Tableau de Parfums/Andy Tauer Ingrid: Antique Florals

Ingrid is a fragrance from Tableau de Parfums, the collaboration between the Swiss perfumer, Andy Tauer, and the American, Memphis-based, indie filmmaker, Brian Pera (who is also a perfume blogger at I Smell Therefore I Am).

Women's Picture. Source: Fragrantica.

Women’s Picture. Source: Fragrantica.

There are three Tableau fragrances (Miriam, Loretta, and Ingrid) and, as the Tableau Parfums website at Evelyn Avenue explains, each one is an olfactory representation of a particular female character in Brian Pera’s film series, Woman’s Picture. According to the website, “Woman’s Picture is an anthology film inspired by classic women’s films of the thirties, forties, and fifties. The story is divided into three sections, each of which presents a portrait of a specific female character.” I’d previously reviewed the tuberose Loretta, but couldn’t wait to try Ingrid given its oriental notes.

Source: Fragrantica

Source: Fragrantica

Ingrid was released late in 2013, and is an eau de parfum in concentration. Tableau de Parfums describes the scent as follows:

A fragrant floral gem in an elegant oriental casket, Ingrid is a rich woody floral inspired by classical scents of the fifties, full of contrasts. Draperies of citrus and spices open the stage for sensual frangipani and roses, with hints of lily of the valley adding softness to the flower heart. These rich feminine notes are anchored by a chord of precious woods and resins in the base. Vanilla, tolu and sandalwood add an exotic twist, and underline with the contrasting lines of dark cistus and smoky balsamic styrax the feminine melody. […]

Andy Tauer on Ingrid: “Ingrid is unique, a strong character, yet soft and feminine. She is a beautiful woman, who developed her style, found herself, she is present and demanding, with a past full of questions, unanswered. Her flower is frangipani. I have no doubt.”

Fragrantica and Luckyscent say the notes are:

Bergamot, orange, lemon, cinnamon, clove, Frangipani [or Plumeria], rose, lily of the valley [Muguet], sandalwood, tolu [balsam], cistus, vanilla, styrax

Source: apartmenttherapy.com

Source: apartmenttherapy.com

Ingrid opens on my skin with lily of the valley and dust, followed by an oddly stale, sharp, leathered, sweetness that smells like styrax resin that has gone a bit off or turned rancid. Seconds later, there is ISO E Super, more dust, a vanillic sweetness, and powdered rose. The lily of the valley tries to add some freshness but it is such a delicate aroma and cannot counter the other elements. My overall sense is of extremely musty, fusty, sweet dust with an odd edge. It’s hard to describe but, to me, it smells like the stale air in a dusty attic that hasn’t been opened in decades. The ISO E Super is a light touch, and isn’t responsible for any of this at all.

Yet, at the same time, there is an undercurrent that is sickly sweet. I suspect the latter stems from the frangipani or plumeria, a flower whose scent I find sickly and quite difficult in general unless it’s handled very lightly. Here, the plumeria isn’t individually distinct in Ingrid’s opening moments, but I’m pretty sure it’s responsible for that particular, nauseating, cloying touch. It injects its syrup from a distance into the faintly leathered, “off” dark notes and the arid dust, creating a combination that I find quite discordant and just plain odd.

Source: wallpaper.metalship.org

Source: wallpaper.metalship.org

Other elements are smoothly blended into the background. There are flickers of cloves with a touch of cinnamon. Much more pronounced is the old-fashioned floral soapiness that dances all around. A soft touch of sweetened citruses lurks in the shadows, alongside the rose. The primary bouquet, however, is of ancient, antique dust with lily of the valley, followed by a touch of fusty greenness and soapiness, all nestled within the strong embrace of stale, somewhat rancid, dark sweetness.

I’m finding it incredibly hard to convey precisely because I can’t explain why I’m smelling what I am, or the extent of the strange combination. It’s akin to the fustiest of mineralised oakmoss, infused with styrax resin gone rancid, cloying sweetness, prickly aromachemicals, vanilla, flowers that feel dried and pressed in an ancient book, soap, and some strange dark element, all doused with the dust of ages.

