Apparently, the best skincare in the world comes from nature itself. Surprising, since surely everything comes from nature in one way or another, but there’s a fine art in discovering the substances both effective and mild enough to improve skin. Aveeno have spent the past sixty years in the lab testing out everything they found in the woods, combining it with everything else, and working out the very finest elixirs known to humanity, and today they seem to have worked out more or less exactly what you need to revitalise your body.

Check out our Aveeno range of moisturising creams and bath oils, now at reduced prices at fragrancemad.com.

A great British success story, Paul Smith was born in Nottinghamshire in 1946, and although he left school at 15 to work in a fashion warehouse, his sole passion in life was cycling. Unfortunately, a bad accident left him hospitalised for six months and destroyed his hopes of becoming the old Bradley Wiggins, so instead he turned to his day job for inspiration and began to design, attracting the attention of the warehouse boss, who put him in charge of ordering menswear at the tender age of seventeen.

By 1970, he had saved enough to invest in his own boutique, Paul Smith Vêtement Pour Homme, on a shady back alley in Nottingham. The shop was apparently heavily perfumed to overpower the smell of Smith’s dog, and sounds utterly charming. The boutique began selling prestige clothes usually only available inside London, along with Smith’s own designs that he would lease out for production to local factories. After a few years of steady growth, Smith moved from the back alleys to the main street of Nottingham, before buying a disused bakery in the then rundown area of Covent Garden to convert into his first London store. Smith’s love of the simple and classic British design led to him becoming one of the nation’s most prominent designers, and his style has since become popular throughout the world, with stores thriving in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Bangalore, amongst other places.

Smith has also become a major player in the UK fragrance market with much the same philosophy: simple, uncluttered notes making for classic scents that turn heads. Paul Smith Men is a daring men’s fragrance with top notes of bergamot, Brazilian orange, lavender, basil, and cardamom; a heart of fig, violet leaves, hyacinth, and geranium; and base notes of oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, and biomusk. Its counterpoint, Paul Smith Women, is a floral Eau de Parfum, vivid and woody with a combination of bergamot and clementine, blackcurrant, green pear and a hint of pink peppercorns. Both are stunning in their design and scent, and both are available now at super prices from your local Fragrance Mad website.

Paco Rabanne was born in the Basque in 1934, but fled Spain with his mother when Civil War broke out, relocating to France. After studying as an architect he moved into the fashion world in the 1960s, creating jewellery for Givenchy and Dior, before starting his own fashion house. He became known for his unconventional style, using materials such as paper, metal, and plastics, to form his flamboyant designs.

Today, the Paco Rabanne fragrance brand is one of the world’s best known, and the collection boasts upwards of thirty fragrances. At Fragrance Mad, we stock a wide variety of the Paco Rabanne range, some of the most popular being the Ultraviolet Man and Ultraviolet for Women scents, Eau Pour Homme, and Ultrared. Brand new to our store is the latest take on Ultraviolet, Liquid Metal, available in both men and women’s scents. As an added bonus, Liquid Metal comes inside a ridiculously large cyborgesque box, that will surely come in handy as a conversation piece at your next cocktail party.

As you may know, Fragrance Mad stocks one of the widest ranges of TIGI hair products around. On our site there’s something for those with curly hair, straight hair, long hair, short hair, coloured hair, thick hair, brown hair, blonde hair, and any kind of follicle in between. Products from TIGI’s funky range allow you to style or renourish your hair at will. What you certainly won’t know is that from the very moment this blog is posted, we now have a super mega sale on absolutely EVERYTHING available in the TIGI range. Whatever your style, however unmanageable your hair may be, you’ll find a funky TIGI product to match it, and make outrageous savings while you’re doing so.

Zino Davidoff spent much of his life smoking luxury cigars but it didn’t seem to do him much harm: born in 1906, he died in 1994 at the grand old age of 87. Before his death he oversaw the diversification of his luxury cigar and leather business into the realms of the fragrance world, in 1988 unveiling Cool Water, a fragrance that became hugely successful, and remains so today, perhaps thanks partly to the omnipresent advertising campaigns featuring the dashing Josh Holloway, or Sawyer from Lost as he’s better known.

Davidoff’s latest foray (from beyond the grave) into the world of fragrance is the fantastic new scent Champion, supposedly aimed at the sporty gentleman, but ideal for anyone with even a mildly active nose that loves to be enchanted by fantastic scents. The fragrance is initially striking due to its unique dumbbell bottle design, something that will look cool in the bathroom of any self-respecting gentleman, but things become even more intriguing once you get inside.

The scent itself is a thoroughly masculine one, comprising a zesty top of bergamot and lemon, a heart of galbanum essence and sage, and a dry base of cedarwood and oak moss. Get ladies literally, or at least figuratively, falling at your feet in awe, and perhaps sport a nifty Davidoff smoking jacket at the same time. Manly.

