Tableau de Parfums/Andy Tauer Ingrid: Antique Florals

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Kafkaesque

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.)

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 website. Samples: 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.

Serge Lutens La Vierge de Fer

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Kafkaesque

Joan of Arc. Source: cosmovisions.com

It’s hard to live up to a powerful name. Even harder when that name is something that seems to reference both Joan of Arc, and perhaps the most notorious of all medieval torture devices, the Iron Maiden. So, I put all titular and symbolic considerations aside when I tested the latest fragrance from Serge Lutens, La Vierge de Fer, and looked at it in a vacuum. With deep regret and sadness, I have to say that I think it is the worst perfume that I’ve ever tried from Serge Lutens, and more suited to a cheap department store.

La Vierge de Fer is a floral eau de parfum whose name translates to “The Iron Maiden” (or virgin). It was created by Christopher Sheldrake, and released in September of this year as one of the famous, pricey, bell jar “Paris Exclusives.” The perfume is not sold world-wide, but is limited to Serge Lutens’ Paris headquarters, the Lutens websites, or to the Lutens section of Barney’s New York.

The inspiration for the fragrance seems to vary depending on which source you read. Some say that La Vierge de Fer was inspired by Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, others talk about Joan of Arc, or the medieval torture device called the Iron Maiden. A few mention Serge Lutens’ mother and how the fragrance is partially an homage to her. (You can read about Serge Lutens’ childhood, and how his mother was forced to abandon him as a baby in the first part of my profile on Monsieur Lutens.)

An Iron Maiden. Source: museumofman.org

In an interview with Ozmoz, Monsieur Lutens seemed to give a nod to a few of these things:

The name you picked, La vierge de fer (The Iron Maiden), is pretty intense. There’s a reference to torture. Is there perhaps a connection to Joan of Arc, too?

SL: All maidens have a connection between them. Joan of Arc kicking the English out of France is one of the loves of my life. Whether she’s wearing armor or crowning the King of France, she’s a reference, absolutely, but not here. The Iron Maiden is more of an attitude. My own attitude towards what creates beauty. You can’t conceive of anything without a certain fragility, a scar at the bottom of it all. Opening that scar to make it universal is the basic principle of Art. An iron maiden used to be an instrument of torture. And if the term ‘to create’ means anything, it means that whoever does it is tortured and sacrificed on the alter of something.

La Vierge de Fer bell jar.

On his website, Serge Lutens doesn’t add any clarification, writing and describing the perfume rather cryptically:

The religion of iron needed a Virgin, and the Virgin, a lily.

“Have you smelt it?”
“Yes, I have.”
“And how is it?”
“As striking as the fleur-de-lis seal on the arm of a criminal.”
“Never?!”
“And deep down, as itchy as a hair shirt on the skin. In fact, a sublime torture!”.

As always, Serge Lutens keeps the perfume’s notes secret. Surrender to Chance says they are:

Lily, jasmine, amber, vanilla and sandalwood.

The notes I detect are slightly different:

Lily, aldehydes, muguet (or lily of the valley), jasmine, generic amber, white musk, vanilla.

Calla lilies. Source: cosmovisions.com

La Vierge de Fer opens on my skin with notes that are, indeed, as itchy as a hair shirt, though the torture is far from “sublime,” in my opinion. There is a heavy layer of soapy aldehydes that have a lemony undertone. They are followed by lilies that don’t smell like indolic Stargarzers so much as the fresher Calla lily shown in the photo. I also detect a subtle, green whiff of dainty, dewy lily-of-the-valley which I’ll just call by its French name, muguet, in order to avoid any confusion. The whole thing smells as fresh as Dior’s legendary Diorissimo, which would be fine and dandy were it not for the white synthetics.

Bounce dryer sheets.

The green-white floral bouquet is infused with a sharp white musk that sends a piercing pain through my eye every time I smell La Vierge de Fer up close. It starts off resembling expensive hair spray, which is bad enough without its fast transition into the most potent of laundryesque dryer sheets. It is astoundingly bad, astoundingly cheap, and just plain astounding — period — from a house like Serge Lutens. One reason why I like his perfumes is because they generally (with some exceptions) eschew very heavy amounts of synthetics, and, even then, it’s rarely the cheapest form around: common white musk. I don’t go to Serge Lutens for a fragrance that smells like any white florals found in Sephora or Macy’s. I don’t pay his prices for what a celebrity might put out for $30, and I most certainly do not expect such a scent in one of the uber-expensive bell jars whose price has just gone up in the U.S. to $310. The depths of my disappointment and disbelief knows no bounds.

Source: wallpaper.metalship.org

As I struggle to stop wincing at the shooting pains in my head from the Bounce fabric softener sheets, I notice the odd contrasts emerging in La Vierge de Fer. The fragrance runs hot and cold, metallic and gourmand, in a mix that is both discordant and perplexing. The top notes are soapy aldehydes, piercing white musk, and fresh, green-white lilies, but there is a metallic clang surrounding them that goes beyond mere coldness. It’s as though there were a vein of chilled silver running through the notes, no doubt due to the bloody white musk and the aldehydes. The latter quickly lose their lemony overtones, and turn into pure soap with a tinge of waxiness.

Vanilla powder. Source: food.ninemsn.com.au

Appearing underneath the cool, white bouquet are sudden flashes of something warm, dusty, and sweet. At times, it feels like richly custardy, sweet vanilla. Other times, it’s like dusty, dark, vanilla extrait in unrefined, unprocessed powder. The rich sweetness in the base acts like a wave hitting the green-white floral shores before pulling back, then returning once more. It’s almost like a sort of relay race between the sweet gourmand notes and the alternating cool, metallic, clangy element, the soapy aldehydes, and that piercingly sharp, laundryesque, white musk. It’s rather brilliant on an intellectual, theoretical level, but somewhat disorienting and perplexing on a purely olfactory one.

