Agent Provocateur Blue Silk: fragrance review

 Blue Silk, part of a flanker duet launched in 2018 by lingerie brand Agent Provocateur (the other being Lace Noir) is credited to Beverly Bayne, shifting from the usual Christian Provenzano creative umbrella. 

The company presented it thus: "Making a sensuous entrance into the Agent Provocateur fragrance collection, Blue Silk is an unforgettable perfume, feminine, provocative and deeply romantic. Piquant top notes of woody, rosy pink pepper, revitalizing citrus from lemon and mandarin and exhilarating, fresh juniper combine with floral middle notes from classic rose and rich, sweet, precious jasmine, alongside the honeyed peach tones of nectarine and the warmth of spicy cinnamon. Leaving a lingering feeling of deep, almost smoky sensuality are the base notes of hypnotic musk, cooling, earthy vetiver, creamily sweet sandalwood and the vanilla, praline-like tones of aromatic tonka bean."

via

What is uncanny about Blue Silk is its delicious top note of bright and lightly sweet spices. It almost creates the impression of the opening of YSL's discontinued Nu eau de parfum, a fragrance overseen by Tom Ford (and this is telling in so many ways.) The spices are almost rejoicing, they never come across as sharp like the air within the spice cabinet. The composition is redolent of the steamed puddings of Jungle Elephant, but done in miniature form; there is none of the bombastic sillage of Kenzo's mastodont. 

The muskiness surfaces like a silky undergarment peeked through a crepe dress; it does feel silky and soft, very wearable and romantic, melding with the wearer's skin, and creates erotic imagery without prompt. Priceless.

As with most Agent Provocateur fragrances Blue Silk is available in 100ml Eau de Parfum at advantageous prices online and is highly recommended.

Pétale Noir by Agent Provocateur: new fragrance

British lingerie brand Agent Provocateur will launch its fourth fragrance (after the original Agent Provocateur eau de parfum, L'Agent and Maitresse)— called Pétale Noir — this Valentine’s Day with a coordinating Luxury Body Elixir, according to WWD.

The cult lingerie brand further elaborates: "[Pétale Noir] is a deep floral scent with a hint of oriental mystique. The launch of the new Pétale Noir fragrance personifies the modern and naturally confident woman, but be warned, she knows what she wants and knows how to get it. The fragrance is made with the finest of oils featuring dramatic florals for the heart and precious woods, enhanced by musk crystals and sweet spicy accords that ignite the senses. A rich, vintage rose pink juice, perfectly complements the delicately floral, and beautifully shaped sensual bottle. Yet beware, things are not how they seem as the soft petals make way for dangerous prickly thorns. This contrast in mood is further emphasised by a striking black chain around the neck, symbolising the stark suggestive passion that binds us together".

Agent Provocateur by Agent Provocateur: fragrance review

When the first Agent Provocateur perfume first launched in 2000 in its ostrich-egg-sized pink bottle, little did one expect that the scent within would be atavitistic to the lineage of impressionable floral chypres of yore. Chypres, a perfumy and mossy family of fragrances, had been effectively extinguished from a whole generation's memory by then (relegated to mothers and grandmothers who continued to wear their signature scents discovered decades ago) and were incomprehensible things to another: surely this was a doomed project? Who in their trendy minds remembered or wore Shiseido Inoui, Balenciaga Cialenga, K de Krizia, never mind Mitsouko or Miss Dior?

But curiously enough, it caught on!

Why it Worked
Agent Provocateur is a lingerie brand teetering on the edge of campy and they made ample use of that element to promote their fragrant wares. To quote Adentures of a Barbarella: "They aspire to be kinky, elegant, sophisticated, and somewhere along the line it goes wrong. Their clientele is stuck up, their models are either socialites or Russian escorts (it's a fine line), and they sold out last year. The depraved tone of the campaigns can be hilarious". But after all, what's the point of racy lingerie if you take yourself too seriously, right?

But the thing is their first fragrance is sexy as hell, a bit retro, a bit modern, and all around brave and great, considering they launched at the end of the aquatic/ozonic brigade of the 1990s and the advent of cupcakes-from-hell of the 00s. It's deservedly something of a cult favourite, if only for the fact that it was so very different.


Scent Description
The big Moroccan rose in Agent Provocateur's heart, much like in classic Jean Couturier's Coriandre from the 1970s, is complimented by a paper-y woody note of amber and vetiver combined with warm musks, but it is the saffron along with the upbeat coriander that bring a rather animalic and weirdly "dirty" quality to the fragrance making it the olfactory equivalent of an aged Hollywood star the morning after she has had a rampant night in bed with a nostalgizing fan half her years.

