Hirondelle

I quote a flea market salesman in southern France: "My mother had a perfumery in the fifties, now I'm selling the old stock." Yeah! That's what you wish to experience by chance. "But I don't advise testing on your skin, these things are sometimes eighty years old." No, that's clear. Further I bought an ancient version of "Tabac blond" by Caron with a minirest, but he raked the whole car, "Eau d' Hadrien" by Annick Goutal (the beautiful butterfly version), "A la reine des fleurs of Piver".
Sometimes I envy the elderly who still knew the old scents. Comments like "Today it's all softened up", "the character is no longer comparable" etc. come into my mind. Therefore I search flea and antique markets very specifically for vintage flacons, here in Switzerland unfortunately mostly unsuccessfully. You can be unlucky and the scent has long since tipped over, you never know in advance.
Now the suitcases are unpacked and first I test this old Caron, as a big fan of powder scents I am curious about the iris, the mimosa. You hardly notice when you open it, the texture is different, the performance doesn't come with a thunderous head note, which tempts you to buy impulses. No, the fragrance develops gently and roundly, very harmoniously! What is exciting about this fragrance is the tension between the powdery notes (iris and rose), which sometimes smell almost clean, and the more sensual notes like ylangylang, amber and woods. This combination adds depth to the fragrance. Moreover, the fragrance remains completely unsweet in contrast to many other fragrances of the last thirty years. In my opinion it doesn't need that much sweetness, I have trouble with the Supra-Gourmands. There I find this vintage scent in its spicy soapiness much more pleasant. The Sillage remains relatively close to the body, the durability is still amazing for such an old water. A beautiful and exciting fragrance experience!

This scent fits so beautifully into exactly this season: late April: The Lechzen after somewhat warmer days has (in theory) an end and suddenly literally flowers explode, trees and of course the blue rain. It is the smell of the blue rain after it has rained for a whole day and in the late afternoon the sun suddenly breaks through the clouds and the blue rain now steams in the evening sun.

Jasmine and narcissus underline a certain heaviness, the honeysuckle gives some lightness and a touch of powder. In the course of time jasmine and narcissus take over relatively soon, too bad, I would have liked to stand under the steaming blue rain (or would have liked to pass it a few more times).

I would recommend a sparing dosage as mild headache potential.
Overall nice late spring fragrance.

I'll say it straight away: I love him. On the one hand it starts fresh (and almost spicy) with bergamot, at the same time its wonderful creaminess shines through, which characterizes the character of this fragrance throughout. A creaminess I had never known before. Neither soapy, nor too sweet, nor too powdery (although "too powdery" does not exist). Just just right. It is an unbelievably feminine and elegant fragrance... Thank God, the tubereuse holds back in a form in which it contributes its best qualities moderately to the Gesamtkunstwerk. I also mean to smell heliotrope. The drydown is pleasantly warm, as someone has already written here, not a classic chypre, because neither oakmoss nor patchouli dare to come out. What a stronger presence of these notes would have done with the overall scent is hard to say, would perhaps have contributed to a somewhat greater tension. But the way he is, I like wearing him very much. Signature scent potential!

I know, the fragrance is judged very ambivalently, you hate it, you love it. I'm with him, I'm with his fans. Someone also wrote that he might be better valued if he was more expensive (and if the bottle was more aesthetic). It was in the nineties, when the scent blew to me every now and then. When we first went with my parents in the Magic Flute in the old Kursaal in Westerland, I took the scent for the first time and would have liked to sneak after it as a little girl. Powdery, warm, cordial. Like the kindergarten teacher you're terribly attached to, like the dearest cuddly toy, like a very elegant lady in an evening dress who was on the beach before the opera in the afternoon (and still smells a bit like Ombia sun cream from Aldi Nord, let's be honest). When I was a teenager and accidentally sniffed at different flacons in a perfumery, I just couldn't believe it: This so beautiful and warm fragrance in such an ollen bottle... Anyway, it was my first perfume I bought. Today I like to wear it from time to time, today I lack something of the complexity, the special course that I tend to look for today. But what the hell, sometimes you just want a bag of Haribo, children's chocolate (childhood memories) or sometimes I just like to wrap myself in a feel-good scent that nostalgically takes me back to this evening of my first opera visit and caresses my soul.

Actually, I test and sneak around buying candidates for quite a while, but Incarnata didn't let go of me very quickly. This fragrance has a completely different effect. Of the Anatole Lebreton scents it is still the most pleasing in my perception, but in comparison to the Grand Public scents the scent needs time, as if it wanted to be conquered. The lipstick note is really very skilful, in addition there is a warm powderiness, which gets along completely without sweetness, but radiates a dry warmth. Anatole Lebreton dares a lot in his creations, when I tested this fragrance for the first time, a liquorice note bothered me so much that I washed off the perfume as well as possible. But it didn't want to, it stuck and it suddenly smelled - unliedly - like a bedroom in which things had been going really well shortly before, you stumble into an unventilated intimate nest and think only hoppala! More and more I like these fragrances, which not only smell good, but which at first can irritate, are unfamiliar, have a character that wants to be known (and loved). Fragrances that look like an own scent, Hautaccord, I read recently (if someone can recommend such fragrances to me, please!!). Despite my first violent reaction, I continued testing Incarnata. Thank God, because since today it's mine!