There is an oldness to the aroma that reminds me of an old lady’s clothes in a closet that she hasn’t opened in years, but the dusty fabrics still carry the lingering traces of her floral perfume and the soap on her skin. I almost never find fragrances to be “old lady,” and it is a pejorative term that I find offensive, but if ever I were to use it, it would be for Ingrid. Most people give that label to heavy orientals or powdery scents, like Shalimar or L’Heure Bleue. I’ve never agreed with that and if I’m using the term here, it’s for a very different reason: the fetid dustiness of accumulated years. I’ve tried Ingrid twice, and with different quantities each time, but on both occasions, I had enormous difficulty with the opening because of that one reason.

The famous, recently discovered Paris apartment, untouched and unopened for 70 years. Source: DailyMail.com http://tinyurl.com/cweo355

The famous, recently discovered Paris apartment, untouched and unopened for 70 years. Source: DailyMail.com http://tinyurl.com/cweo355

Twenty-five minutes in, Ingrid starts to change. The stale, sharp mustiness ceases to be the leading note, though it is still substantial and enormous. It now shares center stage with the soapiness and florals. The frangipani or plumeria makes its first appearance in a distinct way; the orange grows a whiff more noticeable; and the sweetened powder becomes more dominant. Then, the cloves rise up from the base, and… oh boy. I love cloves, passionately, but the note here takes on a medicinal undertone that strongly reminds me of American, clove-based, dentistry analgesics. At the same time, it’s pungent and, yes, dusty. In fact, it merely compounds Ingrid’s overall odd staleness, creating an aura of fusty antiques, florals with old-fashioned soap, strange sweetness, and spice.

Woman's dusty, antique dressing table and perfumes from the Paris time-capsule apartment. Source: Daily Mail.

Woman’s dusty, antique dressing table and perfumes from the Paris time-capsule apartment. Source: Daily Mail.

Ingrid finally softens about 45 minutes in, and the sillage drops. From a moderately strong opening, it now hovers two inches above the skin as a blur of powdered, sweet florals with medicinal, pungent cloves and a strong dash of vanilla powder over a slightly warm base. Nothing in the latter translates to my nose as richly ambered or darkly resinous. This is not the labdanum of Dior’s Mitzah or Serge Lutens’ Ambre Sultan. It’s not the smoky, leathered styrax resin that I’ve encountered in other perfumes either. In fact, Ingrid’s colour visuals would be powdered pastels with ribbons of brownness from the cloves, and greyness from the dust.

To my relief, the fusty staleness slowly diffuses and weakens, making Ingrid a touch easier to bear. At the 90-minute mark, Ingrid merely smells like old-fashioned, 1930s-style, feminine, powdered florals, instead of being dominated by dust from that same era. The perfume remains largely the same for several more hours to come, though the plumeria or frangipani takes the lead as the main flower, followed by the rose. The always subtle muguet has faded away completely, while the soapiness retreats to the sidelines. However, the cloves continue to blast away, though, thankfully, they’ve lost their medicinal undertone. Lurking all about is an amorphous, indistinct, dry woodiness that has the tiniest hint of something smoky about it. It’s hard to detect though, given the sweetened powder that now infuses Ingrid from top to bottom.

Plumeria or frangipani.

Plumeria or frangipani.

Ingrid’s notes slowly grow hazy and abstract, with only the plumeria and cloves really standing out. If you smell really hard and up close, the rose pops up once in a while in the background to add a very muted, muffled hint of Damask-like richness, but it’s usually indistinct on my skin. The plumeria feels unctuous, while the cloves now remind me of a Christmas baked ham. And the sweetened, vanillic powder infused them both. Yet, even those notes become blurry and nebulous around the end of the 4th hour. Soon, Ingrid turns into a soft, generalized, vaguely frangipani-like, floral powder with vanillic sweetness and cloves.

