Parfumerie Generale Felanilla

One of the most frequent complains you hear from hard core perfume lovers is the about the lack of character in so many modern perfumes. We kvetch and krechtz about celebrity scents, focus groups gathered from food court patrons at Utah malls, ridiculous IFRA regulations and the evil of LVMH. It's sort of like comparing today's Young Hollywood to the golden age. Neither the Kardashian Sisters nor the thin and pale Twilight star possess even an ounce of real glamor. Brad and Angelina might come close, but let's face it- they are not Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

While it's most likely that nothing can save Nicole Kidman's face, when it comes to perfume I can actually find a glimmer of hope here and there. Some perfumers are still making scents that have a real curvy body, depth and character. Pierre Guillaume, owner and creator of Parfumerie Generale, is one of them.

Felanilla would easily appeal to fans of vintage Shalimar and Magie Noire. While the list of notes as it appears on Luckyscent doesn't say a word about animalics, I could have sworn there's something decidedly civet-like in Felanilla's depths, and not just because of the perfume's name. It starts with a lovely and creamy wood note, something that Guillaume is an expert in weaving. But it's not a modern, cedar-Iso E Super kind of wood. Instead there's sap, bark and layers upon layers of sweet-smelling material that smoothly morphs into incense (another note missing from the list, but it's there on my skin). The vanilla part is there almost from the start, but no matter how rich it is, Felanilla is not a gourmand. I want to bury my nose in it, but not really eat it (which is a very good thing. Licking your own arm or cleavage is not looked upon kindly).

The drydown lasts forever and smells velvety and warm. It's seductive but not vulgar, and despite the animalic, almost fur-like feel (as in fur on a purring live animal) there's no skank in Felanilla. It keeps the sexy lingerie facet under a soft cashmere robe. Modesty is more or less intact, but you're still not wearing any real clothes.

Bottom line: Let's see- felines and vanilla- Mr. Guillaume could have just named it "Gaia".

I've been living on a large decant lately which is quickly being drained. A full bottle is my very near future. Felanilla is sold at Luckyscent ($115, 50 ml) and the Perfume Shoppe in Canada. Someone really needs to bring the line to NYC. Samples and decants are available from The Perfumed Court.

Photos of Ava Gardner: stirredstraightup.blogspot.com

Cuir d'Iris -Parfumerie Generale Private Collection

Pierre Guillaume, the name, nose (not to mention the face) behind Parfumerie Generale wasn't reinventing the wheel when he paired leather and iris, but he sure did it extremely well. Cuir d'Iris feels more civilized and muzzled than many other black leather perfumes (I'm thinking about Bandit, Rien, Lonestar Memories, Cuir Mauresque, Tuscan Leather and Montale's Oud Cuir d'Arabie, just to name a few). It doesn't have the wonderful weirdness of other iris-leather combination, such as Cuir Ottoman by Parfum d'Empire (let's wear the new leather couch) or Serge Lutens' Daim Blond (suede jacket saturated in apricot jam). Instead, Cuir d'Iris is an amazingly wearable, friendly soft leather with a hint of powder at the beginning and one of the smoothest drydowns imaginable.

Cuir d'Iris is neither a masculine scent nor feminine. It's just... is. Waiting to be worn and merged with one's own skin, offering a touch of woody incense, dry but not rigid or austere. It's more romantic than sensual, in my opinion, and would make a great shared scent. There's a powdery amber undertone that keeps things warm and inviting, and why I suspect it'd be a good starting point for those who are usually afraid of the whips and dungeons and wild animals hidden in many leather scents.

Cuir d'Iris ($135 for 50 ml) is part of Parfumerie Generale's Private Collection. It's available from Luckyscent/Scent Bar in Los Angeles, but cannot be purchased online- only by phone or email. If you go to Parfumerie Generale's website you'd need a user name and password to access the Private Collection area (seriously. A password. Uncle Serge is kicking himself for not thinking of it first). Samples and decants are available from the Perfumed Court, which is where I order my fix.

