It's easy for me to bemoan the destruction of such legendary perfumes as Worth Je Reviens and Carven Ma Griffe, and to be suspicious of the reformulations of other perfume darlings, like Guerlain Mitsouko. Everywhere I turn, I hear something else alarming: that the Caron reformulations are a travesty and my beloved Tabac Blond will never be the same, or that Jean Patou 1000 may be discontinued. (I can't speak to either of these, by the way.)
Then along comes a fragrance like Parfums MDCI Enlèvement au Sérail to remind me to chill out. High quality, complex fragrances are still being created. Some of them, like Enlèvement au Sérail, have a vintage feel that I love, while others are decidedly more modern, like Jean Claude Ellena's perfumes from Hermès. We are lucky to experience them.
Enlèvement au Sérail, originally called FK 3, was part of Parfums MDCI's original offering of five fragrances in 2006. Francis Kurkdjian created it as well as two others in the line, Promesse de l'Aube and Rose de Siwa. The Parfums MDCI website describes Enlèvement au Sérail as an oriental floral, but to me it smells like a classic peach-jasmine chypre — a gamine Rochas Femme. Parfums MDCI lists Enlèvement au Sérail's notes as bergamot, Italian mandarin, ylang ylang, sambac jasmine, tuberose, Turkish rose, wallflower, patchouli, Indian sandalwood, vanilla, and Haitian vetiver.
The scent opens with juicy mandarin orange that within seconds is joined by ylang ylang and rose. Enlèvement au Sérail smells friendly and springlike at this point, like a pale peach satin dress on the flower girl at a wedding or a shower of petals from a blossoming plum tree. Within ten minutes, the fragrance's jasmine steps forward, almost making the scent vibrate. The fragrance loses its girlish feel and becomes womanly and luxurious without being heavy.
Although it's not listed in the notes, before long I begin to smell the warm earthiness of oakmoss mixed with sandalwood, and this is where Enlèvement au Sérail becomes less pretty but more profoundly beautiful. People who don't like chypres or stay away from vintage fragrances might not like Enlèvement au Sérail just for this stage in its development. After a few hours, the peach and jasmine fade away, and an easy mix of sandalwood, patchouli, and vanilla linger. Enlèvement au Sérail is quiet when dabbed and lasts four or five hours on me. Like a flattering Marilyn-era dress or a day when my hair curls more than frizzes, Enlèvement au Sérail raises the bar. I feel like a better version of myself when I wear it.
Since Enlèvement au Sérail smells so vintage, I compared it to a few drops from a tiny bottle of Edmond Roudnitska's Rochas Mousseline parfum that I have squirreled away, and they're remarkably similar. The Mousseline is mossier, but they could be sisters.
Yes, it is sad that Christian Dior Miss Dior may never be the raunchy countess she once was, and that Lanvin Scandal is gone for good. But, as they say, it really isn't any use crying over spilt milk. With Parfums MDCI, Amouage, Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfum, and others releasing such enthralling fragrances these days, I'm ready to turn away from the past and look forward with anticipation.
For information on where to buy Enlèvement au Sérail or Parfums MDCI's generous sample set, see Parfums MDCI under Perfume Houses.
Here, here! And I would Onda to your list above of fragrances that bring modernity together with vintage complexity.
Meanwhile, I am going to have to dump my tiny vial of Enlevement into a sprayer and see if I can get to the magic. So far I get a big burst of jasmine and then…um…
That would be “add Onda”… I thought we were going to have an edit function over here in the brave new WordPress world. I swear all this typing online has made me dyslexic.
I thought we were too. I can edit comments though, even if you can’t, and if you ever enter “please edit the above to say”…whatever, I’ll happily do it.
Thanks for the offer R., but I would so much rather have you writing than editing my errors!
Speaking of which, I’ll be sending you a short news item later today.
That’s funny, I didn’t even miss the “add”. I think my brain put it in automatically. I adore Onda, too. It’s beauty is so strange, it’s irresistible.
That’s it? All you get is jasmine? That’s terrible! I love the jasmine in it, but it isn’t the primary player for me, except for half an hour or so. Did the spraying help?
Agreed – truly a perfume of old-fashioned loveliness. Probably my favourite from this line, though, like you, I also love Invasion Barbare.
