Reviews of Une Fleur de Cassie (2000)
by Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle

To the uninitiated UNE FLEUR DE CASSIE may come across as crass, vulgar even, and all those earlier references to bodily orifices seem to have more than an iota of truth in them. Who on Earth would ever want to smell like this? But others may find the funky mix of florals, spices and musk oddly erotic, a scent reminiscent of sex (?). Or for nature lovers it could just be the scent of wild flowers and fallen petals in various phases of decay. In any case I find myself going through love, hate, reconciliation but eventually, resignation and separation. This is just not for me. While its artistry is undeniable and Ropion's execution flawless, IMO it's far too controversial when it doesn't need to be.

I do not know what cassie smells like, but I'm thinking it must be related to mimosa, as the fragrance this most strongly reminded me of was Caron's Farnesiana. It shares a curiously thick, doughy texture with that fragrance, but without the other gourmand elements found there. Instead, the flower-dough core is surrounded by car exhaust; smelling this is like smelling flowers by a highway, on a day with bad air pollution. It's not smoky, dark, dirty, animalic or even oddly petrochemical the way some fragrances are, but it is most assuredly smoggy, and this smog note is the first thing I notice about this fragrance and is - hopefully - its unique feature.

All in all, I find it very linear. It's a little "fresher" in the first few minutes, but there is no big difference between when it's put on and when it disappears ( twelve or so hours later, on me ). The sillage is moderate, and all in all this is in no way a big, luxuriant floral; in fact it's rather reserved. But then, I love big white florals, so I may have different standards than most!

One of my all time favourites. Bestial & rich, textured, voluptuous provocation. Big EFM fan, especially the edgy florals. After application, the tense rubbery industrial white floral trail opens its arms and releases the haunting emotive spice and hot skin note i seem to be constantly drawn to in scents. I keep returning to my own skin as the scent shifts and travels to its hovering vanillic echo of a end. As with nearly all the published Malle scents, the power is sometimes debatable. Some days it shocks me beautifully with it 30s music hall vulgarity, other days it just shimmers and fades. Extraordinary nontheless.

Talk about love-it-or-hate-it! Of course, every time a scent splits opinions as thoroughly as Un Fleur de Cassie, I'll be next in line to try it. The cassie blossom has a musty, foetid quality about it that's frankly more animal than floral. It's a note of decay, like the abandoned lair of a large mammal. I'll wager that it's this animalic edge that makes Un Fleur de Cassie such a controversial fragrnace.

The top notes are deceptive: jasmine and rose are first out of the gate. The notes are well rendered and blended, but in and of themselves they're nothing special. Then the cassie comes roaring past from behind though, and its earthy, even dirty influence runs the floral accord off the track and into uncharted territory.

A well judged touch of mimosa contributes some sparkle to the dark cassie, while the rose and jasmine meld with an exceptionally creamy sandalwood below. We've come a long way from the seemingly innocent opening, and anyone expecting a "pretty" floral will be sorely disappointed, if not utterly repulsed.

There is a beauty to Un Fleur de Cassie, but it's of the dangerous kind found in scents like Yatagan and Muscs Koublai Khan. The drydown is another surprise, with a very light powder and vanilla hovering above the soft sandalwood, all anchored by the murky shadow of the cassie note.

The sandalwood in Un Fleur de Cassie is much like the one Ropion employs in Carnal Flower. In fact, Un Fleur de Cassie could be the dark doppelganger to Carnal Flower, earthy and slightly threatening where its counterpart is sublime and ethereal. Un Fleur de Cassie will always be the ugly stepsiter of the two, but then I'm not often in a fairy princess kind of mood.

If this description hasn't turned your stomach, give Un Fleur de Cassie a try. Just give it enough time to drop its floral mask and reveal its true nature.

This is a stunning modern classic. Not only is this fragrance extremely faceted and complex, but it is beautifully powerful and coherent, true vintage that is a marked contemporary fragrance. Beautiful aldehydes and bergamote provide the opening counterpoint for a beautiful, woody violet note. All of this sits on a grand set of absolutes: mimosa, rose, jasmine, and cassie, an almost uncontrollable note.

What is everyone going on about?
Sweaty buttcheeks in a bottle.

