Guerlain Habit Rouge Sport: fragrance review

~by Mike Perez

There was a time when I hated any scent that smelled like powder. Powder smelled ‘cheap’ to me, which may seem odd since I love mint in fragrances and many people associate that with store bought toothpaste. Guerlain changed everything.

The first time I tried Habit Rouge (the Eau de Cologne) a couple years ago, I found myself for the first time in love with a powdery fragrance. Also slightly dusty; antiquated and gentle, like those photographic effects where an image has a soft, hazy glow all around the subject in the picture. I liked the effect (maybe it was the ‘Guerlainade’) and instantly thereafter found it easy to love Shalimar, Vol de Nuit, and Jicky - other wonderful powdery scents which are an acquired taste. I’m aware that many men (of differing ages) don’t agree with me and dislike Habit Rouge. Nonetheless, wearing a popular fragrance has never been essential to me. Therefore, you might say, Habit Rouge is an important fragrance to me.

This year (March 2009) Guerlain released Habit Rouge Sport, the 2nd flanker to the 1965 fragrance (the first was 2005’s Habit Rouge Light/Légère) which joined the many formulations of the original: Eau de Cologne, Eau de Cologne Dry, Eau de Toilette, Eau de Parfum, After Shave and Extrait/Parfum. I instantly disliked the name: Habit Rouge Sport. Why not just call it Habit Rouge Arctic Rush? Still, I was excited to smell how Guerlain would interpret Habit Rouge, into a ‘sport’ fragrance.

Oddly, the way Habit Rouge Sport opens up on skin, in the top notes, has absolutely nothing in common with the original. A very sturdy and synthetic fresh note both sharp (aldehydes?) and bright, is the first thing you’ll smell – not citrus, which when it arrives later isn’t very lemon prominent at all. The smell is piercing and I strongly advise you carefully sniff your skin closely upon application. Based on first impressions, I was initially instantly dissatisfied. Subsequent wearings have perhaps made it less shocking, but no less disappointed with the cheap-room-freshener sharpness.

The jasmine floral accord in HRS arrives after the fragrance warms on skin. A very transparent jasmine, similar to those used in designer feminines (Blush by Marc Jacobs, 24 Faubourg Eau Délicate by Hermès). Simple florals that lie on top of the aforementioned fresh and synthetic top notes, giving the scent a varnished surface effect. The plastic floral effect (Nappe Rouge [Red Tablecloth] Sport?) is probably due to the leather notes (a nod to the original scent) but which in Habit Rouge Sport has no solid citrus / oriental structure to blend with.

Saddened, I hoped it might progress in a pleasing way – Guerlain fragrances are appreciated for their intricate and satisfying dry downs. But no. It evolves into a synthetic woody / vanilla musk (annoyingly safe and conservative and miles away from Guerlainade) that extends the sturdy fresh notes for 4-5 hours before it disappears.

I’ve smelled synthetic notes, used unskillfully here-and-there is a few select Guerlain scents (Heritage (the EdT); Aqua Allegoria Laurier-Reglisse) and I’ve smelled shampoo-underarm-deodorant-esque fresh accords also (Guerlain Homme) – but I’ve never smelled the combination of both effects in a Guerlain masculine.

I wore it several times before writing this review – each time I patiently awaited the scent to evolve differently on me. It never happened. I have the strong feeling this scent was not created for Habit Rouge fans like me, but rather for those who have never smelled or are unfamiliar with the original. If so, how sad? Kind of like a cocktail party I’ve attended: I am the unpopular bookworm kind-of- guy, over in the corner all by myself and no one paying attention to me - while on the other side of the room everyone is crowded around the new-in-town, handsome, popular jock in his tight red shirt.
Habit Rouge Sport is available at select Guerlain boutiques and Bergdorf Goodman. A 100 ml atomizer bottle (red glass, with a silver cap) is $92.

The notes for Guerlain Habit Rouge Sport are: citron vert, bitter orange, pink pepper, bamboo, jasmine, leather, vanilla and patchouli.