Yep, those are my favorites, too. Have you tried Vepres Siciliennes? It’s not my usual thing–sort of fruity and musky–but I keep going back to it.
Alas, MDCI too rich for my pocketbook . . . though it sounds lovely, Maybe I’ll add it to my decant wish list.
MDCI is definitely expensive–one bottle, a refill bottle, that is, costs the equivalent of two or three bottles from other companies. I’ve been getting better, though, about not buying perfume too impulsively and instead saving up for the perfume that I really, truly want. Someday I’ll have a bottle of this.
I love this line, Angela! I think I purchased Enlevement Au Serail the second it arrived at luckyscent. Ypres Siciliennes, too. I love them both dearly. And, Invasion Barbare smells amazing on my husband.
Bravo to Claude Marchal and the beautiful fragrances the perfumers have created for him!
Hugs!
You must smell like heaven itself! And keep me away from your husband….
Hugs to you, too!
Thanks for posting this lovely review, Angela. Enlèvement au Sérail is among my current favourites. It has the complexity of those vintage classic chypres, yet manages to feel very modern at the same time.
This jasmine/peach accord in Enlèvement au Sérail reminds me tantalizingly of a niche perfume that I owned 10 years ago, but gave away. I have absolutely no idea what it was called or who made it.
Now you’ve got me wondering what the scent, was, too. If I knew, you can bet I’d chase down a bottle! In the meantime, I am putting away a little here and there so I can have my own bottle of Enlevement.
Uh oh! This nails it. A chunk of my April 1 paycheck is going toward that 5-sample set from MDCI, with Serail and Invasion Barbare heading the list.
I’m not the target for descriptors like “pale peach satin dress” or “womanly,” but this still sounds amazingly good to me, and I’ve been intrigued by it since the first time I read about it. Thanks so much for the great review, Angela.
However, even though great perfumery is still occurring in this day and age, MDCI regrettably kicks the price point up another notch toward the unattainable. I thought Malle was at the upper reaches of any budget at one point, but I guess I resent having to pay MDCI prices in order to get this kind of quality. Part of me resents it, but part of me is still willing to play along. Oh well. And yes, the truth is that there are still some mighty affordable JCE creations out there.
I know this makes me seem like it’s all about the money, but I would be VERY curious for someone to do a historical comparison of the price of “fine” perfumes to the average wage of the day. For example, what did Guerlain extrait sell for in the 1920s or 1960s, and how did that compare to the average hourly wage? Maybe we’re not in dire shape after all. Can any historians in the house pick this up and run with it as a blog post idea?
I second Joe’s request, as I too would like to know how perfume prices have compared to average incomes over the years.
Another vote for trying to figure it out. I’ll try to revive my rusty knowledge of economics and see what I can do.
This topic was recently discussed on Octavian’s blog, when he posted some prices he found for well know perfumes in 1957. Here is the link:
http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/2009/02/american-price-of-luxury.html
According to the US Census’ historical income files (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f07ar.html), median family income in 1957 was $4,966, which corresponds to $30,444 in 2006 dollars. (For comparison, median family income in 2006 was $58,407).
From the prices that Octavian listed, it looks like the most expensive (Patou Joy at $13.50 for 1/4 oz.) corresponds to $103.25 today. Guerlain Shalimar ($6 for 1/4 oz, corresponding to $45.90 in current dollars) would be a steal if we could find it at a comparable price today! Thus, it looks to me from this small sampling of fragrances as though the price of perfume has gone up faster than the rate of inflation.
Thank you! It’s so interesting that the median income has gone up so much. Maybe because it’s a median, and there is such a large disparity in incomes these days that the “middle” isn’t the same as the mean? (My brain is dredging up a rusty Gini coefficient from a college microeconomics class.) I suspect that the average family’s costs have gone up, too. Now we all need cellphones, DSL, cable TV, all sorts of gadgets–and an expensive college education to boot. And healthcare costs so much. But what a great price for Shalimar!
Thanks so much to you and jlunatic for posting that link to Octavian’s piece.
I really love that kind of historical comparison… I am sometimes a very big statistics geek.
