Stéphanie de Saint-Aignan Royal Palm: Tripadvisor In A Bottle

Since the advent of the Internet, there has been a growing trend away from using travel agents in favour of booking flights and hotels independently, a trend which Mr Bonkers and I have also followed to organise our holidays. Or - to be precise - which I have followed, since I am the designated "researcher" in our household. My favourite websites for planning work trip and holiday accommodation are Hotels.com. Booking.com, Trivago and perhaps the granddaddy of them all, Tripadvisor...

I have singled out Tripadvisor in the title of this post on account of its widely varying and often harsh critiques. I always use its reviews in conjunction with information from other sites, because if you relied on Tripadvisor alone, you would only feel confident booking a luxury five star hotel costing upwards of $1000 a night. And you still might be disappointed.

That said, the Royal Palm Hotel in Mauritius gets a rating of 89% out of a possible 100 on Tripadvisor, is ranked No 1 out of 24 hotels on the island, and gets uniformly rave reviews. I have just checked the rates and they are 395 to 980 euros per person per night, depending on the time of year. Sounds like a pretty safe bet if I had that kind of money.

And for a much smaller outlay there is Royal Palm, the hotel's "signature scent" insofar as a building can be said to have such a thing. The perfumer Stéphanie de Saint-Aignan worked for two years with Jacques Silvant, the General Manager of this luxury hotel on the Indian Ocean, to capture the scents of Mauritius in a bottle. The note listing from Luckyscent is as follows:

Grapefruit, jasmine, iris, cardamom, cinnamon, pink pepper, black pepper, clove, vetiver, cedar wood, leather and incense

Speaking to the Mauritius Tourist Office, Stéphanie de Saint-Aignan explained: "We were agreed that we wanted to create a scent that was both very fresh and very grounded, appealing equally to men and women, and which took its inspiration from the island's fruits, spices and precious woods." (my translation)

On first application I get a strong burst of spices - I can detect non-colour-specific pepper, cinnamon and clove, though not cardamom - and any grapefruit notes are lost in this feisty opening salvo. Throughout its development, Royal Palm remains sheer, green and softly spicy. Right off the bat it reminded me of Parfums 01630 Lentisque, with which it shares three notes: jasmine, iris and vetiver. And while there appears to be less overlap compositionally with PG Papyrus de Ciane, Royal Palm smells like a much more wearable and accessible interpretation of that same green/resinous style.

I came to hear about this scent via lovethescents, and no sooner had she tipped me off about it when I coincidentally received a sample as a swap extra.
Strangely, I can't find a single review of Royal Palm on any of the perfume blogs - I say "strangely", because it seems deserving of greater accolades.

And while the Royal Palm Hotel gets a very high rating on Tripadvisor, my own hastily assembled team of reviewers, namely Mr Bonkers and his mother, were less forthcoming in their praise of its eponymous perfume - and in that respect more typical of contributors to the site. The three of us were about to set off on a day trip to Bath, and I thought Royal Palm would be a refined choice of SOTD for such an elegant city.

"What on earth is this?!" inquired Mr Bonkers tetchily, after I had pressed him into giving my wrist a hasty sniff.

"It's the signature scent of a five star hotel in Mauritius."

"Huh", he replied, "Smells more like the bins on a caravan site in Rhyl."

Mr Bonkers's mother reluctantly applied her nose to the same spot.

"Sweatshop", she remarked, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "Sweatshop in Asia somewhere - you know - where they make T-shirts for a pittance."

Goodness - I didn't see any of that coming. Maybe she could smell the cardamom that I couldn't? Does cardamom + vetiver = sweat?

Undeterred by this slew of criticism, I dabbed on a bit more Royal Palm. This may be the closest I get to a holiday this year. Mrs Bonkers Senior meanwhile had applied a generous swoosh of Burberry Women, and Mr Bonkers was his usual scentless self. Looking back, I should have left some more space for the scent testing opportunities that lay ahead...


Photos of Royal Palm Hotel from free2.co.uk and questtravel.com, photo of Stéphanie de Saint-Aignan from ilemaurice-tourism.info, photo of spices from flickr.

Label.M Professional Haircare: The Seaside In A Soufflé

I am a little behind with my usual blogging schedule, on account of what has been - in my semi-hermit terms, at least - an unusually sociable week. This also prompted a visit to the hairdresser yesterday, where once again the stylist made a surprisingly small number of judicious snips, before transforming my skull cap of fine, flat, lifeless hair into a tousled, textured, artfully dishevelled mane. As though I had spent all day romping in bed. Or as Mr Bonkers' mother might observe, as if I had been dragged through a hedge backwards. To which I would reply that this look is in fact achieved by walking frontways and voluntarily through a hedge, negotiating the tangled thicket with the confidence and panache of a certified arborist.