This is a perfume to wear sparingly (it can be big), but it won't change much during the day and after the initial impression it dries down to an erotic and  skin-friendly, skin-compatible nuzzling buzz.
Agent Provocateur original EDP is in hindsight similar to many fragrances which followed, so if you like any of them you should give the great-aunt a try: Gres Cabaret, Lady Vengeance by Juliette has a Gun, Narciso Rodriguez Narciso for Her EDT.

Available as Eau de Parfum from major department stores.

Flankers & Stuff
The brand has brought out variations on the theme with:  Agent Provocateur Eau Emotionelle (EDT from 2006), Agent Provocateur L'Eau Provocateur (new, lighter interpetation for spring 2012), Agent Provocateur L'Agent (2011) and Agent Provocateur L'Agent L'Eau Provocateur (spring 2012) in similar pink-ostrich-egg bottles. They can differ quite a bit with L'Agent being a woody floral musk.
Nota bene that the quite different fragrance by the same brand called Maitresse is also having a lighter flanker edition for spring 2012, called -you guessed it- Agent Provocateur Maitresse L'Eau Provocateur.

Free Agent Provocateur Scent

From now until next Wednesday, if you spend $150 on beauty products at the boutique of Agent Provocateur online, you'll receive an Agent Provocateur Signature Fragrance Purse Spray ($55) for free! Sound nifty, huh?

News via Bella Sugar

Optical Scentsibilities: back to back

A naked feminine back can be more provocative than the most plunging decolleté. It implies a state of deshabillé that is not par for the course the way cleavage usually is with standard clothing and it draws men nearer, almost unconsciously and with a Plavlovian reflex to touch, going from the visual to tactile in an all too brief second.
It is exactly this imagery that has surfaced in perfume advertising as well as art.


From Pierre Cardin's Paradoxe from 1983 with its stylisized lines...



...to the luxurious, curvy decadence of Agent Provocateur with its saffron-rose chypriness.



The beauty of Jules Joseph Lefebvre's Odalisque from 1874 is at the heart of this seductive back nudity.



Modigliani also was inspired by it, using his characteristic style of brushwork in an aquarelle from the beginning of the 20th century.



And all can be traced back to La Grande Odalisque by Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres (1814). A classic portrait of distorted human proportion (look carefully at the back and limps and you will know) that accounts for true beauty.
Comissioned by Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples and sister of Napoleon Bonaparte, La Grande Odalisque was intended to keep company to another nude by Ingres which she owned: Sleeping Woman, Nude.
Influential even to the point that it inspires photographers to shoot today's actresses, such as this one above with Julianne Moore by Michael Tompson in 2003 (American Photograph magazine). Which one is sexier?

Perfection! It's back.

Pics from imagesdesparfums, parfumdepub, wikipedia and in.gr

Chypre series 3: the new contestants

 If we are to talk about New Chypres (also nouveau chypres or "pink chypres" see below), we need to clarify some things. If you're new to Perfume Shrine's Chypre Series, please refer to the following basic articles:
What ARE "chypre perfumes"?
What are the aesthetics of chypre fragrances?
What's the history and zeitgeist of "chypre" evolution?

In our quest for chypre perfumes we stumble upon a peculiar phenomenon: there are scarcely any true chypres getting produced in the last 25 years!! Why is that? The answer is two-fold and fascinating in its denouement.

First of all, there is the matter of ingredients getting replaced and restricted, with oakmoss being the most crucial and prominent one as mentioned before. However surely this is a very recent phenomenon that only lately has seriously affected perfumers and houses into producing fragrances that do not make use of this elusive, wonderfully sensual ingredient. For example it was only at the beginning of the year that Mitsouko begun its journey into its latest reformulation, the one that lowers the oakmoss magnificence into the accountant-minded IFRA guidelines. Perhaps it's just as well that the process is going slowly in those instances so one can stockpile a favourite version/vintage while they still can. Labdanum is also slowly being replaced by other ingredients. Miss Dior, this legendary New Look debutante has had a makeover by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The effect is not quite as endearingly old-fashioned as it used to be. The sister fragrance (or should I say evil step-sister?) Miss Dior Cherie is the new direction in which the pendulum swings.

Nevertheless there must have been something else besides ingredients' embargo at play, influencing trends and production, which we will explore in another installment on the Chypre series real soon.

In the meantime, it might be interesting to note that after what seemed a total eclipse of chypres in releases of late years, there has been a new category of fragrances coming out slowly but surely that although not typical of their family they bear the illustrious label regardless.

