Baruti Perfumes and Colognes

Top 7 Perfume Discovery Sets – Holiday Gift Ideas 2018

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I absolutely love perfume discovery sets and selected 7 fabulous sets from independent perfume houses for you. These sampler sets are great to try new fragrances and make excellent gifts as well. Here we go, the sets I selected are from Gallivant, Baruti, Tauer Perfumes, Sylvaine Delacourte, Etat Libre d’Orange, NOT Perfumes and Pierre Guillaume Paris. They are all available online.

1. Gallivant Nomad Discovery Sampler Set: Gallivant was founded by former L’Artisan Parfumeur creative director Nick Steward. Gallivant has 6 fragrances at the moment all based on different cities around the world, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brooklyn, Istanbul and Telviv. The 6 sample set is sold out at the moment but there is still a smaller one available with 4 samples for 18 pounds. Postage is free in December 2018. All sprays are 2 mls.

2. Baruti Baruti was created by Amsterdam based Greek perfumer Spyros Drosopoulos. You will not find these fragrances easily anywhere else. They make an excellent gift for those who want to try something different perfume wise. I sampled his fragrances many years ago when Spyros just started and tried his newest creations at The Perfume Lounge in Amsterdam. This discovery set is only available online with 8 samples of the whole Baruti collection. All spray samples are 1 ml. Price: 30 euro

3. Tauer Perfumes Tauer Perfumes was created by Zurich based Andy Tauer. His samples are stored in small beautiful metal boxes like the box on the photograph. These boxes are still one of my favorites to store samples. You are free to choose from his whole collection and create your own Discovery Set. Andy Tauer has some recommendations on his website which is fabulous if you are new to his fragrances and do not know which one to choose. All spray samples are 1,5 mls. Price: 27,50 euro including shipping.

4.  Sylvaine Delacourte, Sylvaine Delacourte worked for Guerlain 15 years and started her own perfume house several years ago. At this moment she has 2 collections based on perfume notes, Vanilla and Musc. She just introduced some wonderful scented candles inspired by the different seasons of the year. Both the Vanilla and Musc set are lovely and affordable sets with 5 samples each for 4 euro including postage. I tried the Musc sampler set and just received the Vanilla box. This is an excellent deal. All sprays are 1,5  ml. Price: 4 euro per set including shipping

5. Etat Libre d’Orange (ELDO) This French niche brand has several sampler sets in its collection. One set for its whole collection and 2 different sets stored in fabulous metal boxes with their 7 classics or modern classics. All are available through their website. The metal boxes are 20 euro for 7 samples with 2 mls. The complete collection set has 22 samples with 1,5 to 2 mls and its price is 39 euro. Isn’t this metal box beautiful?

6. NOT Perfumes. This brand new Swedish brand recently launched with 5 creations. It’s creator and perfumer Johanna Venables made original fragrances with very outspoken Nordic visuals. The complete sampler set is 25 euro excluding postage. The samples are 0,5 ml extraits and the sampler set is only available online. I haven’t tried them yet but very much look forward to experience her poetic fragrances as they look and sound very unique.

7. Pierre Guillaume Paris  If you are not on a budget, French perfumer Pierre Guillaume just launched his whole perfume collection as a sampler set called Integral Box 64. All 64 creations are stored together in a beautiful black box for 146 euro excluding shipping. It’s available online but check your local perfume store as well if you live close to a perfume shop which sells his creations.

Concluding: The perfume sampler sets I selected this year are from the following perfume houses: Gallivant, Baruti, Tauer Perfumes, Sylvaine Delacourte, Etat Libre d’Orange, NOT Perfumes and Pierre Guillaume Paris. Did you like one? Are you interested in one of these as gifts?

If you want some more inspiration for sampler sets, please visit my previous Discovery Sets posts here: Discovery sets 2017, Holiday sets 2016 and Fragrant Holiday Gifts 2014.

You can find the direct links to the sampler sets in this article by clicking on their names:

Gallivant, Baruti, Tauer Perfumes, Sylvaine Delacourte, Etat Libre d’Orange (ELDO), NOT Perfumes and Pierre Guillaume Paris.

Disclosure: Except for the photographs of the Sylvaine Delacourte and Tauer sets all photographs were taken from the official websites. The photograph for the NOT perfumes sampler set was made by Joaquim Suñe from Lost Branch Leather and kindly provided for this post. This article was not sponsored and does not include affiliated links.

