inside a room,' the scientists said. The implications for health remain unknown and will be the subject of further research, but previous studies have shown that having a plentiful supply of the chemicals that make up the protective cloud is linked to better airway function, lower inflammation, reduced biological stress, healthier blood vessels and improved blood pressure.
Time of India
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
All about model Cassie Ventura, who is making news for testifying in Sean 'Diddy' Combs' trial
When Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura walked into a New York federal courtroom this week, eight‑and‑a‑half months pregnant, shoulders squared, hair in a neat chignon, the pop charts of 2006 felt very far away. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Nearly twenty years after her hypnotic debut single 'Me & U' turned the Connecticut teenager into an R&B darling, Ventura is headline news again, this time as the star witness in a sex‑trafficking and racketeering trial that could see her former partner and label boss Sean 'Diddy' Combs jailed for life. Her calm, methodical testimony is forcing the music industry and millions of nostalgic fans, to confront the darker power dynamics that underpinned the glossy MySpace era. From small‑town beginnings to fashion's front row Born on 26 August 1986 in the naval outpost of New London, Connecticut, Ventura is of African‑American, Mexican and Filipino heritage. She spent her teens copying Janet Jackson routines from MTV and, by fourteen, was catching dawn trains to Manhattan for catalogue shoots. Early campaigns for Delia's, Seventeen and Abercrombie & Fitch led to a Wilhelmina contract and, at nineteen, a coveted slot in Calvin Klein's CK One fragrance ads. The sleek mix of lip‑gloss, oversized denim and bare midriff she modelled became a Pinterest blueprint for effortless street‑glam. Break‑out success - music, modelling and a Hollywood swerve Producer Ryan Leslie discovered Ventura in late 2004, recording the demo that landed on Combs' desk. Bad Boy released 'Me & U' in 2006; the breathy ear‑worm soared to No 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, while her stripped‑back, self‑titled album debuted at No 4. Overnight she was closing Dior beauty launches, starring in GQ editorials and cameoing in Kanye West's 'Stronger' video. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Hollywood soon beckoned: she played Sophie Donovan in Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and delivered the sultry ballad 'Is It You' for its soundtrack, proving she could dance as fluently as she modelled. A romance written in flashes Ventura and Combs began dating in 2007, appearing at the Met Gala in matching monochrome and holidaying on super‑yachts. The relationship, glamorous on social media, was reportedly volatile behind closed doors. Friends recall jealous rows; a 2016 hotel‑corridor CCTV clip - now prosecution evidence, appears to show Combs shoving Ventura. She later described her signature half‑shaved hairstyle, unveiled that same year, as 'taking back control' after repeated studio arguments about her image and autonomy. Lawsuit, settlement and criminal charges In November 2023 Ventura filed a 35‑page civil suit accusing Combs of rape, trafficking and prolonged physical abuse. He settled within twenty‑four hours, but federal investigators folded her allegations into a wider probe that produced a grand‑jury indictment in 2024. Cassie Ventura takes an oath before testifying in Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP) The criminal trial opened on 12 May 2025; Ventura took the stand on Day 2 and has endured marathon cross‑examination ever since. What the jury has heard so far Ventura has testified about beatings, forced drug binges and 'freak‑offs' - drug‑fuelled group‑sessions she says Combs demanded as 'payment' for his patronage. Defence lawyers have projected explicit texts in which she appeared enthusiastic, suggesting she was a willing participant; Ventura counters that she often echoed whatever placated him, telling jurors, 'Consent wasn't really an option.' She also acknowledged that both partners were addicted to opiates at times, a point the defence uses to blur timelines. Prosecutors argue her first‑hand account anchors a pattern of coercion alleged by more than fifty civil plaintiffs and frames Combs as the architect of a criminal enterprise that exploited women for almost two decades. The fashion of resilience While the evidence is harrowing, Ventura's appearance is calculated serenity. Courtroom sketches show her in a pared‑back beige maternity sheath, pearl studs and low kitten‑heels - worlds away from the diamanté gowns she once wore beside Combs. Stylists read the look as deliberate reclamation: quiet luxury, no logos, absolute poise. Cassie Ventura 'Admits' Her 'Involvement' In Diddy's Freak-Off Mess, Jury Reacts It mirrors her post‑Diddy Instagram feed of roomy blazers and discreet jewellery, an aesthetic dubbed 'old‑money cool' that has sparked thousands of #CassieCore TikToks and nudged high‑street colour palettes towards sand, taupe and ivory. Life after Diddy Ventura ended the relationship in 2018 and soon began dating Alex Fine, a bull‑rider‑turned‑fitness‑trainer. They married on a Malibu bluff in September 2019. Daughters Frankie Stone (Dec 2019) and Sunny Cinco (Mar 2021) feature in minimalist linen co‑ords on Ventura's feed, and the couple are expecting a son this summer. Sean 'Diddy' Combs faces explosive allegations shaking the core of the music