They encompass lovely watercolours like Narciso for Her by Narciso Rodriguez, the coquette qui fait la coquinne Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel (classed either as floriental or fruity chypre, leaning more to an orientalised patchouli), the grapefuit laden abstraction of Ralph Lauren's Pure Turqoise , the sexy safron rosiness of Agent Provocateur that might have been at the vanguard of the trend.
These new entries into the galaxy of chypre have been ingeniously coined by Ayala Moriel as "pink chypres", simply because they exude a modern, young and girly air that is a novel take on the old sophistication of a classic chypre.

Michael Edwards, the man who is responsible for the "Fragrances of the World" system is classifying them under the "mossy woods" umbrella as evidenced in the Sephora directory. Oakmoss is mentioned in the introductory note, yet it is distinctly shunning the invitation in several of those listed.

But then how conclusive are fragrance families and categories anyway?

Referenced in the series "Que sais-je?" in the volume Le Parfum Jean Claude Ellena notes:

I've taken part in the perfume classification committee of the Société Française des Parfumeurs, but nowadays I wonder what its use really is. [...]In today's olfactory classifications, I believe that the most valuable information lies in the perfume's date of creation, its name, and the name of the brand that launched it on the market. The date allows us to put perfumes in an evolutionary perspective (as long as we are able to smell them), while product names and brands give us some indication of the degree of creativity involved in each company. (p. 77-78)

(quote copied from Marcello on nowsmellthis)

Clearly this is a renouncement of formal classifications and perhaps a rather elitist streak, one might say, that runs into this 60 year old minimalist perfumer responsible for such masterpieces as First by Van Cleef, Declaration by Cartier, the Hermessences and the Jardin series (en Mediteranee and sur le Nil) for Hermes and numerous others. But then again Jean Claude has a family which cherises aromas in everyday life and sits down to Christmas dinner hiding little aromatic gifts under the napkins. His daughter is also a perfumer, Cecile Ellena, the co-nose of The Different Company. It goes with the territory.

With that in mind, if we choose to take his side, this new category of chypres is worth exploring even though they lack the characteristic bergamot-oakmoss accord that is typical of the classics of yesterday.

So what goes into the production of those modern chypres?

The typical bergamot top of classic chypres has long been known to be phototoxic, resulting in brown patches on the skin upon exposure to UV radiation. It has been advised ever since I can recall to avoid placing perfume in spots that would be exposed to the sun, exactly because of that. And it has been well-known and accepted for decades. Why it has become such a derisive issue now, which demands the restriction of its use in minute amounts or the clear labelling on the box, is a matter that has to do with complicated legal reasons and the fervent desire of companies to not get entantangled in judicial battles that would cost them fortunes.
Bergamot has thus been shunned for other citrusy and bright top notes that include fresh and slightly bitter grapefruit, sweet mandarin and tangerine (like in Miss Dior Cherie), homely orange in some cases, and even floral essences that marry the florancy with the high volatility and sparkle of hesperides, like neroli or even orange blossom (as is the case in Narciso which uses a synthesized orange blossom that is also apparent in this year's launches for men Dior Farhenheit 32 and Gaultier Fleur du Male).

Fruity notes such as mangosteen (Hillary Duff With Love), lichi, watermelon and passion fruit (Masaki Matsushima Masaki), strawberry (Miss Dior Cherie)and berries (Badgley Mischka) are also appearent, although this might have to do with the overuse of fruity aromas in perfumes of recent launch anyway.
Sweet gourmand touches (caramelised pop corn of Miss Dior Cherie and creme de cassis in Badgley Mischka) might also be attributed to that and not to any desire to revolutionise the chypre notion any further. Which is just as good...

Oakmoss and labdanum have been substituted by grassy, pungent vetiver ~that aromatic root from Java that is the dream of every engineer as it binds itself into substructure; and by patchouli ~that indian bush with the sweet smelling leaves that produce the most potent smell in the vegetal kingdom. The two have been the base accord of almost every new chypre to emerge since 2000 and are going steady in their triumphal marching into perfumery even in seperate capacities. They are tremendously popular notes in both feminine and masculine perfumes.

Often spicy notes, such as coriander (Emporio Armani City Glam Her), or herbal ones, such as angelica, mingle with various musks to accent the murky character of the new chypres. Producing thus oeuvres that although they bear no relation to the old-fashioned intense warmth and powder of their predecessors, they appeal to similar audiences; audiences who have been conditioned to love chypres since childhood perhaps, be it from received memories through beloved family members, or through an appreciation for the unidentifiable character of those Old World sumptuous fragrances.

In any case the future for modern chypres is looking very bright indeed!


Next installement will tackle matters of aesthetics.

Top pic sent to me by mail unaccredited, pic of Narciso bottle courtesy of Nordstrom.com