What is interesting, however, is the base which turns increasingly warm and ambered. It’s a largely abstract amber, to my nose. It doesn’t feel distinct or individual enough to separate out into labdanum amber at all, but just feels like a warm, spiced, slightly leathered, dry goldenness. Call me crazy, but the Tauerade signature seems to take on some Caronade similarities. Or perhaps the cloves in Ingrid are so dominant that, in conjunction with the growing amber, it makes parts of Ingrid resemble Caron‘s clove-based Poivre in its foundational elements. The big difference here is the plumeria with its nauseatingly sickly sweetness.

By the end of the 7th hour, Ingrid turns into a sweetened, powdery, floral oriental with plumeria nestled in a spiced ambered nest. It’s also a skin scent at this point. Oddly, the ISO E Super suddenly becomes much stronger, adding a prickly, peppered, jangling bit of dryness to the base, though it’s not enough to cut through the plumeria’s syrup. The cloves fold into the Tauer base which is actually quite nice, and well-balanced between the dry and warm elements. As a whole, though, the perfume is largely a nebulous blur of powdered, very sweet florals atop a warm base with some dryness and abstract spiciness. Ingrid remains largely unchanged until its end when, 11.25 hours from the start, it fades away as a blur of warm sweetness.

Skin chemistry is a funny thing, and I blame my own for whatever vagaries occurred with the dust, and the “off,” almost rancid, dark-sweet accord. I also need to repeat what regular readers know all too well: I don’t like scents that are either powdered florals, sweetened powder, or soapy. Having all five things together — at the same time — made Ingrid extremely difficult for me. I tried to like it, I really did, but my skin simply wouldn’t comply. The first time I wore it, with just a small amount, I came within inches of scrubbing it off after only 20 minutes, and it takes a lot for me to get to that level. To my surprise, the ISO E Super was very powerful at the lower dosage, but that wasn’t the problem at all. The difficulty was the dryness and fustiness which, in the opening 25 minutes, is excessive on my skin, regardless of the quantity used.

1930s Vancouver street photo by Foncie Pulice. Source:  chronicallyvintage.com (Link to website with a series of super cool 1930s street photos embedded within. Click on photo.)

1930s Vancouver street photo by Foncie Pulice. Source: chronicallyvintage.com (Link to website with a series of super cool 1930s street photos embedded within. Click on photo.)

In fact, the dry dustiness I experienced with Ingrid far surpassed anything in L’Air du Desert Marocain. Relatively speaking, that fragrance almost verges on the gourmand in comparison to Ingrid’s start on my skin. Plus, LDDM was never fusty or dated in feel. While Ingrid eventually loses its arid mustiness, it is simply replaced by old-fashioned floral powder and dusty cloves in a way that simply doesn’t work for my personal tastes. I kept imagining a woman from the 1930s or 1940s: older, relatively well-dressed, somewhat matronly in sensible clothing, and who had worn the same comfortingly powdered, floral scent since she was a young bride.

Others, however, seem to really like Ingrid, and had completely different perceptions or associations. The review on the blog, I Scent You A Day, reads, in part:

Ingrid is earthy and reminds me of birch or tar or dried bracken. There is winter spice too, but not in a chintzy Christmas way, you’ll be relieved to know. The Rose is prevalent, and as with other Tauer scents, no Rose is the same twice.  In this case, the Rose reminds me of dried petals in a pot pourri- they have gone paper thin and their colour has faded but their scent has gone faintly peppery. Nevertheless it can still be recognised as Rose.

Ingrid is rich and spicy, but dry rather than sweet. It left me thinking I could smell the deep dark scent of Myrrh, but it may have been the resinous Styrax which is used so beautifully.

On my skin, the base notes of Ingrid are Clove, dried Roses, Resin and Frangipani. It’s rich, dark and mysterious yet the ingredients have been used lightly enough not to overwhelm.

