Gardez-moi by Bertrand Duchaufour for Jovoy: Mistress Gardenia

Is gardenia the new tuberose? It’s floral, it’s green, and since there are no extracts, can be reinvented to suit any purpose, from fresh-cut water-gorged bud to decadent diva: what’s not to love? It’s been claimed as a note by quite a few mainstream launches (Jour d’Hermès, Nina l’Eau, Bottega Veneta Eau Légère…), and featured as a soliflore in a cluster of niche products. In Une voix noire, Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake plucked theirs from Billie Holiday’s hair, and dipped it in jam and tobacco. Carlos Huber and Rodrigo Flores Roux splashed Arquiste Boutonnière with aromatic cologne and pinned it on a dandy’s lapel.

With Gardez-moi (pronounced “gahr-day moo-ah”, meaning“Keep me”), Jovoy owner François Hénin asked Bertrand Duchaufour for a full-out vampish floral with a vintage vibe, as a tribute to the original fragrance of that name, launched by Jovoy in 1926. The perfumer responded with a soap-meets-petal aldehydic composition amped up to the highest retro setting, which is to say it veers into the modern, with an unusual tomato-leaf green note on top. This is gardenia as dominatrix stalking the Place Vendôme rather than bruised blossom. The whiff of mushroom gardenias give off as they ripen is kept in check (this isn’t Tom Ford’s late, lamented Velvet Gardenia).  The scent veers more towards the moist and green, with a slight undercurrent of fruitiness (a drop of melon juice, a hint of unripe banana, and what the notes list calls a “raspberry bouquet”).

According to the charming monsieur Hénin, gardenia used to be a flower offered to mistresses in the Roaring 20s, though certainly not intended for discreet back-street affairs since its scent can tattoo itself all over a gentleman’s person. Gardez-moi does what it says on the bottle. It clings to the skin and flaunts its sillage like a lover who just won’t be thrown over. Hence the above illustration: Mila Parely’s secretly sentimental aristocrat hanging on to Marcel Dalio’s urbane marquis de la Chesnaye in Jean Renoir’s masterpiece The Rule of the Game. Because one can never mention Renoir often enough. But also because the feline Parely brings to mind the black cat designed by Baccarat to house the original Gardez-moi (cats do have a way of demanding to be kept like mistresses…). And wasn't one of the greatest gardenia-themed fragrances Carven's Ma Griffe. When a flower inspires a scent called "my claw", there will be blood...