Madame Rochas (new) (1989)
by Rochas

What you would expect to smell when enveloped in the arms of your Nanna or favourite great aunt. It is elegant, romantic, sweet, haunting, seductively beautiful. My favourite scent.

I bought this because it was in fact said to be inspired by the Chanel line. I found it to be quite different on me. I find the Chanels to be very aldehydic even in the greener 19. MR was a blast of floral that quickly died down to a very animalic chypre. Not used to this type of perfume, I didn't quite know what to make of it, but soon grew to love it.

MR :

Bulgarian Rose, Iris, Jasmine, Rose De Mai, Cedar, Sandalwood and Incense.

I generally like classic aldehyde fragrances - I respect their beauty and enjoy wearing them, but this one really does smell "old fashioned" and hopeless to me. Madame Rochas begins very heavy and dark with soapy aldehydes and not much else. It is not awful, but it just doesn't seem to have any life to it, like heavy drapes that haven't moved for decades. Some classic aldehydes just blossom and morph into hidden beauties after they've been given a chance to warm up on the skin and breathe. Maybe it's the reformulation, but I can't recommend Madame Rochas.

Did you ever have a lasting friendship with someone, with some really symbiotic times, and some distant phases ... and then one day you realized you were totally in love? With this truly wonderful person you so totally got? This has been Madame Rochas in my perfume life.

I have known it since childhood (My grandmother had all the greats.) but am only more recently aware of my peculiar attachment to this fragrance.

I have no issues with the current formula. It seems more plastic in the introduction phase, a little "soapier" in the start, but this is a soapy scent, and I love good soap. In fact, when I first spritz it, I am always thinking of the perfect bar of soap... perhaps a startling, memorable discovery, in the most stately, historic Italian hotel, of a luxuriant bar of impossibly unique soap in the lavatory.

The drydown is the real treasure, though. A really dizzying, luxurious and sensuous thing. It's amazingly evocative lingering on clothing, and its sillage is extremely enduring.

Oddly, I don't wear this out often. I think because I like to keep it almost a secret, or I am so enamored of it, I exalt it too much ... like a perfect vintage silk garment.

But when I do wear it, I get compliments every single time.

It is very ladylike, and I really feel the intentions of Guy Robert when I smell it. What a dashing yet luscious, willful yet poised, sexy and coy woman he had in mind!

Madame Rochas moves straight to the powdery dry down of Cabochard (Parfum Gres) but without some of its leathery/leafy complexity. I would find this a simple and honest scent for every day wear, which competely avoids the horrors of chemical melons, plastic flower bombs and other contemporary attempts at 'perfume'

I got the possibility to smell both Madame Rochas and Rochas Femme once, and the one of these perfumes that suited my skin was Madame Rochas. So I had to have a bottle of her. I never regereted that, it is a very easy-to-wear-fragance, and still interesting. It is available at a very good price, too.

I red at a perfume-blog on Internet, that this frag is as the perfume for Jaqueline Kennedy. And I do agree. It is truly beautiful, and not at all "old".

Don´t let the namne stop you from trying Madame Rochas. It is a lower-price-alternative to Chanel No 19, at least to my nose!

Madame R getst two thumbs up from me!