More Than Just a Little Brouhaha – Robert Piguet Petit Fracas Perfume Review

The sheer thought of a Fracas flanker is enough to send most fumenerds in to fits of fear-induced hysterics. Such is always the case when a classic is reinterpreted for the modern generation, just take Shalimar Parfum Initial for example, the blogosphere practically imploded upon hearing the news of a pink-ified Shalimar (more on that one later), so it would not be un-wise to expect the same reaction for the arrival of Petit Fracas.

Yes that’s right, I said “Petit Fracas” as in “Little Fracas”. But fear ye not, the people over at Fashion Fragrances and Cosmetics Ltd (who own the licence for Piguet Parfums) have taken great care in the re-launch of Piguet’s classics and they have applied the very same amount of care to this reinterpretation of the original.

“Play the game of love with Petit Fracas de Robert Piguet. The scent has an audacious air, inspired by our iconic Fracas. Petit is fresh, youthful and feminine, with a playful innocence. Flirtatious and charming […] elegant and enchanting, but not too serious, Petit Fracas is a chic floral bouquet, perfect for flirty fashionistas or fashionistas at heart.”

Aiming for a younger woman who is not quite ready to step into the 9 inch stilettos of the original, Petit Fracas (created by Aurelien Guichard who has been responsible for all of the Piguet relaunches and new scents) mashes modern tastes with the haute couture style of one of perfumery’s most infamous characters. She’s the wild child of an even wilder parent; living, loving and vying for attention.

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The Candy Perfume Boy’s Movember Barbershop Quartet

Loving the Stripes... — The Candy Perfume Boy’s Movember Barbershop Quartet

Movember Madness has struck me this month and as well as attempting to cultivate a handsome portion of facial hair upon my top lip things have been a bit more man-focused on The Candy Perfume Boy. Sometimes one must remember that it’s important not to forget the boys and this month I am honouring my fellow Mobros in true Candy Perfume Boy style.

Those of you who read The Candy Perfume Boy regularly will know that I wear a mixture of feminine and masculine scents, with the ratio skewed much more to the former rather than the latter. That’s not to say I don’t like masculine fragrances at all, quite the opposite in fact, it just so happens that my favourite style of fragrances (earth shattering florals) tend to lurk on the feminine side of the perfume shelves.

When I wear a masculine fragrance I tend to go for something classic with a modern twist. I often find myself drawn to the floral-sweet yet dandified style of fragrances that can be classified as barbershop. For me there’s just something attractive about smelling well-groomed and well-oiled.

In this post I would like to showcase my top four barbershop scents, presented in the form of my Movember Barbershop Quartet. So without further adieu I present you The Lead, The Tenor, The Bass and The Baritone.

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Change is Inevitable – Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme 2012 Perfume Review

In life there are only two things that are certain; death and change. Both of these certainties are also rife within the perfume industry, with ever-tightening restrictions on ingredients and brand cost-cutting leading either to the demise or the change of some of the world’s most beloved perfumes.

Most of the time perfume reformulations are cloak and dagger affairs, with brands swearing that “absolutely nothing has happened to your beloved Mitsouko, so please stop with your questions, or else…” But this isn’t the case with the new Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme, which the brand are fully admitting has been subjected to some “fine tuning”. Well, one can’t help but admire their honesty!

“Warm and voluptuous and a touch of creamy sweetness, this fragrance is for a woman who is compelling and sensual. It is made up of contrasts, an exuberance of sinuous details that strike the balance between strength and gentleness. Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme for women is not afraid to face any challenge, and does so with a strong sense of self and a fierce determination.”

The re-orchestrated Dolce & Gabbana Pour Femme is described as having an “innately soft yet seductive character” and I would say that it definitely leans more to the soft side of things rather than the seductive. This may lead to some disappointment for long-term lovers of the original, which I’m led to believe was a bit of a floral-bomb. My advice? Stock up while you can…

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Guerlain The Confectioner – Guerlain L’Art et la Matière Iris Ganache Perfume Review

The clocks went back on Sunday meaning that the days are now getting shorter and the harshness of winter darkness is upon us. Some may view this as a bad thing, after all as the days get colder and darker the mood of the population tends to follow suit, but there is one group of people who love the cold, and that is the fumenerds.

That’s right, as a general rule of thumb (please say if you disagree) fumelovers adore the winter because it means that one can dip into ones perfume wardrobe and pick out the heavy orientals, warm lactonic florals, and best of all, the cosy sweet foody fumes. When it comes to this genre of tasty scents the absolute best come from a little Parisian boutique located at No. 68 Champs Elysees: a patisserie disguised as a perfumery.

