Posted by Angela
on
12 November 2012
So many perfumes smell like things we know: flowers, fruit, wood, food, spice and funk. A few fragrances — mostly created before the disco era, it seems — are more difficult to pin down. They smell only of themselves. They’re sophisticated, and they’re undoubtedly a challenge to fall in love with in the thirty seconds most perfume shoppers these days take before making the decision to purchase. Rochas Mystère is that kind of fragrance.
In response to a post a few weeks ago, a commenter lamented Mystère’s disappearance. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my decant, a bonus in a swap years ago, shoddily labeled with scotch tape and a sharpie. As fate would have it, I stumbled over a bottle of Mystère Eau de Parfum at Goodwill just a few days later…
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Posted by Angela
on
12 March 2008
Last night before I went out for a drink with a friend, I sprayed one Eau de Toilette on my left wrist and another on my right wrist. I went into the living room, held out my arms wrists up, and said to my friend, “What do you think of these perfumes?”
She sniffed each wrist and said, “This one smells kind of light and alcohol-y. That one is a diva. It's really strong and reminds me of something…”
“Leather?” I asked. “Yes!” she said, “Like shoes.”
“Well,” I told her, “They're the same perfume: Diorling by Christian Dior. This one —” Here I pointed with some disgust at the wrist with the light, fizzy scent, “Is the new version. The other one is the old one.”
Paul Vacher, the nose behind the sublime Miss Dior, created Diorling in 1963. Diorling is a leather chypre with its leather front-loaded…
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Posted by Angela
on
23 October 2007
When people talk about big, knock-‘em-out scents, they often mean white florals like Robert Piguet Fracas or Annick Goutal Passion or heady 1980s orientals like Yves Saint Laurent Opium and Chanel Coco. I’d like to add another category of perfume to this list: the fierce green chypre. I’m not talking about a moody green chypre like Jacomo Silences or a modulated green chypre like Estée Lauder Private Collection. I mean a no-apologies, cuts-like-a-knife, love-it-or-loathe-it green chypre. At the top of the list of fierce green chypres are Sisley Eau du Soir, Parfumerie Générale Corps et Ames, and Niki de Saint Phalle.
A fierce green chypre isn’t easy to wear. It’s a diva, and it will be bigger than you are if you give it an inch. Before you spray on a fierce green chypre, you’d better be ready to be fabulous. Make sure you have the energy for snappy comebacks, unleashed hilarity, or wanton passion — whatever the occasion calls for…
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Posted by Angela
on
3 May 2007
I’ve spent years looking for the perfect dress, a dress I can wear in the winter with boots and a sweater, in the summer with sandals, with pumps to business meetings, and out at night with a Miriam Haskell necklace and hand-knit shrug. When wearing this dress, I won’t have to hold in my stomach or worry that my bra straps show. Slide the dress over my head and I’m done. Well, I haven’t found the dress yet, but I think I’ve found its perfume counterpart: Y by Yves Saint Laurent.
Y is a clean, soft green chypre that lays a gentle background. It is quiet and elegant, but still warm, and when you’re wearing it people notice you and not your scent. It stays close to your body. Someone crammed against you in an elevator when you’re wearing Y won’t think of perfume but will think you’re still warm from your morning shower and maybe have clipped a few flowers from the garden for your desk…
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Posted by Robin
on
21 June 2006
The UK-based lingerie line Agent Provocateur released their first fragrance, called simply Agent Provocateur, in 2000. The “exotic floral chypre” was created by perfumer Christian Provenzano, and includes notes of saffron, coriander, rose, jasmine, magnolia, ylang ylang, gardenia, vetiver, amber and musk.
There are fragrances that are sexy in a non-obtrusive kind of way, and then there are fragrances that are sexy in an in-your-face kind of way. Agent Provocateur is in-your-face sexy. It smells, quite simply, like a fragrance that you would wear to seduce someone, which is, after all, the raison d’être of the Agent Provocateur brand…
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