Elisa Gabbert: 55 posts

Lots of roses ahead! Today, Elisa reviews two recent rose-centric flankers, Roses de Chloé and Balenciaga Rosabotanica. For more on flankers in general, check out “Flankers 101.”

Chloé Roses de Chloé 

By all rights, Roses de Chloé is what the first Chloé release should smell like. The original Karl Lagerfeld Chloé from the mid-70s was a voluptuous white floral, but Chloé relaunched it as a clean rose in 2008. The problem is, it’s too clean, with so much white musk overwhelming the formula that it smells far more like a laundry room than a rose garden.

Last year’s L’Eau de Chloé, a greener version with more patchouli, was an obvious improvement – and so is this one, with its clearer, more realistic floral accord of tea rose with gestures toward springtime-y linden and lily of the valley. There’s nothing particularly unusual about it (this is a rose soliflore folks, not a moon walk), but it smells fresh, young, and pretty without smelling faux-fruity (though I do pick up a crisp apple note) or cheap. In fact, it reminds me at times of pricier niche scents like Annick Goutal Rose Splendide, Parfum de Rosine’s Rose d’Été and Yosh Sottile. If you’re looking for a simple rose scent at Macy’s or Sephora, you could do far worse and these days, couldn’t do much better.

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Elisa talks about gardenia, tiare, and leather as she reviews Aftelier Cuir de Gardenia Extrait.

Searching for a natural gardenia perfume is a little like hunting for unicorns – gardenias, notoriously, don’t release a natural oil. As Victoria once put it, “gardenia, temperamental flower that she is, does not give up her essence to any distillation methods.” Accordingly, gardenia in perfumery is necessarily a re-creation, using other materials to approximate the flower’s scent: sweetly tropical, but with an earthy element often likened to dirt or mushrooms.

I was surprised, then, when I heard that Mandy Aftel of Aftelier Perfumes was releasing a gardenia scent, since Aftel is known for her all-natural creations. As it turns out, Cuir de Gardenia is based on the Tahitian gardenia, or tiare flower, which can be made into a (costly) enfleurage (termed monoi when using coconut oil). Aftel has bolstered this material with jasmine and benzyl acetate, an isolate that occurs naturally in jasmine and ylang-ylang and is also used as a solvent in plastic and resins.

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Elisa talks about several underrated favorites that she would be glad to keep to herself. Of course, she can’t help but share with us. 

A woman is standing in line at the grocery store. She smells the most amazing perfume wafting by. She turns and realizes it is coming from the woman behind her. “Your perfume is gorgeous!” she says.

The woman smiles, obviously flattered. “Thank you. I’ve been wearing it for 20 years.”

“How wonderful,” the first woman says, “what is it?”

Her smile disappears. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not say.”

I read a version of this story in a comment on a perfume blog, and I found it both funny and sad – why not share the name of your perfume with a perfect stranger? It’s one thing to hope your coworker or your best friend stays away from your signature scent, but you can’t protect your chosen perfume from everyone. (If nobody but you buys it, it’s not going to be available for long.)

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Elisa plays Scheherazade with her 10 favorite oriental perfumes.

Come winter, you will find me in orientals almost exclusively. An oriental is a fragrance with an emphasis on amber, that fantasy accord of resins and vanilla, often accented with spices, woods, soft florals, or candy-like gourmand notes. Both the phrase and the fragrances remind me of an oriental rug: dark and rich, ornate, intricately patterned, dense but soft.

Orientals tend to be heavy with long-lasting base notes, so they’re perfect in winter, when you want a scent to envelop you all day with comforting sweetness and warmth. Here are my ten favorite oriental perfumes that get me through the cold, dark days of winter.

Flower by Kenzo

The name suggests “floral,” but under the violet and rose lurks this perfume’s true character: a powdery vanilla musk with opoponax that feels plush and white, and seems to sparkle especially when it snows.

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Elisa on roses, moss, and brocade.

Some perfumes take only moments to love, but years to understand. Such was the case for me with Une Rose Chyprée, a perfume from the indie line created by Andy Tauer. From the first sniff, I knew it was special. But I struggled to grasp why or how. It was not, to my nose, a chypre (a mossy-woody blend) at all. It was not of the sharp, haughty variety like Paloma Picasso; not chilly and green like Yves Ssaint Laurent Y or Chanel No. 19; not, like the more recent Agent Provocateur, saffron-sour up top and musky-dirty at the bottom. So what was it, then?

After spending a few years with his collection, I realized that Andy Tauer’s true muse is amber. And Une Rose Chyprée is not a straight chypre but an amber in conversation with a mossy rose, melding into its bittersweet floral-herbal personality, but not losing its own round, full, and resinous scent.

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