Cheap Thrills. Zara Heavenly Blanc

This is part of a series of articles about cheap thrill perfumery. Not all beautiful fragrances costs an arm & a leg.

Today I’m celebrating a new find, Zara Heavenly Blanc.

I have been craving a low key almondine wash, not overly sweet, musky or vanilla heavy. A veil of almond milk if you will.

There seemed to be karma at work when the wonderful Portia wrote about Burberry Brit last week. It sounded perfect & was already in my basket. Then Portia gave me the heads up on its level of sweetness. Not for me.

More hunting ensued, both of my own perfumes & online. I own Reminiscence Heliotrope & Dragee. Neither scratched my itch. Dragee was too sweet, Heliotrope was too vanilla heavy. So online hunting I went.

Basenotes & Fragrantica were interrogated & up popped Zara Heavenly Blanc. Some say a dupe of a much more nouveau niche scent, Blanche Bete, others strongly argue not. There are also comparisons to L’Occitane Amande range, which I have used for years.

Off to L’Occitane firstly to check out the Delightful Mist. Hmm.. ok. Not quite like the Amande products. A little too sweet, a lot too vanillic. At £39 for 100ml of hair & body spray that needs reapplication every 2-4 hours it’s pretty costly.

Off to Zara. The new upgraded shop is top end boutique in style, really wood flooring, tasteful music, display rails far enough apart. All but the perfume section that looks like teenage locusts have swarmed through. I did find a Heavenly Blanc tester though. Quick spritz & off home. My itch was scratched, softly almondine, almond milk rather than a hit of marzipan. Just the thing. Not complex at all. Three hours in I checked the online availability & price. In stock & woohoo only £22.99 + postage. The only presentation is 80mls of Parfum.

How does it wear in real life?On me it’s just what I was craving, a simple wash of almond milk settling to a not too sweet amber. Very simple & pretty. Sillage is gentle, longevity is excellent. It wears like extraits used to, intimate but for a long time. Heavenly Blanc will get lots of wear regardless of the season. Though in extreme heat it may become a bit much.

Heavenly Blanc was released this year, the perfumer is not named & it is now sold out on the Zara UK website.

Notes from Fragrantica are:- almond milk, tuberose, orange blossom & sandalwood.

I bought this & have no links to any of the websites mention. The absolutely appalling photos are the work of my own, not very fair, hands

Diororiginals Diorella & Dune

My Diororiginals

Back in the day I was a huge fan of Dior perfumery. Diorella, Poison, Dioressence, Dune, Diorissimo, Hypnotic Poison & Dolce Vita. All were in my protocollection. Over the years I became less happy with the Dior offerings. I do still own Diorella in vintages from the 80s, 90s & 2000s but as time passed Diorella became a shadow of its former glory, Dune became muddied & Diorissimo lost the dance in her bells. I was keen to check out the Dioriginals to see what FK had achieved.

Diorella 2026.

I blind bought the new Diorella. Am I bovvered? Does vis face look bovvered?

Not bothered at all. She is beautiful! When I lavishly anointed myself with this latest Diorella I teared up, I smelled what my 14 year old self did 50 years ago. I actually became emotional for that teenager with her whole life before her. The opening was just as I recall from 50 years ago. Citrus, fruity & green. Maybe there is now apricot or osmanthus rather than the overripe melon or even as well as. I’ve never been able to parse the notes in Diorella, never will be able to. To me Diorella was always an entirety & remains so in this new release.

Onto Dune, the scent of my 30s. I own the last version in the pebble bottle, the bottle remains voluptuous & tactile, the contents have become muddied marsh rather than golden sands, meh rather than melancholy.

I got my nose on the new Dune today. Immediately it hit me, that golden tan horizon, stretching as far the eye can see & the nose can sniff. Again, Dune is not a scent I can parse. It’s a whole not a list of aromachemicals to be sniffed individually, there is no “airiness” between notes. Dune is a dense blend & all the better for it.

Overall, the two reformulations I’ve tried hit the bullseye of smelling like the original releases. The work of four years & the quality of ingredients used shows on the nose.

Are the two I’ve tried “modern”? Diorella does smell somewhat current with its fruity green sparkle. It does lack the sugar & harsh woody base of current fruity releases. Dune was startlingly modern when released in the 90s. Now its complexity, density & lack of sugar means it feels less modern than Diorella. Maybe perfumery cycles take 50 years for styles to feel new again. Greens have been showing up more frequently recently. Combining green with today’s taste for sweetness must be a difficult task. Just the memory of the cabbage candy floss of Mugler’s Aura can make nauseous.

