Sherapop

Fresh, clean, flowery and powdery. As ingenuous and natural as can be, APRES L'ONDEE has no hidden, inner, subterranean depths to penetrate, and thus differs rather radically from my concept of classic Guerlain—especially from compositions such as MITSOUKO and L'HEURE BLEUE. Yet this perfume is beautiful, too, in its own way. My distinct impression is that Prada was trying to capture something like this aesthetic in its Infusion series, especially INFUSION D'IRIS edt, the most recent launch, to which violet has been added. The INFUSION trio is also very clean, but it is far more woody and, in the case of INFUSION D'HOMME, soapy as well. There is no soap in APRES L'ONDEE at all. The cleanness of this scent is that of fresh rainwater-washed purple flowers, no more and no less.

Although APRES L'ONDEE features key notes—violet, iris, heliotrope and anise—in common with a number of other more recent perfumes, here they are presented in an unsweetened state and without other components which tend to muddy the waters somewhat. There is not a single speck of dirt anywhere to be sniffed in APRES L'ONDEE. For that reason, some people may find this perfume simply too simple, more like a nineteenth-century violet soliflore than a masterpiece. However, those who seek out high-quality notes such as are featured in the sometimes simple perfumes of niche lines are bound to appreciate APRES L'ONDEE. In my case, the appeal is overdetermined: I love niche-quality notes, in general, and violet, iris, heliotrope and anise, in particular!

My understanding is that this perfume has been discontinued, and I'm thinking that maybe that's not such a bad thing, since at least if I manage to acquire a bottle it will not (I presume) have been disastrously reformulated.

I see red! Wear QUEL AMOUR! and you will too: wild roses, rose geranium, red currants, pomegranates, and cherries. Yes, there's an awful lot of red going on in this rich fruity-floral perfume, and all of it is good! The fruits and florals are well-balanced, each carrying their weight and not being drowned out as is often the case in fragrances of this kind. The other primary virtue of this creation to someone like me, with whom fruit notes are notoriously uncooperative, is that these juicy red fruits really are fresh. They are not plastic or artificially sweetened or rotting or sour or vaguely (or profoundly...) emetic. Not at all.

It goes perhaps without saying that I am not really, in my throbbing red heart of hearts, the fruity-floral type, but QUEL AMOUR! has made a believer out of me (along with Ineke BRIAR ROSE, which is even better...). Yes, it is at least *possible* to create a wearable, enjoyable, fruity-floral perfume for adults. For years, I believed that the sheer possibility might be precluded by some arcane law of perfume logic, but this sort of composition, albeit rare, roundly refutes that hypothesis.

Although QUEL AMOUR! is relatively simple, it's quite nice for what it is and certainly leaps and bounds better than the vast majority of fruity-floral BHT nightmares on the market today, most of which are pointless and some of which I find even painful to wear. The red here is saturated, making this perfume rather assertive. The longevity is also good, like a deep red wine stain on a white linen tablecloth. Even after a full night of sleep, the rose geranium, in particular, lingers on...

Another smooth oriental creation in the same olfactory neighborhood as Boucheron TROUBLE, albeit quite a bit simpler, Rochas ABSOLU is so benzoin and tolu balsam and labdanum-rich that the flowers (lily and neroli?)—and whatever else is supposed to be here—lie below my threshold detection capacity. What is most salient to me about this creation is its creator, Jacques Cavallier, who seems to use some mystery component which marks many perfumes as his own. I've smelled it in not only TROUBLE and ABSOLU, but also Calvin TRUTH (the original—I am not familiar with the reformulation...), and the perfumes which he designed both for Yves Rocher and for Salvatore Ferragamo.

Of all of the many perfumes by Jacques Cavallier with which I am familiar, ABSOLU strikes me as the most streamlined and the most obviously Cavallieresque, devoid as it is of loud distractions—whether of the spicy or the floral variety. In fact, this one might have been named L'ESSENCE DE JACQUES CAVALLIER. To my nose this composition really is minimalist—I would not have thought to compare it to Moschino COUTURE, for example, since the spices are so much more dominant in that composition than in this one, which to my nose is essentially an oriental perfume base. Very understated and totally unisex, ABSOLU would be perfect for those who find hard-hitting orientals to be a bit overwhelming.

I myself like but do not love and could certainly forgo ABSOLU without undue strife, but I really do love the sleek vessel in which it is housed!

I really fell head over heels for La Perla, which I first encountered last year when a fellow fragrance traveler sent me a generous sample of this gem. I had never even heard of this perfume, much less seen it anywhere for sale. To me, La Perla, like Moschino's first (eponymous) perfume, is a made-in-the-1980s classic which deserves to live on and on and has been severely underappreciated, passed over by the masses lured in to the major counters to buy the latest new big thing (whatever it may be, and however it may smell...) by massive attention-getting marketing campaigns. Meanwhile, La Perla has been shrouded in relative obscurity—I presume because the company has lingerie not perfume as its primary focus? More evidence for this "other priorities" theory would seem to be the cap on the La Perla bottle. It's probably the cheapest one I've ever seen, more akin to something that you'd find on a stick of deodorant than a luxurious perfume. But it wasn't the ugly, tacky, five-cents-to-produce cap that kept me and so many others away. It was the near total lack of any significant effort to promote or sell this beautiful perfume!!!!!

Why do I love La Perla? In part, because it is a sophisticated yet comfy modern chypre, which was amazingly created between two patchouli fads. On the one hand, there was the hippie era, when (I'm told...) dark patchouli oil mingled with old faded, not-washed-for-months jeans. On the other hand, we continue to witness to the present day the post-Angel deluge of sweet patchouli frags. Somehow La Perla manages to avoid both excesses, being rich in patchouli and moss but neither very dirty nor very sweet. Instead, this perfume is soft and sultry: a perfect piece of silk lingerie, in fact. I love to sleep in La Perla, I really do.

***

NB: the above review is for vintage LA PERLA. I have two reformulations, one in the original bottle, and one in the new bottle. Neither comes close, unfortunately. I'd give them 70% tops.