A Week of Violets, Part I: Caron Aimez-Moi

Today kicks off A Week of Violets, a joint blog project at Redolent of Spices and Scent of the Day.  We’re each reviewing three violet scents this week, so be sure to go read their reviews today, and then check back later in the week for more reviews.   First up here: Caron Aimez-Moi.

In general, I haven’t been a big fan of Caron scents so far.  It’s true that I’ve largely limited my Caron testing to the currently-available fare, without resorting to the vintage ebay finds that make up most of my vintage experience, so I’ve never smelled, say, Narcisse Noir or Tabac Blond as they were before the current round of Richard Fraysse reformulations.  Those classic Caron scents are fairly rare and sometimes available, but at long-lost-love prices.  It’s true that, with a few exceptions, I haven’t been all that impressed with the current Caron offerings.

Aimez-Moi is one of the exceptions.  Two years ago, I was trolling along looking for recommendations for violet scents, and ran across a review of Aimez-Moi by Robin at Now Smell This.  It would eventually become clear to me that Robin’s tastes and mine share a very small area of overlap, but I didn’t know that at the time, and her description of Aimez-Moi as “deep, cool and mysterious” pulled me in.  Shortly after that, a sample became available to me via swap – and I was hooked.

The scent opens with a dry, almost nail-polish-y overlay, which is more noticeable on fabric than on skin, and which might be a bergamot note beginning to go off.  It doesn’t matter, because very quickly, AM blooms into an anise-violet accord which is both sweet and pungent.  If you think of candy at all – you may – you’ll think of those odd, old-fashioned British candies called Liquorice Allsorts, which are bits of stiff, chewy licorice, tougher and less sweet than the American stuff, encased in thick, chalky-tasting pink, orange, or green candy coating. 

Shortly after that, a pleasant rose note appears, staying to hang out with the anise and violet for at least an hour or two, while gradually a dry, powdery vanilla-heliotrope accord surfaces under that.  It actually reminds me a good deal of Apres l’Ondee, if Al’O were less misty and ephemeral.  Aimez-Moi becomes cheerful and friendly, a sort of perky, quirky yet wholesome ingenue version of Apres l’Ondee’s ethereal, wispy poetry-writing maiden.  Think Emma Woodhouse, from the Jane Austen novel, and you’ve got a pretty good idea.  She’s known some sadness in her life, but generally things go her way, and since all she really wants is to make all the people in her life happy, she’s optimistic and rather naive.

The first time I wore Aimez-Moi, I thoroughly enjoyed it, only realizing toward the end of the four-hour ride that I wished that I’d known of it when I was young and optimistic myself.  I thought it was the perfect scent for falling in love – and then the moment that thought occurred to me, I became terribly sad that I was no longer that young, optimistic, in-love person.

Heliotrope tends to make me unaccountably wistful. 

The second time I wore Aimez-Moi, and every time since then, the entire experience was cheerful.  No sadness – which after all had more to do with my life than with this scent – at all. 

 If Apres l’Ondee is a silk chiffon scarf in lavender and silver, Aimez-Moi is a fluffy, girly sweater in mauve and pale silvery purple, cuddly as a basketful of blue-eyed kittens.  It is a fairly quiet scent, and not very sweet beyond the brief initial blast of weirdness.  It’s also good for what I like to call a “handkerchief scent,” one that’s feminine and unobtrusive enough for spritzing your linen handkerchief before tucking it into your purse.  If you just said to yourself, “Tucking a what into my what?” then it’s possible that Aimez-Moi may not be for you.  But, of course, I might be wrong, and who am I to say that biker chicks in black leather who carry wallets chained to their belt loops might not love it? 

Notes for Aimez-Moi, which was composed by Dominique Ropion (Dominique, will you marry me? I’d at least like to thank you for Carnal Flower, Alien, Ysatis, Jungle L’Elephant, Safari and Une Fleur de Cassie, as well as Aimez-Moi) and released in 1996:   Top notes include bergamot, star anise, mint, and violet.  Middle notes are jasmine, iris, magnolia, vanilla, peach, rose.  Basenotes are musk, amber, woody notes and heliotrope.  What I mostly smell, as I mentioned, is anise, violet, rose, vanilla and heliotrope. 

I bought a small 1-ounce bottle for about $17 at one of the discounters, and I’ve been very happy with it.  I was lucky enough to discover one of the pretty, original-release bottles; it looks like an ornate Victorian cushion with tassels on each corner, interpreted in cut glass.  I don’t care much for the standard Caron bottles, and have been known to call them “butt-ugly,” but who cares about ugly bottles when the scent inside them is so pretty?

A few more reviews for your consideration: Robin at Now Smell This, Bois de Jasmin, Marina at Perfume-Smellin’ Things .  Tania Sanchez, in Perfumes: The Guide, says of Aimez-Moi (****)  that it “begins with a pretty fresh violet and ends in sweet powdery vanilla, and has a humor and cheer largely missing from Caron’s current lineup of feminines.”

Images of Aimez-Moi ad and bottle from Fragrantica.  Image of Liquorice Allsorts from Wikimedia Commons.

