tocca

It’s her hair you notice first — long, loose and wavy, and still a little damp from this morning’s shower. Today she’s riding her rickety bicycle, the one with the worn wicker basket on the front, along the cobblestone streets of the small Italian village you both call home.

“Hello, Graciella!” you call to her. She sees you, smiles and waves a hand high in reply.

Clackity-clack-clack, goes the bicycle, as it moves along the cobblestones. She’s wearing a flowery, flowing dress today, and all of a suddenly the air is filled with the scent of oranges, you assume from her shampoo. Fresh from a visit to the early morning market, her basket is brimming with white lilies and a brown paper bag filled with pears. Hungry (she’s always hungry), she nibbles on one of them as she cruises along, and when she passes you, there’s a whiff of soft musk from her skin, but it slowly drifts away…

Just like that, she’s gone, floating off toward the day’s adventure. 🙂

Graciella ($68), Tocca’s newest eau de parfum, is a fleeting, simple beauty on the corner of a cobblestone street. Sweet, feminine and innocent, it starts quietly, with notes of pear and bitter orange, moving from there into a slow song of white lilies, before winding down into a lush, creamy musk.

[Continue reading…]

It seems so obvious now, but I think I just figured out the real reason why Tabs has always preferred to sleep on the floor instead of the bed. The second I put fresh sheets down washed with the new Tocca Laundry Delicate Fine Fiber Wash, he was like, “Wow, this bed is AWESOME!” He couldn’t wait to roll around on the duvet cover and brush his cheeks on the pillows. Apparently, he has a taste for the finer things, and drugstore laundry detergents just won’t do.

I should have known. I love Tocca, too. The brand is known for their Italian-styled perfumes and candles, but maybe that’s about to change. I started collecting their scents about a year ago, and now I’m hopelessly addicted to a few (I’m in love, love, LOVE with Bianca, in particular).

I can say with 100% certainty that I’ve never been this excited to do laundry in my life. 🙂

The new Laundry Washes are based on four fragrances from Tocca’s collection of perfumes — Stella, Cleopatra, Florence and Touch. They’re sold either individually, as 8-oz. bottles for $15 apiece, or together in the $22 Delicato da Viaggio Laundry Travel Set, which includes smaller 2-oz. bottles of all four scents.

The perfume versions of Stella, Cleopatra and Florence have been in my rotation for a while, and compared to those perfumes, I find the Laundry Washes to have crisper scents. Tocca turned down the warm base notes and turned up the fruity florals at the middle and top. To me, the resulting washes seem brighter and more citrusy.

Stella, my favorite of the four, reminds me of blood oranges (strong citrus notes, as well as lily and freesia). I also really like Florence, with its gardenia, violet and Italian bergamot; and Touch, which reminds me of Hawaiian tiare flowers. My least favorite of the bunch, Cleopatra, which Tocca describes as a grapefruit and cucumber scent, smells more like gum balls to me (odd)!

Tocca designed these detergents for delicates, either washed by hand or using the delicate cycle on a washing machine. The directions call for using five cap-fulls per machine load, or the equivalent of about a quarter of each of the smaller 2-oz. bottles (YIKES!). If you plan to hand wash a small number of items in the sink, however, one or two cap-fulls should suffice.

So far, I’ve used these to wash the bedding, a couple of sweaters, my pajamas and some random underthings in the machine. No really serious stains like grass, dirt or oil to test them against, but I did wash a couple of sweaty, funky-smelling sports bras and socks, and the Washes also took care of those.

[Continue reading…]