More bottle porn

Now I don’t give a monkey’s toot about perfume bottles, as long as they stand up & I can handle them & get them to spray with my tiny, arthritic hands I’m happy. These fulfill these criteria & I have memories of Dior presentations in similar bottles. The font is the font that has been used on Diorella for years. The display at Flannels looked stunning, far better than the Haute Perfumery line.

And again

I do hope this line of reformulations succeed. I had to buy Dune today & will be testing all of them over time.

A big thumbs up from me to Dior & Francis Kurkdjian.

These reformulations are easily available. Boots & The Perfume Shop both stock them, as well as most department stores. The cost here is £130 for 100mls of the female aimed range & £110 for the men’s. I snagged 20% off from The Perfume Shop despite it being launch day, not affiliated in any way, but it was a great deal!

With acknowledgement to Catherine Tate for “Bovvered”

Airport Offerings

We got away to Anfi Beach…. Yay! Was touch & go but we made it.

A heron or similar hanging out over the wildlife pond at Anfi Beach

Passing through Leeds Bradford Airport, I had nothing to collect, Club Avolta’s online offering was uninspiring. Going through the fragrance duty free section only one thing piqued my interest, 100ml of Clinique Aromatics Elixir Parfum was under £50! My little 25ml is almost empty, so the temptation was huge but my boycott of all things ELC stood firm.

I checked out Diorissimo too, my mini pure Parfum is down to its oily dregs. I found Diorissimo was very heavily discounted as well. Just under £85 for the standard 100ml bottle. Diorella was the usual Duty Free price. The Club Avolta online offer didn’t have AE or Diorissimo to order in advance.

Yacht moored in the cove

There is now a Fund Grube shop onsite at the resort. There Diorissimo is in stock & again heavily discounted. I plan to buy a bottle today. Why? Searching for Diorissimo in the UK every online stockist is sold out, with “Notify me when available”. There is no Diorissimo available on the Dior UK website either.

Having heard that MFK plans to rework & modernise the Creations de Monsieur Dior I suspect Diorissimo will be the first of the the line to be reinvented as lilial is now banned in the EU.

View from the loungers on the patio

Will my new bottle smell the same as my vintage perfume? No, I don’t expect it to. Am I prepared to wait for MFK’s reimagined version when I have the chance to get a Creations de Monsieur Dior version? Again, no. The version in Grube is still pretty & LotV forward.

More yachts & the glass bottomed ferry behind. yes people were still sunbathing at 18.30

If the reimagined version is priced as the current Creations are it can be sampled it & purchased only if I fall head over heels in love.

However, if the rumours of reimagined Creations are true, I suspect they may be priced in the ball park of the La Collection Privee. The aspirational pricing will attract those buyers who have previously turned their backs on what they see as out of date or fuddy duddy perfumes.

Do you have a favourite Creations de Monsieur Dior? What are your thoughts on the rumoured MFK reimaginings?

Digital Detox & My Current Craving.

Apologies for being somewhat MIA. I found I had taken a natural digital break. Other than doing my daily puzzles, checking in with Instamates & eBay for any sales I found myself rereading Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles series. Bloody brilliant! Much maligned in the 80s & 90s as bonkbusters, reading them again now, they are exceptionally well characterised & the research to enable her to create such detailed atmospheres of diverse situations must have been incredible fun. More on that in a future post.

An Instamate posted about a medicinal fragrance that shouldn’t work but does. This made me think of what one of the scents I would ask to be created just for me if money was no barrier. There would be a classic, astringent chypre, a perfectly balanced citrus cologne & a springtime floral. The one I am currently craving though would be the weird one.

St Barts Hospital’s North Wing’s Great Hall by Matthew Andrews

In my head & imaginary olfactive nose I yearn for the smell of the parquet flooring from a century old hospital. It would open with citrus & pine from the Zoflora or Dettol used in the sluice. Then comes the phenolic disinfectant used daily to mop the parquet. This would be aged not fresh, the residue of decades until the smell of the oak panels & the phenolic cannot be separated. Underneath there would be the veneer of beeswax, animalic & rich, but also the greasy iris, rose & violet of the vintage lipstick & powder worn by the nurses.

Apple Tsunamis Alert

The apples have already started falling from our dwarfish mixed apple tree gone feral. They are a mix of Discovery (eaters, pink fleshed, don’t keep) James Greive (hybrid of Cox Orange Pippins x Potts seedling cooker or eater, don’t keep, matures September) & Charles Ross (another cooker/eater ready late August).

Our feral apples are huge, sweet enough to eat unless you only like super sweet fruit but happily go in pies, tarts, Tarte Tatin, cakes, crisps or make apple sauce, stewed apples, or apple butter.

