Balmain La Môme

La Môme (2007) was part of Balmain's renewed effort to stay relevant in the perfume market. The license holder, Selective Beauty, seems to specialize in established fashion houses that are struggling in the perfume arena (Benetton, Sonia Rykiel, MaxMara) as well as operate as the distributor for highly successful perfume franchises, such as Burberry, Lolita Lempicka and Bulgari. While their website is practically non existent (Balmain isn't much better, by the way), it's clear Selective Beauty is a company that means business.

It made a lot of sense for Balmain, a classic French house, to use the release of the French film La Môme (La Vie En Rose, as it was renamed in the US) as an opportunity to find new customers. After all, the successful movie about a beloved French cultural icon, Edith Piaf, earned Marion Cotillard an Oscar and made her an international star. A perfume that ties in with the movie without going the route of a celebrity scent (the French don't go for this crap) sounds like a brilliant idea. Make that a limited edition and restrict the distribution, which usually makes people do the weirdest things to obtain a bottle: La Môme was an exclusive to Marionnaud stores. Doesn't all that sound like the beginning of a very bright future?

The problem started when people actually sniffed La Môme. A perfume that is all about rose, violet, freesia and raspberry was not what they expected. A tribute to Edith Piaf (who grew up on the streets of Bellevile, was raised in her grandmother's brothel, started her career singing in seedy bars and associating with pimps and mobsters, had lovers, husbands, tragedies and addictions) was not supposed to smell like candied violets. Where are the smoky nightclubs? The ladies of the night? The streets of Pigalle? The love, sex and pain? Basically, why doesn't this smell like vintage Bandit?

I don't have an answer, but this review on I Smell Therefore I Am offers a good point of view. Of course, there's also the possibility that it was simply a business decision: La Môme, limited edition or not, was still aimed at the mass market (Marionnaud is basically an overpriced Perfumania), and raspberry perfumes tend to sell a lot better than blood, sweat and tears.

If we put aside the nostalgic yearning for Paris of the 1950s, La Môme is actually a nice perfume. It does smell French to me, or maybe that's how I interpret the rose-violet core. As someone who doesn't like YSL Paris or Lipstick Rose by Frederic Malle, I'm guessing it's the candied aspect and the oriental drydown that make La Môme attractive to me. It's very feminine, even overly so, in an extra small waist and very full skirts way. My cynical side says it's more Betty Draper than Balmain or Dior couture gowns, but still. It's pretty, wearable and has a very sunshiny feel. La Môme is also very strong and lasts forever and a day, so spray with caution.

As far as I can tell, while La Môme is no longer officially in production, the huge stocks were unceremoniously dumped on the doorsteps of every online discounters. We can make it a game- who bought it for the least amount of money. If you paid more than $25 you lose.

Photos:
1951 French fashion- blue suit by Pierre Balmain, pink dress by Robert Piguet- myvintagevogue.com
Edith Piaf and Yves Montand circa 1945 from somewhere on the net (apologies for losing the source)

And, since last night I posted the clip of the amazing Gay Marshall singing Piaf, here's the real thing- Edith Piaf on the Ed Sullivan Show, January 1959, singing "Mon manège à moi":

A Year Of Perfume: 2008 Retrospective

'Tis the season: Looking back, making lists and trying to summarize the previous twelve months in a way that makes sense. A group of us, bloggers with a serious thing for perfume, is offering a 2008 retrospective of the fragrance world. Each one of us is writing from a different point of view and location (some are based in Europe), and there's no common theme. I chose to look at events and trends that shaped and influenced us as consumers.

1. Launched in 2007, Tom Ford's Private Blend line was met with quite a bit of groans and growls from many perfume lovers. The twelve scents released at the same time made many doubt the amount of care and thought that went into creating them and accused Ford of trying to become an instant Lutens. Coupled with nose fatigue (who has the attention span for trying 12 new scents from one house at one sitting?), a general annoyance at the limited distribution and Ford's own controversial reputation all caused many to not even try. This year, however, found people giving the scents a chance and finding out they really really like them.

Say what you may about Tom Ford and the soft porn campaign he ran for his (tame, office-friendly) mainstream Tom Ford For Men fragrance. The Private Blend is well-made, interesting and actually worth the hype. 2008 has found the scents (if not the man) getting enough love that the latest release, Champaca Absolute, had people ordering blind. Quite a change from last year.

