Frederic Malle's Powders
Frederic Malle is a house that the more acquainted with it I become, the more I love it. It's a house dedicated to luxury and the idea that perfume shouldn't just be a product to be marketed to people, but rather a piece of art curated by a master artisan. To that end, Frederic Malle encouraged guest perfumers to create as freely as they desired with all the ingredients available to them, resulting in a lot of very complex fragrances. I took a class recently taught by an ISIPCA graduate and during the history of perfumery part of the class, she mentioned that when perfumery really took off, especially with the rise of Guerlain fragrances, it was common practice for these perfumes to be incredibly dense, with upwards of 90 ingredients comprising them. This would lead to an insanely complicated notes list, but also create a perfume with remarkable lasting power, a unique profile, and a very meandering unfurling of the notes. In this school of thought, many perfumes published by Frederic Malle (a word I think he would like, since the company story mentions that they see Malle as an editor and the perfume packaging is stylized to look like books) have very busy notes lists.
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| Screenshot of Frederic Malle's About section |
I love perfumes as wearable art and I think it's cool to see perfumers flexing their creative muscles in completely self indulgent pursuits. Today I want to take a look at two of the perfumes offered by Malle that hearken back to vintage perfumes, both in notes, style, taste, and the density of the notes lists.
Iris Poudre
This is a powder, as stated in the name, and it is exactly what it says on the bottle. Pierre Bourdon is the guest perfumer who made this one, and according to the website's copy, it is his tribute to and reimagining of "the great aldehydic florals of the 20th century." While many of us may think of aldehydes as being quite metallic and aggressive, like cold mountain air, I think the aldehyde in this composition refers to how he makes the perfume cloud around the wearer. If I was in a cartoon my whole top half would be slightly obscured in a gentle sheer lavender sparkly cloud that would leave scent tendrils into the noses of passersby.
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| Iris Poudre notes |
On initial spray it smells like that really silky body powder everyone's grandmother seemed to have. It is not as chalky as baby powder nor as dry as makeup setting powder, but sweet, smooth, and bright. It made my nose tingle a little, like the concept of a sneeze, but as soon as I backed out the area where I had sprayed and the liquid settled on my skin, the overwhelming powder was gone. This took maybe 30 seconds at most, so do not be worried about what it smells like directly from the bottle. After about a minute something sticky sweet came to life under the initial powder blast, like I had drizzled a thick floral syrup directly onto my skin. Usually I can pick out a Bulgarian rose by itself, but this was a very well blended floral, all sweet and juicy with no discernible single flower. I must attribute the juiciness to the peach. It was sharp in my nose, but not cloying. Imagine smelling the sweetest fresh flowers, the way you can almost taste the nectar but the aroma still floats on the air. This bloomed open over the next two hours, enlivening the powdery florals of violets and iris. At no point did this ever cross over into cotton candy gourmand syrupy sweet, but reminded steadfastly floral nectar, which kept it from getting nauseating. I have always had a hard time with florals and gourmands that lean too hard into the sugar notes (Sweet Tooth, Her, Angel) and certain Bulgarian rose notes can veer into that overwhelming saccharine territory, but somehow Iris Poudre walked a fine line of being candy sweet without giving me a toothache.
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| The work vibes wearing Iris Poudre |
The powder aspect in this fragrance is so glamorous and mature. I felt like I could be confident, alluring, sophisticated and mysterious wearing this, like it would go from day to night seamlessly and blend with any outfit. Definitely appropriate for work in a lower dose, and refreshed before hitting the town for a sensible happy hour or perhaps a dinner reservation. It's floral and airy enough for spring and summer, but the powder keeps it warm and velvety for fall and winter. I feel like I should be a New York socialite who summers in Connecticut or Rhode Island.
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| Jackie Kennedy Onassis could wear Iris Poudre in any season |
As this wears, the powder cloud around you slowly clears, and after about 4-6 hours it sits merely on your skin, there if you get close enough, and only strong enough to make you smell clean to the person standing right next to you. From the rosewood on the opening to the sandalwood and cedar at the base, there is a very gentle and dry foundation of wood to this fragrance that sits underneath all the notes and directly against the skin. It's there if you smell close enough, adding stability to the great powdery poof above it, but not so noticeable as to make this a woody scent. The vanilla, amber, and musk provide a slight warmth to the composition, but it's just as slight as the woods, merely there to deepen the mountain of floral notes above. It is not an incredibly long lasting fragrance, a good 8 hours on the skin with no friction, longer but gentler on clothes. I feel like one good spray on a cashmere cardigan would make me fit right in in Greenwich, CT. Well, until they saw my 2014 Honda Civic.
