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Time Business News
6 days ago
- General
- Time Business News
Perfume Bottles: From Vintage Designs to Modern Luxury
Spiritual art, of course, but also very often, art in concept: what perfume has always been more than a smell: a signature, a memory, a mood, a personal art. The bottle used to store the sense- the perfume bottles has been the most beloved item throughout the ages, as the actual fragrance. Perfume bottles packaging has been changing since ancient times where flacons were of crystals and gold to minimalist bottles created by the luxury fashion house nowadays. Today, with the help of this article we are going to summarize a sensual journey through time and show you the beauty and ingenuity of perfume containers: starting with the vintage masterworks and finishing with the state-of-the-art modern luxury. The history of perfume bottles can be traced way back to the old civilizations. Alabaster, gold and glass were used by Egyptians, Greeks and Romans as container materials to store precious oils and scented liquids. These initial bottles were not only practical but they had a meaning of symbolism which mostly took place in ceremonies and burials. In ancient Egypt, symbolic thought became the detailed carve vessels of an animal or god that lesser power and divine association. Perfume bottles became more accessible and ornate by the time glassblowing was made perfect in the Roman Empire and they assumed different forms and colors. When perfumery became an European-wide trend in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the works of perfume containers started to match the lavishness of the European courts. Venetian glass, silver, porcelain and even gemstones were the common materials used to make perfume bottles. Nobility would also carry the bottles of scents as pendants or as girdle attachments. Such designs were hand-painted images, elaborate metal decoration, and scenes of religious subjects. The bottle became more than a container, it was now seen as a status symbol, a luxury product, and a very personal item. Vintage Perfume Bottles Vintage Perfume Bottles have always been an important part of my life. I grew up as a child having no interest in them when my mother insisted that I had to come over and help out. The era of the vintage perfume bottle design reached the golden period in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. As the trade in perfume increasingly became commercialized in places such as Paris and in Grasse, firms started to work with master glassmakers to create unbelievable packaging. One of the most notable alliances was between Ren Lalique and francois Coty. The designs of Lalique with their art nouveau and art deco persuasions modified the perfume bottles and created new types of them, plates of frosted glass, geometrical form, etc.; Lalique also involved delicate etching thus launching perfume bottles to a whole new level of artistic beauty. Guerlain, Caron, and other heritage brands could not stay behind and invented bottles that are identified as classic and beloved up to the present time. The bottle design of a perfume is always an echo of the existing art and cultural tendencies. Feminine-shaped bottles gave way to masculine-shaped bottles as the Perfume bottles turned sleek, angular and geometrical with bold colors and metallic tones in making them in the Art Deco era in the 1920s and 1930s. After WWII, more domesticated design came into fashion, and it was marked by spare lines and functionality. In the 1960s and 70s, designers took to liberation and imagination — which produced fantasy-like, colorful, and even psychedelic designs on bottles. The changes in culture forcefully remind us that the packaging of perfumes is not fixed because it is the reflection of societal liking, values, and dreams. During the second half of the 20th century, the fashion houses started to keep fragrance as an extension of their image. As designers such as Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior started their own perfume business, the bottle became a storytelling canvas. The sleek square bottle used in Chanel No. 5 with a simple label became the symbol of eternal elegant beauty. The opium by YSL shocked the world with the provocative name and the lacquered red bottle. These designer fragrances are introducing a new level and have created a style, a fashion mix with perfume into one new treatment of indulging the senses. In the current context, luxury perfume bottles are an amalgamation of technology, design and prestige of the brand. When it comes to the high-end side of the business, names like Tom Ford, Clive Christian, and Amouage have bottles that are not only beautiful to look at but also luxurious to touch gold tone accoutrements, magnetic closures, hand-blown glass. The bottle has been designed, in most cases, to fit the personality of the fragrance, bold, delicate, mysterious or romantic. The present-day perfume bottle design also pays attention to sustainability with some manufacturers proposing refillable bottles or those that are made with recycled material, but without losing the elegant appeal. Collecting perfume bottles has become a hobby of many people across the globe. Vintage bottles produced by Guerlain, Lalique, and Baccarat are very popular and can sell at auction for multiple millions of dollars. As a result, many brands like House of Sillage, Hermes and Jo Malone release limited editions with collector packaging, sometimes with Swarovski crystals, enamel paintings and personal engraving. These works are transgressing the border between the perfume and the piece of art, which makes them both important visually and