2. After years of dreaming, pining, hoarding the few precious drops left and paying over $400 on eBay for bottles that may or may not have relatively fresh juice in them, fans of Donna Karan's long-discontinued Chaos finally got their wish with the scent's re-release as a Bergdorf Goodman exclusive. Someone at Lauder (the company that holds the license for the Karan beauty line) has definitely been paying attention, as they created a full line of other discontinued items: Black Cashmere, DK For Men and the Essentials, all in the new black bottles.

As expected with such a project, the controversy hit two seconds after the first bottles were sprayed: Was the scent reformulated? Did they ruin it? Weakened it? No one can tell for sure, as those who still have some of the old juice admit, their bottles have aged (very well, in many cases, even if most of the top notes are no longer there), and it's quite difficult to compare. The new Chaos is lovely, but many of those who ordered unsniffed, based only on the legend, were disappointed to discover it's not an Earth-shattering perfume.

3. Speaking of internet hype, the biggest stampede of the year was probably the Balmain craze. Take a fragrance or two from a classic house, previously only available in Europe for full retail price, no samples to speak of, one name evoking a desired raw materials (Ambre Gris) and the other one named after a classic French icon (La Môme), and all of a sudden release them in the USA through an online discounter for a fraction of the original price. The result is a mass hysteria of blind orders, ending with almost as many disappointed noses. While both scents are pleasant and very wearable, they are not the pinnacle of French perfumery.

4. While Le Labo continued with their (super annoying and totally unjustifiable) marketing gimmick of exclusive city releases (Los Angeles, Tokyo and London, joining the ones in Paris, NYC and Dallas) which you can only buy in person at those specific locations, Serge Lutens has eased his grip just a little and allowed for more of his non-export perfumes to be sold here in the US. You can now get Santal de Mysore, Bois de violette, Bois et Fruits and Un Bois Sepia at Bergdorf Goodman (and even order them by phone). The first three were recently made available at several other locations like Aedes in NYC, Scent Bar (L.A.) and the Canadian Perfume Shoppe. In addition, Chergui seems to have made a semi-permanent migration into the export line and is available wherever Lutens fragrances are sold. While I'm not sure this means you will soon be able to buy Muscs Kublai Khan at your nearest Neiman Marcus, it does seem like Uncle Serge has realized a thing or two about the art of making money.

5. Guerlain have continued the trend of odd marketing decisions. Releasing Habit Rouge in parfum while keeping some beautiful old classics in an EDT form, thus making their performance less than stellar. Combined with the LVMH tendency to cater to Saudi sheikhs more than to genuine perfume lovers (I have no other way to explain that Four Seasons set which contained one former Aqua Alegoria scent or the other four digit items that look more like merchandising than a perfume), it was not the happiest year for Guerlain fans. And I'm not saying a word about the ridiculous soft porn literature that accompanied the release of the Elixirs Charnels.

6. Chanel have expanded their Les Exclusifs line with more jugs of EDT juice while terminating the USA sales of the few formerly-available parfums (Bois de Isles and Cuir de Russie). Apparently, they think we all want to be supersized or go swimming in our bottles. While the new Sycomore is available wherever Les Exclusifs are sold (which means hardly anywhere), Beige is limited to Saks 5th Avenue's NYC flagship. According to a source in Chanel USA, it was never meant to be a major release and they were quite surprised at the internet uproar and downpour of phone orders the store has received. The result of the many blind buys was the usual disappointment, when buyers discovered Beige was a very tame floral and not as interesting as they hoped. What else is new?

7. Perfumes- The Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez is not the first book about perfumes. It's also a much less definite guide than the publisher would have you believe. Its strength (and also greatest weakness) is making perfume literature into entertainment. It has a somewhat broader appeal than most fragrance-related books (though for the life of me I cannot see the average L'Eau d'Issey one-bottle-a-year customer buying or enjoying this), and provides quite a bit of amusement to those who've sniffed a thing or two. Written by a scientist (Turin)and a former blogger and MakeupAlley popular reviewer (Sanchez), it mixes pop culture, snark and quite a bit of perfume knowledge. Still, at the end of the day, it's a book about the authors' opinions, a fact that seems to have escaped some of the online perfume community, fans and foes alike.

The release of the book was followed by a massive internet uproar from people who found their beloved scents being trashed. It was nearly as entertaining as some of Sanchez's more infamous quips, but not quite.

