Tigresse by Nicole Lenzen & Yosh : Perfume Review

Tigresse is a bridal atelier (originally based in San Francisco, now relocated in New York) that specializes in custom-made bridal wear, evening gowns and accessories with a twist: The style is non-traditional, modern and innovative. About a month ago I emailed Nicole Lenzen, the founder and designer of Tigresse, asking for a sample of the homonymous Tigresse perfume, explaining that I wished to review it on my blog if I liked it. A couple of weeks later, a packet arrived at my house containing two tiny samples and the press release. I didn’t have to open the samples to know what the perfume smelled like: Even though the vials were intact, the lovely scent was so strong it had permeated everything. Even though the samples are tiny (a few drops in each) the sample I’ve opened has lasted me for several tests – the tinsiest of dabs will do!

Tigresse was created in collaboration with perfumer Yosh Han (Ginger Ciao, Kismet) and as is the case with all Yosh perfumes, contains no alcohol, just perfume oils and natural essences. This is one of the most beautiful, innovative, fruity-floral scents I’ve ever smelled. Yes, as you know I am not a big fan of the genre, yet this is one of the exceptions. There is no fake, plastic smell. There is no cheap undertone. This is not a light, agreeable little fragrance. There is no hint of the generic to be found here. You will have to forgive my lyricism: The opening of this fragrance truly smells like strong rays of sunlight bursting through the canopy of an exotic forest. Then the sun gets stronger, brighter. There is this sense of beautiful, clean warmth, like sun-warmed freshly washed hair. The fruity top notes are infused with the freshness of peppermint, and smelling close, the peppermint is feisty enough to actually free the nose and be felt on the back of the throat in the most refreshing manner. The dusty earthiness of pomegranate pulls everything together, bestowing a dry, tangy feel to the perfume. The heart of the fragrance is a most intoxicating lily scent, which if I am honest, smells to me more like a Japanese lily, with its strong, uncompromising scent, than a tiger lily. As time passes, Tigresse becomes more and more honeyed, without ever once stopping to bloom on the skin. If anything, it deepens, becomes more complex with the passage of time. It becomes –amazingly- the gorgeous, sweet scent of flower nectar, golden and lucid, like the precious drops hanging from a thousand stems gathered just for the sake of scenting one’s skin. This is what I love most about Tigresse, this sense of having found true, honeyed nectar, captured so beautifully I can practically feel its sweetness on my tongue, like a child, carefully pulling the stamen of a honeysuckle blossom and tasting the heavenly, precious droplet. If I had to choose only one word I could use to describe it, it would be vibrant. Everything about it seems brightly colored, three-dimensional and improbably real. It is as deeply exotic as the jungle and at once pure, like an unexplored beauty.

Official Notes: Pomegranate, Tiger Lily, Fig, Sweet Pea, Peppermint and White Ginger.

Since Nicole was kind enough to send me two samples, I want to offer one of them to you, my readers. Please let me know in a comment if you would like to be entered in the drawing. Results will be posted in a week’s time, next Friday.

Tigresse retails at 55$ for 15ml. and can be purchased at the Tigresse website, Luscious Cargo or alternatively at the Brown Eyed Girl Boutique in San Francisco.

Images: www.tigressefashion.com and commons.wikimedia.org

Esperys by E. Coudray : Perfume Review

What is the connection between E. Coudray and L.T. Piver? Why do they share the same address? Are they co-owned? Does Piver own Coudray? All questions I cannot answer unfortunately, but logic guides me to the conclusion that L.T. Piver probably does own Coudray, since every Coudray product is stamped with “L.T. Piver S.A.” while Piver products themselves bear no mention of Coudray on the packaging. So if Piver indeed owns Coudray, what is the connection between Coudray’s new Esperys and L.T. Piver’s original? (launched in 1903, re-introduced in 1911, now discontinued) Another question I cannot answer, but wish I could. I admire most everything I have smelled from Piver and the same goes for Coudray’s products, from the perfumes to the luxurious, deeply hydrating body creams. There is a difference though – Piver’s fragrances suit me and I find them very wearable, while so far I have not found a Coudray I felt excited enough about to buy. They just don’t go with my personality it seems, seeming either too flowery, too heavy or too sweet most of the time. Yet Esperys won a little place in my heart before I even had the chance to sniff it, and couldn’t wait to do so. Undoubtedly the name played a huge role in this, reminding me of the greek word Esperinos, the early evening hour. The time when the sun sets, the church bells ring and the birds go to roost. The time when I always had to stop playing and rush home as a child, forming a deep, sad association with the hour and the sadness I invariably always ended up feeling when I heard the call of birds overhead signaling their return as well as mine. To this day, the cries of a flock of birds going to roost at nighttime make my heart feel a little heavier, lamenting another day lost in time. A great name does not make a great perfume though. How many times do I need to experience this simple fact before it becomes internalized as a belief? Many, apparently.

