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Hello Perfume Junkies,

One of the most written and talked about perfume curators is my mate Neela Vermeire. I know that she is a complete perfume idealist, putting in more money to her perfumes ingredients than most other niche houses and always insisting on the absolute best available. Neela works in fragrant guidelines rather than budgets and has a much smaller profit margin than you would expect. Yes her perfumes are pricey but that is not a value inflated by advertising, brand name or ego, it is a very real reflection of the money spent creating her masterpieces. When you pay for a Neela Vermeire Creation scent, you are paying for the highest quality personal fragrance available. I am extremely proud to be friends with Neela because she is good people and a great fragrance curator.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:

Fig leaf, leather, white lotus, pink lotus, mimose, fig tree, osmanthus, rose, water hyacinth, vetiver, styrax, incense, sandalwood, myrrh, tonka bean and balsam fir

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Neela Vermeire Creations gives these featured accords:
Top: Lotus, rose, water hyacinth, fig leaf, parsley leaf

Heart: Osmanthus absolute, cassie absolute (acacia farnesiana), iris, incence absolute, jasmine sambac, fig milk, geranium, ylang ylang

Base: Fir balsam absolute, myrrh, cedarwood, sandalwood, vanilla accord, abregris, birch, Haitian vetiver, leather, styrax, heliotrope

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While Jin and I were in Paris earlier in the year we were used by Neela as guinea pigs for three of her very last mods before making decisions. They were all different but built around the same warm, woody theme and their longevity was amazing. Jin and I both got an armful of the two samples we liked and Neela acted as if it were an imposition and she was sorry to put us through it. UM, OMfreakingG. testers for one of the most beautiful and prestigious brands of fragrance in the world? What a terrible imposition! Outrageous! All of them were exquisite and all Neela really had to do was pick one at random depending on how her vision matched because any one could have gone straight to market in my opinion. I don’t know which one Neela went with and I don’t have a sample so instead I will tell you about the name Ashoka. I have taken most of my story from Wikipedia on Ashoka and the Mauryan Dynasty.

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Ashoka Mauryan was an Indian ruler long before there was such a thought as unified India and came from the Mauryan Dynasty (322 to 185 BCE) which ruled on the eastern side of India where the modern Bihar is. Following Chandragupta Mauryan (who was a Jainist) into power, who had taken advantage of the disturbance left in the wake of leaving Alexander the Great armies and annexed large swathes of India to his rule. The Mauryan Dynasty was the largest India had seen and one of the biggest empires of its time.

Photo Stolen WikiMedia

So Ashoka was a warrior from a warlike race who desired power and more lands above all. He continued his forebears conquering ways until after the Kalinga War, which his army won though none of his ancestors had been able to. The mass deaths of his own and his enemies people, which had caused more than 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deportations, stirred something new in Ashoka and he slowly came to embrace Buddhism as his religion, “Ashoka regarded Buddhism as a doctrine that could serve as a cultural foundation for political unity.^“ Ashoka is now remembered as a philanthropic administrator, a man who led his people to 50 years of peaceful prosperity. A man who brought Buddhism to the world and changed the way his people lived for the better.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

H G Wells wrote in The Outline Of History, “Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of Asoka shines, and shines, almost alone, a star.”

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Ashoka is released Friday September 13 2013 and can be purchased direct from Neela Vermeire Creations.

There’ll be more once I get a sample,
Portia xx

Photo Stolen GoogleCommons