Thursday, May 1, 2025

Le Jardin Retrouvé Jasmin Majorelle: fragrance review

Is it him? you ask yourself, looking at the graceful figure that seems to float on the pool, beyond the fountains, in the blue of the renovated building. Your imagination, helped by the heat of the sun at its zenith, thinks it perceives the man who once created here his inspired worlds. But only a rare scent of jasmine, ylang-ylang, lemon of Italy, coriander and iris answers you and proceeds to disturb your senses. Jasmin Majorelle. Pure joy illuminates you. 


The name comes from Jardin Majorelle, restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé at Marrakech, in Morocco. 

perfumeshrine jardin jasmin majorelle marrakech  fragrance review

photo of Jardin Majorelle in Morocco borrowed from Pinterest

 The formula was originally created by Yuri Gutsatz, the founder of the brand decades ago and one of the founders of the Osmotheque, who worked for Roure-Dupont-Givaudan and the first to formulate the principles of a middle ground between luxury perfumes and mass perfumery back in the 1960s. 

 As one of my colleagues wrote, "Jasmin Majorelle the fragrance was created in 1981 and introduced in 2018 in a limited edition after being chosen by hundreds of fragrance connoiseurs — it garnered 23% of the votes. However, further sales have shown that this perfect jasmine fragrance has proven to be a real bestseller!" 




A dense jasmine-ylang cloud, lively, fresh and sweet, embellished with citrus accents, transparent greenery, light spices and a subtle mothball hint of indole. A romantic perfume to offer as a love token, or to love yourself. Just like the founders of the original garden did. 

Monday, April 28, 2025

Luxe Calme Volupté by Francesca Bianchi: fragrance review

 

There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.
-Charles Baudelaire, L' invitation au voyage

In the poem, Baudelaire invites his lover to join him in an exotic place where they can live in calmness and peace. Francesca Bianchi described in 2021, when the fragrance launched, how this fits with the times in which we found ourselves and how she felt the need to offer something which could bring comfort to the spirit, an invitation to connect with oneself and temporarily forget about the daily concerns. Now, after the pandemic, this message isn't lost on us. It still delivers a powerful reminder to savour small pleasures, every single day and Fancesca Bianchi envisioned Luxe Calme Volupté as this escape. 

perfumeshrine.com perfume analysis art style blog Helmut Newton photo


photo borrowed from pinterest


Baudelaire included L'Invitation Au Voyage in his poetic collection Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, inspiring in turn the namesake 1904 painting by Henri Matisse. Bianchi is often inspired by classical chords not only in poetry but in perfumery as well and she has divulged that she was inspired by no less than three classics when art-directing this one: Y perfume by Yves Saint-Laurent, Must de Cartier, and Envy Gucci. A floral chypre, a green-top oriental (the mix of galbanum and amber is very characteristic) and a green floral. Armed with that knowledge my adventure in the lands of Baudelaire and Bianchi promised a wild ride. The fragrance of Luxe Calme Volupté is not wild but lush and rich in depth. And it doesn't really recall green chypres of the past, although there is definitely the natural feel those leave you with (although they're not at all natural). Melifluous, honeyed, sweet and fruity, but with that kind of fruity depth we have marvelled at from fruity chypres of yore, when women wore this rich lactonic effluvium directly on their naked skin, their naked bosom and charmed by-standers and their dates while on a night out in the city. Ylang ylang and peachy-plummy notes evolve and get sweetened with a lacing of sweet resins and balsams, without however becoming heavily orientalised or ambery. 

Francesca Bianchi perfume review Luxe Calme Volupte perfumeshrine.com fragrance analysis blog

photo borrowed from pinterest

 Perhaps like another verse by Baudelaire, Bianchi aimed for corrupt, and rich, triumphant, With power to expand into infinity. While retaining her Italian pedigree as well. Luxe Calme Volupté feels like a cadenza extending into eternity, because of its nuance, its depth, its fruity ecstasy, which embraces without overwhelming with that horrid shampoo-like synthetic aura so many fruity fragrances do. The Luxe Calme Volupté fragrance leans more feminine than masculine, though all sexes may want to experiment with it. It feels gorgeous and lovely and this comes from someone who isn't crazy about fruity fragrances on the whole. In the same way the Francesca Bianchi fragrances, even when not overtly sexual, take sensuality as a point of departure to ponder on the value of sensuousness, of analyzing Hedone as a philosophical concept. Indeed the Latin name for this Greek goddess is...Voluptas. So there, the Luxe Calme Volupté name of the scent alone recounts the entire story, faithfully.