For more information, check out www.zinodavidoff.com

Vivienne Westwood was born in 1941, and, after studying at Harrow College of Art in London, she worked instead as a Primary School teacher, expressing her creative side in her spare time by making jewellery to sell at Portobello Market. Things changed when she met and moved in with Malcolm McLaren, then manager of the Sex Pistols. Together, Westwood and McLaren completely created the outrageous punk style that featured bondage gear, the use of safety pins and razorblades, dog collar accessories, and other such charming attributes.  Members of the Sex Pistols wore her designs, and Westwood’s shop Sex became a focal point of the punk generation, kickstarting a long and successful fashion career, during which she has received the British Designer of the Year award three times, and was made a Dame for her services to the industry in 2006.

Westwood’s first scent, Boudoir, was launched in 1998, and is a strong lingering scent comprised of top notes of vibernum, bergamot, and mandarin; heart accords of English red rose, tobacco flowers, and heliotrope; and a base of patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla, and cinnamon. The fragrance has in the past largely been very exclusive and difficult to get hold of at a good price, but as usual Fragrance Mad has cracked it: we have 50ml of Eau de Parfum available at just £21.99, and that’s free post remember, so that price includes a nice box, a postage label, and some of that crunchy protective packaging that you can throw in the air and pretend it’s snowing.

Tom Ford is a Texas-born fashion designer who has recently made the remarkable move to Hollywood director. Born in 1961, Ford grew up in Texas and New Mexico, before attending New York University to study Art History. Dropping out after a year, Ford began to study a mixture of architecture and fashion and frequenting the infamous Studio 54 nightclub, whose disco glamour would later have a strong influence on his designs (of clothes, not buildings).

Ford began working at fashion houses in America, but eventually left his home country and moved to Europe, working his way up to become Creative Director at Gucci by 1994. When he got the job the company was virtually bankrupt, but within a year Ford had overseen a 90% increase in sales, and by the time he left in 2004, the company was valued at nearly $10 billion. Now, Ford runs his own fashion house, and even made a foray into film-directing with the hugely successful Oscar-nominated A Single Man in 2009.

Ford’s fragrance, Black Orchid, inspired by the elusive quest to create a purely black flower, is a big favourite here at Fragrance Mad. It combines a sensual accord of orchids and woody notes, and manages to be both modern, but also reminiscent of many classic fragrances. We have a 30ml bottle flying fast off the shelves, past our disbelieving eyes and through the door, available for just £24.99.

Oscar de la Renta was born in the Dominican Republic, but left home at the age of eighteen to study painting in Madrid. He quickly became interested in the fashion world and earned an apprenticeship with the renowned Spanish designer, Cristobal Balenciaga, before moving to Paris as a couture assistant at Lanvin.

Oscar worked for Elizabeth Arden from 1963 to ’65, developing his skills as a clothing designer, before leaving to set up his own high-end fashion brand. Today, he has become one of the most revered designers around, winning numerous awards and having his clothes worn by a range of high-profile celebrities. One of his leading endeavours is his self-titled Eau de Toilette, inspired by the lush gardens of his homeland in the Dominican, and celebrating the romantic and sensual side of femininity. The fragrance contains notes of orange blossom, coriander, peach, jasmine, clove, and lavender, and is one of our very best selling scents at Fragrance Mad, available now for £26.99 for a 100ml bottle. All of the classic style for just half the RRP!

Here at Fragrance Mad we’ve been eagerly listening to what you, our loyal customers, want from the site, and are pleased to announce some big changes that enhance our website’s usability. In the recent dark age, when you wanted to search for a particular item, mascara for example, you’d have to wade through 400-odd items in the Cosmetics section. Now, you can click Cosmetics, then Eyes, then Mascara, and BAM! 34 products to choose from, things couldn’t be easier. The Cosmetics, Skincare, Haircare and Tanning sections have all been made fully searchable, and it took a very long time, so I hope it’s appreciated.

Elsewhere, we’ve also installed a Related Items feature on the site whereby, if you’re looking at Britney Spears Fantasy for example, the Related Items tab will show you different sizes that we have available, or if you’re looking at Marc Jacobs Lola, the sister fragrance Daisy will show up. Just a little something to make things easier, especially for those buying for presents who have no idea what they’re doing! We hope that these changes will make Fragrance Mad a lot easier to search, and if you have any more ideas of how things can be improved further, please contact us and give us some work to do!

Bourjois Volume Glamour Ultra Black Mascara is now available at Fragrance Mad for the earth-shattering price of £4.99. The mascara is enriched with silicone to make your lashes up to 50% more volumised, and its brush is specially developed to avoid clumping on application. This high-end mascara ordinarily retails at £19, so you save almost three quarters on the RRP.

Even better than that, it comes packaged with a FREE Bourjois Effet 3D Cosmic Lipgloss (shade: Rose Symphonic), worth £11.99, to give your lips fantastic three-dimensional cosmic shine. But wait: even better than that, the mascara also comes with a FREE Bourjois Perfect Harmony Eye Shadow (Crazy Baby shade) to glamourise your eyes even more. Three for the price of one, maths fans. Make yourself look a million dollars for just £4.99! That’s a good exchange rate by anybody’s standards.