Estee Lauder Sensuous Noir: fragrance review

This discontinued gem is shining in a deep purple bottle of sumptuous line that would match a wonderful smoky eye that looks so at ease on an autumnal night out. Sensuous Noir takes the good parts of Lauder's Sensuous (that idea of woody notes enhancing the natural scent of the skin) and taking it up a notch, adding patchouli with its dark sweetness interlaced like a shadow on said skin. More voluptuous, more intense, more sensual than the original version of Sensuous, the second version by Estee Lauder - Sensuous Noir includes characteristic wooden tones, an abstract floral hint and soft aromas of cozy oriental balsams that carry the entire composition.

Sensuous Noir has a stronger, more intoxicating and more seductive scent than the prior fragrance by Estee Lauder with half the same name, although the latter is also quite sensuous and silky and worth your time and money.

The top notes include a floral blend of purple rose, jasmine, rose oil, black pepper and spices. The heart focuses on the warm wooden notes, typical for this scent, with the use of the innovative Nature Print technology. The smell of "dissolved wood" in the concept, generated by pine tree and guaiac wood merging, was captured exactly by this technology, and used as a seductive note that was first used as a sensory note and complemented by the innovative Noir cream, lily flowers and patchouli notes. The base notes include benzoin, amber and soft vanilla with an amber overall scent. The final feeling is one of absolute self-confidence!


Please visit Estee Lauder fragrance reviews and news on the PerfumeShrine.com using this link.

Niki de Saint Phalle: fragrance review and musings on memory

My experience with Niki de Saint Phalle goes back many years ago. I was aware of Niki being a force to be reckoned with artistically of course even before meeting her scent; her impressive snake-shaped creations in hues of vivid emerald and lapis blue were like a prelapsarian vision of Heaven. I will never forget the time when I saw a real size serpent of hers in the library of one of the university facilities in Cordoba, Spain. I doubt the serpent sculpture is still there, yet the impression has stuck with a mental recall vividness which is truly arresting.

via

Niki de Saint Phalle's eponymous scent, Niki de Saint Phalle eau de toilette, is much the same arresting affair both in looks (the cobalt blue oval with the intertwining snakes) and in smell.

It feels like one steps into an immense pine forest in a day of frost, when the needles hang with snow on them. The snow feels like dry powder and soap, very starched and proper, like some aldehydic fragrances of the 1970s, but with that green bitter touch of wormwood-mossy quality and a dose of carnation, which makes it more mysterious than just a bon chic bon genre aldehydic floral.

In what concerns hardcore chypres Niki de Saint Phalle is an odd man (woman) out. It's artsy yet not too hard to wear, with a playful twist that recalls violet candy, less herbal or animalic than most chypres, a hint of leather, some temptation, some tongue-in-cheek. It's a bit like stepping into a university library only to be greeted by a giant snake sculpture that looms above your head in insatiable hunger.

Related reading on PerfumeShrine: 
The Chypre Series: history, culture and aesthetics
Chypre Fragrances Explained for Newbies

Hermes Equipage: fragrance review

If Calèche encapsulates perfumer Guy Robert's idea of a great taste feminine perfume, then Équipage is his idea of the perfect masculine; sober, handsome, restrained, graceful. These two Hermès fragrances embody both the house's easy, effortless elegance aesthetic (you can imagine them as "old money" contrasted with nouveau rich) and Guy Robert's idea that only a "lived-in" ambience about a scent makes it truly romantic; if you need more proof you can just test out Madame Rochas and his other marvels (Amouage Gold, Dioressence etc).