If further proof were ever needed for how skin chemistry makes everything different from person to person, consider the experience of WAFT… What a Fragrance Fanatic Thinks:

Andy Tauer has created a fragrance that is all  at once foody , pillowy , warm , comforting – in a word delicious . Ingrid just fits my mood and makes me want glue my nose to my wrist . Ingrid never frowns , never argues nor challenges .
This fragrance flows from sunshine and tart nectar and I loved it at first whiff . The frangipani note is so perfect…It lasts a good six hours on skin ( probably longer if you don’t cook or wash dishes – I do .) Ingrid reminds me of a fluffy whipped cream and rice confection called Glorified Rice , which has bits of tart mandarin slices in it .
If I had any complaint it would be the early drydown of Ingrid falls a little flat , but eventually smooths out .

On Fragrantica, there is only one review for Ingrid thus far:

The Cloves and Frangipani make this a great choice for Autumn and Winter. I didn’t get any Lily of The Valley: to me this is dark and full of shadows and mystery.

Ingrid wasn’t my cup of tea, but we’re all different and have different tastes, not to mention different skin chemistry. So, if Ingrid’s notes sound appealing to you, and if you enjoy either frangipani or some of Andy Tauer’s drier fragrances, then give her a sniff. 

DETAILS:
Cost & Availability: Ingrid is an eau de parfum that comes in a 50 ml/1.7 oz bottle that costs $160 or €135, and which comes with a free DVD and movie poster. Ingrid is also available in a small 7 ml travel spray that costs $40. In the U.S.: you can buy Ingrid in all sizes directly from Tableau de Parfums, along with Luckyscent. Tableau de Parfums only ships domestically. I’ve read that the line is also sold at Portland’s The Perfume House, but it is not listed on their website. Outside the U.S.: In Europe, you can find Ingrid at Germany’s First in Fragrance which sells the perfume for €135.00 and the travel size for €39. It too carries samples. In the UK, Scent & Sensibility carries Tableau de Parfums, and sells Ingrid for £110, with the purse spray for £25. In Italy, you can find the Tableau de Parfums line at Milan’s Profumi Import, but I’m not clear about price or if they have an e-store. Tableau de Parfums fragrances are also sold at a handful of other locations in Europe, from Marie-Antoinette in Paris, to Switzerland and Lithuania. You can find that information on the company’s websiteSamples: You can get a sample of Ingrid from Luckyscent for $4 for a 0.7 ml vial, or The Perfumed Court, where prices start at $6.99 for a 1/2 ml vial. Loretta is not sold at Surrender to Chance.

Tableau de Parfums/Andy Tauer Loretta

Collaborations across different art forms and platforms are always intriguing. I think it is even more so when two different artists use the same source of inspiration to create works in two different mediums. Tableau de Parfums is one such collaboration, consisting of a perfume and movie pairing between the Swiss perfumer, Andy Tauer, and the American, Memphis-based, indie filmmaker, Brian Pera (who is also a perfume blogger at I Smell Therefore I Am).

Source: Tauerperfumes.com

Source: Tauerperfumes.com

There are three Tableau perfumes (Miriam, Loretta, and Ingrid) and, as the Tableau Parfums website at Evelyn Avenue explains, each one is an olfactory portrait “inspired by the films of Pera’s ongoing series, Woman’s Picture.” According to the website, “Woman’s Picture is an anthology film inspired by classic women’s films of the thirties, forties, and fifties. The story is divided into three sections, each of which presents a portrait of a specific female character.” The Miriam perfume is supposed to be quite heavily aldehydic, so I eschewed that one, and opted for Loretta which is an eau de parfum released in 2012 and which is supposed to be centered around tuberose. It’s my favorite flower, but the fragrance also has orange blossom (another winner in my book), ambergris, and other appealing notes.

