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!

Montana Parfum de Peau by Claude Montana : Perfume Review for Mother’s Day

I was not planning to write a special review for Mother’s Day, in fact, I had been preparing a different review for today. But something happened yesterday, a strange coincidence, a little touch of fate that prompted me to suspend the piece I had prepared, in order to write this one, a Mother’s Day special.


As it has probably become clear by now, Saturday mornings are perfume exploration days for me and yesterday was no exception. I went to a specific perfume boutique to try out some fragrances I was not very familiar with, in order to decide which one to order online from a gift certificate I’d been given some days ago. I was walking purposefully next to the countless shelves of perfumes to reach the specific section, when my eye caught a certain blue box that made me stop dead in my tracks: Montana Parfum de Peau by Claude Montana. My heart missed a beat; I had not seen it in years, more than a decade to be exact. I thought that it was out of circulation and that I’d never happen upon it again. I was immediately flooded with emotion: On the day that every boutique in town was filled with shoppers buying gifts for Mother’s Day, I happened upon the one long-lost perfume that says 'mom' to me like no other. The coincidence was not lost on me; I knew I had to buy it and write a Mother’s Day special for today.

My mom has never been fickle with her fragrance choices. She always picks a single signature scent and sticks with it for years until something prompts her to change it. During the time that I was growing up she went through three different perfumes: Paris by Yves Saint Laurent, Nina by Nina Ricci and Montana by Claude Montana. Out of the three, only Paris is still widely available. And out of the three, it is Montana that rouses the strongest memories inside me. Wearing it now, I become a child again, reliving a scenario so oft-repeated it’s been imprinted in my mind like a schema. My mother is about to go out for the evening with my dad and she laughingly puts me into her bed to watch her, as she is getting ready. “Do I look alright, darling?” I nod, wide-eyed and utterly in awe of her dramatic blue eyes, shiny blonde hair and extravagant eighties outfit. She is about to leave and there is one last touch to complete her outfit, the perfume. Apprehension – I know my nose is going to sting and burn for a while before I can start enjoying it. I do not know whether I love or hate this perfume, but I say nothing of the sort. It forms a peppery cloud around her and she tells me I can sleep in her bed as she presses her nose against mine. The scented trail she leaves behind is so strong, it will stay with me for hours, in the air, on my skin, on the bed linen. Mom. Paris was youthful innocence, Nina was a return to romantic femininity, but Montana was always my mother as a sexual animal, a self-confident woman filled with joie de vivre and sensuality. A side of her that took me a while to consolidate with her daily image.

Montana is a floral chypre that opens up with an overwhelming burst of pepper and cardamom, combined with juicy fruits that excite the senses and leave the nose tingling. The ginger and carnation at the perfume’s heart enhance and prolong the peppery spiciness, while rose and tuberose give the fragrance depth and substance. It is the base notes however, which turn this into a truly magical concoction: amber, cedar, patchouli, olibanum, vetiver, oakmoss, musk, civet and by far my favorite of all animalic notes, castoreum, all blend together perfectly, leaving me breathless, gasping for more in a state of addiction. Not only is Montana extremely unique and grossly, clashingly peculiar, it is also deviant by nature. Having forgotten all about it for years and now experiencing it again, I realize now I had been looking for controversy and dissonance in all the wrong places. No wonder Muscs Koublai Khan smelled tame and friendly to me, when my olfactory bulb still retained the memory of Montana in its depths. Fur, sex and exuberant abandon were all waiting for me there to be rediscovered and no substitute would do. Seeing the listing of oakmoss on the box makes me surmise that this is a fresh bottle. Hopefully that means we will never have to part again.

I’d always thought of my preference for perfumes that sting and burn the nasal cavity (Paloma Picasso, Rose Cardin, Wrappings...) as a personal idiosyncrasy, a very personal taste I’d somehow developed. I thought of it as a personal quirk, an eccentric oddity of taste. Only now do I realize where it stems from and the reality of this leaves me slightly shaken, as though part of my originality has been stolen away. Yet at the same time I’ve gained insight; “Know thyself” advised the ancient Greeks and I do know just a little bit more now. My bond with my mom has been strengthened. The invisible line that connects us has been reinforced one more time. I love you, mama. Happy Mother’s Day, this one’s for you.

Images of Montana ads through the years, courtesy of imagesdeparfums.perso.orange.fr
Image of Montana on fur, my own.