Olivia Giacobetti's I love les Carottes and Love Coco: Smelling Raw

In my review of Vamp à NY, I wrote that Olivia Giacobetti had found her bearings in the organics register, but actually I think it’s more than that: what she’s doing is extending the vocabulary of perfumery by staying within the range of familiar aromas, while displacing the locus of perception of these aromas. In other words, she’s managed to shift what is usually perceived in the mouth, through retro-olfaction, to a purely olfactory sensation. And what’s more, she’s doing it by exploring a palette very seldom used in perfumery (Bertrand Duchaufour is one of the few who regularly plays with it): the vegetable.

For her new Honoré des Prés collection, Giacobetti has hit on the idea of raw. Raw in the sense of raw materials: working within a more limited range, she’s had to keep things simple – conciseness is the essence of her style to begin with. So that Vamp à NY almost reads as just that, a barely enhanced tuberose absolute. But also raw in the sense of “not cooked”…

What’s so delightful about I love les Carottes is the sensation of having your nose stuck in a hyper-realistic CARROT with all its facets opened up and displayed: the sweet tenderness of its flesh bolstered with orange, its natural partner-in-juice, but also the woody core, the rootiness extended by iris, and the bits of earth clinging to it in the farmer’s market – patchouli, from which Giacobetti has lifted the moist earth notes without dragging in the camphoraceous ones. The choice of carrot is also interesting in that it neatly dovetails into the concept of Honoré des Prés -- someone who’s interested in organic perfumery is apt to drink freshly pressed carrot juice. Why not wear it? After all, carrot is really an extension of iris.

Love Coco is a little less unexpected. Coconut notes are not uncommon in perfumery: many flowers have coconut facets, and the note has been so extensively used in tanning lotions it is virtually the olfactory sign of the beach in North America. However, this isn’t quite beach coco butter. Giacobetti, who has stated in interviews her fondness for Tang Frères, the Parisian Asian food emporium, has pulled it towards South-East Asian cuisine, a register much less explored than Middle-Eastern and North-African spices (though the recent Oriental Lounge by Céline Ellena for The Different Company played on the curry leaf in a bid to renew the oriental family). The coriander leaf Giacobetti adds to the blend (coconut and coriander form a classic harmony in Thai cuisine) cuts the oily sweetness of the coconut with a lash of bitter green. Even the vanilla doesn’t translate as dessert: it is rather burnt, woody, almost licorice-like.

The construction reprises classic codes of perfumery – green, lactonic, balsamic – in a playful, off-hand style, but it skews them towards a novel set of references. Giacobetti has often worked with food aromaticians, and has never restricted herself in her exploration of smelly things – she was, after all, the one to introduce the fig note (in Premier Figuier) as well as incense (in Passage d’Enfer) a step before the Comme des Garçons trilogy. She’d actually already worked on a carrot theme for L’Artisan Parfumeur, the discontinued Fleur de Carotte. If someone is inventing an offshoot of the gourmand family, it might not be the team behind Mugler’s Womanity, but the maverick Olivia Giacobetti.

The Honoré des Prés trio will be launched in the US in September.

There are still a few people who haven’t sent me their addresses for the Vamp à NY giveaway. Please hurry, I’d like to ship this week, next week I’ll be in London.

CJBlue, CyndiN, Dissed, Isabelle Graber, JAntoinette, Nancy,

Stars au Naturel, Therese, Trhoades, Dingo, Robert...

either send your address or send it back, it may have got lost in the battle!