Hi, Angela. I was a little surprised that the median family income had gone up so much as well, but I guess this means that everyone is doing better, although some are still doing MUCH MUCH better than others. The median is usually thought of as more robust to changes in the distribution than the mean. With growing income inequality, especially with the top end of the distribution having a long “tail” (i.e. the richest of the rich are now fabulously wealthy), one would expect the mean household family income to increase more rapidly than the median. This is reflected if we compare the median to the mean for 1957 (median=$30,444 vs. mean=$33,368, in 2006 dollars) and 2006 (median=$58,407 vs. mean=$77,315).
Thanks! Maybe we’re up for another French revolution. Whew.
I love this idea! It’s probably possible to find out the prices of at least some perfumes by looking at advertisements in old magazines. The next step would be to look at indexes by the BLI (??) to find out their “real” prices today. I’ll have to look into this.
For a starting point, earlier this year 1000 Fragrances (http://1000fragrances.blogspot.com/2009/02/american-price-of-luxury.html) published a list of 1957 prices, and adjusted the figures for inflation.
Excellent! Thanks so much for the link.
Oops, I didn’t see your posting of this until after I had posted the same!
I’m glad for your comment, anyway. Lots of good information.
The mid-section to which you refer includes what I – and Farah, whom I haven’t seen on the site lately, but I passed my sample on to her – can best describe as a “mothball note”, and I am not averse to traditional chypres by any means. However, I think I will stick to my teeny sample of Promesse de L’Aube…
Now that you mention it, that stage does give the hint of a dull mothball. But I love it! Promesse de l’Aube is very beautiful, too, so you have a good substitute.
Love your gravatar, by the way.
Thanks – those with good eyesight may recognise the Borneo 1834 bottle, featuring marionnettes inspired by Indonesian etchings – I wrote to Serge Lutens in Paris and they gave me the lowdown on the artwork, as it looked so quirky and interesting. Not a scent for me, but I love the bottle!
The member formerly known as Vanessa
Marionettes! That’s fascinating. I’ve seen the bottle a few times in photos and liked it, but I never knew what the images were.
Also known as shadow puppets. I love them too, as you can see!
Indonesian (maybe they’re always Balinese? Or also Javanese?) shadow puppets are great. If you ever get a chance to see a performance, Angela, check them out!
Thanks, I will!
I’m so glad you liked it. Did you get the standard sample set, I wonder?
I got this one, Promesse, Vepres, Rivage, and Peche (pls forgive the lack of accents). This one was my favorite, with Vepres close on its heels, and Rivage third. (Thanks to Erin, I already have some Invasion Barbare, which is dreamy.)
Hey … where’d my gravatar go?! I have a fun new vintage one. Hm.
Oh, I want to see your new gravatar! Sometimes you have to clear your cache before it will fetch your new gravatar.
Angela: I really enjoyed this review. I love many classic fragrances, and last year I made the decision to stop driving myself crazy trying to find those hard to get older ones, or with thinking about spending my rent on a great old find. I realize that while I love the serendipity of finding something old that I love or have been looking for, I really needed to spend as much energy and money to support the *new* fragrances coming out that are just as magnificent though less well known. I think, especially these days, it is important to support new, excellent fragrances by new, talented perfumers or niche houses, because with the 15 minute attention span of most modern consumers or marketing agencies, an absolutely gorgeous fragrance might be discontinued before enough time has even passed for it to be worn with devotion. If you imagine the decades it took for some of our most beloved fragrances to obtain their cult status, the one or two years most modern frags are given to be a “hit” pale in comparison. Thank god we have the internet to discover and obtain these new modern classics. I look forward very much to getting a sample of this new Enlevement au Serail. It sounds like just my thing.
You raise a really good point in saying that we need to support the new fragrances that we love so that they don’t disappear, too. Who knows? Maybe even more companies would be inspired to create something interesting.
If you do try Enlevement, I’d love to know what you think of it.
Testing … testing … cleared my caches….
…. drat.
ooooh! a gamine rochas femme sounds fabu, Angela! sounds like a must sniff…I was a bit meh’d by the peche that is getting some love amongst the fumistas…penny for your thoughts on that one…
Enlevement really is pretty terrific. I haven’t given Peche more than one wearing, so I really need to give it fair shake, but on first try it was perhaps too peachy for me (although the fruit seemed to be lying on pine boughs, which I liked). I thought I might get bored with it. I’ll give it another run (or ten) for sure, though.
