This may arguably be the finest perfume launch of the year, and one that houses several blends, and contains so many stories and sources. Gorilla Perfumes by Lush Cosmetics will transport you into orchards, rose gardens, moorish customs laced with tales from druids, and make you reminiscence a very sexy French dance move called Tuca Tuca (popularized by the band Pink Martini).

The New York fragrance preview was held in an old Tribeca art gallery, and each room was transformed to evoke a sense of time and place. There was a dance floor for the Tuca Tuca, naturally; a room evoking thunder, lightning and the aftermath of rain for one of my favorite perfumes, Smell of Weather Turning. Unfortunately, we cannot even locate this perfume on Lush’s web site, so we’re hoping it will make its way into the collection.

Here are some of our favorites, and almost all of them are in the Limited Edition Set:

Tuca Tuca: Violet accord, with notes of vanilla, ylang, ylang, vetiver gives you an incredible sexy scent.

Smell of Weather Turning: houses notes of peppermint, bay oil, roman chamomile; it’s an incredibly comforting scent.

Imogen Rose: was created for Simon Constantine’s baby girl; this blend contains notes of Damascus rose.

Orange Blossom: blend of orange, neroli, bergamot; so good you could almost drink it.

The other fragrances in this set include Scent of Freedom (spicy), Earthy Karma, and sexy Lust.

You can try all these perfumes in the Limited Edition trial set found here (does not include Smell of Weather Turning). We think it’s a steal at $12.00.

We also interviewed Mark and Simon Constantine to get a sense of inspiration for their perfumes.

Q: Why is it called Gorilla Perfumes?

A: An article on Basenotes.net published about our perfumery was titled “The Guerilla Perfumers: An Interview With Mark and Simon Constantine”

We took this as a working title as we were putting the project together. In one of our meetings I stepped out the room and by the time I came back they had decided that Dad may be Guerilla but I was more ‘Gorilla’ so the name stuck.

Q: What inspires you to come up with the creations?

A: Anything. This is our first time attempting an ‘album’ of scents. So clearly music has inspired us a lot and we use music to keep us inspired in the labs.

For me I also find travel and experiencing where the ingredients come from helps educate me and inspire me. On this project we had some very different inspirations from Dad’s hairdressing past to the birth of my baby daughter.

Q: How do you start a beginning of a fragrance?

A: It’s quite cerebral, for me I begin with a rough concept, say an orange flower/neroli perfume. Because I visited many areas that the material comes from (Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt…) I then try to set the material (orange flower absolute and neroli) against complimentary materials and build a full perfume. That probably follows a more logical traditional path. Whereas in the smell of freedom I took the three portraits and used materials I knew came from the regions or had some resonance with the subject.

We cannot endorse this collection of perfumes enough (without sounding like we got paid by the company to do so). If you have a nose for the new, then splurge away. They are truly worth it.

– Charu Suri & Diane Artzberger

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