I’m not happy. I have not been happy on any of the occasions when I’ve tested La Vierge de Fer. Lily is perhaps my favorite floral note, and white floral bombs are the one kind of floral scent that I gravitate towards, but I can’t decide which part of La Vierge de Fer I find more off-putting. So, it’s probably a small mercy then that the perfume has such incredibly weak projection. Within minutes, it feels as though it were evaporating off my skin. Well, everything except that revolting white musk. In less than 10 minutes, in fact, La Vierge de Fer is a complete skin scent on me, which is pretty astonishing. I have problems with longevity, not sillage, but 10 minutes? For an eau de parfum?!

Lily of the Valley, or Muguet.

La Vierge de Fer also suffers from the cardinal sin of being utterly boring. I have nothing against soliflores — perfumes celebrating and revolving around one main note — if they are interesting or well-done. For me, however, La Vierge de Fer is tedious and banal. Exactly 20 minutes into its development, the perfume loses that odd metallic clang and coldness, and the relay race with the vanilla ends. I wasn’t keen on it, but at least it was interesting, and I could see how the metal might be a symbolic representation of either Joan of Arc’s armour, or the steel spokes of the Iron Maiden as it pierced flesh warm from vanilla and white from lilies. Once that extremely clever bit of elegiac sophistication vanishes, you are left with nothing more than lilies infused with soapy aldehydes and horrific commercial musk. Even the more green muguet note vanishes, if it was even there at all. It’s hard to tell under all the synthetics, especially given how wispy the fragrance is on my skin.

Source: hdwallpapers.fr

It takes about 75-minutes for La Vierge de Fer to change, though it’s minor at best. At first, there is a subtle, nebulous change in the perfume’s temperature and feel, as though there were a growing warmth in the base. It’s not vanilla, and it’s most definitely nothing that is actually ambered, but La Vierge de Fer seems less crisp and fresh. The jasmine starts to come out, slowly vying with the lily for dominance, and turning the fragrance sweeter. Eventually, by the end of the 2nd hour, La Vierge de Fer begins to shed some of its laundryesque sharpness like an unpleasant snake’s skin, though the jasmine can’t erase all of it. The perfume is now jasmine and lily on an abstract, sweet, warm base that is infused with Bounce dryer sheets. By the end of the 3rd hour, La Vierge de Fer is nothing more than a blur of whiteness (and synthetics) that feels as though it’s about to die entirely.

To my surprise, La Vierge de Fer hangs on tenaciously, chugging away in the most translucent smear on my skin. It still gives me an immediate pain in my head every time I smell it up close, but the perfume is definitely there if you put your nose right on your arm and inhale forcefully. What is surprising is an odd, unexpected fruitiness that suddenly pops up alongside the clean, white musk in the base. To the extent that I can make out anything from La Vierge de Fer’s thinness, it almost smells like dark grapes. It has to be the indoles so prevalent in white flowers like jasmine; indoles can be broken down to something called methyl anthranilate, a natural compound which has a fruity aroma, often like that of Concord grapes (among other things). Whatever the reason for the sudden fruitiness, it is a fleeting thing that shows up on in the tiniest of ways and towards the end on my skin around the middle of the 5th hour.

Source: backdropsforyourlife.wordpress.com

The perfume dies shortly thereafter, giving its last gasp just a little over 7 hours from the time I first applied it. In its final moments, it was nothing more than cheap, synthetic white “cleanness.” The 7 hours comes from an average quantity of about 3 smears, or about 2 sprays. At a smaller dosage amounting to one good-sized spray, La Vierge de Fer lasted only 5.75 hours on my skin. Were it not for piercing musk, which my skin clings onto like glue, I suspect the whole thing would have died after three hours, no matter how much I applied.

If I were to be diplomatic about the reactions to La Vierge de Fer that I’ve observed in groups or on various sites, I would say that they are mixed. Some eventually grow to appreciate the perfume as was the case for Bois de Jasmin, who wrote, in part:

La Vierge de Fer is neither punk nor bizarre. It’s not particularly dark either. I would put it as one of the more approachable and easy to like florals from Lutens’s impressive collection. It’s quite demure and delicate next to the bombshells like Tubéreuse Criminelle or Fleurs d’Oranger. The tender sweetness of jasmine is contrasted with the champagne of aldehydes in the top notes, and this beautiful contrast between softness and sparkle is carried on into the drydown. […][¶]

Jasmine and lily fireworks notwithstanding, La Vierge de Fer was not love at first inhale for me. I found it too simple and not challenging enough. But as I continued to dip into my sample, I found it more and more compelling. It’s simultaneously comforting and sophisticated, which makes it versatile enough to wear for just about any occasion. You simply have to love being showered with white flowers.

Well, I do happen to “love being showered with white flowers,” but I personally wouldn’t wear La Vierge de Fer if it were given to me for free. And no amount of time or testing is going to change my feelings.

In my opinion, La Vierge de Fer could go right next to the sort of clean, fresh, white, Spring-like floral scents found in Dillard’s, TJ Maxx, or Sephora. There’s nothing wrong with that if that is your taste, but I doubt anyone would want to pay $310 for it. One spends that sort of money on a Serge Lutens bell jar to get a wholly unusual, creative, innovative scent with a twist — a scent that has a complex, morphing character that is different from everything else out there, and that doesn’t come with a massive wallop of cheap synthetics. I realise that Serge Lutens has veered as of late towards lighter, thinner, simpler fragrances, and away from the complex (often Oriental) perfumes with which he began his line in the early 1990s, but I think La Vierge de Fer suffers from more than mere simplicity. I find it tedious and absolutely terrible. In almost every case with Serge Lutens — even when a particular fragrance doesn’t suit my personal tastes — I can admire the artistry, think it is well-done, and respect it. That is not the case here. I don’t think La Vierge de Fer even deserves to carry the Serge Lutens name.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: La Vierge de Fer is an eau de parfum that is part of the Serge Lutens “Paris Exclusives” line, which means it is available only in the larger 2.5 oz/75 ml Bell Jar size. It retails for $310 or €140 for a 75 ml/2.5 oz bottle. You can buy it directly from the U.S. Serge Lutens website or from the International one.