What a stunning fragrance! The cassie, violet, and musky sandalwood are the notes that stand out the most for me, but this is a very complex fragrance to my nose. It is wet, powerful, and animalic--it makes me think of a jungle, full of both growth and decay. Violet is sometimes a difficult note for me if it is overpowering, but here I find it pleasantly challenging--still strong, but just enough restraint. I think the unisex label is correct on this one, although I personally like it much, much better on a female friend of mine than I like it on myself.

This scent is so beautiful I could cry. If I could designate a single perfume to be the scent-track of my life it would be this.

I am a huge fan of acacia farnesia, the dominant note to me in Une Fleur de Cassie. I also detect the earthy, spicy, cumin note, in perfect contrast to the floral. This is not for everyone, however. The cumin can smell a bit funky. Some people perceive it as the scent of unwashed human bodies, must, mold--and while that is not how I would describe it, I find that sort of dirty basenote glorious. If this seems just too creepy but the rest sounds good to you, I would recommend Après l'Ondée by Guerlain, which is in a similar scent family, but sweeter and cleaner, and every bit as haunting. I prefer, slightly, Une Fleur de Cassie, but I wear Après l'Ondée, and here is the reason: what makes me cry about Une Fleur de Cassie, besides its perfection, is that it simply doesn't last. Within about 30 minutes it is as if I had never put it on. Love is so elusive!

I am a woman of the eighties (and the seventies AND the sixties AND the fifties) and this wonderfully blended exotic floral is PURRfect for me. I am anyway a huge fan of Ropion and his mastery of the assertive bold statement flowers well on my bod. This scent may have been meant for the dark recesses of a Rolls enroute to Le Jazz Hot but I happily wear it with shorts and sandals here at the beach.

We all smell things differently... I get dirty, wet and dank notes in this. I do not find this flowery at all, just an unpleasant musty mold aroma. Try it, though, you might find it different then what I smell.

I'm always amazed at my fellow sniffers who find this scent repellent or dark or intimidating. I find this to be an absolutely exquisite and quite uncomplicated floral. Like many of the other scents in this wonderful, high-quality line, it is superbly well-structured, with ne'er a wobble in any stage of its development. I find it reassuring in large part because of its quality, in the way I find other Editions de Parfum scents, or Chanel, or Guerlain scents reassuring. It's always reassuring to know that there still are manufacturers dedicated to artistry and quality in perfume. Practically everything in this line is FBW.

Flowery, spicy,fruity, aldehydic, musky, woody; this scent is remarkable for its brilliant composition, its juxtaposition of notes that work together beyond expectation. This is the genius of the true nose, to make a scent that works in balance despite odd combinations by gauging exact proportions to achieve a novel effect. Ropion here succeeds in spades, making a rich floral-woody-oriental with subtle marriages of fruit and spice, using apricot to enhance the florals, and clove to reflect the carnation, and then tying it all together with a classic and straightforward woody oriental base note. This is an extraordinarily rich floral, shimmering and complex, with carefully arranged modulations to carry one through the seemingly seamless development in precise order. It's one of the best of an already excellent set in the Éditions de Parfums series.

I get the weirdest note from this... cumin. I'm assuming this is the Cassie flower. While the powdery musk is a bright spot in the scent, the tinge of body odor/cumin ruins it for me.

This is an exceptionally beautiful fragrance, highly retro and very classic. I have learned to be extremely fond of Dominique Ropion's perfume creations in the most recent past (Carnal and Amarige to name two). Une Fleur de Cassie is beautiful from opening note to drydown. I am very much reminded of Je Reviens (another of my all time faves) throughout this perfume's life, but it comes in less sweet and more full-bodied. While I find this scent "deep," I am not seeing all this "darkness" everyone is referring to. To me, this is light, soft, powdery, romantic....nostalgic. One whiff will remind you of at least one bittersweet romance. The musk at the end is very nice. My new "instant favorite!"

Une Fleur de Cassie is most impressive in it's transparency. It evokes the smell of a person who has perfumed oneself. There is a dirty human core veiled in powder/musk notes from the cassie/mimosa, orris, and musk/sandalwood so it wears almost more like an idealized version of a person's natural scent than an overt perfume. I couldn't stop smelling the back of my hand (a tester does it no justice).

