Pacifica

If you love the smell of holidays, then look a bit further at the Pacifica range which so cleverly taps into the scent of good times, hot, sunny days and exotic flora. The range is huge in the States and relatively unknown here but it’s really beautiful. With gorgeously tempting smells such as Tahitian Gardenia, Brazilian, Mango & Grapefruit and Waikiki Pikaka, they just send you straight away to sun cream, cocktails and blue skies. Pacifica does a great job of tapping into the feel-good part of the brain with scent which triggers happy feelings; they use coconut quite a lot so there’s an instant exotic connection. They’re also beautifully packaged in bright, cheering colours. Find a selection in the UK at http://www.planetorganic.com/catalogsearch/result/index/?p=2&q=pacifica
Pacifica is made without parabens, phthalates, mineral oil, peanut oil and artificial colours.

I’ve also noticed that there is a really heft whack of vanilla in a lot of fragrances I’m smelling at the moment.. in fact, it’s quite hard to get scents that don’t slug in a dose of vanilla. For someone who can only tolerate that smell in very small quantities, it’s a bit of a fragrance nightmare. But of course, if you want a perfume to be a best-seller, a shot of vanilla is a good place to start. It’s a fragrance that is all about good things… your mum’s baking, sweeties, biscuits, childhood birthday cake; moving on from that, being nurtured, treated and loved. These olfactory markers are imprinted on your brain from day one so thereafter, if you have a good association with a smell, your brain instantly recalls it at any time subsequently and says, yes, this is GOOD! So, for a mass fragrancer to go without any vanilla at all to tap those embedded sensations is a bit of a risk. Which is why everything has it. Simples.