Lyn Harris La Fleur, La Rose & La Poudrée For Marks & Spencer - Part 2: Mini-Reviews

Lyn Harris looking satisfied with her handiwork, as well she might!

I thought I might write mini-reviews of these three new perfumes for M & S, partly because I am never very confident of my nose's ability to deconstruct the development of a fragrance, but also because I wrote 14,000 words for work since my last post!  Yes indeedy.  I can hardly credit it, but my brain definitely feels as though it has been through the wringer in the past week.  I am not totally "worded out", but let's just say that I find myself massively drawn to non-verbal communication of all kinds at the moment.  Oh, I just looked that up, and there are eight types, apparently - as many as that?  Here they are:

Facial expressions, gestures, body language and posture, eye gaze, appearance (includes choice of perfume! Or it could do, though that is not an example they give...), haptics (I know that from my studies on car dashboards - it's a fancy name for touch), proxemics (fancy name for personal space) and paralinguistics (fancy name for tone of voice.  No, strike that one, as it also involves words, and we are keeping those to a minimum, or trying to.)

"So get on with your mini-reviews then!", I hear you chorus.

LA FLEUR ("Truth or Look" aka "New Dare")

“A floral classic, white gardenia and Indian tuberose flowers set the tone with gentle woods, vanilla Bourbon and musk.”

Source: haircomesthebride.com(!)

When I first applied La Fleur on skin in store I had a banging headache and thought it was a bit loud and shrill, with that shampoo-y chemically vibe commonly found in gardenia-"containing" scents (well, excluding the really high end ones like Isabey).  Yes, Jo Malone Vintage Gardenia, I'm looking at you.   No wonder you were discontinued.  Then when I tried La Fleur at home, with all my faculties on form, the opening was more "bright and juicy", and still a little bit synthetic if I am honest, but the impression was not as marked.  I was reminded quite a lot of Madonna's Truth or Dare, which also has a big loud artificial opening, though it additionally has all that caramel undercurrent going on.  And it is somewhat louder than La Fleur, I might add!  

But anyway, very quickly that startling entry settles into the main turn, as La Fleur morphs into a very creditable  poor man's version of Dior's New Look 1947 laid over a bed of Truth or Dare - minus the caramel.  Not a deep bed, mind - one of those narrow caravan mattresses.  For I get more New Look than Truth or Dare as La Fleur wears on.  Oh, and I mean "poor" mainly in the monetary sense, for aside from the first few moments, La Fleur feels anything but cheap.  And at £25 for 50ml, it actually is every bit as inexpensive as a celebuscent.  As Truth or Dare, indeed!  But La Fleur comes across as classier than Truth or Dare - which I thought wasn't at all bad when it came out - and its quality feel overall is somewhere in between that and New Look, just as one might expect from such a hybrid smellalike!  I can't quite make up my mind where it sits along the spectrum, but at least half way.  I sense that my knowledge of how much New Look actually costs may be playing into my perception of its superior quality, and I really would have needed to have smelt La Fleur and New Look blind to be sure of my ground.  Though it should be remembered that the opening of New Look doesn't smell artificial, not even for a minute or two.  

When La Fleur gets properly into stride though, you have this pretty big white floral that has been tamed, and tastefully muskified - but crucially not laundry muskified.  In fact The Duchess of Cambridge would have been better off wearing this on her wedding day, because it is the sort of perfume she was going for, though she ended up with something much more sharp and artificial throughout.  

For reference, here are the notes for New Look and Truth or Dare - they are by no means the same, but there is some white floral-vanillic-musk crossover for sure.  I see there is no musk mentioned in New Look below, but maybe the benzoin strikes me that way.

New Look: peony, ylang-ylang, pink pepper, jasmine sambac, rose, tuberose, iris, benzoin, and vanilla

Truth or Dare: jasmine, benzoin and white lily, vanilla absolute, caramelized amber and sensual musk.

LA ROSE (A Mohur-style sleeper?)

“An elegant classic; rose petals with sparkling green notes of galbanum and red berry with a base of Indonesian patchouli, sweet musk and amber.”

Right, so on first smelling this one I immediately thought that La Rose was Lyn Harris's concession to the traditional M & S shopper, the "blue rinse brigade" if I may be so uncharitable.  I got a lot of powdery rose, which can so easily read as old-fashioned to my nose, Floris White Rose-style, and the rose was of that sharp metallic type that I think is the more expensive sort (a natural of some kind even? - can anyone help me out?), but which isn't really my preferred style of the note.  I also got a rooty, earthy facet coming through, very likely from the patchouli, together with the piercing sappy brightness of the galbanum, a note I find challenging as a rule.  I thought La Rose well done and realistic, but on balance probably not my thing, at least not in its early stages.  Then as it develops, Diptyque L'Ombre dans L'Eau came to mind, which also showcases the vegetal quality of the rose.

For reference here are the notes of White Rose and L'Ombre dans L'Eau - interestingly, I seem to have picked up on a shared base of amber and musk!:

White Rose: white rose, violet leaf, carnation, violet, iris and jasmine, amber and musk

L'Ombre dans L'Eau: rose, blackcurrant bud, amber, musk, and myrrh.

