"There's Something About You Girl that Makes me Sweat"

Givenchy music video for the brand’s new fragrance Givenchy Very Irrésistible Electric Rose starring Liv Tyler, the face of current Givenchy perfumes (waste of beauty if you ask me, but of course you didn't so I'll shut up now).
The fragrance will be available for purchase in stores in April 2012.
The clip is choreographed by Bianca Li and filmed by Swedish director Johan Renck.
The music is a cover of INXS's "I Need You Tonight"

What do you think?

Definition: French Style Perfume ~Connotations & Meanings

If the Great Big Sea are to be taken literally, "you can smell that French perfume" on the wake of a contraband ship "if the wind turns right". In a world where everything has a received value besides its inherent one, Pilsener has to be Czech, computers should be USA-made, feta cheese must absolutely be Greek and perfume would be French (I suppose Absolut drinkers might get rallied up by now, but carry on please). The French have more or less cornered the market in what has to do with posh, sophisticated perfume (though there are wonderful specimens from all over the world, from the most unlikely places, such as Australia, Greece, or Germany). But how many actually know that "French type perfume" or "French style scent" is indeed very specific terminology to denote a specific olfactory experience, a certain scentscape if you will, a specific fragrance family even? And yet, like with many things in perfumery jargon (we insist that the nose is never wrong, it's the brain that muddles things up), it is so.

If we look back in magazine articles, perfume books and trade documents spanning the decades from the 1950s up to the end of the 1970s,  aldehydic perfumes are referred to as "modern type"or "french type". This was both due to the public's unfamiliarity with perfumery jargon (the industry was even more cryptical then) and due to a need for simplification for communicating the product to the consumer: modern or French denoted much more than a reference to chemistry (aldehydic fragrances are those which are characterised by a specific sequence of aliphatic aldehydes in their formula, scented molecules usually constructed in the lab). Especially since the emblematic torch-holder was Chanel No.5: both supremely "modern" for its times, the 1920s (thanks in part to the newly popularised bouquet of aldehydes) and quintessentially French as everyone knows.

But that's not all. In bibliography there was French type No 1 and French type No 2: the former a classic floral aldehydic, molded after Chanel No.5 and Arpège, the most famous surviving examples (others in the genre are Guerlain Liu and Guerlain Vega,  Piguet Baghari); the second was the chypre aldehydic perfume, of which Calèche is a prime candidate still circulating to this day (others include Mystère by Rochas and Paco Rabanne Calandre). Is it any wonder that even the perfume brand names are French sounding, replete with accents aigus and accents graves?

Technically speaking chypre perfume isn't particularly French of course, since it's an old formula/tradition that survived from the oldest cradle of perfume in the world: the Eastern Mediterranean, specifically the island of Cyprus. (Chypre is French for Cyprus, plus the best variety of cistus labdanum -an intergal material in the mix- grows in the East Mediterranean). But it did transport its effulgent magnificence to France thanks to a royal figure: Marie de Médicis (1575-1642), queen consort, lured by perfumes from Cyprus, the famous chyprés, then imported with a vengeance due to the opening of the Middle East route thanks to the Crusades, sent for her Florentine perfumer Tombarelli to come to Grasse, where the flowers were renowned, instructing him to capture their ambience in perfumed essences. From then on, a symbiosis of Greco-Franco roots produced this characteristic type of perfume we refer to as chypre. But what does it have to do with French type No.2? I'm getting there.

The chypre accord is pliable, though tightly structured, in that it can assimilate a selective bee harvest ingelements from diverse pools of scent: give it a twist with animalic or leathery notes and it almost creates a sub-category; sheen it with florals and it gets very close to the green floral (see Cristalle and Chanel No.19, on the cusp of the two classifications); inject it with woody-musky notes and you have nouveau chypres; and finally sprinkle with the waxy, lemony radiance of aldehydes and you have the aldehydic chypre, aka French Type No.2! The style was popularised through cheaper variants for the middle and lower market and through soaps (The soaps of the 1970s have nothing to do with the soaps of today; their olfactory profiles are miles apart, documenting evolving tastes and evolution in the functional fragrance industry. This is also why these French type perfumes are not considered "clean" any longer, as they used to, because the formulae for soaps and shower gels have heavily leaned towards "clean musks" and fruits in the last 20-25 years).

Today perfumes of this type smell "perfumy", i.e. "smelling like perfume", because this kind of formula is rare. People smelling a floral aldehydic or an aldehydic chypre fragrance invariably describe it in those terms; they also typify them as "dated/old fashioned" (general population), retro/old-school (fumeheads) or even "old lady scents" (people with no imagination and stuck up associations). In the general population smelling like perfume is a negative connotation on the whole due to the popularisation of the "not trying too hard" casual lifestyle image persisting. Even super synthetic accords devised for todays' market "fruit salads" (no fruit note is natural in perfumery, as fruits cannot be extracted) and fruitchoulis (such as Miss Dior Chérie or Angel and its progeny) are considered "natural-smelling" because they have been marketed as such. Additionaly, these scents have a mimicking methodology, whereupon they copy a natural smell via synthetic means, whereas the older "modern types" didn't copy a specific object but instead purposefully aimed for abstraction.

