Henry Dunay designs jewelry, very chi-chi expensive jewelry. He’s won numerous awards for his work, and his pieces are sold all over the world. When he decided to introduce a fragrance under his name, he looked no further than his brother, Richard Loniewski, to help him create it. Mr. Loniewski’s firm has a lengthy portfolio of fragrances they’ve worked upon, which are quite helpfully listed on his company’s website, along with a brief bio of him.
This Sunday found me donning Dunay’s eau de parfum Sabi before I charged out the door, late as usual, to meet with my brother for a birthday breakfast (his, not mine) at the Kennedy School. The Kennedy School is a decommissioned school campus, refurbished by Oregon’s infamous McMenamin brothers as a sort of pub restaurant, community center, movie theater, and bar.
The whole half-hour drive there found me wondering what the appeal of the scent was. The opening is, well, it’s not terrible, but it’s not $110 good either. I smelled mostly “jasmine” on the top, the sort of “jasmine” that Sephora used to sell in $3 soliflor purse sprays. The top also has a strong green chypre tang to it, which was nice, but nothing that blew me away. Oh well, I told myself, I’m stuck with it now.
I arrived, sat down with everyone, and temporarily forgot all about the Sabi I was wearing, because the food and the table chatter began in earnest. When I got up to walk down the school’s corridors later, I noticed the most wonderful smell. It was heavenly, like a gauzy floral apparition, with rich old antique wood aromas floating through my nose. It took me forever to figure out that wonderful smell was ME! I could not believe the sillage it gave off, and I only used a single spray of Sabi on my skin.
I kept walking around to look at the fun art and folk art hung on the walls in the hallways, partly just so I could keep enjoying my own sillage. The opening may have left me underwhelmed, but that dry down is divine.
The notes I noticed most in Sabi were (besides the jasmine) rose, green floral stems, and oakmoss, and in the sillage I also perceived hyacinth, lily, the aforementioned rich wood, and a soft vanillic lilt that seems indirect to me. If you’re a big fan of gracefully gliding floral fragrances, especially floral chypres, I’d say it’s worth checking out for the spring/summer season. If you’re not, well, this is not going to be your cup of tea. Insofar I as I know, Sabi is sold only via Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, and I haven’t seen it on any of the online discount sites at all.
Updated list of participants in the upcoming Mother’s Day Benevolent Blogging event: (More to come, I’m still busy compiling the list, but I will update soon!)
Kristen, who writes Beauty Addict is a confessed makeup junkie, whose site is likewise addictive. Without fail, Kristen delivers the skinny on everything that’s bound to pretty you up, with product reviews covering makeup (of course!), fragrance, hair care, skin care, good reads, and bath and body products. Please don’t miss her “Silly Celebrity Makeup of the Week” features, which never fails to amuse me to an inordinate degree. Beauty Addict will be donating a dollar to Orphan Foundation of America for every comment made on her blog post on Mother’s Day.
Scenteur 7 is the brainchild of Marlen, who many of you may have already have been familiar with before he fired up his blog because he also writes scrumptious columns for Basenotes and reviews for Now Smell This. His site details his impressions of everything that smells with his razor-sharp humor and wit. His features on great deals on great scents is terribly helpful, and you really oughtn’t miss his posts that dredge up old (and usually quite funny) perfume ads from the past. Marlen will be donating $1 to Orphan Foundation of America for every comment left on his blog between May 10th and May 15th.
Image of Dunay Sabi Turtle pins from instoremag.com