8. 2008 was the year the online perfume conversation has become even more important than ever before. Blogs and message boards have been spearheading trends for some time now, and this years we have also gotten some exclusive scoops and led important discussions. Denyse from Grain de Musc broke the story about the upcoming new Serge Lutens, Nuit de Cellophane, while I was the first to sniff and write about the latest Frederic Malle, Dans tes Bras. Our growing relevance is equal parts hard work, deep passion for the subject at hand and our loyal readers who make the effort enjoyable and worthwhile. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

And a special thank you to Helg of Perfume Shrine for organizing this blogging event.

For more 2008 Retrospective, please visit these blogs:

1000 Fragrances

Ars Aromatica

A Rose Beyond the Thames

Bittergrace Notes

Grain de Musc

I Smell Therefore I Am

Legerdenez

Notes from the Ledge

Olfactarama

Savvy Thinker

Tuilleries

The Perfume Shrine

Anatomy Of A Lemming: Balmain Ambre Gris

E-commerce and marketing experts do not usually hang out in perfume forums. Too bad, really, because the random stampedes that originate there are worth some serious exploring.

Take, for example, the case of Ambre Gris by Balmain.

Ambre Gris came out earlier this year and until last month was only available in Europe. This alone is reason enough to get all of us, crazy perfume people, twitching and yearning. Uncle Serge has made this into an art form, after all. A couple of months ago one of the more reliable e-tailers suddenly had it in stock and in an incredible price, to boot: Sephora France lists the 40 ml (1.3 oz) bottle for 38.10€ and the 75 ml for 55.40€. I saw the 100 ml (3.4 oz) bottle at Le Bon Marche in Paris for about 70 € (nearly $100). Compare this to the $25-$30 for the largest bottle that you were charged here!

The info spread quickly on every message board and related threads sprouted several times a day. I wish I knew exactly how many people made a purchase, but it seemed that just about everyone did. And the interesting part that separates the Ambre Gris phenomenon from the Chaos rush that followed a few weeks later was that almost everyone was buying blind without ever sniffing or sampling.

Part of the reason is the name. Ambregris is a highly regarded note, even in its synthetic or plant-derived substitute form. It conjures fantasies of precious materials, pungent scents and an air of mystery. Add to that the elegant grayish bottle (it is the season of gray, after all) even with the odd golden golf ball cap, and the reputation of the house of Balmain (looks like everyone manged to ignore the butchered reformulation of their classic Vent Vert), and what you get is biggest stampede since March made everyone crave Kenzo Jungle L'elephant.

Then the bottles started showing up on doorsteps across North America and the first disappointed threads appeared on the usual message boards. Why?

Mainly because there is nothing out-of-the ordinary, mysterious or especially unique about Ambre Gris and it won't take you on a journey to times and places where real ambergris was used in the great perfumes of yore. What you get in the heavy bottle is a modern juice that goes from light and airy (though not in the horrible aquatic way too commonly found) to very sweet. The official notes (translated from Sephora France): pink pepper, cinnamon, tuberose, immortelle, myrrh, gaïac wood, benzoin, white musks, ambergris.

Basically, people were hoping to get some exotic animalic funk, but instead found themselves with a huge bottle of candied wood.

The thing is, I like Ambre Gris. I actually sniffed and tried it in Paris (it was everywhere from Colette to Le Bon Marche). While I thought it was nice, it certainly wasn't worth the retail price. I had much better uses for my perfume budget. But when I had the opportunity to get a bottle for less than I've paid for any perfume in ages (if $25 wasn't good enough, there was also a 10% off code and free shipping). With minimal expectations this was a pretty good deal.

I find Ambre Gris to be a very wearable pretty little thing. The opening has the lightness of a late summer morning. It's cool and barely there (or maybe I'm half anosmic to something). The sweetness follows quickly. It's almost fruity (I blame the pink pepper and cinnamon), but the tuberose gives the heart a little kick before handing the torch to the pudding. The immortelle and benzoin lend the dry-down a decidedly gourmand feel. But for an ambery-vanillic base it still maintains an interesting clarity that makes the perfume more of a crystallized sugar than a heavy syrup. If you don't like sweet perfumes (think L'Occitane Amber or Givenchy Pi), you're not going to enjoy this one, either. But if you're fond of them, you might find that Ambre Gris is a friendly fragrance that (sprayed lightly) works surprisingly well even in hot summer days, and is sure to be just as nice when fall sets in.