Scent Description 
Aromatic, spicy and woody, the brief for Équipage was based on the success of Monsieur Rochas, composed by the same perfumer (Guy Robert) just one year prior, demanding the scent of a "cold pipe".  Word has it that Jean Louis Sieuzac also worked on this one. The smokiness is there all right (I'm hypothesizing birch tar to give a smoked leather note, reminiscent of the Cuir de Russie type of scents), but there's pungent dryness instead of the usual rum casket fantasies of honeyed milky tobacco; such as the ones evoking languorous Turkish escapades that Lutens brings to his Fumerie Turque, to cite but one example.  Liatris is an interesting note: it possesses both a herbaceous facet on one end and a hay & tobacco facet with only a subtly vanillic undercurrent on the other end, so it balances off nicely the bitter, pungent top notes of Équipage, reinforcing the concept of a smoking pipe.

Équipage is resolutely old-school and conservative smelling ~therefore probably anathema to anyone under 40, unless they have a perfume obsession~ and like an experienced acrobat balances between strength and finery, between the rustic herbs, the bitterness of the clary sage opening and the bite of cloves, on a base of smooth wood notes and a little sweet floral touch, a combination as dependable as a gentleman of the old guard. The florals cited in official notes description give only half the truth: the lily of the valley gives but crispness, the rosewood a profusion of linalool (that ingredient familiar from classic lavender), the carnation adds a clovey tint, as carnation composing was done by utilizing clove essence.
The true character of the fragrance evolves from the evolution of the aromatic, rustic and bitter herbal essences into rich woody, earthy notes in the drydown with a tinge of leather notes. In this it is in the same league as the equally magnificent Derby by Guerlain, which epitomizes the smooky woody fragrance genre; perhaps the Guerlain is a bit more balsamic and greener than the Hermès.

Who is it for?
I can vividly picture Équipage on a tweed-clad man out in the woods, lithe, supply riding his horse with his gun between horse bridles and saddle, leather lapels & patches on the jacket, having a good time only to return home when the sun is beginning to set. Perhaps it's so old-school that such a picture doesn't really seem ridiculous or overblown. Hermès at any rate likes to emphasize its "team player" name, showing the bottle over the photo of a rowing team. Cool, I get it. That's got to be some posh British college we're talking about, where the idea of a team spells dedication and loyalty and doesn't mess with anyone's individuality. Équipage smells perfectly individual nowadays, sticking like a diamond ring among graphite pencils, so perhaps my modern take is skewed. I suppose more men smelled in some variation of this liquid nectar back then....and oh boy, weren't those the times.

Équipage seems perfectly at ease on a smoker too, a heavy one at that, fusing with the remnants of the ashtray scent on the clothes into producing something delightful rather than repelling. No wonder in this age of cigarette demonisation Équipage looks like an outcast. Most interestingly this masculine eau de toilette works well in both the hot and cold season and lasts equally impressively, as it seems to morph to suit the weather. Winter brings out its crispness of sweet earth and woods. Summer heat highlights its cooling herbal, almost mentholated effect and its spicy kick.

I am a bit at a loss on how it would be possible to recommend it be worn by women, evocative as it is of virile-looking men like Sean Connery, however I have to share that I indulge myself in my vintage bottle more often than I'd care to admit. Perhaps there's something to be said about women embracing the idea of wearing a virile scent from time to time...

Vintage vs Modern Équipage 
The vintage versions of Équipage bear a light brown cap with a screw top design; the modern is sparse, black, architectural. The modernised version, available at  Hermès boutiques and department stores with a big selection of Hermès fragrances where you will have to ask for it by name, has attenuated some of the pungency and projection of this fragrance, without messing too much with its bouquet garni of herbs. If anything it's more citrusy and terpenic now than leathery, but not by much.

Notes for Hermès Équipage: 
Top: bergamot, rosewood, lily of the valley, clary sage, tarragon, marjoram
Middle: jasmine, carnation, pine, hyssop, liatris (a herbaceous perennial)
Base: Vetiver, patchouli, tonka bea, amber

Serge Lutens L'Eau Froide: fragrance review & draw

Inhale the icy ringing air coming from the thundra filling your lungs. Feel the chill of cold water in a silver-tiled pool where you anticipated warmth. Remember the surprising burning sensation on your tongue upon munching an ice cube against the hardness of adamantine. Feel the wet, clean feel of stones in a brook. And imagine a kiss from dead lips...
If De Profundis aimed to capture the scent of death, the cold tentacles of a serene end to all can be felt in L'Eau Froide, from the pristine white-lined coffin to earth's cool embrace. I personally find this philosophical attitude to mortality very peaceful and cleasing to the mind.