I loved how this one wore. This is one of the few fragrances that has made me stop and consider truly devoting myself to a signature scent. Gorgeous, universal, flattering, and sophisticated.
Lipstick Rose
I feel like this one is called a powder simply because the classification for a perfume that smells like wax and plastics just does not exist. This is not a slight against the perfume, mind you, it is just such a wonderfully unique creation as to defy labeling.
The concept behind this fragrance is "that intimate moment when a star, in the quiet comfort of her dressing room, looks in the mirror and glides her lipstick over her lips. The powdery fragrances produced by the violet and the iris, two flowers associated with eye shadow and other make-up products, whose scents conjure up the magnetic appeal of the eternal feminine." I love the fact that the idea is not just the woman wearing the makeup, but the makeup itself is at the heart of this fragrance. Hence why I genuinely enjoy the synthetic smell it produces. I also love the image of the star's dressing room. One of my favorite settings in a movie about a star, especially ones from the early to mid 1900's, is the dressing room. I love the variety of ways set dressers would style a dressing room. Sometimes a rich velvet boudoir, sometimes a silky pink confection, but always glamorous and opulent and a place that makes you want to visit, especially if it's not yours.
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| Ginger Rogers in her vanities |
When this is sprayed initially there is something candy sweet on the air, vibrant and fresh, which I have to assume is the lemon and raspberry, but almost immediately the powders of the iris and violet emerge and begin sticking to everything. This lays the foundation for how the perfume will act as it wears. When I breathe in the powder is there, dry and sweet and dusty, swirling in the air around as though I had clapped together two big silky powder puffs from a movie star's makeup chair. Dancing gently on top and around the powder though is a fruity sweetness, but there's a gentle sour tang to it, which must be the lychee. It gives this odd, slightly nauseating quality to it, like when you drink a Yakult too fast and it makes you momentarily queasy before your stomach settles. Again, this sounds like I dislike this fragrance but I really don't, it's just remarkable how the notes play with each other. The notes working together somehow give the impression of a waxy lipstick, but certainly of a very vintage bullet. If your main frame of reference for lipstick smell is the vanilla of modern MAC this may not be an appealing scent to you. It does waver back and forth between wax and plastic for me, but not cheap, thin, noxious plastic, like toy packaging, but more of a clean, durable, powder coated plastic, like a new car part or new pleather shoes. Again, this is me very happy and intrigued with the fragrance, I really enjoy wearing it, but it is definitely a work of creative art and not an easily marketable crowd pleaser.
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| Lipstick Rose notes |
As this wears, the powder slowly turns into a cloud around me in the air, while the deeper notes start to bloom on the skin. I cannot smell any of the base notes wafting around me, like I can with the ever present iris, violet, and lily, but once I pick my wrist up to my nose and breathe deeply I smell the musk and cedar quite clearly, the dry cedar playing very well with the gentle dry powder. The leather is also noticeable under all the notes, helping to bring the idea of the dressing room to life, as no doubt the chair this movie star sits in is upholstered in beautiful sumptuous leather, albeit with a blanket thrown across it for warmth. The base notes do not take away from the superstar middle notes, but offer some grounding to the otherwise airy, diffusive ensemble.
This lasts a generous 8+ hours, a full work day for me, and gradually loses its intensity. It's like the whole thing evaporates off slowly, first the fruity top notes, then the long haze of the sweet powder, and when you finally realize the air no longer has that dusty, pink quality, and you raise your wrist to your nose to check it it's all gone, even the amber and vanilla have burned away, leaving behind the memory of the warmth they had.
While I don't think this one is an everyday wear for most people (I'm sure there is someone who dresses like Joan from Mad Men every day and she could make this a signature) this is definitely a fun accessory to have in the wardrobe. It's very vintage and doesn't smell like anything else I've tried.
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| Joan Holloway from Mad Men |
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