Thierry Mugler Womanity: fragrance review

All Mugler fragrances create a stir, from the iconic Angel to the stomping woody jasmine in Alien, the metamorphosis-inducing androgyne tuberose of À Travers le Miroir to the surprising Miroir des Envies with its Nutella chord: Womanity, a woody, sweet (fig notes) and salty Eau de Parfum which was advertised with fish references (the caviar accord) alongside the name cannot but conjure images of female genitalia to the fertile imagination. And maybe this was at the back of the mind of Mugler and the creative team at the Clarins group all along!
The designer's house has almost gone bust, kept afloat via perfume & accessories and the man has buffed himself up into a mutilated rendition of a seedy-magazine bodybuilder named Manfred. Something has got to keep the perfumes at the position they are nevertheless and that something is innovation and originality. Womanity is no exception, the definition of a love-it-or-hate-it fragrance, much like all Mugler perfumes are with the possible exception of Cologne.

"Womanity is the quality of being a woman. We differentiate ourselves from the rest of huMANity in biological, social, cultural and spiritual terms" (according to womanity.blogspot) Colour me unimpressed. Yet the composition which perfumers at Mane concocted for Parfums Mugler is nothing short of apocalyptic (in both senses of the word). The overwhelming sweetness (and loudness!) of the fig note is flanked by the austerity of wood and a salty nuance (ever so slight) which manage to create something that doesn't conjure anything concrete, and doesn't recall any other fragrance on the market. In fact if the saltiness was more pronounced (as the woody drydown progresses the arch seems to fall flat and become dull and incongruent) we would be talking about a true classic-to-be.

Smell and compare with other fig fragrances ~such as the two classics, Philosykos by Diptyque and Premier Figuier by L'Artisan Parfumeur with their hint of coconut and bitter leaf note; or the ultra-refined Un Jardin en Mediterranée by Hermès with its herbal aromata~ and you will see how Womanity differs. First of all, there is a watery-sweet note on top which is very unusual: The fruity note passingly resembles that in Un Jardin En Mediterranée or Figue Amère by Miller Harris, but whereas the warmth co-existed with the cool in the Hermès fragrance, laid on thin over the green notes, and it was bitterish-cool in the Miller Harris, in Mugler's Womanity the figs have caramelised. Their succulent flesh id more apparent in the sun than the leaves or the bark of the tree, with a nod to fig cookies as well. And then the salty note, said to evoke caviar!! Its intimate, lightly animalic quality is musky and intriguing. Pierre Aulas, olfactive director of Clarins Fragrance Group, revealed that it was a true challenge to work on Mugler's idea of combining savoury and sweet notes. The ambery-woody drydown is the "weakest" part aesthetically, borrowed as it seems from Alien, and not exciting enough, echoing as it does a base common in other fragrances on the market.

The finished effect though is so powerful that it is worth amassing some of the quotes of people who have sampled Womanity and publicized their impressions on Fragrantica. Those range from the impressionist ("a futuristic scent, or what perfume would be like on an alien planet" and "something a mermaid would wear. Overpoweringly fishy at first as she rises from the sea, but later as she is sitting on a rock combing her tresses, breezes from the nearby fig groves sweeten the air. Perhaps she is on a Greek island somewhere in the Mediterranean") to the programmatic ("I know many people get citrus, fig, salty caviar, nail polish or bad body odour, but I smell spicy cookies" and "Womanity smells like popcorn from a movie theatre, filled with gobs butter"), all the way to the purely dismissive ("It smells dirty, like youd been cutting trees all day and smoking at the same time, but smells even worse than that if you can imagine"). A fragrance which creates strong feelings......but a very strange one!

Thierry Mugler has once again jumped into the deep end with Womanity, proposing a new release which sounds odd but will definitely open up new doors, possibly more refined along the way. If the previous Mugler scents are any indication to the spawn they leave behind, then expect to smell more of this combination in the future. I don't think I would personally wear Womanity, my tastes running to subtler, more intellectual routes concerning personal fragrance, but I cannot deny its risk-taking as the proper stance to take at the moment, even if not entirely successful. If all fragrance houses did this, the world of perfumery would be much more interesting at least, without a doubt!

NB: The review is based on my own sampling at store and at home and NOT on the promotional pre-release "kit" which several other bloggers got in the mail in summer 2010.



Related reading on Perfumeshrine: Thierry Mugler news & reviews

Caviar on Fig photo by Boverthemoon

Bertrand Duchaufour: "My work always seems to come from bumping into someone unexpectedly"

How romantic is it for a modern day perfumer to get initially interested in perfumery because he fell in love with a girl with great taste in fragrance at 17? (She was wearing Chanel's No.19) And is it any wonder that Guerlain's Mitsouko and Jacques Fath's Iris Gris still remain to this day the olfactory monuments by which consequent artists set the bar?

Bertrand Duchaufour, perfumer for Comme des Garcons, L'Artisan Parfumeur and Penhaligon's among others, who trained at the Lautier Florasynth group in Grasse while also working at Florasynth Paris and Créations Aromatiques (the two companies merged in 1997), is revealing these and other interesting points about his tastes and work perspective in a short & sweet interview hosted on Osmoz.com on this link.
Worth a read!