In the U.S.: La Vierge de Fer should be available exclusively at Barney’s New York store, but for some reason, the fragrance is not on the website at the time of this review. Normally, you can call the store to purchase their Lutens bell jars. The number is (212) 833-2425.

Samples: You can order samples of La Vierge de Fer from Surrender to Chance starting at $3.99 for a 1/2 ml vial. The fragrance is also available as part of a Five Piece Non-Export Sampler Set, where you can choose 5 Lutens Paris Exclusives for a starting price of $18.99 for a 1/2 ml vial.

Phaedon Tabac Rouge, Rouge Avignon & Pure Azure

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Kafkaesque

Pierre Guillaume. Source: Fragrantica

While in Paris, I had the chance to sniff fragrances from Phaedon, the Paris niche perfume house founded in 2011 by Pierre Guillaume (who also owns Parfumerie Generale and is behind Huitieme Art). The line previously had seven eau de toilettes, but, this summer, Mr. Guillaume launched seven more fragrances that are all “High Concentration Eaux de Parfums.” The new creations were all made by Pierre Guillaume in collaboration with various perfumers.

I obtained samples of three of the fragrances, thanks to the kindness of the Paris niche boutique, Sens Unique, a fantastic store which I will rave about in another post one day. The perfumes in question are: Tabac Rouge (Turkish Blend), Rouge Avignon, and Pure Azure. For reasons that will soon become clear, I’ve decided not to follow my usual course of doing a lengthy, comprehensive review for each fragrance individually. Instead, I’ll merely provide a brief synopsis and my impressions for all three perfumes in a single post.

TABAC ROUGE:

Tabac Rouge. Source: Fragrantica

Phaedon describes Tabac Rouge (Turkish Blend) as follows:

Turkish Blend is a quintessentially Art Deco composition. Turkish tobacco absolute and incense make up the core accord, spare, dry and perfectly balanced. As in Tamara de Lempicka’s paintings, the “color” palette is pared-down and vibrant: ginger, cinnamon and a lick of honey. In the base notes, musks, bolstered by warm, powdery Siam benzoin, blend the scent with your skin. Androgynous, stylized and luxurious.

Fragrantica‘s list of notes, oddly enough, excludes the main ingredients in the scent which are Turkish tobacco absolute and incense. Adding those in, Tabac Rouge’s ingredients would include:

Turkish tobacco absolute, incense, ginger, cinnamon, honey, musk, powdery notes and benzoin.

Source: Basenotes

Tabac Rouge is, in a nutshell, a simpler, slightly less forceful, lighter version of Tom Ford‘s Tobacco Vanille. The major differences to me are that the Phaedon version is fractionally less sweet than its cousin, lacks a fruited base, has weaker sillage, less density, and doesn’t quite take on the Yankee Candle Plum Pudding undertone of Tobacco Vanille.

Like Tobacco Vanille, Tabac Rouge starts with a strong blast of honeyed tobacco that is infused with incense and vanilla, and dusted with spices in a potent blend that eventually turns softer, airier, more powdered, and more vanillic in nature. The differences that exist are largely minute, and one of degree. As noted above, Tabac Rouge lacks a plum pudding undertone, but it also feels much more honeyed to me. In fact, the honey was much more pronounced on my skin than the vanilla which seemed less significant than in Tobacco Vanille. A much bigger difference is that Tabac Rouge feels much softer and lighter than the Tom Ford fragrance. It doesn’t have the latter’s dense, thick chewiness, but it does have its longevity.

In essence, it’s very sweet, it’s pretty, and it’s a much better deal than the Tom Ford fragrance at $160 for 100 ml, instead of $210 for a mere 50 ml. Nonetheless, it’s obviously treading water that’s been explored before, which is why I agree, to some extent, with Mark Behnke of CaFleureBon whose entire summation of Tabac Rouge amounted merely to this:

Tabac Rouge, travels a well-worn path of combining tobacco and incense. It is fine but it didn’t ever rise to a level of something I would be reaching for when I am in the mood for tobacco and incense. If you like these notes and want a lighter simpler take on them Tabac Rouge could fill the bill.

I like Tabac Rouge more than he did, but I too would get my incense and tobacco fix elsewhere.

ROUGE AVIGNON:

Rouge Avignon. Source: Fragrantica

Phaedon describes Rouge Avignon as follows:

A Gothic composition, as opulent and dark as the shadow of the Papal Palace looming over nations and centuries… The carmine red of the papal stole is conjured with a fleshy, spicy rose facetted by ylang-ylang and raspberry. In the heart notes, waxed woods, cocoa bean, black truffle and earthy smoky vetiver lure us into the private apartments of the Supreme Pontiff. Gilt moldings and religious ornaments glint in the firelight while gray tendrils of smoke rise from a censer burning sandalwood chips mixed with musk and amber.

The succinct list of notes is:

raspberry, ylang-ylang, rose, cacao pod, hinoki wood, tuber [black truffle], vetiver, sandalwood, musk and amber.

Rouge Avignon opens on my skin with a bouquet of honeyed sweetness and delicate florals that soon turn into a fleshy, fruited, purple rose. A strong heaping of sharp, almost clean musk ensues, and deep down in the depths, there is a very noticeable dose of cocoa powder. The latter is soon overwhelmed by the syrupy, jammy rose, and doesn’t really appear again until a few hours later. I honestly don’t smell raspberry as the fruit, per se, in its own right but, instead, an amorphous, almost berry-like fruitiness.