Images via M.Perez

Work your signature scent to become unforgettable

In a fun little article in College News about 5 ways to become unforgettable (I am assuming positively and to a certain someone which you want to romantically involve) there is this nifty bit of advice on how to manipulate fragrance into the equation. In fact it is on the very very top, being advice #1. We wouldn't have guessed for the world!
Here it is:

"Too much: Layering to the point of eye-watering pungency. Layer, yes, but don’t saturate yourself in the scent to a fault. At a certain point, it’s just going to burn their nostrils, which will result in you being the bad kind of “unforgettable.”
Just enough: Slather on some deliciously-scented lotion while you’re in the car, right as you’re about to go out and do dinner or a movie. The rush of fragrance in the small space will be enough to jolt his memory nicely. Plus, when you get back in the car, it will smell like you.
With that in mind, I recently read another great tip: spritz a little of your fave perfume on your bedroom light bulb, just a little, and the room will fill with your trademark scent. Finally, don’t be afraid to go outside the box for your perfume of choice. After all, the point is
to be memorable, not to smell like every other person on campus. Simple concoctions like cocoa butter or suntan lotion can be great scents. Likewise, sometimes a phenomenal-smelling shampoo is all you’ll need to make someone’s heart pound. "

Somehow ~and judging by being outside the target audience~ I find shampoo smells (as well as cocoa butter or suntan lotion) not nearly enough to make one's heart pound for very long, but what do I know? I wasn't around when a specific green shampoo was all the rage.
Tell us if you have any "simple" scents that have had someone special go amok about it!

Amy Winehouse stinks up a storm?

"Amy Winehouse is reportedly eyeing a deal with a perfume house to launch a range under her name. The singer was said to looking to bag a deal worth more than 750,000 dollars under the guidance of her father, Mitch" according to the Indian Express. “They want it to reflect her style with a classic smoky 1950s look and smell. Amy is keen to expand her brand and wants to latch on to the celeb perfumes bandwagon while she can". The news is also broadcasted on Starpulse Entertainment news. The initial reportage is owed to The Daily Star, but in a world when porn stars have issued their own celebrity scents, a (talented, if troubled) singer's juice doesn't seem as far fetched.

Will it be "Eau de Funk" like reported on Ear Sucker? "A namless {sic} industry insider seems to agree with me saying: “Frankly, she doesn’t look like she smells that nice, so doing some positive publicity to prove it doesn’t just smell of stale booze and fags would be vital.” according to Fashionindie.com

The "while she can" line sounds a little desperate...even if 50s fragrances are indeed often an affair of booze and cigarette smoke, let me remind the nameless industry insider.

At any rate, for her sake, I hope this move (if confirmed) is the nudge to tilt her out of the downward spiral of dependency...

What would you like to see featured in Amy's scent? Or which celebrity (who hasn't yet) would you like to see launching a fragrance?

Nina Ricci Coeur Joie: fragrance review & history

My maternal grandmother had a Louis XVI vanity with silk damask that had a interlay of glass vitrine within the wood panel back, behind which small precious flacons from Paris hid. They seemed to flirt with each other at nights and I imagined them having spirited conversations when I was little. The square-shouldered Balmain extrait was the masculine counterpoint leaning seductively close to the smoothly countoured L'Air du temps and close to them a bottle of Coeur Joie seemed to proclaim by its very name the romanticism which those perfumes aimed to provoke. Perfume was a reverie back then, a daydream and a longing, more than a mere accessory and my grandmother brought them all to life.
I was watching an Angela Lansbury film, in which she travelled to Paris and had a gown made at the famous Nina Ricci atelier and what stayed was the palpable feeling of her intoxication of becoming another person through this chrysallis transformation; or rather the person which she used to be as a young girl; optmistic and hopeful, before the vagaries of life had crushed her dreams. In retrospect I believe Coeur Joie would have been an excellent scent choice to accompany this elegant vision! Its understated luxury of its feminine bouquet of subdued, cooly whispering flowers transports us into an early evening reverie someplace where Chopin Nocturnes can be heard through ajar French windows and ball-gowned debutantes are casting their dreams on the flip of a wrist during a waltz.

