Azzedine Alaïa joins a long list of designers (and other entities) who entered my radar only via perfume. I know close to nothing about his fashion, and given how rarely the fashion really turns out to inform the juice, I did not bother to investigate before smelling the new Alaïa Paris. Despite the gorgeous bottle, my expectations were low; as I said when I announced the launch, the notes (pink pepper, freesia, peony, animalic notes and musk) sounded pretty meh, although there is a nice romantic ring to the childhood memory that reportedly inspired the fragrance’s development: his grandmother throwing cold water on sun-scorched walls in Tunisia, where Alaïa lived until he went off to Paris as a teenager (he is now 75).
You’ll find that steaming blend of water and chalk mostly in the top notes…
