Mother’s Day Gift Ideas & Offers Roundup

Still struggling to come up with the perfect gift for mother’s day? The holiday is just a week away, so here’s a roundup of all the beautiful things that caught my eye!

• Ormonde Jayne says “Mother Knows Best…” and I can’t help but agree. The British niche perfumery is taking the guesswork out of gift giving by offering a sample program and a gift card. The sample program (35 GBP with complimentary postage worldwide) contains all eleven fragrances –and you’ve got to trust me, there’s something to love for everyone- in a chic black coffret. Once a choice has been made, the gift card can be used at the boutique in Old Bond Street or over the phone. The gold and glass stoppers of the pure parfum can be engraved with two initials, for that extra little touch of luxury. Prices: EdP 50ml: 58 GBP. Parfum 50ml: 112 GBP

• Mindful of your budget but still looking for something that is niche, luxurious and special? Impossible? Of course not. Korres, a cosmeceutical brand from Greece, has rapidly become an international success and a favorite with beauty editors the world over. Treat your mom to a Wild Rose Lip Butter ($9.00), a luscious tinted lip-balm that provides sheer color and deeply hydrates lips with shea butter. Also available in Guava, Pomegranate and Quince. But for that price why stop there? Make it a goody-bag and include the Kings & Queens Royal Favorites Set ($8.00). The Kings & Queens shower gels have become favorites with perfumistas for their unusual fragrances, scented with aromas (such as myrrh, pepper & tobacco) usually found in niche perfume creations.
The particular set contains the following showergels: Nefertiti Honey, Chinese Princess Jasmine, Queen Isabella Cinnamon Orange, Emperor Akbar Mango, and Sultan of Granada Lemon Flower. These and more Korres products can be found among other places at Sephora, Nordstrom and select Douglas stores.

• Leave it to the Bond No. 9 team to make our jaws drop on all the important holidays! Bond No. 9 and Swarovski have teamed up again to create three new Swarovski-encrusted bottles. The three lucky perfumes to be getting the blindingly beautiful Swarovski Star Makeover are Nuits de Noho (vivid sapphire), The Scent of Peace (rich amethyst) and Chelsea Flowers (golden topaz). The Bond No. 9 Swarovski Stars Limited-Edition flacons have arrived in May, just in time for Mother’s Day, but they will be available for the remainder of the year. The not-very-recession-friendly price for each 50ml bottle is $550. But you can still give mom that Bond No. 9 excitement (not to mention pampered skin) without the hefty price tag too: Bond No. 9 has just introduced 24/7 New York Liquid Silk, eight brand new body smoothers to both soothe and scent the skin. Each 200ml lotion costs $90 and the available scents are: Bryant Park, Astor Place, Chelsea Flowers, Eau de New York, Nuits de Noho, The Scent of Peace, West Side and of course, the ever popular Chinatown.

• Finally, one of my favorite indie perfumers, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz has just started her own fabulous Mother’s Day sale yesterday. The discounts are great and the variety is dizzying, so you are sure to have great fun shopping for mom! Here’s what the marvelous Dawn has in store for you this Mother’s Day:
* All Garden Bathe Aromatherapy products – 15-25% off
* All DSH New Creations Oil Essences – 15% off
* Perfection & Les Rouges Collection Boxes – 15% off (A perfect gift for mom!)
* Selected Sweet Dreams & Luckyclover products (Essence Studio Collection) – 15% off
* Selected Limited Editions by Parfums des Beaux Arts Body Products – 25% off

And as if that wasn’t enough, if you enter member code POL, MUA or PAM, you receive an extra 10% off! The sale lasts until the 17th of May. Can you resist treating yourself too? Click here to start browsing!

Cashmere Mist by Donna Karan : Perfume Review

It is not surprising to me that Cashmere Mist was released in 1994, the same year CK One was introduced. The market was ripe for perfumes that were clean, unobtrusive and almost asexual – perfect matches for the heroin-chic, boyish figures that were advertising clothes at the time. Although admittedly more feminine than CK One, and a good deal more interesting than L’Eau d’Issey, Cashmere Mist is very much a child of its time. Even so, I only discovered it recently and I have to admit it, it was love at first sniff. There is something incredibly comforting about this scent, so aptly named. It smells like clean, powdery skin, skin that is begging to be caressed. It is an abstract concoction that responds so sensitively to my chemistry that it manages to smell slightly different each time. It is a skin scent whose character is always dry; it never smells sweet, despite its soft jasmine and muguet blend. The musk and iris combine beautifully and feature prominently throughout the development, making it powdery and soft from the beginning. And what makes it most special is the gentle, well-worn suede note that is ever so soothing, as well as tame, which I appreciate, since most strong leathers overwhelm me. Cashmere Mist elicits strange memories in my mind, that play like a fast-forwarded flashback scene in a movie: the Noxema roll-on deodorant my mother used to use when I was a child, a visit at the doctor’s when I was a kid – the scent wafting from the clinically clean female doctor comforting me as she laid a hand on my head, clothes straight out of the dryer on a snowy winter’s morning, fast-forward, fast-forward to pictures constructed from the media, colorful Lacoste polo shirts above tiny, blindingly white tennis skirts on a sunny spring day. The smell that fits innocence before adrenarche... and yet, warm flesh wrapped in a fluffy bathrobe on Sunday morning, a scent worn for one’s lover just to say: “I want to have coffee in bed with you”. I did not mean to turn this review into an exercise of freestyle stream of consciousness method, but somehow I found myself compelled to record the strange associations this fragrance elicits in me. After discovering this perfume, I had to rush out and buy it, I find it so charming and well made. I do not regard it as simple, even though it can appear deceptively so. Some have described it as “mumsy” and “old”. If you agree with this statement but have somehow found yourself stuck with a bottle for one reason or the other, here’s a suggestion: Layer it with a tiny bit of Fracas. The end result is very cheerful.

Picture of Cashmere throw courtesy of www.wise4living.com. The limited edition flacon of Cashmere Mist was sourced from www.donnakaranbeauty.com where it is currently available for purchase, with the designer’s signature.