Cacharel: 4 posts

No perfume families are as vast as the fruity-floral and gourmand families. It seems that you can get any dessert in perfume form, from crème brûlée to cupcakes. There are also many fragrances that smell like clones of each other, which is why after you smell one too many variations of Angel, you start giving up on the whole lot. On the other hand, if you want lighthearted and fun, then nothing can beat a well-crafted gourmand blend. From time to time, I canvas perfume store shelves for such contenders, and my latest search turned up Cacharel’s Anais Anais Premier Délice.

Premier Délice is one of several variations on the classical green floral Anais Anais, but it’s the first major departure from the original. Instead of accenting the floral notes, perfumers Olivier Cresp and Dora Baghriche took a different route. They’ve laced it with chocolate! If you’re familiar with the original, you’re probably skeptical right now, but if you like gourmand and fruity notes you’ll like Premier Délice. It is moderately sweet on the contemporary gourmand spectrum, and it has some interesting elements.

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If I were to select the best fruity floral perfume, it would be Cacharel Amor Amor. Of course, the best may be debatable, as is the true fruity-floral character–Amor Amor veers into the oriental family with its notes of vanilla, sandalwood and amber, but it’s such a good example of fun and bubbly that I find it hard to avoid overstatement. Amor Amor is both lighthearted and sophisticated, a simple shift dress made out of shocking pink fabric.

As a fashion brand, Cacharel is often described as French Girl chic–quirky prints and designs, minus the studied elegance of the more venerable couture houses. The perfume collection was designed to match the same spirit, but Amor Amor released in 2003 is its most successful embodiment.

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As a kid I used to love puzzles and I spent many evening looking for the right jigsaw piece to complete the picture. Occasionally I feel that with perfumes I’m still playing a jigsaw puzzle game as the same fragrance reveals something new whenever I smell it again. This was the case with Cacharel Loulou. When I first smelled it as an 11 year old on my mother, I remember thinking, “the cherry compote.” It was the only part of Loulou I could recognize, because at that point I hadn’t smelled any gardenias or ylang ylang or incense. They didn’t figure in my Eastern European childhood.

Revisiting Loulou some years later after I had already worn gardenias tucked in my hair as someone tried to kiss my neck and having smelled pungent Indian incense, other pieces of the puzzle fell in place. I discovered with surprise and pleasure that it was not a juicy cherry, but a candied white blossom dipped in vanilla liqueur. I loved it just the same, except that it no longer seemed innocent to me. Loulou was quite a vixen, and though I wasn’t one at all, I liked to dab the parfum on my neck and play the part.

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Cacharel Noa is a little gem that’s easy to overlook on a crowded perfume counter. The bottle with its plastic top is plain, and the perfume on the blotter is sharp and scratchy. But Noa was obviously created to be worn by breathing, living women*, and not just tested on paper, because on skin, the fragrance changes dramatically. It’s a cloud of white petals softly dusted with powder, and it wears like a favorite cashmere sweater.

Cacharel has an interesting perfume collection that fits well with the quirky aesthetic of its fashion line. When you wear the ultra-feminine Anais Anais or bubbly Amor Amor, you can imagine how it might be created by the same house that become renowned for its cheerful, bright prints and seersucker dresses. Noa is likewise lighthearted and unpretentious, and its charm lies in its combination of tenderness and sophistication.

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