I’m tired of on-trend design. Especially if it’s bossy and difficult to navigate. Extra especially if it reads like an avant garde take on an American Apparel ad. “Get some imagination!” I want to scream. I’m so done with tiny font, nude tweens and vacant looks. Give me emotion, be honest, surprise me.
Plus, this kind of design makes me suspicious. I see a lot of sizzle, and instead of steak, I’m expecting a meat patty too small to make the cut at Barbie and Ken’s barbecue. It’s enough to drive me to comic sans and baskets of kittens.
So, to get to the point, I didn’t last ten seconds at the Folie à Plusieurs website before I jumped ship to Facebook to look for information on the brand. Luckily, I’d already sampled two of the brand’s fragrances, The Lobster and Blow-Up, and I liked them, especially at their reasonable price for a niche line. The bottle’s design is simple but feels fresh. Here’s a case where I’m grateful that branding and product aren’t the same thing.
Folie à Plusieurs’s Facebook page lists the brand’s mission as “Beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes,” and says it was “Inspired by the psychiatric syndrome ‘Folie à Deux’, conceptualized in 19th century French psychiatry by Charles Lasègue and Jean-Pierre Falret in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. Folie à Plusieurs has taken this condition of ‘shared madness’ as a creative process for the manner in which each scent is realized.”
These are beautiful thoughts. Let’s scrap them and go straight to the actual perfume. The brand’s first line of fragrances is called Le Cinéma Olfactif, and each of the line’s fragrances is inspired by a scene in a movie.
Not surprisingly, The Lobster film, from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, inspired The Lobster perfume. Perfumer Mark Buxton developed The Lobster, and its notes include lily of the valley, green notes, woody notes, cedar, cypriol, animalic notes, arnica, moss, myrrh and fenugreek. The Lobster is vivid spring green, plumped with stems so green you can almost taste their tartness. Lily of the valley deepens the fragrance’s “whiff of April” feel, but don’t be so fast to hand this one to your teenaged niece to wear to communion. A thread of skank weaves through the perfume for its first few hours on skin.
Now for something completely different. Blow-Up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, inspired Blow-Up. Mark Buxton developed Blow-Up, too, and its notes include wormwood, blackcurrant bud, cardamom, rhubarb, saffron, cypriol, incense, myrrh, amber, birch, cedar, civet, leather, labdanum and cistus. If The Lobster is spring in a forest, Blow-Up is winter in a club situated above a parking garage. After a quick whiff of sweet rhubarb, it’s leathery, animalic, woody and tinged with sweetened motor oil. It's the dense sort of "everything but the kitchen sink" scent that feels warm, comforting and edgy at the same time. As the fragrance fades, it settles into what smells like vanilla and vetiver with a hint of an incense tang.
Both The Lobster and Blow-Up last hours on skin, but I didn’t find that either one wore out its welcome. I’m looking forward to getting to know the other fragrances in the Folie à Plusieurs line, but, please, don’t make me go to the website. I guess I’m just not cool enough.
Folie à Plusieurs The Lobster and Blow-Up Eaux de Parfum are $135 for 50 ml. For buying information, see the listing for Folie à Plusieurs under Perfume Houses.
I’m all for minimalist design elements,but that website is just sh*t,sorry!!I do like the packaging and design,sort of the Black and White opposite of Byredo’s White and Black,which I totally adore!I guess you must be a movie-perfume-avant garde-buff to appreciate these?I’ve never seen any of the movies so the tie-in is lost to me.The notes sounds very very busy.I think I am one of those perfumistas now:”Give me a Red Rose and call the damn thing Red Rose/Rose Rouge/Rosie….but for God’s sake let it then BE a red rose perfume.and Smell like one!Packaged in simple red rose-tinted paper!!Lol.Rant over.I will go smell these one day,and see what the fuss is.Thanks for the review!x
It sounds like we both experienced the same level of crankiness with the website! As for the fragrances, Blow-Up does have a lot going on, but The Lobster feels more straightforward, but still interesting.
Blow Up sounds like a match for me….Maybe a Bvlgari Black type of edgy vibe?
Their website is hideous….Sheesh!
It does have a bit of Bulgari Black’s vibe, with less musk and rubber. It reminded me a bit of Nanban, too.
I know! The website is so hard to use! I don’t want to be forced to watch videos when I just want some quick info.
Great reviews, Angela! To my memory, I think this is the first time in the ten (I think it’s been about that long) years I’ve been an NST reader that I’ve ever heard you “rant”! Way to go, girl! You and Meryl Streep!
