Posted by Robin
on
10 March 2011
I like pears, and I like apples, but as a general rule, I don’t like either in my perfume. Whether that’s because of how they’ve typically been used — from Donna Karan Be Delicious to Viktor & Rolf Eau Mega to Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia — or because I just plain don’t care for the smell, is hard to say.
La Belle Hélène, the latest from Parfums MDCI, promised the pears (and the violets) from the dessert Poires Belle-Hélène, minus all the fun stuff calories (vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce). On the plus side, it also promised osmanthus, one of my favorite floral notes, and the perfumer in question, Bertrand Duchaufour, is responsible for one of the few perfumes with (noticeable) apple that I like: L’Artisan Parfumeur Traversée du Bosphore. Oh, and plus he is responsible for quite a few other fragrances I was willing to pay real money for. So I was looking forward to La Belle Hélène, even though it costs more money than I would ever spend on a perfume. So far…
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Posted by Robin
on
18 February 2011
Parfums MDCI has launched La Belle Helene, a new fragrance named for the French dessert Poires Belle-Hélène:
Osmanthus is one of the most unusual floral essences in the perfumer’s palette…
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Posted by Robin
on
7 July 2009
Un Coeur en Mai is one of the more recent launches from Parfums MDCI, the French niche brand that packages its perfumes in limited edition, numbered bottles featuring Limoges bisque stoppers. They’re $610 a pop, and anyone who reads here regularly knows that this is precisely the sort of “luxury” that is bound to irritate me beyond measure, and the price of the refills, $235 for 60 ml, hardly helps matters. So it was with great satisfaction that I tested the first 5 MDCI perfumes, found them beautifully done but neither outrageously wonderful nor outrageously interesting1, and moved on to other matters.
As always, I should have left well enough alone, but I dutifully tried the next 4 releases: Péché Cardinal, Le Rivage des Syrtes & Vêpres Siciliennes, and lastly, Un Coeur en Mai. I know Péché Cardinal has found fans, but it was very nearly a scrubber on me (ghastly fruit roll ups), and Le Rivage des Syrtes and Vêpres Siciliennes both left me cold. The last one to go on skin, Un Coeur en Mai, was the one that did me in…
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Posted by Robin
on
18 April 2009
Parfums MDCI has launched Un Coeur en Mai. Like their recently introduced Le Rivage des Syrtes, Un Coeur en Mai was developed by perfumer Patricia de Nicolaï of Parfums de Nicolaï.
The other route taken by Patricia de Nicolaï opens up for us a different imaginary world; this is a green floral which instantly evokes a fresh spring day, a walk through woods perfumed with hyacinths and lily-of-the-valley…
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Posted by Angela
on
30 March 2009
It’s easy for me to bemoan the destruction of such legendary perfumes as Worth Je Reviens and Carven Ma Griffe, and to be suspicious of the reformulations of other perfume darlings, like Guerlain Mitsouko. Everywhere I turn, I hear something else alarming: that the Caron reformulations are a travesty and my beloved Tabac Blond will never be the same, or that Jean Patou 1000 may be discontinued. (I can’t speak to either of these, by the way.)
Then along comes a fragrance like Parfums MDCI Enlèvement au Sérail to remind me to chill out. High quality, complex fragrances are still being created. Some of them, like Enlèvement au Sérail, have a vintage feel that I love, while others are decidedly more modern, like Jean Claude Ellena’s perfumes from Hermès. We are lucky to experience them…
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