The Story of Eau in 50 Shades of Pink

Has the same brief been circulating in all the perfume houses? This spring, the industry seems to have given in to a severe H2O fetish. Not aquatic, mind you: there is nary a drop of calone to be sniffed. No: what’s put forward here is freshness, conjured both by the word "eau" (or "acqua") and by citruses or light spring flowers."Fresh" being the average consumers' tag for just about any fragrance they feel comfortable with, even the heaviest hitters, while "strong" is a polite way of saying "yuck".

In niche, two major houses presented their new cologne collections in Paris this week.  Annick Goutal, under the ownership of the Korean group Amore Pacific (which also owns Lolita Lempicka) but still under the creative direction of Isabelle Doyen and Camille Goutal, is ushering in new packaging along with a trio of cologne versions of Néroli, Vétiver and L’Eau d’Hadrien (the current Néroli and Vétiver will no longer be produced).  

The LVMH-owned Acqua di Parma is also putting out a new cologne collection, Acque Nobile, composed by François Demachy, Aqua Nobile Iris, Magnolia and Gelsomino (jasmine). Not to be confused with the just-plain-Nobile line, which also features iris, magnolia and jasmine (one befuddled beauty editor muttered you’d soon be needing a PhD to keep it all straight).

Of course, both brands have a well-established legitimacy in colognes, with cult products like Eau d’Hadrien and Colonia.  Still, cologne seems to be trending in niche, something Atelier Cologne, one of the most successful new brands, has cleverly caught on by turning every note in the perfumer’s palette into a refreshing splash:  even the dusky grand dame of powerhouse scents is worked into a nautical theme in their latest, Mistral Patchouli. 

As for the mainstream, it’s unleashing a veritable tsunami of fresh floral flankers, all dubbed after some variation on H2O, and almost all of them in various shades of pink. Might be the swing of the pendulum after last year’s slew of “intense” versions of best-sellers (off the top of my head: Gucci Guilty, Prada Infusion d'Iris Absolue, Paco Rabanne One Million and Lady Million Absolute Gold, Valentina Assoluto). While the industry’s craving for berries and caramel-coated wood is not quite abating (yes, Lanvin Me!, I’m looking at you), all these Eaux seem like a bid to capture the aquatics-loving market.

Narciso Rodriguez L’Eau for Her by Aurélien Guichard takes the original to the edge of the aquatic, with a “water flowers” accord of peony, muguet, cyclamen and mock orange. 

Bottega Veneta Eau Légère adds gardenia to the lovely apricot and leather chypre blend of the original. But oddly, on my skin the faint iodic, almost algae note that lent it saltiness is somehow amped up in this new version, also authored by Michel Almairac.

Prada Infusion d’Iris L’Eau d’Iris crowns its top notes with deftly-handled mint: the effect is crisp, fresh and green rather than mouthwash, and steers clear of the sinus-clearing intensity of many mint-themed scents. L’Eau d’Iris also features an oleander note, defined by Daniela Andrier as “powdery” and “almondy”.  This limited edition is still very recognizably the huge, white, powdery puff of iris and musk of the original.  

Even the sticky delights of the gourmands are being splashed with spring-like floral notes.  Prada Candy L’Eau has gone lighter on the caramel with an added freesia accord.  Lolita Lempicka is reincarnating into L’Eau Jolie, whose notes list (blackcurrant, pear, neroli, peach blossom) sounds nothing like the original, to say the least. Its distant offspring, La Petite Robe Noire, is coming out in an eau de toilette version with added jasmine and more citrus in the top notes.

Still going with the flow,  Balenciaga L’Eau Rose tugs Olivier Polge’s original violet towards the lipstick accord by adding the eponymous rose, also featured in Eau de Cartier Goutte de Rose. Not afraid of jumping in the pool:  Valentina Acqua Floreale  (Valentino) and Nina L’Eau (Nina Ricci), both signed by Olivier Cresp – who also authored the new Cerrutti 1881 Acqua Forte – and you’ve got more than a trend.  Oops! As I type this, the press release for Love Chloé Eau Florale is dropping into my inbox… And whoops!  A courier has just rung with a bottle of Roberto Cavalli Acqua…which breaks with the dress code by flaunting an aqua box.

I’m not passing olfactory judgment here, since I haven’t smelled the half of these more than once. Lots smelled lovely, and I’ve zeroed in on a couple of wows. But just to give them skin real estate, I’ll need to break out my swimsuit ahead of summer.If you hear a gurgling sound, please be so kind as to send a lifeguard.

