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…
Cartier has launched II L’Heure Convoitée, a new fragrance in the Les Heures de Parfum series. It is the 2nd hour but the 9th in the series; reportedly, there are still four more to come. Like the others, L’Heure Convoiteé was developed by perfumer Mathilde Laurent…
Baiser Volé (‘Stolen Kiss’) debuts this month from Cartier. The pleasant but faceless Cartier de Lune (I tried but failed to review it, and have entirely forgotten what it smells like) launched only very recently so I was surprised to see another feminine entry so soon, but here we are. This one was also done by perfumer Mathilde Laurent, who noted that “when asked about their favorite flower, many men said it was the lily” (really? can that possibly be?) but that she “didn’t want it to be the 1,001st floral floriental” (fine with me) and she “didn’t want to add a new floral composition” (ditto); instead, she “[imagined] what the whole flower — including its leaves, petals and pistil — could smell like”.1 Translation: lily haters need not (necessarily) worry, lily lovers need not (necessarily) drool.
