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
6 February 2012
Guerlain will launch Lys Soleia, the latest addition to their Aqua Allegoria range, this spring. The new fragrance for women is meant to evoke the caress of the sun on the skin…
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Posted by Robin
on
2 February 2012
Guerlain has launched Shalimar Parfum Initial L’Eau, a flanker to last year’s Shalimar Parfum Initial, itself a flanker to 1925′s Shalimar…
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Posted by Robin
on
1 February 2012
Guerlain has launched Guerlain Homme L’Eau Boisée, a new aromatic woody citrus flanker to 2010′s Guerlain Homme L’Eau (itself a flanker to 2008′s Guerlain Homme)…
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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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