A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: No 2 (Belgium & France) - A "Drowned And Out In Paris" Sniffathon: Fragonard Museum

The next stop on my semi-random itinerary in Paris was the Musée Fragonard (9, rue Scribe), which I just happened to walk past as I headed towards Place Vendôme. I didn’t know Fragonard had a museum, and if I had, I would have expected it only to be in Grasse. It was in an elegant old townhouse. and as I walked into the empty foyer I was warmly greeted by the lady on the reception desk, who asked if I wanted to take a tour. There was no charge, for as later became apparent, the tour ends in a bit of a sales pitch in the shop downstairs. Several people came in just behind me and the receptionist performed a quick triage between those who wanted an English-speaking guide and those who preferred a French one. In my case, I was happy to take the next tour in either language, as my feet were starting to hurt by this point! Within 5-10 minutes the French guide, a willowy girl who could easily have given up tour guiding and applied to enter France’s Next Top Model, hove into view and escorted our small group of four upstairs, where the museum occupied a handful of rooms.

Cameras were not allowed, but I have found a few snaps on the Internet taken by bolder visitors than me. The first room housed some splendid alembics and other perfume-making paraphernalia. As we were given a quick run-down of the various methods of extracting essential oils such as steam distillation, maceration and enfleurage (for delicate flowers like jasmine and tuberose that can’t stand the heat apparently – much like my friend Geraldine, I thought fondly), I couldn’t help but think of Tarleisio, and her blog, The Alembicated Genie.

The guide went on to relate how Fragonard brings out a new release every year showcasing a particular note. Last year it was mimosa, this year fleurs d’oranger, while violet is up next in 2012. We also learnt that Fragonard doesn’t export its perfumes and its bricks and mortar presence is confined to in-house shops in Paris, Grasse and Eze. This sounded to me like an exclusivity policy akin to that of Puredistance in its early days, but I must say I don’t have Fragonard down as a luxury brand.

In the second room we were shown displays of perfume bottles through the ages, from early, tapering glass ones that women used to tuck coyly into their corsages, to later models in porcelain from Germany and the UK. The guide explained that the bottles Fragonard uses for the parfum version of its scents are made of stainless steel to maximise their shelf life. I was reminded of Montale and Comptoir Sud Pacifique’s similar use of steel, but had always assumed this was for aesthetic reasons unrelated to longevity.

The next exhibit on our tour was a perfumer’s “organ”, containing a couple of hundred different materials in little brown apothecary-style bottles, though apparently a “top of the range” organ might run to 1000 bottles! According to the guide, "noses" only work for a maximum of 20 years while they are in their prime, and as well as ensuring that they eat a balanced diet (no stinking hot curries, I inferred), don’t drink or smoke either so as not to compromise the sensitivity of their precision sniffer. I kept trying to remember the time I met Bertrand Duchaufour at the Penhaligon’s launch of Amaranthine. I could have sworn he had a glass of cava, but maybe not… : - )

In the final room we took a smelling test to see how good we were at recognising different odours. We were each assigned a spot at a long bench, and given a dozen or so bottles containing unnamed scented waxes, which we had to place on the picture corresponding to the note we were smelling. Examples of notes were cinnamon, mint, lavender, strawberry, pineapple, licorice and rose. It was a fun but relatively easy exercise, and all four of us got them all right! I think we would probably have managed to get most of them even without the picture clues, though the fruits were a bit tricky.

The talk over, the guide led us down to the shop, where she gave us a “tour” of the Fragonard parfum strength scents, available to buy individually or in sets of 3 or more for a greatly reduced price. Because we would be paying factory gate prices, even the starting price for a single 5ml mini of a parfum struck me as quite reasonable at 26 euros, and this price also fell sharply if you were willing to buy a humungous canister of 250ml, or whatever the biggest size was. The guide even whipped out a calculator to stress just how significant a percentage saving we would make if we opted for a bulk or multiple bottle purchase. She was veritably the Carol Vorderman of fragrance SAs!

The parfums I tested on card were:

ETOILE – overly sharp citrus bouquet

Notes: "lemon, apple, bergamot, ginger, gardenia, lily of the valley, jasmine, cedar, amber and musk"

EMILIE – overly sharp floral, despite the rather appealing note list below!