 

Histoires d'Eau en 50 nuances de rose

Les maisons de parfum auraient-elles toutes reçu le même brief ? Ce printemps, l’industrie entière semble avoir succombé à un fétiche aquatique. Notez, pas une goutte de calone n’aura été versée pour s’y adonner. Non : de l’eau, ce qui est retenu, c’est le mot. Et une fraîcheur déclinée soit dans l’agrume, soit dans la fleur printanière.

Dans la parfumerie de niche, deux maisons historiques présentaient leurs nouvelles collections d’eaux de Cologne cette semaine.  Annick Goutal, toujours sous la houlette créative d’Isabelle Doyen et de Camille Goutal , dévoilait un nouveau packaging, premier impact visible du passage de la marque dans l’escarcelle du groupe coréen Amore Pacific, également propriétaire de Lolita Lempicka.  Mais aussi un trio de versions cologne de L’Eau d’Hadrien, Néroli et Vétiver (ces deux derniers étant supprimés dans leur version eau de parfum).

Chez Acqua di Parma, c’est également un trio de colognes signées François Demachy qu’on présentait, les Acque Nobile  : Aqua Nobile Iris, Magnolia et Gelsomino (jasmin), à ne pas confondre avec la collection Nobile-tout-court qui propose également un iris, un magnolia et un jasmin… J’ai cru entendre une consoeur effarée marmonner qu’il faudrait bientôt un Bac +5 pour s’y retrouver.

Bien entendu, Annick Goutal et Acqua di Parma ont toutes deux une réelle légitimité dans le registre puisqu’elles peuvent revendiquer des colognes mythiques, respectivement L’Eau d’Hadrien et Colonia.  On se demande tout de même si le succès d’Atelier Cologne, la nouvelle marque de niche qui monte, n’est pas pour quelque chose dans ce déferlement. Traduire en cologne toutes les notes de la palette, même les plus sombres, comme ce Mistral Patchouli aux accents iodés ? Riche idée pour séduire une clientèle avide de jus ni mainstream, ni dérangeants ou trop puissants.

Dans le mainstream, justement, c’est un tsunami de flankers floraux frais qui déferle, tous baptisés d’Eau, presque tous en nuances de rose (la couleur, pas la fleur). Serait-ce le retour de balancier après la vogue des versions « intenses » de l’an dernier (au débotté : Gucci Guilty, Prada Infusion d'Iris absolue, Paco Rabanne One Million et Lady Million Absolute Gold, Valentina Assoluto) ? Même si la passion de l’industrie pour les fruits rouges et les caramels boisés n’est pas sur le point de tarir (oui, Lanvin Me !, c’est de vous que je parle), toutes ces variations sur le thème de l’eau semblent chercher à s’infiltrer parmi les fans des notes aquatiques, qui exigent du "frais" (mot qui, chez le consommateur de base, est strictement synonyme de "ça me plaît" indépendamment de toute caractéristique olfactive).

Narciso Rodriguez L’Eau for Her d’Aurélien Guichard flirte d’ailleurs avec elles, avec un accord “fleurs d’eau” pivoine, muguet, cyclamen et seringa.  Bottega Veneta Eau Légère ajoute du gardenia au chypre fruité-cuiré de l’original.  Prada Infusion d’Iris L’Eau d’Iris couronne ses notes de tête d’une menthe savamment dosée, plus fraîche et verte que Pepsodent, et glisse une note de laurier-rose (« poudrée » et « amandée » selon Daniela Andrier) dans une forme qui reste fidèle à l’original.

Même les parfums gourmands s’allègent cette saison avec une brassée de fleurs.  Prada Candy L’Eau  joue  sur un accord freesia et offre un caramel en version light. Lolita Lempicka se décline en L’Eau Jolie, dont les notes (cassis, poire, neroli, fleur de pêcher) dévient nettement de l’original. Sa lointaine descendante La Petite Robe Noire pique un bouquet de jasmin dans son bustier pour sa nouvelle version eau de toilette.

On continue dans le mouillé avec Balenciaga L’Eau Rose, qui tire la violette de l’original vers un accord lipstick à l’ancienne en y ajoutant la rose éponyme, laquelle s’invite également dans Eau de Cartier Goutte de Rose. On se laisse encore porter par la vague avec  Valentina Acqua Floreale  (Valentino) et Nina L’Eau (Nina Ricci), tous deux signés Olivier Cresp, également auteur de Cerrutti 1881 Acqua Forte… Tiens ! Au moment où j’écris ceci, le communiqué de presse annonçant  Love Chloé Eau Florale apparaît dans mes mails… Et oups ! Maintenant c’est un coursier qui se présente avec l’Acqua de Roberto Cavalli (entorse au dress-code, le flacon est turquoise).  

