'Cover girl': The Social parfum and the Sindy doll school of perfumery

Source: pinterest

When I was a kid, I had a Sindy doll. Well, I had a steady procession of Sindy dolls in fact, as my mother persisted in melting their heads under the grill. Every time she did, I would write a plaintive letter to Mattel, whereupon the empathetic people in Customer Services would promptly send me a replacement. I was not allowed Barbie, I might add - her physique was deemed too preposterously provocative. Nor was I allowed Tiny Tears for that matter - too anatomically correct. So serial Sindys it was. That said, one outfit you could buy for her comprised a rather raunchy patent mac - for a very affordable half a crown as I recall - so she wasn't entirely the wholesome girl-next-door sort she was cracked up to be.

But what, you may ask, is the connection between Sindy and a new perfume with the rather curious name of The Social parfum? Well, my initial take on the scent was that it's not so much about being sociable as about dressing up. For the distinctive feature of The Social parfum is that it is one scent, however, as a kind of 'fashion accessory', for want of a better term, you can buy one or more spare boxes (The Social parfum calls them 'covers'), from a range of fairly vivid shades, swapping them over as the fancy takes you. I see echoes here of the different coloured bottles of Kenzo Amour - there you can pick a bottle at the outset in your preferred shade, but if you then fancied a change, you would have to commit to buying a second bottle. Here of course you are only investing in a replacement box.

Source: recenzieparfemov.sk

So at some point over the summer I was contacted out of the blue by The Social parfum. After my usual demurral and request for a sample instead - I levelled with them and admitted that I didn't think this perfume would be my cup of tea - the company assured me that it was no trouble to send me a complimentary bottle anyway. Shortly afterwards, a bottle duly turned up in its default white plastic box, together with a separate pink box to swap the flacon into - why, they didn't even ask me what colour I'd like, hehe! ;) ;) At a pinch you could even just swap the top over, so you would have a white bottom and a pink top, though I am not sure why you would want to do that, unless you were very drawn to the look of Neapolitan ice cream.

Yes, this whole 'dressing up' game is doubtless not aimed at the likes of mature women in their 50s, I sense - or even immature 50-somethings, which is more apt. I am guessing from the marketing photos that their target audience is teens to early 20s, though even that age group has surely long since abandoned their dolls. But hold on, hold on.....I suppose if people swap the covers out on their mobile phones or Kindles etc - which is a distinct possibility - there might be a market for doing this with perfume bottle boxes after all...?

The Dolly Mixture / Neapolitan look

I should perhaps have clocked the blurb on the brand's website sooner - the rationale behind the launch is set out there. And I think we can guess the target audience from the inclusion of the word 'totally' - that's 'yoof speak' all right, though I am occasionally guilty of it myself.  Hmm, now 'code' in what sense? 'Code' as in a received mode of behaviour, like 'dress code', or 'code' as in speaking in a secret language with your mates? You know, in a Masonic funny handshake kind of way? Could be a mixture of both in fact.

"The new perfume code.

The one and only women's eau de parfum you can totally mix & match as you like. 6 covers 1 fragrance for the new social woman.

Collect them all, share your personal parfum with your friends and get social!"

And another thing - this is eau de parfum, not 'parfum', though I don't suppose anyone looking at the presentation would be misled into thinking this was extrait strength...

Also, the 'parfum' is only 'personal' if you happen to have chosen a different box from your pals - the perfume of course remains the same. And that's always assuming you know anyone else with it in the first place. But that is most likely the whole point - a group of young female friends, united by a common perfume, but distinguished by their own choice of coloured box.

It's a concept, no question, but I wouldn't buy into it now, and I am not sure I would have done so back then, had I been into perfume at that age. Though as I say, there could be something in it, based on the swappable mobile phone covers fad. I'd be interested to hear what any readers think of this, especially those with daughters in the target age group.

I also took a look at The Social parfum's Facebook page - it is an Italian company and there are a number of photographs on there of young women holding little cards with the house's heart shaped logo on them, looking happy together - and quite sociable, it must be said - in piazzas up and down the land.

And what about the scent itself, I hear you ask?

Top notes: bergamot, blackcurrant, white peach
Middle notes: waterlily, rose, almond blossom
Base notes: exotic woods, vanilla musk

Source: slapiton.tv

Hmm...The Social parfum reminds me a bit of how I would imagine a mainstream take on L'Artisan's Mure et Musc to smell, and it also has some crossover with YSL Parisienne, which I remember describing once - rather uncharitably perhaps, looking back - as 'disgruntled purple talc'. I am wearing the two scents side-by-side, and there is a definite resemblance, though The Social parfum has a cleaner blackcurrant note and a marked kind of nuttiness to it (or pepper, maybe?), where Parisienne is more powdery. For the market they are aiming for, The Social parfum is probably in the right ballpark, even if it isn't my thing. If you are any age and a particular fan of blackcurrant, it might be worth a sniff too, though I am not sure that these are available in store anywhere.