But, you know what's really funny? While Ambre Gris seems to be easy to find now from several online discounters (just google it and you'll see), even if the price has gone up a little, LuckyScent, of all places, is now selling it (why?) for full Paris-worthy retail price (screen capture from their web site, because it's really hard to believe):



Bottle image: Balmain.com

An American Blogger In Paris: More Perfume Shopping

Living right next to the Paramus malls and 15 minutes away from Manhattan makes one a bit jaded and hard to impress when it comes to shopping. There are very few things you can't find around here, fashion-wise, but when it comes to perfume shopping I was quite jealous of what I saw in Paris.

I'm not even talking about the obvious ones: Serge Lutens and his bell jars or the gorgeous Guerlain boutique. It's more about the variety and the many options, far above and beyond what we're used to see here.

Let's start with Sephora. While I've been told their stores vary and not all of them are that amazing, the flagship on Champs-Élysées is a huge wonderland. They had just about any beauty and makeup brand I could think of, including Bobbi Brown and Armani (the former has been gone from our Sephoras years ago, the latter has never made it). As far as fragrance goes, I was surprised to see the entire Serge Lutens export line, Bond no. 9, many other brands and scents that have been taken off mainstream shelves in the US (Kenzo Jungle L'Elephant!) and the entire regular (not the Exclusifs) Chanel range in all concentrations, including parfum.

Speaking of Chanel, the perfumes can be found everywhere. From department stores (more about them in a minute) to big and small perfumeries, and the parfums are right there on the shelves. The same goes for Robert Piguet. Here, you're lucky if you see Fracas at a brick & mortar store, but in Paris you can go out and also buy Bandit, Baghari, Cravache and Visa (I think I need a bottle of that. I spritzed it at just about every store I visited, and the verdict is that it makes me happy in all its fruitiness).


A special pleasure are the lovely boutiques of niche and semi-niche lines, where you get to play with the entire range. Parfums de Nicolaï have a couple of stores. We visited the one on avenue Raymond Poincaré, tested a few things and liked the brand as a whole, couldn't find anything we absolutely had to have right away, though Maharnih might be calling my name, after all. There was something in the rich base that grabbed my attention. Maybe the (synthetic) civet.

The Maître Parfumeur et Gantier boutiques are on the baroque side of interior design with their marble floors and lavish decoration, full of ornamental bottles, scented gloves (their specialities) and thy stock the full range, including those scents you rarely see on our shores. They also have an impressive (and expensive) line of home fragrance (I adore the amber). I still prefer their masculine scents to the girly ones, and there is a bottle of Racine in my future.

My one disappointment was Evody, a store famous for niche offerings. I hoped to see a much better selection of Parfumerie Generale and was certain I'd be leaving it with at least one bottle, but they only had about 1o of the scents, which is far less than what you can find at Scent Bar in L.A., and none of the limited editions. They did have all the Lutens, Piguet, By Killian, The Different Company and several other lines, as well as Marc Jacobs Daisy, for some inexplicable reason. Actually, Daisy was everywhere, you couldn't escape it.

We visited Colette, mostly so I could smell their Le Labo exclusive, Vanille 44. It's far less vanilla and much more labdanum, and while I liked it, it wasn't a must-have. I've heard people complain about the noise and chaos atmosphere in Colette, but I actually enjoyed it. It's very informal and you can play with the perfumes (many niche lines and the unavoidable Daisy) as much as you want without a SA breathing down your neck and trying to explain to you about the Comme des Garcons aesthetics. The Blond has fallen hard for Hinoki, which smells fabulous on him: dark and earthy, the funky notes are far less prominent on him than the incense and vetiver. I did my best to like the Juliette has a Gun scents, but failed miserably. One was too fruity and young, the other a boring rose. They didn't like my skin, either. The fashion floor at Colette was fascinating. Hair-raising expensive and gorgeous items. You're not allowed to take pictures and the security guys are very efficient about it, so I have nothing to show, you'll just have to believe me it's worth a visit.

