Weil - Weil de Weil (Vintage)

How green was my valley

This Easter I did a little shopping for vintage perfume at Fritsch Pharmacy. I focused on green perfumes and chypres, which is all I want to wear these days. They are perfect for the weather, and, although they are beloved by perfumistas, green chypres are a neglected category in contemporary perfumes. It may be that one of the essential ingredients, oak moss, is restricted by EU rules. Maybe the bracing, bitter and dry, green category doesn't sell well, I would put two current perfumes, Estée Lauder Private Collection and Chanel No.19 as two of the best still available; heck, I think they are two of the best ever made. And Weil de Weil ranks right up with those two as one of the best green chypres I have ever smelled. It is an under-appreciated beauty.

Weil de Weil was released in 1971 and is now discontinued, which is a shame because it's lovely and the very soul of spring. It starts with a bracing green note, then a lightly floral and spicy breeze bows in, carrying the fresh scent of spring flowers like hyacinth and daffodil. The heart is grassy and green with some honey sweet flowers and is slightly powdery. Throughout the whole progression of the perfume I can smell the base notes: bitter, dry oakmoss, earth and wood. I don't smell the civet, but I'm not very sensitive to it. Maybe it's in the background, making the perfume more personal, melding it to my skin, instead of being too distant and abstract as something dry and green can be.

Green chypres can be like a beautiful but cold woman with an acerbic wit. She seems like a real bitch but once you get to know her, she's fascinating and one of your favourite people, all the more so because she wasn't easy, if you know what I mean.

I took a couple of days to warm up to it, but now Weil de Weil is on my desert island list: the limited list of bottles I would take with me if I had to be stranded. Yes, it's that good. If you love the green chypre category of perfume, you must try Weil de Weil someday.

House: Weil
Nose: ?
Notes: Top: tangerine, neroli, greens, galbanum and hyacinth. Middle: lily of the valley, honeysuckle, ylang-ylang, mimosa, rose and daffodil. Base: sandalwood, vetiver, civets, musk and oak moss.



Photo by wuu.

Diptyque - Olène

Pretty please!

I used to be quite the snob about pretty perfume. Not for me, I said, the simple floral bouquets. Give me spices and woods and leather! If I wore florals, they were complicated with bitter moss or animalic bases to make them darker, bitchier femme fatales. I didn't do girly. Boy, was I missing out.

Olène is girly and sweet, but without being stawberry/carmel/cotton candy dreck. It's a simple, romantic floral  based on three notes: wisteria, jasmine and narcissus.

I've never smelled wisteria, but they must smell like lilac, because the first few minutes of Olène smell exactly like burying your nose in a big bunch of fresh lilacs. It's intoxicating. Then, a short while later, it switches to rich jasmine, wafting it's gorgeous, gasoline-edged and narcotic prettiness everywhere. The narcissus in the base is barely there but it adds a slightly waxy, earthy strength.

And that's it. Simple but lovely. And what's wrong with a little prettiness?  In the spring, who can say no to a little romance? Olène makes me feel like mushy love songs and cartoon hearts and bunnies and flowers.

House: Diptyque
Nose:Serge Kalouguine
Notes: wisteria, jasmine, narcissus

L'Artisan Parfumeur - Fleur de Narcisse (Exceptional Harvests Collection 2006)

Falling hard for a sunny beauty

Fleur de Narcisse, 2006 was created by L'Artisan Parfumeur as one of their "Exception Harvests" perfumes. These special-edition perfumes were created in limited quantity from a particular natural harvest and are meant to showcase the material and also the region, the way that certain vintages of wine reflect in their aroma and flavour the soil they came from. Fleur de Narcisse features a heady absolute made from narcissus, hand picked on June 6th and 7th, 2005, from the volcanic soil of Lozère, France. Only 3,000 bottles were made.

Luckily, my local perfume shop has a bottle of this gem. I first took a sniff of Fleur de Narcisse about two years ago but I was unimpressed. I don't know what I was thinking, because I tried a few sprays on my arm again this weekend and I am gone, baby gone. Fleur de Narcisse is marvelous.

It starts with the tart green smell of black currants and leaves, then blooms into big, sunny daffodils. Narcissus is one of my favourite notes in perfume. It has a honey-sweet side but also a waxy, thick smell and an earthiness. The narcissus in Fleur de Narcisse does seem to have an ashy quality, like the volcanic soil they grew in, thanks to the use of a gorgeous smoky leather note.

But as soon as I have recognized leather and smoke a gorgeous sweet, herbaceous hay note takes over. For an few minutes it's as if I am standing in a shaft of sunlight in a warm barn. I can smell hay all around me and a leather saddle nearby. Then, the honeyed daffodils come back and leave me smiling. It's a cheerful perfume.

