Camille Goutal loves to douse herself in perfume. But when she rides the Paris metro to her work studio every morning, she doesn’t want her fragrance to nauseate other commuters. “I try to respect people around me,” says Ms. Goutal, the “nose,” or official perfume creator, for French fragrance house Annick Goutal.
— Find out how Camille Goutal applies her fragrance in A ‘Nose’ Puts on Perfume, in the Wall Street Journal.
According to my friend Mikey D, it ‘smells like a cross between Clorox and Old Spice. It’s something a dirty middle-schooler with a mustache would wear.
— An anonymous “beauty panel” checks out some recent fragrance releases in the News Tribune (link no longer working, sorry). The above is one panelist’s take on Clix by Axe.
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I liked C Goutal's lifestyle approach to scent … might be a bit too time intensive and forward planning for some of us. heh. Re the Herald article: once again grandmas and middleschoolers get a bad rap. Ah well. A lot of them probably smell better than those who saunter around reeking of Pink Sugar. Just saying. xoxo
What a coincidence — I was just cracking up at “The Funeral Director”
CG's is a way more labor intensive method than I would ever bother with!
Re:The News Tribune article: What an interesting look into How The Other Half (or, more accurately, the other 99% of the population) Smells.
To them, the charming style of Annick Goutal adds up to nothing more than “…a bizarrely awful fragrance packaged as something chic and different.”
And witness this bizarre reaction to the eminently inoffensive Jo Malone Blue Agave and Cacao: “Ugh! This smelled like a candle or a grandma – neither of them friendly or warm. It was just plain weird, not at all like a pleasant fragrance. I imagined people sniffing the air and moving away from me discreetly all day. Very uncomfortable.”
But the remarkably unremarkable Chance Eau Fraiche (a redundancy if ever there was one- the original Chance was as fresh as could be) draws accolades: “Ahhh, now we are talking perfume.” One of them even described it as “gorgeous and decadent.”
Don't get me wrong. I didn't hate Chance Eau Fraiche. But it is hardly what I would describe as “decadent.”
I chuckle to think of what these reviewers would say if confronted with my favorite perfumes. They would probably scream and wail and make several references to dead grandmas, then express a desire to commit suicide.
That Annick Goutal blurb was particularly odd, but so were several others, and so agree about Chance Eau Fraiche, which is nice enough but nothing startlingly original, much less decadent. I'd love to know who was on this “beauty panel”!
I concur with all the above comments. In addition, I found the the News Tribune tester remarks about “Vito” etc. etc., to be quite offensive, and I am certainly glad my eponymous brother-in-law,of whom I am quite fond, does not follow the world of scent. I'm about to start ranting about anti-Italian bigotry, so I will stop.
The middle-schooler comments were pretty funny, though.
It kind of baffles me why anybody would think that was worth printing (don't get me wrong, though, R, glad you linked to it…) As if we could possibily really care what an anonymous batch of people who don't know much about fragrance would say on the subject! As if the average person doesn't hear such opinions walking through a department store! Why don't I just poll a random group of people about what they feel about random examples of symbolist poetry? I'm sure we'd get some informed opinions and real news there….
I have to agree with you. Even if one was not actively offended, the comments were pretty banal, and the opinionators appeared to know less about fragrance than I do, and I don't know that much. But perhaps Robin posted it so we could all feel superior and elnightened…. Thanks, Robin!
I think your random poll on symbolist poetry might be worth doing, though – let me know if you try it.
I didn't even notice that part, was too busy laughing at the perfume descriptions!
Tigs, these sorts of articles crack me up so I love linking to them, but I do know exactly what you mean. Not sure why they called this one a “beauty panel” when it is no doubt, as you say, a random group of innocent bystanders.
LOL — no sense feeling superior & enlightened, I suppose, when your average person would think *we* were the insane ones! But I am fascinated by some of the descriptions, esp. of the AG brand — so entirely different from what a perfumista would think.
And happy to sign up for some meaningless statements about symbolist poetry