Parfums de Nicolai - Vie de Château Intense

Life In A Castle

The French expression "la Vie de château" translates literally as "life in a castle" and means living a life of luxury. Rough equivalents would be the Italian "la dolce vita" (the sweet life, a life of pleasures and indulgence) and the Irish "the life of Riley" (an easy and pleasant life).

Vie de Château Intense is a sweet, pretty perfume. For the first few minutes, it smells like surgared pink grapefruit and wildflowers. It's breakfast on the patio in the county. As opens up on your skin, it takes on more of the smell of hay, freshly mown and drying in the nearby fields as you peddle your bike past on a summer afternoon. It's warm and sunny. The base is smooth and soft and has a texture and smell to me like pale grey suede.

I've been wearing Vie de Château Intense a lot this fall. It's a favourite of my husband's; he likes its sweet simplicity. A co-worker commented that it reminds him of childhood memories. It doesn't smell like luxury, not the way that Chanel Cuir de Russie or Bois des Iles does, but it has the air of a sweet life, of carefree and untroubled pastoral memories.

House: Parfums de Nicolai
Nose: Patricia de Nicolai
Notes: Tobaco, hay, oakmoss

Parfums Nicolaï - Maharanih

A "fruitchouli" for the more refined palate

According to The Perfume Shrine, the perfumista term "fruitchouli" was coined sometime in 2009 to describe a flood of unoriginal perfumes on the market that combined sweet, fruity notes with patchouli. In a similar post, Grain de Musc adds "patchrose" (patchouli + rose) to the list of overused perfume accords of 2009. The patchouli frenzy may have had something to do with the popularity of 1992's Angel. It may also have been a result of new EU restrictions on the use of oakmoss in perfumes - making perfumers look to patchouli to add depth to their perfumes.

So what makes this fruity rose and patchouli a great perfume and different from the run-of-the-mill? I think Patricia de Nicolaï's Maharanih, released in 2006, is gorgeous and classically composed because of the way all her notes are perfectly balanced. Maharanih starts with a sweet juicy orange that is combined with a bitter orange peel. In the heart, a deep wine-red rose is combined with a lighter, creamy carnation. The spiciness of the carnation is reinforced with cinnamon - a note that also compliments the jammy rose and holds the two flowers together. There is an earthy patchouli in the base, but I also can actually smell the sandalwood. A smudge of civet makes this a woman's perfume, not a little girl's.

As much as we who sniff whine about boring "fuitchoulis", I find one annoying fact inescapable: the men we love seem to love it. Well mine does. I can be certain that anything in that category will be instantly deemed "sexy" by him. So, if I want to indulge him once in a while, why not do it with a beautiful and sophisticated perfume like Maharani? Plus, it's such a happy perfume! It makes me smile too.

House: Parfums Nicolaï
Nose: Patricia de Nicolaï
Notes: Top notes : Citrus : sweet orange oil, bitter orange zest
Heart : Spicy and floral : rose oil, carnation, cinnamon
Bottom notes : Woody : patchouly oil and absolute, sandalwood, synthetic civet

Picture: Lucy Nieto

Parfums Nicolaï - Le Temps d'une Fête

Daffodils bloom in a sunny glade, surrounded by the dappled shade of mossy green woods

Parfums Nicolaï was created by Patricia de Nicolaï and her husband Jean-Louis Michau. Patricia comes from a distinguished family of perfumers, the Guerlain's. Her great-grandfather was Director of Guerlain and she was trained as a perfumer by her uncle, Jean-Paul Guerlain.

Patricia started her company to create "haute-couture" perfume - perfume that is not controlled by the marketers and their briefs, but instead allows the perfumer complete freedom to express herself, to use high quality ingredients and to manage the creation from idea right through to production.

Le Temps d'une Fête must be Patricia's idea of a walk in springtime. You can see in the notes, taken from her web site, how she envisions the perfume's development, from green leaves, to white flowers to animal/woody base. It's my favourite perfume structure, the chypre, and it's been done beautifully, so classic and yet so pretty and approachable.

LTdF starts with a sweet, bright fruit, like lemons and apricots. After a few minutes, the galbanum comes out. I'm really starting to love galbanum, it has a slightly bitter, spicy greeness; it's all leaves and stems. Another thing I love about this scent is that I don't have to wait until the drydown for the moss; it's right up top, nice green mossiness, like you've plunked yourself down under a mossy tree to enjoy the sunshine.

In the heart is the thick, yellow-pollen smell of daffodil and the waxy, lightly spicy hyacinth. It's like Easter.  Everything is held in perfect balance, the florals shine, a little fruit is still there but it never gets too sweet. Everyting is dappled by green leaves and the shadow cast by mossy branches. The base has lovely oakmoss and wood. My favourite part is sniffing my wrist in the far-drydown and smelling that deep mossy wood. As far as I am concerned, it's not a chypre without oakmoss and I hope that LTdF is never reformulated to conform to annoying IFRA rules.

Even with the high quality and creativity of her scents, Parfums Nicolaï manages to offer perfumes at a reasonable price. I especially appreciate the option to buy in smaller bottles of 30 ml, which makes collecting them so much more affordable!

House: Parfums de Nicolaï
Nose: Patricia de Nicolai
Notes:
Top notes : Green notes : galbanum, opoponax (sweet myrrh), mousse d’arbre (tree moss)
Heart : white flowers : jacinthe (hyacinth) and narcisse (narcissus)
Bottom notes : Animal and woody : bois de santal (sandalwood), patchouli, mousse de chêne (oakmoss)

Photo: bortescristian