French niche line Parfums MDCI has launched Cuir Garamante, a new leather-focused fragrance. The brand’s last fragrance was 2012’s Chypre Palatin…
Parfums MDCI Peche Cardinal ~ fragrance review
Have you ever seen the optical illusion that looks both like an old hag and a young woman, depending on how you approach it? That’s how I feel about Parfums MDCI Péché Cardinal. Not that it has anything of the old hag. Not at all. But come at it one way, and it’s nothing but caramelized peach. Look at it through a different lens, and you get tuberose. Peach. Tuberose. Peach. Tuberose. It’s kind of marvelous.
Perfumer Amandine Marie developed Péché Cardinal, released in 2009. It has notes of peach, blackberry, black currant, davana, coconut, lily, tuberose, plum, sandalwood, cedar and musk. When I fist smelled Péché Cardinal, I decided I was smelling a peachy floral. After that, peach is what I got whenever I sniffed Péché Cardinal. It was a plush, fragrant, earthy peach, but among the riches of my Parfums MDCI sample set, it fell to the back.
During a post about perfumes that smell like Champagne a few weeks ago, a commenter mentioned wearing Péché Cardinal for New Year’s Eve…
Parfums MDCI Chypre Palatin ~ fragrance review
You can’t have been a thrift store junkie as long as I have without honing your eye for beauty and solid craftsmanship. The problem with a lust for 1930s crystal cocktail glasses with their fine, imperfectly etched bowls, for example, or the ability to suss out vintage alpaca or 1940s rayon by touch alone, is that I end up toting home too many gorgeous things I’ll never use. That butter-soft tweed Brooks Brothers overcoat? It went to a friend’s husband whose girth supported it. The chocolate brown Manolos two sizes too small? Seven dollars later, an intern in my office was wearing them. Let’s not even get started on geometric mid-century lamps, Murano glass ashtrays, and mouton jackets. I crave these items for their quality and style, but they don’t always fit into my life.
That’s how I feel about Parfums MDCI Chypre Palatin. I love everything about it and long for a bottle, but it was made for someone else. However, if Chypre Palatin suits you, you are in for a real treat…
Parfums MDCI Chypre Palatin ~ new fragrance
French niche line Parfums MDCI has launched Chypre Palatin, a new green oriental chypre developed by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour…
Parfums MDCI La Belle Helene ~ fragrance review
I like pears, and I like apples, but as a general rule, I don’t like either in my perfume. Whether that’s because of how they’ve typically been used — from Donna Karan Be Delicious to Viktor & Rolf Eau Mega to Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia — or because I just plain don’t care for the smell, is hard to say.
La Belle Hélène, the latest from Parfums MDCI, promised the pears (and the violets) from the dessert Poires Belle-Hélène, minus all the fun stuff calories (vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce). On the plus side, it also promised osmanthus, one of my favorite floral notes, and the perfumer in question, Bertrand Duchaufour, is responsible for one of the few perfumes with (noticeable) apple that I like: L’Artisan Parfumeur Traversée du Bosphore. Oh, and plus he is responsible for quite a few other fragrances I was willing to pay real money for. So I was looking forward to La Belle Hélène, even though it costs more money than I would ever spend on a perfume. So far…