This spring, Arquiste partnered with Birchbox, the innovative online beauty sample company, in an exciting attempt to bring our fans’ noses closer to our scents. Birchbox featured Arquiste fragrances, among other beauty samples, as part of their Gossip Girl themed edition of their exclusive beauty box. In celebration of the series’ season finale, the Birchbox team re-imagned the kinds of beauty products that suit the show’s characters. Co-founder Katia Beauchamp appeared on PIX 11 Morning News, presenting Flor y Canto as her favorite spring and summertime fragrance. Take a look here.

·       The following is a recollection from Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Sinan Antoon, which appears in PEN America 15: Maps and is excerpted from “In the Presence of Absence”.  We are grateful to our friend Claudette Bakhtiar Ericson for sharing:

“Cities are smells: Acre is the smell of iodine and spices. Haifa is the smell of pine and wrinkled sheets. Moscow is the smell of vodka on ice. Cairo is the smell of mango and ginger. Beirut is the smell of the sun, sea, smoke, and lemons. Paris is the smell of fresh bread, cheese, and derivations of enchantment. Damascus is the smell of jasmine and dried fruit. Tunis is the smell of night musk and salt. Rabat is the smell of henna, incense, and honey. A city that cannot be known by its smell is unreliable. Exiles have a shared smell: the smell of longing for something else; a smell that resembles another smell. A panting, nostalgic smell that guides you, like a worn tourist map, to the smell of the original place. A smell is a memory and a setting sun. Sunset, here, is beauty rebuking the stranger.”

Copyright © 2011 by Archipelago Books.

Men have certain grooming and dressing traditions that go back ages. One of these is the story of the "buttonhole flower" or boutonnière. Their use probably originates from their attachment to a symbolic, honorific or even religious meaning. However, they quickly became appreciated for their decorative and olfactive qualities.

* A man would select a fresh boutonnière in much the same way he would wear a freshly laundered shirt or a pair of polished shoes. Its glory lay in its fragility; it was picked, worn in the buttonhole and allowed to die.

* When women danced or embraced their partners, the perfume of the boutonnière was meant to surprise and amuse them.

*The story of the boutonnière also includes its discreet rivalry with honorific and military decorations;  a lapel flower hints that its wearer is possessed of a keen imagination and elevated sensitivity.

* Flowers all had a specific time and place for use; for example, the Gardenia become known as the "Opera Flower" for its use in black-tie attire.

 ...has no future.

("Une femme qui ne porte pas le parfum n'a aucun futur")

- Coco Chanel

A reminder from my friend Elisa Gil

(Image: Venus Reclining on a Sea Monster by John Deare 1785-87)

Check out the amazing presentation on Arquiste in Barneys New York "The Window":
Time Travel in a Bottle: 6 Transportive Scents from Arquiste

Le Parfum

Lecteur, as-tu quelquefois respiré

Avec ivresse et lente gourmandise

Ce grain d'encens qui remplit une église,

Ou d'un sachet le musc invétéré?

Charme profond, magique, dont nous grise

Dans le présent le passé restauré!

Ainsi l'amant sur un corps adoré

Du souvenir cueille la fleur exquise.

"O reader have you ever breathed,

With drunkenness and greed's faiblesse,

The incense from a church recess,

Sachets of chronic musk unsheathed?

O deepest magic charm's sweet thrall               

In present or in past restored!

As lovers place on their adored

Mnemonic petals of their fall."

Carlos and close friends celebrate the launch of ARQUISTE at Barney's New York stores across the United States. 

Check out the photos!

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