Do you love carrots? By which I mean, of course, do you love carrots in perfume? Because if you don't, move on, nothing to see here today. I Love Les Carottes is one of the three fragrances in the We Love New York collection from French organic line Honoré des Prés, and they're not kidding about the carrots. Perfumer Olivia Giacobetti reportedly spend some serious quality time with carrots while developing this one:
With this comforting wonder, Olivia has initiated, with love, by cooking, freezing, and cooking again the carrots from organic farmers in the streets of Harlem and by crossing the crudity of the carrot juice. She is moved by this olfactory dietetic. This experimentation has led her to write her own recipe book : blending the seeds thinned out from the carrot flower which still smell of the divine, natural, odour of the earth, combined with the mild orange tanginess of the Caribbean, imbedding the seductive scent of vanilla and the secretive essence of orris butter.
And of course, fans of Ms. Giacobetti's work will possibly remember that she's done carrots before, with the nearly-forgotten Fleur de Carotte for L'Artisan Parfumeur, and then again in the top notes for my old favorite Hermès Hiris.
In I Love Les Carottes, the carrot note is front and center: this is easily the most carrot-y of the three. The opening is crisp and smells like a carrot martini with a twist of citrus peel. Later, it's softer and earthier and more iris-y, a little darker, and still pretty darned carrot-y although you'll also catch bits of turnip and possibly other root vegetables lurking about. You will either love it (I find the smell nearly addictive, and will add that it's a marvelous background fragrance for reading in bed) or hate it (Kevin said it smelled like "some body fluid you'd inhale in a vet's office" or "some drainage from a corpse" — consider yourself warned).
It is unisex (society at large has not yet found the need to assign a gender designation to the smell of carrots) and reasonably long lasting for a natural perfume (don't expect it to last all day).
Honoré des Prés I Love Les Carottes features notes of orange, orris butter, vanilla, patchouli and benzoin. It is available in 50 ml Eau de Parfum, $98. For buying information, see the listing for Honoré des Prés under Perfume Houses.
Call me crazy, but this sounds really good to me! But then I love all of the orange vegetables and can quite easily imagine carrot and iris together. I’m definitely ordering a sample! Thanks (I think?) Robin. But great review even it you did create a minor lemming.
They’re together in Hiris *and* in Iris Silver Mist…I do not know what all they use to make up carrot in a perfume, but I’m guessing a lot of it is iris.
Let me go all geeky on you: there *is* real orris butter in I Love les Carottes, but as for creating the carrot effect, well… you use carrots (i.e. carrot extracted by CO2). And usually, because iris is such an expensive material, you use carrot to reinforce the iris note rather than the other way around. The orange vegetables, like many flowers but also tea, contain carotene, which gets transformed into ionones (the molecules that are used for violets). Ionones are very close to irones, which is what gives orris butter its smell. And voilà: iris and carrot *are* chemically related, and I Love les Carottes is really a whimsical variation on iris fragrances.
I refuse to care about chemicals, but thanks on behalf of everyone who does
Love the whimsical twist to this!
Rapple–I have good news for you —I don’t love les carottes…so don’t buy a sample!
Since the announcement for this was posted a few months ago I’ve waiting for a review! Oddly, the list of notes is more appealing to me than your description, though! I think I might order a sample anyway, since I love a lot of what Giacobetti does.
Try all 3 of the We Love NY if you can, they’re interesting.
Any perfume that can inspire reviews as varied as “nearly addictive” and “drainage from a corpse” goes to the top of my sampling list. I’m a sucker for the really odd ones.
I loved “drainage from a corpse”…when Kevin doesn’t like something, he really doesn’t like it.
tried it at the same time as vamp a NY, I’d say provocatively that I love les carottes is to iris silver mist what vamp is to tubéreuse criminelle: the happy go lucky younger sibling.
Yeah, that works for me…
Not only the review, but the comments make me want to check this out – I love the carrot-y topnotes of Hiris (SOTD, interestingly enough). Plus, I want to try anything created by the lady who came up with Dzing.
She’s quite talented.
This doesn’t really appeal to me — and yet, I love Olivia Giacobetti, so between that and your positive review, I just may try it ….
Have you tried anything else from this line? She did almost all of it, all but one in fact. The only one from the first 5 that really made an impression on me was the Chaman’s Party, but all 3 of the new ones were interesting.
Hiris is one of my favourite perfumes, but I have never smelled the carrot note. The metallic note, but not carrots.
