Sisley - Soir de Lune

A bodice ripper chypre

In honour of Valentines Day, I bring you Sisley Soir de Lune, a good old-fashioned bodice ripper.

Dark and magnetic, like the eyes of My Wicked Earl over there, Soir de Lune really pops my pearl buttons.

Starting with smoldering spices, Soir de Lune unfolds its red rose petals dripping with honey and a touch of soft peach. Deep in the woods, it lays me down on a soft bed of earthy patchouli and moss. In the darkness is a hint of the bitterness to come in the morning when my love leaves.

House: Sisley
Nose: Dominique Ropion
Notes: lemon, bergamot, orange, mandarine, coriander, nutmeg, pimento, May rose absolute, mimosa absolute, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, peach, moss, musk, patchouli, honey, sandalwood
Where to buy: in Toronto at Holt Renfrew

Thank you to Victoria at Bois de Jasmin for giving me her extra sample!!!

Frederic Malle - Angéliques sous la pluie

The perfect tonic

I think I'm starting to become a big fan of Jean-Claude Ellena. His style is minimalist, sheer, and luminescent. He takes a limited palette of notes and  finds just the right way to combine them to compliment each other.

When I received a sample of Angéliques sous la pluie, I was expecting a floral perfume, the name made me think of Apres l'Ondee. The story accompanying the perfume is that Ellena created it to pay tribute to the smell of a bouquet of angelica gathered after the rain.

I forgot that angelica is an herb, sometimes used to flavour drinks like absinthe and gin. It has a bitter, slightly spicy and green smell. Ellena has elevated the spicy character by adding coriander, and played with the gin connotations of angelica by adding juniper.

The result is wonderful.  Angéliques sous la pluie sparkles like a cool green tonic and wakes me up when I'm feeling tired. I smell the juniper first, like Bombay Sapphire in a crystal tumbler, then the spicy, green angelica. The smell is effervescent yet creamy. The base notes of sheer musk and wood, are like adding a comfortable chair and a soft grey blanket to your garden. This perfume makes me happy and content.

Men, please wear this! I would love to smell this on more men. So much sexier than the usual masculines.

House: Frederic Malle
Nose: Jean-Claude Ellena
Notes: angelica, juniper, coriander, musk, cedar

P Frapin & Cie - Caravelle Epicée

Take a voyage on a spice ship

The Frapin family has been creating wines and cognac in France since 1270, through 20 generations. It may seem odd at first, that the company started a line of perfumes, but there are many similarities between Cognac and perfume. Both share a long, proud history in France; both rely on the skill and creativity of great craftsmen; and both represent the ideal of luxury and physical pleasure. Also, the quality of both depends on the quality of their ingredients. In the far history of perfume, those ingredients were often imported from far away by explorers and traders.

Caravelle  Epicée recalls the voyages of the spice trader ships of the 15th and 16th centuries. The caravel was a vessel of great importance at this time, developed in Iberia it was used by Portuguese and Spanish explorers along the west coast of Africa and in numerous voyages around South Africa in attempts to reach India. It was also used to cross the Atlantic - the Nina and the Pinta of Christopher Columbus's famous voyage to the new world were most probably caravels.

The perfume opens with a big blast of spices, like walking in the hold of a ship filled with barrels of precious ingredients from exotic lands. The spices are dry and hot, with a lot of cumin, nutmeg and pepper. I also smell smoky wood, which makes me imaging the barrels themselves and the planks of the ship. After the initial desert wind of spices, a boozy vanilla note can be detected - maybe a barrel of finely distilled spirits is on this voyage as well.

If Caravelle  Epicée stayed with those notes I would be ordering a bottle today, but alas, it does some other strange things on my skin. I want it to be a cozy cashmere blanket, and it insists on being a bracing day on a rough sea. There is a slightly sour, dill pickle note that pops up on me when I'm least expecting it. And it has a very salty quality in the drydown that, while perfectly appropriate for a sea-going vessel, is not so much what I'm looking for in a perfume.

I'd like to smell Caravelle  Epicée on a man, I think it might be amazing in a pirate sort of way. 

House: P Frapin & Cie
Nose: Jeanne-Marie Faugier
Notes: Coriander, nutmeg, hot pepper, pepper, thyme, Gaiac wood, patchouli, amber, tobacco, sandalwood