Elegant: 198 posts

Perfume names can be tricky. Noir leads you to imagine something glamorous and wickedly mysterious. You read Sport on the perfume bottle and before you even smell the top notes, you anticipate sharp citrus and lavender. Based on the name Etat Libre d’Orange Bijou Romantique, which in French means “a romantic jewel,” you’d expect something suitable for women who love kittens and wear far too much pink. I can almost hear Emily Howard from Little Britain saying, “It’s a lady’s perfume, and I’m a lady, you see.”

Now, as a woman who loves kittens—and really, who doesn’t!—and has enough pink accessories to dress up the whole city of Brussels, I don’t mind frilly and girly perfumes. But it’s not fair to call Bijou Romantique a frou-frou fragrance. It has a dose of retro charm thanks to its delicately powdered iris and jasmine, but the earthy vetiver and peppery bergamot give it an elegant austerity. Take a deeper inhale, and you suddenly realize that it’s a sibling of Shalimar, one of Guerlain’s crown jewels and the grandest of grand parfums.

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As I described in my post on sandalwood fragrances the other day, I’ve always had a romantic and exotic association with sandalwood. Its perfume of roses and cream–so rich, so haunting, so long lasting–seems like a whiff from some other world. Scheherazade’s palace in the Arabian Night Tales must smell of sandalwood. If so, who would be better placed to create a fairytale sandalwood perfume than the man who made a career out of worshiping beauty–Serge Lutens.

Like a modern day Scheherazade, Lutens weaves one tale after another, with the leitmotif of a fantasy running through the collection. Perhaps it is for this reason that his large range doesn’t feel redundant. Or perhaps I’m too much of a fan of his tales to be tired of them. Whatever the case may be, Santal Majuscule is the latest fragrance to cast upon me the Lutensian spell.

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The combination of violet and oud is like a romance between Doris Day and Cary Grant—one is wholesome and innocent, the other is dark and smoldering. Yet, just as Day and Grant set the screen on fire in the comedy, “That Touch of Mink,” violet and oud can be an irresistible pairing as I discovered through Lalique Hommage à l’homme.

Hommage à l’homme is the newest Lalique perfume created by perfumers Christine Nagel and Mathilde Bijaoui. It’s a masculine fragrance, and while it’s much too virile for me personally, I would gladly smell it on men around me. You will not find typical masculine cologne elements wrapped into the elegant shape of Hommage à l’homme. It’s the fragrance equivalent of a leading man in a classic Hollywood film—dashing, suave, and sophisticated. Hommage à l’homme smells like something worn by Cary Grant, whether he dashes around the French Riviera with Grace Kelly or tries to woo Doris Day with mink coats and champagne.

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Gilded, raunchy, glamorous, voluptuous… Any of these words describe Christian Dior Dioressence, a fragrance that has been marketed by Dior as le parfum barbare, a barbaric perfume. Dioressence is still sold today, but the reason why it ended up among my Long Lost Favorite Perfume series is because the original version is gone. Marika, who asked me to add Dioressence to my list of discussions, said, “I recall it being a deliciously rich chypre, very powerful and tenacious. I liked its balance of earthy depth and elegance. It was my first perfume.”

Fans may complain about Christian Dior causing confusion with their game of renaming and reformulating Miss Dior and Miss Dior Chérie, but Dioressence has suffered the same fate through the years. When I smell the original perfume created by Guy Robert in 1969, the relaunch from the 1970s and the current version, I feel as if I’m wearing three different perfumes—an ambery animalic chypre, a full-bodied spicy oriental and a pale green chypre.

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When you approach the Estée Lauder counter you will see the slender bottles of Pleasures, the heavy flacons of Knowing, the ribbed orbs of Sensuous. Occasionally, you spot an hourglass bottle filled with dark as molasses Youth Dew. But to smell Azurée you often have to ask the sales associate for the tester. At many Lauder counters I’ve visited it is kept under the counter, reminding me of Soviet-era shopping. “From under the counter” was the magical phrase that produced things rarely seen on the store shelves. Something as commonplace as a packet of sugar obtained in this way seemed even sweeter.

Its special “under the counter” status isn’t the reason I crave Azurée. It’s big and bold, with a distinctive presence. Since it has been around since 1969, it bears a whiff of the era—you will not mistake this moss festooned beauty for another pink fruity floral, but it’s stunning. Anyone who loves woods, earthy notes and leather would enjoy Azurée’s generous presence. Among great chypres (the mossy and earthy perfumes that are the scent equivalents of film noir), Azurée holds a special place.

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