Catherine Fructus started Auguste in 1994 to bring back some of the old beverages, medical remedies, and beauty concoctions of her native Provence. Her website calls Auguste a "bienêtrerie", or, as my lame French would translate it, a made-up word for a "place you go for things relating to well being". At Auguste, well being includes private label pastis, soap, folk aphrodisiacs, manicure kits, and cherries in eau de vie. It also includes three parfums: Esprit de Chine, Esprit de Cuir, and Esprit de Chypre.

According to Luckyscent, the perfumes were copied from formulae found in handwritten perfume recipe books that Grasse's perfumers wrote between 1905 and 1920. Auguste used old methods to make the perfumes, too, so that they would be more faithful to the original scents. Although each scent is distinct — a floral oriental, a leather, and a floral chypre — they share a feeling of music played on old instruments and heard at the end of a hall...

According to my local weather forecast, it is currently "46°F Feels Like 39°F". I can vouch for the "feels like" part — it is darned cold and dreary for May. I considered just staying in bed, but instead I thought I'd spray on a bit of the tropics today...

First up, Floral Solaire (or Golden Floral), the fourth release from niche line Filles des Iles. Filles des Iles is the latest venture from the same team that brought us the strikingly unconventional fragrance Dinner by Bobo — remember that one? It was once described, somewhere (sorry I can't remember where), as meat served by a sweaty waiter...

Huge thanks to everyone who chimed in last week to help Tracey find a new perfume. Hopefully she'll get back to us and let us know if she found a winner; meanwhile, we've an even tougher challenge this week: Lavonne, who admits that she is "completely ignorant about perfume".

Here is what we know about Lavonne:

She is a 50 year old recently divorced mother of 3, and describes herself as "professional, well-organized, somewhat conservative".

She has purchased fewer than half a dozen bottles of perfume in her entire life...

Back in March, I asked how many of you thought the then-upcoming book Perfumes: The Guide would impact your fragrance spending. About half of you were worried about your wallets. Today's question is a bit broader: I'd like to know about the last perfume you bought unsniffed based on a review you read anywhere. If you're up for a confession, tell us the name of the fragrance, where you read the review, and how the purchase worked out for you.

My last unsniffed purchase was Hermès Un Jardin après la Mousson, but that wasn't based on a review, in fact, if I had waited to read the reviews, I doubt I would have bought it...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Diptyque's first fragrance, L'Eau, originally introduced in 1968. To celebrate, the line has launched a trio of unisex colognes: L'Eau de L'Eau, L'Eau des Hesperides and L'Eau de Neroli. All three were developed by perfumer Olivier Pescheux.

L’Eau de L’Eau pays homage to L'Eau (go ahead, translate that in your head), which was said, in turn, to have been based on a 16th century potpourri recipe. I haven't tried L'Eau in some years; my testing notes, probably written in late 2003 or early 2004, say "it is warm and spicy but sheer at the same time: an almost aqueous feeling: potpourri under water. Very nice, would absolutely never wear it." My tastes have expanded pretty dramatically since then...

It’s spring — the perfect time to release ambery, spicy, oriental fragrances full of coffee, musk, cocoa, patchouli, ambergris and vanilla…right? I used to complain about sparkly “resort” citrus fragrances being released in October and heavy, rich scents coming out just before or during summer, but this off-season system of fragrance debuts has been a money-saver for me. I hold off buying fragrances I can’t wear immediately, so by the time cold weather rolls around, this spring’s and summer’s warm, wintry-smelling fragrance releases will have lost their gloss of “newness” and I can look at them dispassionately, and buy only fragrances I love (not simply like).

Dolce & Gabbana’s The One for Men (developed by perfumer Olivier Polge) has a cool-weather vibe; it contains grapefruit, coriander, basil, cardamom, ginger, orange blossom, cedar, tobacco and ambergris. The One begins with a strong (and predictable) citrus-spice accord that disappears within five minutes. I was stifling a been-there-done-that yawn when something interesting began to happen...

Fabulosity is the latest fragrance from Kimora Lee Simmons' Baby Phat line. A representative from Coty described her first scent, Goddess, as "kitschy and over the top"; perhaps they were referring to the packaging and advertising, as I found it pretty standard fare: a fresh, clean-ish floral, fairly sheer yet still too sweet for my taste, and not particularly memorable (in fact, I believe I commented here recently that I had never tried it on skin, but I was wrong — there is a whole paragraph on it in my testing notes). Apparently, it "succeeded beyond anyone's expectations"*, so there you are.

Fabulosity is the one I'd tag as over the top. Canada's National Post recently described it as "...an out-of-control Mr. Soft Cone truck...crashing into a Kool-Aid stand", and that's pretty accurate for the top notes, which are mostly sweet, syrup-y fruit over a megadose of vanilla...

Miss Marple, where were you when I needed you? Late last summer I stalked department stores in search of Cuir de Lancôme, a then-recent addition to Lancôme's La Collection range of vintage reissues. The word on the street was that it was supposed to be released in the United States sometime in early fall 2007. A sales associate at Saks Fifth Avenue rifled through some Lancôme sales packages and found something claiming that Cuir should have been released in spring 2007. Another sales associate, this one at Nordstrom, looked at me like he believed I was making it all up and proffered a bottle of Lancôme Sikkim with a busted atomizer. A lukewarm review over at Perfume Smellin' Things did little to chill my ardor, and news that Lancôme eventually decided not to release Cuir in the United States only made me crazier for it. I had to have a bottle of Cuir de Lancôme.

Finally, last month Cuir testers showed up at discounters in the United States, and within a few days I had a bottle in my hands...

I don't get a ton of reader email, but most of what I do get goes along the lines of "I like (fill in blank) and (fill in blank), can you recommend a few perfumes I might like..."

I always answer, but I'm not sure recommending perfumes is a particular skill of mine, so today we're going to try out a new semi-regular feature: I'm going to post some information about Tracey, my latest correspondent, and I'm asking everyone to please chime in with some recommendations. Plus, this gives me an excuse to post a picture of the newish R2D2 mailbox from the United States Postal Service, which I have been hunting for but have not yet seen in person...

I'm sure many of you have had this experience: you read about a new fragrance. It sounds perfect. You start to build a smell-picture in your mind. You wait, and then you wait some more. It finally launches, but is only sold someplace inconvenient (there are few phrases in perfumespeak more dispiriting to me than "exclusive to Saks"). Finally, you get your hands on it. You spray, and — oh! It is not at all what you expected.

Un Jardin après la Mousson is the latest from Hermès and the third fragrance in their Jardin series, and it isn't the first of perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena's creations to surprise me in this way, although more often than not, I manage to adjust. I liked Osmanthe Yunnan as soon as I smelled it, but it somehow wasn't what I thought it would be, and I could not help but feel a sliver of disappointment...