Notes: orange blossom, rose, jasmine, violet, lily of the valley, amber and sandalwood

BELLE DE NUIT – Fragonard's best selling feminine, recommended by the guide as the safe choice for buying as a gift for someone, and I would agree - it struck me as a pleasant, but mainstream light floral oriental.

Notes: mirabilis, violet, geranium, rose, plum, woods and musks.

DIAMANT – softly spicy gourmand oriental – initial impression was of something a little discordant, but this grew on me, and I wish I had tested it on skin.

Notes: mandarin, orange, pepper, rose, jasmine, plum, patchouli, vanilla, musk and caramel.

CAPUCINE – surprisingly sweet oriental given the note listing: very potent and powdery going on (with all the muzzy force of EL Knowing, if that makes any sense), but the far drydown was yummy in a Prada Candy kind of way, and I regretted not buying at least 5ml of the parfum.

Notes: green tea, bergamot, rose, jasmine, musk, winter woods

BELLE CHERIE – not yet released, but we were treated to a sneak preview. A fruity gourmand scent, again with a slight discordant aspect that didn’t go away, unlike Diamant. The lone reviewer of this scent on Makeupalley detected a "whacking great whallop of ethyl maltol", which probably gives it its sweetie shop character.

Notes: tangerine, star fruit, jasmine, heliotrope, lily of the valley, sandalwood, tonka bean and vanilla.

So in the end I came away empty handed, though Capucine and Diamant definitely merit a retrial. Seems like I will have to wait till I am back in Paris for that.

I would be interested to get anybody else’s take on the Fragonard range, namely views about the company's low key sales strategy, and whether the brand feels exclusive to you or not. Despite having taken the tour of the museum, I haven't changed my view of the brand, I must say, but I can't quite put my finger on why I don't quite consider Fragonard "a serious player".




Photo of museum entrance from france-for-visitors.com, photo of perfume-making equipment from inthemo.com, photo of perfumer's organ from whattoseeinparis.com, photo of Fragonard products from the company's website, photo of the shop from tripadvisor.co.uk

Guerlain "Moins Que Jamais" And The Benefits Of Maceration?

If I had to answer that sudden death, old chestnut of a question: "What is your Holy Grail Scent?", Guerlain Plus que Jamais would be it. Created in 2005, PQJ is a sensuous floral oriental with citrus, ylang-ylang and vanilla. It has the trademark powdery trail of a classic Guerlain, but not cranked up to the max as with the sneezefest that is L'Heure Bleue. This is Guerlinade for the 21st century, which I would place in complexity somewhere between the behemoths of Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue and Shalimar, and the rosy musk crowd-pleaser that is Idylle. Here are the notes:

Lemon, bergamot, ylang-ylang, rose, jasmine, orris, vanilla, amber, tonka bean, vetiver.

Totally smitten by this elegant and feminine fragrance (which only suits the aspirational me, I should point out, not the everyday scuzzy me in cat hair-beflecked cords and pilled sweaters!), I bought a 15ml decant of it from a seller on Scent Splits in July 2009. The decant smelt very thin and sheer, not as rich/powdery/sweet as what I know of PQJ from decants and testers I have tried in the past, never having owned a FB myself. The juice frankly smelt diluted, yet still recognisably of PQJ, or PQJ given a modern treatment with most of the Guerlinade stripped out to accommodate contemporary tastes.

So first of all I contacted the seller, who agreed that she had once smelt a different batch that was a bit deeper in intensity, but she just assumed that this is how it is these days and didn't think it a big deal, whereas I was feeling distinctly disappointed and shortchanged.

Anyway, I followed the chain up to the bottle owner, who initially - quite understandably - seemed a bit piqued that I had challenged the quality of her bottle or was implying that she had doctored it in any way (which I wasn't, though the thought inevitably crosses your mind). She told me where she had bought her bottle - it was the first time she had ever smelt the scent, so unlike me she had no point of comparison and thought it pleasant enough.

