“Everything I’ve done, I’ve just followed what I’ve been interested in. I’ve never had a plan, I have had no plan about any of this.” – Mandy Aftel Mandy Aftel started making natural perfumes almost 30 years ago. Her passion and artistry have won Aftelier Perfumes many awards and accolades. She’s been featured in countless magazines and blogs from Vogue to Forbes, Now Smell This to Bon Appetit. In 2003, Mandy launched Chef’s Essence, which supplies natural flavor oils and …
Tag: Natural
Cake Vodka * Fiction * M. Leona Godin
There was this blind kid, a really young large kid, but very sweet, very sensitive kind of soul. He’d walk in and come straight to the counter. He moved fast. The bells on the door would just finish jingling and he’d be in front of us saying politely, “Hey how’s it going Could you grab me a bottle of that Cake Vodka?” In the beginning, he always came in wearing a shirt and tie. He said he worked at some …
Aroma Victoriana: Flowers, Explosives, and the Mysterious Secrecy of Perfumery
Often we associate the Victorian Era with a degree of primness that falls helplessly into parody–nowhere better illustrated than in Oscar Wilde‘s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)–but as with all eras, the Victorian offers a dark underbelly as well as a laced-up exterior. I shan’t elaborate on the entirety of this dichotomy, but content myself with the extremities of Victorian perfumery, from the nosegay to the nether regions of the civet, and from the ancient coaxing of flowers by …
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