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Midnight Poison by Christian Dior is the fifth perfume in the Poison collection since 1985. It comes after Poison (1985), Tendre Poison (1994), Hypnotic Poison (1998), and Pure Poison (2004). It was one of the most prestigious launches of 2007 as if in an attempt to recapture the glamor of the golden age of perfumery -- modeled after the golden age of Hollywood -- a reminder of the era of mega launches such as those of the original Poison or Opium or Trésor when such means were deployed that a perfume could become the center of attention for an enduring period. The campaign seems to have been mostly visual as articles on the perfume are not that numerous. Actress Eva Green was enlisted and director Wang Kar-Wai shot one of the most luxurious and romantic advertisements of last year (check the French version) in a year that was not lacking in them (Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, Guerlain L'Instant Magic, the ad). Like for Coco Mademoiselle, it is a storied advertising campaign, mostly visually, re-interpreting the story of Cinderella who now swings from the roof of the opéra Garnier in Paris at the stroke of midnight.........
Continue reading "Christian Dior Midnight Poison (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} 2008 Collector Edition {Fragrance News}" »
This review of Skarb by Humiecki & Graef is continued from Part 1. I would like to pick up where I started last time to describe the scent proper, "...Skarb is romantic in a forgotten sense; the word "eruptive" chosen by the authors to describe this sensation is completely apt. The perfume opens with a hitherto unknown sense of aggression and dynamism, literally jumps at you like a surge of violent emotions breaking one's sense of tranquility and resounding of a diffuse noise that seems to emanate from a crowd. One is reminded of the tears streaming down on the faces of Czechoslovakian men standing on the streets when the German Nazis invaded Prague in 1938."
The smell-personality of the scent is immediately complex: leathery, fougère/fresh, peppery, a trace of semen-like impression (see Sécrétions Magnifiques), metal, a deepening spicy brew. There is a refined undertone of orris adding a sense of melancholia, tenderness, and femininity to the scent. It smells of, or perhaps abstractly suggests dusty history books whose leather covers would have kept, somehow, the faint traces of men's sweat and layered experiences; the sweat is refined and exquisite. The herbs are almost violent in their expression at times, like the scent and properties of natural plants can be. There is also a more systematic peppery and salty impression which makes one think of pepper gas and tears running down on one's face. A resinous quality emerges that conjures up a witch's hut in a forest whose door sill is announced by bunches of tied up herbs drying upside-down. The area feels vaguely magic and enchanted but also dangerous. The forest motif here suggests also a place of liminal danger in reference to it having been a locus of traumatic experiences during WWII. It signals hidden executions and refuge places for escapees from concentration camps or Nazi raids (perfumer Christopher Laudamiel worked with historical photographies we are told, but I do not know if this type of reference was included)........
Continue reading "Skarb by Humiecki & Graef (2007): How Men Cry - Part 2 {Perfume Review & Musings}" »
As announced previously, the estimable perfume boutique Aedes de Venustas, which is based in New York city collaborated this year with the Molinard perfume house to release a limited-edition fragrance called Une Histoire de Chypre (A Chypre Story). The perfumer behind this creation or re-creation rather, reportedly based on an old formula exhumed from the archives of the house is Dominique Camilli. Upon discovering the perfume, one is suddenly tempted to interpret the name of the fragrance as loosely meaning "a history of chypre" as this review starts with a puzzle regarding the historicity of the fragrance. Une Histoire de Chypre smells familiar at first for two reasons. The first reference is not very uplifting; the scent smells like an improved version of Chypre d'Orient by Molinard also released in 2007, which we still have trouble understanding what it is doing exactly in the market except offend (very interestingly since we reviewed it, Molinard has removed the descriptive pyramid of notes for the scent on their website, while the other perfumes still have them. We of course now regret not taking down some notes but felt it was unnecessary given the quality of the scent). The second reference is more interesting; Une Histoire de Chypre feels familiar because it is reminiscent of the crystalline chypre personality of Diorella by Dior. In other words, it immediately offers a classic signature that people familiar with classic French perfumes will recognize. When using the expression "classic chypre" people often mistakenly point out that Chypre by Coty (1917) is the first chypre fragrance to have ever existed and therefore take it as a main reference point. It is more complicated than that. It is just the most famous chypre in modern times. Chypre perfumes have existed since Roman times. The Coty Chypre did not appear in a vacuum but was preceded by a continuing lineage of manufactured chypre perfumes in the 19th century that were usually simply called "chypre" in reference to Cyprus island from where this type of perfume is said to originate and in reference to the oakmoss used in the composition most famously harvested originally from that locale....