Robert Ricci, the son of fashion designer Nina Ricci and head of development at parfums Ricci, took an unconventional approach when visualising how he wanted Coeur Joie to be, the first Nina Ricci perfume to diversify from clothing, in 1946. Despite it being a creation of Germaine Cellier, a perfumer with a daring and unapologetic streak of rebellion, then working at the famous Roure company, this Ricci perfume comes off as a comparatively soft fragrance; delicate and low-key floral, with an elegant polish rendering it suitable for a Grace Kelly type rather than the more daring amazones of Cellier's. Germaine Cellier was quite formidable herself, a great beauty of alleged lesbian tendencies, smoking a chimney, eating garlic with other famous couturiers, violently clashing with Roure's acclaimed perfumer Jean Carles, briefly acting as a functional scents composer for Colgate-Palmolive soaps (a stint which lasted but three months) and gingerly mixing perfumers' "bases" wondoursly resulting into stunning compositions such as the first "green" fragrance (the galbanum-souled Vent Vert), the knife-scathing outlaw of Bandit with its leathery bitterness of quinolines of 1944, the buttery radiance of tuberose in 1948's Fracas (both for Robert Piguet), the nostalgic violet chypre Jolie Madame for Balmain (1953) and the lesser known La Fuite des Heures for Balenciaga in 1949. There is also the enigmatic Eau d'Herbes (Herbal Water) conceived for Hermes at an unspecified date during the 1950s, which remains an enigma, and several compositions for Elizabeth Arden during the same time-frame. The solution to her Roure disputes presented by Louis Amic was to set Cellier up in her own laboratory in Paris (baptized Exarome), a place of her own where she could create her perfumes and meet her clients.

Nina Ricci on the other hand is best remembered for L'Air du Temps, the romantic lactonic floral with a carnation accent by Fabric Fabron in the emblematic flacon crowned with doves, but she has had a line-up of several less popular classic fragrances. Among them Coeur Joie (1946), Fille d'Eve (1952), Capricci (1961), the masculine Signoricci (1965), the orange-rich Bigarade (1971)and the spicy carnation aldehydic Farouche (1973) all the way to the original green Nina in the frosted bottle in 1987 (the name has been reprised for the gourmand in the apple-shaped bottle of 2006), the playful fruity chypre Deci-Dela and the trio of Les Belles de Ricci, all the way into the recent years when the company was bought by Puig.
Marie Adélaïde Nielli (nickenamed Nina when she was but a mere girl) was married to Louis Ricci, to whom she bore a son, Robert. Nina Ricci relocated to Monte Carlo first and ultimately in Paris in 1932 when Robert was 27 years old, working as a model maker. But her son's motivation instilled into her the desire to open a fashion house one year short of her 50th birthday and the rest is, as they say, history.

The polished feel of the fragrance is immediately apparent, from its fresh, greenish opening oscilating between neroli and cool iris tonalities to the discreet, slightly warm and reassuring drydown which shares elements with the original Nina by the same designer, while being as waxy woody as the legendary Dior Dior. Despite scents of that time being usually powdery, Coeur joie stops short of producing this effect and does not smell old-fashioned in the least, although modern noses might be disappointed at the lack of overt sweetness. As someone at Fragrantica put it: "Launched just two years prior to Nina Ricci's renowned L'Air du Temps, Coeur Joie is L'air du Temps with a whiskey chaser -- a lilting, cool, pretty-as-a-princess floral with a knowing, silken drydown befitting an empress. Wear this when you want to promise nothing but deliver everything". I'd substitute whiskey with champagne, but the rest rings quite true.

The bottle, designed by Marc Lalique with whom the Ricci family enjoyed a close relationship since childhood, reprised the romantic theme into a garlanded tube that was heart-shaped. Extremely costly due to its rarity nowadays, yet there are round canisters of Eau de Toilette, holding big quantities appearing now and then on Ebay auctions and on online discounters; these harken back to the 1960s. There is a rumour circulating that they were especially made for the Greek market where Ricci perfumes were especially popular at the time and well-to-do ladies used them for refreshment on warm spring days.

Notes for Nina Ricci Coeur Joie:
Top: neroli, bergamot, orange blossom
Middle: iris, violet, hyacinth, jasmine, gardenia, and rose
Base: woods

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Germaine Cellier scents



Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) plays Frédéric Chopin: Nocturne nr. 12 in G, opus 37 no. 2, composed in 1839. Recorded in 1928. Originally uploaded by pianopera on Youtube

Fashion photo of Van Cleef & Arpels jewels by Bert Stern. Nina Ricci atelier via nytimes. bottle pics via parfumgott/flickr and ebay

Caron With Pleasure: fragrance review & Caron history

Certain fragrances grab you by the throat and demand to be asked "What are you talking about anyway?" Whether they do it via shock value or by undecipherable codes posing an enigma it is a matter of semiotics.