The next day the scent left on my sweater is almost gourmand. Maybe it's the honey-sweet narcissus and the spicy hyacinth lingering? But, although they aren't listed, it smells to me like the cinnamon sweetness of tolu or the sweet nuttiness of tonka.

In any case, Fleur de Narcisse is big hit with both me and my husband. It might have taken me a couple of years to appreciate it, but now I'm hooked and saving for a full bottle.

House: L'Artisan Parfumeur
Nose: Anne Flipo
Notes: narcissus, hay, hyacinth, violet leaf, blond tobacco, iris, blackcurrant bud, moss and leather

Painting: J.W. Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, 1903

Worth - Je Reviens (vintage)

Spring will return

As I write this, I can look out my window and see bleak, grey Toronto. The whole city seems to be just persevering, grimly soldiering on, fighting forecasts of snow flurries like the last remnants of a bad cold and hoping for the relief of spring.

So I continue to wear perfumes that remind me of spring. Narcissus and hyacinths are my favourite flowers for early spring. Cheerful and vibrant, but not sweet, these flowers are earthy and pungent and demanding. They may be gorgeous in a pot, but they take some work to love in a perfume.

Je Reviens is one of the rare perfumes to focus on narcissus.  Although it seems old-fashioned today, when Worth released its perfume Je Reviens in 1932, it was a very modern fragrance. The dark blue bottle was designed by René Lalique to resemble a one of the new skyscrapers of New York. It became very popular in the 40's as a gift from soldiers to their sweethearts. Je Reviens was actually the fourth of five perfumes released by the house of Worth. Their names put together create a love poem: Dans La Nuit (1924) Vers le Jours (1925) Sans Adieu (1929) Je Reviens (1932) Vers Toi (1934).

In Je Reviens, the oily, earthy smell of narcissus is combined with aldehydes to make it sparkle. The heart of the perfume is an interesting combination of fresh non-sweet notes like narcissus and hyacinth and the warm, round, sweeter notes like hay and tolu. Tolu is a balsam with a sweet, mellow smell that has a touch of cinnamon to it. The spiciness of cinnamon and the slightly clove-like smell of hyacinth balance a powdery heart. I tested both the parfum and the EdT, and in the parfum you can smell the jasmine and lilac more clearly, but both formulations are pretty. The far drydown adds a musky wood.

Worth re-released Je Reviens in 2010 and I assume it was re-formulated, but I have vintage samples (from Fritsch's, of course.)

I want to thank my favourite Aunt for introducing me to Je Reviens. As a girl in the 50's, it was her first "grown-up" perfume. I'm wearing it a lot lately, thinking of her, and waiting for spring to return.

House: Worth
Nose: Maurice Blanchet
Notes: Top: aldehydes, narcissus Middle: hyacinth, jasmine, violet, lilac Base:  vetiver, tolu, oakmoss, sandalwood, musk

Lancome - Magie Noir (Vintage)

Beautiful Witch

Magie Noir was launched in 1978. The generous JoanElaine at Redolent of Spices recently sent me  a vintage sample of it that has me bewitched.

Although it's classified at an oriental floral by Fragrantica, to me Magie Noir smells like a chypre. Its opening notes are those of a traditional chypre base. Dark, mossy and bitter, the opening of Magie Noir slaps you in the face with its "chypre-ness" and a healthy animal note of civet. She growls.

The earthy darkness of the opening stays throughout, but Magie Noir's gorgeous bitchiness softens after a few minutes. It has a sort of backwards progression from that of most perfumes. After opening with traditional base notes, honey, fruit, and flowers join Magie Noir and seem to smooth out her mood. Nevertheless, it still feels like the fruit and flowers are under the base notes, not the other way around. The red and black fruit, cassis and raspberry, are present but only if you smell closely. From arms length, I still smell mostly the patchouli and oakmoss.

The florals of Magie Noir are subtle but wonderfully complicated. I think I can smell hints of narcissus and a spicy greeness from hyacinth and galbanum. These notes make it a spring time perfume for me. Magie Noir reminds me of early spring, when the everything is still chilly and dark, but the daffodils and hyacinths are just beginning to sprout out of the black earth.

In the end, Magie Noir reverses direction and goes back to base notes of amber, and wood. Like an unpredictable woman, she keeps you guessing.

Unfortunately, Magie Noir has been reformulated and it has suffered. The current formula is harsh and chemical in the opening notes. I can see how the basic structure of dark notes over fruit and florals has been imitated, but the magic is gone. There is something sour about the fruit, and the dark base notes are not as rich, missing the oakmoss and civet. Only after the dry down does the new version become a tolerable, if slightly powdery, facsimile of the original. It's a loss.

House: Lancome
Nose:  Gérard Coupy
Notes: cassis, raspberry, galbanum, hyacinth, bergamot, bulgarian rose, honey, tuberose, jasmine, ylang ylang, lily of the valley, orris, cedar, narcissus, spices, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, musk, civet, oakmoss, vetiver.
Where to buy: skip the new stuff and try to find the vintage online.