I don’t know exactly what it is about some of Guerlain’s offerings that makes them so delicious, perhaps it is the fact they aren’t quite gourmand enough to be edible that gives them the edge. They have that certainly je ne sais qoui that means they simply work and it is a simple truth that nobody quite manages to do confectionary quite like Guerlain.

This review focuses on one of my absolute favourite Guerlain confections and perhaps my one of my favourites from the house in general (but you’ll understand if I do not commit myself to that statement); Iris Ganache – a fragrance that I have silently stalked in Selfridge’s and Harrod’s many times, falling in love a little bit more each and every time, until I had to face the facts and bite the bullet on my very own bottle.

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The Steampunk Tuberose – Tableau de Parfums Loretta Perfume Review

She's a Steampunk Girl... — Oh Steampunk Girl, How I Love You With Your Cogs and Your Curls…

Andy Tauer is one amazing dude. Not only is he an incredibly talented self-taught perfumer he’s also a fascinating blogger as well as being a very nice chap indeed. What I love most about Andy Tauer is the fact that he constantly pushes the boundaries with beautiful, innovative compositions whilst staying true to his signature style.

Whether you click with this signature style or not Tauer’s collection, which contains his Classics, Homages, Pentachords and Collectibles, is so diverse that you’d be pretty darn unlucky not to find something to fall in love with. Whether you are attracted to the throwback rose of Une Rose Chyprée or the orange/vanilla supernova of Orange Star you are bound to find something to adore.

Perhaps the most interesting of Tauer’s projects is his collaboration with filmmaker Brian Pera for Tableau de Parfums, a line of perfumes inspired by the heroines of the Woman’s Picture Series. First came Miriam, an impeccable vintage floral and now we have Loretta, Tauer’s ode to tuberose. Andy Tauer AND tuberose?! Surely this could go either way! It could be the amazing tauerade soaked floral I hope it to be or it could be a hot mess.

Described as referencing “the rich spicy orientals and elegant floral classic of the seventies and eighties, with a modern twist” Loretta is unmistakably Tauer but at the same time it feels new, not just as a Tauer fragrance but as a tuberose. It has the striking ability to smell simultaneously familiar yet alien and it is so bold in character that it will easily be one of those perfumes that divide opinion, and as we all know those perfumes are the best kind.

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Smell Bent Speedy Sniffs, Part 1: Little Miss Panda Gets Lei’d, Violet Tendencies & Chile Vanilli

Mad Scientist — The Crazy Cartoon World of Smell Bent

Smell Bent is the slightly warped brainchild of LA based perfume-lover (and very handsome perfumer) Brent Leonesio. Offering fragrances that “delight your nose and your funny bone” Smell Bent lets you into a cartoon world of chaos, naughty frolics and damn good smells, all for a more-than-reasonable price. As they put it on the Smell Bent Website:

“We think that perfume should be fun and shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg. We know life can be hard, but it shouldn’t have to smell bad.”

Brent Leonesio

I reckon that I have perused the Smell Bent website, chuckling away at the names, cartoons and descriptions of each scent, about a million times, yet it was only recently that I decided to put in a sample order. Perhaps there was a bit too much choice for my little brain to handle and if I’m being honest I think that might be the case, I wanted to order just about everything but I couldn’t (apparently we’re supposed to be buying a house or something, I don’t know, ask Nigel) and that made me sad.

It was actually Freddie of Smellythoughts fame that convinced me to bite the bullet and I’m ever so glad he did because the six Smell Bents I ordered, each of which is like a fun little ditty, have surpassed my expectations considerably. So without further ado I present to you Part 1 of my Smell Bent Speedy Sniffs (with Part 2 to follow next week), I hope that you enjoy reading about these characters as much as I did smelling them. They may be low in price but they certainly aren’t short on quality or fun!

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Frozen Flowers – Floral Fragrances for Winter

You may or may not be aware that I am somewhat partial to the odd floral or two. OK, that’s a severe understatement, I am a floral addict and if you were to examine me under a microscope you’d probably discover that my genetic makeup has been significantly altered by the sheer amount of white flowers that I wear. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and I’ll actually have become a flower? Is that pushing it? Thought so.

