I can’t think of another fragrance that matches the mystique of Jacques Fath Iris Gris. Sure, perfume lovers scramble for vintage Mitsouko and study its qualities by the batch number, but Mitsouko is still on the market, and vintage bottles are relatively easy to find. Jacques Fath, perhaps Dior’s closest competition in the New Look years, died in 1954 at the stupidly young age of 42, and Iris Gris — even the name is mysterious and moody — disappeared soon after. Scent of Hope is a recreation of Iris Gris that indie perfumer Dawn Spencer Hurwitz originally made for a private client.
Perfumer Vincent Roubert developed Iris Gris in 1946, just as France was shaking free of World War II.1 Thanks to Denyse Beaulieu of Grain de Musc, I’ve been lucky enough to smell a sample strip dipped in a bottle she bought unopened. I was surprised at how clean it smelled, and how rich the iris was, but of course that bottle was at least 60 years old. I cherish the amber-stained but now-scentless strip as a talisman. But how would Iris Gris smell fresh?
In Scent of Hope, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz includes notes of aldehydes, ambrette seed, bergamot, carnation, grandiflorum jasmine, green oakmoss, ionone, lemon, muguet, musk, Mysore sandalwood, orris, peach, powder, violet, violet leaf absolute, civet and Virginia cedar. To me, the notes that stand out most distinctly are peach, green notes, iris, violet and cedar.
Scent of Hope kicks off with bright peach and crushed green stems almost like cut grass that ease straight into peppery iris. The iris never enters turnip nor floral-popsicle territory, but stays lush and true. It isn’t super rooty, but buttery and fruity, amped with violet as well as peach. Peppery cedar tinged with lemon rind gives the fragrance the structure it needs to avoid melting into a delicious but shapeless flab. Any civet in my sample vial was on the refined side of fecal. To me, Scent of Hope is more timeless than vintage, but it isn't particularly modern.
I’m so happy to smell Scent of Hope, and who’s to say it’s not a dead-ringer for Iris Gris? Very few people still alive have smelled the original fresh as well as Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’s modern reproduction, and, of course, it would be impossible to test them side by side. If Scent of Hope is a good approximation of Iris Gris — and there’s no reason for me to think otherwise — then Iris Gris must have stood apart from its peers — Jean Patou L’Heure Attendue, Carven Ma Griffe and Nina Ricci Coeur Joie, to name a few — as smart, clean, and rich. A poised woman’s perfume.
Still, a part of me wants to believe that Iris Gris will never be faithfully reproduced. Way too often, it seems, the dream beats reality. Why not let the dream live a while longer? In the meantime, you can let a few drops of Scent of Hope fire your imagination.
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Scent of Hope is only available in Extrait for $227 (15 ml) and $88 (5 ml), both in antique presentation bottles. A sample is $23. Thirty percent of sales are donated to Sense of Security, an organization in Denver dedicated to helping those coping with breast cancer afford their treatment and living expenses. For information on where to buy Scent of Hope, see Dawn Spencer Hurwitz under Perfume Houses.
1. By coincidence, I wrote a short story about Iris Gris, called “In Search of the Gray Iris,” for my newsletter subscribers this month. If you’d like a copy, just email me at angela@angelamsanders.com and tell me if you’d like a mobi copy (for Kindle), an epub (Nook, Kobo, iBook), or a pdf, and I’ll be happy to send you one. The story features the heroine of my two mystery novels and takes place after The Lanvin Murders but before Dior or Die.
Note: top image is Iris - 1 [cropped and colorized] by jar () at flickr; some rights reserved.
The scent itself sounds fabulous, but it’s the charitable aspect that really wins me over. 30% is a BIG chunk for an indie house.
It’s super generous, and it sounds like a solid gold charity. Let’s hope she raises lots of money for them!
This was a wonderful review, Angela, but interestingly enough, you managed to talk me *out* of it, not into it! Not sure why as you were positive, but the notes and description just didn’t resonate with me. I’ll keep searching for my silver unicorn equivalent: a rooty iris without musk!
Hey, that’s what these reviews are for–to try to give you an advance “flavor”! If it doesn’t sound tempting, so much the better for your pocketbook.
Your description sounds like Iris Silver Mist. That one doesn’t work for you?
It’s been 7 or 8 years since I’ve tried it, and honestly, I don’t really remember it. I didn’t really pursue it as wasn’t it one of the non-export ones? It would be my luck to love it! 😛
I think you’re right–it’s still bell jar only. But for a mere $310, one can be yours…(yeah, right).