Source: nature.desktopnexus.com –

Something about the overall combination and my skin chemistry has produced instead an accord very similar to a patchouli rose. It’s a profusion of abstract dark berries and syrupy sweetness, much like the purple patchouli I loathe so much. In fact, I’m reminded of Frederic Malle‘s Portrait of a Lady, only Rouge Avignon has a greater degree of musk that feels a little synthetic, along with extremely muted, minor hints of something dark in the base. I’m not the greatest fan of fruited, syrupy, patchouli-like roses, and I don’t like Portrait of a Lady, so I confess that I’m equally underwhelmed here.

I was surprised to see that Mark Behnke of CaFleureBon also struggled with the forceful combination. On him, the fruited element definitely seemed like raspberry in its own right, as opposed to some amorphously red-purple fruit syrup, but he still wasn’t fond of the overall effect:

I really enjoyed the foodie heart of Rouge Avignon but I must confess the strength of the rose and raspberry in the top notes took some getting used to. I think I will revisit this in the chill of the fall.

By the standards of CaFleureBon with their positive, laudatory take on everything, that simple confession speaks volumes. As for the issue of seasons, it’s almost December here, and I’d like Mr. Behnke to know that Rouge Avignon is still a painfully sweet, berried rose from start to finish.

There are only a few minor changes in the fragrance’s primary backbone and theme. After a few hours, a subtle touch of sweetened powder emerges, as does a slightly earthy, murky, brown funk with a faint undertone of cocoa. On my skin, it’s never the “foodie heart” that Mr. Behnke talks about, at least not in any dominant or substantial way. Still, there is some minor darkness deep down in the base, and that turns Rouge Avignon from a scent that begins as Portrait of a Lady into something closer to Tom Ford‘s Noir de Noir. Rouge Avignon is lighter, airier, thinner, and more synthetic in feel than both those fragrances, and it also lacks Noir de Noir’s powdered violet nuance, but the similarities struck me repeatedly nonetheless.

At the end of the day, I simply don’t find the sum-total of Rouge Avignon to be all that interesting. Actually, I grew to hate it quite intensely. The rose is painfully, almost torturously sweet for my tastes, and the perfume feels wholly unoriginal. The list of notes is fantastic, but the reality on my skin is primarily of a very fruited rose with sharp, very synthetic musk, and only a modicum of a dark, earthy heart. However, if you’re looking for something in the general vein or family of Portrait of a Lady, but much lighter and airier, then you should consider Rouge Avignon. It is a much better bargain at $160 (or €120) for a large 100 ml bottle, than Portrait of a Lady which costs $340 for that same sized bottle. The same goes for Noir de Noir which Tom Ford sells for $210 for 50 ml. Rouge Avignon has moderate sillage, turns into a skin scent after four hours, but has good longevity.

PURE AZURE:

Pure Azure. Source: CaFleureBon

The description and advert for Pure Azure are meant to transport you to Mykonos in summer:

This giddy balancing act of a scent carries us high above the cliffs of the Aegean Sea, where azure skies contrast with the blinding whiteness of fishermen’s villages… The fragrance of fig trees and orange blossom, the warmth of vanilla and spices, the sensuousness of jasmine rise from the shores of the Mediterranean. In the base notes, the mouth-watering warmth of tonka bean is brought out by a delicately salty note. A “Mediterranean Oriental” hovering between the radiant and the animal….

The succinct list of notes is:

fig, orange blossom, vanilla, spicy notes, jasmine, tonka bean and salt.

Orange Blossom. Photo: GardenPictures via Zuoda.net

Pure Azure opens with an explosion of whiteness that is both clean and verging on the florid. There is orange blossom, tinged with hints of a more bitter, woody, spicy neroli, and then a big burst of saltiness that is truly wonderful. It’s a visual landscape of white with orange blossoms that are languid, sweet, indolic, utterly lush, and, yet, also fresh. There is spiciness and a definite sense of greenness underlying those orange blossoms, but it is the initial sprinkling of saltiness that really captured my interest.

Unripe Figs via Giverecipe.com. (For recipe on Unripe Fig Jam, click on photo. Link embedded within.)

Unfortunately, it soon fades, but it is replaced by an interesting fig note. Like the orange blossoms, the fruit is simultaneously sweet, fresh, and green. There is none of the leathery darkness that figs can sometimes take on. Instead, there is an almost milky quality that evokes a slightly unripe fruit in late Spring, before the summer heat has turned it fleshy, dark, and gooey. Deep down in Pure Azure’s base, there are touches of vanilla, but it’s never custardy, heavy, or rich.

Pure Azure has a beautiful medley of notes, but what is initially so great about it is the paradoxical mix of freshness and lushness. The orange blossoms have hints of lush, heavy, indolic ripeness, but not quite. It’s as though the sweet flowers are almost green, with a dewy, light feel that truly feels fresh.

The scent is crisp (though not like a cologne), feels very summery, and most definitely meets Phaedon’s goal of recreating the Mediterranean coast. (I actually saw Capri more than an Aegean island, but let’s not quibble about lovely places where fresh flowers bloom in the warm, salty air.) The best way I can describe Pure Azure’s feel in my mind is to refer to a crisp white shirt worn against a man’s tanned skin (à la Kilian Hennessey), instead of the more common or traditional visual associated with indolic white flowers, namely, languid courtesans reclining with ripe, white flesh and heaving bosoms.

On the negative side, however, Pure Azure’s opening has an undertone of soapiness, as well as an increasingly strong blast of white, clean musk that, unfortunately, feels very synthetic. Both elements help underscore the fresh crispness of Pure Azure’s opening, but I would have been happier without the splitting headache that the musk gave me for a few hours. Despite that, I generally liked Pure Azure’s opening stage because of the green touch to the flowers and fruit.