olfactionally. Whereas some brands flaunt luxurious splendour, others subscribe to contemporary minimalism. The likes of Le Labo, Byredo and Maison Margiela have gone in a complete contrast with minimalistic, apothecary-like bottles, black and white labels and no-nonsense typography. These bottles are more an emphasis on going back to authenticity and rustic ways, on the experience and scent rather than on the design. The simplicity of the elegance is appreciated among the new generation of customers who countenance the subtlety of the aesthetically and ethically produced goods. Due to the development of the technologies and changes in values of consumers, perfume bottles of the future will probably become even more innovative. Biodegradable packaging, AI smart packaging, and application, and smart, biodegradable packaging could transform our engagement with our perfumes. Meanwhile the need to be beautiful, artistic and emotionally related will make sure that perfume bottles will not always be just containers. They will continue to be the symbols of beauty, identity and remembrance just as they have been through centuries. essential oil bottles have always enjoyed a very special niche as far as the luxury and design worlds are concerned, whether we are talking about the ancient vessels, or the futuristic flacons. They are the embodiment of the balance of fragrance and shape, classic and modern. Depending on whether they are plated in gold or cocooned in minimalism, each bottle has a story to tell, about its designer, about its era, and about the user of that bottle. Not only are we attracting us to the scent contained inside, but its beauty as well, as collectors, connoisseurs, or just casual wearers we have been pulled by both. In the perfumer trade, it is all about grace at the very bottom, the bottle. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
7NEWS
01-07-2025
- Business
- 7NEWS
Thousands of lottery players mistakenly told they had won big in $76 million jackpot
Many of us have dreamed of a lottery win but for thousands of lottery players that dream has now turned into something of a nightmare. A few thousand players in Norway's EuroJackpot thought they had scored big wins in last Friday's $A76 million draw — only to have their elation quickly quashed. The players were mistakenly sent messages saying they had won 'high prizes' in the European-wide lottery, before later being told it was a coding error and the notifications were a mistake. The messages were sent by Norsk Tipping, which is the company which handles player notifications for EuroJackpot in Norway. It said it received prize amounts in euros then converted the figures into Norwegian kroner. The 'manual error' occurred in the conversion code. Instead of dividing the amounts by 100, as intended, the code multiplied the amounts by 100 — wrongly indicating 'big wins' for the players involved. 'The error was discovered after a short time but the damage was done,' Norsk Tipping said, according to New York Times which also announced the departure of Norsk Tipping chief executive Tonje Sagstuen. A remorseful Sagstuen said she had received messages from players who had started to plan vacations or buy a home. 'We understand of course that this is a breach of trust,' Sagstuen said. Norsk Tipping did not share the exact number of impacted customers. However, chairwoman Sylvia Brustad also admitted that trust had been broken. 'We are determined to clean up and improve ourselves,' she said.
Irish Examiner
07-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
The Menu: A rare award that has the greater good of the Irish food world as its concern
Two weeks ago, at a special lunch in Ashford Castle, Euro-Toques Ireland unveiled the winners of their annual food producer awards for 2025. Sweet suffering kidneys of Christ, says you, not more awards. With each passing year, it seems more crop up, right across the commercial world. Very often it is about self-promotion, to generate buzz and publicity for members of a particular commercial sector, to gain a bit of traction with the public and then dub them the 'Oscars of the Tricycle Importers of West Longford' or whatever product or service you're trying to flog. Increasingly, especially in the food world, awards are being created purely for the financial gain of the organisers, whose knowledge of the sector can prove surprisingly scant. Some years ago, when I used to work with small food producers, a client rang to ask about a new 'Irish food award' run by a foreign commercial entity for which they had been invited to enter. Further investigation revealed that, on top of the entry fee, there were further charges for displaying product at the awards, potentially running into thousands. Then there was the cost of attending the awards themselves. The price of a table for, say, 10 (you and all the staff of your small speciality food production business, perhaps) would again cost several thousand. It is a model used across multiple sectors, an opportunity to cash in with a lavish event, milking it for every last dime. Coincidentally, I had been invited to be a judge for these awards. Sniffing the reek of commercial opportunism, I asked how much I would be paid to compensate for my time. Nada… but it would allow me to promote my own 'brand'. Travel expenses? Nope. I regularly donate my time gratis to voluntary causes or organisations and will do so in future but I baulk at giving free time to a commercial entity primarily focused on profit. I advised said client to say no and I did likewise, subsequently noting the professional calibre of certain judges was such that they'd struggle to judge a crisp-opening competition. The Euro-Toques