“The warm air is pervaded by a pleasant sensation of white flowers, jasmine and newly blooming magnolias, garlands of moist moss, aromatic leaves and proud cypresses. Slowly the fragrance rises. Up, up, higher and higher still, to join, all of a sudden, the crystalline jets gushing in the fountains and resting on the mirrors of water in the garden. Millions of miniscule water particles intertwine to create a shining, perfumed veil that rests on the cold marble shoulders of countless statues: gods, nymphs, fauns, dragons and mermaids. Time has stood still in the garden: yesterday is today is tomorrow."
This is how perfumer Vero Kern presents her newest fragrance (after the masterful Kiki, Onda and Rubj in extrait and in eau de parfum), Mito, a white floral with green, mossy and freshly spicy nuances. Mito is out for launch later in the year.
Lady Gaga, no stranger to provocation and shock-value has released her first celebrity scent. As you remember we had commented on the initial rumours surrounding Lady Gaga's celebrity scent. But now she has slipped some facts about it on Twitter and an over-enthusiastic fashion editor has also leaked photos of the bottle on the Net. So here it is, Fame Black Fluid by Lady Gaga!
Created in collaboration with Haus Laboratories in Paris, the ad copy of the perfume, mentioning "weird" and "rare" ingredients, is a meta-commentary on the contemporary flowery prose that pertains to new fragrance releases.
We've got Tears of Belladonna, the crushed heart of Tiger Orchidea, with a black veil of incense, pulverised apricot and the combinative essences of saffron and honey drops...the works!
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Another interesting aspect is how the perfume is technologically manipulated to be black in the bottle, yet turn to invisible once it's airborne. The structure also defies any classical fragrance pyramid structuring, letting the ingredients reveal several different facets prismatically at the same time. The concentration is eau de parfum.
The bottle doesn't look too bad, that metal claw thing on top a menacing touch, though it could be a little awkward while using to spray.
All in all, sounds just like the thing from Lady Gaga! And, might I inject, much better than "smelling like an expensive hooker"...
The main criticism upon announcing the news on the Arabian inspired triptych by Guerlain, affectionately termed "Les Deserts d'Orient", has been that should this exclusive-laced foray into Middle Eastern market tastes prove successful, it would herald a stop to French companies offering "French-smelling" perfumes. Having the privilege of savoring the new fragrances at leisure, thanks to the generosity of my Middle East readers, I'm in the happy position to let you know this is not the case and wouldn't be, if Guerlain continues in the direction they've taken with Encens Mythique d'Orient especially. The perfume is redolent of the splendor and richness of the east, yes, but it firmly holds on the patrimonies of the west as well, translating as a very decadent, European-geared animalic oriental with mossy proclivities.
It comes as a sort of an exquisite shock to see that whereas Guerlain new head perfumer Thierry Wasser had been taxed with selling Guerlain short in the first couple of releases under his name -which were baptism by fire for him- he has proven now that he's capable of both refinement and modernization without eschewing tradition (as in the solar floralLys Soleia) as well as in offering the baroque treatment with the taste for exquisite balance and quality for which Guerlain perfumes had become famous the world over. Much like Shalimar, Mitsouko or Vol de Nuit before it, Encens Mythique d'Orient is inspired by exoticism but it retains at heart a core of tradition which distinguishes it from upstarts to the throne (Montale etc.) Wasser has found a balance between what the Arabs will find somewhat familiar, yet tinged with the desirable Franco-laced "western cachet" and what the Westerners, flocking to the flagship boutique on Champs Elysees for precious juice, will find inspired by the 1001 Nights.
Even though Encens Mythique d'Orient is allegedly inspired by frankincense, there is little of the ecclesiastical citrus-laced, terpenic smoke we have come to associate with high mass or niche fragrances aimed at aficionados of this pious, somber ambience. Rather ambergris is the real protagonist, in what smells like a real tincture of the rare greyish matter, with all its nutty, buttery, smoky and salty intimate nuances intact, blooming on the skin like a hundred kisses from the soft lips of a handsome sheik. The mood is animalic, sexy, decadent and very "there" without becoming skanky or vulgar, though I expect hyper-sensitive to intimate acts of pleasure individuals upon smelling it will be clutching their pudenda self-consciously pronto.
Guerlain gives what incense is there the Guerlain treatment (with a nod to Lutens as well) and weaves richness and depth in their typical patisserie way, full of billows of raw materials which fuse East and West into an amalgam, a tapestry with a million themes. The opening of Encens Mythique is reminiscent of retro shaving foam, part retro fern-like and mossy, part musky sweet, with a very decadent, rich feel to it that stems from an oriental Damask rose. The rosiness is allied to saffron, a classical combination that exalts the bittersweet facets of the spice into a warm embrace. But it is the coalescence of ambergris and muskiness which "makes" the perfume a true Guerlain and at the same time a reverie into the Middle East.
The sillage and lasting power are great; you certainly get your buck's worth in investing in this fragrance. I'm smitten!
The Guerlain perfume bottles of Les Deserts d'Orient are adorned with Arab-cript calligraphy down one side, the French names down the other side. They are the tall, architectural style of the collection L'Art et la Matière with the antique gold overlay on the sides holding 75ml of perfume. The concentration of the fragrances is Eau de Parfum for tenacity. Prices are set for 190euros/AED990 per bottle. The perfume was aimed to be available exclusively in the UAE and the Guerlain flagship store. Also via the connections of Wim in Parfumerie Place Vendome in Brussels, and in the UK in Harrods for 160GBP.