Continue reading "Une Histoire de Chypre by Molinard & Aedes (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
Gris coulée de Loire à la trace ocre by Olivier Debré, 1987 The Hermessence collection, which now includes Brin de Réglisse (it becomes lit. "strand of licorice" without the "un" at the beginning), is the most exclusive of the perfume lines offered by the house of Hermès. While a feminine Hermès fragrance distributed through department-stores channels will be produced at 300 000 to 400 000 copies, an Hermessence is limited to 5000 copies only and tightly distributed in the 90 Hermès boutiques worldwide. Jean-Claude Ellena, the Hermès in-house perfumer, has stressed that the Hermessence range does not offer better quality ingredients than the more widely distributed fragrances but that it does offer a different approach to the art of perfumery. In this more elitist perfume collection addressing itself to a smaller public of "true connoisseurs", the perfumer is allowed more freedom of expression and can propose what he calls some "exercises of style" writing each time "a short story around a raw material". Ellena has explained that what he tries to do for each Hermessence is to "transform" the raw material used and very much in keeping with a Baudelairian vision of perfume, to propose at the same time to embark on an olfactory voyage........ Chinese root-wood sculpture, 19th century
Continue reading "Hermès Brin de Réglisse (2007): An Abstract Figurative Fragrance {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
Daniel Craig by Sam Taylor-Wood in Men Crying
Skarb means "treasure" in Polish; it is the name of the first fragrance put out by the niche perfume brand Humiecki and Graef, named after the two grandmothers of founders Sebastian Fischenich and Tobias Müksch: Helena Humiecka z Humiecina (1908-2000) and Katharina Graef (1906-2004). There exists here so many networks of meaning on which the existence of this perfume rests that it is worthwhile to try to present a few of them. First the fragrance is said to explicitly refuse the traditional order and hierarchization of notes. Skarb is an attempt to reflect the intricacies of life and history - especially as impacted by National Socialism in Eastern Europe, the points of rejoinder and departure, the memories and emotions that beset and nurtured human lives in that region - into the language of perfumery........ Anschluss Tears
Continue reading "Skarb by Humiecki & Graef (2007): How Men Cry - Part I {Perfume Review & Musings} {Scented Thoughts} {New Fragrance} {Men's Cologne}" »
The she-wolf... imagination carries reality away....who inhabits this name?
Where do wolves live? At the Louvre! The she-wolf is heraldic. It resides on top of a mountain in a snow castle
A legend of the beginnings of time...a perfume? -- Serge Lutens
Louve by Serge Lutens is like a large diamond dropped and found in the snow letting out unusual fires and colors; perhaps they mimic the color of time. The faceted diamond then slowly morphs into a magical crystal ball into which one can look at things past and perhaps things to come as well. Louve seems to be built on a series of strange, fairy-like accords with unexpected twists and turns. The perfume is heartbreakingly beautiful like the memory of a lost kingdom you once used to visit when you were a child. The scent is all purity and innocence yet feels enriched by the dreams and memories of experience. It is a profoundly moving work of art and is so beautiful and real it brings involuntary tears to your eyes. In a sense it is another incarnation of Douce Amère by Lutens, not olfactorily speaking so much although there is a bitter almond note but more to the point as by the bitter-sweet feeling it elicits out of you, shedding light on deep continuities in the work of Serge Lutens.......... Romus and Remulus by Rubens
Continue reading "Louve by Serge Lutens (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
As previously announced, L'Occitane introduced this fall a collection of four fragrances called Notre Flore (Our Flora) and Les Quatre Vents (The Four Winds). It is inspired by richly historic aromas of the Mediterranean region, in particular as they were perceived by mariners upon approaching the coastal areas. Myrtle in this case is the scent carried by the winds around Corsica, which signaled the imminent appearance of the "Island of Beauty". The concept is a priori lovely as it intertwines history, affective memories, and poetry. To attempt to recreate the past through an immediate olfactory sensation is the best time-travel machine man has constructed thus far. Devoting attention to very specific micro geographic areas and and attempting to revive a history of the senses, further contribute to the interest of the project........