Oh, there I am! I’m dabbing perfume… that’s me, of course. As you can see. It doesn’t look like I’m tending to my earwax or something, does it?
Oh March, I can’t see it! Dang. Maybe I need to clear my own caches.
I think I got myself into trouble initially by rating my image PG, so I changed that. Really it’s so small I think it’s okay.
For some reason I still can’t see it, but I’m sure it’s a problem with my computer somehow.
I see your gravatar now–Wowee Jane Russell! Great choice.
Flushing out earwax with fragrance–as if we didn’t have scent on the brain enough. Despite the multitudes of ear infections you’d experience, just imagine having little storage pockets for scent right next to your sniffer! May I suggest: “NowSmellThis and its affiliates does not recommend flushing-out earwax with fragrance nor implies any such usage is safe. However, wearing a beer hat filled with fragrance, enabling constant applications to the neck region throughout the day, is perfectly acceptable and in some cases, even desirable. “
I’ll heed your warning and give serious thought to your recommendation of a sniffer hat!
This may seem far fetched, but I was amazed by the similarity myself: Test a $3 – $39 bottle of “Yria” by Yves Rocher, comparing “Enlevement au Serail” on the other arm. They are strikingly similar–disconcertingly, so. EaS is ever so slightly smokier in the vein of chanel’s “Bois des Isles”, where “Yria” is sweeter, like Chanel’s “Allure” (there is a distinct Chanel-esque feel to both EaS and Yria, probably due to such classic combinations of notes). Normally I’d say “Oh, well there you go–that subtleness is the deal breaker that makes EaS superior” but here, it doesn’t–at least, not significantly enough to support such a price difference. “Yria” develops in a surprisingly sophisticated way and matches EaS in lasting power.
Wow! If they smell as similar on my skin as they do on yours, it could be a real money saver. I’ll have to give it a try.
Angela, thank you for bringing this much needed perspective regarding the old versus the new. I love hunting down vintage and discontinued fragrances, but sometimes I am disappointed by bad top notes or even expectations that were set too high. There really are some wonderful new fragrances out there (yes, for ridiculous prices sometimes) that can actually be found without taking crazy risks on ebay.
I need to get the sample set of the MDCIs. Having tried a small sample of EaS has only sharply increased my appetite for a larger sample. I can’t decide among the others now!
The sample set, while not cheap, is a pretty good deal considering the price per ml of the bottles. Plus, they’re great fragrances. Plus plus, if you order a bottle, you can deduct the cost of the sample set.
I consider that sample set to be one of the best bargains out there (if they quality is what everyone seems to agree it is) at less than $1.50/ml. I forgot that the cost can be applied toward a future purchase (not that I imagine doing that, but who knows…).
Also (and I used all these reasons myself to justify buying the sample set), although the website says that it costs 12 euros for postage, MDCI deducts the VAT, which is conveniently 12 euros, so the total cost is 55 and not 67 euros.
Thanks for the review! Just a quick question: how would you rank this one compared to Promesse de l’aube, another FK creation for the same house? I’m eager to hear your thoughts.
To me, Promesse is similar to Enlevement–they both smell of peaches, jasmine, and warm wood–but Promesse is a little less complicated and probably better for day. Promesse has sort of a “warm lawn” smell to it, too. Promesse for day and Enlevement for evening would be a perfect for someone who could afford it. They complement each other.
After I wrote my reply to your comment, I dabbed some Promesse de l’Aube on my hand, and I wanted to reply again. Promesse has a distinctive floral accord in it–and I can’t identify it, although you or others probably could in a second–something crystalline and almost pastille-like. It’s sweet, but not as sexy as Enlevement au Serail.
I’ve been trying to avoid these, but my resolve is eroding.
It’s much better to have perfume you truly love than less expensive perfume you like a lot. And, hey, maybe you’ll hate them!
I feel I must speak up for the underloved Rose de Siwa. I know we’re supposed to be all edgy and stuff, but for sheer beauty, it’s hard to beat. Of course, I have a sentimental attachment, since it smells like the pink rosebush I got as a wedding gift years ago.
