Dancehall artiste Ce'Cile with her favourite cosmetics at Kings House Ave. recently.
PERFUME IS the ultimate sensory experience, calling up emotions and forgotten memories. Scenting your clothes, as well as your bed linens, with delicate floral fragrances is a wonderful way to surround yourself with uplifting, natural scents all the time.
Perfumes are Jamaican dancehall artiste Ce'Cile's trade secret and weakness. She uses the scents on every surface on her body, making use of scented hair sprays, skin creams, deodorants and perfumes. Ce'Cile loves to buy colognes in the airport while travelling and she has picked up such favourites as Elizabeth Arden's Green Tea.
"Never let me be delayed in an airport where they sell colognes and perfumes. My money will be gone."
On stage she wears Lâncôme's 'Attraction for a confidence boost.' She notes, "If you go into a club (to perform), you do not want to leave smelling of smoke." To combat this kind of performance fatigue, her favourite weapon is 'Angel' by Thiery Mugler which includes the cologne, deodorant, lotion and hairspray. The set sells for US$90.
Researchers note that the thought of pleasant fragrances may be enough to make us a bit more cheerful, but the actual smell can have dramatic effects in improving our mood and sense of well-being.
Although olfactory sensitivity generally declines with age, pleasant fragrances have been found to have positive effects on mood in all age groups.
The positive emotional effects of pleasant fragrances also affect our perceptions of other people. In experiments, subjects exposed to pleasant fragrances tend to give higher attractiveness ratings to people in photographs.
In one study, the presence of an unpleasant odour led subjects not only to give lower ratings to photographed individuals, but also to judge paintings as less professional.
The mood-improving effects of pleasant smells may not always work to our advantage: by enhancing our positive perceptions and emotions, pleasant scents can cloud our judgement.
Ce'Cile says she loves Nivea products to which she has become quite addicted.
Nivea, the smooth-skinned chanter says, is absolutely the best skin lotion. "It's really like milk for the skin." She also likes Nivea lip-glosses, moisturisers and deodorant.
Great finds for her, the performer notes, have included Givenchy's 'Hot' which she bought on sale once at a London airport.
Other finds were Naomi Campbell's 'Always' and 'Curio' (Britney Spears). Dunhill Desire, Moschino's 'Couture' an eau de toilette and J-lo's 'Glo', as well as Versace's 'Woman' are also favourites. Her favourites, she admits, often have beautifully shaped bottles as well as a heavenly scent.
She also loves Deauville, a scent which she has only been able to find in Trinidad. Versace's Jeans series (Blue and Red) have also caused her to dig deep in her pockets.
Dates, she says, will find her wearing 'Angel' or Givenchy's 'Hot'. The absolutely sexiest perfume, she says, is 'Obsession'. "It is almost like an aphrodisiac. I have bought the whole line hair spray, deodorant and cologne."
Users should apply fragrance where the skin is the warmest the wrists, collarbone, between the breasts, in the crook of the elbows, behind your knees, on your inner thighs, and around the ankles.
Scented body creams contain around eight per cent aromatic oils, and lotions have three to five per cent. But, because of their thick cream or lotion base, the scent will linger all over in its more concentrated form for several hours and can still be smelled faintly on the body up to 24 hours later.
Don't apply fragrance behind the ears, advises cosmetic maker Dove there are too many sebaceous glands in the area that can affect the way a perfume smells.
The best way to make your fragrance linger all day is to layer your scents. Indulge in a foaming scented bubble bath and use the complementary scented soap, the matching body lotion and follow up with a spritz or dab of your chosen scent. Your skin will absorb the fragrance molecules over the complete surface of your body.
Partial sources: Source: www.
ivillage.com and www.sirc.or
