La Belle Helene by Parfums MDCI

By Marina As the song goes, "the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t." La Belle Helene, whom, if I were to anthropomorphize her, I would place in the "29 to infinity" age bracket, is undecided about what to do with her life. The fragrance, created for Parfums MDCI by Bertrand Duchaufour, seems to be vacillating whether to become a joyful fruity, pear-centered scent, to focus her attention on leathery osmanthus or to perhaps turn into a very vaguely loukhoum-like rosy-orrisy blend... And most significantly, I am not even entirely sure I should call La Belle Helene a She. For a perfume that is supposed to be inspired by a dessert and is full of such traditionally feminine and even girly notes, Helene smells rather masculine. Right from the start, the aldehydes are sparkling darkly, not brightly, and that sets the tone for the subsequent stages of the development. The fruits and flowers are sweet but strangely dry at the same time, the gourmand aspect is abstract at most...And the base, well, that is where La Belle Helene is all man. The mossy, earthy, leathery, sharply-woody drydown is mucho macho on my skin. The overall impressions is that of a porcelain-skinned, seemingly very feminine beauty on whom somebody drew a mustache... Some of the most interesting people I know are the ones who decided to accept the fact that they still don't know what to do with their lives; their eclectic tastes and vast albeit sometimes random knowledge are what makes them exciting. The same applies to La Belle Helene. Yes, you can't figure her out because she hasn't figured herself out, but that's what's keeping you coming back. Available from MDCI and Luckyscent, $250.00-$375.00, depending upon the fanciness of the bottle. Image by Matt Ewrin.

In Which I Am Hard to Please

It is difficult to please me with fruity scents, because, and I will freely admit it, my set of rules keeps changing. Ordinarily, I would maintain that the less fruit the better. So I feel bad saying what I am about to say regarding Parfums Delrae's new perfume, Emotionelle...It is too perfumey, and the "perfumey" part does not let me enjoy the delicious juiciness of melon in full. Don't get me wrong, I think, the scent is sublime. It is gracefully delicate and intense at the same time. The "perfumey" part is, I suppose, constituted of cedar, vetiver, labdanum and spices...I was tempted to write, cumin, but I might be making it up. Imagine Diorama, Diorella or Le Parfum de Therese, imagine that very specific, very recognizable something that most if not all Edmond Roudnitska's creations have. Something perfumey and dirty, and I mean both as a compliment. And add to that E. Roundnitska base a lot of melon. A LOT of melon. (Yes, the three scents I mentioned already have some anyway.) Basically, I would describe Michele Roudnitska's Emotionelle as equal parts melon and Edmond Roudnistka. And - it pains me to type this - in this particular instance, I wish there was less of the latter here. So much perfumey-ness just does not go with so much melon, in my humble opinion. SOME melon, as in Le Parfum de Therese, for example, is a perfect, playful, joie de vivre twist that puts a smile on a chic face of the maitre's compositions. But when there is a lot of both the fruit and the chic perfuminess, it just does not work for me. I guess, because I love melon so, if there is a lot of it in a fragrance, that is ALL I want to smell in a fragrance. Not so with peaches. Having gone on about how there is too much perfume in Emotionelle, I feel awkward criticizing MDCI's Peche Cardinal for not being perfumey enough. But there you have it. It is not. It is too peachy. Peachy is childish, too girly, invariably smells too chemical in such quantities, and it makes me uncomfortable. Especially when it is blended with coconut. I love the slight booziness of davana in Peche Cardinal and I enjoy the elegance of the musky-woody base. I am guessing, the creators were aiming for a modern take on a peachy chypre, trying to do a playful take on a classic. For me, they might need to do take two. Having said that, I was trying to come up with a single name of a peach fragrance I love, and failed. So it is actually unfair of me to critisize Peche Cardinal at all. When it comes to peach, I am not just hard but impossible to please. Both available at Luckyscent, Emotionelle for $135.00, Peche Cardinal for $235.00-$610.00.