Yves Saint Laurent Belle d'Opium: fragrance review

When the perfume gods are chastising your Hubris (in this case taking the original Opium and changing the hell out of its familiar, groundbreaking spicy bouquet "thanks" to IFRA restrictions), Nemesis comes in the guise of bland innocuousness meant to flop, namely Belle d'Opium. Long forgotten are the droves of protest ~and inevitable adoration~ on the addictive powers of the original Opium by Yves Saint Laurent; the almost contraband repackaging in certain countries so that it wouldn't pose challenges at customs; and the Australian peanut growing governor who banned its sales in his county. Belle d'Opium merely raises an eyebrow at best with its almost masculine structure, which isn't wholly intentional and belies the fanfare and the Romain Gavras commercial (watch here) with which it was launched to the scene a little while ago.


It's no fault of the competent perfumers, Honorine Blanc and Alberto Morillas, but rather a capitulation to the sacrificial pyre that the "Intentional Fragrant Abyss" (our own patented IFRA acronym, which seems more like it) is pushing most modern perfumes into. Firmenich, who produces the juice for bean-counters L'Oréal, is obviously too afraid to bypass these new restrictions and given a cheapskate budget they are following the bland and confused brief to the letter: Make a programatic spicy floral-oriental for people who are afraid to venture outside Lahore for fear of coming to terms with real poverty and those who think visiting Paris means shopping for scarves signés, stuffing on croissants and doing Le Louvre in under 3 hours.
Oddly, the perfumers were obliged to pronounce such silliness as "the fragrance was inspired by France's cultural references such as the Belle de Jour film or Belle du Seigneur book [they wish!] but also international references, like Bella Swan in Twilight [there you go!] who is a fresh-faced young woman, a romantic figure later acquiring dark psychoses." [sic, I kid you not]. It's very bad timing that Armand de Villoutreys, president of Firmenich, was put on record in the September issue of Cosmétique Mag admiting there is no time for the company to work properly: "We receive an avalanche of briefs and the whole chain is overheated. It's mechanical, in the sense that we ought to be very quick and we don't have the necessary time to devote to each step". Uh huh...

Although the listed notes of Belle d'Opium include jasmine, gardenia, peach, sandalwood, lily and pepper, I'm scared to report that the whole smells of neither, but rather an abstract and shapeless spicy-woody composition, beggining with a muted fruity-cardamom note and ending in the familiar woody-ambery-patchouli drydown of myriads of modern fragrances, plus an incense hint. Spicy perfumes, like masterful ganster films, have the great advantage of having a core duet of players who battle for reign within the gang crossing each other and siding with other forces in order to prevail; you're at the edge of your seat to see who will overpower whom. Just observe the majestic (and statement-making) Poivre by Caron with its pepper & clove shot-down at dawn. If only Belle d'Opium had the guts to double-cross its partners, we might have something memorable in our hands. As it is, we're not only far from -even- PG13, but firmly into the Nickelodeon channel.

To add insult to injury, neither the sillage nor the lasting power are technically adequate for an Eau de Parfum, which ~with said perfumers involved~ suggests a quickly churned out "generic" please-the-masses deodorant for the price of a proper perfume.
What bugs me most? According to inside info I have the name Belle d'Opium was chosen to ride on the heels of Yves Saint Laurent's best-seller and will be eventually pulled in favour of simply "Belle". If Belle reminds you of... B'Elle (a fictionary flanker of Elle by the same brand maybe?), it's because that's the concept to begin with. Be Elle? Nah....Shame, really!

Available at major department stores in Eau de Parfum concentration (from 53 to 90 euros).

photo collage originally uploaded on stylista.gr

Le Labo AnOther 13 & Baie Rose 26: fragrance reviews & draw

Never were two fragrances by the same niche line been so contrarily contrasted: Where I expected the pedestrian I got a brilliant surprise and where all signs were siren-calling (the rare, the uber-exclusive!) I was crest-fallen. I'm referring of course to Baie Rose 26 and AnOther 13 by Le Labo, this autumn's newest releases by the hip niche line who provoke, as much as put things up for an interesting discussion on the boundaries of art and marketing.

Baie Rose 26 comes as a welcome surprise in a market inundated with the plethora of pink peppercorns (i.e.baies rose) peeking from ultra-fruity compositions with the requisite patchouli base that makes for modern "young" juice (what's accusingly called a "fruitchouli" ). The initially piquant top note of pink pepper sets the scene for a very diffusive fragrance, which radiates from both blotter and skin, slowly revealing a generous rose heart; like roses half-hidden in an aluminum chest under bullet-proof glass in an Ian Fleming novel.
Perfumer FrankVoelkl, who composed both Musc 25 and Iris 39 previously for Le Labo, tackled pink peppercorns (which naturally have rosy facets) and made them woody-musky with a prolonged drydown full of Ambrox reminiscent of the finish of Mille et Une Roses by Lancôme and Stella by Stella McCartney. There is even a deliciously weird, but oddly very becoming, "vomit note" that reminds me of Karo Karounde, an exotic essence which is used in Pleasures by Lauder. If that makes you queasy, fear not: it's only an impression and a little bit of jarrigness makes for an artistic outcome.
Although Rose 31 is already a best-selling fragrance in the Le Labo portfolio (a spicy cumin-rich rose note which makes for a rose "sweating" from the inside), the perfume enthusiast could find merit to include Baie Rose 26 in their collection all the same. I admit I'm sorely temped!

