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Guerlain Figue Iris & Laurier Reglisse, the 2008 Aqua Allegorias ~ perfume review

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Guerlain Figue Iris & Laurier Reglisse

For those of you unfamiliar with the Aqua Allegoria range from Guerlain, they might be seen as “entry level” Guerlains; they are supposed to “showcase nature”, and they tend to be lighter, younger and simpler in composition than the perfumes in the regular line. For the past few years they've been introducing two new Aqua Allegoria scents a year, and discontinuing those that don't do well. There are a few I really like (Herba Fresca, Anisia Bella, Mandarine Basilic), and despite the fact that some years they're just duds, I always look forward to trying the new editions. The 2008 entries: Figue Iris and Laurier Réglisse.

Aqua Allegoria Figue Iris is attributed to perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain. I'll start right off with a disclaimer: I love fig and I love iris, but the combination doesn't entirely appeal to me, and I've yet to meet a powdery fig I could love…

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Jean Couturier Coriandre ~ a sort of fragrance review and lament

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Jean Couturier Coriandre perfume

Jean Couturier’s Coriandre was my first true signature fragrance. I started wearing it in junior high school (middle school, to many of you) and I stuck to it for rather a long time, although at some point I started wearing Chanel Cristalle on the side, and later still I switched over to Christian Dior’s Diorissimo. Nobody else I knew wore Coriandre, which made it the perfect signature scent, and to my then-very-young self, it seemed almost extraordinarily sophisticated.

Coriandre launched in 1973, just a year before Cristalle. Susan Irvine’s Perfume Guide lists the notes as coriander, angelica, orange blossom, aldehydes, rose, geranium, jasmine, orris, lily, ylang ylang, patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, civet and musk; and Irvine describes it as a fragrance “For a red-headed Raymond Chandler heroine. Or an anchorite”. I am neither of those things now, and was arguably less so back in junior high, but I simply adored Coriandre…

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Jacques Fath Green Water fragrance review

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Jacques Fath Green Water cologne

Scorching weather has arrived — even in the usually temperate Northwest. Last week, the temperature in downtown Seattle hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit! During that heat spell I wore an old favorite fragrance: Jacques Fath’s Green Water.

French fashion designer Jacques Fath has been dead for over 50 years and few people recognize his name, but in his heyday in the 1940s and early 1950s, he was considered an innovative designer (and marketer) of women’s clothes. His designs were featured in films and his clientele included Greta Garbo, Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner. Fath died of leukemia at the peak of his fame at age 42 and his fashion house never really recovered from his loss — no matter who owned it or designed for it. Jacques Fath perfumes were kept in production…

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Annick Goutal Eau de Camille & Eau de Charlotte ~ fragrance reviews

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Annick Goutal Eau de Charlotte perfume

The Annick Goutal line occupies a rather in-between place among perfume fans — the company probably qualifies as niche based on their size and their limited distribution; still, they are available in a number of mainstream stores (three department stores in my local mall carry them), and the line doesn’t feel niche. The feminine perfumes are emphatically pretty, romantic even; they don’t, like so many niche perfumes, challenge traditional notions of what a woman ought to smell like.

Eau de Camille and Eau de Charlotte are both very much in that mold. They were created by Annick Goutal for her daughters…

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Les Exclusifs de Chanel: Bel Respiro fragrance review

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Chanel Bel Respiro perfumeChanel Bel Respiro perfumeChanel Bel Respiro perfume

Bel Respiro is one of the 10 fragrances from Chanel’s recent entry into the niche perfumery market, the Les Exclusifs de Chanel collection. The name Bel Respiro, and the inspiration for the scent, comes from a country house outside Paris that Coco Chanel owned in the 1920s. Bel Respiro was created by Chanel’s in-house perfumer, Jacques Polge, and the notes are rumored to include crushed leaves, rosemary, thyme, rose, lilac, hyacinth, green tea, aromatic grasses, myrrh and leather.

The frenzy over the Les Exclusifs reached a fever pitch in the weeks before they launched — among perfumistas, anyway. I’m guessing the rest of the world is only just barely aware of their existence. At any rate, by the time my samples arrived, I was reluctant to try them at all. How could they possibly live up to the hype? When curiosity finally got the better of me, Bel Respiro was the first thing I reached for. A fragrance “intended to evoke stems, leaves and springtime” (Women’s Wear Daily, 12/22/06) seemed bound to please.

As it turns out, Bel Respiro was a good place to start…

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