BOP News - Blog on Perfume News

As it’s nearly a week before Valentine’s Day, here are a list of facts for you:

• The average spend in the UK of Valentine’s Day Products is £65. Most of that goes on Perfumes and Fragrances.
• Over 1 Billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent (and I still don’t get one!). Surprisingly, Teachers receive the most, followed by children.
• Lace, a fabric associated with valentines day, is so named after Love And Romance.
• The heart is associated to Valentine’s Day as it is considered the source of all human emotions. The custom of drawing a heart shape is supposed to have come from early attempts to draw an organ that no one had seen. The symbol came on to become as a sign of love.
• In the Middle Ages young men and women drew the names from a bowl to see who would be their Valentine. They would wear this name pinned on their sleeves for one week. This was done so that it becomes easy for other people to know your true feelings. This was known as “to wear your heart on your sleeve”.
• In America, the pilgrims used to sent confections, such as sugar wafers, marzipan, sweetmeats and sugar plums, to their affianced. Lot of value was placed on these gifts because they included what was then a rare product, sugar. After the late 1800’s, beet sugar became widely used and more available, and sweet gifts continued to be cherished and enjoyed.

Source: My Dear Valentine

Wonder how you keep that nice bottle of Paul Smith Perfume fresh for as long as possible? Well, wonder no more as this article will give you basic tips on keeping your perfume smelling fresh like the day you bought it.

Keep It Out of Strong Heat and Light
A shady corner in the bathroom or inside a medicine cabinet is ideal place for keeping a bottle of perfume. Both the light and the heat can damage the colour and - therefore - the scent.

Keep Upright
Ever wonder why perfume bottles come in boxes? Well it’s to prevent it from shaking about too much. When you are not using it, keep it standing as it should. Plus the bottle looks a lot nicer.

Buy The Right Perfume
If you don’t wear much fragrance, choose one with a higher concentration of alcohol in it. Perfume with a higher percentage of alcohol lasts longer (by about 5-6months longer).

Perfume retailer “The Perfume Shop” has announced this year’s “Nose of the Year” Awards. The competition, which will be voted for by the general public, will culminate in an awards ceremony on February 7th in London. The nominees are:-

• Gok Wan,
• Ben Shepherd,
• Jeremy Edwards,
• Craig Doyle,
• Alan Sugar,
• Brian Dowling,
• Cheryl Cole,
• Melanie Sykes,
• Kate Middleton,
• Rachel Stevens,
• Denise Van Outen,
• Tina O Brien

The Perfume Shop Marketing Director, Julia Bolsom, commented,

“For us at The Perfume Shop, it’s people’s noses that get us excited! So we put our heads together and decided to start a campaign to really celebrate the nose – starting with our Nose of the Year Award! We asked staff across our 170 shops to select their favourite celebrity noses and now it’s down to the public vote!”

We Say:  Seems to me to be a bit of a pointless exercise. For one, are we looking for somebody with the nicest looking nose? Or are we looking for somebody with the best sense of smell, only time will tell.

Source: Response Source

You’d think that if you were a mega star like Nicole Kidman, being paid £2.5 Million to be the face of Chanel, you wouldn’t wear anything but that, right?

Well, it appears as though there’s a bit of a row, where it was allegedly emerged that the movie star wore a rival brand on the set of The Golden Compass.

 ”The Aussie actress, 40, was accused of wearing Jo Malone’s White Jasmine & Mint during filming for The Golden Compass.”

Of course, she was quick to quell the rumours, so it was something and nothing.

We Say: Surely all publicity is good publicity?

Source: Daily Mirror

Often, when people land big modelling contracts, the money can change them. Not so one the latest star of the “Petite Armande” campaign for Mungo & Maud.

As she was already a bitch.

Shirley, the grand basset, was paid £25,000 for one days work modelling the new fragrance for dogs - which sells at just under £40.

Stuff.co.nz broke the story, and had a quote from an industry insider, who said that “Shirley was one of the best behaved bitches in the industry”

At a recent charity auction, Shilpa Shetty - who shot to prominance by winning Celebrity Big Brother - launched her latest perfume called S2. The first bottle of which sold for £15,000, and the money is being given to Anamika, a charity for underprivileged children in India.

Shilpa’s publicist Dale Bhagwagar said, “She is thrilled that her perfume has managed to raise this amount for charity. What’s remarkable is that the sum raised from auctioning the S2 perfume topped other auction items, including a diamond and ruby necklace and a Cartier watch.”

We Say: We don’t mind people paying astronomical sums of money if the money is being used for charitable purposes.

Source: Indiantelevision.com 

File this one under wierd. Perfumebay.com have lost a court case with a giant website after they succesfully argued that “people would click on Perfumebay.com instead of their site, thus causing a loss of revenue.”

The website who beat perfumebay.com in court? eBay.

From TG Daily:

[The owner, Jacquelyn] Tran, admitted that she sometimes would capitalize the b in perfumeBay much in the same way the b in eBay is capitalized.  Tran told the court she did this because, “it was a common thing she saw online where companies would capitalize the first letter of the first word if they had separate words.”

We Say: We find this story preposterous. There’s now a law against capitalising letters and having company names sneakily hidden within other company names. I’m sure nobody in their right mind would get confused. Now I’m off to visit tesconamy.com!

With all this talk recently about global warming, I’m surprised to find that perfume retailers haven’t done more to win the hearts of green people (who may probably wear perfume).

So step up Bond No. 9, who will take your old perfume bottles off your hand and recycle them. In return, you will recieve a free refillable pocket spray, but only if you make a purchase from them.

Talking to wral.com, company founder Laurice Rahme said the following:

“As I become more aware of the issues facing our environment, I feel compelled on a personal and business level to participate in the green movement - and assume a leadership role”

We Say: Forgive my cynicism, but I quesion Bond No. 9’s reasons for doing this, as it’s probably more of a business, rather than etichal, reasons. Nevertheless, if it encourages more people to recycle, so be it.

The world of celebrity perfumes was awash with the news that Alex Curran - who seemingly is only famous for being the wife of Liverpool Midfielder Steven Gerrard - has launched her own perfume. The 24 year old beautician launched the fragrance - Alex - in Liverpool’s St. John Centre last monday.

The Liverpool Echo Writes:

“The launch will be a unique opportunity for fans to come to see Alex selling it over the counter and chatting with shoppers.

“She will be signing autographs and bottles of her fragrance, and we hope many people in Liverpool will come along and try it for themselves.”

What We Say: From reliable sources, we hear it isn’t actually half bad, will be interesting to see how much of the market share this capitalises on.

A small group of students at California State University are taking the unusual step into looking to ban perfume and bodyspray to be worn around campus areas.

It’s not just for fun though, a number of students suffer from illnesses associated with synthetic fragrances found in a lot of common perfumes. The Daily Titan - from where this story comes from - leads with this:

“Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) is a condition in which various symptoms reportedly appear after a person has been exposed to any of a wide range of chemicals. Symptoms include headaches, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, difficulty concentrating, and breathing problems.”

We Say: A lot of popular perfumes have synthetic chemicals in them, a lot of the less popular ones don’t, but alas, they don’t come cheap.