When most people think florals they think of summer; of golden sunlight beating down on fields and meadows of fragrant flowers shouting their narcotic odours into the warm summer breeze. But for me florals aren’t exclusive to spring or summer, in fact one of my favourite times of the year to break out my bottles of trapped flowers is the time, for the most part, when they are not blooming in the wild. My favourite time for florals is winter.

Floral fragrances are surprisingly versatile in winter, they can provide warmth and comfort or they can react with the cold stiff air to create a sparkling aura that freezes on the skin. So as the weather appears to be quickly changing and the mercury is heading closer and closer to the 0 mark (well it is here at least) I thought I would share with you some of my favourite florals for my favourite time of year.

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Flowers, Smoke and Jazz – Serge Lutens Une Voix Noire Perfume Review

I don’t know about you but it took me a long time to ‘get’ Serge Lutens. The line that is, not the man himself, I doubt there is anyone on the planet who can profess to ‘get’ Serge Lutens himself, but I digress. Yes, it took me a long time to understand why everybody raved about everything Lutens, there was just something about all of those thick-set, heavy orientals that simply didn’t click with me.

But alongside his dense orientals Lutens has a number of gothic florals (Iris Silver Mist, Tubéreuse Criminelle and Sarrasins etc) that really do speak to me and it wasn’t until I tried these that I felt compelled to convert and pray at the altar of Sergeism. It is this great love of Serge’s florals that made me so excited to try his latest exclusive offering, a perfume that focuses on a highly fragrant, yet elusive flower that yields no oil; the gardenia.

Une Voix Noire (A Black Voice) is the name of Uncle Serge’s essay on gardenia and it takes its inspiration from famous American jazz-singer Billie Holiday, or “Lady Day” as she was sometimes known. For the lady who wore gardenia flowers in her hair, Lutens and his olfactory-partner-in-crime Christopher Sheldrake have created a fragrance that evokes the odours of “jazz, drinks and the night, and, beyond all that, a troubling line of white gardenia-scented smoke.”

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The Little Black Dress: The Remix – Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire 2012 Perfume Review

Guerlain’s ode to the Little Black Dress, ‘La Petite Robe Noire’, has a confusing history. First it was released as a pricey boutique exclusive, then there was the sequel ‘La Petite Robe Noire 2’ (and yes it was about as good as you would expect a sequel to be), the first of five planned additions to Guerlain’s wardrobe. Following all of that Guerlain has now decided to relaunch a new version of La Petite Robe Noire as part of its main collection, and in-house perfumer Thierry Wasser has gone in and tweaked things a little bit.

Now, I don’t mean to be smug (OK maybe just a little) but I have always said that La Petite Robe Noire was wasted as a boutique exclusive, strongly believing that it would be a massive hit if it were unleashed into the world of mainstream perfumery, and from the response it’s getting on the counters I think it may just be as popular as I expected.

Taking inspiration from the most classic and versatile pieces of clothing – the little black dress, La Petite Robe Noire is the perhaps the most fun, free-spirited of Guerlain’s many offerings. It comes billed as “the epitome of couture for the skin” [1] and if you’re wondering what “couture” smells like, the answer is, in true Guerlain style, a big fruity floral gourmand.

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Who’s That Girl? – Juliette Has a Gun Mad Madame Perfume Review

Juliette Has a Gun is a curious little outfit. They seem to happily fill the space that separates niche and designer perfumes and does so in a young and fancy free way. The thing is, as much as I like the brand and one or two of the scents they’ve yet to have a hit as far as I’m concerned. Calamity J and Romantina came close but neither had the wow factor needed to convince me to part with any of my hard-earned dosh.

That said, the spunky, take-no-prisoners attitude of Romano Ricci’s heroines is definitely appealing to me and I’m always more than happy to dive into their new releases to see what they are up to. So far we’ve had charming girls, vengeful ladies, queens and delightfully calamities but with their latest release Juliette Has a Gun is unleashing the Mad Madame.

“For this new episode I wanted to pay tribute to a woman who dares. A woman slightly more mature than the previous episodes, but by no means better behaved! Mad Madame has this touch of craziness, which she is happily displaying. Endowed with a sense of provocation, she enjoys being looked at and igniting conversations. As Oscar Wilde once said, The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Romano Ricci

Mad Madame is described as a green chypre “revolving around the metallic Rose Oxyde” and as you would expect from Juliette Has a Gun it is a fragrance with a strong character, as Mr. Ricci puts it; “Mad Madame has the knack of getting herself talked about. And she likes it.” What are they saying about this Madame? Well, I can tell you that it may not all be good.

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