02/14/2021
Rossiniopera
37 Reviews
Rossiniopera
1
Bitter-green spicy chypre
I recently found a bottle of Lancôme Flèches d'Or. The bottle is beautiful, well preserved in its white box, and was still sealed with a crisp layer of thin wax around the stopper. However it was so stuck that it took me two days to open it, trying all the tricks I knew, before I finally just took a piece of cloth and wrapped it four times around the fragile glass stopper, took a small wrench and just turned with force. Fortunately, it worked, without breaking anything.
The perfume opens with a really strong galbanum note, which, mixed with oak moss, gives a heavy chypre feel. Very bitter-green, like freshly cut flower stems. And then on top of that, there's a strong anise note. I find that to be a rather odd combination, as I usually associate spices with orientals, not green chypres. More spices appear, I believe cardamom and maybe a hint of clove. I often use those spices when cooking with apples, so I keep waiting for some familiar sweetness, but this is not sweet. There is a bouquet of mixed flowers, I think lavender, and most notably rose, but it still feels green and dry - I mean that as in non-sweet, not dusty. After a couple of hours, it gets very musky, just like my other very-old Lancôme, Conquête, which is also a rose-centered chypre, but without the spice.
The perfume is well-kept and no doubt still fresh, with high-quality ingredients. I just find the composition and combination of notes very unusual, and probably also a bit too much of a chypre for my personal taste. Large portions of oakmoss and galbanum tend to get stuck in my throat - I am more of an oriental/floriental lover. Still, I am somehow drawn to it...
Flèches d'Or is cool, full of dark green nuances and shadows, like a garden on a spring evening, just around sunset. I do not yet know all the secrets that are hiding in there, and it may take me a while to discover them (if I ever will), but I am willing to give it a few more tries... maybe one day the full story will reveal itself?
The perfume opens with a really strong galbanum note, which, mixed with oak moss, gives a heavy chypre feel. Very bitter-green, like freshly cut flower stems. And then on top of that, there's a strong anise note. I find that to be a rather odd combination, as I usually associate spices with orientals, not green chypres. More spices appear, I believe cardamom and maybe a hint of clove. I often use those spices when cooking with apples, so I keep waiting for some familiar sweetness, but this is not sweet. There is a bouquet of mixed flowers, I think lavender, and most notably rose, but it still feels green and dry - I mean that as in non-sweet, not dusty. After a couple of hours, it gets very musky, just like my other very-old Lancôme, Conquête, which is also a rose-centered chypre, but without the spice.
The perfume is well-kept and no doubt still fresh, with high-quality ingredients. I just find the composition and combination of notes very unusual, and probably also a bit too much of a chypre for my personal taste. Large portions of oakmoss and galbanum tend to get stuck in my throat - I am more of an oriental/floriental lover. Still, I am somehow drawn to it...
Flèches d'Or is cool, full of dark green nuances and shadows, like a garden on a spring evening, just around sunset. I do not yet know all the secrets that are hiding in there, and it may take me a while to discover them (if I ever will), but I am willing to give it a few more tries... maybe one day the full story will reveal itself?