Agave. Source: Self.com

The freshness doesn’t last long. About 75 minutes in, Pure Azure turns into a simple, honeyed floral, as the jasmine emerges and the white musk recedes to lurk underneath. The jasmine soon becomes fully integrated into the orange blossoms, and both are completely drenched in sweetness. The honey is not heavy syrup, however, but more like agave nectar which is both sweeter and lighter. Despite the lack of density, it’s very potent, transforming even that clean, laundry, white musk into something warmer.

Pure Azure soon turns rather abstract, feeling like a soft cloud of blowsy, ripe, white florals, with heavy honey, a dollop of musk, and the faintest smidgen of salt. It’s like a floral cousin to Mona di Orio‘s Eau Absolute, only lighter, airier, and without citric elements. In its final moments on my skin, Pure Azure is a nebulous smear of honeyed sweetness with just a vague hint of something floral behind it. I like honey, which my skin tends to amplify, but I have to admit, I was taken aback by how quickly and by how much it dominated Pure Azure. I know it’s probably my skin’s fault, but it was all too much for me by the end. Too linear, too simple, too boring.

Source: picsfab.com

At this point, I have to bring up Mark Behnke’s review again, because Pure Azure is where we part ways a little. He loved it, finding it his favorite of the new Phaedon line. I’m less enamoured. His review reads as follows:

My favorite of the new collection was a surprise to me as with a name like Pure Azure I was expecting a variation on an aquatic theme. Instead I was treated to a fantastic summer floral which appealed to me on many levels. Fig and orange blossom open Pure Azure on a bright accord. Vanilla and jasmine turn things sweeter and deeper. Tonka and a bit of a marine accord cut the sweet without making it go away. For almost the entire time I wore Pure Azure I was in the midst of a grove of fig trees, orange trees and jasmine swirling in and out of each other. I ended up wearing this on a day the thermometer hit 100 and it was perfect for that kind of heat. It wasn’t cloying or too much it was just right.

Pure Azure was significantly less interesting on my skin than on his, but I can see why he liked it so much. I smelled pretty much all of them at Sens Unique, and Pure Azure captured my interest the most at first sniff. Nonetheless, my feelings are highly qualified because I struggle with the potency of the clean, fresh synthetics, as well as with the way Pure Azure veers so sharply to the other extreme of warm, almost indolic sweetness. I also wish Pure Azure had a more complex evolution than mere honeyed florals in its later stage.

ALL IN ALL:

My problem with the new Phaedon line isn’t that many of them seem derivative, but, rather, with their extreme sweetness. Pierre Guillaume is a chap known for having a very gourmand touch with his Parfumerie Generale fragrances, and the Phaedon line doesn’t seem to be an exception. It’s simply too, too much for my personal tastes.

I also struggled with the synthetic feel to some of his fragrances. During one test for Rouge Avignon, I became completely exhausted by the deluge of syrup and roses, and tried to scrub it off. “Tried” should be the operative word here. It took me over an hour to get most of it off my skin, using everything from rubbing alcohol (3 times), nail varnish remover (2 times), soap, dishwashing liquid (2 times), and Tide laundry detergent (2 times). Even after all that, I still could smell lingering traces of that damn fruited rose on parts of my arm later that evening. Only something with definite synthetics in the base will be that impervious to cleaning agents. (As a side note, a few of the fragrances I sniffed at the store had ISO E Super, an aromachemical that Pierre Guillaume loves to use in his Parfumerie Generale line.)

The synthetics may also help explain why the line has such good longevity on my perfume-consuming skin. The Phaedon fragrances consistently lasted over 11 hours, with some tests almost approaching 13 hours, depending on quantity. The sillage was potent at first, and the fragrances very forceful, but they are all uniformly airy in feel, lack density, and turn into something that is generally quite soft. On average, it took between 4 and 4.5 hours for them to become skin scents, though they were usually easy to detect up close.

Judging by what I’ve sniffed as a whole and tested in specific, I think the Phaedon line is generally pleasant, and good value for those who want a more affordable, lighter, softer cousin to some existing fragrances on the market. They’re not my personal cup of tea, but I can see the appeal.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Tabac Rouge, Rouge Avignon and Pure Azure are all eau de parfums that comes in a 3.3 oz/100 ml size and which costs $160, €120, or £95. In the U.S.: you can purchase Tabac Rouge, Rouge Avignon and Pure Azure from Luckyscent, though the first two are currently sold out and can be back-ordered for December delivery. Pure Azure is in stock. Samples of all the fragrances are generally available for purchase. Elsewhere, the Phaedon line is at NY’s Osswald Parfumerie, which also offers a US-only sample program for telephone orders. 10 samples for $10 with free domestic shipping. Outside the U.S.: You can buy all three perfumes directly from Phaedon, which also offers samples of all 14 of its fragrances (7 EDP, and 7 EDT) in a Discovery Set which costs €40 for 14 x 1.5 spray vials. The set is sold out at the time of this review. I should add that Phaedon doesn’t provide any information as to the countries they ship to, and if they limit things just to the EU. In the UK, you can buy Phaedon from London’s Bloom Parfumery which sells each Eau de Parfum for £95, along with samples. In Paris, Tabac Rouge, Phaedon and all Pierre Guillaume’s other brands are carried at Sens Unique in the Marais district. They don’t have an e-Store, but they have teamed up with DesFragrances for online orders. In Switzerland, I found Phaedon at Osswald Zurich; in Russia, I found the line at Lenoma and Lesse Parfum; in Poland at Galilu; and in Italy at Profumeria Gini. For the full list of retailers carrying the Phaedon line, you can turn to the company’s Stockist page. Samples: many of the sites linked above offer samples for purchase. I obtained mine from Sens Unique in Paris. For American readers, Surrender to Chance does not carry any of the new Phaedon Eau de Parfums at this time, so your best bet is Luckyscent.

