Enough to make me care about Valentine's Day: the Frédéric Malle Roses Coffret, with 7 ml bottles of Lipstick Rose, Portrait of a Lady, Promise, Rose & Cuir and Une Rose ($175 at Bloomingdales). And why not throw in one of the newly (and betterly) repackaged perfume guns in Rosa Rugosa (€140 for 450 ml at Frédéric Malle in the EU)?
I’ve never met perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena, but from what I’ve seen, heard and read (interviews, his own books) I like him. I enjoy (and own) many of his perfumes and, like Georgia O’Keeffe, Ellena shows that wrinkles do not tarnish sex appeal or good looks. Best of all, Ellena comes across as unpretentious, sensible, fun.
Enter stage left: Mr. Serious (aka Frédéric Malle).
In Frédéric Malle’s video of the making of Rose & Cuir,* Malle talks of Ellena’s “periods” as a perfumer…
Rose & Cuir’s origin story begins in a verdant garden planted more than 70 years ago by Edmond Roudnitska, the perfumer behind such midcentury masterpieces as Diorella and Diorissimo, outside his Côte d’Azur studio. It was there that Roudnitska first smelled the vivid crimson Etoile de Hollande rose that inspired him to create Rose de Rochas for couturier Marcel Rochas in 1949, and there that, in 2018, Roudnitska’s son Michel happened to wave that long-discontinued eau under the discerning nostrils of [Frédéric] Malle and [Jean-Claude] Ellena.
— Read more at Jean-Claude Ellena Is the Picasso of Perfume at Town & Country.
Frédéric Malle and perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena talk about Rose & Cuir.
More limited edition collector fragrance bottles, with the usual disclaimers: in most of these cases, the juice is unchanged, just the bottle is “special” (or not, as the case may be), and some of these may not be available in the US. Today’s post includes special edition bottles from Cartier, Frédéric Malle, Guerlain, Goutal Paris and Calvin Klein.
New limited edition bottles of Cartier La Panthère to celebrate the scent’s 5th anniversary. At Nordstrom; both are listed as Eau de Parfum (which seems unlikely), in 25 and 75 ml…