Found in our Boston fragrance, tobacco leaf can be used in perfumes to add a gritty smell and feel to the scent. It provides the fragrance with a sweet, slightly smoky, rich aroma. There are a number of types of tobacco, but the New England variety is called shade tobacco, and is grown along the banks of the Connecticut River, which runs from the Long Island Sound, through Massachusetts, to New Hampshire. Cultivating the leaves of shade tobacco is much more labor intensive than its cousin types, and as a result is used as an outer wrapper for some of the world’s finest and rarest cigars. Much of tobacco’s popularity historically stems ironically from it’s purported healing powers, from relieving pain to curing cancer. During the 1600’s, tobacco was so popular that it was frequently used as money. It wasn’t until 1836 that New Englander Samuel Green revealed that tobacco is an insecticide, a poison, and can kill. Tobacco is the most grown plant in the world that is not used for food. Try our Boston scent here, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook!
Found in our Washington, D.C. fragrance, Cherry Blossoms are an integral part of the history of Washington, D.C. Donated by the Japanese in 1912 to United States as a gesture of friendship, 150 of the initial 3,020 offering, still remain. The first two cherry blossom trees were planted on March 27, 1912 by first lady Helen Taft and the Japanese ambassador’s wife, Viscountess Chinda on the northern bank of D.C.’s Tidal Basin. You can still view these two trees today near the John Paul Jones statue at the south end of 17th Street. The first cherry blossom festival was held in 1935, and now draws in approximately 1.4 million viewers (attendees?) each year. The peak bloom time is on average April 4th and the blooming period lasts only a few days to two weeks at most.
DC’s cherry blossoms are most of the Yoshino variety. Their smell has been described as a very faint and sheer rose-like and cherry blend, with a hint of sweet and spicy.
DC is the perfect fragrance for fall. With a variety of new and changing opportunities, from the return to school to the resurgence in work after summer, DC is assertive and powerful making it your perfect partner for the fall!
Found in our classic East Hampton fragrance, Atlantic White Cedar originally thrived in swampy, low-elevation wetlands, characteristic of the Hampton and Montauk areas. The swamps were destroyed by rising sea levels, as well as lumbered, drained and cleared for farmland, but a few Atlantic White Cedar stands still remain. Before Long Island’s population boom, cedar swamps formed an almost continuous chain from Brooklyn to Montauk Point.This special cedar is typical of some historic rustic cedar shingles found on many of the waterfront homes in the Hamptons and Montauk. In 2011, tree trunk remains of the Atlantic White Cedar had been exposed on the shore due to extreme erosion from Hurricane Irene, and were found to be dating back about 4500 years ago.
East Hampton is a light, woody floral scent. It is sophisticated and elegant, with a Bohemian twist. East Hampton invites you to experience the feelings of artists and writers past, lured by the promise of golden, wispy dunes, refreshing breezes, and quaint front porches. Try it here.
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Yoga On-the-Go[/caption]
Last week we shared one of our favorite new sites,
Calm.com, as a great resource to add to your travel arsenal. That got us thinking, what other resources are out there for keeping you calm and relaxed while traveling? In our searches, we came across another fantastic website,
Yoga Glo. The site offers a wide variety of instructional videos, teaching different styles for varying skill levels. The site also offers classes of differing lengths, from five minutes to two hours. No matter how much time you have, there's something for you on Yoga Glo!
Yoga Glo is a subscription service, and they offer a 15 day free trial after which you can subscribe for $18 a month for unlimited access to Yoga Glo's online classes. Between that and Calm's guided relaxation services, you'll be able to travel with ease and relaxation!
When we met model Tash Moore at the Hester Street Fair on the Lower East Side, we knew immediately that we'd get along. Tash is the founder of
Peace Love Threads, a fantastic e-commerce site with a wonderful blog to go with it. According to their website:
"Our mission is simple: live the life of your dreams… & look good every step of the way!"
Sound familiar? It certainly did to us! Tash's mission reminded us a lot of our own mantra, "Live your dreams, and smell good while doing it." With such a perfect pairing, we naturally had to pass along this website, as well as a link to a
post that Tash wrote up about Nomaterra! Thank you to the Peace Love Threads team for the Nomaterra love!
Be sure to follow Nomaterra on
Twitter and
Facebook!
Happy Monday Nomaterra fans! We hope everyone had a great weekend; last week we came across this fantastic
list courtesy of Refinery29 of the top 30 rising stars in D.C. under 30. We love the idea of giving young up and-comers (like Nomaterra founders Ben and Aggie) the props that they deserve, so we absolutely loved this story and thought we had to share! And, we have to admit, we think that everyone on this list would love our powerful and fresh Washington, D.C. fragrance!
Be sure to follow Nomaterra on
Twitter and
Facebook!
Last week we stumbled upon a fantastic article about perfume making from a 2005 issue of
The New Yorker. "Annals of Innovation: The Scent of the Nile" details the creation of an Hermès perfume, Un Jardin sur le Nil (
translation: A Garden on the Nile), and provides a fascinating insight into the incredibly complicated world which is perfumery.
From debates about how to create a signature across a line of perfumes to listings of the countless iterations which Hermès perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena created and tested before settling on the final formula for the "juice," the article details exactly how difficult it is to do what perfumers do.
Finally, the overall piece serves as a reflection on the different ways in which perfume is incorporated into major fashion houses, like Hermès. Hermès and Chanel both have in-house perfumers, allowing them to create a body of work that is cohesive and completely in line with their brands concepts. Many other larger houses and big name perfumes (such as celebrity perfumes) outsource their perfume factions, turning to external companies who employ master perfumers to create their scents. While this second tactic has been known to turn out some very successful fragrances, there is no cohesion, no authenticity or truth behind the perfume which links it to the ultimate message of the brand. By using the model found in niche perfumery, Hermès was able to create a body of perfumes which are distinctly Hermès and which represent all of the elegance, glamour, and class for which their brand is known.
Read the whole article
here.
With Amazon at our fingertips, it's easier than ever to discover a whole new assortment of things to watch, read, and add to our wish lists. As avid fragrance lovers, we here at Nomaterra have taken it upon ourselves to discover some of the finest books about fragrances around. Read on for to find out what we'll be bringing along to the beach this summer!
Perfumes: The A to Z Guide By Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez; This fantastic tome provides reviews of over a thousand fragrances, as well as a section answering perfume FAQs and a guide about how to purchase your next perfume.
The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry In Paris and New York By Chandler Burr; This book follows the creation of two different perfumes: Un Jardin Sur le Nil by Hermès and Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker. Be sure to pick this up if you've always wanted to know how exactly the stuff in the bottle came to be.
Reeking Havoc: Unauthorized Story of Giorgio By Steve Ginsberg; The
Unauthorized Story of Giorgio tells the tale of Giorgio, a perfume created by Fred and Gale Hayman which took the world by storm. Americans spent $70 million on this perfume when it was first released, and its release caused quite the stir in the perfume world. Pick this up for a tale of scandal, glamour, and a look at just how intoxicating perfume can be.
