Posted by Angela
on
31 August 2009
Friday afternoon I scoped the downtown department stores for something new and interesting to smell. At one department store, the sales associate showed me lots of recent but ultimately uninspiring perfumes — all Angel rip-offs or fruit-ridden musks. We ended the tour at the Trish McEvoy counter where she raved about one of them that ended up smelling like a baby-shampoo-scented candle on me. At Macy’s, the sales associate said there weren’t any new releases for women, only for men. “Maybe Shalimar L’Oiseau de Paradis?” I tried, thinking I could at least look at a pretty bottle. “We didn’t get that one,” she said and turned her back, leaving me neglected in a forest of celebrity fragrances. Discouraged, I returned home to a surefire remedy for mediocrity and bad manners: Millot Crêpe de Chine.
Crêpe de Chine is a floral aldehydic chypre with top notes of bergamot, lemon, neroli, and orange; a heart of jasmine, rose, lilac, ylang ylang, and carnation; and a base of oak moss, vetiver, benzoin, labdanum, patchouli, musk, and leather…
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Posted by Angela
on
5 September 2008
Surprise of surprises. When I first smelled Miller Harris L’Air de Rien, a fragrance named “air of nothing” and made for the breathy-voiced, hippie-chic Jane Birkin, the last thing I expected to think of was Jean Desprez Bal à Versailles, a scent purportedly made of over 300 ingredients and whose bottle features 17th-century ladies in pastel dresses. But from their shared sweet neroli beginning down to their saddle leather, musk, and dirty stable dry down, Bal à Versailles and L’Air de Rien smell to me like twins separated at birth and raised in different homes.
Bal à Versailles grew up in the family that had a maid to keep the vases full and polish the furniture with lemon oil and beeswax. The perfumer Jean Desprez launched Bal à Versailles in 1962, the same year that Guerlain released Chant d’Arômes (and that, incidentally, Jane Birkin turned 16 years old). Notes I’ve found listed for Bal à Versailles include jasmine, rose, sandalwood, patchouli, musk, amber, and civet. I also smell orange flower and leather.
In extrait, Bal à Versailles is rich with syrupy neroli that fades to a spicy blend of flowers before settling into a disturbing, yet comforting, smell of civet, old horse droppings, and leather…
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