Icy, you say? 
The bottle and the box of L'eau Froide are inscribed with iterations of coldness...cold, icy cold, frosted, transparent, crystalline, calm, ice salt, large glass of water...

Cold? Yes, it is. But very pleasantly so.

I'm a firm believer in the cooling properties of unadulterated frankincense, the kind at the heart of L'Eau Froide, which I burn regularly: After all, the raw material shares terpenic, citrusy top notes in itself, which dissipate and volatilise quickly rendering that cool smoky ambience we associate with stone temples of old. But amongst fumeheads of northern latitudes, removed from the warmth & sun of the Mediterranean where frankincense use flourished, ‘frosty’ and ‘glacial’ are not adjectives we tend to associate with incense (rather pyrocaustic is, although on Perfume Shrine we have devoted a whole series to different   varieties and  nuances of incense fragrances). Nor is the association of niche orientals ~where incense notes are the bread & butter of perfumers fast becoming rock stars. But frankincense/olibanum, the par excellence incense note, is indeed cool: it can become very smoky and dense when in high concentration, but the more you dilute it the more it gains lemony, fresh facets that inspire deep breathing, the cleansing kind.

Serge’s press upon this newest fragrance is probably what matters anyway: ‘People only notice the pyrogen facet in smoky incense burners… but not the coolness, except for the church’s."

Inspirations
Before we jump into conclusions in how the maestro is doing atypical work, fandom-alienating possibly as in his first L'Eau,  let's remember, Serge Lutens is no stranger to cool incense in his impressive line already: Encens & Lavande takes on the ashen facets of lavender-nuanced smoke, while Serge Noire is the spicy, warm & cool contrast of meditation. Nor is he a stranger to gothic coldness itself: from the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" hard-as-nails menthol blast opening in Tubereuse Criminelle, to the perverse aloofness of Bas de Soie and the lavender-tinged greyness of Gris Clair, all the way to the bluish, dead lips of Iris Silver Mist... L'Eau Froide comes as the natural evolution of spermatic ideas in all these fragrances: the herbaceous top note that cools the sinuses, the chilling dampness, the resinous incense, the clean underbelly...

But we could be short-sighted if we didn't consider fragrances with a semblance outside the Lutens seraglio too: What L'Eau Froide reminds me most of is one of my favourite summer incense waters: Passage d'Enfer, composed by Olivia Giacobetti for L'Artisan Parfumeur. I must have gone through crates of it...
The terpenic, bright side of Somalian frankincense (reminiscent of crushed pine needles) is given prominence in Passage d'Enfer, much like in the Lutens 'eau' which unfolds the terpenes after a fresh mint start; this exhibits a hint of pepperiness (could it be elemi, another resin?) giving a trigeminal nerve twist. The effect is dry and very clean indeed (but unlike the screechy aldehydic soapiness & ironing starch of the first L'Eau), with a lemony, bitter orange rind note that projects as resinous rather than fruity and a projection and sillage that are surprising for something so ghostly, so ethereal, so evanescent.

It's the scrubbing mitt of a monastery in the southern coastline, rather than the standard aquatic full of dihydromyrcenol and Calone coming out of the cubicle in an urban farm. Still this aesthetic is something with which the average perfumista hasn't come to terms with yet; it will probably take a whole generation to reconcile perfumephiles with "clean" after the horros that have befallen them in the vogue for non-perfume-perfumes in the last 20 years. I'm hopeful. After all being a perfumista means challenging your horizons, right?
The little human warmth in the deep drydown of the new Lutens comes from the refined, vegetal musks that hide in Voyage d'Hermès or Goutal's Musk Nomade (ambrette seed); eschewing too sweet and powdery for a slightly bitter, metallic edge reminiscent of the iron in blood. The whole projects with a mineral quality, like cool peebles at the foot of a lemon tree.