Painting by Norman Lindsay, Languor or the Pink Drape (1934)
"In recent years, the flower came to seem outdated to some in the cosmetics industry.
“It was because of tea roses,” said Ben Krigler, creator at Krigler perfumes in New York, which was founded by his great-great-grandfather in 1904. “They were popular in the ’50s and ’60s, but they’re really a hybrid. That’s where you get that musty, powdery smell. We call it the ‘granny smell’ in the shop.”
Indeed the rose has been through a lot. I have had my own share of troubles with rose and then I came around. Now rose is making a come-back and there are quite a few perfumes and beauty products featuring it. (I can vouch personally for the delicious scent of Korres Wild Rose face cream which is aromatized with rosa moschata or "musky rose")
Uncanningly similar to the dressmaker's dummy bottle of Shocking by Schiaparelli (1935), a powerful and iconic animalic oriental of a long lost era, fashion's enfant terrible Jean Paul Gaultier began his career in perfumes with his own -originally eponymous (1993), later renamed Classique- Schocking copy bottle, that hid a floriental of intense sweetness and powderiness. The inspiration for Gaultier was his beloved and -we surmiss- glamorous grandmother's vanity with its vats of face powder and nail polish remover smelling of acetone. Interestingly the perfume however plays with this perception of femininity in nuanced ways which defy an accurate transliteration. Despite all that, it's a perfume I can't really stomach, but it deserves its own analysis.
Eye-Catching Looks for Classique
But it is the bottle and presentation that will go down in history, originally in a pink metal corset, later given a frosted glass costume over the smooth glass body of the bottle, so to speak; and then given all kind of variations in all the colours and patterns of the rainbow for limited editions and summer flankers. The box gives an avant-garde touch; like shipped cargo, functional and brown-beige, while the bottle is encased inside the box in a metal can, "like the ones for cat food at the supermarket", as Gaultier put it. Meow....
The commercials were equally eye-catching and memorable, with variations on the theme of femininity, conceived by master image creator Jean Baptiste Mondino to the soundtrack of Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma, as sung by Maria Callas.
Interestingly, if we're to examine the feminist and cultural subtext of the perfume visuals, the Jean Pauls Gaultier commercials themselves have become markedly tamer and tamer as the years went by, reflecting a more sedate "sexy" view of femininity, a conservative retake on the mistress which marks her man's memory with her perfume (alongside her corset and high heels; a panoply of restrictive femme gear that places woman on the pedestral of an object) Contrast with the eclectic bunch of sui generis characters sharing one common element: their love for JPG perfume from two decades ago. Or the apogee of quirkiness in a gay gender playing game in the combined commercials for Le Male and Classique from 2002.
Even the models were quirkier looking back then (Eve Salvail with her trademark shaved head, Kristen McMenamy with her irregular features...to the predictable beauty of Michelle Buswell) and we're just talking about nothing further than the 1990s.
Alice Classique commercial from 1995
Le Diner Classique commercial from 1997
Classique & Le Male commercial from 2002
Scent Description
The opening of Classique is rich in mandarin orange, peach, plum and cassis (a synthetic base that recaretes a berry/currant note), sherbety and sparkling-waxy thanks to the sheen provided by decanal (aldehyde C10), a characteristic element in the archetype No.5. The metaphor of nail polish is made through benzyl acetate, possessing jasmine-like and pear-drops notes. The heart is predictably rosy like the hue of the juice inside, with powerful cinnamic roses and damascones (synthesized molecules that give off intensely rosy-fruity tonalities) given an even fatter nuance by the inclusion of orange flower and ylang ylang, indolic and lushly sweet. A faint hint of spice is accounted by lily and ginger, but it's weak to really characterise the composition as a spicy floral; it resolutely stays within the sweet fruity floral with a wink to the floriental direction.
It is imperative that one loves powdery nuances in fragrances to like Classique, as the quite powdery base is built on a contrast of woody-amber Ambrox with vanillin, the two building to epic proportions of intense diffusion. A little orris note opens an interesting discourse of dryness in the base, beneath the amber-vanilla there is a musky-earthy footnote with a hint of animal; perhaps an ironic meta-comment on Shocking itself by perfumer Jacques Cavallier? Not enough, hidden under the syrup...
Le Boudoir Classique commercial from 2007
L'Appartment Classique commercial from 2009
The Perfumer's References& the Zeitgeist
Cavallier did cite classics, such as Chanel No.5, within the formula but interjected modern elements as well resulting in what proved to be a contemporary commercial hit. You might be forgiven for thinking Classique is va-va-voom material, only it is so for those people who can't help being a bit too flamboyant. For all its intensity and almost cloying fruitiness, it escaped the seal of "powerhouse" that Dior's Poison or CK Obsession bore in the previous decade. The era was ripe for a disruptive aesthetic so the blinding paleness of aquatics and the surypy element of "fruities" led this dance.
JPG's Classique consolidated its place by playing upon an idea that had already found its culmination in Lancome's Tresor in 1990: The peachy rosiness of Sophia Grosjman's modern classic had been the building block upon which a thousand beauty products from lotions and hair products to fine fragrance and fabric softener followed. Tresor's formula has plenty to admire in, but perhaps it's too ubiquitous to claim one's own. But whereas Tresor achieves the perilous balance of naturally lush bosom kept under decorum thanks to its solid perfume structure, Classique for all its rosy girlishness shows rather too much nipple for my taste.
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