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.

No Unmarked Door Unpushed: Meeting Katie Puckrik Again And Cadging A "Smadge" Of Madonna Truth Or Dare

My recent merch selling duties in Germany meant that unfortunately I had to pass up Katie Puckrik's lively talk at the Perfume Lovers London meet-up in April. Comprehensive accounts of - and the next best thing to attending - the evening may however be found on Candy Perfume Boy and Olfactorias Travels.

As it happens, I was down in London the last weekend in April, so Katie and I arranged to meet on the Sunday afternoon for a "senior supper" and a bit of a catch up. I had just clocked her hilarious, no-holds barred article in The Guardian about her meeting with Stephen Nilsen, the perfumer behind Madonna's new fragrance release, Truth or Dare, and a few days ahead of our meeting dared to send a cheeky request of my own.

"Really enjoyed your Guardian piece and wondered if you could possibly bring a smidge ("smadge"?? : - ) ) of the Madonna scent on Sunday, as I am mad keen to try it, having recently enjoyed a bit of a white floral epiphany."

Katie replied that that would be no bother, but could I please bring a vial with me, as she hadn't got any decanting tackle with her in London. She gave me the address of a club in East London of which she was a member, and said she would meet me in reception, adding that the door was unmarked, but that I should just push it and go on in.

So I got to the address with five minutes to spare, only to find that every single door in that particular street was unmarked, not with building names or even numbers (though I only had the name of the street anyway). Suffice to say that if I was in the signage business, I would give that entire postcode a very wide berth. But okay, I thought, not to worry, I will push every last one of them and see if any yield to the touch and lead into something resembling a reception area. I say "resembling", because East London is noted for its trendy warehouse conversions and other quirky developments, so one should keep an open mind as to the possible layout of any given building.

Some eight doors later, I asked a passing American for help - on the principle that if Katie is an American living in London, there may well be others with good local knowledge, and so it proved. "That's the one you want" he said affably, "you see where those people are going in?" Aha - I suppose I should have taken the party of four club members filing in as a bit of a clue. After all, no one had made any attempt to gain entry to those other unmarked doors I was scoping in my ten perplexed minutes wandering up and down the street.

Shortly after that, Katie herself arrived, and after a quick tour of the building (also a warehouse conversion!), we ensconced ourselves on the squashy sofas of one of the lounges, and proceeded to "download" our news over a late brunch of portabello mushrooms and poached eggs, which we recast as a "senior brunch". This was washed down in my case by a pot of tea, because I had a lot of "catching up" to do on that front too to meet my copious daily requirement.

The meal over, we got down to the serious business of decanting my sample of Truth or Dare from Katie's handbag size bottle. We both had a go in the end - with and without funnel - and I ended up applying the not inconsiderable overspray to both wrists and neck. That was my SOTE sorted, then! We did finally coax a couple of ml into the atomiser I had brought with me for the purpose. My first thought was that the juice itself was a pretty peachy pink, not unlike Shalimar Parfum Initial, to which I have recently taken an unexpected shine.

Before setting out to write this post, I couldn't resist taking a peek at the reviews already out there, which are all favourable as far as I can tell, and with good reason. For Truth or Dare is a cut above your usual celebuscent all right.

As I type I am wearing a number of diva-ish floral fragrances at once to see which ones Truth or Dare most closely resembles. Robin of Now Smell This dubbed Truth or Dare "Fracas Lite" in her review, while Jen of This Blog Really Stinks likened it to "Fracas Candy" (as in Prada Candy).

Well, I'd say that those are two very good analogies: in the case of the latter, you've got a big white floral bouquet with tuberose and gardenia at its heart, like twin prom dresses with swishy, bouffant skirts, and underneath all that you have a sweet, candied, fluffy layer not unlike the base of Parfums MDCI Promesse de L'Aube. I detected a syrupy vanilla, and at one point could have sworn that a toffee apple accord flitted in and out again. "Miscellaneous calorific desserts", let's just say. Or one of those Ben & Jerry ripple-type ice creams with crumbled bits of pavlova.