Photo of Rudolph Valentino and wife Natasha Rambova from Ana_Lee on LiveJournal.

Top Ten Summer Perfumes

Can there be a list of summer perfume recommendation without boring myself silly and/or mentioning Eau d'Hadrien? I'm going to try. Some of these are new(ish), others are perennial favorites. In no particular order:

1. Reverie au Jardin- Tauer
Midsummer afternoon dream. Will transport you to a magical alpine garden.

2. Amethyst- Olivier Durbano
Slightly sweetened pencil shavings, clean incense and a touch of vanilla. Surprisingly refreshing in the heat.

3. Un Matin d'Orage- Annick Goutal
Green gardenias drenched in rain without an ounce of sweetness until the musky drydown.

4. Monyette Paris *
The other side of gardenia. Tropical, sweet with a touch of nag champa incense. Put a flower in your hair and go dancing on the beach.
*I think it's the first fragrance review I've written here. It's magnificently bad, but kind of nostalgic in a campy way.

5. Nuit de Cellophane- Serge Lutens
Osmanthus flowers with a hint of apricot. Like drinking iced peach tea on a beautiful Cape May porch.

6. Italian Cypress- Tom Ford
Is it an homage to Eau d'Hadrien (so I lied. It had to be mentioned)? Maybe. But the cypress is a darker green and the feeling is more pulled together.

7. Encre Noire- Lalique
Or any other vetiver, really. I've chosen this one because it's a bit softer while still dry and grassy.

8. (Vintage) Vivara-Pucci
I'm talking about the original 60s formula. A salty chypre that belongs with the jet set in San Tropez. White pants, a Pucci scarf and oversized sunglasses are essential.

9. Bois Blond- Parfumerie Generale
A roll in dry hay on a lazy Sunday afternoon. You can smell the earth and trees baking in the sun.

10. Figuier- Heeley
Like lying in the shade of a huge, old fig tree next to a running stream.

What are your summer favorites this year?

art: Embarkation by Dan Dahlke

The Bold and the Beautiful- Parfumerie Generale Corps et Ames & Querelle

This is probably the worst post title ever. I just can't think of anything more fitting. We'll just have to let go of over made-up actresses with frosted hair and storyline in which they discover they have married the son of their mother's first husband who disappeared under questionable circumstances.

Back to drama in a bottle.

Who's afraid of big bad chypres? Not me, considering that I wore Paloma Picasso at 19, Eau du Soir at 20 and the original Sonia Rykiel at 22. I have no idea how I pulled it off back then or why I stopped. The answer to the latter part is probably the decline and almost disappearance of these type of scents. It's not that I spent my late 20s or early 30s wearing fruity-florals, but like the majority, I turned to more elevator-friendly perfumes.

Corps et Ames by Parfumerie Generale smells like something from a world long gone. Dramatic, I know. It's meant to be. It's a dark and mysterious scent, very Greta Garbo. Not overly feminine and definitely not girly. It's a black dress and vintage compact scent, but a man could wear this immortelle and sandalwood blend just as easily, as long as he's not afraid of big scents.

There's supposed to be some leather in there, but I'm not getting any. The drydown is a lot softer than I'd expect. It leaves the drama behind and becomes mellow and very pleasant. I'm not sure I need this in my permanent wardrobe, but it's a nice fantasy of a scent: "What to wear if I'm playing Mata Hari?"

In comparison, Querelle is a lot more subtle. It doesn't lack in drama with notes like myrrh, vetiver and incense (those are the three that are most dominant on my skin, but there's a lot more in there), but the citrus which stays there beyond the top notes, is keeping the perfume in check. To my nose, it's one of the most beautiful incense scents I know, and causes that uncontrollable wrist-to-nose action, until late in the drydown, when all of a sudden I find myself wearing an almost ordinary citrus-woods fragrance. Not bad and not really boring, because it's very nice, but compared to all the loveliness that preceded, it's no longer as exciting.


