Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

The New Year - Two Thousand and Zen - and a Starry-Moon Full Swoon I've had my nose to the grindstone. There are so many projects, all with varied needs and timelines, I haven't had time to "keep up" with much that's going on. I do have my google alerts set to let me know when "Anya's Garden" pops up in the Internet, and I had to stop and pay attention in the past few days when one after another, alerts came in. I had no idea there was a "Best of the Best 2009" plan among perfume bloggers, but my goodness, am I the beneficiary of some lovely mentions by them! One after another they flowed: From the lovely Elena at Perfume Shrine blog: Best of Niche: Anya's Garden Starflower A gourmand with guts! Unusual combination, great lasting power for an all-naturals. Anya's Note: I was one of a number of niche perfumeries mentioned, but surely the tiniest microbusiness of all, so this knocked me out. From a devoted lover of Anya's Garden P...

Elena at Perfume Shrine reviewed MoonDance and StarFlower from Anya's Garden Perfumes, and if you leave a comment, you will be entered in a drawing to win samples - click here to read and enter

Natural Perfumers Guild President Anya McCoy is featured on The Scented Salamander website series: North American Originals:Perfumers on Fall & Winter. Anya's Garden Perfume's two new colder season scents, MoonDance and StarFlower are explained in Part Two From the Scented Salamander: American perfumery is as varied as its landscape. One of its most notable traits is the fact that in spite of the presence of giant corporations like Coty or Estée Lauder, there exists a strong breed, I am tempted to say, of independent perfumers who appear by contrast even more like the necessary missing pieces of a vast puzzle. And without them, one could argue, American perfumery would be forgetting the flip side of anonymous efficiency, large-scale organization and big business, that is, originality, primitivism, naïveté, a sense of community, intimacy, individualism and let us not forget, the can-do attitude. If we only had the big labels, we would still have rivers of perfume, but...

MoonDance - an Evolutionary Style Perfume StarFlower - a Morphing Style Perfume I recently-launched StarFlower and MoonDance, two fragrances that were designed in two very different ways. There is a historic perfume style that is classic: evolution. Most traditional perfumery schools and textbooks teach that a perfume should evolve smoothly, transiting from top to base notes, with a heart that melds them together. My MoonDance perfume is blended in that manner, and as one reviewer wrote me privately "is very subtle in the changes." That is the exact effect I was looking for. The lovely, fragrant MoonFlower (not to be confused with MoonDance!) slowly unfolds in an evolution that is subtle and beautiful. The tiny bud slowly opens to reveal a larger version of itself, color intact, form barely changed over time. The pointed petal tips, arranged in a rounded, clock-like fashion, softly blend into the overall form of the fully-emerged flower. There is an innate, sophisticated b...

StarFlower Perfume and EdP Fragrances Launched by Anya's Garden Perfumes: An Homage to Mexican aromatics The tuberose flower has always captivated me. When nighttime comes, and the fragrance billows out into the night air, few can remain stoic in its presence. The alluring beauty of the strong, spicy scent can draw people to it like moths to a flame. A native of Mexico, the tuberose has spread across the world, thriving in many climates, from the tropics to the coldest termperate zones, so many know its beauty. In Mexico, they also know its flavor, because they have used it in sweet treats for recorded history. I first became aware of its use in ice cream from an 18th Century book Encarnación's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California, and further research showed its use in other sweet desserts. My perfume musings got me to thinking, well, let's see how it would pair with vanilla and chocolate, two other tasty and fragrant offerings from Mexico. All I can...

The dreamy, sensual image above is the chosen graphic for one of my two new perfumes, MoonDance . It's one of the few images I've used that aren't either a collage piece of art that I created or a photograph I took. I just fell in love with it when I saw it, and it snapped me right out of the mindset I was in, with rather literal images of people dancing under a full moon. I also believe that the image helps a person imagine the gossamer beauty of a perfume, wafting and swirling up off their skin, an item of delight - and don't we all need a little delight right now? As my friend Chris said "I refuse to participate in this recession." You might not be able to buy a new car, or you're worried about your job, but a recent article - or two or three - have pointed out that perfume and lipstick are two luxuries women refuse to give up when the economy tanks. I've decided to push back the launch of MoonDance, and it's accompanying launch partner, StarFlo...