One such scent is With Pleasure, belying its very name, not because it is repulsive, but because it is on the edge of consciousness nagging you to tilt your head once more and mubble again "what is it about it, then?"

The Unknown Perfumer at Caron: Michel Morsetti

Caron's With Pleasure was issued in 1949, composed by perfumer Michel Morsetti, two years after the self-taught founder, Ernest Daltroff, had passed away. The bottle was customarily designed by Félicie Bergaud (née Félicie Vanpouille and the collaborator of Daltroff, with whom they shared an open, and controversial at the time, relationship out of wedlock). Contemporary to both Or et Noir (Gold and Black) and Rose it remained in their long shadow, a secret to be unveiled by those in the know. The same year also saw the introduction of the original version of Caron's Pour Une Femme, later discontinued and then re-issued in 2001 in an altered formula. It seems that the end of the war and the decade drawing to a close saw an orgiastic productivity at Caron! Yet although the former fragrances continue their unhindered path (with slight tweaks along the way), With Pleasure has been discontinued and become rare, a true collectible.
Michel Morsetti has been responsible for all these fragrances, along with others in the Caron stable of thouroughbreds in the late 1940s and 1950s, notably the cassie-rich almost gourmand Farnesiana (1947), the relatively unknown marvel Tabac Noir (1948) ~a counterpoint to the famous Tabac Blond of the roaring 20s~, the lily-of-the-valley ballet Muguet de bonheur (1952), and the fiery, peppercorn fury of Poivre and its lighter concentration Coup de Fouet (1954). Royal Bain de Champagne is also attributed to Morsetti, despite it being issued in 1941, at a time when Daltroff was still alive. Incidentally many of the classic Carons and a history of the house of Caron are covered in Parfum: Prestige et Haute Couture by Jean-Yves Gaborit (editions Fribourg, 1985).
The vereable French house started from meagre beginnings in 1901-1902 when Russian-Jewish brothers Ernest and Raoul Daltroff bought the small parfumeria "Emilia", located on rue Rossini in Paris, evident in their first fragrance baptized Royal Emilia in 1904. Aided by an obscure acquaintance named Kahann with deep pockets, Ernest Daltroff moved the address to 10 rue de la Paix and renamed it "Caron", with which name it became synonymous with French style and "fit for a duchess" chic, according to an infamous quote.

If there is a signature Caron-ade running through the fabric of the older vintage Carons, it is evident in With Pleasure, without doubt: a dark rose with musty, slightly earthy tonalities is peeking its face underneath a green-herbal façade. The rosiness is an upside-down image of the darker and rosier Or et Noir, with an almost anisic touch. The greeness of With pleasure is not chypré, nevertheless, but rather tilted into an aldehydic direction with a non tangy citrusy accent, folded into the rosiness along with snuffed-out candles notes. The more strident, angular chypres of the 50s were competing with more traditionally feminine aldehydics and their proper lady image; so very fitting, after the return of women to the home, the kitchen and the boudoir following the loaded responsibilities they had shouldered during the hard WWII days which helped emancipate them further.
There is nothing upbeat or girly about the scent, on the contrary there is a quiet mood, but one can sense that this is no mere capriciousness but a frank introspection, a look into a different angle of an at-heart secretive personality who lives her life day by day. I am not sure whether I like it or not, but it keeps asking me neverthless.

The English name alludes to an international venture, capitalizing on the rave reception that Narcisse Noir, Caron's leading fragrance of 1911, had received on the other side of the Atlantic thanks to its potency.
The bottle in Bacarrat crystal is old-fashioned, tactile and round and can be imagined on the vanity of a lady with ebony brushes bearing boar bristles for hair that is brushed a hundred times every night by an attentive chambermaid: A crystal flacon shaped like a honey jar with a T-shaped stopper resembling a glamorous pastry-roll on top (technically this design is called tonnelet) and the name "With Pleasure" emblazoned on the front. The Bacarrat signature in acid on the bottom seals its aunthenticity.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Fragrance History, Caron scents , Aldehydes

Photographs by Luca Cornel of Brenda Lee via fishup.ru, Ad pic via ebay, With Pleasure flacons via coutaubegarie.auction.fr