Insolence (2006)
by Guerlain

Insolence is a cheerful L'Heure Bleue with raspberry over, under & sideways notes. It is sweet yet bold...and I like it! My husband gave this to me as a gift and I was a little unsure at first until I wore it for the first time and received lots of compliments. Yes, people can smell you coming, but they seem to like what they smell! The iris and violets tone down the raspberry to a wearable fragrance. This is for those happy, carefree days (or days that you would like to feel carefree).

I quite like this one.
It's different; silky smooth and creamy violets, sweet in a good way, unlike so many of those sickly modern fragrances.
This perfume immediately gets your attention, it is very femminine and starts out as pretty yet deliberate and purposeful, refined but fragile. Unusual. it seems to change after a few hours of wear, becoming slightly warmer and plasticky, then later on still it takes a strange turn and starts to smell like unwashed underwear.
It isn't a very far wafting perfume, although the tester i have isn't an atomiser.

It has been said that Insolence is a kind of homage to a few classic Guerlain's like L'Heuere Bleue, Apres l'Ondee and Vol de Nuit. While I've yet to smell Apres l'Ondee, I own both L'HB and V de N and I'm not getting the comparison. Insolence does not have the depth of either of those scents. First of all, Insolence's development, on me, is pretty linear. It opens with a very loud and cloying sweetness and stays that way for a good while. It's only in the very extreme drydown, when it's just about to disappear, that I get any references to the wonderful L'Heure Bleue (forget about Vol de Nuit...there's no comparison). In my opinion the comparison is just part of the marketing strategy that's being used to align the trendy insolence with the classic Guerlains. The strategy isn't working on me. I gave My Insolence a thumbs down as well, but after experiencing Insolence I feel that My Insolence is better...it's much softer and not as shrill.

I tried this yesterday on my wrist.

I miraculously found it in a discount store - perhaps it had *gone* but it was one the most awful things I had ever put on my body. I'm American of mostly french, English and Irish descent, and perhaps it matters, because my mom is "dark Irish" and seems to be able to wear perfume better than myself. I have very pale skin.

*Sweet* scents tend to strengthen on my skin and the Fuity, "raspberry fizz" top note was disgusting. It smelled "dirty" but not in a good way - rotten and powdered and sweetened with splenda. Chemical and sweet/sour. I let it sit for two hours, fighting my instinct to scrub, hoping the Guerlainade would rescue it. No. The rose started to come through near the end of my patience, but the raspberries lingered.

This is not something I could stand to wear again.

Ravetastic, I love your review! As for Insolence, it's OK I suppose, nothing interesting (oh, is that supposed to be violets?!) but why on earth is it called Insolence? Insolence should have attitude, like a sharp urban version of Bandit perhaps or a citrus Bulgari Black. This is just a mild thickish sweetish unchallenging thing that sits in the corner till it fades away.

Like many admirers of classic Guerlains, I have been concerned with the direction the house has taken in recent years. However Insolence was a very pleasant surprise, as it shows the respect the house still has for its past. I immediately noticed a resemblance to L'Heure Bleue, but I was also reminded of the general aesthetic of Shalimar in that it marries a very heady sweetness with a dark and complex base. I think there is an interesting parallel here in that Shalimar was derived from Jicky, just as this fragrance was derived from L'Heure Bleue. Of course this perfume is more than just a homage to Guerlain's past, and has to stand up on its own merits, and I believe it does so very well. It is hard to know if this will be a future classic, but it is certainly a reassuring addition to the mass market.