(Side note: please check before ordering if postage is included to your own country, I live in The Netherlands)

The Perfume: Play The Future Of The Navy District Of Amsterdam

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About a month ago I visited cultural institute Mediamatic in Amsterdam to play an interactive perfume game. The game was organized by Mediamatic in collaboration with The Institute Art and Olfaction and Play The City.

Five fragrances had been created to represent different future options for an area used by the navy (Marine Terrein) in Amsterdam since 1655. A large part of this area was intended to be developed for other purposes than its original naval buildings.

The idea of the interactive perfume game was to smell 5 different fragrances through a vase (as on the photograph), choose a favorite, get a sticker with your choice and then look for 3 to 5 other visitors with the same sticker, to continue at the table of your chosen fragrance and get a decanted sample. Each perfume represented a different future for this naval area. A great and creative way to think about the future of your city. Every detail was beautifully executed from spray samples, vase to stickers as you can well see.

The 5 different future scenarios for the Naval Area were:

Scenario 1. Navy: Let the Navy stay in this area

Fragrance : White Military Marina

created by perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri

The first scenario was: Let the navy stay at this area. The perfume had elements of machines, green, canals, hygiene and humus to represent mechanical, natural and human parts of this area.

Perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri well known for his perfume house Nasomatto, lives in the centre of Amsterdam near the canals so he was a good choice to develop this fragrance. His creation scented of canals, manly sweat and iron. I used to live near a canal in Amsterdam in a student house and still remember the fresh and slightly salty smell of water, very well captured in this fragrance.

Scenario 2. Party Zone: Let’s have a party in this new hotspot

Fragrance : Love & Tonic

Created by perfumer Ricardo Moya

The second scenario was: Create a place for people to party outside. This perfume was my personal choice and created with gin and tonic in mind. It had elements of gin + tonic, love, dance, sunshine and flowers and scented slightly as a perfume people could wear to such a party. A light, happy and young scent.

Scenario 3. Luxury Apartments: create the home of your Dreams

Fragrance: Filtered Beans

Created by artist Niklaus Mettler

The idea was that coffee in a neighbourhood says a lot about the people who live in this area. The fragrance was created by tincturing 3 different kinds of coffee representing different groups living in Amsterdam. The classic Dutch coffee Douwe Egberts Rood Merk, Coffee from Ethiopia and Turkish coffee were mixed and left for 10 days in liquid (alcohol and dpg).  The idea was nicer than its scent. Not very surprisingly it smelled of coffee mixed with water.

Scenario 4. Create a place for social enterprises with refugees

Fragrance: Dew of Afghanistan

Created by Maki Ueda

Japanese Artist Maki Ueda was inspired by an Afghan woman she meet at a civic integration course. Maki Ueda used ingredients (I presume the rose) from Afghanistan bought from women trying to make a living in this country. For this fragrance she used rose, orange blossom and labdanum. I liked the scent of this uncomplicated light Rose and Orange Blossom fragrance as well. It could be worn as a skin scent.

Scenario 5. Create a place for sport, recreation and play

Fragrance: Splash! 

Created by Spyros Drosopoulos (Baruti perfumes and colognes)

Splash! was created as a joyful fragrance starting with water, grass and fresh air. As soon as the picnic starts a scent of prosecco wine mixes with sun tan and sweat. This scent smelled of grass, wet soil, joyfully fruity and slightly sweaty. Spyros Drosopoulos lives in Amsterdam as well and I can imagine he is familiar with the scent of having a pick nick in a local park.

The formula of three fragrances were published online as open source Filtered Beans, Dew of Afghanistan and Splash!.  I was given a sample of all fragrances to further try at home and be able to write about it.

The Dutch ministry of Defense quite unexpected decided  in the beginning of July 2018 to keep this area for their own purposes so option 1 the Navy staying was chosen. It’s rather unclear what is going to happen in the future with this area.

I like this playful way of making a decision for an area of Amsterdam although my choice was more inspired by the fragrance itself than the given options. Option 2 was my favorite scent representing Create a Party Zone but I would have chosen option 5 a place for recreation and play to benefit all inhabitants or option 3 apartments for people to live in, but not necessarily luxury ones. I thought the fragrances made by  Spyros Drosopoulos and Alessandro Gualtieri were quite interesting when I scented them more at ease at home on a blotter.

The way this project was executed was amazing, the vases to smell the perfumes at the beginning, the sprays which were given and the stickers were all very well prepared.

All fragrances can now be scented at Mediamatic as a permanent exhibition in Amsterdam. You can find more information here.

Disclosure: I was not given any compensation for writing this article. All photographs were made by Esperessence and my fiance.