Loretta‘s cinematographic tale is about a young woman by that same name who works in a motel. It comes in three parts, two of which are posted here. As Fragrantica summarizes: “She is shy and withdrawn, but creates her own life in a fantasy world where she danced and falls in love with a man. She is sensual, sexy and seductive, but she has a secretive dark side.” The reason why that’s important is because of the way the perfume is intended to reflect her light and dark sides. According to the press release quoted by Now Smell This:

Like the film, Loretta the fragrance explores the way fantasy and reality inform each other in an interplay of light and dark impulses and energies. In the film, the character of Loretta, played by Amy LaVere, deals with a difficult, mysterious past by transforming it into a dream world of possibility and romantic adventure. The balance between the past and her fantastic reinvention of it is delicate, fraught with tensions, where childlike naivete and adult awareness twist and curl into increasingly complex sensual patterns. Fragrance becomes an important gateway into this transformed world.

Andy Tauer on Loretta: “Loretta is an incredibly sensual and erotic story, in which a daydream world becomes a powerful, seductive reality. In Loretta’s world there is music, dance, romantic intimacy, soft light and a natural, childlike shyness confronted with somewhat dark, adult realities. Loretta’s flower is tuberose, and I wanted this fragrance to be as dark and mysterious, as opulent and seductive as her reveries themselves.”

It all sounds fascinating and intriguing, doesn’t it? Alas, I did not share Loretta’s adventures with the fragrance, not even remotely, which is a sad disappointment given the story, the tantalizingly dark aspects to the short films, and the wonderful notes in the fragrance. Those notes, as compiled from Luckyscent, Fragrantica, that press release, and The Perfumed Court, include:

ripe dark fruit, velvet rose, cinnamon, clove, coriander, spicy tuberose, orange blossom,  patchouli, woody notes, ambergris, leather, vanilla, and sweetened orris root.

Source: Boston.com

Source: Boston.com

Loretta opens on my skin with an explosion of grape juice that smells exactly like the American brand, Welch’s, in concentrated form. It’s as though a thousand kilos of Concord grape have been distilled down with about a gallon of sugar into a treacly syrup. There are lots of perfume explanations for the aroma, from the use of methyl anthranilate that occurs naturally in tuberose, to the amplifying effect of the dark fruits like plum. I’m sure the use of fruited patchouli had some indirect effect on the combination as well. Either way, I’m not a fan, and it doesn’t make me happy how prominent the grape juice accord is for a vast portion of the perfume’s lifespan.

Source: tastefood.info

Source: tastefood.info

In the immediate seconds after that unbelievably sweet burst of grapes, other notes are introduced. There are candied dark fruits, led by plum, and covered with more sugar, followed by coriander, some amorphous dark notes, and hints of cinnamon. A very hesitant orange blossom peeks her head through the curtains, along with touches of vetiver and sugared orris root, but all three remain on the sidelines for fear that they’ll be plowed down by the stampede of grape and crystallized dark fruits. Have I mentioned sugar yet? God, it seems to be seeping out from so many different corners! Take the orris root which is where one commonly gets the approximation of an iris smell. Here, on my skin, the note doesn’t smell so much of the flower, but of some sugared root. There is also a vague hint of some darkened, aged leather lurking about, but that too is sweetened. It’s simply too, too much for me.

Hovering all around is a wafting floral bouquet. It never feels like tuberose in the traditional sense, and it’s not like typical orange blossom or rose, either. In fact, it’s simply an abstract floral sweetness without much shape, delineation, or substance. It simply smells fruited and cloyingly sweet. (Have I discussed sugar, lately?)

Thirty minutes in, Loretta shifts a little. The leathery undertones temporarily become more prominent, along with amorphous, abstract woody notes and the blasted ISO E Super that Mr. Tauer loves so much. The latter isn’t overwhelming though, nor particularly strong, and it certainly isn’t medicinal in any way. Frankly, I think the reason why it doesn’t smell very noticeable is because not even that synthetic horror can compete with the saccharine grape juice and its bulldozer effect upon everything in its path.

While the perfume is getting a little darker on some levels, it’s also getting a little lighter on other ones. There is the subtle introduction of a powdery element that smells both vaguely floral in nature and slightly vanillic. Lurking underneath is a jarring hint of something that really resembles cooked celery to my nose. Perhaps it is the result of the combination of the vetiver with coriander, orris, and leather, but there is a definite vegetal quality in the base. Alongside it is a faintly sour nuance underlying the fragrance’s woodiness, but the latter is so vague, it’s hard to really analyze.