You’ve been lucky, then, to miss my other rants!
Maybe they were kinder, gentler rants then.
Alas, in yonder times, when I was also kinder and gentler….
Thanks for the review! I skipped the website and went straight over to Luckyscent which has just enough info for my taste. There are a few that sound interesting to me. I’ve liked some Mark Buxton scents so I’m curious about these. Blow-Up sounds fun. I do like a bit of the industrial in my scents. The only film I did see of the lot was The Virgin Suicides and that scent sounds right up my alley.
If I’m honest, I’d probably love perfumes that went with with dorky movies I love best. Auntie Mame? Fabulous. Singing in the Rain? Can’t wait to smell it.
I would totally buy a fragrance based on Auntie Mame – can you imagine?!?!
The book mentions the fragrance she wore (and of course I can’t remember it) but I’d love to smell something created for her character! Gin, cigarette smoke, horses (the best scene ever), and glamour.
I imagine a series; something for each of her crazy phases but that each would have an alcohol component – gin, champagne, whiskey…
Wasn’t it Nuit de Noel?
Yes yes yes! I think you’re right. It’s funny though, I would have pegged her for something with more drama.
Great review as usual, Angela. Here I was thinking, that The Lobster would smell as bizarre and absurd, as the film itself. Would never have pegged it as being “Spring in the forest”.
As for the Folie a Plusieurs website, it is downright awful. There is nothing trendy about a landing page, that is impossible to navigate. Which is the basic and fundamental rule of design.
I couldn’t agree more.
I know what you mean! I see lobster, and I think fish. Naturally. But there’s nothing fishy about it.
Lol… except, The Lobster has nothing to do with fish. Regardless, a perfume “inspired” by that film should have been quirky and weird.
I’ve yet to see the movie, but that’s a good recommendation!
I initially misread the title of this review as saying “The Lobster Blows Up”, and I was trying to imagine what that would smell like.
Yikes! Thankfully, it smells much nicer than that!
What a laugh you gave me! Exploding lobster…a spritz behind the ears and you’re good to go chumming for shark. Every fisherman should own this. Okay. I’ll stop now. But thanks!
The fisherman’s friend! (ugh)
I also read the fragrance titles as a mash-up. Glad that I wasn’t the only one… except I came up with a blow-up lobster. Kind of like a beach ball. That ought to teach me not to multitask!
That’s hilarious! I guess everything else has pretty much been covered in perfume. Why not blow-up lobsters?
The website made me literally laugh out loud. In principle, as far as flannel goes, ‘Folie à Deux’ as metaphor for enjoying perfume works for me. But the brand’s mash-up of insanity with soft porn makes me yawn big time. That sound you here? Me snoring softly. Women who are both crazy AND sexy as a motif for selling luxury? Ah yes. Of course. And in this instance there is not even an attempt at irony. It is in earnest, by George! Tsk tsk tsk. Come along children. Come along… I am sure that awkward black and white photos of dogs will be next, or maybe plants in greyscale that look like ‘ladies parts…”
I know, I know! I hate to mock them, but I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to antagonize users right off the bat like that. It sounds like you made deeper into the website than I did. When I saw that I was going to be forced to watch a video, I clicked right off the page. I had no idea what the home page was about, and I wasn’t interested enough to find out. Am I old and cranky? Maybe so. But I buy perfume.
The bottles are backpainted and actually look kind of interesting on Luckyscent. And I like that they offer less expensive travel sprays.
Anglela, I’m curious about how you happened to review these two out of the line. Did you try more of them and like these the best, or just happened to have these two, or what?
I stopped by Fumerie, and Tracy just happen to pull down these two bottles first. (It sounds like The Lobster has been popular.) So I begged for samples of those, and voila! I haven’t smelled the rest of the line.
They have a fume inspired by La Haine?! This is both exciting and odd, very odd!
I really need to sample the rest of the line!
Ha – I loved the film – The Lobster – (what animal would you be if you could not couple up in time with a human? I’d be a sloth
) But in the film the renegades from this dystopian set up live in a forest, hence, I suppose the greenness of this perfume (and the animalic facets) which I would try if I saw it.
Howevah not going to bovver wiv the interweb site ……
Smart lady.
I love movies so I’m a sucker for scents named after them, but I feel like “The Lobster” is too recent to deserve its own perfume… Unless soon the new thing for indies will be do have a fragrance tie-in?
Maybe it’s the next new thing!