The first time I came across Une Fleur de Cassie, I almost burst into tears. It was the perfume I had been searching for all my life --- an aromatic evocation of my childhood in Hong Kong, of cassias, gordonias and spicy lantanas, of morning mist on the Peak and damselflies skimming over sparkling pools, of banyans and balsams, mossy tracks into thickets, sweetly rotting leaves and cool, moist earth. The first air I ever breathed smelled like that; it gave me life, and Une Fleur de Cassie is an intense distillation of it. I had to find out if I were just wilfully tricking myself, so two months ago I went back to HK and walked through the forests of the Peak all the way to Black's Link for six hours ... and yes, Cassie is as close as any perfume will ever come to being my version of "a la recherche du temps perdu". It is a cool, elegant, aloof scent. It is not pretty, like a bunch of fresh flowers waved in one's face; it's alluring, like a forest full of well-concealed beauties waiting quietly for the solitary walker to notice them. I wear Cassie when I'm feeling a bit vulnerable and need to restore my self-possession by reminding myself where I come from.

My husband is a wine writer and my seven year old daughter has inherited from him a deadly accurate nose. When I offered her my wrist without comment, she said, after a couple of thoughtful sniffs, "it smells like a perfumed zoo".

Not sure where that came out of.. but I think this is an extraordinary scent. For me it paints a picture of a garden at the end of the summer, with the sweet/sharp scents of flowers and leaves, sun baked earth and somewhere in the background, the a faint, sweet and not unpleasing smell of compost. I don't have it now but I soon will.

A cool floral, perfect for a bright spring day. Initially it's quite pungent, but this dries down to a subtle, musty undercurrent, leaving the flowers to proliferate. I get a lot of jasmine from this, and in this regard it reminds me of Alien, though it's a lot less in your face.
Even though Une Fleur de Cassie is not really my style, I can see its attractions.

Think of a walk through a park on an early morning in late september, when the air gets cooler and there's this fine mist on the last green leaves. That's my main impression of Une Fleur de Cassie, which is a unique combination of notes: it's powdery, green, soft, cool, melancholic and calming at the same time. It seems to be full of contradictions, and maybe that's the reason why it polarizes that much. Personally, I love it. I like its matt green vibrancy and its dim chlorophyllic character. The lack of sweetness makes it a bit easier to wear than its near relative Iris Poudre (which I also appreciate very much). Maybe its name is misleading: don't expect flowery freshness or cheerfulness - Une Fleur de Cassie is far from being a happy spring scent, but it's a grand, slightly aloof love-or-hate fragrance.

Une Fleur de Cassis is a masterful fragrance, in my opinion, because it's incredibly unique. But it smells cold and distant; strange. Its top notes evoke an elegant, vintage aldehydic floral, but the somewhat woody base smells like dead trees drenched with water. There is an ozonic, almost metallic smell that lingers throughout a layers on my skin. This fragrance is something that feels like Atlantic Ocean waters off the New England coast in winter. Fans of Hiris and Iris Poudre may enjoy this one, because it's such a cool scent. It's more Oriental than floral to me, probably because of the spices. I could really do without the cumin and clove notes. They just don't "fit" with the rest of the notes when on my skin. Une Fleur de Cassie is interesting, and intriguing, but very, very moody. I don't want a bottle of it.

Color me unimpressed. I should hope I never run into a wild Cassie flower, if this is what they actually smell like. Also, I suppose luckily, this scent was almost undetectable on my after about an hour.

This is a weird scent--DO NOT buy unsniffed! I got mine as a free sample. It smelled like bad breath in the bottle. I figured it would develop. Every so often when I tried it on, it would smell good--like a unique flower on a warm-person base. But then it would morph back into overly-pungent-odor-of-various-orifices. It did eventually fade away but it was largely an unpleasant experience.

In it's description, "bordering on coarse" is used. Coarse, sharp, almost marine-like describes this scent. Not my usual preference for a floral blend type, I found this scent unpleasant. It is very light and in my opinion, not worth the money.

a dash of poweder, cold metallicness, rich smell of money