One of my new discoveries during my trip to
Israel was Le Parfum de Thérèse, which I enjoyed on those hot dry spring days when the wind from the desert blows steadily and hydration is a question of sanity, not just simple survival necessity.
Le Parfum de Thérèse is both fluid and stable. Slippery like a cool veil of satin, moist and refreshing like a film of cucumber and aloe vera gel on a sun-warmed skin verging on a burn. Yet it breathes out coolness like a stone-house in the summer, and has the dry sensuality of a marble rock. It is so utterly Mediterranean and is most magical when worn on a hot and dry desert day – than its true beauty glimmers and shines.
With sparkling top notes of basil, lemon, melon and peach, Le Parfum de Therese was revolutionary for its time and preceded the watery trend of the 1990’s by a few impressive decades (and also is far superior in my opinion to any of those). The hedionic jasmine heart is sheer and uplifting, and creates a unique feeling of reviving euphoria. Some of the rose heart notes remain until the very dry down, which is a simple and gorgeous chypre accord of oakmoss and labdanum. Le Parfum de Thérèse shares a lot of its charm with the more widely available Diorella, only is somewhat deeper and more complex in my opinion. Though I barely notice any of the plum and leather notes that it shares with Femme (another great creation of Roudniska), it has a similar sensuality and warmth that is softly captivating and sensual.
Le Parfum de Thérèse reminds me of all that is summer – folding the tart grapevine leaves stuffed with rice and spearmint on a marble-tiled patio and the scent of laundry drying fast in the desert wind, and enjoying the coolness of fragrant melons in the evening.
Labels: Chypre, Citrusy, Edmond Roudniska, Frederic Malle, Le Parfum de Thérèse, Leather, Melon, Oakmoss, Photography, Plum
7 Comments:
What an evocative article! I was just about to write about this one myself! I love your blog and linked to it. Thanks for all the images and thoughts I don't find anywhere else.
Our blog love is mutual. I visit your blog frequently and enjoy reading your thoughts about perfumes. Thanks for the link!
I am curious to read what you have to say about Le Parfum de Therese.
dear ayala,
i wrote something on it, so take a look!
That was interesting reading your impressions right after writing my own! We do experience Therese differently. To me it was so fresh and young and "now" that I did not feel a connection to the past as much I feel with some other perfumes (for instance Roudniska's Miss Dior and Femme, and also Mitsouko and Vol de Nuit). I too felt it through textures (actually more as an ensamble of textures rather than notes), it was more of a tactile experience than olfactory if that's even possible...
Some of the notes that you noticed were not so apparent to me. I find the leather and vetiver and cedar really muted, and the plum must be a tart, not yer ripe one, with the smooth and stretched skin collapsing under the pressure of my teeth with a crunch...
I, too love this perfume. The modern feel of it is amazing, and how lucky his wife was to have this formulated just for her! It is not forced, or, how can I say in another way than you said - mature - as Miss Dior and Femme. Instead it speaks of fresh, rejuvenated love.
That said, hey, when are you coming home? I thought you'd be back by now -- tried to call you yesterday.
Don't apply perfume behind your ears, as it will be easy for it to mix with the secretions of your skin and form a strange smell.
I completely disagree with you, parfum - the way the scent changes on the skin is what makes perfume so magical. It smells different on every person and designing a perfume to be that way is a dying art - as the current commercially-produced perfumes are designed to smell the same all along to appeal to the masses.
People don't think they have time any more to test perfumes on their skin. They expect a fast solution to their perfume hunt and want to make a decision within seconds without trying the perfume on their skin. For that reason, perfumes are now made to smell the same on skin, paper, fabric and hair. This way you can make a decision right away and that's why department store perfumes have become so boring.
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