This is a pie/tart made from the windfalls. I keep the skin on to maximise its nutritional value.

Apple pie

*pic is mine

**apples are mine

***pastry is shop bought. I’m not Nigella!

Peach for Summer

Peach forward fragrances don’t always get good press. They can be a jammy peach nectar, childishly pretty or luscious in the manner of juice running down the chin. Using peach as the star note isn’t easy to do.

Amongst the samples of designer haute perfumery I recently got was Guerlain Peche Mirage.

Peche Mirage by Guerlain

Notes from Fragrantica:- Top – peach, blackcurrant & saffron. Mid:- osmanthus. Base:- suede, amber, sandalwood.

How does it smell? As per the name & notes it opens distinctly peachy. Not sweet nectar or lusciously juicy but erring on the pretty, slightly childish side. Peche Mirage has a smiley opening with great teeth. I’d been cooking this year’s blackcurrant crop before spritzing & wasn’t sure if the distinct sweet/sour/bitter blackcurrant I could smell was from the cooled pans. Turned out Peche Mirage counteracts the potential over sweet juiciness with blackcurrant.

As I am writing the notes for this piece, I’m also watching the England v DC Congo World Cup game. As Kane’s second goal went in, when I threw my arm in the air I caught the scent of a supple, slouchy, creamy suede. The unripe peach still hangs in there & this suede gives the texture of velvety peach skin. The child has grown into a self contained young woman, less smiley but still with excellent teeth.

As time passes the creaminess of the suede peach skin blooms. Warm skin & movement give it lift & a peachy glow. The young woman is now at the zenith of her beauty. Still self contained but now wise with sensuality. That smile is now brings a knowing sparkle to her eyes, no one notices those excellent teeth anymore!

My first impression of Peche Mirage wasn’t favourable. My notes include childish, almost Avonesque & disappointed. The Kane scored & everything changed. My heart pitter pattered, could this be a love? In the end, much as the sueded peach skin bloom is beautiful & engaged my imagination that opening is just too twee with its memory of childhood Avon bubble bath.

Part of the L’Art & La Matiere range, Peche Mirage is £215 for 50ml

*I bought my sample through a preloved site & have no links to the site or to Guerlain

*crap photo by me

Hotter than Hades!

Whitby in the heat

Why is it when a heatwave strikes the UK goes to hell in a handcart?

So far this week our Prime Minister resigned. Honourable man but sees every side of an argument & the optics of doing U turns & not delivering on promises made, did not look good. I mean not as bad as Agent Orange sitting on a cream sofa with a black towel under him bad. Just lacking in political nous.

Whilst the PM made his speech, the new MP for Makerfield, elected last Thursday, was saying goodbye to his staff then travelling to London. By the time he arrived, he had been de facto crowned PM by the hysterical media. He hadn’t even been sworn in as an MP! At his swearing in ceremony the next day some wag in the Commons heckled “Are you the Messiah?” Life imitating art he threw back “No, just a very naughty boy”. It may go down as retort of the year.

Then Farage, pronounced garidge, friend of Agent Orange pops up to be interviewed. Now he’s been very quiet since April, when it was revealed he’d accepted a gift of £5 million from a crypto billionaire who is resident in Thailand. Initially he claimed it was for security, after an incident when an unknown liquid was thrown at him. The liquid was cold coffee it came out in court. Since then journalists have been searching for evidence of this security. The question from Nick Ferrari enquired about the gift to be told by Farage “ It’s an unconditional loan, I can spend it on Ferraris if I want”. This from the man who wants an immediate General Election with the expectation he would be PM. He makes Boris Johnson look like an upright citizen & Truss a genius economist!

For the rest of us we’re being told not to travel, schools & offices are closed, there are shortages of fans, dehumidifiers, ice creams & ice lollies.People who have carried their dogs to a patch of grass for toilet purposes are being abused, yet kids are playing out in their swimmers & bare feet.

All that & the worst game of the World Cup so far was the England vs Ghana bore draw. Talking about the World Cup, when did Olivier Giroud turn into a hottie? Check out BBC coverage, he’s one of the pundits.

Perfume this week? EA Green Tea & O de Lancôme. Oldies but perfection in this oppressive humid heat.

Whoop! Whoop!

Best ever loaf!!!!

Just look at those golden, gluten strands! This made me incredibly happy.

My hands are wrecked from handling unfermented & partially fermented gluten. Note to self get some catering gloves.

Dior Paradise

As Dior Prive Perfumery is not available in any of the large cities within shopping distance, I haven’t ever really explored them. Plus, their pricing, new scents & discontinuation turnover are too high & too fast.

