Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire Rose Rose Rose, Jo Malone Sea Daffodil and Bitter Mandarin, and others – Skin Time February 2022

Creed Spring Flower

You never know what you’re getting with Creed. And by that I mean you literally don’t know what you’re getting. You may think you’re smelling a scent first released in 1996 – in this case, Spring Flower** – but chances are that the sample hovering beneath your nose is a rogue batch of the umpteenth variant of a formula that bears little resemblance to its original guise. So who knows what was in the small vial upon which I was recently able to place my ever-curious hands? Certainly, it bore the words Creed Spring Flower, but beyond that, I can’t say very much about how faithful its contents were to the 1996 release. How did it smell? Consistently Creedish: a dull, melon+floral opening leading to a thin, lazy base of musks. If this is spring in the land of Creed, I’m quite happy to remain cooped up in the depths of winter. 

Jo Malone Sea Daffodil
and Bitter Mandarin

An equally unconvincing floral comes to us as part of the new, Sardinia-inspired duo from Jo Malone London*. Sea Daffodil (Alexis Dadier) is clearly trying to whisk us off to heat, beaches and sunscreen, but it doesn’t get much further than the cheap deodorant aisle at Boots. It’s an off-putting piece of work, in which the presentation of its key materials (mandarin, ylang ylang and vanilla) suffers from coming across as much too soulless and synthetic, very much like the screechiest aspects of Tom Ford Black Orchid. Michel Almairac’s Bitter Mandarin fares better, if only because its opening conjures a fairly believable image of citrus cocktails and pleasant sunset conversations. But it too lacks the power to transport you all the way across the Med and topples into an insubstantial base of amber. I can’t quite see the Sardinian tourist authority adopting either of these as their signature scents. 

Juliette Has A Gun Lipstick Fever
and Guerlain
La Petite Robe Noire Rose Rose Rose

Thankfully, there’s more passion in evidence in Juliette Has A Gun Lipstick Fever*. As you’d imagine, the ‘cosmetic’ note is achieved through the use of rose and violet, but where, in most other releases of this sort, it projects a facetious retro feel, here it manages to convey a surprising level of sophistication. This is no doubt thanks to the use of patchouli in the base, which pulls the whole into the perennially-classy realm of the chypre, and aligns it with the much-missed, vintage iteration of Lancome Tresor (Sophia Grojsman). What we have here is a character who is more than happy to paint her lips a confident shade of scarlet before heading out to deliver a lecture on postmodern irony. But she does possess a rather damaging character flaw, which is that she vanishes from the scene far too quickly. A shame, because she’s fun company while she’s around.

A hint of irony would have been welcome in Rose Rose Rose**, the latest flanker (how many have there been now??) of Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire. On the one hand, I suppose I’m pleased that yet another version of this scent has been created, because it suggests that it continues to sell well, and I’d quite like Guerlain to remain in business. But on the other, I can’t shake off the sense that – pardon the mixed metaphors – the creative juices at the brand are no longer sufficiently energetic to keep the black-robed horse in motion. This feebleness is reflected in the juice: yes, there’s a stronger rose note in it, but then LPRN has always featured a prominent rose, and as this flanker develops, it moves closer and closer to the original, which leaves you wondering why we need to have it in the world. A somewhat inexplicable release.   

Penhaligon’s Bluebell
and vintage Davidoff Cool Water

A few weeks ago, one of my followers (I believe it may have been someone on YouTube) said they were worried that Penhaligon’s Bluebell** is about to be discontinued. If you’re a fan of this 1978 classic, then fear not: I have it on reliable authority that Bluebell isn’t going anywhere just yet. I’m equally pleased to say that it’s current version is in decent shape, maintaining that balance between sweetness and sharp-eyed hissiness that has always been its most distinctive feature. We may no longer be able to smell many bluebells when we go for walks through English woodlands, but their spirit lives on in this important piece of British perfume history.

And finally, speaking of history, all the recent talk of Pierre Bourdon (click here if you don’t know what I mean) prompted me to seek out and buy an original, Lancaster version of Davidoff Cool Water**. If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing this specific iteration of one of the defining scents of the 1980s, then the first thing you should know is that you could get away with just having a sniff of what’s currently in the shops, because it isn’t radically different. However, there’s no question that the vintage is superior. As per usual, the reasons for this are mostly to do with balance and body.

Cool Water’s trick was to contrast a huge mandarin note with an equally oversized dollop of the strange, glassy, super-scrubbed woody-sweetness of dihydromyrcenol. Remove one side of the equation, and the whole loses some of its force. And sadly, the current version isn’t as ballsy as it should be when it comes to the citrus note. But the original is bright, tart, assertive, cheerful and hairy-chested in all the right places and makes you realise why this masterpiece has managed to stick around with us for as long as it has. Well worth tracking down.

Persolaise

* sample provided by the brand
** sample obtained by me

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