Who will like L'Eau Froide and who will not

Incense accolytes who appreciate the monastic qualities of Tauer's Incense Extrême, the coolness & pine of Zagorsk and the white lily whiteness of Passage d'Enfer are the prime target of L'Eau Froide.
So are those who like Eau de Gentiane Blanche and Voyage d'Hermès. I think L'Eau Froide will be more popular with men than with women who view this dry mineral facet as emasculating.
The cool customers of Chanel No.19 (especially the eau de toilette which is rich in vetiver) and Paco Rabanne's Calandre, as well as YSL Rive Gauche for women, might also be satisfied with the silvery sheen of this Lutens fragrance. If on the other hand you prefer for your incense fix the densely oriental mixes like Caron's Parfum Sacré, the rich balsamic formulae like Ormonde Jayne Tolu, and the sophisticated smoky warmth of Hotel Costes, you would be totally disappointed. Then  again you might be an omnivore, like me.
It's of note that no comparison can be effectively made with Etro's Messe de Minuit: Whereas the Etro is a chameleon, smelling in varying degrees of warm or cool according to your GPS positioning when wearing it, the Lutens is a la la la constant tune that doesn't waver much. 

Will I wear it? 
I was somewhat confused with last year's Lutens De Profundis and Vitriol d'Oeillet. Though arguably not the height of originality, I see myself dousing myself with L'Eau Froide each time I want to feel that chill on the small of my back that denotes either solace from a heatwave Med-style, or the exciting but safe thrill of peeking within the crypt when demons are hiding low on a snowy winter's day.

L’Eau Froide, a clear eau de parfum concentration of fragrance sees his previous L'Eau Serge Lutens joined by a similar-looking bottle. (1.7oz/50ml and 3.4 oz./100ml, 69 and 100 euros respectively at select doors stocking Lutens fragrances from March 2012).

For our readers an advance sample sprayer is offered. Please tell us your incense memories, if you have any. 
Draw is open till Sunday 26th midnight.

pic of the Dead Sea via english.al-akhbar.com 

Parfum d'Empire Wazamba: fragrance review

In the words of Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura "most human behaviour is learned observationally through modeling". And nowhere is this more cognitively apparent than in the beauty and sensual business in which perfumery holds an esteemed place. Wazamba by Parfum d'Empire is a prime example of the developmental incline which the niche house established by Corsican Marc-Antoine Corticchiato~assisted to by Elisabeth de Feydeau~ has been for a while now, influenced and influencing through modeling.

The resounding success of Ambre Russe, Cuir Ottoman and Osmanthus Interdite are a small testament to the power of quality materials, conceptual storylines (the recreation of the atmosphere of great empires of the past, influencing the Romea d'Ameor line as well) and an aesthetic focus which diverts from the torpid patcho-syrupy jingles of so many new releases to produce baroque, complex and refined sonatas.

In Wazamba, the name doesn't evoke a peruqued era with fake beauty marks travelling the rosy cheeks of decadent and unwahsed aristocrats, nor Tsardoms of fierce despotism drenched in samovars' inky liquid and potato grain liquor. Instead it is inspired by “a sistrum used in the rituals of West Africa” possessing a “heavy sound, full and deep” which one could imagine played by the regal silhouettes of Modigliani-like figures in the savanna evening bonfires. Perhaps a little imaginatively conceived, as the mysterious instrument is nowhere to be found (there is wazimbo though!), yet the merit of the composition more than surpasses the want of accuracy in the press release. A Lutensian web is weaved around almost every niche release, his pioneer work being the instigator in large part (excluding L'Artisan, Goutal and Diptyque who always travelled their own path). Parfum d'Empire is no exception, yet the familiarity is not contrite nor bellicose, but proud in itself.