Je ne porte ici aucun jugement olfactif puisque je n’ai pas encore senti la moitié de ces nouveautés, et à peine eu l’occasion de tester l’autre. Plein de trucs jolis, sûrement ; de petites merveilles, j’espère. Mais rien que pour leur offrir de la peau, je vais devoir sortir le maillot avec six mois d’avance. Et me trouver un maître nageur.

Serge Lutens, the Girl from Berlin and Tomorrow's Eve

Serge Lutens’s launches are increasingly becoming apparatuses (the untranslatable French term dispositif would be more accurate) in which the fragrance itself is the core, but not the sole element at play. And none more so than La Fille de Berlin, whose press presentation was timed to coincide with the Berlin à Paris book and exhibition of Lutens’s photographs. The press release, penned as always by the maestro himself, was every bit as cryptic as its predecessors – as cryptic as a perfume formula to a layman, in fact. A black box of a text teeming with hints and half-whispered secrets about feminine identification (as he did with Billie Holiday for Une Voix Noire), solitude, fear, furor, crime and guilt… 

Once more, the scene seems to be haunted by the ghost of the mother who apparently abandoned little Serge, seen in the text as a receding figure on an earth path… What has she got to do with Berlin? Lutens was born in 1942 in the midst of the German occupation of his native Lille… Does the name of the fragrance translate as “The Girl from Berlin” or “The Daughter of Berlin”?

Digging around in this black box -- this poetic dispositif – can yield rich chains of association which, in all likelihood, was Lutens’s intention. Cross the name of the scent with Lutens’s Expressionist inspiration as a photographer, and you land straight in the Weimar Republic. From there, follow the Rhine – Lutens does write of the Rhine-Gold, of lips dipped in Siegfried’s blood, of an armed maiden – from Wagner to Germany’s leading Expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang, who adapted the myth of the Nibelungen in 1924…  

Hanna Ralph as Brunhild in Fritz Lang's Siegfried

Margarete Schön as Kriemhild Kriemhild's Revenge

… and from then on to his much better-known Metropolis (1927), where Brigitte Helm embodies two “daughters of Berlin”: the workers’ Madonna Maria, and her evil twin Robot Maria who whips the upper classes into erotic frenzy and leads the workers to destruction.

In Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Brigitte Helm as the real Maria...

... Robot Maria...

... and evil dancing Maria.

What’s all that got to do with perfume, you say? Bear with me. Lang’s two Marias – the virginal worker and the robotic vixen – may well spring from an earlier figure of female duality, perhaps the first android in literature, imagined by the French Symbolist writer Villiers de l’Isle Adam in Tomorrow’s Eve (1886). In it, a fictitious Thomas Edison has invented a robot in the likeness of Miss Alicia, whose perfect beauty is flawed by a shallow soul, in order to save her lover from despair and suicide. This android, Hadaly, is animated not only by Edison’s clever mechanisms, but by the beautiful spirit of a cataleptic woman. A product of human artifice, Miss Alicia’s “twin” is more perfect – closer to the innocence of nature – than the corrupted original, who bears all the female flaws of our mother Eve…

This could already stand as a metaphor for perfume. But Hadaly, the quintessence of female perfection, is literally fed on the quintessence of nature, perfume, since she requires only a few drops of rose oil and amber tincture to “live”… And that’s where Serge Lutens’s Berlin-inspired rose channels Villiers’ android via Fritz Lang’s twin Marias, or indeed Brunhilde and Kriemhilde, who competed with each other for the love of a hero rendered almost invincible by bathing in the blood of the dragon he slew…

Rose. Rose and blood. La Fille de Berlin is the breath of Tomorrow’s Eve, a head-turning potion bursting with rich rose oil on fur-smooth animal notes… Are those claws or thorns at the tips of her fingers? Within the mouth-burning fruity jamminess, there is a hint of metallic-mineral effects, brought on by pepper, conjuring a drop of blood. This is a grand, dark, angry rose, potent enough to seep into the bloodstream, with the glowering radiance of a ruby in the rough. A warrior queen thumbing her nose at all the wimpy yet migraine-inducing roses drenched in laundry musks flooding the market. Poison and antidote.