Serge Lutens Fourreau Noir: Dark, Delectable Magic

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Kafkaesque

Only he could do it. Only Serge Lutens could make a fragrance that a lavender-phobe would not only love, but buy. And not just buy a regular bottle of it, but buy a bloody expensive, exclusive bell jar! Only a true master could make a fragrance that is essentially everything that I dislike in a fragrance, and bring me to my knees.

Photo: my own.

It’s as though Uncle Serge decided to make me eat my hat by checking off every box that would normally make me wince — lavender, gourmand, sweet, sheer, discreet, and even sometimes vanishing, no less — intentionally combine them all into a single scent, and make the final result be something utterly beyond my ability to resist. It’s actually amusing at this point — and I say that as one who needs to take frequent breaks in typing to sniff the air around me with the glazed eyes of an addict. Only Le Grand Serge and Christopher Sheldrake could manage that.

Photo: my own.

Fourreau Noir is an Oriental eau de parfum that was created by Christopher Sheldrake, and released in 2009. As noted above, it is one of the famous bell jar “Paris Exclusives,” which means that it not sold world-wide, but is generally exclusive to Serge Lutens’ Paris headquarters. That said, it can actually be purchased outside of France, either from Barney’s New York or directly from Serge Lutens’ international and U.S. websites, though it’s always at a big mark-up if you are buying outside of France.

Uncle Serge describes the scent and the meaning of its name as follows:

A fourreau in French means a sheath for a dagger as well as a form-fitting dress… ready to embrace the voluptuous contours of a widow’s body.

Maybe you’ve heard of the brown bean used to extract vanillin? Its name is the tonka bean. It grows in abundance on a tree in the Amazonian rain forest. Sweet and fluid, its fragrance lingers, living its mark.

Photo: my own.

As always, Serge Lutens keeps the perfume’s notes secret. Fragrantica says they are:

Lavender, tonka, musk, almonds, smokey accords

Based on what I smell, however, I think the list would be longer. My guess is:

Lavender, Incense, Patchouli, Almonds, Tonka Bean, Vanilla, Cedarwood, and Musk. There may be some ambery element as well.

Photo: my own.

Fourreau Noir opens on my skin with lavender. Have I mentioned lately just how much I loathe lavender? It is a note that I struggle with deeply, due to childhood experiences living in Cannes, in the South of France, where dried herbal sachets of the blasted stuff were ubiquitous. Their sharp, pungent, aggressively herbal aroma was everywhere, and it didn’t help matters that the driveway to our house had lavender growing as if it were on steroids. I had a sensitive nose even back then, and the aromatic deluge left a mark, making me avoid lavender as an adult whenever and wherever possible. As you might have gathered by now, this is the first of what will be several examples of Serge Lutens making me eat my hat because, yes, Fourreau Noir opens with lavender. And lots of it. En plus, it’s pungent, herbal, and dried — everything that would normally send a bone-deep shiver through my body.

Source: background-pictures.feedio.net

Those magicians, Messieurs Lutens and Sheldrake, quickly coat and cloak the lavender with the black sheath talked about in Fourreau Noir’s description. Like loving tentacles, incense wraps itself around those blasted purple stalks, lovingly turning them dark and smoky. Within moments, my hated, floral, herbal nemesis is also infused with sweetness from a lightly spiced, chewy, slightly earthy patchouli. It, too, is a bit smoked, and the dark sheath is even further supplemented by what smells to me like dry, also smoky cedar wood.

Source: amyglaze.com

There is something a little synthetic about all the sharpness, something biting that almost burns my nose, but it is soon countered by a wave of warm sweetness. Like a pale, white counterpart to the the black incense tendrils, creamy vanilla and tonka bean seep through. They curl their way around the sharp notes, fractionally dulling their razor’s edge. The sweetness is gauzy but strong, light but potent, and always feels like the very frothiest mousse. Subtle hints of a bitter fresh almond soon follow, along with an intangible woodiness that differs a little from the smoky, dry cedar.

Five minutes in, the patchouli starts to slowly become more prominent, feeling wonderfully red-brown with its spicy, sweet, earthy facets. It’s potent, but never dense, chewy, or opaque in feel. It is true patchouli, even down to the very fleeting, momentary and faint hint of something medicinal in its character. It is a touch which underscores the more herbal aspects of the lavender. Yet, despite that, the flower is never completely like the aggressively pungent, aggressively herbal, dried, acrid note that is the stuff of my nightmares. Thanks to the impact of the other notes, especially the patchouli and incense, the lavender has been transformed into something different. It is now simultaneously incense-y, a little floral, and a little darkly leathered, herbal, and sweet.

Source: layoutsparks.com

Fourreau Noir encompasses you like a cloud that is at once almost translucent and as tough as steel. I’ve worn differing amounts, but most recently tried 3 decent-sized sprays, and Fourreau Noir’s opening spread its tentacles about 4-5 inches around me. It is potent and intense, yet oddly feels as insubstantial and thin as the smoke it contains. It’s like being covered in a swirl of incense and lavender, tendrils that weave about you as thin as an invisible thread, but with enormous tenacity. I’m amazed by how sheer it is, and by the mental images of translucency. Take that as Exhibit No. Two of Serge Lutens making me eat my hat, as perfumes with a gauzy, almost invisible sheerness are far from my personal cup of tea.

Source: footage.shutterstock.com

What’s even more baffling about the odd case of Fourreau Noir is that it actually feels as though it disappears from my skin from time to time. On past occasions, there were times when fragrance felt as though it had evaporated after about 90 minutes, and it wasn’t always easy to detect. Yet, it still lingered all around me, an undeniable cloud of incense, patchouli, and lavender. It would follow me like a lap-dog, leaving a small trail in the air. At other times, however, I couldn’t detect any projection at all, but Fourreau Noir was clearly pulsating and evident on my skin. Occasionally, it seemed to slip away like a ghost, only to reappear, almost stronger than it had been before, just as I was about to apply more. Fourreau Noir is a perplexing creature with a mind of its own, flitting about, encapsulating you, weaving some mysterious spell around you that makes you ignore all your usual issues or concerns as you smell that entrancing mixture of sharp contrasts. Dry, smoky, sweet, earthy, herbal, and woody — it’s all there, all around you, potent and dark, and yet, as insubstantial as a ghost. How can I love it so?!