Speaking of vegetables, Creed Spring Flower goes MAJOR celery on my skin.
I don’t like celery in perfume
I bought samples of all three from beautyhabit: my personal fave was Love Coco (I am a sucker for anything coconut, and the warm, milky version in this is awesome!). And I Love les Carrottes was my second choice, it’s like a bit of spring to me
I haven’t yet spent as much time with the other 2, but I liked them also & planning to try again.
I was hoping someone would chime in about Coco – all the talk has been about the Vamp. I love coconut scents, so I suppose I should get a sample of this one!
Oh, very curious about the Coco – is the cilantro very pungent or just a subtle accent?
Cooked? Whaaa. I’ve been banging my fists for fresh carrot — freshly grated, sweet and juicy. They remind me of fresh flowers. Ah, well, I’ll wait.
I’m with you, Quarry (and Tama below), but I would try this one. Robin, I loved your aside that “society at large has not yet found the need to assign a gender designation to the smell of carrots.” LOL!
Ha…but they will, eventually
We eat a lot of carrots here
This sounds really interesting, though like Quarry I would be more interested in fresh than cooked. I love the smell of fresh carrots right out of the ground.
Personally, I think it smells just like carrots, still, not with quite *that* degree of photo-realism that I would distinguish between raw & cooked carrots. It smells like carrot juice, does that help? Carrot juice & iris.
That helps! Thanks
Bloomingdale’s in my area had the trio on display and while I was checking it out, a sales girl sauntered over and was telling me the Les Carrotes seemed to be appealing to the granola kind of women.
I thought it smelled rather earthy and carroty. Not my kind of scent but I thought it was pretty cool.
I bought Vamp A NY a couple of months and that one is my fave. The smoothest tuberose scent in my collection. I love it.
~Dawn
Ha…that’s funny, the granola women.
And congrats, the tuberose is lovely.
As soon as she said that about the granola women, all I could think of were a bunch of birkenstock wearing women all coming to Bloomie’s to sniff Les Carottes. ;0
Thanks! I really am enjoying the Vamp. For a natural, it lasts for hours and hours on my skin.
Happy Thanksgiving R!
~Dawn
Same to you Dawn!
Would love to try this! That ad copy is pretty funny, but I get the gist of it. Love that the carrots are Harlem carrots…
And: The L’Artisan is not forgotten by me, R. I’ve always regretted not getting to try it, and remember your review, where you described learning what carrot smells like “translated into perfume.” Such a useful concept.
Well, now you can smell *this* and Hiris and accomplish the same thing!
WANT. I love carrot juice, but I can’t claim I have smelled it in perfume. $98 is a lot to drop on a perfume unsniffed, so I will have to see if I can sample it.
Oh, I wouldn’t buy anything unsniffed, and certainly not this.
Okay, now I’ll have to try this one again. I liked the other two from the Love NY series, but I’m afraid I was right there with Kevin on this one—I thought it was one of the most horrifying perfumes I’d ever smelled. (And I like actual carrots, I love Iris Silver Mist, and anything you can describe as “a carrot martini with a twist of citrus peel” sounds like it should appeal to me!) I will try again.
Ack, if it was horrifying, please don’t put it on again!
I’ve tried all 3 —and none appealed…I had high hopes for the coconut, since I love coconut. Les Carottes…welllll, I wouldn’t go right to corpse fluids…I mean, it didn’t make me gag, it was interesting to sniff…but I sure don’t want to wear it. Guess I’ll stick with eating carrots.
I suppose I could offer more information than just generally sticking my tongue out. It opens very, very carroty —fresh carrots vs cooked carrots, I dunno, it’s close….and a lot bitter….after a while the bitter fades and it begins to pick up that rooty iris note Robin likes. I really disliked the first 15 minutes…now it’s moved firmly into interesting territory but still not likely to be my SOTD. (ever)
I love that you added “(ever)” in case the first part wasn’t clear, LOL…I will put you down for Kevin’s camp
How random! I’m wearing Vamp a NY today for the first time in months… and I like it enough that I’ve been wanting to sample the other two (and I’m a tuberose hater).
I really noticed and liked the carrot note in both ISM and Hiris, so I’m thinking that I need to buy a sample of this. Coconut, I’m not so sure about.
Thanks for the timely review Robin!!
