Fragile by Jean Paul Gaultier, 1999

When this came out, I felt rather let down - I adore Jean Paul Gaultier and his work, and I'm crazy about tuberose, but Fragile just left me so unimpressed. And still does, for the most part. Tuberose, to me, is a rather fiercely deep and serious, take-no-prisoners type of floral, one you either go for completely or else don't go near. The worst thing a fragrance can do is "prettify" this big white flower and turn it into - gasp - something gardenia-like. Not that gardenia's a bad floral at all; I just consider it the, well, the Ava Gardner to tuberose's Jeanne Moreau. If that makes sense at all to anyone besides film fanatics...I mean, Ava was a goddess of beauty and beyond reproach in that regard, but Moreau simply defies description, not because of physical beauty but of other qualities that go well beyond the limitations of appearance. Tuberose is much the same to me, makes those sorts of impressions on me. ANYway, if anyone should have understood these differences, I'd have expected it to be Monsieur Gaultier, but apparently he had other visions in mind. Fragile is a sweet, warm fragrance in which the paradoxically dry steaminess of the tuberose gets covered up by fruit and clipped by the warm vapors of pepper and cedar. It's very feminine but a smidge or ten too predictably so, and only a hair or two less twee than Marc Jacobs' signature scent. (I like Marc a lot as well but cannot tolerate his fragrance - to the point where just thinking about it annoys me incredibly.) JPG's Classique, though it has its flaws, is entirely worlds better and more true to his image than this one, in my humble estimation.