I then contacted the SA at the store in New York, explained who I was and how I was not the bottle owner, but had come by a portion of it, which I felt was not a true representation of the scent. So I sent him samples from my decant from the bottle bought at his store and a Perfumed Court sample that smelt just wonderful - which I later learnt was also bought at his store, just months previously!

The SA tested them both and agreed that the sample from the 15ml decant was inferior on all the aspects I had flagged up, also on longevity.

So the next step was to mail the bottle owner with samples of what I had from her bottle (as a control and to check nothing untoward had happened to it before it reached me, like the postal service keeping it in a depot at 100 degrees or whatever!), plus a sample from the Perfumed Court bottle bought at that same store, and a third sample from an extra of PQJ I got in a swap that also smelt like the second one, ie just lovely!

On testing the samples, the owner was surprised at the marked differences and could now see why I was determined to pursue this quality issue. So when she was next in New York she popped back to the store where the SA was up to speed with the saga and replaced her bottle without a quibble. And at the end of October I received replacement product from the owner.

So looking back, what might have been up with the bottle? The SA agreed that it smelt different, without going quite as far as to state that there was something technically amiss with this batch of the scent. And he did point out that he had received no other complaints from customers who had bought a bottle around the same time. Ah, but hold on, just as my bottle owner had never smelt PQJ before, how many purchasers of any scent have smelt other versions before? The answer is probably a high proportion of perfumistas and a low proportion of the general public, especially when you factor in husbands buying scent for their wives or other gift scenarios. And the fact that PQJ is not available in every mall. In fact it is barely in stores at all! Nowhere in Britain, anyway...

Then the SA also drew my attention quite rightly to the fact that with a fragrance high in natural ingredients some variation is to be expected, however, as I put it to him, at what point does a perfume not smell sufficiently like itself to be considered commercially acceptable? But whatever his private view on the matter, customer service prevailed, for which I owe him a huge thank you!

A big thank you is also due to Lovethescents. For before sending the SA in NYC samples A and B for his evaluation, I carried out a mini-poll on the differences between the two to check it wasn't all in my head. Eight people agreed with me in blind tests, four of whom were beauty industry professionals. Two of these were Guerlain staff in Canada, with Lovethescents acting as my go-between to carry out a "dummy run" of approaching Guerlain staff about the issue, armed with yet another set of samples! And four test subjects were ordinary members of the public.

I should also mention that I checked out the reformulation angle with Guerlain HQ in Paris, and compared bottle formats and strengths (A and B were both bee bottles and EDP - bought within months of each other as I mentioned), so there was no possibility of pinning the blame on a relaunch.

A chance conversation with a Guerlain SA in London (at a store stocking the Export lines, but not the Exclusive range to which PQJ belongs) may have shed light on the mystery. The SA had visited Guerlain's production facility outside Paris, and speculated that my bottle might have come from a batch that was not macerated for the requisite time. She reckoned this could account for its weak, thin consistency, just as a very young wine lacks the depth and character of one that has been aged for its full term. In short, maceration is the key to good "body" in a perfume. It is only a hypothesis, but maybe for whatever reason this scent may have been untimely ripped from its macerating equipment before it had steeped and soaked and mulched and infused and wallowed and luxuriated and generally lounged around sufficiently.

I guess any scent would turn out a bit peaky and wan if it hadn't been allowed to macerate properly...

Seriously, after speaking to this lady, I had to know in more detail what maceration was exactly, and the answer seems to be a "warm fatty version" of enfleurage:

"During enfleurage, flowers are spread on glass sheets coated with grease. The glass sheets are placed between wooden frames in tiers. Then the flowers are removed by hand and changed until the grease has absorbed their fragrance.

Maceration is similar to enfleurage except that warmed fats are used to soak up the flower smell. As in solvent extraction, the grease and fats are dissolved in alcohol to obtain the essential oils."

And the final twist in the tale is that the owner went and put her new bottle up for sale on the same split site where I bought my original decant. Which I initially thought was a shame, given the lengths I had gone to to get hold of the real McCoy for us both. But then again ignorance is bliss, and if it wasn't for me the owner would never have known there was anything the matter with her fragrance and she might still be enjoying the weaker version to this day. So in a way I spoilt things for her, possibly irrevocably, for which - if true - I am very sorry.