(photo of Greta Garbo from SKJ Studio)

Heartbreaker- Parfumerie Generale Jardin de Kerylos

Heeley's Figuier was supposed to be my ultimate fig perfume. I absolutely love it, as proven by both my frequent use of the full bottle I bought and the fact that I no longer hold a grudge for the awfulness of his Spirit of the Tiger.

Enter Parfumerie Generale's Jardin de Kerylos.

Villa Kerylos on the French Riviera was built in the style of ancient Greece. Here's what the official site says about the garden:

From the garden around the villa there are fine views of the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula, dotted with magnificent mansions. The garden contains a pleasing mixture of typically Greek plants : olive trees and vines, pomegranate and carob trees, acanthus and myrtle, oleanders and irises, pine and cypress trees, palm trees and papyrus all help create a Grecian look and feel in the lovely Mediterranean sunshine.

You'd notice that they don't mention figs, neither sycamore, that are the official notes in JdK. Then again, I'm not really sure what a sycamore note should smell like.

To my nose, there are two elements in this scent, both are present throughout its wear: fig and a delicate, elegant white floral, that keeps it from going too dry and too green. It shares the beauty you can see in the villa's photos and makes you think about these far away places that unless you're one of the lucky few, you only get to briefly visit, then you spend your entire life missing them.

The drydown is supposed to be musky, but I suspect that it's the kind of musk to which I'm completely anosmic. What I smell is just a quiet, dark green fig tree with a whiff of those same flowers, coming from a distance.

This fragrance is heartbreakingly beautiful. Pierre Guillaume, this line's creator, is fast becoming one of my favorite artists.

You had me at "Bois"- Parfumerie Generale Bois de Copaiba

It's probably not the right season for a rich, woody fragrance, but I really don't care. I'm mildly obsessed with Parfumerie Generale's scents. They have a Lutenic quality to them, being as intriguing and full of little surprises as they are beautiful, sometimes heartbreakingly so.

Bois de Copaiba from their private collection is a celebration of rich woods, tinged with spice. It eases into one's presence with a sweet citrusy opening of crystallized orange pulp. There are many scents lately that start with candied orange, but this is different. It's rich, spicy and doesn't even remotely resemble a teen perfume.

My guess is that anyone who likes Donna Karan's Black Cashmere would enjoy this one. They are of the same family, though Copaiba is smoother, softer and not as dark. Both are sexy in a luxurious, elegant way. I wear Black Cashmere year round, though only at night these days. Bois de Copaiba is even wearable on summer days. At least, if you are me and your body chemistry is very sandalwood-friendly.

Tubereuse Couture Parfumerie Generale

I think that I found my tuberose.

This is a serious matter. Regular readers of this blog were exposed to my lack of enthusiasm for white florals in generals (yes, they're florals! they're white! they're pretty! I prefer my pretty clouded in a little mystery, darkness and with a side of wood and leather. And, if possible, I want Andy Tauer to make it), and for tuberose in particular (other than Michael Kors, they all smell like my mother, which is a good thing if you are my mother, not so much if you're me).

Tubereuse Couture by Parfumerie Generale is different. It doesn't smell even remotely related to the big diva, Fracas. The opening, with its strong ylang-ylang note is a wonderful of example of how this line combines notes in an unexpected way, to make interesting, slightly twisted scents. I love the herbal-medicinal quality that mixes with the floral top notes. It keeps you guessing (in a similar fashion to the ylang in Tom Ford's Black Orchid, where it takes the fruit and flowers and keep them on the dark side).

The green jasmine is a natural development. It keeps the scent fresh and alive, and the mix reminds me of some of my favorite fig scents, where the green leaf balances the fruit. The official notes don't say anything about either fig or coconut, but to my nose, the heart notes have a hint of that.

Neither the ylang-ylang nor the tuberose ever leave the scene. They are there, they do their dangerous dance throughout the perfume's development. The tuberose isn't heady as much as it's striking, and, yes, there's a difference. Heady is what kills your fellow elevator passengers. Striking is what makes you fall in love and want to marry your own wrist.

