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

Daisy by Marc Jacobs : Perfume Review

I have been saving my sample of Daisy for a couple of weeks now, with the prospect of using it for this month’s Tried and Tested feature. It struck me though, that perhaps something a little more elaborate is needed in this instance: many of you are likely to be wondering what this actually smells like and whether a visit to the closest department store is in order, since the cute-as-a-button bottle has garnered so much attention.

Well, let me start off by saying that I can hardly believe the nose that created the lovely, subtle and oh-so-thoughtful Bulgari Blu is the same nose behind this scent! The first whiff is quite nice – I get a quite interesting blend of honeysuckle and green foliage from it. Rapidly though, the pleasant green scent gets replaced by an intense wave of fruit. On a paper strip the only fruit I can detect is strawberry, on my skin though, I smell a whole range of red fruit, including pomegranate. Unfortunately, this little fruit salad is rather bland – there is no spice to make it interesting, no dash of a smooth liqueur or even a dollop of cream to make it more palatable: Just some citrus juice to keep the fruit from going brown and a sprig of mint for presentation. And even that tiny sprig of mint spoils it for me: quickly the jus starts reminding me of chewing gum. The type of chewing gum that remains slightly ambivalent where flavor is concerned, uncomfortably hovering between full fruitiness and freshness. As the white florals (jasmine, gardenia) rise to the top, it all goes downhill. Daisy quickly starts smelling completely unoriginal – in fact, it is indistinguishable from other generic fruity-floral concoctions. Too, despite the high intensity of the opening, the entire funfair fizzles out relatively quickly. Daisy lovers will have to reapply frequently: an hour and a half later there is but a trace of musky fruitiness remaining and I practically have to exert effort to discern it. Well, at least the bottle is gorgeous right? Truly, the bottle is very photogenic, but it failed to wow me in real life. I mean, of course it is a beautiful bottle, just not the radiant, whimsical little jewel I was prepared to find judging from the images I had seen. But to be fair, Daisy does have some saving graces. It does not fall into the pitfall of being overly sweet, like many of her sisters do. And once again unlike many other fruity-florals, this one does not smell chemical. It is not likely to be classified as a scrubber by many, nor is it likely to offend anyone. It’s just highly unremarkable and generic. You’ve smelled it all before.

All in all, I have to say that with a name and bottle like this one, I consider this to be an opportunity lost for Marc Jacobs. For me, Daisy would have ideally been a truly innocent, transparent scent for everyday wear. Freshly cut grass and chamomile for example, would have done it for me. They would have perfectly described the feeling of laying lazily on a grassy field studded with tiny daisies on a sunny day. I find fruit to have been a bad choice for a fragrance trying to evoke such images. Not to mention the fact that jasmine and gardenia are both too heavy to be associated with anything daisy-like.

Sorry Marc – Love the shoes.