Ireland awards are markedly different in both structure and ambition. For starters, Euro-Toques Ireland is the Irish chapter of a European-wide, chef-led organisation dedicated to preserving and championing local food culture, traditional food craft and gastronomy, and chef-members not only pay an annual membership fee (€150) but also devote time on a voluntary basis. Food producers can also become members for free. Secondly, nominees don't 'enter' the awards or pay an entry fee; they are selected and passed through the judging process by the chef-members, only learning of their nomination once the dye has been cast. The cost of the awards lunch (members €65; non-members €80) is to cover expenses (the chef-member venue is donated free), no more, even though Euro-Toques Ireland has a skeleton professional staff, one part timer and head of community Manuela Spinella (familiar to Irish football fans as translator to erstwhile Irish football manager Giovanni Trapattoni), the only full-time employee, and membership fees and sponsorship are its sole source of income. Each nominee gets one free ticket for a gorgeous lunch with wine and can buy more at member's rate. Safe to say, Euro-Toques Ireland is an entirely ethos-driven organisation with the greater good of the Irish food world its sole concern. Euro-Toques Ireland came about in 1986 when Myrtle Allen was approached by three-star Michelin chefs Paul Bocuse (France) and Pierre Romeijer (Belgium) to form a European-wide chefs organisation on foot of growing alarm at the loss of traditional food cultures and professional cheffing practices as a result of the increasing industrialisation of agriculture and the food sector. Myrtle best represented the true values and aspirations of the organisation, once famously scolding her fellow Michelin-starred members for serving up coffee with UHT milk instead of proper milk. Her life's work at Ballymaloe was the essence of the Euro-Toques ethos in action, brilliantly cooked seasonal menus based on traditional produce of the local terroir. Enjoy a well-cooked meal of this year's Euro-Toques award-winning produce and I promise it will be a culinary highlight of your year. If you want it to be more than an annual highlight, check out Euro-Toques online and start engaging more with the cooking and produce of chef- and producer-members. Host kitchens sought Chef Network is seeking Irish restaurants and other hospitality ventures to follow in the footsteps of Glover's Alley, Aniar, Rare at Blue Haven, and many more by registering as a host kitchen for Open Kitchen Week (Nov 10-16). The initiative, in its third year, offers aspiring chefs of all ages and backgrounds hands-on experience in a professional Irish kitchen, from TY students to mature learners as well as career influencers such as parents and teachers. Host kitchens, in turn, get to showcase the culinary sector, attract new blood and help to sustain the sector's future. TODAY'S SPECIAL If new season strawberries, which I wrote about last week, are an annual edible highlight, they are nothing compared to the first new potatoes of the season. A bowl of steaming hot new spuds, chopped parsley, a grind of black pepper and drowning in enough melting butter to fund a cardiologist's yacht, is my favourite dish, death row meal and last supper all rolled into one. I always purchase my first of the year from fine independent grocery/food shop, Menloe Stores, of Blackrock, who source directly from growers but new spuds should be on shelves all over the country by the time you read this.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Booking.com targeted as hotels plan Dutch damages claims over price clauses
By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - could face Dutch damages claims running into millions of euros after 26 hotel associations across Europe teamed up to sue the company following an EU court judgment last year over its price curbs on hotels. Europe's top court ruled that restrictions against hotels offering lower rates on their websites or on rival sites are unnecessary and could reduce competition, but also that such clauses are not anti-competitive under EU laws. Such parity clauses, which are included in contracts between online booking sites and hotels, have triggered complaints from competitors and scrutiny from regulators across Europe concerned about fewer choices for consumers. The case came before the European Court of Justice after applied for a declaration in a Dutch court on whether parity clauses are valid, prompting the latter to seek guidance from the top court. HOTREC, which represents 47 member associations in the hospitality sector in 36 European countries, said it was backing the hotel associations' damages claims. "European hoteliers have long endured unfair conditions and inflated costs. Now is the time to stand together and seek redress," HOTREC president Alexandros Vassilikos said in a statement. said it had not been informed of any European-wide legal action taken by the hotels and that their conclusions about the court ruling are incorrect. "The ECJ judgement relates specifically to questions asked by the Amsterdam District Court in relation to litigation between and some German hotels disputing the legality of price parity clauses in Germany between 2006 and 2016," a spokesperson said. "The court did not conclude that German parity price clauses were anti-competitive or had an effect on competition. The Amsterdam Court will now need to make a decision specifically on German parity clauses only." Hotels have until July 31 to sign up to the damages litigation. The hotel associations endorsing the action are in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.