I am calling this a "Mohur-style sleeper", not because La Rose smells like it particularly, apart from the retro powdery aspect - this is much greener, however - but because I suspect it will be the one that is overlooked in the trio.  La Fleur in particular is more accessible, more of a contemporary crowd-pleaser, while La Rose feels like a scent from a bygone era.  It comes across as high quality from the off, and may appeal to vintage lovers.  I must say that once the tinny green rose aspect wears off a bit, along with the excess powder of the opening, I do like its later stages quite a lot.  Which I know sounds like damning with faint praise, but the drydown is the longest stage, after all.

LA POUDREE (Hold the opening!)

 “An oriental classic; raspberry and peach nectar with soft rose, orange flower, iris Florentine, vanilla and musk.”

Fleur Oriental incense - the opening of the scent does get up my nose a bit!

I had a polarised reaction to this one: I liked the opening least out of the trio, and the drydown most.  On first application, La Poudrée hits you with a wall of thick musk which instantly harks back to Miller Harris Fleur Oriental, which I do not care for for this very reason, and in this regard is also reminiscent of Parfums de Nicolai Sacrebleu, which has a similarly suffocating opening.  A fug of powder or musk or both - I don't rightly now what I am smelling, but it could induce a headache amongst those of a delicate constitution, as I was the first time I tried it.

Compared to La Fleur, La Poudrée takes longer to move into the next stage, but it is very beautiful when it does - a rosy, fruity, vanilla oriental that I defy anyone not to be seduced by (or anyone who likes vanilla orientals as a category at least).  I can't think of any other overtly fruity vanilla orientals, but this is as lovely as it may be ground-breaking (and it probably isn't - please say if you know of others!).  I can see La Poudrée being a top seller, along with La Fleur.  And I can see La Fleur being more generally wearable, also for me.

For reference, here are the notes of Fleur Oriental and Sacrebleu - ooh, I see Fleur Oriental has musk AND heliotrope - that goes a long way towards explaining its particular fug wall!  And Sacrebleu is a seriously big production as you can see, but - and this is key - it shares "stifled orange notes" with Fleur Oriental and La Poudrée in its opening.  I also note the potentially worrying presence of tonka bean:

Fleur Oriental: fresh orange blossom, heliotrope, spicy carnation, Turkish rose, amber, vanilla and musk

Sacrebleu: mandarin orange, fruits and red berries, carnation, tuberose, jasmine, cinnamon, olibanum, woody notes, vanilla, patchouli, sandalwood, peru balsam and tonka bean.

Overall verdict?  Very well made scents, excellent for the money.  I'd buy two of the three, and with La Poudrée would simply waft and wait a bit.  Now we can all pick up a Miller Harris perfume along with our underwear and ready meals, and the high street is much the better for it.  

Photo of Lyn Harris and shots of the trio of Lyn Harris scents from the M & S website, photo of green rose from 1ms.net, photo of Fleur Oriental incense from the Miller Harris website.

Lyn Harris La Fleur, La Rose & La Poudrée For Marks & Spencer - Part 1: "Remember Preston" - An Extraordinary Tale Of Customer Service

Lyn Harris

I admire the Miller Harris brand.  Its contemporary Englishness appeals.  As does the fact that Lyn Harris is a northerner and wears trainers round the lab.   Then I like the way that - as far as I can detect - her fragrance collection doesn't adhere to any tidy overarching categories or theme; I am also amused by the fact that she famously created a scent for dogs.  Lyn Harris's bespoke perfume prices are relatively affordable compared to Roja Dove's (if not by me), and I have a soft spot for the scrolly designs on the bottles.  Additionally I love the Miller Harris teas, and having finished my stocks of Thé Pétales, I have redeployed the elegant grey canister to store Earl Grey tea bags of more homely provenance.  What else?  I love the lacquered oriental gloom of their tea room in Bruton Street.  I love the bracing citrus kick of Citron Citron shower gel.  In fact I am drawn to many aspects of the house, yet so far the fragrance line itself has failed to exert a visceral pull.   I have yet to develop a Miller Harris perfume lemming as it were.  Hence why I don't own any bottles from the range - or rather, I used to own Fleurs des Bois, but sold it on.  Okay, maybe L'Air de Rien (review here) has come quite close to flexing my solar plexus, but I am managing quite well with my small decant.

The Bruton Street tea room

Then last year I read in the press that Lyn Harris had been approached by Marks & Spencer to collaborate with them on the development of six fragrances: three for men and three for women, to be sold in their new perfume halls in the bigger category of store.  In a fascinating article by Vicki Reid, published in The Daily Telegraph magazine, Lyn Harris explains her creative vision:

"I was thinking about the M & S customer and who they were, and how I could help them come into fine fragrances.  I didn't want them to be so refined nobody could get near them, so they had to be sophisticated and accessible."

