Fleur de Carotte (2000)
by L'Artisan Parfumeur

Fleur de Carotte goes on as a pleasantly natural-smelling lemony eau de Cologne, then morphs into a very pale green fruity floral arrangement backed up by a sweet, rooty “carrot” accord. It’s cheerful, undemanding, and pretty. It’s also so pallid that it’s hard to detect after half an hour, no matter how much you dump on. If you enjoy the experience of applying a fragrance but don’t actually want to smell it, Fleur de Carotte is for you.

5th April, 2011.

This one is too incongruous for me. I love natural orris root butter, which smells like carrots. It goes well with green notes and florals, but not fruits. In this perfume, there is a strong apricot/osmanthus note. The rootiness of the carrot is musty, and the fruitiness of the apricot is fresh and sweet, so it gets pulled in two opposing directions: musty and sweet, which displeases me. Yes it is a unique scent, but I prefer the iris in Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist, The Different Company Bois de Iris, or even Chanel No. 19 or 28 La Pausa.

21st October, 2008.

I love this so much I splash it all over the bed when I've changed the sheets. Luckily the bottle I bought was a whopper so there's plenty to go round. Smells as sweet as a freshly-pulled carrot. Absolutely, hands down, the best summer perfume ever.

29th September, 2008.

This is one frag whose name excited me when I first read it. I love that sparkling, wet scent of a freshly scraped sweet carrot--it reminds me of the scent of modern roses, and I suspect L'Artisan figured that if irises/iris roots work in perfumery, why not its cousin the carrot? Reviews I read said this carrot, however, was more boiled than fresh, and, sadly, I suppose that's so. Still, it's not a bad scent, and then again, I don't blame L'Artisan for discontinuing it. I think L'Artisan needed to confer with Christopher Brosius (of Demeter and CB I Hate Perfume fame) to tweak this formulation.
This is a weak scent on my skin, so it takes a good wetting down to create sillage. This could be a darling first scent for a very young person -- well, maybe not at this price.

7th June, 2007.

Since I normally don't like light, fresh vegetable/herbal scents (I especially loathe cucumber and mint) I shouldn't like this. I do, however, mostly because I get an interesting earth note from it. A vegetable garden after the rain. Pity I don't get any carrot, that would be really interesting in a perfume...

26th February, 2007.

I am coddling my bottle of Fleur de Carotte and decided to wear it today since it's unseasonably warm for October.

At first application, a sweet note shreiks out like those four memorable notes at the beginning of the overture of "My Fair Lady". After the initial shock, the alcohol rides prime for a very brief period. Throughout the first notes of sweetness and the second notes of pure alcohol, one can sense a person in a distant room peeling carrots.

Then we move to the carrot experience up close. With a poignant combination of sweetness, greenness, and the earthiness of the roots of the carrot, Fleur de Carotte has greater longevity and warmth than one might suspect.

It's a great warm-weather scent and a very original one. I don't know why it was discontinued. Perhaps the carrot concept seemed too risky or too much of a one-note. I find it glows in a warm refulgence of healthy happiness. I don't believe that I smell like a salad bar, but I think that this odor while being true to carroty-greenness, has some mysterious overtones that add to the intrigue.

I will continue to use this for day time and special occasions. I could say goodbye forever to many scents, but this one will be surely missed. I doubt that any of the one-note houses can approach Fleur de Carotte.

9th October, 2006.