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Perfume Reviews: Ormonde Jayne Ta’if and Caron Parfum Sacré, or Two Peppered Roses

In my Pepper post of a few days ago, I promised reviews of these two scents. (I also promised a review of Lumiere Noire pour femme, but that one’s going to take me awhile; it’s very complex and I need some more time to process it.) It also occurs to me right now that there’s a pretty famous Peppered Rose I haven’t smelled: The Different Company’s Rose Poivree – notorious for its first version smelling like a sweaty jockstrap. Apparently it’s been reformulated for polite society – but no sample has come my way as of yet. Ta’if and Parfum Sacré are two favorite scents of mine; they share a spiciness and a warm, winey rose. I tend to associate them in my head for that shared spicy rose, but of course during the side-by-side test I confirm for myself that they’re different.

This is good. How else could I justify having both? Actually, I own only a decant of Ta’if, which is by far the more expensive of the two, and which I obtained in a swap with dear Daisy the Enabler. Parfum Sacré I have only worn in eau de parfum, as the extrait is no longer made and is both hard to find and ridiculously expensive. Just yesterday, an eBay auction for a 7.5ml bottle of Parfum Sacré extrait sold for just under $150. Yes, $150, for a quarter-ounce! No matter how gorgeous it is – and it’s reputed to be The Bee’s Knees – I can’t afford that. Good thing that the edp is wonderful. I have heard that it’s been reformulated as well and is thinner than the original. My bottle, which came from an online discounter in Feb. 2008, must be old stock. It smells just like the samples that came from The Posh Peasant and a swap friend who bought her bottle in 1998: wonderful.

Today’s experiment was to wear Ta’if on my left wrist, Parfum Sacré on my right. Here are the notes for each:
Ta’if: Pink Pepper, Saffron, Dates, Rose Oil, Freesia, Orange Flower Absolute, Jasmine, Broom, Amber
Parfum Sacré: Lemon, Pepper, Mace, Cardamom, Orange Blossom, Rose, Jasmine, Rosewood, Vanilla, Myrrh, Civet, Cedarwood

The similarities are apparent – pepper, spicy notes, orange blossom, rose, and jasmine are congruent. At the beginning, each scent is strongly peppery and spicy. (And yes, I know that pink pepper is a dried berry, not a true peppercorn. It smells like “fruity black pepper” to me. I like it. Kwitcher whining.)

Ta’if smells quite peppery to me at the start, and it takes a few moments for the saffron to show up. I like that saffron note, whatever aromachemical it is – saffron seems creamy and smooth to me in perfume, and it’s a texture I enjoy. But very soon the dates come to the fore, and for several hours Ta’if is all about creamy saffron, the sweet dried-fruit character of dates, and that beautiful rose. Bookworm likes Ta’if; it’s probably the sweetness she finds appealing. There in the heart of the fragrance, there’s a fresh floral presence which could be the orange flower but is probably freesia, since freesia has a cool, dewy, florist-case quality that my brain calls “fresh.” This is such a pretty fragrance. I wouldn’t call it girly – but gosh, neither would I term it Edgy, as Luca Turin seems to imply in his review of it in Perfumes: The Guide: ‘Wear it when the desert wind blows, as Raymond Chandler put it, “one of those hot dry Santa Anas that … make your nerves jump and your skin itch…”’ Good grief. Wonder how he got Edgy out of the not-quite-gourmand saffron+dates+rose, which I consider the true character of Ta’if, and which lasts for a good three-four hours on me. As the drydown continues, it gets a little less pleasant; the amber is not my favorite type (labdanum cistus), and there’s nothing else in the base with anything near the rich sweetness of the heart. However, by the time the drydown arrives, the fragrance is nearly gone. There is a dreaminess about Ta’if, a head-in-the-stars sort of innocence about it.

On the other hand (literally!), Parfum Sacré begins with very “kitcheny” notes – it’s primarily lemon pepper, both aromatic and a little dusty. Just as I begin to think, “Well, if there’s lemon pepper, I must be cooking fish tonight,” the nutmeggy mace and the cardamom come in, hand in hand with that beautiful winey rose PS shares with Ta’if, and it’s not kitcheny anymore. I smell a good bit more orange blossom in PS than I do in Ta’if, but PS is still largely a rose fragrance in my mind. Oddly, Bookworm smells only pepper and wood in PS, no rose at all, while I get mostly rose and incense. The wood is there, of course, and I sometimes think of Dolce Vita when I wear Parfum Sacré, but I smell a great deal of myrrh too. There is supposedly vanilla in there, and civet, but I am not conscious of smelling them. The drydown of PS is beautiful; it is rich and mysterious and layered. Parfum Sacré is one of those rare fragrances that I wear for comfort, but which also seems very sensual to me. I think of phrases like “the eternal feminine” in connection with PS.  When I wear it, I feel very feminine: both very motherly, and very… well, interested in doing what women do in order to become mothers. It also has that magical quality of melting into the skin, becoming part of me instead of being simply a scent I wear.  It was one of the first scents I fell in love with over the past year, and every time I have worn it since, I’ve been glad I bought it.

Summing up in a few words:
Ta’if is a rich, sweet rose, with saffron and dried fruit, idealistic and young at heart.  I love it.
Parfum Sacré is a rich, warm rose, with pepper and wood and incense, emphatically womanly.  I love it deeply.

Top image: Rose Bouquet Well-Defended by bartholmy at flickr.
Second image is from ormondejayne.com.
Third image is from fragrancenet.com.

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