Source: LTphotographs Etsy store. (Website link embedded within photo.)

Source: LTphotographs Etsy store. (Website link embedded within photo.)

At the 90-minute mark, the notes blur, the perfume falls flat, and starts to feel thin. Loretta is still primarily a grape floral with dark fruits and increasingly soft spices, but the patchouli starts to feel more prominent. It doesn’t feel dark, dirty, and chewy like black patchouli, but it’s not wholly fruity and purple, either. Equally noticeable is the powder which is more sugared than anything akin to orris or makeup powder. In his blog entry about the making of Loretta, Mr. Tauer said he used benzyl acetate (a natural component of tuberose) to create a soft, sweet powdery note that lasts throughout the perfume’s development. He succeeded, because it does. Underneath all this are hints of something rooty, but they’re not distinguishable as either orris or vetiver. There are also whispers of darkened leather and vanilla flittering about, but they feel nebulous as well.

Source: theberry.com

Source: theberry.com

By the start of the 3rd hour, Loretta is an abstract, intangible, amorphous bouquet. The notes feel flat, muted, and vague. The fragrance itself hovers just an inch or two above the skin, though it is still very potent when sniffed up close. For the most part, Loretta is a candy, bubblegum floral, thanks to the overall combination of sweet powder, fruits, and flowers. It has little delineation or definition, and not a single bit of it feels like the woman in the tale with her dark side, her quiet eroticism, and her fantasies of seduction. To the extent that Loretta, the woman, had a “soft light and a natural, childlike shyness,” that part is covered, but the seductive, languidly fleshy, heady, opulent and erotic side of such indolic flowers as tuberose and orange blossom? There is not a whisper of it on my skin. I’m quite saddened, not only because of my love for both flowers, but because I know how much work went into the fragrance. Andy Tauer’s blog has a detailed perfume breakdown of what he did to the tuberose, and the other elements he used. All the “tuberose specials” that he talks about, along with the concentrated orange blossom absolute, somehow got lost in translation on my skin. I’m not alone in that, but we’ll get to other people’s experiences in a moment.

Juicy Fruit gumFor a long time, I was very confused as to why Fragrantica classified Loretta as a floral oriental, but things became clearer at the end of the fourth hour. Until that point, Loretta had gone from being a cloying, unbearably sweet, fruity scent with vague florals, to just plain, powdered Juicy Fruit with less sweetness and still vague florals. At the end of the fourth hour, however, Loretta veers sharply and abruptly into a whole new category when the amber rises to the surface. In less than an hour, it takes over completely. Loretta is now sweet powdered amber with a lingering trace of Juicy Fruit gum. There are hints of a jammy, patchouli-infused rose that pop up every now and then, but they’re fleeting and extremely muted. For the most part, Loretta is merely soft, hazy, sugar-powdered amber, and it remains that way until its dying moments when it is nothing more than powdered sweetness. All in all, it lasted Loretta lasted just shy of 11.5 hours on my skin. It had moderate sillage throughout most of its lifetime, though it was generally quite potent if you sniffed it up close for much of the first 7 hours.

I’m not the only person who found Loretta to be dominated by an incredibly sweet grape note and, to a lesser extent, sweet powder. The Scented Hound had the same reaction, and, like me, found the remaining notes to be hard to pull out from under the deluge. In his very diplomatic review, he wrote:

Loretta opens with candied tart sweetness.  It’s bright with just a tinge of sour.  Quickly it moves into grape soda.  Really???  Then quickly again, the grape soda is met with a light powder.  […] Thankfully, the grape soda is met with a bit of warmth that helps to anchor the sweetness.  The plum (which to me smells like grape soda) completely dominates and therefore makes it hard for me to pick out additional notes even though I know they’re there as the fragrance starts to even out.  Finally, Loretta settles down some to reveal a lightly sweetened patchouli woodiness tinged with a bit of what seems to be some coriander.  [¶]

Loretta confuses me.  I don’t hate her and I don’t love her and am struggling with when I would want to wear her. I keep reading about the tuberose in this, but that is completely escaping me.  Finally, besides grape soda, Loretta reminds me of what the penny candy aisle at the Ben Franklin store used to smell like.  Not for me, but I could see someone else digging this for its uniqueness.