Esperys opens with not so much a note, but a setting. The fist days of fall, after a summer drought that seemed eternal. Storm clouds gather ominously – there’s static in the air. The deserted road has accumulated inches of dirt that is about to be washed away. As the first large raindrops lazily start to fall, the air fills with the scent of dust rising from the road. Soon, if the rain was allowed to becomes more and more urgent, this parched smell would give way to freshness, but Esperys remains focused on that first moment instead, the moment of the first raindrops on a hot dirt road. That first moment, with the dust rising like a cloud and threatening to choke the hapless pedestrians running to find cover in order to avoid the approaching storm is forever captured in Esperys, unchanging, with no relief of cleansing in sight. I am not complaining – merely describing, for uniqueness excites me in perfumery and I have never smelled this before. I’ve smelled rain, I’ve smelled storms, I’ve smelled wet earth. I've smelled dustiness before too. But never so much intense, wet dust: this is new. I am not exaggerating either when I speak of that choking feeling of rainy dust cloud rising to the nostrils. It feels like an implosion of dryness. I am seduced by the novelty and my excitement mounts as I smell the fizzy bitterness of beer that follows. Green, wild vegetation is growing on the sides of my imaginary road. They too are dusty of course and I can almost smell their relief at the promise of rain. They are perfect and I can’t wait for them to grow in intensity and shine through. But they never do. Instead, very suddenly, I find myself woefully wondering if the ‘red berry’ note in the press release alludes to pomegranate, because that is indeed exactly what I am smelling and I do not like it. Not one bit. It is all there, the fruity seeds, the unsugared juice and most of all, the skin. Admittedly, the bitter dryness of the skin matches the dry composition, but I hate it regardless. Esperys didn’t need fruit. It didn’t need the caramel either, which peculiarly floats to the top far sooner than I expected it to. It makes the composition just a tad sweeter, unable to outmaneuver the glorious, dry bitterness. Its presence is nevertheless distracting and slightly nauseating. I keep hoping both it and the pomegranate will at some point relent, but (as I later find out), it takes them more than two hours to dissipate. These two conspire to ruin the fragrance for me. Even the beautiful, (yes, once again ‘dusty’) dry nutmeg can’t seem to cheer me up. The rest of the composition is so intriguing – the dustiness, the dryness, the sheer unique strangeness of it make me want to wear it, take it out for a spin, raise a few eyebrows, bother a few noses. I know though I never will. I can’t possibly stomach neither the pomegranate, nor the caramel. There is a delay, during which my shocked nose does not detect any changes, then suddenly, the rose becomes apparent. It is heavy, rather masculine. It smells exactly like Greek rose resin regularly used to burn on charcoal. If I was disappointed before, I am even more so now. From the first moment I experienced that exceptional dustiness I wanted it to be intermingled with greens and white flowers. The freesias that never came through. Maybe some honeysuckle and a little jasmine, if I had a say in it. I wanted it to be ethereal as well as strange. I willed Esperys to break my heart with its beauty just like Esperinos, the hour of sunset always has. And now, now it is cloying on top of everything else. Disappointed I wait for the drydown. It is not completely unremarkable, due to the dryness which still persists. Behind it lurks the rather unexciting smell of an expensive body cream. My disappointment is acute and apparent due to the fact that this was something I really wanted to like. I hate to admit it, but I can’t wait to wash it off. Four hours has been torture enough.

Images:
Esperys bottle from www.parfumeursdefrance.com
Painting of dusty road from the National Hungarian Gallery, www.mng.hu
Greek rose resin, from Natural Flow Direct ebay webshop: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Natural-Flow-Direct