Paris-based niche line Mancera has launched Roses Greedy, a new floral fragrance:
Mancera perfumes are inspired by the art deco period, using rare and exotic materials to create a new dynamic of perfumery. Delivering a rush of vibrant floral notes, Roses Greedy contains rose, jasmine, aquatic flower, amber and vanilla combined with fruity tones of sparkling mandarin, peach, coconut and blackcurrant.
Additional notes include benzoin and white musk.
Mancera Roses Greedy can be found now at Selfridges in the UK, in 60 (£56) or 120 (£100) ml Eau de Parfum.
(via selfridges)
I thought of Montale Chocolate Greedy..this isn’t by them, right?
It’s another brand, but very Montale-like, and for all I know, done by the same person.
“aquatic flower”=waterlily?!
Sounds interesting. I hope that Luckyscent or STC will carry it so I can sample!
Could be, that’s as good a guess as any.
Personally, I think it’s a Montale offshoot – the fonts, the fragrance names, the olfactory concept and the bottle protecting the perfume from sunlight (allegedly made from UV protective glass, specifically manufactured for space rockets or something silly like that). So, who’s the founder of Montale? Pierre Montale (allegedly). And who’s the founder of Mancera? Why, it’s PIERRE Mancera, of course! But, nah, it’s probably just me reading too much into things… 🙂
I know many people have suspicions about the provenance of the Montale brand, but I don’t see what difference it makes. The whole fragrance industry is built on this myth that the name on the package is the person who made the fragrance, and we all know that’s only the case about 2% of the time, right? So if Montale and Mancera are owned by the same people, or not, it doesn’t make much difference to the outcome unless it was really important to you that somebody named “Pierre Montale” in Paris was actually the “perfumer” (in the sense that perfumistas use the term) in the first place, which seems about as likely as the “perfumers” at “Haus Laboratories” in Paris making Lady Gaga Fame or the Creeds mixing their own fragrances in some lab somewhere.
But the question is why not just admit it? Personally, I really couldn’t give a toss but it does make you wonder.
Btw, the whole fragrance industry isn’t built on myth – more BS… 🙂
Why would they admit it, any more than any other brand goes out of their way to tell you the honest truth about how fragrances are made and by whom? Do we think that because Thierry Wasser appears in the press all the time and is clearly a “real” human being that he personally develops every single launch from Guerlain? I do not see how Francois Demachy (who appears to be a real person also) would ever sleep if he made every single fragrance credited to his name in the press. What’s the difference between that and whatever they’re doing w/ Montale?
We shall have to agree to disagree — from where I sit, without myth there is no fragrance industry. People don’t want to buy Formula #847 from Firmenich or Formula #356 from IFF; they don’t want to walk into Nordstrom — or Aedes or Luckyscent — and look at the vast array of fragrances, and know that they were all made by the same 4-5 companies. They want branding & backstory & a sense of history & fancy packaging, and they want to think their money is going to rare raw materials and careful execution and all the rest of it.
I always figured it was a bit like professors and research papers. Their names are on tons of them, but they are merely (in most cases) just heading the teams and guiding PhD/research students who are putting in the actual lab work.
That’s a good analogy.
Robin, you haven’t told me anything that I didn’t know already. But based on previous comments, very little about Mancera was known so, for the sake of the readers, I felt the need to fill you all in. This isn’t exclusively my opinion but a summary of what I’ve come across over the years (and some of the parallels are quite amusing). As for myth, I’ll have to politely disagree – not everyone needs it. The masses, maybe, but not everyone…
And did not mean you shouldn’t have, sorry if I sounded that way! And always happy to politely disagree 🙂
😉
I’ve enjoyed reading this discussion, which was brought to my attention by Andy Tauer’s blog.
Please may I chip in with a thought?
The fact that a perfumer releases a large number of scents per year doesn’t necessarily mean that they haven’t all been made by him/her.
Most of the perfumers I’ve spoken to have stated that they’ve got so many 99%-complete drafts and mods in their archives, they could sit back and release several scents per year without ever having to do any more formulation work. I suspect this would particularly apply to people like Wasser and Demachy, whose training and experience have almost certainly allowed them to reach the point whereby they probably wouldn’t really have to make any new perfumes from scratch if they didn’t want to.
I’m not saying Wasser and Demachy DEFINITELY make all the scents for Guerlain and Dior. All I’m saying is that the volume of releases from those two houses doesn’t automatically prove that Wasser and Demachy aren’t the authors.
All of that is true, and my assumptions are not really based on the volume of releases but on what I know about how these companies work. And we all know that the person who is announced as the “perfumer” in the press is not always the same person who is listed in the database, whether it’s the fragrance & flavor company’s database or even Michael Edwards’ database.