Baie Rose 26 notes:
Ambrox, Clove, Pepper, Rose, Baie Rose, Musk, Ambrette, Cedar, Aldehyde

Baie Rose 26 by Le Labo is available only in Chicago (it's a "city-exclusive", following Le Labo's annoying but business-savvy ~apparently~ technique of saving some frags for specific cities around the world).

AnOther 13 is the definition of a limited edition: only 500 units are produced globally, in partnership with so-hip-it-hurts AnOther mag in London. This project was born thanks to Sarah of Colette boutique in Paris who initiated the creative collaboration between the Le Labo founders and Jefferson Hack, editor in chief of AnOther Magazine. Jefferson Hack is a renowned British journalist and magazine editor who co-founded Dazed & Confused in the early 90’s and who launched AnOther Magazine in 2001. Perfumer Nathalie Lorson (praised on our pages for her Poivre 23) was called to blend a "dirty musk which your nose will want to go back to the skin that wears it more than you want to". Errr, no, actually; if you put this on skin, you run the risk of having your arm fall off!

Let me explain myself after this provocative statment: AnOther 13 is a monochromatic take on Ambrox and musks (three major musky aromachemicals, Muscenone delta, Ambrettolide and Helvetolide; more on different synthetic musks here) which murmurs disparaging bon mots with vicious intent and which unfortunately has the half-life of plutonium, i.e. you will be scrubbing and scrubbing if you happen not to appreciate that sort of thing.
Ambrox has certainly been toned & honed through several popular fragrances in the last decade (see our article on Ambrox here), but 2010 has seen it being writ large on the marquise, as the prominent star, which is a new twist. Contrary to Juliette has a Gun Not a Perfume, though, AnOther 13 is not solely based on Ambrox but is rather a composite of strong mostly woody notes which project with the force of steel. Helvetolide, a synthetic musk with fruity aspects (apple and pear-like) contributes a note which can be identified as "wet dog", Delta muscenone is reminiscent of real ambrette seed (and could stand for that) while Ambrettolide is strongly musky with a warmer feel. Yet the Le Labo fragrance isn't a "musk" in the traditional sense, nor is it nauseating in the aquatic and eerie mould of Sécretions Magnifiques: The piercing woody-ambery metallic note has something of the tormented Erica Kohut as she stabs herself aimlessly (and certainly non lethally) in lonely despair. A disturbing fragrance, to be sure!

Le Labo AnOther 13 notes:
Ambrox, Salycilate, Muscenone delta, Helvetolide, Ambretteolide, Cetalox

AnOther 13 is available in numbered bottles at Le Labo boutiques and at collaborating partners around the world: Liberty in London, Isetan in Tokyo, Barneys in the US, and Colette in Paris. It comes in one size (100 ml/3.4oz) and is sold at regular Le Labo 100 ml prices (i.e.200$) .

For our readers, a draw!Draw is now closed, thanks for the participation! Create the next frag concept for Le Labo in the comments & enter to win a sample of both exclusive fragrances!

Disclosure: For these reviews, I both paid out of my own pocket for decants for reviewing purposes through splits and was sent (a little later) samples in the mail by the company itself. Funny timing, but a great opportunity to be generous with our readers.
Asia Argento in a provocative photo shoot uploaded by girlsgirlsgirls on Photobucket. Another 13 photo found on Basenotes.

Ormonde Jayne Opens on Sloane Street

Ormonde Jayne celebrates its tenth and most exciting year with today’s launch of the new flagship boutique in world famous Sloane Square, London. The third and newest address of Ormonde Jayne in London is 192 Pavillion Road (site of the old General Trading Company) and like the first boutique in Old Bond Street, it neighbours with Tiffany’s, Cartier & Links of London. Designed by Caulder Moore, the smoked glass & antique gold shagreen walls give the store Ormonde Jayne’s trademark sophisticated decadent look. According to the founder Linda Pilkington, it was waiting to happen because it was so fitting the concept of the firm anyway: “When I first saw the “to lease” sign on Pavillion Road, I knew it would be the perfect location for Ormonde Jayne and I have always loved Sloane Square. Our original business plan was to start looking by the end of 2011, but I operate on instinct! As we are an independent company without outside investors, we have the luxury of making quick decisions. Following the success of our debut in Harrods earlier this year, it felt like the next logical move. Sloane Square is an international address in the heart and soul of London & we are thrilled to be opening today”.

Don't forget to check our other Ormonde Jayne articles and news.