Dior - Miss Dior (vintage)

I thought she was a Veronica and she turned out to be a Betty

I have a vintage mini of Miss Dior, I think it's from the 80s, that I've never tried but a recent review by Normand at The Perfume Chronicles made me want to pull it out and give it a sniff.

The opening of my Miss Dior is sharp and green. I can smell a lemony bergamot and some old-fashioned aldehydes and the oak moss from the base. My first impression  was that it is a bitter green chypre; if Miss Dior was person, I would say she was a cool blond and a bit of a bitch. She's beautiful , but cold.

And then she changed. The bitter green was replaced by pretty florals. Miss Dior became cheerful, maybe even a little flirty. Amazing. I like it when a perfume does the unexpected. But she still wasn't finished evolving. In the base notes, a smooth, soft leather with a little smoke joined the flowers. The flirty girl now had some sex appeal. She winked at me as she pulled on a pair of leather gloves.

House: Dior
Nose: Jean Carles and Paul Vacher
Notes: Top notes are aldehydes, gardenia, galbanum, clary sage and bergamot; middle notes are carnation, orris, orris root, jasmine, neroli, lily-of-the-valley, rose and narcissus; base notes are labdanum, leather, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, oakmoss and vetiver.

Caron - Montaigne

Elegant and stylish, retro and modern

The perfume house of Caron opened in 1904 in Paris. In the eighties, Caron opened a store on Avenue Montaigne which famously features crystal "fountains" or urns, designed by Baccarat. When you purchase an urn perfume, the bottle is filled for you from one of these crystal fountains. The store in New York has them too, I hear, and I dream of visiting it one day.

In 2007 the perfume Montaigne was created by Richard Fraysse, the master perfumer for Caron. Montaigne preserves the elegant style of classic french perfumery while also being modern.

The opening will be familiar to anyone who has worn Chanel N^o5 - a floral bouquet with sparkling aldehydes; Montaigne has more jasmine. I immediately think "Oh, old fashioned perfume!" but it's old fashioned in a great way. Chanel N^o5 is still on the best-seller list for a reason.

After that lovely opening, the heart is powdery and creamy at the same time. It's centered around a thick yellow narcissus, supported with lighter mimose and orange blossom. I know it says "bitter orange" but I think is smells more like the orange blossom than the fruit. The creaminess comes from sweet amber and vanilla in the base.

Montaigne lasts for a good long time; I sprayed it at 8:00 a.m. and at 4:30 p.m. my wrist still smells like a yellow, orange and cream coloured bouquet.


House: Caron
Nose: Richard Fraysse
Notes: jasmine, coriander, bitter orange, mimose, narcissus, sandalwood, amber and vanille.

Photo: Mattias Kristiansson

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

Penhaligon's - Orange Blossom

A light, sweet and refreshing orange veil for a hot summer day

Originally created in 1976 for their Anthology line, Penhaligon's classic Orange Blossom has been updated by the famous perfumer Betrand Duchaufour. You can watch a video of M. Duchaufour describing  Orange Blossom on the Penhaligon's site.

In the video, Duchaufour talks about how he wanted to modernize the perfume by giving is a more "contrastic" structure and richer notes. I don't know what the original was like, but this orange blossom feels quite sheer.

The top notes have a sharp lemony citrus.  Duchaufour speaks of adding a "leafy green" top note, and I do smell a little green here and it's also a little spicy.

In the heart Duchaufour added jasmine to the main orange blossom note, as well as other florals, but I think it's mainly the orange blossom and jasmine that I smell. He mentions adding a couple of florals that aren't in the official list, such as honeysuckle, narcissus and gardenia. I get a little of the narcissus, which has a feeling of pollen and once in a while, if I sniff deeply, I catch a hint of a rich gardenia.

To the base, he added "woody" notes and vanilla to make it more sensuous and comforting. What I mainly smell in the drydown is light, sweet wood and a slightly orangey vanilla. It is comforting.

On the whole, Orange Blossom is a light, refreshing, slightly sweet white floral with the barest hint of orange. It rests over my skin like a veil and is perfect in the muggy Toronto summer heat. Just a dab from the sample was not enough - I really have to pour it on to get the full effect - but it lasts all day and wafts up gently from my wrists as I write this. I might buy a full bottle and spray myself from head to toe this summer.

Perfume: Orange Blossom
House: Penhaligon's
Nose: Bertrand Duchaufour
Notes:
Head Notes: Neroli, Violet leaf, Bergamot, Lemon-cedrat, Cardamom absolute, Pink berries
Heart Notes: Orange absolute, Egyptian jasmine absolute, Tuberose absolute, Rose essence, Peach flower, Orchid
Base Notes: Sandalwood, Virginian cedar, White musk, Vanilla


Art: Mockingbirds on Orange Blossom by Albert Earl Gilbert