I, too, would be interested in hearing how the prices of perfume stacked up through the years.
I have a tiny sample of Rose de Siwa somewhere, and I’ll dig it out tonight. I haven’t given it a fair shot, but I sure don’t have anything against a beautiful rose fragrance!
Like you, I love Rose de Siwa and it is my favorite of this line. RdS is my one-and-only summer rose scent — just a pure happy rose covered in sunshine.
What a wonderful description. I sure could use a little sunshine-on-the-roses right now.
Reading all the wisdom above about the forsaking of old, extinct fragrances for those in production now, I was also struck by the thought that our forebears never got to sniff any of the modern wonders, such as Christopher Brosius’ creations, or Andy Tauer’s, just to name a couple of modern houses. So it is a trade off. Granted, my grandmother didn’t know about 10 Corso Como because it didn’t exist while she was alive, so she didn’t know she missed experiencing it, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have loved it. My thought is that, as loud as the siren song of some of these vintage scents can be, perhaps I can school myself to live more fully in my own era and enjoy the fact that Serge Lutens and I are contemporaries. It makes living in the here-and-now seem less like settling and more like celebrating. (Hopefully that was not too incoherent – if not, I’ll ask Robin to delete it tomorrow.)
S, I love how you so often hone right in on what strikes me the most when I write these things. It’s easy–hindsight is 20-20, as they say–to make a fuss about all the glories that we’ve lost. I know I do it all the time. On the other hand, things really aren’t so bad now! Especially if you know where to look. It’s so much more satisfying to appreciate what we have than mourn what we’ve lost. (Of course, I was just looking at a 1940 Harper’s Bazaar, photos of Balenciaga fashions taken by Man Ray, yearning for some vintage glamour….Hopefully I can backslide sometimes without getting too much flack for it.)
Perfectly coherent. Do not delete.
You are very kind, as always. And I’m hyperventilating thinking about Balenciaga shot by Man Ray – wow. I guess the whole issue is unanswerable. Ultimately we want to be able to appreciate the past, and adopt those parts of it that make sense into our current lives, but at the same time avoid that contrived, less than genuine affectedness that can come from trying too hard to live in another era, whether it be fashion, fragrance, home decor, whatever. So many people attempt to do this, and I think it is both the cause of and effect of a sort of unease, the opposite of being comfortable in one’s own skin. But perhaps I am going pretty far afield here, and this would be a better email conversation…
There’s a lot of meat to chew on here. I remember reading an article once about someone in Paris who lived in his 18th-century, un-rehabilitated apartment without electricity to keep everything authentic. Part of me admires this discipline, but it would take an extreme aesthete to put up with it longer than a few days, I think. Did he do it for himself? For what other people would think of him? For the heck of it?
In any case, taking what you admire from the past–the cut of a dress, the work of a songwriter–into your (electrified) life now seems like a good compromise.
Enlevement au Serail sounds utterly gorgeous. I only wish my wallet could handle the price, LOL.
Still though, I’m tempted to sample! Thanks for a great review.
A sample is definitely worth it, I think, just to smell its quality.
I finally got a sample of Enlevement au Serail, and I wore it today. It’s definitely not an everyday kind of thing. It’s one of those scents I would feel more comfortable wearing while “done up”. It was definitely not quiet on me starting out. I put on a few dabs from my sample vial, and I just about gassed myself in the car this morning. Might’ve overdone it. It was still going strong by the time I got off work and up to about the 10 hour mark, though I could still smell it somewhat faintly at around 15 hours. This is only the 2nd MDCI I’ve tried, and both have been really beautiful. I want to try more, and maybe someday a decant or two or three will be in order.
MDCI has a sample program where they’ll send you six or seven (can’t remember) 10 ml decants to try. It’s very reasonable, given how much the fragrances cost, and 10 ml will last a surprisingly long time!
And sadly now in 2014 this discontinuation notice appears on the MDCI website:
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
Unfortunately, thanks to IFRA guidelines, “Enlèvement au Sérail” is no longer available, even as samples.
Please do not include this fragrance in your selection when ordering sets.
Thank you for your understanding!
Ohhhh…..
Another one bites the dust. So sad.