For the benefit of readers outside the UK, your typical M & S shopper leans to the conservative - and older - side.  In the cafe attached to my local branch you would be hard pushed to spot a customer not sporting a perm.  Well, amongst the women, anyway.  Their food hall is a whole other ball game, as M & S is synonymous with the ne plus ultra of ready meals, amongst other things.  "This isn't just food porn, this is M & S food porn", as the adverts used to go (well, the subtext, anyway).  Then there are also a couple of individual brands under the M & S umbrella which appeal to a (somewhat) younger demographic, namely Autograph and Per Una.  Famously, one in three British women still buys her underwear in Marks, where they cater to every taste from boudoir chic balconette bras to big - and magic - knickers.

As far as perfume is concerned, I'll be honest and say that I have studiously tuned out to the M & S offering.  The few scents I have tried in the past smelt cheap, old-fashioned, or both.  I was reminded of that trio of later releases by Sarah Jessica Parker: Dawn, Endless and Twilight, in terms of the quality level where  I felt they were pitched.  Though this is all kneejerk stuff, I might add.  I have been so indifferent to the M & S ranges in fact that I haven't even clocked any of the names, though I think there may have been one under the Autograph label on the theme of New York.

But when I heard of this joint venture between Lyn Harris and M & S, I was very, very curious, and equally optimistic.  It has become quite common in the fashion world for a leading designer to create a budget range for a high street chain or supermarket: Amanda Wakeley for Principles, Barbara Hulanicki for Top Shop, Matthew Williamson for H & M, and Gok Wan for Sainsbury's, to name just four examples of the strategy.  However, I don't recall anything like this happening in the world of fragrance - or certainly not bringing niche fragrance to the mass market on such a large scale. The plan apparently is to roll out the range into 126 stores eventually, but as my local branch is small and a bit time warp-y there was no point looking for it there.

M & S HQ in Paddington - a sample-free zone

Ever the market researcher, towards the back end of last year I rang M & S's head office in London and spoke to someone in Customer Services.  I was informed that there was no store within easy striking distance of Stafford where I could test this range first hand.  I inquired about the possibility of samples, explaining my particular interest as a British-based perfume blogger.  No samples were available, but the lady in Customer Services was hopeful of having the lab make some up specially.  "That sounds great", I said, and offered to supply empty vials if it all got too tricky, like that memorable occasion with Ormonde Jayne and Tiare.  The samples never came.  I rang back, and was referred to the M & S PR company, where I spoke to the person handling the account.  She asked me to write in, explaining why I wanted the samples, mentioning the name of my blog etc etc, but thought that in principle it should be possible to rustle a few up somehow.  The samples never came.

M & S Preston - a serendipitous beacon of customer service!

Months passed, when by chance I found myself the other weekend in the M & S store in Preston, buying one of those exotically fancy salads they do so well.  I spotted a sign to the beauty department, and decided to check out the perfume selection on the vague offchance that Preston might be a sufficiently large store to carry the Lyn Harris range.  My expectations were immediately raised by the sight of a dedicated Fragrance Hall.  And towards the end of the fixture, there was the complete Lyn Harris line, together with coffret sets of fragrance and body cream and various sizes of scented candle.  I had struck perfumed pay dirt!

I made myself known to one of the sales staff, Christine, and explained my interest in the range, and how I was dying to try the perfumes and review them on my blog.  In no time I had sprayed all six on my hands and arms, while Christine and I chatted amiably about the Lyn Harris venture, about her own favourite perfume (L'Heure Bleue), and her training from, and admiration for, Roja Dove.  Saturated in scents, I asked after the possibility of samples, though I wasn't terribly hopeful.  They had Scratch 'n' Sniff cards (or "Peel 'n' Sniff" to be precise) of La Rose, but that was the only one.  Christine promptly handed me a whole clutch of these.  But that still left the other five, notably the two remaining feminine scents, La Fleur and La Poudrée.

Almost the M & S logo fashioned from La Rose Peel 'n' Sniff cards

Nothing daunted, and keenly aware of my desire to test these perfumes at more leisure - and equally of my frustrating catalogue of failed attempts to acquire them so far - Christine conferred with her colleague Hannah.  Hannah proceeded to rummage in a drawer by the till and fetched out a handful of little clear perspex pots, of the type usually used to give customers a sample blob of a face cream, say.   Before I knew it they had a two-woman production line going, and were spraying, taping, labelling and bagging all the scents in the range, with the exception of Le Sauvage.  I think they may have run out of pots, or depleted their pot stocks to perilously low levels, so we called it a day after five of the six - I was more interested in the women's ones anyway.  After thanking the duo profusely, I hotfooted it back to my hotel, taking care to keep the bag upright in case the sticky tape wasn't hermetic, and the jostling pots leaked into one another.  But apart from a bit of evaporation, I managed to transport my precious cargo all the way back to Stafford without incident, and have been quietly trying them this week, once my sense of smell gradually returned following a pesky cold.

Mini-reviews to follow in Part 2!

Meanwhile, for readers who didn't live in Britain in the 80s, here is the advert to which the title: "Remember Preston" alludes...; - )



Photo of Lyn Harris from M & S website, photo of M & S HQ from artofthestate.co.uk, photo of M & S Preston from Google Maps, photo of M & S underwear from Ebay, other photos my own