There has been grumbling for a while now, niche houses sell out to corporations and the quality of the perfume goes down; both in the back catalogue and, most likely – but harder to gauge, in new releases.
By comparing old and new samples you can often find out if a perfume has been tweaked, but the quality of new releases - compared to the back catalogue - is more difficult to judge. One approach is to look at the ratings a house gets, before and after being sold to a corporation.
Blogger, lecturer, prize giving judge; when Denyse Beaulieu had a perfume made for her by Bertrand Duchaufour, her involvement in the world of perfumery took on a new role, that of art director. Duchaufour was the composer of Séville à l’aube, but this was a collaborative affair between him and Beaulieu - whose vision was the driving force behind the scent.
In her book The Perfume Lover, she relates how she told the composer about a drunken night in Seville with a Spanish guy named
Fracas is a hard perfume to write about. Not because it’s hard to break down into chords, or there’s nothing to say about it, it’s hard because most things worth saying have already been said.
So instead of trying to find something original to say, I will draw on the comments of other writers who have already dealt with this great classic.
Fracas is widely held to be the reference tuberose, the one by which all others are judged. Raiders of the Lost Scent calls it a ‘benchmark
Complice was originally released in 1934, the year Coty died. It was subsequently relaunched in 1973 under the title Complice by François Coty.
Complice is a cool creamy bouquet, aldehydic and lightly pink; a soft abstract floral that clearly owes a lot to Ernest Beaux. Complice is a fine aldehydic (at least in the 1973 version) but it's nothing special. It stands alongside Infini and 1000 which were released the year before but doesn't really outshine them. The interesting thing
L'Heure Bleue - the witching hour, when day slips into night. Dusk falls, and orange lights on the banks of the Seine twinkle in the deepening blue. The atmosphere is cool, elegaic...
Some people find l'Heure Bleue sad, and indeed, there was something weighing on Jacques Guerlain's mind when he composed it. Jean-Paul Guerlain later told Michael Edwards his uncle had a premonition he couldn't describe - and so he expressed it in the way he knew best - in a perfume. With the benefit
| iTrader Profile | Recent Ratings | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
See all reviews
See Wardrobe
View Blog Entries