Paris Department stores are not your local Macy's. I don't think I saw even one bottle of Britney Juice or Eau de Donald, but both Printemps and Le Bon Marché have an amazing selection of luxury and niche brands. On top of the many others I've mentioned above, you can waltz in and buy Tom Ford Private Blend, Armani Privé, the entire Miller Harris range, L'Artisan, Annick Goutal (because, apparently, all the free-standing Goutal boutiques are not enough), including Les Orientales (lovely and raising the question regarding Musc Nomade: exactly how many musks do I need?) and Lubin. Le Bon Marché was especially amazing, offering the Il Profumo line (I don't think I've ever seen them outside of Scent Bar) and the quirky bottles of Isabel Capeto. They also have a mini Guerlain boutique (like the one at Bergdorf) that had all the rarities, from the Art et Matière line, Les Parisiennes and the Four Seasons collection.

Something that made my day (or week, even): Printemps have a nice L'Occitane counter. It wouldn't have been worth mentioning, considering I have a L'Occitane store practically a walking distance from home, except for one thing: They were clearing out old stock of the original Neroli perfume, an old favorite of mine, which I was left with less than 1/4 of my last bottle (and recently watched how a bottle on eBay has gone well over $100. I'm not paying that for a L'Occitane). It was 40% off and now I have a lifetime supply.

Less satisfactory but very interesting was a private perfume store, Parfumerie Victor Hugo (130, Avenue Victor Hugo. It's a few stores down from the Frederic Malle boutique and around the corner from Parfums de Nicolai). A mom & pop shop (literally. The owner, her husband and daughter can all be found there) with great selection of cosmetics and fragrance. The makeup includes Chanel, Dior and Clarins, and the perfume section would make your head spin. I don't think I ever saw all the Dior masculines on one shelf, including Jules (!!! I really should have made the Blond get it). There were several other colognes that are considered extinct on our side of the pond (the original Lagerfeld and Calvin Kline) as well as new stock like Encre Noir. On the feminine front they had all the Chanels, including bath and body products, all the export Lutens, By Killian, Piguet and many other brands, old and new (when was the last time you saw Ma Griffe in an actual store?).

I was testing happily when I suddenly saw a very familiar blue box. Niki de Saint Phalle. And I don't mean the EdT. They actually had the parfum, both 1/2 oz and a 1 oz. The prices were outrageous: the smaller bottle was north of 200 euro and the 1 oz was marked well over €300 (I can't remember the exact price for the life of me). Niki, in all its weird glory is among my most favorite perfumes and I was dreading the day my 1/4 oz runs out. So I decided to treat myself to the smaller bottle. Thus begun an hour in which the store's owner and her husband tried to make their their credit card reader work. It took them a while to discover it wasn't connected to the phone, and then there was a whole other saga which we couldn't understand due to the language barrier. It was so aggravating I wasn't thinking straight, otherwise we'd have just walked to the nearest ATM and paid cash. But I just gave up, which turned out to be a very good thing, because I just discovered that Parfum1.com have the 1 0z bottle currently in stock for 1/5 of the price. There's also a 10% coupon floating around and free shipping. My bottle has arrived today and I couldn't be happier. It's the real thing and smells as gorgeous as ever.

On top of all the niche and luxury brands you can easily find, there's the mainstream market. There's a Marionnaud store on every corner, which is more or less a b&m equivalent to Fragrancenet, albeit far more expensive (I don't think Paris believes in discounters). But you can try everything on, so no need for crazy unsniffed purchases. I was interested to check the Balmain exclusive, La Môme, which wasn't yet available here. I thought it was nice, but for the price (49€) my socks remained fully unrocked. The same went for the other new Balmain, Ambre Gris that you could see all over Paris. Of course, upon my return I started kicking myself for not getting them, if only for the sake of their hard-to-find status. Thankfully, I didn't have to kick too hard. If you've seen the various perfume forums you know that Parfum1 now has both scents for a lot cheaper. Last week it was $25 each, before the discount code. Now it's been kicked up slightly to around $30, but still a bargain that would make our friends in Paris cry. It's an interesting lesson in global marketing, if nothing else.



All photos are mine. The two at the top are of Niki de Saint Phalle's Stravinsky Fountain near the Pompidou Center. Sadly, the fountain, the sculptures and the entire area are dirty and run down. Some pieces are missing and there's no sign that explains anything about the artist or this creation. We stumbled upon it by chance and immediately recognized her work. One of the sculptures is very similar to the snakes on the perfume bottle.


More perfume shopping in Paris:
Guerlain
Frederic Malle
Serge Lutens
Caron
Etat Libre d'Orange
Memo