It's highly ironic that "the modern type" of as little far back as the 1970s has become the outdated type of the 2010s. But that's perfume fashions and perfumery terminology for you...

Pic of Audrey Hepburn smoking (and hugging Dean Martin). She was actually British with Dutch roots. I think I got it via Blogdorf Goodman's tweets, can't recall exactly.

The winner of the draw...

...for the bottle of Violet is Barbara Patty. Congratulations! Please email me using the Contact with your shipping data so I can have this in the mail for you soon.
Thanks everyone for the enthusiastic participation and till the next one!

Lady Gaga's Celebrity Perfume: Smelling like an Expensive Hooker

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, Gaga posted: "Looking forward to this weekend. Shooting my parfum campaign and commercial with Steven Klein. Will be edited to a special song...shit." The tweet can be viewed at her official Twitter feed, which is followed by 19 million people. [source]

"Every celebrity whose “anybody” needs to have a perfume and as we all know, Lady Gaga’s scent will smell like an expensive hooker.
Competition to bottle Gaga is fierce, but the Swiss fragrance company Givaudan is working to collaborate with her when she releases her first scent, reportedly with the intent of blood and semen in the mix. Collaborating with names such as Lady Gaga would bring a boost to Givaudan’s fine-fragrance unit." [source]
The perfume will circulate later in 2012.

"Like an expensive hooker". Let's think about that for a moment: "like an expensive hooker". Out of all the possible briefs in the world of smell, you go for "expensive hooker"!
Reminds me of the following anecdotal dialogue attributed to George Bernand Shaw:

GBS: Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Actress: My goodness, Well, I’d certainly think about it.
GBS: Would you sleep with me for a pound?
Actress: Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?!
GBS: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
(This dialogue is also attributed to Winston Churchill).

If you're set on hooking, why does the "expensive" adjective have anything to do with it???

pic via globaldebateblog.blogspot.com

Oscar de la Renta Oscar Violet: fragrance review & draw

Violet is a limited edition "flanker"* of the signature Oscar fragrance, one of the group of limited summer editions by fashion designer Oscar de la Renta which launched through 2005 (Violet is from that season) and 2006: Soft Blossom, Soft Amber, Sweet Flower, Tropical Flower, Fresh Vanilla, Red Orchid, Pink Lily, Sheer Freesia, Citrus, Bamboo. [Wow they did a lot of them!] From this assorted progeny I always thought Violet was the best  and though by no means a masterpiece or a must-smell, it's an easy to wear desert-like, yet judiciously restrained, vanillic fragrance. By all accounts a no-brainer, no need to steel-yourself-for-it scent, for days when you can't be bothered by complicated things and just want some cosiness and comfort.

The subtle overture is fresh and a bit "sweet peppery" thanks to the cinnamon touch sprinkled on a short-lived, citrusy accord. This very soon opens into the main plot: a dark chocolate accord, powdery cocoa shifted for angel's cake and 70% cocoa solids chunks for glazing it. This is quite a sweet perfume, which is a precarious balance to do right, but without the sickly candy notes of many a modern fragrance fare. More a cocoa-vanilla blend than one resting on violets, it's ironic it got named the way it was. (Even if consciously searching for violets when smelling it, you're getting the Violettes de Toulouse confectionary kind, not the Parma violet, even less so the metallic violet leaf note). The base is quite persistent, with inclusions of musk and sandalwood (creamy, goose-down soft), but the generic vanilla blend tends to overshadow these subtler, more discreet notes. This is the main drawback of the Oscar Violet fragrance and why it doesn't get out of the cabinet more. The drydown is lackluster compared to what a delicious, sophisticated gourmand like Angel Innocent, or  Prada Candy can offer; and as to searching for a sweet violet or gourmand sandalwood combo I'll go with Bois de Violette, Santal Massoia and Praline de Santal. Still Oscar Violet is so cheap online it's worth grabbing for your curiosities cabinet or your little sister who likes "sweet stuff" and shouldn't be let to plunge too deeply into the vulgar end lest she never resurfaces again. 

If a few well-judged comparisons illustrate a point like a thousand pages, Oscar Violet is reminiscent of Hypnotic Poison Eau Sensuelle by Christian Dior and Deep Red by Hugo Boss (but sweeter, creamier than the latter) with similar notes of pear, mandarin orange, sandalwood, vanilla and musk.
Discontinued, but still found discounted on etailers and Ebay.

For our readers, a bottle of this discontinued fragrance up for draw, for those commenting. Draw is open internationally till Sunday midnight.

*flanker is industry speak for a new, different fragrance coat-tailing on the success of an established one by the same brand, exhibiting some twist on the name & packaging to differentiate it from the original.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Floral Gourmand Fragrances