The bottle for Hypnôse Senses is beautiful in its crystalline simplicity. The name of the perfume is only readable on the top of the cap. The shape is borrowed from Magie by Lancôme (1950). This time, the shape is further elongated and looks a bit more like the bottle for l'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci.
Perfumers: Christine Nagel, Nathalie Feisthauer, Ursula Wandel
Perfume Notes: top: pink peppercorn, mandarin essence; heart: osmanthus absolute, rose leaves, honey; base: Indonesian patchouli, cistus (vegetal amber), benzoin, tonka.
Hypnôse Senses is the latest flanker to the original Hypnôse by Lancôme created by perfumers Annick Ménardo and Thierry Wasser and launched in 2005. This time three women perfumers
Christine Nagel, Nathalie Feisthauer and
Ursual Wandel worked together to produce a fragrance that is subtly original and the olfactory equivalent to my nose of traces of lipstick and cosmetics left on a linen napkin: almost vanishing yet very sensual and present. The advertising campaign resting in part on a dedicated website puts the accent on Daria Werbowy's skin (
she modeled for the original Hypnôse), an imagery that takes on a fuller meaning upon smelling the perfume.
Women will perhaps complain that the ad is particularly objectifying as Werbowy's body gets cut out in seven "sensual spots" drawing a map of desire that is only too predictable and essentially meant to satiate the male gaze even if mediated by a female one, which is curious considering that women are the prime targets of the ad (see
Vivez l'expérience Senses). One can only complain that this ad is terribly and even caricaturally classic in its implicit subservience to masculine desire, unless you would be gay or post-lib. However, like lipstick and a good perfume, one can simply enjoy putting those on as gestures of self-cultivation and not care about someone looking up your thighs or down your cleavage for reassurance that this is a worthy scent.
Lancôme, via
Pauline Zanoni the director of fragrance creation, insisted on the chypre lineage of Hypnôse Senses advancing the idea that through this affiliation the perfume was asserting once more the core tradition of the house which has been carried out by great chypres like Magie Noire (1978) (cf.
Cosmoty.de). As far as chypre-perfume labeling goes, Hypnôse Senses is very soft and as close as can be to a full-fledged skin scent while using some of the neo-classic chypre ingredients: citrus, cistus, patchouli...
Continue reading "Lancome Hypnose Senses (2009): Second Skin {Perfume Review} {New Fragrance}" »
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