Notes: gardenia, tuberose and neroli, with jasmine, benzoin tears, white lily petals, vanilla absolute, caramelized amber, and sensual musk

Now Truth or Dare may sound a bit full on, but it really is soft and caressing in a little while, like a musky meringue - the drydown is reminiscent of the perfume Kate Middleton didn't in fact wear on her wedding day, ie the "wrong" batch of White Gardenia Petals that accidentally came my and Birgit's way... I am also wearing "correct" White Gardenia Petals, and it is not much like Truth or Dare - too sharply green, wan and metallic to my nose.

As well as being these variants on Fracas, another scent which I feel Truth or Dare resembles is Gardénia Pétale, from Van Cleef & Arpels' Collection Extraordinaire.

Notes: green notes, citrus notes, lily of the valley, jasmine, and gardenia

Like Truth or Dare, it is a plush white floral blend featuring lily, jasmine and gardenia. Okay, LOTV in this case, but at the risk of playing note bingo, that is still a fair bit of crossover.

For fun, I just tried layering Gardénia Pétale with its stablemate, Lys Carmin, which has a very sweet, gourmand facet that I thought might possibly mimic the edible drydown of Truth or Dare. And d'you know, it isn't a dupe by any manner of means, but there is a marked likeness between this layered combo and Truth or Dare - much more so say than between it and either of the Van Cleefs in isolation. Now Lys Carmin doesn't have the same kind of sweetness exactly - it is too spicy for one, and generally darker in feel - but texturally it is very similar in terms of the fluffy nimbus thing it has got going on. And it adds the vanilla in our note bingo game, and yet more lily!

Notes: Lily, pink peppercorn, ylang ylang, vanilla, and sandalwood

You may not be surprised to learn that the next day in Selfridges I came this close to buying a 50ml bottle of Truth or Dare, but ended up "fondling and replacing" it as is my practice these days. Even though it cost a mere £25 for 30ml, £32 for 50ml and £42 for 75ml. Clearly the more you spray, the more you save, to annexe Mr Bonkers' beer mantra for a moment. So that is a "Fracas Lite" price to boot!

I don't know what stayed my hand. Quite possibly the bottle, which looks a bit plasticky in reality, and reminds me of a kitschy replica of an altar my dad bought when I was a child - at Lourdes, or somewhere like that selling cheap religious souvenirs. I distinctly remember that this white plastic altar also had accents of gold, plus a red chalice (coated to look like burnished metal and concealed behind a little door, for all the world like a chocolate in an advent calendar). And Madonna was of course brought up as a Catholic, so it is perhaps not surprising that those early influences might assert themselves later - in a scent bottle with ecclesiastical overtones, or the dodgy outfit of her Like A Virgin video.

So it might have been that, or the fact that the sales assistant in Selfridges and I were discussing the intended demographic for Truth or Dare, whose upper limit of 45 stops a good 8 years short of Madge's actual age. The SA told me that it was in fact selling to ALL ages, including a lot of teenage girls, and maybe that was what put it beyond the pale for me. Which is plain daft - and cutting my nose off to spite my face - because this is a well-made fragrance, which I like a lot!

But meanwhile, I have a bit of my sample left, and thanks to Katie have also inherited a scented candle featuring the fragrance, which would doubtless have taken up her entire hold baggage allowance on the flight home. And if those two things are not enough to sate the Madonna scent lemming, I reserve the right to dare to crack - by which I mean "fondle and take to till" - the next time I am in Selfridges, which may very well be next week...


Photo of East London from macnovel.org.uk, photo of Madonna Truth or Dare from fashionison.com, other photos my own

Bonkers "On Tour" In Germany: April Aromatics At KaDeWe, Berlin, And Thoughts On "Tuning Out"

Saturday 21st April found me in Berlin, with my merch selling duties acquitted and a free day stretching ahead until a late evening flight home. I had plans to go sniffing in at least three different outlets, but in the end only managed a flying foray to KaDeWe, an upmarket department store with a large selection of designer and niche scents, which I also visited on my previous trip to Berlin a year ago that week.