"Le Myrte" in Les fleurs animées by Grandville, 1867
Continue reading "Myrte - Myrtle by L'Occitane (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
We just came back from a visit to the By Kilian website and we have to admit, the biggest shock we have experienced this year so far in terms of marketing attention-getting ploy, is not the by now infamous vision of a naked derrière belonging to Tom Ford or one of his cohorts (can’t remember and don’t care to) with accessorily a perfume bottle neatly tucked in between the cheeks, like a suppository, a felicitous association if ever there was one, but this: complete perfume formulas posted on a perfumer’s website to convince you that they, by contrast with the competition, truly do stand above the fray and the norm.......
Continue reading "Love, Beyond Love by By Kilian {Perfume Reviews & Musings} {New Fragrances}" »
 Through some mysterious accidents of history, the recipe for a cologne that was used by Pope Pie IX (1792-1878) - the longest reigning pope in the history of the Catholic church after Saint Peter (1846-1878) - ended up twelve years ago in the hands of a general physician from San Francisco, Fred Hass, who decided to resurrect the 19th century formula.
All that is known with some certainty is that the recipe left the Vatican premises in the luggage of the commander of the Pontifical Zouaves (the Pope's guard), Colonel Baron Anasthase De Charette, a French Catholic nobleman who had come to the rescue of the papacy in the troubled years of its struggles with Garibaldi.
How did this personal grooming item came to be passed on from the Pope to the head of his guard, who it seems, always the Frenchman, recognized the qualities of the perfume enough to wish to reproduce it, is another pretext for imaginative speculation and could probably be clarified only by descendants of the De Charette family, if anyone remembers anything about it still. This was also a time when fragrance recipes were liberally circulated in advice books and reproduced at home......  A young Pie IX or Pio Nono
Continue reading "The Pope's Cologne by Excelsis Fine Fragrances: An Homage to Pie IX (Mid to Late 1800's - 2006) {Perfume Review & Musings} {Men's Cologne} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
Cognac Pierre Frapin, cuvée 1888 Inhaling the different facets of the new quatuor of perfumes by Frapin which includes Terre de Sarment, Caravelle Epicée, Passion Boisée, and Esprit de Fleurs, put out by the venerable multi-secular French Cognac house ("established" coincidentally on a date marking the end of a period in the Middle Ages in 1270 cf. death of Saint-Louis during the 8th and last crusade) is as close as one can get to taking a stroll in imagination around the 300 hectares Frapin domain and, one surmises, smelling some of Béatrice Cointreau’s favorite smells. She also more recently added Champagne Gosset to the family enterprise. By now with all these names that are the names of both real people and famous alcohols one will have understood that for a specialized contingent of liqueur and wine producers the relationship between wine-making and perfume-making may quickly have become a self-evident one, that is upon further thoughts........
Continue reading "Terre de Sarment, Caravelle Epicée, Passion Boisée, & Esprit de Fleurs (2007) by Frapin {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrances} + Practical Perfume Application Tip for Winter" »
Elle is the new women’s perfume creation by Yves Saint Laurent and is being billed as a major fragrance launch for the brand, which reportedly has made the choice to issue fewer fragrances over the years but to support them with prestige advertising campaigns. An international website in five languages was made accessible earlier on to learn more about the story around the fragrance. In the US, the perfume will be distributed through an e-commerce website from November 2007. It is described by their creators as a woody floral and by the press release as being "the embodiment of an incomparable style, contemporary chic with a touch of the bohemian."
Elle by Yves Saint Laurent offers a subtle brand of exoticism and reveals an originality that might well have been left unnoticed if tried on too distractedly or succeeding too close in time to other fragrances. The fragrance appears deceptively familiar at first, seemingly wanting to decline its identity as yet another trendy smoky rose composition, of the rose-patchouli obedience, but one’s mind is little by little gently pulled by the nose to realize that there is in fact an authentic displacement of that idea..........