Parfum d'Empire Wazamba travels the new route of conifers, surely pre-empting along with Fille en Aiguilles, a revisited appreciation for balsamic notes which I predict we will be seeing more of in the future: fir balsam, pine needles, cypress sap...Lubin's Idole and Black Cashmere by Donna Karan were incorporating some warmth and fir notes with their incense a few years ago and Zagorsk from the Incense series by Comme des Garcons was the first to marry pine with incense. But in Wazamba the synergy is more complicated, very interesting and sweeter. The burning, pyrocaustic frankincense of Serge Noire and Essence de John Galliano appears softly pettering out to ashy-powdery, slightly sweet notes (opoponax and the sensuality of labdanum). Yet the initial impression and one of the predominent notes on my skin is ~surprisingly enough but pleasurably so~ apple; a red, juicy and ripe variety that is miles away from the sanitary, upbeat, acid green and detergent-like apple in shampoos and fine fragrance alike in later years! The combination of this apple note along with long-lasting, delectable myrrh is joined at the hip via the cinnamon nuance that both materials evoke; one through allusion, the other through illusion. Yet Wazamba isn't spicy, nor is it gourmand despite its sweetness. Neither is it fancy, sophisticated, elegant or conventionally sexy and that's perfectly all right. The feeling it evokes is one of unadulterated, raw beauty: It relies on a forest of aromatic pine needles, laid out in an African sunset, when climbing the nearby knoll your hands are almost touching the copper clouds.



Notes for Parfum d'Empire Wazamba: Somalian incense, Kenyan myrrh, Ethiopian opoponax, Indian sandalwood, Moroccan cypress, labdanum, apple, fir balsam

Parfum d'Empire Wazamba is available in Eau de Parfum in 50ml/1.7 and 100ml/3.4oz spray bottles at Luckyscent and Aus Liebe zum Duft, as well as in the men's department of Le Printemps and the Old England store (corner of the rue Scribe and boulevard des Capucines) in Paris.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Incense Series, Pine scents

Pics from the postcard book African Ceremonies by Beckwith and Fisher via cas1.elis.ugent.be and salon.com.
Photo of Parfum d'Empire Wazamba bottle © by Elena Vosnaki.

Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles: fragrance review

Many summers ago I used to spend my days by the sea at my grandparents' villa, surrounded by majestic pines as old as the original tenants, numerous dusty fig-trees and one wild-pear tree which was later struck by lightning to ash. The wind was sighing in the boughs, a nightingale came to sit on my shoulder and the longings of those long summers promised adventures as yet uncharted, our psyche elevated through a taste of awe. The long pine needles were falling in heaps on the floor of this pine grove ~infuriating my grandfather who had to work doubly hard along with the gardener to keep the grass properly breathing~ counterpointing the mighty trunks, often bleeding tears of golden sticky resin used in both turpentine and retsina. This was different from the mastic and copal resins, which we grounded in fine dust, or the rosin, which I witnessed being used by the student of violin who routinely accompanied me at the piano at the Conservatoire. We were sent as children to gather fresh pine needles, run them through the cold water of the outdoors tap, gather them in bunches and hang them upside-down to dry: they would be stored to make herbal tea with honey to ward off colds, a tip of our German cleaning woman, when the summer villa would revert to its silent existence for half a year. Everything about those precious memories was conjured as soon as I heard of the newest Serge Lutens fragrance, Fille en Aiguilles and the reality of it didn't betray my visuals as some of you will find out for yourselves (yes, there's a draw for samples coming up, keep reading!)