industry, shocking revelations emerge as the courtroom battle intensifies Alongside motherhood she has returned to modelling - fronting SKIMS, Savage x Fenty and, most recently, a Loewe eyewear campaign, while teasing independent R&B tracks on SoundCloud and quietly studying screenwriting. Cultural stakes For prosecutors, Ventura is both insider and survivor; for pop culture, she is a case study in how glamour can mask abuse. Speaking out risks her privacy and lucrative partnerships, yet it recasts her from perceived one‑hit wonder to catalyst for an industry‑wide reckoning with misogyny. Her beige courtroom uniform, once merely fashion, now reads as armour and a subtle rebuke to the maximalism that once surrounded her. What's next Ventura is expected to finish giving evidence today; Combs' lawyers will then present their defence. Whatever the verdict, 's narrative is no longer a footnote beneath Diddy's discography. Instead, she stands for agency, endurance and the power of telling one's own story.
New York Times
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Kate Moss, Christy Turlington and the New Calvin Klein
There hasn't been a Calvin Klein runway show in almost seven years. Calvin Klein himself has not attended a runway show for his brand in nearly two decades. But on Friday, the brand, now designed by Veronica Leoni, and Mr. Klein returned. It was Day 2 of New York Fashion Week and the official unveiling of the Calvin Klein Collection, the high-end, high-fashion expression of the Klein look. The one that would prove it's not just about jeans and underwear anymore. It was a homecoming in more ways than one. The show was held on the ground-floor gallery space at 205 West 39th Street, the garment district headquarters where Mr. Klein moved in the 1990s and where the company remains. The space was white, as per the original Calvin minimalist aesthetic, with white benches and a white carpet displaying a new logo in the black typeface of the old Obsession perfume ads. Mr. Klein, 82, who sold his company to PVH in 2002 and has mostly been off the fashion grid since then, made his entrance in a natty, black three-piece suit and tie like a good-will ambassador from another time. Seated next to him was his former wife, Kelly Klein, and across the runway were his former muses, Kate Moss and Christy Turlington, in tailored black Calvin coats; Ms. Moss wore a slip dress beneath her coat. Nearby, Mario Sorrenti, who had photographed her naked Obsession ads back when they were a couple, was chatting to friends. 'It's very emotional,' Mr. Klein said of being back in his old office building and seeing his label back on the runway. It was a reminder of the heady days when Calvin Klein defined a certain kind of breathy, urbane American sportswear and drew the attention of the crowd to New York. The air was replete with nostalgia. So, for both good and bad, were the clothes. In an interview before the show, Ms. Leoni said that her goal was to pick up from the day Mr. Klein last walked out the door. She did so, with a dual-gender collection that acted as a warm-up run through the Calvin playbook of the late 1980s and '90s: slick, clean-lined C-suite suiting (check); minimal, cocooning outerwear (check); lingerie cocktail looks (check); grunge plaids and denim (check). You get the idea. There was even a CK One bottle, in honor of the 1994 perfume that once sold 20 bottles a minute, turned into an evening minaudière and a little pendant worn around the neck like a charm. Ms. Leoni proved she understood the heritage and embraced it. The problem is, since Calvin left and the label went through various iterations under his successor designers — and especially since 2018, when PVH abandoned the high-end collection — many other brands, big and small, have done their own versions of Calvin. Some of them very well. His influence helped shape the Row, Toteme, Phoebe Philo and smaller brands like Kallmeyer. At this point, when a romance with all things '90s is a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon, it's understandable that Ms. Leoni would want to pay homage to, and reclaim, the legacy that is rightfully hers. But it's not enough. She needs to do more than simply engage with the past; she needs to take it into the future. Mr. Klein pushed boundaries in so many ways: with the provocation of putting his name on jeans and underwear, with his overtly sexual ads, with his willingness to strip excess away. To really be true to the brand, Ms. Leoni should push forward, too. There were hints of this in her collection. In, for example, the just-rolled-out-of-bed silk pajama suiting for men and women, ice-blue silks that slithered around the body and made comfort dressing more come-hither. Likewise in the blanket-like wool coats and trenches clutched to the torso, including one terrific look made from hundreds of springy organza loops. Also in a strapless evening dress with a sweetheart neckline and a train of silk fringe looped around one forearm like a sheet hastily wrapped around the body because the doorbell had rung in a … well, delicate moment. A gunmetal-gray long-sleeve T-shirt and skirt covered in enameled paillettes that could be brushed forward and back like a reversible sequin pillow offered decoration without frivolity. It practically begged to be touched. She should lean further into her own more twisted instincts. At the end of the show, Ms. Leoni took her bow and then ran over to Mr. Klein to pay her respects. He kissed her on both cheeks, delighted. They had staked their claim. It was a start.