Tubereuse Couture is as sexy as it is elegant. The Luckyscent description calls it "very refined". I agree with this assessment. It's not for everyone, but which tuberose scent is?

Woody Floral- Parfumerie Generale Iris Taizo

My quest for spring scents is far from over. Sampling interesting florals seemed like a good way to go, therefore the one I picked from the sample stash was Iris Taizo by Parfumerie Generale. Of course, despite the image of the flower itself, the actual iris note is not really floral, as it's produced from the rhizomes of the plant, lending it a cold and earthy feel. My favorite iris fragrance is Tauer Perfumes' Orris. A scent that is dark and leathery, despite the combination of rose and iris, but is also sharp and fresh enough to feel more suited for warm weather than for mid-winter, when I first tried it. But, that's my skin. I know enough people who think of it as a black leather winter scent.

Back to the iris at hand. The opening felt cluttered. Spice? Florals? Very perfumy for the first couple of seconds, but once it settled on my skin, it was a surprising mix of dark woods and spices, somewhat reminiscent of Donna Karan's Black Cashmere, one of my all-time favorites. The iris and wood combination that followed had a similar feel to the pretty part of Zagorsk , just without the smoke. Incense isn't listed as a note, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they've used some.

The drydown is all slightly sweet, honeyed woods. It caresses the skin and stays on for several hours. The feel is soft and pretty, with maybe a hint of musk. It's not exactly a spring scent, but it's beautiful and I think that it can be worn year-round (unlike Black Cashmere and especially Zagorsk, that becomes poisonous around late May). There might be a full bottle in my future.

What to Wear for a Nor'Easter? Parfumerie Generale Ilang Ivohibe

I had the best intentions to post a review of Quel Amour!, one of my favorite sunny fragrances. But the weather we've been having is on the Quel Horrible! side, and requires something completely different. Enter Parfumerie Generale, a line which makes me love even those scents that I don't really want to wear.

Ilang Ivohibe might have an impossible name, but the scent is very wearable. The notes (Madagascan ylang-ylang, California citrus orange, Egyptian jasmine, vanilla, tree woods, musk, according to LuckyScent) could have gone very wrong (how many white flowers and vanilla scrubbers can be found on the market?), but in this case the result is mellow, elegant and almost cozy.

The opening notes are very floral, and on my skin they had a soapy and almost sharp quality. But it warmed up rather quickly into a soft, pleasant orangey blend. There was something about the mix of fruit and ylang-ylang that for a second I got a similar feel as in Tom Ford's Black Orchid heart notes. But, while Ford's creation is deep, sexy film noir version of the notes, Ivohibe is more of the Doris Day edition, and I mean it in the nicest possible way.

My skin skipped the musk and most of the woods, and jumped right into the vanilla drydown. It's sweet, alright, but not cloying or silly. That's where the cozy aspect of the fragrance starts. It's not a classic comfort scent, because it gives an elaborate, ornamental feel, but it has an embracing femininity that makes a stormy day become much better.

Photo by F.C. Gundlach, 1955

Not Safe for Work- Parfumerie Generale Coze

Based on the listed notes (canapa sativa seed oil, pepper, pimento, coffee, ebony wood, chocolate, bourbon vanilla pods) I half expected Coze to be Parfumerie Generale's masculine version of Musc Maori. But it isn't. The sweetness I'm getting in the opening isn't gourmand (not a bad thing, actually) but more woody. This opening is so pretty that some men might find a bit feminine, but only for a very short time. Within five minutes it becomes smoky and very incense-like.

On one hand, about half the time I'm wearing it, the dark sweetness is alluring and sexy to the point of it almost feels indicent. It's a night time scent that seems third date ready. The incense is sensual, and even though I'm missing the promised chocolate and vanilla, there is a yuminess aspect that adds to the illicit air. When it is bad, it's really good...

But.

