Clean living

Hollywood fashion-philes Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall have all professed a partiality to clean living. While far from being the rehab locals and pass-out sweethearts that thrill the paparazzi to near-ecstasy, these actresses’ particular partiality to cleanliness doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with alcohol abstinence or a total ban on glazed donuts.

Jen, SJP, and Kim are all fans of Clean, the line of scents created by Randi Shinder that promises the pure, undiluted scent of soap-inspired, just-out-of-the-shower clean, that universal scent suggestive of a thorough scrubbing down with pure, unscented soap. This natural scent rarely lingers beyond a couple of hours after a bath, and since there wasn’t a fragrance out on the market to simulate the experience, Shinder brilliantly decided to develop her own.

The bottled-up soap scent Shinder created smelled fresh, pure, subtle and well, clean. Though she initially created it for personal enjoyment, it captured the attention of friends and family and Shinder knew she had something she could not keep to herself. In April 2003, she launched Clean Perfume, under the company name Dlish Fragrance Inc., and started a phenomenon among spritzers who have developed an adversity, and possibly allergies, to perfumes that reek of a hothouse of flowers. Clean’s just-out-of-the-shower smell combines fragrance notes of litsea cubeba, orange, sweet lime, pink grapefruit (a preferred ingredient by fragrance houses these days), passion lily, rose geranium and white musk.

Shinder soon followed up this simple fragrance with a sweeter version called Clean Sweet Layer. Combining fragrance notes of sweet orange, grapefruit, lime, neroli and rose, Sweet Layer gives off a more feminine scent while maintaining the Clean essence. For a double dose of clean, combine the original eau de parfum and Sweet Layer to create, according to Shinder, one of the most unique fragrance combinations.

Clean also comes in a lighter eau de toilette variant with whiffs of green wild berry, night jasmine, sweet orange and grapefruit, and also in a longer-staying perfume oil. If Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the scent-sensitive protagonist of the Patrick Süskind novel-turned-movie Perfume, smelled this perfume oil, he’d probably agree to this being the cleanest fragrance ever formulated, soapy, fresh and lively as it is.

We all love how a man smells as soon as he has just showered and Clean Men captures this subtle, almost nude, sans-deodorant-and-aftershave scent amazingly well. Clean Men is the perfect snuggle-up-to scent: enticing with a mix of ruby red grapefruit, English lavender, wild raspberry, clove and lime.

If you’re hankering for the purest form of clean, then Clean Ultimate, which combines juicy notes of Italian bergamot and Provencal lemon with lavender, jasmine, white rose and muguet is spot-on. Big girls who want to evoke little girl memories find an option in Clean Baby Girl, with citrusy top notes of fresh lemons, cyclamen and orange. Earthy bohemian traveler types should love Clean Provence, reminiscent of the soft scent, captured for centuries by the fine milled soaps of France. This special perfume conjures up images of freshly laundered linen and open blue skies and the stunning Provencal landscape. Then there’s Clean Laundry, infused with notes of Brazilian orange, cotton blossom, and Mexican lime, which smells like a warm fluffy towel fresh from a dryer packed with Bounce sheets.

The Clean line also includes body lotions and shampoos. While the fragrance line makes you smell, and to an extent, feel good, it doesn’t come with a guarantee of hygiene. So, if you’re thinking of substituting Clean for a real shower, don’t.

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Clean is exclusively available at Rustan’s Essenses.

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