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Calvin Klein's first female creative director finds succour in a fictional New York
Calvin Klein's first female creative director, Veronica Leoni, presented her debut collection on Friday lunchtime, with Kate Moss – the brand's most famous face during the 1990s, when its billboard advertisements ruled the zeitgeist – Calvin Klein himself, now 82, and Christy Turlington in the audience. The brand had a lot riding on Friday's show, its first catwalk presentation for six and a half years, and the highlight of a New York fashion week schedule that has been light on big names as American fashion struggles to compete with European brands owned by the French conglomerates LVMH and Kering. Speaking backstage after the show, Leoni said her biggest challenge was 'to be inspired by the archive, without getting into nostalgia'. On the catwalk, that was expressed through a commitment to minimalism, seen in the opening look of a black mock-turtle knee-length dress and a preponderance of perfectly executed tailoring on the black-white-greige spectrum. There were also more playful elements, including trompe-l'oeil modern monochrome ballgowns destined for awards season, pops of colour (a rose pink, form-fitting, off-the shoulder dress; a flowing tomato-red gown) and tiny animal-print clutch bags inspired by the silhouette of the CK One bottle. Leoni, 41, recently described herself as being of the 'CK One generation'. Some of the standout looks featured a slim silhouette that felt fresh – black trousers and shrunken jumpers over shirts that recalled Gwyneth Paltrow's office wear in Sliding Doors. The moodboard for the collection included photographs of David Byrne, whose influence was felt in oversized shoulders, and Paltrow and Brad Pitt as a couple in the 90s. New York fashion week, which began on Thursday, has the unenviable task of bringing cheer and glamour to a fretful city reeling amid the chaos of Donald Trump's first weeks as president. The brand has felt the impact directly. This week its parent company, PVH – which also owns Tommy Hilfiger – was blacklisted by China in a retaliatory action after Trump imposed a 10% tariff. The results of this action are unclear, but they could include fines and shutdowns. About 18% of PVH's suppliers and factories, and 6% of its sales, are in the region. Little known outside fashion, Leoni – who is Italian and lives in Rome with her wife – has never led a major house, but has an impressive CV working among fashion's most influential minimalists, including Jil Sander, The Row and Celine, the latter under Phoebe Philo. She launched her own brand, Quira, in 2021. Like many who grew up outside America, she said she had a fictional view of the country, and of New York specifically, gleaned from movies and media before she ever visited. Sign up to Fashion Statement Style, with substance: what's really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved after newsletter promotion The collection expressed her 'personal dream of America' and explored characters from the movies that came to life for her on the runway. 'You've got the sexy worker, you've got the taxi driver, you've got Jessica Rabbit, you've got Clark Kent. And I feel that, you know, these kind of moments help to shape a variety of personalities.' Klein, who founded the company in 1968 and who has kept a relatively low profile since he retired from it in 2004, told her after that he was happy with her collection and that 'he found a new coat to buy'. The brand's most recent show, before its catwalk hiatus, took place in 2018, under Belgian designer Raf Simons, now co-designing at Prada. At the time, Simons found inspiration in the horrors of the first Trump administration, presenting a dark view of Americana. This time, its rather more upbeat interpretation of American style was based on a seductive and much longed-for fiction.