Tobacco isn't a listed note here, but the smokiness definitely has a strong tobacco feel. So much so, that I find it off-putting. I'm a life-long non-smoker (never even tried) and I find the smell unpleasant. Every now and then I'd get a whiff that reminds me of the way my mom used to smell before she quit smoking. A mixture of cigarette smoke, Karl Lagerfeld's Chloe (the old EdP version) and a mystical air of beauty products and general femininity that mothers smell like to their daughters.

While this is not bad at all, the smoker's clothes accord is not my thing, and I find the combination disturbing enough that I don't enjoy wearing it as much as I'd like.

For the love of chocolate- Parfumerie Generale Musc Maori

I've been pondering my options for that dreaded day that my bottle of Lea Extreme runs out. It is a limited edition, but still available at Luckyscents, so I can hoard bottles if I really have to. However, I'm not sure if it's such a good idea, considering that the bottles are (too) big at 100 ml and might turn before I actually get to use them.

I was hoping to find something similar. A very non-Angel gourmand scent that is chocolatey and musky without hitting you over the head with a sweet stick, and that doesn't smell like it belongs in a discounted gift set from Macy's.

Musc Maori by Parfumerie Generale is just that. It boasts several notes: Cumaru wood, green notes of coffee tree blossom, white musk, cocoa bean, amber and tonka bean. On my skin it was exclusively vanilla, cocoa and that lovely white musk that characterizes Lea Extreme's drydown and is probably responsible to the craving Lea fans tend to get.

Unlike Aomassai, another rich gourmand offering from PG, there are no weird notes in this one and it's unlikely that anyone would find it objectionable. If anything, it might be criticized for lack of innovation. It stays the same without much development throughout its short-to-medium skin life and doesn't surprise you at any point.

Musc Maori smells more delicate than LE, it doesn't have the almondy-coconuty note in the opening and carries an air of sophistication that Lea Extreme sadly lacks. Still, it has the same satisfying, comforting effect, a similar warmth and its sexiness is just a bit more grownup. I might have just found the solution for life after Lea.

Beautiful Ugly- Parfumerie Generale Aomassai

The Blond and I rarely disagree about fragrance (and most everything, actually. Ten years of marriage have made us eerily similar, well, except for him being blond, and me- not so much). We seem to love the same things on ourselves and on each other (a noted exception here was his reaction to my Anat Fritz on his skin). But, Parfumerie Generale's Aomassai has presented a serious challenge to this harmony. He didn't like it when I first tried it on and really hated it the second time around. To him, it smells like vanilla with a side of rotten. He only gets the gourmand side of this fragrance, without any of the wood and spice, and the foody element smells rotten to him. I have no idea why.


It's not that I don't get why he finds the scent disturbing. Aomassai has a weird note that never goes away. The listed notes all seem harmless enough (caramel, toasted hazelnuts, licorice, bitter orange, spices, wenge wood, vetiver, balsam wood, incense, dried grasses, resins), except, maybe, the licorice that many people find objectable. But I doubt that it's the case here. The thing is, that I sort of like this weird note. Or at least, I can't keep my nose away from it.

I can't help but think of model/actress Rossy De Palma, famous for being ugly and beautiful at the same time (and that nose!). I tried to find photos from a story she did for Vogue about 15 years ago that demonstrated this quality perfectly, but they don't seem to exist online. Her face is hypnotic. One moment she's ugly and all you see is her nose. But you still can't take your eyes off this face, and suddenly you see her beauty and her striking features.

To my nose, Aomassai is just like that. The first thing I smell is Frangelico. A mix of booze and hazelnuts. It's rich and caramely, tempting with sweetness, yet the weirdness is there, somewhat medicinal, and can't be ignored. Later come spice and wenge wood, a note I adore. It keeps the liqueur feel and sweetness, though less foody by the end of it. Still, Rossy and her nose are there, keeping the fragrance from floating quietly into a pretty drydown. I keep sniffing my wrist, fascinated and... not repulsed, maybe taken aback just a little. I like it. I think.

Next fragrance review will be something way less controversial. The Blond and I will team to talk about Andy Tauer perfumes, which we both adore.