If numbers are anything to go by, last night’s Andrea Maack event at Les Senteurs was a runaway success. I’d never seen the place so packed before! Now I just need to sit down and write my Basenotes article about it… I won’t upload my reviews of Maack’s three perfumes until they’ve had their official UK launch (currently scheduled for May) but I will just say that if you smell Bulgari Black, ELDO’s Divin’Enfant* and – believe it or not – Badedas shower gel, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what they’re like.
Before heading to Les Senteurs, I managed to pop into Ormonde Jayne‘s Sloane Square shop, an elegant haven of black and gold. Monica, the sales assistant, very helpfully talked me through the main products and showed me the store’s ‘perfume portrait’ (also to be found at Harrods, albeit in less conspicuous form). Essentially, it consists of samples of key perfumery materials – vetivert, labdanum, orris etc – and is designed to help prospective customers decide which fragrance to buy. I remain unconvinced by the notion that identifying favourite ingredients is a helpful way of choosing a perfume. After all, one of the main points of composition is to combine individual materials into a whole that’s greater than – and different from – the sum of its parts. But perhaps I’ll return to OJ one day and ask to be put through the process.
I also found a few moments to step inside the Amouage boutique where Vanessa – as charming as ever – let me have a spray of Opus V (due to be released next month). This is by no means meant to be a review – hopefully, that’ll come after I’ve obtained a sample of my own – but I can reveal that the scent started with vivid red fruit – think: shiny berries – and moved on to a dry leatheriness… or should that be a leathery dryness? I reserve the right to change my mind on this, but my initial reaction was… wait for it… Angel meets Traversée Du Bosphore. Talk about whetting one’s appetite!
Have a great weekend, folks.
Persolaise.
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* Thanks to @archmemory for pointing this out to me.
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