Niche line Frapin has launched Speakasy, a new woody oriental fragrance…
Frapin 1697 ~ fragrance review
The Frapin line of fragrances has (somehow) escaped my attention; blame it on a flooded market, a lack of time and energy to find samples, or being in a perfume-induced stupor: “No more perfumes! Enough!” So: a year after its introduction, I’m finally sniffing 1697 (named after the year the Frapin family was ennobled by Louis XIV).
1697 was created by perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour and includes notes of cabreuva, dark rum, acacia, davana, pink pepper, jasmine, hawthorn, ylang ylang, cloves, cinnamon, sweet dried fruits accord, rose, ambergris, myrrh, tonka bean, patchouli, cedar, cistus labdanum, white musk and vanilla.
When first applied, 1697 smells of wine/brandy, then “rum cask;” as this brash, fumy liquor accord subsides…
Frapin 1697 ~ new fragrance
Frapin will launch 1697, a new fragrance presumably named for the year the Frapin family received its coat of arms from Louis XIV…
5 Perfumes for: a Summer Cocktail
One of the people who made the biggest impact on my early life was my maternal grandfather. After a hardscrabble childhood in Glasgow, he immigrated to Canada as a young man with his parents and sister to train as a draftsman and parts engineer. An aptitude for the work and for study in general made him a success within a few years and he was soon able to provide his family with the sort of respectable, cozy comforts that they had always aspired to in their homeland.
People of his generation and background approvingly described him as “a careful man” — a certain sort of sober fussiness being viewed at that time as one of the proudest and most patriotic of Scottish virtues — and he was as meticulous and discerning about his pleasures as he was about everything else. Our own, less kind era might hang the label of “OCD” on his morning hygiene and dressing routines, his fastidious care of such household objects as clocks, vinyl records or decorative biscuit tins, or his use of a level to straighten all the picture frames in the house once a week.
Despite his enjoyment of many small, bourgeois luxuries, I am proud to say he was an optimistic, open-minded and politically progressive man for his day and one of the most enduring, if frivolous, symptoms of his faith in the goodness and intelligence of all human beings was his insistence on ordering a very specific gin martini (very dry, one olive, glass frozen) wherever we went…
Full-bodied and profound
We smell a vintage from 1870. It is possibly one of the most mellifluous, ambrosial, treacle puddings of a sensory delight that I have experienced. Paultes explains that it was this specific vintage that inspired the debut Frapin scent 1270, a Caramac delectation of candied fruits, burnt sugar and dry woods. It is as rounded and gustatory and honeyed as the cognac —comforting and cosseting, full-bodied and profound.
— From How perfume improves wine at the UK Times Online.