The first announcement containing the notes had been the instigation, the second round of news with the cryptic messages by Serge had been the icing, as it left us with exactly nothing to go on upon ~the mystery was well preserved: this girl ~or boy, who could wear this equally well~ rolling on pincushions was not telling any tales just yet. The aiguilles part (“needles”) in the name has been linked to sewing needles (due to the French idiom "de fil en aiguille" meaning from needle to thread, from one thing to another, ie. snowballing), or stiletto heels ("talons aiguilles" in French) perhaps exactly because there was the "tick tick tick" repetitive sound in the press release. Still pine needles, those long thin lances that strew forest floors and exude their resinous, medicinal-sweet smell when the air is warm, are at the core of the composition rather than the ill-sitting, detergent-like tones of so much "pine"-baptized air pollution posing as home and car ambience.

In a nod to old empirics and apothecaries, who healed ills attributed by the superstitious ailing to supernatual forces or the wrath of God through folkore herb medicine and mysticism, uncle Serge acts as a shaman, letting out blood with his pine needle in his bag of seemingly endless tricks. In Alain Corbin's book "The Fragrant and the Foul" the theory of miasma is documented: the widespread belief that foul smells accounted for disease and therefore eradicating the bad smells would result in battling the disease (Incidentally there was also the widespread belief of bathing disrupting the protective mantle of the skin, but this is the focus of another of our articles). The practice has long ancentrastal ties to ritualistic cleansing via sulphur as depicted in antiquity, remnants of which are referenced here and there in Greek tragedy such as Euripides's Helen. Fire and brimstone led by a savant Theonoi goes far, far back...In the Middle-Ages during bouts of cholera, the plague and other miasmata, empirical healers used a large hollow beak stuffed with cleaning herbs so as to protect themselves, earning them the descriptor of "quack", which by association became synonymous with charlatan later on when the science of medicine prevailed. The word is of Dutch origin (kwakzalver, meaning boaster who applies a salve); boaster because quacks sold their folk medicine merchandise shouting in the streets.The belief in the magical properties of scented compounds runs through the fabric of fragrance history: let's cast our minds back to the alleged cure-all of Eau de Cologne by Johann Maria Farina and his imitators! But is perfume really snake-oil? Only to the extend which we allow it to be, yet there lies artfulness in the pharmacopoeia.

This particular catharctic blood-letting preceding the herbal ointment, forms a trickling kaleidoscope of the elements which Lutens has accustomed us to, via the sleight of hand of perfumer Christopher Sheldrake: There is the candied mandarin peel with its strange appeal of cleaner (La Myrrhe) and putrid aspects (Mandarine Mandarin), the fruits confits of his Bois et Fruits, the interplay of cool and hot of the masterful Tubéreuse Criminelle, the charred incense depths and fireworks of Serge Noire, the vetiver in Vétiver Oriental with a rough aspect peeking through and even some of the spice mix of El Attarine, appearing half poised between cumin and fenugreek. After the last, pretty and atypical for Lutens Nuit de Cellophane, Fille en Aiguilles is an amalgam of strange accords, a disaccord within itself, but with a compelling appeal that pleases me. Contrasting application techniques ~dabbing versus spraying~ I would venture that should you want the more camphoraceous elements to surface, spraying is recommended; while dabbing unleashes the more orientalised aspects. There is sweetness in the sense that there is sweetness in Chergui or Douce Amere, so don't let it scare you too much. The liquid in my bottle is wonderfully dark brown, somber yet incadecent in the light of the day and as dark as ink, much like Sarrasins, in the dusk of the evening (and be warned that it also stains fabric almost as much).

Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles has notes of vetiver, incense, fruits, pine needles and spices in a luminous woody oriental formula.
Available in the oblong export bottles of 50 ml/1.7oz of Eau de Parfum Haute Concentration for 95 € /140$ at Paris Sephora and of course Le Palais Royal and later on at Selfridges UK, Aedes US, the Bay in Toronto and online.

For our readers, enter a comment to win one of the five samples given of the new fragrance well ahead of its wider distribution!

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Serge Lutens news and reviews

Other reviews: Elisabeth de Feydeau, Grain de Musc, Perfume Posse.

Paintings by Colette Calascione, via deyarte.blogspot.com