"Everybody has some sense of what good food is. 
What many of us actually eat may not taste specifically good, may not be particularly good for us, and probably comes from a farm or factory we don't want to even imagine. But that's not because we don't know what we want. It's just that we always seem to end up eating something else."
(Jeff Crump - From Earth to Table, p. 1)

I could say the very same about perfume. How many times we know what a good perfume should smell like, but buy into the marketing schemes, or make a purchase because of the bottle alone? How many times it's the persona selling the perfume (a model, celebrity, or a brand-owner we find inspiring) that convinces us it's what we should wear? The power of suggestion is even more pronounced in the fragrance industry. Tell someone there is jasmine in their perfume, and they'll find something - anything - to remind them of what the gestalt of jasmine is in their minds.

While jasmine fits in beautifully into pretty much any composition, illuminating it with its aura and creative more space where before dense matter lay flat and barely breathing - adding anything TO jasmine in order to make it beautiful is almost as ridiculous and frustrating as putting makeup on a beautiful 4 year old girl.

The essence of Jasmine is a perfect thing. To add anything to it, or to take anything away, requires both vision and manipulative skill. How can you make it less indolic but not silence the animalic purr that is so prevalent in a good jasmine? How can you make it fruity and juicy, without being too sweet, cloying and cheap-smelling? How can you take something that is essentially perfect the way it is, and create a new fragrance from it, a jasmine statement unique to you as a composer?

I've spend the best part of July testing jasmine perfumes from all walks of life: the mainstream department store types, artisan and/or natural, niche, and even the synthetic cheapie varieties. It prove to be a far greater challenge to find a satisfying, convincing jasmine that truly brings forth the beauty of this raw material while respecting it. The ones that I've shortlisted boil down to a very short list, actually, and appear in alphabetical order below. It would be interesting to note, that the most intriguing of them are those which do not possess the ambition of being overtly jasmine, but at the same time do not shy away from using impressive dosage of this note.

Alba Botanica's Hawaiian Moisture Cream with Soothing Jasmine & Vitamin E  used to be my favourite face cream before Persephenie came up with much more wholesome formulations, and even better perfumed, such as her Rose Paka. I got to admit though: I've abandoned all face creams in favour of my own Elixir - a hand-blended face oil, that is made of nourishing noncomedogenic oils and smell wonderfully rosy and fruity. For this jasmine fest I've also experimented with formulating a jasmine-scented face oil, using avocado oil as the base, in hopes of a greater synergistic effect for sensitive skin. I'm yet to find the right balance of jasmine to the base oil, because there is a tendency of jasmine to get completely hidden in a fatty base. When making perfumes it's not a problem, because high concentration is fine. But in body and skincare products, no more than 1-2% at the very most is recommended, and even less is advisable for the face.

So this is where Jasmine & Vitamin E cream still holds its place as the go-to jasmine-scented moisturizer. It is beautifully scented, with just enough jasmine to give it that character, and a light, heady ylang ylang to support this tropical, intoxicating aroma while keeping its costs down. The texture is very light weight, so I would use it during the day mostly. I'm not too keen on the least of ingredients, though, which seems to have its main constituent as water, seconded by sunflower oil (which is nice enough, but not as rich as I'd like my face cream to be), and glycerin as the third ingredient. Glycerin is not the most moisturizing ingredient, actually. It's humectant, which means that it draws moisture out of the air and into your skin if humidity level is 65% or over. But in a dryer weather, under 65% humidity, what it would do is actually suck out the moisture out of your skin. So I would be careful about using glycerin-based products, depending on where you plan to use the product.

Other than that, it does have some list of beneficial extracts and oil, including both jasmine and chamomile, which are both good for sensitive skin, and various nourishing oils such as borage, sweet almond, jojoba, and of course vitamin E. It's hard to tell how much impact these ingredients would have, it really depends on their exact quantity and quality. But overall, this is a fun product to use, with a lightweight, fast-absorbing texture, and a lovely scent. And you all know that I'm a sucker for the latter.

Ingredients (as appears on the packaging and on Alba Botanica's website):
Aqua (Water), Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Oil (1), Glycerin, Glyceryl Stearate, Octyl Palmitate , Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice (1), Cetyl Alcohol , Glyceryl Laurate , Tocopheryl Acetate , Aleurites Moluccana Seed Oil, Borago Officinalis Seed Oil (1), Macadamia Ternifolia Seed Oil , Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil (1), Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil (1), Carica Papaya (Papaya) Fruit Extract, Centella Asiatica Extract , Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract, Jasminum Officinale (Jasmine) Extract , Zingiber Officinale (Ginger) Root Extract , Allantoin , Dimethicone , Panthenol , Stearic Acid, Tocopherol , Tromethamine , Xanthan Gum, Ethylhexylglycerin, Phenoxyethanol, Amyl Cinnamal, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Salicylate, Butylphenyl Methylpropional, Eugenol, Geraniol, Hydroxycitronellal, Hexyl Cinnamal, Hydroxyisohexyl 3-Cyclohexene Carboxaldehyde, Linalool , Fragrance (Parfum)

In celebration of jasmine this month, I'd like to mention Carol Priest's Jasmine Flower Toner. I can no longer find it in town, but when I did I truly enjoyed a more light handed experience of jasmine on my face.

Jasmine offers some wonderful properties for the skin. It is particularly recommended for sensitive skin, so enjoying it in this light and safe quantity (this is not a true hydrofoil, but rather jasmine absolute emulsified into distilled water, with the aid of alcohol and carprylyl/capryl glucoside). This ingredient is vegetable-derived and has surfactant, solubalizing and cleansing properties.

Ingredients: Distilled Water (Aqua), Alcohol, Caprylyl/Capryl Glucoside, Jasminum Officinale (Jasmine) Oil.