Which is fake strawberry. Like, the stuff used in Jolly Ranchers. This
isn’t even a realist school of perfumery because it’s not perfumery at
all.
Perfumers and flavorists share many raw materials (a lot of
the things in your Diors and Laurens are food grade), and what Audigier
has bottled, you can find in the cake mix aisle at D’Agostino.
I say Audigier advisedly. Technically, this sugary elixir is attributed to a perfumer, Caroline Sabas.
To say that her prodigious talents are wasted here is to misunderstand entirely the marketing premise.
Obviously Audigier wanted fake strawberry, and that’s what Sabas gave him.
(It’s nice as far as fake strawberry goes, incidentally — probably Sabas’s contribution.) And if you’re wearing your awesome
Ed Hardy swimwear, size small,
you’ll
probably buy a bottle because the packaging design matches. But it’s
not good. Not strangely beautiful. And not substantive.
Paul
Poiret was the Yves Saint Laurent of his day. In the early 1900s, he
threw extravagant parties and became so famous that he was invited to
show his collection at the British Prime Minister’s residence.
His
clothes — innovative, elaborate pieces of draped and billowing fabric —
sold for vast sums. In 1911, Poiret launched his perfume collection,
named for his oldest daughter, Rosine.
The Chanel people chafe
when it’s mentioned, but I believe Poiret indeed preceded Coco Chanel
by a decade as the first fashion designer to launch a fragrance.
When
Poiret hung up his uniform after World War I, he found the house — then
in competition with the clean-lined, sporty new designers like Chanel —
almost bankrupt. He was in debt, his business partners abandoned him.
The house closed in 1929. Poiret died in poverty.
In the late 20th century, a woman named Marie-Helène Rogeon became interested in reviving Poiret’s scents.
Rogeon’s
grandparents and great-grandparents had been fillers for Poiret, mixing
his formulae in alcohol and packaging the perfumes, of which Poiret had
created 50.
None of the formulae had survived, nor the names
of the perfumers, but Rogeon found a text that described the scent of
La Rose de Rosine.
Rogeon went to the perfumer Fran?ois Robert,
son of the great perfumer Guy Robert and a professor at ISIPCA, the
Cambridge of perfume schools.
