Heading for the Holistic
Much has been made in fashion recently about how, as we approach the millennium, we’re turning back to the familiar luscious cashmeres, warm wools and comfy cottons. We’re also turning to more natural, less heady fragrances and scents.
At least that’s the theory of Arcona Devon, one of Southern California’s pioneers in holistic beauty treatments. “Most perfumes, even expensive ones, have chemical fixatives which adhere to elevators and clothing.” She believes naturally scented oils are the best alternatives because these fragrances stay on the body and uplift the people wearing them. But they don’t last as long as traditional fragrances.
So her Arcona Studio in the Valley Village area of Los Angeles, which makes Mythic Tribe skin care products, has launched a line of oil scents called the Seven Sensual Sacraments. With names like Pillow Dance, Trance and Primal Innocence, and with natural scents of freesia, wisteria and cassis. The company claims its products will help soothe the body and mind of those with broken hearts, depression, even PMS. Each scent costs $85.
A few other cosmetics companies are planning to introduce scented oils, rather than traditional perfumes. Analysts expect sales of incense and fragrant woods to rise faster than those of spray bottles of colognes.
Ocelots Like It an Awful Lot: Grrrr, men’s cologne isn’t just for humans anymore. Dallas Zoo researchers looking for ways to encourage breeding among endangered ocelots found that Calvin Klein Obsession for Men cologne drives female cats wild.
Four female ocelots living in captivity reacted more powerfully to the cologne than to natural tantalizing aphrodisiac odors such as rat feces and ocelot scents in a project aimed at using smells to guide ocelots to each other in the wild, said Dallas Zoo research curator Cynthia Bennett in wire service reports.
“On a lark my research technician brought in cologne because a lot of other animals like it and we put Obsession out and our ocelots went wild over it,” said Bennett.
The cats reacted by rolling and rubbing themselves against the spot where the scent was applied in a response much like domestic cats show to catnip.
About 100 to 120 of the Texas subspecies of ocelot are left in the wild, living in scattered habitats, said Bennett. The zoo’s research aims to find a way to guide them together along scent corridors so they can breed more easily and often.
Zoo researchers have contacted the Calvin Klein Cosmetics Co., a unit of Unilever, about the findings, Bennett said. “They thought it was cute. I think they were grateful we weren’t trying it on vultures.”
New Uses for Scents: It seems that humans are turning up their noses at many fragrances. The number of bottles of prestige fragrances sold in the United States have been dropping 2% to 4% annually, according to the trade publication Advertising Age. The Canadian city of Halifax has gone so far as to outlaw wearing heavy perfumes in public places and schools.
But other uses are being found for fragrances and scents. The subways of Paris are being sprayed with a perfume combination of musk and citrus. Heathrow Airport in London is awash in the scent of newly mowed grass. Even Las Vegas hotels are spiffing up their lobbies with theme fragrances such as rain forest.
Two More Stores: Sephora, the French cosmetics retail chain famous for carrying thousands of cosmetics and skin care lines, as well as its own products, will open two more stores in Southern California. A Sephora store will open at Sherman Oaks Fashion Square on Aug. 20 and in Thousand Oaks on Aug. 27.
The first East Coast store was opened in Costa Mesa last year and business has been booming since, says store manager Jeanie Olivar. The two new stores will look just like the 5,000-square-foot store in Costa Mesa, but Olivar says each store carries a few different products. The chain carries such lines as Nars, Hard Candy and Stila, as well as its own line, which includes 365 shades of lipstick.
Barbara Thomas can be reached through e-mail at barbara.thomas@latimes.com.