Exhibit Three of Le Grand Serge making me tolerate what I normally dislike is the synthetic feel underlying Fourreau Noir’s opening hour. It is most definitely there, and I can’t stand fragrances whose unnatural sharpness almost burns my nose if I smell my arm up close. It’s not only that a few of the notes like the lavender or the incense feel like a razor at times, but something genuinely synthetic in the base. I can’t pinpoint what it may be, though I suspect it’s the musk, combined with notes that are inherently a bit sharp in nature. And, yet, I don’t mind it. Even though it lingers high in my nose and burns a little, Fourreau Noir is simply too beautiful a combination for me to really care. Yes, Uncle Serge, I will have another piece of that humble pie.

Source: dreamstime.com

The fragrance continues to subtly shift. Twenty minute in, the patchouli becomes increasingly prominent, while the almond and vanilla foam in the base start their slow rise to the surface. As the supporting actors begin to arrive on stage, they counterbalance the lavender’s herbal, almost leathery undertone, the fierceness of the incense, and the dryness of the cedar. The vanilla tames the beastly lavender and smoke, while the almond’s bitter facets add a fascinating contrast to the earthiness of the lightly spiced patchouli.

Source: A Spicy Perspective. (For recipe for lavender chocolate ice cream, click on photo. Website link embedded within.)

At the end of the first hour, Fourreau Noir turns much sweeter, and borders almost on the gourmand. The lavender is now creamy, rich, and feels like lavender ice cream infused with almond extract. Yet, the perfume isn’t really a true dessert-y fragrance, thanks to the constant presence of the dry notes that swirl all around like a dark cloud. From the temple-like, black incense trails, to the dry smoky cedar, and even the earthy spiciness of the patchouli, there are too many checks and balances to the creamy lavender-vanilla-almond sherbert. What the sweeter notes really do is to soften that early razor sharpness, though the synthetic undertone to Fourreau Noir still remains at the base.

The perfume continues to soften. About 2.5 hours in, it lingers extremely close to the skin, and the patchouli has become as prominent as the incense, while the lavender has started to recede. There is something almost ambered to Fourreau Noir’s base, though the golden sweetness and warmth may simply be the indirect impact of the tonka bean on the patchouli. Whatever the cause, Fourreau Noir is now primarily a bouquet of patchouli amber with smoky incense, atop a vanilla base that is infused with almond and lavender, and lightly flecked with musk and abstract, dry woodiness.

Source: backgrounds.mysitemyway.com

There is also the merest, subtlest suggestion of something that smells like gingerbread, and it becomes increasingly strong. By the end of the 4th hour, it’s quite noticeable and I suspect that the creamy woods, the vanilla, and patchouli’s spicy, earth sweetness have all melded together to create a sweet-spiced gingerbread accord. It’s too dry, however, to be like actual dessert or cloying; the sweetness is perfectly balanced. In fact, the unexpected gingerbread element eventually turns drier and woody, taking on an almost sandalwood-like aroma. The overall effect strongly calls to mind Chanel‘s gorgeous Bois des Iles with its very close replication of Mysore sandalwood in its base and drydown.

Fourreau Noir turns increasingly abstract, and its final drydown is a simple, utterly lovely mix of sweetness, woodiness, and creamy smoothness. It’s a patchouli amber gingerbread with the lightest hint of spices, incense, and creamy, wispy, gauzy vanillic sweetness. All in all, Fourreau Noir’s duration averages out to about 10.5 hours on my perfume-consuming skin with three sprays being the median quantity applied. A smaller amount yields about 9.5 hours, while 4 big sprays results in about 11.75 hours. At all times, however, the fragrance feels sheer, almost translucent, and gauzy in weight. The sillage generally drops after about 75-minutes with a small amount, 90-minutes with a medium amount, and 2.5 hours with more. Fourreau Noir only becomes a true skin scent on me around the end of the fourth hour, though there are the issues mentioned earlier about the fragrance sometimes acting like a ghost in terms of projection, as well as strength on the skin.

I was surprised to read some of the reactions to Fourreau Noir as it has alternatively been described as a very clean scent, a masculine one, a deliciously gourmand one, a perfume similar to Chergui, and even, on one rare occasion, an animalic, almost dirty fragrance. All those opinions are noticeable on Fragrantica and in blog reviews. The Non Blonde referred to the latter in her very positive assessment of Fourreau Noir where she compared it to a cozy, cuddly, fuzzy, long sweater with a slightly clean vibe:

Sometimes my taste in perfume makes me question my sanity. Many reviews and impressions of Fourreau Noir, a 2009 non-export Serge Lutens release, mention/lament/ celebrate two accords- black smoke and a dirty animalic heart. For some of the people who tried Fourreau Noir (the loaded name translates as black sheath) these aspects made it difficult to wear. Me? My skin diffuses smoke and domesticates large beasts. I find Fourreau Noir not just soft and cuddly but also as comfortable and embracing as an old hoodie fresh from the laundry.

I mentioned laundry for a reason. The lavender note is strong in the opening and quite persistent after. […] Fourreau Noir is fuzzy and warm as though it just left the dryer. The lavender over a sweet gourmand base supports this idea, though it’s not exactly Downy Lavender-Vanilla fabric softener. Don’t worry.

Fourreau Noir is musky, but to me it’s a fairly clean musk with a hint of fruitiness. The tactile equivalent is of a soft silk-merino knit, kind of like the long wrap sweater with caressing kimono sleeves I’m wearing now as I’m typing this review. This coziness is helped greatly by the sweet gourmand dry-down. Tonka bean, almond cookies covered in very light powdered sugar and lots and lots of immortelle. I love immortelle on its mapley goodness, and in this case the maple smells like it was aged and smoked in old wood barrels. This is the kind of stuff I expect and enjoy from our favorite uncle.