Oh, then you definitely need to at least try Carottes…
Hi Robin and happy Thanksgiving to you and to all here who celebrate the day [it may just be my favorite holiday]. I’ve never had the experience of smelling carrot in a pefume and I have a feeling it would appeal to me. This is a must try.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too!
I sampled this a few months ago (and I dig out the sample now just to make sure that I remember correctly :D) and I thought that it was a well done scent with well blended notes. After a few minutes it was mostly butter and vanilla with carrots on my skin, but in a good and relaxing way.
I think that It is interesting and worth sampling. And its perfect for reading in bed.
I liked Vamp a NY a lot and wore it during the summer.
Glad someone agrees about the reading in bed. To me, that takes a very certain kind of scent.
Robin, carrots are clearly male.
And I’m going to consider myself set with the L’Artisan… I do love that rooty smell, though.
LOL…I knew society would come along and contradict me.
I do love carrots. I just don’t think I’d like to smell like them. I’d lovet o sniff this out of curiousity, but I’m not lemming it. Which is kind of a relief considering all of the things I’m AM lemming right now….
LOL…yes, it is just as well to cross a few off the list.
Gosh, I found this one so subtle that I can’t imagine anyone having such a strong dislike for it! I Love Coco is more potent to me, and my favorite of the two, although it does occasionally veer into Thai food territory.
Interesting, I did not find this one so subtle at all. Were you dabbing or spraying?
Thanks for reviewing this, Robin. I tested Vamp as part of the Grain de Musc community review project and have been really curious about the other two ever since.
It’s funny – I consume pounds of baby carrots, but I do not think of a smell when I think of raw carrots. Also love Hiris but never noticed carrot. Must revisit and try to sample Carrottes!
I like the idea of a fresh coconut scent, especially after sniffing the divine Osmothèque Fruit Defendu, but Coco also has cilantro, which can range from fabulous to deathly. Must sample!
I did not know there was a community review project — thanks, will have to go read. Is it all on separate blogs, or all on Grain de Musc?
Robin, I guess I should have said event rather than project, since it is not ongoing, but it was a lot of fun, for sure! Last May, Denyse organized a give-away of ultimately about 100 samples of Vamp, courtesy of Honoré des Prés, to readers who agreed to test it and submit mini-review comments in a subsequent post. This was all on Grain de Musc in late May/early June.
I found the experience enlightening. Often I tend not to give samples a fair testing if they don’t grab me immediately. In this case, I felt a debt of gratitude for the opportunity, so I wore Vamp for three days, I think, which was unusual for me to begin with, and the experience of wearing a soft natural perfume was very different, not to mention figuring out what to say. I gained new respect for you, Denyse and my other fav reviewers who do this on a regular basis and come up with insightful, beautiful and sometimes hilarious reviews!
Thanks so much for the explanation! I don’t know how I missed it, but I’ll go read.
I have a small decant and *always* forget to pull it out, but I enjoy this a lot. I don’t remember it smelling quite like the vegetable, but perhaps more like the seeds, and somehow redolent of ambrette? Must wear this when I get home. I don’t love the HdP prices though! I’m still hoping to get a whiff of LA Fleur de Carotte (I believe March once told me it can be found here and there).
Hello from Japan, by the way, Robin! I was able to get a sniff of the famous White Rose at the Shiseido counter today, but haven’t sussed out any other “Japan exclusives”… this vacation isn’t really a perfume buying expedition, but it’s been an amazing time.
Oh, waving back to Japan, lucky you!! Hope you’re eating some marvelous food — that’s more important than the perfume.
Oh dear! On the one hand, I love carrots, Hiris, and almost anything that has to do with Olivia Giacobetti…
On the other hand, Kevin seems to have some kind of insight into my soul. I’ve agreed with everything by him I’ve read so far.
So clearly this is a must sniff.
If you & Kevin are scent twins, you might be happier giving it a skip
2 years ago I moved away from Harlem… so maybe there’s been a revolution, but where on earth are these organic farmers on the streets of Harlem???
The only organic carrots you’re gonna find in Harlem come from the big Fairway under the westside highway.
I assumed she just meant a farmers market in Harlem…
I completely hated it.
I loved it at first sniff but as I wore it throughout the day and kept sniffing it I couldn’t stand it. It was too much carrot! I like carrots, but what I like about the scent of carrots themselves is that their scent is subtle, even when cooked.
This was so strong and concentrated, it began to resemble something that didn’t even remind me of carrots.
Oh well.
Thank you for not telling me what it reminded you of, LOL…