

Portrait of a Lady is the latest opus to come out of the house of Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle and is signed by perfumer Dominique Ropion. If Malle likens his work to that of a self-described editor of perfumes rather than books, he also readily translates his activity into more traditional lingo by calling himself an "evaluator." Despite the literary reference and the homage paid to the prestigious French publishing house of Gallimard in particular which inspires part of the aesthetics of presentation of the perfume house, Frédéric Malle rejects the notion that a perfume might start with a story, a narrative. As underlined in the interview he gave the blog, raw materials are the real sources of inspiration for his vision of perfumery.
The collaboration between the two men - their 8th, including the creation of 3 home fragrances - here stems from their combined love and "avid" wearing of Géranium pour Monsieur which they also co-created in 2009. They both had the intuition of taking an accord found in the fresh, mint-laden masculine fragrance resting on benzoin, musk, sandalwood, patchouli and incense, with the prurpose in their minds of turning it into "a modern oriental fragrance."
"Our mutual trust has become such that we sometimes dare start a fragrance without any precise plan or goal, hoping that our explorations will take us somewhere interesting.
Portrait of a Lady is the result of one of these olfactory adventures."
Malle has specified that the name of the fragrance comes from a general impression of aristocratic elegance exuded by Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James but does not aim to put the novel into a fragrance structure. The form of the perfume was complete when the name came to him and therefore probing the depths of the analogy could be done but with the caveat that most of it would be a reference to the unconscious and mainly interpretative on the part of the reviewer.
I will offer images and impressions that the perfume evoked in me prior to doing the interview with some added comments post-interview.
Perfume notes: benzoin, musk, sandalwood, patchouli, incense, white musk cocktail, Turkish rose essence, rose absolute,cinnamon, clove, red berries accord, blackcurrant, .
Portrait of a Lady takes the genre of the deep, dark oriental rose and gives it further asperities, further dirtiness despite using some white musk to make it more feminine, exploring the limits of both pungency and sweetness and offering one of the darkest rose compositions available on the market. I like to think of it as having been devised with invisible, arachnean-like thorns, scratching the delicate face of a Victorian lady, whose pallor is half-masked by her hat veil. There is something smoky and blurry about the perfume which conveys this sense of mystery and sartorial smoke-screen playing, but also an undercurrent of masculinity which is not surprising and befits the independent persona of Isabel Archer...
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