Obviously, my experience is a bit different from hers, and I don’t find that musk to be either clean or dirty, but I definitely agree that our mutually adored, favorite uncle created a beautiful scent whose drydown is of sweet, smoked, woody goodness.

At the end of the day, I find Fourreau Noir to be a delectably dark fragrance that is quite addictive in its coziness. It really shouldn’t have wrapped its tendrils around me in quite the way that it did. It is a fragrance centered, in large part, on a note that I despise, but it was genius to mix lavender with such unexpected elements as dark smoke, almonds and patchouli. It obviously helps that I’m a sucker for patchouli, but still, everyone who knows me is shocked that Fourreau Noir is the fragrance that I chose as my first bell jar. I am too, actually.

Source: wall.alphacoders.com

I had initially gone to the Palais Royal with plans to get a very different scent, perhaps the beautiful De Profundis with its delicate floral heart and gorgeous purple liquid. (I actually ended up with De Profundis as my second bell jar perfume!) While there, testing all the different perfumes, the gardenia-tobacco ode to Billie Holiday, Une Voix Noire, beckoned to me even more insistently than when I had tried it. My beloved Cuir Mauresque (the perfume that Serge Lutens himself wears) trumped both of them, but it’s ridiculous to buy it in a rare, expensive bell jar form when the perfume is also available for much cheaper overseas in a regular 1.7 oz spray bottle.

I was actually testing the Bois series of fragrances, and marveling over Bois et Fruits, when I happened to put Fourreau Noir on my wrist. It caught my attention almost immediately, but there was far too much going on, and I needed to assess each fragrance’s longevity. There were no samples to be had, so I clutched little scented strips wrapped tightly in plastic and went home to ponder the issue. Two days later, when I returned, I was still undecided. It was down between Bois et Fruits and Fourreau Noir, with Une Voix Noir perhaps in third place.

In the end, something about Fourreau Noir seemed more special to me, more unique, mysterious, and entrancing. I loved the mix of sweetness with the sharp, dry incense, and the way that dark smoke weaved its gauzy, tenacious tendrils around me like a witch’s spell. Fourreau Noir has never really seemed like a pure lavender fragrance to me; if it had, I would have run a mile in the opposite direction shrieking for help. It also seemed to be beyond easy categorization; neither “gourmand” nor “dark incense” really describe its core essence. In some ways, it’s everything and nothing, just like its peculiar, occasionally ghostly sillage that can also be a tenacious, sheer, potent cloud. It is a fragrance that seems at once very simple, but also very nuanced and layered.

Perhaps the best explanation for Fourreau Noir’s hold over me is the dark elusiveness at its heart, an elusiveness that is so very Serge Lutens. How else can one explain a lavender phobe falling for such a fragrance? I tried the much-vaunted, endlessly worshiped, lavender gourmand fragrance, Kiki, from Vero Profumo, and was bored to tears. I found it simple, uninteresting, lacking in nuance, and banal. Perhaps I simply needed dark magic? Or perhaps only a master like Serge Lutens can create a perfume that encompasses everything one dislikes, but make it so delectable that you can’t help but fall into its addictive embrace. Yes, the answer has to be Serge Lutens. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to put on some lavender, and eat some humble pie.

DETAILS:

Cost & Availability: Fourreau Noir is an eau de parfum that is part of the Serge Lutens “Paris Exclusives” line, which means it is available only in the larger 2.5 oz/75 ml Bell Jar size. It retails for $300 or €140 (I think) for a 75 ml/2.5 oz bottle. You can buy Fourreau Noir directly from the U.S. Serge Lutens website or from the International one. For some reason, the International Site seems to be temporarily out of the fragrance at the time of this review (which is why I can’t get the definitive Euro price), but you can recheck the listing later. There is also the rare option of purchasing Fourreau Noir in 2 refillable black sprays, each of which is 30 ml, for a total of 60 ml. The price is $190 on the U.S. Lutens website, and €120 on the International one.

In the U.S.: you can also find Fourreau Noir sold exclusively at Barney’s New York store. The website has a notice stating: “This product is only available for purchase at the Madison Avenue Store located at 660 Madison Avenue. The phone number for the Serge Lutens Boutique is (212) 833-2425.”

Personal Shopper Options: One way of getting Fourreau Noir at a cheaper price is Shop France Inc run by Suzan, a very reputable, extremely professional, personal shopper who has been used by a number of perfumistas. She will go to France, and buy you perfumes (and other luxury items like Hermès scarves, etc.) that are otherwise hard to find at a reasonable price. Shop France Inc. normally charges a 10% commission on top of the item’s price with 50% being required as a down payment. However, and this is significant, in the case of Lutens Bell Jars, the price is $225 instead. The amount reflects customs taxes that she pays each time, as well as a tiny, extra markup. It’s still cheaper than the $300 (not including tax) for the bell jar via Barney’s or the US Serge Lutens website. Another caveat, however, is that Suzan is limited to only 10 bell jars per trip, via an arrangement with the Lutens house. There is a wait-list for the bell jars, but she goes every 6-8 weeks, so it’s not a ridiculously huge wait, I don’t think. If you have specific questions about the purchase of Lutens bell jars, or anything else, you can contact her at shopfranceinc@yahoo.com. As a side note, I have no affiliation with her, and receive nothing as a result of mentioning her.

Samples: You can order samples of Fourreau Noir from Surrender to Chance starting at $3.99 for a 1/2 ml vial. The fragrance is also available as part of a Five Piece Non-Export Sampler Set, where you can choose 5 Lutens Paris Exclusives for a starting price of $18.99 for a 1/2 ml vial.