CNBC
27-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Why Europe is pivoting back to nuclear — one of its most divisive energy sources
A European-wide shift to nuclear power appears to be gathering momentum as countries hedge their bets in pursuit of more energy independence. In just the last few weeks, Denmark announced plans to reconsider a 40-year ban on nuclear power as part of a major policy shift, Spain reportedly signaled an openness to review a shutdown of its nuclear plants and Germany dropped its long-held opposition to atomic power. The renewed European interest in nuclear shows how some countries are hedging their bets in pursuit of more energy independence. The burgeoning trend appears to be driven, at least in part, by some of the costs associated with renewables, notably solar and wind technologies. "Solar and wind are still the cheapest and fastest way to drive the green transition, and that remains our focus. But we also need to understand whether new nuclear technologies can play a supporting role," Lars Aagaard, Denmark's minister for climate, energy and utilities, told CNBC via email. The renewables-heavy Scandinavian country said in mid-May that it plans to analyze the potential benefits and risks of new advanced nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors, to complement solar and wind technologies. Denmark's government, which banned the use of atomic energy in 1985, added that it does not plan a return to traditional nuclear power plants. "We have no recent experience with nuclear power, and we lack the necessary knowledge regarding safety and waste management. That's why we must begin a serious analysis — not to replace solar and wind, but to see whether new nuclear can complement our energy system in the future," Aagaard said. Georg Zachmann, senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, said nuclear power remains the most divisive electricity generation technology in Europe. "Thereby, the renaissance of nuclear in the political discourse is somewhat surprising, given that the cost of main competing technologies, new wind and solar plants, have dropped by more than 80 percent, while those of nuclear plants have rather increased," Zachmann said. The so-called "hidden cost" of balancing and transporting electricity from renewables has been increasing with rising shares of wind and solar generation, Zachmann said, noting that this theme has recently become more apparent. Spain signaled its openness to atomic energy late last month. In an interview reported by Bloomberg, Spanish Environmental Transition Minister Sara Aagesen said that while the government is proceeding with plans to retire nuclear energy reactors over the next decade, extensions beyond 2035 could not be ruled out. Aagsen said at the time that the government was not considering anything, and no specific proposals had yet been tabled. Widely regarded as anti-nuclear power, the southern European country has been mired in a blackout blame game over green energy in recent weeks. It follows a catastrophic power outage affecting much of Spain, Portugal and the south of France. Some external observers have flagged renewables and net-zero emissions targets as possible reasons for the outage, particularly given Spain and Portugal both rely on high levels of wind and solar for their electricity grid. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the country's grid operator Red Electrica de Espana (REE), however, have both said record levels of renewable energy were not at fault for the blackout. Germany, which closed the last of its three remaining nuclear plants in 2023, recently scrapped its opposition to nuclear power in what marked a rapprochement with France. Led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the newly elected government was said to have dropped its objection to French efforts to ensure that nuclear power is treated on a par with renewables in EU legislation, the Financial Times reported on May 19, citing French and German officials. Spokespeople for France and Germany's respective governments were not immediately available to comment when contacted by CNBC. As it is low-carbon, advocates argue that nuclear power has the potential to play a significant role in helping countries generate electricity while slashing emissions and reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. Some environmental groups, however, say the nuclear industry is an expensive and harmful distraction to cheaper and cleaner alternatives. Bruegel's Zachmann said the ability of fully depreciated nuclear power plants to continue operating much beyond their lifetime, as well as the "highly uncertain" hope that next-generation small modular reactors "can be built very cheaply captures the imagination of industry and policymakers." In all likelihood, Zachmann said "new nuclear power plants will remain difficult to finance and will at very best only pay off in decades. In the meantime, the discussion whether to prefer nuclear or renewables only helps natural gas — that continues to be burnt as long as investments in clean electricity do not happen at scale." Data published by energy think tank Ember found that the EU's electricity system continued a rapid shift toward renewables in the first half of last year. Indeed, wind and solar power rose to record highs over the six-month period, reaching a share of 30% of the bloc's electricity generation and overtaking fossil fuels for the first time. Alongside renewables growth, Ember said at the time that nuclear generation across the EU increased by 3.1%.
