BLOOD-INSPIRED FRAGRANCES

For years, blood has played a supporting role: as an eat-right diet to get us back into our skinny jeans, as the gross-out factor in horror movies and today’s endless vampire-loving culture, and as an educational game that actually won a Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Then along comes the mega-songstress and provocateur Lady Gaga and Italian perfumer Blood Concept and a new benchmark gets set overnight.

Lady Gaga caused an early sensation for her just-launched Fame spritz, by saying that it would contain elements of her own blood. Not that in the end, it does, but the perfume does illustrate a burgeoning trend to deep, dark spritzes and a growing interest in mineral and metallic notes.

“These scents are raw, deep and intense,” says Antonio Zuddas, co-creator of Blood Concept, a company with a collection of fragrances named for the human population’s different blood types, A, AB, B and O. “We wanted a new language and a different approach in making scents, like, as if they came from inside of us—something carnal and visceral.”

Whether the sacrificial note added to each perfume is, indeed, the real deal or a synthetic version, these blood-oriented fragrances are not only gender-free, they’re upping the style ante and (pun intended) worth every last drop.
—Adriana Ermter

PHOTO: ADRIAN ARMSTRONG; BOTTLE: TEATRO VERDE

Blood Concepts, A, AB, B, O, www.bloodconcept.com

Lady Gaga Fame EDP, $59 (100 ml), coty.com, shoppersdrugmart.ca, Sephora.ca, thebay.ca