Continue reading "Elle by Yves Saint Laurent {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
Le De by Givenchy has the clarity and purity of a fountain of youth cascading with crystalline floral water, only emitting the loveliest of murmur in the middle of a glade in a delicate green forest. Alternatively it makes one feel as if one were walking on a ground strewn with petals of blossoms before arriving at the gates of Paradise. The strange thing is that one does not usually think of gardens of paradise. One nevertheless stops there to inhale some of the effluvia that waft out through its iron gates before stepping in. Le De is also like the flow of an 18th century muslin textile printed with a seedbed of delicate flowers. Or a modern interpretation of it as with the Givenchy dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in 1957 precisely in Love in the Afternoon. Or again the light scent emanating from a precious letterhead or calling card. Even before one read the press release, the scent evoked intuitively the images of a refined calling card and flowing white light luxurious textile as the ones that were cut out to make the evanescent dresses "à la Gauloise" worn by Marie-Antoinette. Not coincidentally, Hubert de Givenchy is reported to have said, "Fragrance is the final touch of elegance, its identity card" or again, we learn from the press communication that,.........
Continue reading "Le De by Givenchy (1957-2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
L'Instant Magic by Guerlain is the new - and officially, only a semantic - twist proposed on the original L'instant composed by perfumer Maurice Roucel in 2003 in collaboration with Sylvaine Delacourte, Guerlain artistic director. Guerlain wishes to present the perfume as being novel regarding its contents. The new fragrance was created by perfumer Randa Hammami of Symrise in collaboration with Sylvaine Delacourte. Despite the Guerlain press release that states that the new perfume has little if anything to do with the original L'instant, it in fact appears to us to be a L'Instant rethought. It showcases similar fresh top notes and floral bouquet with the main addition of a delicious, very mellow and rich accord of almond marzipan with slightly grilled edges that brings a certain comforting and abstract gourmand quality to the scent while evoking the elegant texture of a vaporous muslin crinoline dress of the IInd Empire that could have been worn by Eugénie de Montijo. The combination of the nutty facet of almond with florals here is interestingly reminiscent, conceptually mostly, of the rose and amaretto accord in Pucci Vivara (2007).......
Continue reading "L'Instant Magic by Guerlain {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Perfume}" »
Rossy de Palma at the launch party for Eau de Protection Rossy de Palma is this wonderful Spanish character actress - one of Almodovar's fetish actresses - with the most atypical of physiques, one that seems to combine references to both El Greco and Pablo Picasso's works. Is it a coincidence or the sum of ancestral genius and powers of observation of two great Spanish painters that have extracted certain specific traits found in their compatriots? Rossy de Palma's face offers the same elongated and sharp-as-a-knife-blade likeness to an El Greco figure as well as the boldness and asymmetry of a woman's face quietly rendered by Picasso (cf. Le Mystère Picasso by Clouzot). And she dreamed to capture the elusive scent of the rose. The Wish
Eau de Protection (Protective Eau), the latest creation by Etat Libre d'Orange is a perfume à la commande, a custom-made perfume for a strong personality and secondarily, a celebrity. Rather than to take the well-trodden path of the design celebrity perfume which aims essentially to please millions of potential wearers more desperately than the celebrity herself or himself, would the marketers be asked to tell the truth in a confessional, Etat Libre d'Orange, being a niche perfumery, has the luxury to take more idiosyncratic risks......
The fragrance team partying on September 22 2007 for the launch of Eau de Protection at the Orangerie de Bagatelle
Continue reading "Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection by Etat Libre d'Orange {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Fragrance}" »
Sarrasins Platine Limited Edition Sarrasins (Saracens) by Serge Lutens starts with the suggestion of the clashing of a warriors’ Dantean battle between jasmine and leather before slipping into the quiet night of a banquet feast or more strangely yet even more spontaneously evoked, a nocturnal fun fair encountered by chance on a traveler’s road, which is redolent with the soft effluvia of rose and almond loukhoums and secretive spices. As the night makes its progression and wanes into dawn, sunnier notes appear that evoke the outcome of a process of civilization. To war succeeds peace and in this stage there is a weaving of civilizational influences as complex as the motifs treaded upon on Oriental carpets. The result is brighter. From the initial outburst of violence emerges the softening and hospitable influence of orange blossom, the “ eau de naffe” brought by the Arabs to Europe. This orange blossom water gives in its turn a novel perfume accord, the light chypre or cologne invented on European soil. In this manner and quite unexpectedly, a subtle reminiscence of Diorella by Dior peaks through the waning stages of the perfume.......... An example of Greco-Iranian Scythian art
Continue reading "Sarrasins by Serge Lutens (2007) {Perfume Review & Musings} {New Perfume}" »
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