Annick Goutal will launch Mon Parfum Chéri, par Camille, this September, with a preview at Harrods in early July. The new perfume for women is described as a “very feminine, elegant and mesmerizing fragrance, inspired by Hollywood glamorous actresses”…
According to the lore of her eponymous fragrance house, Annick Goutal was deeply fond of roses; as one of the company websites states, “Every moment of her life was filled with them as she believed in their sensorial properties and their beneficial powers on the skin. She added drops of rose essence to her bathwater, drank it in secret teas…” Over the years, Goutal has released spicy fragrances, woody fragrances, green fragrances, and all sorts of florals, but it also continues to offer several variations on rose. Here are my thoughts on four of them…
Rose Absolue is an early Goutal fragrance, released in 1984. It was difficult to find for a while — in the United States, at least — but now it seems to be more widely available. Annick Goutal said of Rose Absolue, “Roses symbolize beauty, the eternal feminine. I wanted to dedicate a perfume to them which would also evoke this femininity.” This fragrance is all rose: it contains essences of May rose, Turkish rose, Bulgarian rose, Damascus rose, Egyptian rose, and Moroccan rose. Rose Absolue is both delicate and radiant. Like a gradually opening rose, it shifts from dewy to velvety to slightly dusky. If someone asked me to recommend just a few high-quality rose soliflores, this would be on my list…
I love the smell of mimosa flowers (Acacia pravissima is blooming in my garden now). For me, the “perfume” that best captures the floral scent most of us associate with “mimosa” (Acacia dealbata) is Diptyque Mimosa room spray. I’ve loved many of the Annick Goutal floral fragrances, and I hoped Le Mimosa would provide a mimosa scent I could wear on my skin, not simply spray into the air.
Le Mimosa, developed by perfumer Isabelle Doyen, lists fragrance notes of peach, anise, iris, mimosa, sandalwood and white musk. Le Mimosa opens with a dry, flat note that smells like a combination of pencil shavings, cumin powder, and ‘hairy’ leather. This slightly “dirty” aroma marches thru the entire composition…only soap will remove it from skin. As Le Mimosa develops, I smell artificial “peach” and I detect, for a split second, a puff of iris, a speck of anise, and some vague “citrus.”
There’s plenty of white musk and the aforementioned “peach” in Le Mimosa’s base, but none of Le Mimosa’s notes produces a scent with the aroma of fresh mimosa blossoms (if that’s what you are looking for or expecting). What mimosa there is in Le Mimosa is faint…
Annick Goutal will launch Rose Splendide, a new fragrance for women, in September. The perfume pays tribute to the brand’s founder, Annick Goutal, and her love of roses…
I’ve been half afraid to seriously investigate the state of citrus these days. Have the new IFRA regulations destroyed my summer favorites, like Eau de Guerlain and Chanel Cristalle? If it turns out that they have — or will before they’re through — Annick Goutal’s new woody citrus, Ninféo Mio, will help to make up my new summer arsenal.
Like Annick Goutal’s last major fragrance release, Un Matin d’Orage, Ninféo Mio was inspired by a garden — in this case, a very specific garden, the Giardino di Ninfa (Ninfa garden) near Rome. The first thing you need to know about Ninféo Mio is that it’s green. Very green, from the start right through to the finish. The opening is sharp green citrus, rather acidic, and more dry than juicy — think Hermès Eau d’Orange Verte with more lemon than orange. There’s a fair amount of lavender in the early stages, and it adds an herbal cast to the scent, but it isn’t harsh or overwhelming; those of you who say lavender is a deal-breaker really ought to give this a shot anyway…