Perfumer Christopher Sheldrake talks about the jasmine grown for Chanel No. 5 by the Mul family in Grasse.
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Serge Lutens Chergui ~ fragrance review
Dallying with Tom Ford Private Blend Tobacco Oud sent me looking for my sample of Serge Lutens Chergui. It had probably been a couple of years since I’d smelled it. When it took more than a minute to find the tiny vial in a shoebox of samples, I wondered why I was going to all the trouble. Chergui is tobacco and hay. A nice spicy oriental. I know what this one is all about, right? Wrong.
As I’ve been discovering lately with other fragrances I’ve haven’t smelled in a while, Chergui is not exactly what I remembered. Maybe it’s because I’ve sampled so many perfumes between now and the last time I sniffed Chergui and so have a larger frame of reference. Or maybe my taste is changing. But today Chergui to me smells much more complete and complex than I’d remembered…
Like nighttime and strawberry jam
We wanted to keep this jasmine because it has a particular smell. What is special about this jasmine is that it has a slight green tea smell and a sweetness -- a molecule that is also found in strawberries.
It doesn't smell like flowers in fact, rather a sensual potion. Like nighttime and strawberry jam.
— Perfumer Christopher Sheldrake on the jasmine grown for Chanel by the Mul family in Grasse. Read more at In Essence, at Ireland's Independent.
Abstract and mysterious
Two more videos in support of the No. 5 Culture Chanel exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (you can see the others we’ve posted here). First up here, Chanel house perfumer Jacques Polge, then below the jump, perfumer Christoper Sheldrake.
Serge Lutens La Fille de Berlin ~ perfume review
She’s a rose with thorns, don’t mess with her. She’s a girl who goes to extremes. When she can, she soothes; and when she wants … !
Her fragrance lifts you higher, she rocks and shocks. — Serge Lutens1
La Fille de Berlin is the latest from Serge Lutens; reportedly it’s the only new scent we’ll get from the house this year (normally, there are two or three launches). It’s being introduced in conjunction with his new book of photography, Berlin à Paris, and pays homage, apparently, to the women of Soviet-occupied postwar Berlin.2
The first couple of seconds — it’s quick, don’t miss it! — are ROSE, big and bright enough to justify the all caps, and nearly a dead ringer for The Perfumer’s Workshop Tea Rose. But La Fille de Berlin soon enough goes off in another direction entirely, bypassing as well the dewy springtime rose of Lutens’ own Sa Majesté la Rose and the overtly seductive aura of Rose de Nuit…