Perfume Review: Perles by Lalique and Midnight Rain by La Prairie
I smelled two new releases yesterday - Perles by Lalique and Midnight Rain by La Prairie. First of all, it’s taking me some physical effort to not just get to the gist of it, and tell you exactly how I feel about these two (I love giving out the punch line in anything, and have ruined many a stories by doing so). So, for that reason and for the sake of blog decency, I will refrain and lay out a more detailed analysis instead. After all, tastes differ, and I’m sure there’ll be quite a few followers of Perles and Midnight Rain and their numerous predecessors and descendants. But I must stop now and go directly to the scents before I get too far.
Perles is described as a modern chypre. It features the notes of bergamot, Bulgarian rose, iris, pepper, patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, cashmere woods. It starts out with a sour, slightly tart (think tart apples) note of Bulgarian rose, then iris becomes apparent, then the whole thing turns into a vanilla-patchouli based mix, rather gourmand in character. It sort of reminds me of Agent Provocateur - a gourmand Agent Provocateur. I can’t even call this a chypre. If this was a cake, chypre would be that very thin layer of whatever your favorite filling is, with a heavy sugared vanilla frosting (the kind they put on most American cakes that gives you instant cavities just by looking at it - sorry, not a lover here). The drydown is quite pleasant, with just a hint of oakmoss, but it’s way too close to skin and lacking oomph. It’s almost like it’s scared to be a chypre. It’s like we’re supposed to recognize it as a chypre, yet it will barely come half way to help us here. It’s a chypre wannabe that doesn’t have the guts to be one.
Now on to Midnight Rain. I was actually rather shocked to find that many notes for something that smells so one-dimensional. The notes are guava, mandarin, pomegranate, freesia, white lily, vanilla orchid, plum flower, amber flower, patchouli, vetiver, cashmere woods, musk. Notice: both scents have cashmere woods - a pure coincidence? It starts out tart, fruity, and juicy (surprise!) a la Burberry Brit Red. The drydown is smoother, with unspeakable amounts of sugared frosting, once again. This would make a good surrealist painting where instead of rain drops, you’ll see heavily frosted cupcakes falling from the midnight sky. If this was a drink, it’d most definitely be a soda that contains 41 grams of sugar per can, and the ingredients consist of not just sugar but also high fructose corn syrup and regular corn syrup (as if sugar is not enough already!) It’s like whoever created this was paranoid the world would run out of sugar, so they decided to pack as much as possible into Midnight Rain.
Boy, does it feel good to finally get it all off my chest!
Image source: www.neimanmarcus.com, www.marionnaud.fr
25 comments September 6th, 2006
I’m generally not a lover of perfume oils. As I said in one of my previous posts, most oils tend to turn on my skin, in spite of how gorgeous they might be in top notes. I have tried quite a few, of various price ranges, and have concluded that in order for a perfume oil to work, it has to contain excellent quality ingredients, especially in the base. The two brands that fall into this category are Jalaine and Yosh. I have already raved briefly about one Yosh creation,