Geranium pour Monsieur by Frederic Malle : Perfume Review

Happy New Year everyone! I am hijacking the first part of this review to thank you all for your lovely wishes and the warmth you’ve shown me through your messages in the past month after my attack. I am fine now. I spent three days in bed, not really wanting to travel to Greece - I was so down I didn’t feel I could go celebrate the holidays with my family. However, after just two days with my family, my spirits were lifted and my emotional as well as physical wounds healed. I had a lot of writing to do for the university through the holidays unfortunately, and although I finished delivering papers yesterday, I now have to study for one more exam and my thesis group is beginning later this month. Wait, WHAT? Oh darlings, this year is truly kicking my ass. No matter, as long as I don’t have to be writing day and night like I have been doing for the past two weeks, then I am here, dontcha know? :) Yup, that’s what I call commitment! What can I say, I love perfume and I love you so forget about rest (or shopping), here I am, ready for another review. Enough about studies and pressure and all that: Let’s just pause and breathe in the rarefied air of Monsieur Malle!

It has to be said that Geranium pour Monsieur is not going to be everyone’s favorite: with a rather toothpaste-like, strong mint-spearmint opening, it is unlikely to float everyone's boat. Not a universally accessible scent thus, but an extremely innovative, unique and beautiful one nevertheless. The mint opening is supremely cool, like an icy breath, perfect for cooling down in the evening with a couple of spritzes after a gloriously sunny, hot day. Give it five minutes and the mint loses its toothpaste qualities and calms down to an herbal, bitter-sweet breeze of freshness with gentle camphoric undertones. A slight earthiness, too, struggles to emerge, bringing the senses on the cusp of delicious anticipation.

The heart notes are dominated by geranium. If you haven’t smelled geranium essential oil (Pelargonium Odorantissimum), do it now: any perfume lover that wants to train his or her nose to better pick out notes can start successfully with this one. Its scent is extremely pungent and extremely unforgettable. Alone and in good quality high concentrations it is rather unpleasant, smelling profusely of citronella and leaving a rather sour, dry and ever so slightly earthy trail. The reason I so eagerly suggest it as an early tool to train your nose, is that once you smell it, you won’t forget its scent again, preparing you to readily pick it out in complex compositions. In Geranium pour Monsieur the dose is just right. Yes, it is used generously, so that the end result is instantly recognizable as a composition in which the geranium note steals the starring role, but it is used with such consideration along with the supporting notes, that it shines brightly, jubilantly, youthfully, all its harshness beautifully tempered by the lovely bitter-sweetness surrounding it. So let’s return to those supporting notes then: the mint is unbelievably still there, providing quiet freshness and a cool breeze. Its herbal aspect is underscored by a dill note (oh yes, don’t laugh, I am quite serious), whose inherent soft anise aspects are enhanced by sweet fennel and barely-there anise. You see how genius that progression goes? From the is-it-there, is-it-not anise aspect of dill, to the stronger aniseedic scent of fennel, and finally, to the oh-so moderately used anise? Beautifully considerate, isn’t it? The result is beautiful too, balanced and calm - never a spiky note. Finally, hints of clove and cinnamon underscore the sweetness gently, provide a good bit of dark spiciness to the mix and enhancing the quietly camphoric impression.

The drydown is pure glory. The freshness dies down to a whisper and allows itself to be superseded by clean musks (think fresh sheets), but the beauty truly comes from the round voluptuousness provided by the sweet ambers: soft incense rises through a cloud of yummy, vanillic Siam Benzoin and beautifully balsamic storax. It is all gorgeously rounded off by creamy-sweet sandalwood. Despite this being a predominately masculine scent, it really can work like a charm on a woman. While its signature is definitely masculine, at no point is it even close to aggressive. Proof positive of how well it can work on a woman is Sniffapalooza’s Karen Dubin. She bought this while on our trip and her sillage was so magnificent I had to immediately ask her what she was wearing. Do give this one a try, it might just surprise you. If I am honest, I’ll even admit that I like it better on women than on men. Hey did I say this out loud? Apologies in advance to all the Monsieurs reading my blog - Sorry guys, we’re stealing this one from your shelf!

Images: toothpaste tube via Flickr by twenty_questions, Geranium pour Monsieur flacon

Dans Tes Bras by Frederic Malle : Perfume Review

Dans Tes Bras (meaning “In Your Arms”) has been a notoriously difficult perfume to review. In fact, I’ve been lugging the carded sample with me for more than a month, first in a handbag, waiting for that opportune moment when I’d sit quietly at a café to take notes, then later –when that did not work- in a resealable bag in which it travelled with me to Greece and then back. The surprising bit comes here: it was not lack of time that had me tongue-tied, but the perfume itself. Double the surprise when you consider this is not just the newest Malle, but also a violet scent, violet being a note which I absolutely love. So what was the problem? To my horror, Dans Tes Bras actually made me nauseous the first couple of times I tried it. To my nose it smelled improbably synthetic, to the point that I actually had to scrub it off. After taking a little break from it, I tested it again, only to discover that… it simply bored me. While this is by no stretch of the imagination an objective take on the perfume itself (and perhaps it is not even fair), as I’ve mentioned before, I am growing quite tired of the violet/iris fashion that has been sweeping the perfume world like a forest fire during a particularly windy summer. Having said that, this obviously would not have been an issue had this been the most exciting violet I’d smelled in ages. Unfortunately it is not. (Perhaps Stephen Jones for CdG will manage to claim that spot if I ever get the chance to sniff it!)

After another little break, however, I’ve managed to actually warm up to Dans Tes Bras. Maybe it’s the fact that I am studying a book on Philosophy of Science at the moment, which actually tends to be even more boring than Dans Tes Bras' particular brand of violets. All jokes aside though, this is not a bad perfume. Dans Tes Bras promises to deliver “The deep and lasting odor of warm skin, with all its salty hints and rich overtones.”. The disappointing bit is that it smells nothing like skin. Still, we can rejoice for the inclusion of savory hints in the opening: The scent unfolds with the tingling saltiness of salmiac candy over a soft iris scent, before the sweet scent of violets kicks in. Right at the heart, the scent turns bizarrely mushroomy. Think fresh, earthy, uncooked mushrooms with a hint of (now you’re gonna get scared) metallic blood . The best approximation would be to imagine adding a few drops of Etat Libre d’Orange’s Secretions Magnifique on a bed of transparent, sweet violets. The rocky stage of slightly metallic, earthy mushrooms passes quite slowly, but patience will be rewarded when the fragrance makes yet another transition into a stage that smells purely of daintily sweet violets and something herbal, or vaguely minty. For me, this is the most interesting stage indeed, as I keep catching myself trying to place the slightly dissonant, fresh, almost medicinal note. The drydown is all earthy, pale violets and tends to be comforting enough to make me contemplate reapplying.

Talk of mushrooms, blood, earth and minty hints, just might make this perfume sound far more interesting and captivating than it really is, especially if I also add that Dans Tes Bras never smells quite the same, but tends to appear subtly different with every application. It has to be said however, that despite all those little things that make it interesting and different, the overwhelming impression it leaves me with, is that of a common violet.