Thank you for the review–I am looking forward to smelling this. I hope she chooses to reconstruct Shisheido Nombre Noir next.
Great idea! I enjoyed her takes on the YSL scents, too.
I have smelled 2 versions of it…I sort of wish I hadn’t because Angie is right, sometimes the dream is better than the reality.
(of course, what I smelled was not fresh though)
Hi Angela, has your Gray Iris story gone out to subscribers yet? Have I missed it? (Anxious.) I love your newsletters, they are such a pleasure.
It will be in the next one, which I’m hoping to get together and send out this coming weekend. I’ll do the same thing I’m doing here and tell people to email me if they want a copy.
I’m glad you like the newsletters! They’re fun to write.
But what I wanted to say is that it always surprises me to read about perfumes produced during and immediately after the Second World War in France. I know that couture continued, with plenty of women wealthy enough to buy it. But given the horrors and the strain people were living through, it still amazes me that perfume production continued. That raw materials were still produced, that perfumes were still sitting in labs. I’m wearing Rochas Femme today so I’m thinking about this stuff all over again.
Isn’t it amazing? It’s almost as if the need for beauty was as strong as more basic needs–to rebuild, for instance. Fashion really exploded, too.
I suppose the French would argue that beauty IS a basic need!
And it is!!
I’ve tried Iris Gris from a partial mini and sniffed the Osmotheque recreation on a scent strip. I don’t think there was much, if any, difference between the two, but I did not smell them side by side, and we weren’t allowed to try the Osmotheque version on skin.
My reaction is similar to your description of Iris Gris “as smart, clean, and rich. A poised woman’s perfume.” Not clean in the sense of modern, soap musk perfumes, but in its simplicity and purity, and in the absence of what one tends to think of as heavy vintage notes. I found Iris Gris exceptionally beautiful, but also felt it would go best with a beautifully tailored couture suit.
When Luca Turin sniffed his scent strip (at the workshop where I also tried it), he said, “If you want to know what poetry smells like, this is it,” and admired its wonderful softness. That’s also an apt.
DSH notes on her website that part of the challenge is that some of the ingredients used in the 1940s are no longer available. Nonetheless, I think she did a great job. Scent of Hope smells wonderful, and very close to Iris Gris. The two differences that I notice are small. To my nose, Iris Gris is grounded in a trace of vetiver, and the grounding trace in Scent of Hope smells more like patchouli than vetiver. Since no patch is listed, I suppose that’s just how I’m interpreting the cedar in combination with other notes.
I also think Iris Gris is a bit smoother. I wonder if Scent of Hope is perhaps too fresh, and might blend further as it ages? This difference is not entirely a drawback, however, as it makes Scent of Hope less formal: I don’t feel like I have to get out my couture suits (figuratively speaking) in order to wear it. 😉
The funny story that Patricia de Nicolai told at the seminar was that Vincent Robert was famously lazy, and that he knocked out the formula for Iris Gris in an afternoon!
Thank you so much for your comparisons, and for your terrific story from Patricia de Nicolai! Somehow, the idea that Vincent Roubert was lazy only adds to the fragrance’s charm.
I really wish I could somehow commandeer a time machine and smell Iris Gris in the original against what it smells like now against Scent of Hope. I know materials have changed, and of course time changes a scent, as well.
At the same time, there’s something wonderful about the dream of a scent, too. That imaginary perfume in my brain–the one I can never smell–will always be perfect, even if I never know what it is.
I know – when I read the descriptions of perfumes in books like The Perfume Collector and The Book of Lost Fragrances, I imagine something more wonderful than any actual perfume. I have a hazy idea of what it would smell like, and sometimes it seems impossible that it hasn’t been created yet. Occasionally I review my perfume shelves thinking there MUST be something like it, as if its name were on the tip of my tongue, but it’s beyond anything I have ever actually smelled.
I know exactly what you mean.
What a lovely way to describe that imaginary scent that I think we all have.
Thanks so much for the comparison. I love the idea of its simplicity and purity, so interesting.
Vintage Mitsouko is pretty easy to find but naturally, the prices are minor heart attacks. But I will have to seek this one out after my trip.
Have a great trip–wherever it is!!
Have never gotten the chance to smell Iris Gris, but I thought Scent of Hope was quite lovely. I’m not much of an iris fan, to be honest, and I liked the friendly opening much better than the heart. I thought the drydown just exceptionally soft and gentle, a truly gorgeous skin scent for angels.
Now, that’s what I’d call a good recommendation!