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Michael Connor's Postcard from Paris

Spring, and a young man’s thoughts turn to... well, what exactly? Sorry to disappoint you, but in my case it’s “where shall we go for our summer holidays?” Typically, we’ve left it a little late. I fancied a trip to the Ile de Ré, a small island off the west coast much favoured by Paris’s chic set. Emmanuelle Béart is a regular, and former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has a house on the island. Perfumer Annick Goutal loved the Ile de Ré too.

One region of the island is named the Fier d’Ars-en-Ré. It’s an area of salt marshes and mudflats, and is where Goutal found inspiration for one of the most intriguing scents of her collection, Eau du Fier.

Eau du Fier’s admirers are drawn to the scent’s smoky, salty qualities. It opens, famously, with a powerful tea note: Lapsang Souchong, which is dried over pine fires and smoked over smouldering pine needles. Smoked tea is layered over a tar or birch note, a whiff of iodine, and an equally unusual black cherry and orange “cough drop” accord.

You either love it or hate it. That’s one of the funny things about Annick Goutal’s scents. There’s this image of frilly oh-la-la Frenchness, all silk bows and gilt ivy leaves, but Mme Goutal produced some groundbreaking perfume. Folavril, a topsy-turvy fruit and floral, which danced joyously around the lumbering power scents of its era; Eau de Charlotte - cocoa powder sprinkled on mimosa flowers; Vetiver, which layers salt-soaked sea island driftwood with steely oystershell minerality; Sables, where something silky and unique is produced from unpromisingly heavy references like sherry casks, immortelle flowers and old-fashioned French liqueurs.

And then there’s Eau de Monsieur, which arrives on the skin with a burst of Eau d’Hadrien’s citrus sunshine, before revealing a bitter, intensely pure oakmoss heart, with its associations of wormwood, dead leaves and undergrowth. Oakmoss plays a supporting bass role all-too-often: It’s refreshing to see it centre stage, filling the higher registers of the scent. It’s a brighter, gold rather than deep green mossiness, though its effect softens as the scent rounds out with a light musk, orange flower and sandalwood base. I loved this stuff: A bitter Campari soda in a world of alcopops, a stiff espresso in the face of a thousand sugar-syrup lattés.

Unfortunately, there weren’t enough of us. Eau du Fier, Eau de Monsieur and Goutal’s spicy, unsentimental Eau de Lavande came up for the chop a couple of years ago.

Of the hundreds of perfumes released every year, only a handful are still available five years later. Perfumes come and go, even among the so-called niche producers. Plenty of us still miss Jil Sander’s Feeling Man, and I’ve been sulking with Artisan Parfumeur since the house saw fit to discontinue Santal. Doubtless someone out there is ruefully holding their last bottle of their favourite CK Crave up to the light, wondering how many squirts it’s good for before the scent is gone for good.

I’ve always believed there’s something melancholic about a love of perfume. Most of our experiences of scents are fleeting: A whiff of sillage caught on the Métro, white hyacinths appearing outside florists in late winter, woodsmoke on the air in a forest. How unusual that the memory of scent leaves such a lasting impression. It seems ironic but correct that perfumes themselves often go the same way.

But still. Today, browsing holiday sites, I had a phone call from a fellow Annick Goutal enthusiast.

“Guess what I’ve just bought?”

“Don’t tell me: Another 400ml bottle of Eau d’Hadrien?”

“No. Better. Sorry - nothing’s better than a big bottle of Eau d’Hadrien for the summer. But this is nearly as good. Eau de frakking Monsieur! I’m getting some Eau du Fier tomorrow.”

Yes! The French, as you may have noticed, do not take unwelcome change lying down, and the decision by the new owners of Annick Goutal to discontinue some of its founder's less popular scents sparked a mini outcry among devotees of Eau de Monsieur and Eau du Fier.

They haven’t been reintroduced as such. Instead, the flagship Annick Goutal boutique at Saint-Sulpice has a secret supply: Ask for some, and they’ll fill a bottle for you there and then. You’ll be able to buy a full 100ml bottle of Eau du Fier; previously it was sold only in apologetic little 50ml bottles. No word on how much they have left or whether there are any plans to re-release the perfumes, but in a world of disappearing scents, this is as good as it gets.


If you can’t get to Paris to buy Eau du Fier but need a smoky birch kick, you could do worse than to head to Le Labo’s website http://www.lelabofragrances.com/ and order Patchouli 24.

New York house Le Labo has made its first European appearance in Paris’s always up-to-the-minute concept store Colette and Patchouli is the pick of a first-class bunch. Don’t be put off by the name. Patchouli might be listed as the main note, but you have to sniff hard to detect it. Woodsmoke and dry leather dominate: It is really wintery but altogether irresistible even in this unseasonably hot Paris spring. The scent is rounded off with a warm but unobtrusive vanille note, which even the vanilla-adverse like me can love.

I was also impressed by the complex and compelling Iris 39 (spices and violet play support) and the bewitching, musk-laden Labdanum 18.

It’s fun to have your choice mixed and labelled with your name after purchase, but even this little ritual doesn’t soften the impact of the prices. Le Labo’s scents are extraordinarily expensive, and unlike those of Frédéric Malle (its major inspiration), they do not vary from scent to scent. Do all the meticulously-listed ingredients add up to exactly the same price? Maybe Le Labo’s accountants are as creative as their perfumers.

Available from Colette and mail order from http://www.colette.fr/ (European Union)

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