Perfumer Dominique Ropion talks about Frédéric Malle Une Fleur de Cassie.
Alber Elbaz par Frederic Malle Superstitious ~ fragrance review
Who here likes old-fashioned aldehydic florals? I do. I love their whiff of silk stockings, champagne and evenings at the opera. I adore how tidy and elegant these fragrances are compared to my messy, cat-hair fluffed life. I even appreciate the genre’s inscrutability to the general public weaned on fruit, soliflores and patchouli.
If you’re like me, you’ve been impatient to smell Frédéric Malle Superstitious, classified by the company as a “grand aldehyde floral…”
Don’t go and perfume yourself with chocolate
The one thing I was asking Frédéric, the only request I had, is not to have a perfume with a scent of a chocolate or vanilla, whatever, that is very a la mode at the moment, you know? That’s all about...gourmandize they call it. Like we can’t eat food. It’s forbidden, so let’s make the perfume smell like a chocolate. [...] If you want a chocolate, go buy a chocolate. Don’t go and perfume yourself with chocolate.
— Alber Elbaz on the new Alber Elbaz par Frédéric Malle Superstitious. Read more at Alber Elbaz Thinks Fragrances Shouldn't Smell Like Food: "If You Want Chocolate, Go Buy a Chocolate" at W Magazine.
Top 10 Spring Fragrances 2017
1946: French writer Colette went to Switzerland, where she would undergo treatment for severe and painful arthritis. She was delighted to find that the sparrows around her lodgings in Geneva were tame. They flew into her room from the balcony, slept under her bed, ate from her hands. They would even chirp protests when she would lock them out of the bathroom as she bathed. One day she found a pair of sparrows snuggling in a fold of her bedspread. She startled them and they flew away. Colette wrote:
This gave me fair warning that the time was not far off when I should discover one individual among their small, indefinite band, the particular one, the one who preferred me and was mine by preference. With the animal world, we are subject to the same perils every time. To choose, to be chosen, to love: the very next moment we are beset by anxiety, the danger of loss, and the fear of spreading regret. What an array of big words when the subject is but a sparrow! Yes, a sparrow. In love, there is never a question of smallness. 1
A perfect segue to the love for, and smallness of…perfumes…
To smell a dress
Alber Elbaz and Frédéric Malle talk about the new Alber Elbaz par Frédéric Malle Superstitious. A little over 7 minutes.