Posted by Angela
on
6 February 2012
The archetypal image of Valentine’s Day is a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Done right, the box is wrapped in lightly padded vermillion satin, and the chocolates are rich and silky smooth — no grainy cherry filling here. Of course, next to the box is a lush bouquet of fragrant flowers. It’s romantic, timeless, and sure to melt the coldest heart. To me, its perfume equivalent could only be Guerlain Attrape-Cœur.
In 1999, Guerlain released Guet-Apens Eau de Parfum as a limited edition and named Mathilde Laurent as its nose. The fragrance was reissued in 2005 as Attrape-Cœur, this time credited to Jean-Paul Guerlain. (I’ve also seen Maurice Roucel’s name tossed in as a contributor to Attrape-Cœur.) In 2007, Guerlain released an Eau de Toilette formulation in duty free shops and named it, oddly, Vol de Nuit Evasion. (To make it even stranger, Vol de Nuit Evasion was packaged in a L’Heure Bleue/Mitsouko bottle, but labeled with the classic Vol de Nuit parfum logo.)
In French, guet-apens means “ambush.” I think Attrape-Cœur (“heart catcher”) is a more fitting name for the fragrance…
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Posted by Robin
on
31 January 2012
As for me, I continue to search for Jules, and have even resorted to seeking out back-street chemists in the hope they might just have some old stock. So far I've had no luck, but I have befriended a few pharmacists along the way and I have enjoyed some limited success with the other scent I mourn, Samarkand, another 1980s classic, this one by the Body Shop.
— Gareth Wyn Davies on discontinued (or, as in the case of Jules by Christian Dior, poorly distributed) fragrances for men. Read more at To be (dis)continued: the story of the lost men's scents at the Telegraph.
Posted by Erin
on
16 December 2011
I have always liked mimosa in fragrances. Rather, I should clarify: I have always liked Acacia farnesiana (cassie) and/or scents with heliotropin. The term “mimosa” is a bit of a moving target, even in botany, as there are about 400 species or cultivars of plants under this genus, mostly with pink or mauve flowers, in addition to many other shrubs or trees that produce poofy, cartoonish blossoms and were historically lumped in under the name by the public — silk tree being an example. The sweet, warm, powdery smell we encounter in perfumery, with its facets of almond, honey, violet, craft paste and fresh cucumber, comes from distillation of the soft, feathery yellow petal clusters of the acacia species that most of us in the West know as mimosa flowers. One of my most vivid and happy memories of visits to France is the bushels of mimosa branches tossed out during “La Bataille de Fleurs” or flower parade during the Carnaval de Nice, which winds its way along what must be one of the world’s most beautiful thoroughfares, the Promenade des Anglais.
For all its cheerful straight-forwardness, mimosa appears to be a hard note to use in perfume. There are very few credible soliflores and many mainstream fragrances with a strong mimosa presence come off as airheaded and shampoo-like. With the IFRA restrictions on heliotropin, it has become even more difficult, if not impossible, to base a fragrance around the flower. Looking to include perfumes with some availability in this list, I found that almost all the mimosa fragrances I’d enjoyed at the beginning of my perfume education in the mid-noughties were discontinued or reformulated. Caron Farnesiana, long the great classic of mimosa perfumes, has gone through so many versions that it is hard to keep track of them all…
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Posted by Angela
on
6 June 2011
For Elizabeth Taylor Black Pearls Eau de Parfum, it’s almost as if the Liz Taylor perfume team set out to make a fragrance that was the complete opposite of White Diamonds. First, of course, the name. What could be more removed from a white diamond than a black pearl? Then the fragrance itself. White Diamonds is a grand, soapy, white floral with a clean, dignified, and innocent air. Black Pearls is something else altogether.
“Well, if we really want to distinguish it from White Diamonds, we’ll need fruit,” a marketing person must have said.
“How about peach? You know, voluptuous, like Ms. Taylor herself. We can add a spot of bergamot to keep it from being too sweet,” the perfume executive said.
“What else? What else will set it apart from White Diamonds?”
“Maybe vanilla? We can make it an oriental. Wait! I know — how about leather? A whopping leather note? There’s nothing innocent and ladylike about that.” And so, in 1996, Black Pearls was born. At least, in my imagination that’s how it happened. And that’s how it smells…
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Posted by Angela
on
16 May 2011
A long time ago I read an interview with Donatella Versace in which she said wearing red lipstick with a red dress was bourgeois. She suggested pink lipstick instead. I get that. Red lipstick with a red dress is predictable, a hackneyed suggestion of seduction or power. Pink with red is a surprise that makes you look twice.
Sometimes, though, you don’t want to mess around with subtlety. You don’t want to play cute or artsy — you want to get to the point. A red dress with red lipstick will do just that. So will the perfume world’s version of red on red: a rose chypre. Gucci L’Arte di Gucci makes the point better than most.
L’Arte di Gucci launched in 1991. Its bottle, a glam concoction of asymmetry and gold, is a good representation of its contents. L’Arte di Gucci goes on sharp with a fanfare of green and rose, dirtied by cardamom. (Honestly, a fanfare. Don’t squirt the bottle while your honey’s still asleep, or you might wake him with the olfactory racket.) The fragrance shimmers with hints of orange, aldehydes, and cassis as it settles…
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