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05/24/2020
Unterholz
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Unterholz
Top Review
Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!
This king is no more. Apicius prophesied nine years ago that this midfield Penhaligon would one day be terminated. Esprit du Roi 2011 was a re-release of a perfume with the same name from 1983. I can't say anything about the 83 version, I'm just referring to the re-release here.
Now I see the royal abdication not in its alleged middle class nature, but rather in the fact that the effects-used consumers simply demand "handier concepts" than one could see in such a weird herbal men's fragrance.
This Duchaufour is certainly a successful work of art, but on closer inspection it is neither fish nor meat. And little of it seems royal. It comes from a time when classic big and loud men's fragrances acquired a broad fan base that still exists. Why this rather quiet Penhaligon's did not succeed in the early 80's, I can't judge, so miles away from his shoes he can't have stood with his little bit of tomato extravagance either.
But why did the royal head have to roll? It may hardly be the quality, because this fragrance is really made to a high standard. Does the royalist title not correspond enough to the spirit of the times? If you look at Penhaligon's latest outputs, it's the noblesse factor that the brand relies on... but now with a touch of British humour, which the poor tomato king always lacked. So we would see the failure of the joyless marketing, which finds its consensus in this boring white etiquette?
Anyway, I don't want to philosophize here for a long time about why one product can prove itself on the market and another not. But it is interesting to note that it cannot be the fragrance concept alone, as all kinds of "old-fashioned" recipes have experienced an almost overly celebrated renaissance in recent years. For example "Chypre Palatin", "Sartorial" (both by Duchaufour), "Invasion Barbare", "Masculin Pluriel" (Kurkdjian) etc etc which all say that those believed dead often live longer.
With Esprit du Roi, a certain perplexity is spreading. This scent can't make up its mind. The king rules, but he doesn't rule.
In the years in which I have been working with fragrances, my taste has sometimes changed a lot, sometimes so much that I now include perfumes in my collection that I would never have liked in the past.
At the beginning, for example, only citric, relatively natural scents without any sweetness were appealing to me, but I have dealt with amber, sweeter or even gourmand scents and often made friends with them. It was similar with floral scents, which I did not appreciate at all at the beginning.
And in this context I still remember my first test of this Penhaligon . I had received a specimen together with Endymion, and I liked the latter immediately.
I liked the royal top note, herbal-minty, then follows a fresh not too extreme floral soap in the heart, as I like it.
I found the slightly sweet ambered vetiver-moss base rather unsuitable and it left me a little helpless. At that time I gave it only 6.5 points and left it at that. My judgement must have been subject to my all or nothing maxim at that time: spicy-exotic or citrus-fresh. I realized that this approach did not have endless validity since I started testing the classics from Guerlain & Co., where citrus complexes and floral hearts work wonderfully in combination with a well-tempered vanilla-wood base. I consider some compositions of this kind to be the greatest (and most complete) perfumes of all time.
This Penhaligon's is basically arranged quite classically and you could easily overlook it, because it is nothing really new. The much quoted tomato note catapults it out of its habitualness and is perhaps the stumbling block for some people Esprit du Roi is nevertheless worth a test, if you can generally get to grips with British perfumery. In the net you can find here and there some cheap remainders, I have also taken one without hesitation.
And surprisingly had to rehabilitate the king.
Long live the dead king!
Now I see the royal abdication not in its alleged middle class nature, but rather in the fact that the effects-used consumers simply demand "handier concepts" than one could see in such a weird herbal men's fragrance.
This Duchaufour is certainly a successful work of art, but on closer inspection it is neither fish nor meat. And little of it seems royal. It comes from a time when classic big and loud men's fragrances acquired a broad fan base that still exists. Why this rather quiet Penhaligon's did not succeed in the early 80's, I can't judge, so miles away from his shoes he can't have stood with his little bit of tomato extravagance either.
But why did the royal head have to roll? It may hardly be the quality, because this fragrance is really made to a high standard. Does the royalist title not correspond enough to the spirit of the times? If you look at Penhaligon's latest outputs, it's the noblesse factor that the brand relies on... but now with a touch of British humour, which the poor tomato king always lacked. So we would see the failure of the joyless marketing, which finds its consensus in this boring white etiquette?
Anyway, I don't want to philosophize here for a long time about why one product can prove itself on the market and another not. But it is interesting to note that it cannot be the fragrance concept alone, as all kinds of "old-fashioned" recipes have experienced an almost overly celebrated renaissance in recent years. For example "Chypre Palatin", "Sartorial" (both by Duchaufour), "Invasion Barbare", "Masculin Pluriel" (Kurkdjian) etc etc which all say that those believed dead often live longer.
With Esprit du Roi, a certain perplexity is spreading. This scent can't make up its mind. The king rules, but he doesn't rule.
In the years in which I have been working with fragrances, my taste has sometimes changed a lot, sometimes so much that I now include perfumes in my collection that I would never have liked in the past.
At the beginning, for example, only citric, relatively natural scents without any sweetness were appealing to me, but I have dealt with amber, sweeter or even gourmand scents and often made friends with them. It was similar with floral scents, which I did not appreciate at all at the beginning.
And in this context I still remember my first test of this Penhaligon . I had received a specimen together with Endymion, and I liked the latter immediately.
I liked the royal top note, herbal-minty, then follows a fresh not too extreme floral soap in the heart, as I like it.
I found the slightly sweet ambered vetiver-moss base rather unsuitable and it left me a little helpless. At that time I gave it only 6.5 points and left it at that. My judgement must have been subject to my all or nothing maxim at that time: spicy-exotic or citrus-fresh. I realized that this approach did not have endless validity since I started testing the classics from Guerlain & Co., where citrus complexes and floral hearts work wonderfully in combination with a well-tempered vanilla-wood base. I consider some compositions of this kind to be the greatest (and most complete) perfumes of all time.
This Penhaligon's is basically arranged quite classically and you could easily overlook it, because it is nothing really new. The much quoted tomato note catapults it out of its habitualness and is perhaps the stumbling block for some people Esprit du Roi is nevertheless worth a test, if you can generally get to grips with British perfumery. In the net you can find here and there some cheap remainders, I have also taken one without hesitation.
And surprisingly had to rehabilitate the king.
Long live the dead king!
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