On Fragrantica, there is more talk about the fragrance’s sweetness and oddness. To give just one example:

This smells to me as if I was carrying grape flavor Crush inside of a black leather pouch. It’s very weird and dissonant, like an orchestra tuning before a show.

I get a strong leather note, with a sweet plum and tuberose accord. Super strange perfume… it’s sweet, sweet, sweet, but in an airy kind of way that only orange blossom has. It’s also screechy and spicy. I’m reminded of extremely synthetic gummy candies and that’s fun. This is truly a scent for an original individual, I think, while being very sexy and confident. Who can pull this off!!?? It’s all over the place, colorful and confusing, but mesmerizing, like an acid trip. I keep on sniffing it and I get this highly enjoyable repulsion/attraction duality. I love that. 

Another trippy perfume that wears me instead of me wearing it… smells just like a purple gummy bear stuck to my black leather jacket. Fun times.

Others talk about how the fragrance smells of “spicy tutti-fruity” gum, sticky sweetness, a greasy oily nuance, or black rubber notes. One commentator finds that “the plum overtakes everything and with the other warm resinous notes it smells of decadence- overripe fruit right on the verge of rotting.” Well, I agree that Loretta has a tutti-fruitti gum note, but, for me, the scent is not “fun times” as stated in the quote above, and I can see why one reviewer finds it “unwearable.” Even apart from the fragrance’s nebulous haziness, I don’t want a weird “acid trip… repulsion/attraction duality” with “purple gummy bears” for $160 for a 1.7 oz bottle. I don’t mind very different, weird fragrances if they smell good, but a cloyingly sweet scent that makes me feel I just got three cavities is not my cup of tea at any price.   

Source: weheartit.com

Source: weheartit.com

My personal tastes notwithstanding, Loretta is not a bad fragrance, and I think it would be well suited for a young woman who is looking for something different, quirky, and playful. It’s definitely original and unconventional enough to venture into the “fun” category. In fact, I can see CosPlayers dressed up as Japanese anime characters enjoying the scent, or, perhaps, Lolita types. Whether they’d want to pay $160 for the experience, I have no idea. People who love extremely sweet fruity-florals, powdery sugar scents, or Welch’s grape juice may also want to give Loretta a sniff. For everyone else, especially men, I wouldn’t recommend Loretta.

DETAILS:
Cost & Availability: Loretta is an eau de parfum that comes in a 50 ml/1.7 oz bottle that costs $160 or €135, and which comes with a DVD and movie poster. Loretta also comes in a small 7 ml travel spray that costs $40. In the U.S.: you can buy Loretta from Luckyscent or Portland’s The Perfume House. However, neither Loretta nor Tableau de Parfums as a whole is listed on The Perfume House’s website. Outside the U.S.: In Europe, you can find Loretta at Germany’s First in Fragrance which sells the perfume for €135.00 and the travel size for €39. It too carries samples. In the UK, Scent & Sensibility carries Tableau de Parfums, and sells Loretta for £110.00. In Italy, you can find the fragrance at Milan’s Profumi Import, but I’m not clear about price or if they have an e-store. Tableau de Parfums fragrances are also sold at a handful of other locations in Europe, from Marie-Antoinette in Paris, to Switzerland and Lithuania. You can find that information on the company’s websiteSamples: I obtained my sample from The Perfumed Court, but I no longer see the fragrance listed on the website. The only available option is a Loretta Soap. Loretta is not sold at Surrender to Chance, so your best bet seems to be Luckyscent which sells samples for $4.