Oh, and if anyone is curious about the colourways, they are as follows - mostly on the bright side, as I say:

GREEN MOJITO
BLUE'S (sic)
LIGHT DUSTY PINK
BLACK ANGUS
HOT PINK
WHITE

The separate covers are 11 euros each and the 50ml eau de parfum + a white cover (the 'starter cover') is 67 euros, which strikes me as rather expensive for what is essentially a mainstream scent from an unknown house. I note on the bottom that the perfume is made by ROLS SAS in Italy, a company of which I can find absolutely no trace in Google. And having had a little play with the shopping part of the site, there doesn't seem to be a way you could pick a coloured cover as your base box, meaning that if you fancy anything other than white, you automatically have to fork out the extra 11 euros for the spare.

The gargoyle reassembled the boxes into their correct colours

So may I ask...do you swap your mobile phone covers, or Kindle or iPad covers etc, and would you be inclined to do so with perfume boxes - just for the hell of it to ring the changes, or to differentiate yourself from your friends' bottles? 

And if not, do you know anyone who might? 

Parfums MDCI Rose De Siwa: The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Quality Controller

When I acquired my wine and beer chiller last year to take better care of my scent collection (intermittent icicle issues notwithstanding), I spoke of how keeping products chilled was something by which I set great store - something "in my blood", almost - ever since my stint as a Brand Manager at St Ivel. Exploding yoghurts, mouldy cheese and rancid orange juice were regarded as signs of professional and moral failure, and to this day I remain keenly vigilant about things going off - whether food, or now perfume.

However, where the job of self-appointed Quality Controller becomes tricky is when faced with a perfume which is mutating in an unfamiliar way. It doesn't smell as you remember, but it doesn't have all the hallmarks of a completely "turned" scent - the brown, viscous liquid, the strong alcoholic smell and so on.

This is the problem currently troubling me in the case of Rose de Siwa by Parfums MDCI. I have an 8ml decant of it, which I loaned to a friend for nine months, and which has recently come back into my possession.

Here is a rather lyrical description of Rose de Siwa from Luckyscent:

"Named after the flowers of the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, the perfume is delicate and fresh, truly an exhausted traveler’s dream of a paradise in the midst of a hot desert…with beautiful fountains, and luxurious trees and roses fresh with the morning dew. The scent is a charming, playful rhapsody in pink, a joyful, flirty, truly feminine composition that features pink peonies, pink roses, and pink fruits, with violets adding a darker depth to the blend. It winks, it smiles, it twirls in its gauzy, pink dress…what a little charmer!"

And for more empirically minded readers, without ado here are the notes:

Lychee, peony, hawthorn, Moroccan and Turkish roses, violet, cedar, musk and vetiver

So overall the vibe of this scent is "fresh" and "limpid". The lychee alone rather points in this direction. And that is in fact how I remember it - quite modern in feel, and linear - a straight up rose like Lancome's Mille et Une Roses.

And this seems to be the feeling of Abigail in I Smell Therefore I Am:

"Rose de Siwa is the truest sweet pink rose in fragrance form. There’s nothing soapy or powdery – all you need to do is bend down, feel the heft of the petals in your hand and inhale deeply."

But.....and it is a big but....this is not how it smells anymore. It does smell powdery - but not in a way that seems deliberate. More in a slightly choky way that makes me think of inhaling all those clumps of dust lurking amongst the writhing tangle of computer cables on the floor beneath my desk. I was vividly reminded of these yesterday, when I had to crawl on my back down there to reconnect the fax line. There may also be a sharp alcholic note, though I am less sure of this. But it doesn't smell of an oasis, or like burying your face in dewy rose petals. It is acidic and powdery and depresses rather than lifts the spirit.

Now this scent was created by Francis Kurkdjian, who doesn't like working with rose notes apparently, prompting Abigail to go on to say:

"I think this makes me like Rose de Siwa even more, like it’s an unwanted child, left on my doorstep in a basket, that I’ll gladly take in and care for. I’ll put pink ribbons in her hair, and dress her up in the cutest pink gingham outfits, oh we’ll have so much fun me and little Rosie de Siwa."

Well, something tells me that she wouldn't feel so inclined to adopt this particular Rose de Siwa. Our little girl has aged rapidly and would look most incongruous in pink ribbons or gingham. She is considerably older than Kate Moss, who is also doing a spot of writhing in the back of a taxi wearing Parisienne. This is the scent my Rose de Siwa most closely resembles in its current degraded state. But at least Parisienne smells intentionally powdery - it doesn't conjure up musty corners and household neglect, or unidentified tangy fluids.

It's a shame. I can't remember how I came by this decant, whether in a swap or bought from a split site, but its trading value would have been quite high, Parfums MDCI prices being what they are. And I cannot blame my friend necessarily, who kept it at ambient temperature in a bedroom as far as I know, though not in a provocatively sunny spot.

But my disappointment is also compounded by my uncertainty. For when your experience of niche scents is mostly through mail order and occasional forays to major cities, you lack the opportunity to re-sniff something to verify how it is meant to smell. I can only compare this decant to my hazy memory of how it used to be, and am greatly helped here by these reviews on the Internet, which tend to confirm my suspicions once you decode the fanciful imagery. If this were a vial of No 5, I could just toddle down to Boots to refresh my memory of what it is meant to be like, but when it comes to niche scents I am woefully isolated and lacking in such points of reference.

The upshot of all of this is that if anyone out there has a sample of Rose de Siwa in good nick, I would be happy to send them my decant for forensic examination, to see if I am genuinely on to something - as in on to something being off. Assuming I am right, this wouldn't restore my Rose de Siwa to its previously dewy glory, but I would at least have closure...