And in KaDeWe I only sniffed scents from one brand: April Aromatics from Berlin-based artisanal perfumer, Tanja Bochnig. April Aromatics is a range I had been curious to try ever since reading Asali's glowing review of Unter Den Linden on All I Am A Redhead. And now here I was in Berlin in April - not exactly ON Unter den Linden, even though it is on the long side as boulevards go - or UNDER linden trees on any street, even, but just being in Berlin felt quite fitting!

The sales assistant in KaDeWe encouraged me to sniff the pre-prepared fragrance strips for all eight scents in the range, and said I could keep any I liked. No samples were available, which is perhaps not surprising given that the perfume oils I tested cost a whopping 70 euros for the 10ml size, while the EDP is 189 euros for 30ml. However, these scents are an all-natural line, so one would expect to pay top euro.

April Aromatics sums up its ethos on the company's website:

"Working only with natural extracts enables us to experience the true soul of a plant and April Aromatics captures these essences in its perfumes."

Well, the topic of whether plants do in fact have a soul is perhaps moot, and best left for another time. The brand also proudly states that it doesn't use "animal derived ingredients that involve the killing and torturing of animals". Now I didn't think any perfumery ingredients were sourced by killing or torturing animals nowadays, though please do leave a comment if you know otherwise. But there again, if plants have a soul, by the same token they may well also have a body that isn't too keen on being slathered in grease and having the living daylights pressed out of it. Or being scalded in a hot alembic or whatever. You can't have it both ways, surely?! Okay, so I was being facetious there, but selective anthropomorphism when it suits your purpose strikes me as a bit cheeky. : - )

But on to my testing of the range - all eight on paper, then I sprayed my two favourites on skin.

BOHEMIAN SPICE

Notes: orange, sandalwood, patchouli, incense, vetiver, vanilla

"Very spicy" was my rather terse verdict on this one. I know that isn't much to go on, but the subtext will be that it smelt more like the jumbled contents of a kitchen spice rack than a perfume you might care to wear.

JASMINA

Notes: jasmine flowers, ylang-ylang, pink grapefruit

Jasmine in 3D - this was seriously indolic to my nose. I was reminded of Gorilla Lust, which also features a vampy ylang-ylang note.

ROSE L'ORANGE

Notes: rosa centifolia, rose otto, neroli, mandarin, vanilla

"Weird, spicy, sour" is all you're getting on that one!

PRECIOUS WOODS

Notes: sandalwood, cedarwood, vetiver, buddha wood, cistus

All I have written is "very woody". Even the sales assistant apologised for the extreme woodiness of this scent, saying that it might appeal to men. Or extreme wood-loving women, obviously. An 8 out of 10 on the "trapped in a tea chest" / "planky" scale.

NECTAR OF LOVE

Notes: tuberose, neroli, jasmine, rose, sandalwood, yuzu

"Spicy, honeyed, a bit like Amoureuse?" As anyone who knows me will realise, a comparison with Amoureuse is not a good thing, the DeRae scent in question being a sticky, indolic, veritable Venus Fly Trap of a scent as far as I am concerned. Or was concerned in 2008 when I last tried it. I may be feeling a shade braver now, you never know.

ROSENLUST

Notes: rosa damascena, rose absolute, orris root, tonka bean

"Very true rose" is my bald comment on Rosenlust, my second favourite. They definitely "expressed" the souls of the petals in this one - in every sense of the term!

LIQUID DREAMS

Notes: lemon peel, narcissus flowers, osmanthus petals

This one was "very light, almost aquatic", and would have made a pretty day scent, but it didn't move me particularly, or smell recognisably niche.

UNTER DEN LINDEN

Notes: lindenblossom, mimosa, honey, bergamot, gardenia

My favourite of all - the linden note was very pretty, with a slightly indolic aspect that was well within my comfort zone. I was reminded of Ajne Printemps and its dewy, bright, photo-realistic linden and gardenia notes. Just a minute though - I thought that gardenia couldn't be directly captured in natural perfumery, but only evoked through cunningly circuitous routes? Presumably Tanja Bochnig combined natural extracts of other flowers to create the illusion of gardenia - a fusion of other white floral "souls", if you will. Yes, I think that must be it, for here is a telling commment on the Ajne website:

"Printemps is a complex, soft floral reminiscent of the blossom-filled Parisian air after spring rain. Jane began with subtle top notes that mimic soft gardenia, followed by deeper heart notes of intoxicating flowering lime."

