1889 Moulin Rouge (2010)
by Histoires de Parfums

Many thumbs up for this blind buy (thank you, ClaireV, AKA Priscilla Queen of the Desert). ClaireV’s review is spot-on so all I will do is give it a hearty second, and say I really enjoy this gem. Who knew old lost lipstick could smell so fun?

Lipstick accord. Waxy. Soft. Girly-girl. In minutes, I get a faint, chewy-gummy, candy thing. Then, it turns to powder. Iris rules. Rose slowly moves in. Still, a bit of that gummy-candy thing remains.

The base notes remind me of cinnamon in a way. Nice mix of patchouli, musk, and vanilla, with a touch of suede leather.

Well done! I love it! Of course, it is becoming hard to find...

Cake pan makeup, heavy rouge lipstick, sweat on mousseline de soie and crepe de chine, powder - tons of powder, tinge of cold cream. Well done.

A sweetish feminine iris (orris root) with enough complexity to be interesting. This is not something I would wear routinely myself, but I think I might enjoy it on someone else.

When I want to smell like make-up, I want to go full on Priscilla Queen of the Desert, thank you very much, and Moulin Rouge is what gives me my Cecil B. DeMille moment. I was locked in with Moulin Rouge early on and I don’t think my need to smell like lipstick is so all-encompassing that I need to look further afield. This is perhaps the real reason why the classy, serious Misia and the fey Lipstick Rose never stood a chance with me.

1889 Moulin Rouge has the edge purely because it’s obviously a fine-boned actress with a large, camp gay man fighting to get out.

The lipstick note at the beginning is almost putridly stale. Kind of like discovering a years-old Chanel lipstick at the arse end of some forgotten handbag and deciding, for old times’ sake, to give it a lash, only to spend the next four hours trying to wipe the stale, waxy, decaying stench off your lips with a face cloth.

This is almost as bad as eating that graying, whitish chocolate you find down the back of the couch one night when tidying away after the kids. But you know what I mean. I hope. It’s an almost attractive kind of staleness. I love it, because it’s so mega disgusting and mega delicious at the same time.

There is a boozy, overripe plum note, or pear, but some stone fruit anyway, collapsing and decaying unnoticed inside the leather bag along with the stale lipstick, and this gives off an interesting scent of booze as smelled on someone’s breath, a few hours after they’ve had a drink. It is almost sickly sweet, but in a good way. The iris continues throughout to be the defining element in the mix, though, casting its noble, rooty dust all over the stage and throwing lipstick shapes up on the spackled mirror in the dressing room.

Patchouli adds a shade of darkness and gloom in the basenotes, and I can completely see the vision of the dark dance theatre and the lonely Moulin Rouge dancers that Gerard Ghislain wanted us to see when wearing this fragrance. But this is far from a serious or dark scent. It’s very fun, retro, tongue-in-cheek fragrance, and one that calls for stockings with the line down the back of the legs, black patent Mary Janes, about an inch’s worth of Caron face powder, and Chanel’s Gabrielle red.

Oh, and if you have small children? Totally worth buying this fragrance just to hurry along those olfactory memories they’re already busy making in their tiny heads – kiss them goodnight while wearing this and they’ll remember that you smelled like perfume, face powder, and illicit booze just like any good mother does.