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Style file: Scent from the heavens

The new season is just the time to change to a lighter, brighter fragrance, says Kate Rose Morris

Kate Rose Morris
Thursday 13 March 2014 01:00 GMT
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Dolce EDP £62 for 50ml, Dolce & Gabbana, harrods.com
Dolce EDP £62 for 50ml, Dolce & Gabbana, harrods.com

Flower-filled meadows, richly scented essential oils, warm sunshine – all images that spring to mind when thinking about fragrance. Unsurprisingly, the words “London” and “rain” don’t often feature. Until this season. Jo Malone has taken inspiration for her four new fragrances from that most British of things, rain, and the different ways that it falls on London. An instant favourite is Wisteria & Violet, which blends waterlily and violets to evoke the scent of freshly rain-showered wisteria against a garden wall.

More proof that the UK is where it’s at for fragrance this season is the collaboration between the iconoclastic fashion design duo Meadham Kirchoff and the traditional creator of fine English fragrances, Penhaligons.

Tralala is a musky blend of whisky, saffron, patchouli and myrrh contained in a be-ribboned flacon. It’s as daring and unconventional as the fashion shows its creators put on to draw London Fashion Week to a close every season.

Like the pair’s Topshop collaboration last autumn, this one is likely to sell out following the launch on 21 April.

Karl Lagerfeld is also launching a new fragrance. In a bottle designed in his trademark monochome, Karl Lagerfeld Woman is a green floral and introduces itself with a hit of fresh lemon and peach, blended with rose and magnolia, before drying down to a woody amber base.

Where Karl’s clothes are strict, Tory Burch is known for her ease. And her debut scent is just that: a colourful and cheerful burst of grapefruit and mandarin, with a heart of neroli.

A daddy’s girl, Burch chose vetivert for the base, as worn by her father. The perfect pick-me-up on a rainy day in the capital, unless of course, you happen to love London rain.

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