Well, I would say that that description applies pretty well to the Unter den Linden scent too, if we substitute a windy, sunny yet rainy day in Berlin - just like the weather I experienced that Saturday.

So how come all I achieved in a whole day in Berlin was the testing of eight scents from a single range? Well, in KaDeWe I think I wasn't in the mood for the massive selection on offer, especially as photos were not permitted and the prospect of attempting to jot down the content of the fixtures was daunting. And whether I had managed to document the brands carried or not - which I hoped I might have partly covered already in my earlier KaDeWe post - I simply wasn't up for trying a bunch of things I had never heard of - that would have been too random. And generally I felt a bit dazed by the noise and the bright lights and the Saturday afternoon crowds, so I headed out again after as little as 10 minutes, even though it had taken me a good half an hour to get there!

Does anyone else have those days when you don't feel like shopping (of any kind), though there are things you need and you find yourself in a place that is the perfect hunting ground? When the term "retail therapy" is a misnomer and the "therapeutic" course of action is to be outside pounding the pavements?

Well, I guess that was how it was for me that day, though I felt suitably guilty for "wasting" a perfectly good sniffing opportunity in a major European city. But having spent a lot of that week on trains or sitting at a table in a gloomy venue, I just fancied being out in the fresh, damp air, kicking the blossoms strewn on the pavement by the blustery winds. And though I set off in the direction of one more store - independent perfumery, The Different Scent - I developed a sudden urge to track down a secondhand clothes shop where I had scored some bargains last year. I did eventually find the place but it was shut, so, having blown my chances of making it to The Different Scent before closing time, I wandered along the Berlin wall instead, taking photographs and pausing every now and then to watch the world go by.

And at the airport later, as I was reflecting on the day's activities and the conspicuous lack of perfume content, I mused on whether there was more to it than my not being in the mood on this occasion. I had after all spent the week immersed in sound, not scent, so perhaps I was stuck in a different sensory "groove"? I had also devoted myself to a new and unusual task, and my world had pretty much shrunk to the merch table in each venue.

And in my world I was preoccupied with such important matters as rubber band stocks for the posters, ensuring that I correctly distinguished between one euro coins and the twos!, and that the sizes and designs of T-shirts sold were correctly logged, along with any requests for vinyl. I had all but tuned out to the rest of my life with its sundry other roles and personae, interests and concerns. I was "Head of Merch etc, Germany" and that was that.

Also, I had gained a fair bit of satisfaction from doing what was essentially a favour to the band. I was being useful, and felt appreciated. They even presented me with a gift of a travel pepper mill, because I had previously complained that when you ask for black pepper in Germany you mostly get given white pepper and a weary look. Pepper mills are even a bit hit and miss in Italian restaurants, though those are undoubtedly your best bet. Well, speaking for the calibre of restaurant I frequent, certainly.

So it did occur to me to wonder if I was feeling sufficiently good about myself on account of a job well done that I didn't have any need for perfume as a mood enhancer? Not that I am suggesting that perfume's primary function in my life hitherto had been to act as olfactory Prozac. However, given that my discovery of fragrance coincided with the onset of middle age and its attendant insecurities, there may be some kind of connection there. Has anyone else noted an inverse correlation between high levels of happiness and low levels of perfume usage? : - ) I know that when I am very stressed I don't feel like wearing perfume either, so it could be that for me, extreme emotions of any kind are less compatible with fragrance. Like the "soul" issue above, this is rather a big question to lob in so casually at the end of a post, but I am curious to learn if it strikes a chord with anyone reading. Though it may of course have been a one-off in my own case anyway.

I will give the last word to the band - from the same track ("On my balcony") that contained the gratuitous perfume reference noted in my merch selling post.

For it just so happens that a few of the lines later in the song tie in rather neatly with my Berlin sniffing experience, such as it was...

"Imperious linden, saplings in tow
Nobody knows if she will ever see them grow
And I'm too weak to want to know
Yes, I understand, there's no rush"

No, there's no rush...I will be back in Berlin some day, with my sniffing head on next time, hopefully...?