Two things happened recently. 1. I was laid up with a flare of a chronic illness & bored. 2. When I took my car for its annual check, the woman who greeted me smelled wonderful. It was Dioriviera.

I searched the preloved sites & found a few almost full samples for good prices. Amongst them the latest release, Dior Paradise.

Dior Paradise

From the Dior website the notes are:- Top – mandarin. Mid – bitter almond & orgeat syrup. Base – tonka bean.

Fragrantica gives top – mandarin, orange & lime. Mid – bitter almond & syrup. Base – Tonka bean & woody notes.

“How does it smell?” I hear you ask. I was eager to try this as orange & bitter almond are notes I really enjoy. However, the opening lacks the zestiness & lift I expect from citruses in perfumery. Dior Paradise’s citrus is more towards the flavouring of an orange ice-pop or a highly concentrated fruit squash. This flavoured phase lasts longer than I expected.

It then slowly morphed into a caramelic confection. Think powdered almond brittle made into a paste then heated until it toasts.

Both top & mid have a dusty, closed room quality to them. A touch of Grey Gardens or Miss Haversham. In the top it could be the smell of Persian dried lime powder. In the mid section possibly rose water.

The base arrives after around 90 minutes & Dior Paradise settles into a tonka bean, vanilla & caramel butter frosting.

What is orgeat syrup? It’s a combination of almonds, orange flower or rose water & around 80-90% sugar. Not all brands of almond syrup have the added rose or orange flower water. It appears that without these it is merely almond syrup rather than orgeat. It’s frequently used in cocktails & to flavour & sweeten coffee. Whilst I wasn’t familiar with the name orgeat, I recognise bottles from behind bars & coffee shops. As someone who doesn’t drink much alcohol or coffee I can’t say what it tastes like.

Dior Paradise is all about the gourmand sweetness rather than anything refreshing. It swerves the well trodden marzipan trap that Dior pioneered so successfully with Hypnotic Poison. It also avoids the Amaretto/amaretti bitter almond association. The Dior website states orgeat syrup was a favourite beverage of Monsieur Dior who liked to make cocktails with it.

Will I buy a bottle? No. Will I sample it again? Possibly, on a very cold day. The base of a sweetly simple creamy tonka/vanilla butter frosting is less burnt sugar sweet than the top & mid & all the better for it.

*I bought my sample from a preloved site. It is genuine. I am not affiliated with Dior or the preloved site

Reconnecting with Bread Making

As has been mentioned before in this blog my unscented hobby is cooking & baking, especially sourdough bread. Being a type 2 diabetic with a gut that is very sensitive to commercial bread, long fermented homemade sourdough is what I tolerate best. If there was a local artisan bakery their’s would be fine, but there isn’t. I can tolerate M&S sourdough loaves but they are huge & go stale before they get finished.

How is this anything to do with fragrance I hear you ask. That fresh bread smell that supermarkets pump out to make you hungry has nothing on the real thing baking at home.

My starter had been kept in the fridge for around 6 months. I’m eyerolling myself here. It hadn’t been fed, had half an inch of grey liquid hooch on top & had a pongy vinegar smell. No mould so it just needed a good refresh. Sourdough starter is so very forgiving & after 3 days I had a vigorous bubbly started that doubled in volume in 8 hours. Ready to go.

Made my usual recipe, did all the steps to strengthen & then shape the dough. It felt right, looked right, wasn’t sticky & it bounced back at just the right speed. It went into the banneton & into the fridge overnight. Heated the oven next day with my Dutch oven in it, got the dough out to score and… it collapsed. Over proofed? Under proofed? Not shaped well enough.? Who knows but I got it in a loaf tin & baked. Came out like a badly shaped house brick. I could have smashed toughened glass with it!

Like Robert the Bruce’s spider I refused to give in. Refreshed the starter again & tried a tweaked recipe with slightly less hydration & decided to go straight into the loaf tin for its overnight slow ferment in the fridge. It came out better, it was good toasted or dipping in soup but not for sandwiches.

Again spider like I’m trying again today. This time experimenting using half strong wholemeal bread flour & half white. Using the slowest method as the wholemeal speeds up fermentation. I’ll also be doing a standard white using the slow method too. Will report back on the bread lab below.

Results – I only made the wholewheat loaf in the end. Wrote out all the steps, timings, feel of the loaf & now having bought a dough/meat thermometer, checked the internal temp of the dough when I thought it had completed bulk proofing & when I thought it was fully baked. It hit both suggested temps.

Result!

It’s cooling now & I will show the crumb when I cut it.

Crumb, probably needed just a few more minutes in the oven