And in my case, the look lasted for a full 30 minutes after I left the salon. We might have stretched to three quarters of an hour had it not been so jolly windy.

And as anyone attending a 21st century hair salon knows (which excludes Mr Bonkers, who still favours a £9 cut from the barber's round the corner), these sassy, fashion looks are achieved with something known monolithically as "product". Yes, the term "product" encompasses the full armoury at a stylist's disposal, from styling mousse to gel to putty, and from light hold hairsprays to shimmer mists - to name but a few of the many arcane unguents that are now essential in modern hairdressery.

In my own case, the stylist achieved this volumising effect using Label.m soufflé just before he blow dried my hair.

A reviewer on Amazon perfectly sums up the head-enhancing benefits of this product:

"My hair can be very flat and...it gives it a proper little bouffanty look."

I am particularly partial to the scent of this soufflé, as it reminds me vividly of the salty smell of the seaside. On the side of the pot, we learn a little about the ingredients:

"Re-invent the curl with this uber nourishing, protective mix of avocado, Barbados cherry and olive, which creates loose, glossy waves or instant volume."

I am reassured to learn that Label.m also contains this "Enviroshield Complex". If routine applications of a white gunk eliminate the need for tedious domestic recycling initiatives, I'd consider it well worth the £11 odd price tag. I often cut myself while washing out tin cans, for example.

On reflection, it is curious that this product makes me think of the seaside, when its chief ingredients are avocado, cherry and olive. That places it somewhere between an English - or, indeed, a Barbadian - orchard, an Italian hillside and various parts of the Americas. On the website of the California Rare Fruit Growers organisation I found this interesting titbit on the habitat of the avocado:

"Avocados will grow in shade and between buildings, but are productive only in full sun. The roots are highly competitive and will choke out nearby plants. The shade under the trees is too dense to garden under, and the constant litter can be annoying."

Golly! On the face of it then, this does not come across as a beach dwelling kind of cultivar, but I also note that avocados account for 57% of Hawaii's agricultural output, and Hawaii is definitely noted for its beaches. So, you know, the jury may still be out. If anyone has recently been on holiday to California, Mexico or Hawaii, and recalls fronds from avocado trees hanging over their sun lounger, or even extreme cases of being nutted by the whole fruit, please do leave a comment.

Anyway, this apparently surprising choice of avocado in a haircare product for its maritime connotations got me thinking about how perfumes known to be associated with the sea and/or coastal scenery achieve a similar effect.
First up was MILLER HARRIS - FLEURS DE SEL:

Notes - rosemary, thyme, clary sage, angelica, iris, rose, narcissus, leather, amber, oakmoss and vetiver.

This is very piquant and aromatic and an excellent rendition of the wild grasses in the sand dunes behind the beach. It is grainy in texture and a bit salty too, as though someone had gone for a swim and then rolled around immediately afterwards in a carpet of marram grass, sea rocket, holly and spurge. Maybe even the odd sprig of mouse ear hawkweed.

So notwithstanding its strongly vegetal focus, I think FdS is a very successful olfactory interpretation of the Breton coast which was its inspiration.

Next up was THE DIFFERENT COMPANY - SEL DE VETIVER

Notes - grapefruit, cardamom, Haitian vetiver, patchouli, iris, ylang ylang.

There is a slightly salty tang to this one, but my overriding impression is of the grapefruit and vetiver, so I am not feeling the seaside so much with this one, nice as it is (or might be on a man).

And lastly, I tested CREATIVE UNIVERSE BY BETH TERRY - MARE

Notes - sea salt, avocado and ginger lily.

Well, well, well. The Italian? for "sea" in the name, and both sea salt AND....drum roll....none other than our pear-shaped fruity friend the avocado! in the fragrance.

So there clearly IS an established association between the sea and the avocado, even if it is not immediately apparent to me. Mare smells quite strange to begin with - there is a disagreeable, almost off note to the fore, "off" in the sense of "dead" - it is very hard to explain.

Had the avocado gone all brown and stringy, one wonders? Like bananas, it is one of those fruits with a subliminally short "optimum consumption window". Blink and it is soft and manky. And so Mare smelled at the start. It is a lot better now, more in line with Fleurs de Sel, but with less of the herbal / aromatic stuff going on. Which is most of FdS, in fairness.

So that was all rather interesting (to me, anyway). I also learnt in the course of my research that "avocado" is derived from the Aztec word for a testicle. And thinking about it, I may have put my finger on yet another salty connection, but on balance I don't think I'll go there...