Saturday, April 26, 2025

Zadig & Voltaire This is Her: the mysterious jolt of Ambroxan and Lactone

 

Cecilia Bönström, artistic director of Zadig & Voltaire, told wwd at the time of This is Her! and This is Him! launch that the idea was to break from what already existed on the market and "to find a balance of something really clean and something darker, more mysterious." The woody, floral, and gourmand This is Her!, signed by perfumer duo Sidonie Lancesseur and Michel Almairac, contains notes of pink pepper, Sambac jasmine, silkwood blossom, milky chestnut, whipped cream, vanilla, cashmere woods, and sandalwood. 

perfumeshrine.com fragrance blog on scent perfume analysis current trends history of perfumery

photo borrowed from pinterest

It's all very soft, tender, plush... creamy, like a dessert or maybe a body lotion? I think therein lies the riddle. Although This is Her! masquerades as a gourmand fragrance with all those sweet and edible references in the given notes, in reality, the composition reveals one characteristic that is overlooked. The lactonic impression is, in reality, translating as... metallic. Clean and a little bit shrill. With lots of starched musks (Cashmeran adding a shredded sensibility of salty epidermis) and a layer of abstract floralcy the way Noa by Cacharel or Classique by Gaultier are abstractly plush, feminine, soft, and dreamy. 

 Any woodiness (Ambroxan mainly) is interpreted the way Artificial Intelligence would interpret the picture of woods. Indeed this is all due to the Ambroxan that lies hidden in the formula and the Cashmeran (cashmere woods) in the given notes of the pyramid, with its salty-clean musky-woody appeal. This is part of the charm, as most women would object to much woodiness in their everyday fragrance; they tend to associate it with masculinity or sobriety. But formulas reminiscent of body lotion with musky garlands and irone-rich laces? And a little bit vanilla? They're mad for them! 

The whipped milk construct is especially comforting presented as such, since the term "milk" might refer to edible milk pudding, but also body milk products. Milk also connotes life-sustaining breast milk, the Milky Way, and even droplets of semen in outré works of art bordering on pornography. The mental interplay between "deserving to indulge" but also "deserving to pamper myself" is, in my opinion, the crux of the matter, what makes This is Her! so commercially successful. The eyes interpret the white contours, the startling black lettering of hip and cool upon this unspoiled canvas, the mind reads the indulgent presentation of olfactory effects, and then the nose and skin recognize immediately the familiarity of skin-scent effects that work their well-known magic, acting as an insulating cocoon against the cruel world outside. That's how you build a best-seller for the masses, apparently.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Easter Wishes

 May this time of the year bring inner peace and peace to the world. May it manifest love and prosperity. May it herald acceptance and forgiveness. 

Happy Easter to all! 

pin borrowed from Pinterest

In the meantime, you might read or reread these articles on PerfumeShrine:

Incense Week (incense scents inspired by the Holy Week)

The aromata of Greek Easter and a Recipe

The Myrrh Bearers 

Christos Anesti 

Mapping Scents of Spirituality

Spring Clean: Links for spring fragrance reviews & musings



Monday, April 14, 2025

Puredistance Divanché: fragrance review

 

Meeting with a new Puredistance fragrance is always a time for pleasure and for introspection. The newer Divanché is said to be inspired by Japanese gardenia, so how could I not be mesmerized into trying it out? 

divanche perfumeshrine elena vosnaki

Although gardenias and white flowers have captured the imagination of the past with classic specimens at the heart of illustrious floral chypres, pear and pineapple are two entirely contemporary fascinations of modern perfumery. In fact a minuscule facet of sulphur unites the two materials, producing a common thread that reflects one another like the two faces of Janus. As a colleague chemist notes, "the pear profile often overlaps with other fruity odours; saturated esters often have apple tones, while unsaturated ones have pineapple and berry tones." 

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 Pear especially possesses soft, juicy qualities, a little bit like unctuous sweet treacle, gelatinous and translucent too, and is very popular for a reason. It's succulent without leaning tropical. It first appeared prominently many years ago, in Laura Biagiotti Tempore Donna (1999) and in D&G Feminine (also 1999), but only lately has it been highlighted in recent launches opting for newer chords and newer fruity effects. 

 In DIVANCHÉ pear is very much present in the diffusion of the fragrance, the main protagonist, juxtaposing the light mushroom-like moistness of the gardenia and the hints of lactonic elements hiding in the recesses of the formula (a hint of peach, more than a bit of jasmolactone, a soupçon of fig leaf and milk). It feels ripe and rich, yet fresh and softly caressing, like the wings of an angel or the frisky fur of a long-haired kitten if you're so inclined. 

perfumeshrine elena vosnaki Divanche Puredistance review

It also recalls Japanese stationery with its cute factor intact which is probably fitting given the Japanese background for this Puredistance creation. The woods and musks sensualize and round the floral heart. Finally, resinoids lead the fragrance to an unwavering denouement where DIVANCHÉ gains the feeling of a soft whisper over the skin. It is discreet and polished, not intense.

Read my full review on Fragrantica on this link

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