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Browsing by tag: classic chypre

Dior-Dior by Christian Dior ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 16 July 2012 90 Comments

Rene Gruau Dior-Dior advert, detail

A few more spritzes from my sample tube, and there it goes — the last of my Christian Dior Dior-Dior. Finished.

Lately I’ve been working my way through the crystal cocktail glass storing my most precious samples. A few unexpected (and in one case, fatal) accidents in my world during the past few weeks have startled me out of complacence. We’re not going to live forever. Meanwhile, those few drops of old Guerlain Mitsouko parfum, that dram of Lanvin Scandal parfum, that tiny vial of Christian Dior Dioressence parfum, and, yes, a two ml spray of Christian Dior Dior-Dior Eau de Toilette were going unappreciated. I put an end to that. It’s hard to use a vintage, discontinued fragrance knowing that when it’s gone it’s likely gone for good. But enjoying a perfume sure beats simply having the perfume…

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Molyneux Quartz ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 4 June 2012 55 Comments

Molyneux Quartz advert

There was a time — not long ago, either — when “clean” didn’t smell like laundry soap. In those days, a clean fragrance was crisp and green with a hint of citrus, but might also waft a pretty floral heart and deliver a punch of oakmoss. Clean wasn’t a stack of folded sweat pants hot from the dryer, it was a white kid glove slid onto a cool, powdered hand. Chanel Cristalle and Estée Lauder Aliage embody this style of clean. Molyneux Quartz must have been one of the last mainstream fragrances of this genre.

Quartz was released in 1978. The Parfums Molyneux website mentions only honeysuckle and patchouli among its notes, but Jan Moran’s Fabulous Fragrances lists peach, hyacinth, cassie, jasmine, rose, carnation, orris, melon, sandalwood, musk amber, moss, benzoin, and cedarwood and classifies Quartz as a “floral-fruity.”

To me, Quartz Eau de Parfum is a delicate green chypre with hints of peach and melon and a whiff of cut herbs…

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Mary Greenwell Plum ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 9 April 2012 78 Comments

Mary Greenwell Plum

One morning last week I lay on the acupuncturist’s table, stuck like a pomander, trying to identify the familiar yet elusive note that carries Mary Greenwell Plum. It wasn’t plum — that much I knew. Maybe it was the lobotomizing New Age music or maybe the needle planted smack in the middle of my forehead, but the answer came to me all at once: Smuckers. Smuckers grape jelly, to be precise.

Mary Greenwell Plum hit the market in October 2010 and quickly became a must-sample fragrance. It had a lot of promising features: its perfumer was François Robert, accomplished nose and descendant of the legendary Guy Robert and Henri Robert; it was a chypre; and it was hard to find.

Mary Greenwell is a British makeup artist who made her start prepping a teenaged Brooke Shields for a Francesco Scavullo photo shoot…

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Parfum d’Empire Azemour Les Orangers ~ fragrance review

Posted by Robin on 8 December 2011 112 Comments

oranges

Azemour Les Orangers is the latest from French niche line Parfum d’Empire. It’s meant as a tribute to the city of Azemmour in Morocco and the surrounding region, where founder Marc-Antoine Corticchiato reportedly spent time at his family’s orange groves as a child. As a back-story, that’s relatively tame for a brand that has already brought us scents inspired by the Ottoman empire and Napoléon Bonaparte, among others, but with the never-ending onslaught of new niche brands with ever more obscure (and pretentious) inspirations, I’m tired of back-story anyway.

Azemour Les Orangers is a fresh chypre, a real, honest-to-goodness fresh chypre, with plenty of citrus and that mossy, nearly-musty undertone that you either adore or detest.1 If, like me, you adore it, then Azemour will be like greeting an old friend that you haven’t seen in some time and feared you might never meet again…

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Happy Halloween

Posted by Robin on 31 October 2011 4 Comments

A little funny from Axe.

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