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Browsing by tag: michel hy

Paco Rabanne Calandre ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 12 February 2018 37 Comments

It’s barely February, but my daffodils have buds, and clouds of daphne perfume lurk in pockets on the street. It’s not yet the spring of Easter egg colors and Guerlain Chamade, and it might snow again anytime. No, it’s a sort of pre-spring. It’s the perfect time for the knife-edged green beauty of Paco Rabanne Calandre.

Perfumer Michel Hy developed Calandre, and it launched in 1969. Its notes include aldehydes, bergamot, green notes, geranium, orris root, jasmine, lily of the valley, rose, amber, oakmoss, musk, sandalwood and vetiver. (Michel Hy was a genius of the green chypre — he also worked on Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, Yves Saint Laurent Y and Balmain Ivoire.) In French, the word “calandre” means “grille,” as in the grille on a car or a radiator. It also means “mangle,” a machine that irons linens when you feed them through its long rollers…

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Nina Ricci Fille d’Eve ~ fragrance review

Posted by Angela on 10 January 2011 39 Comments

Nina Ricci Fille d'Eve

I first smelled Nina Ricci Fille d’Eve on a business trip to Seattle about 10 years ago. Before we left town, a colleague and I stopped by Parfumerie Nasreen and sampled perfumes, none of which I remember at all now. The owner of the shop stopped us as we left. She pulled a small, apple-shaped bottle from a high shelf behind the cash register and asked if I’d like to try it. “This is very special. Fille d’Eve,” she said and held the bottle as if she were presenting it at a game show.

Eve’s daughter. How could I resist trying a fragrance with a name like that? She dabbed a bit on my wrist, and I asked the price. It was something exorbitant, so I left without giving it more than a cursory sniff. Half an hour out of town I sniffed my wrist again. It smelled not quite clean. Not dirty as in body odor, but like an accumulation of skin oil. Not pretty, really, but intriguing.

Over the years I’d thought about Fille d’Eve and wished I could smell it again…

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Yves Saint Laurent Y ~ perfume review

Posted by Angela on 3 May 2007 21 Comments

Yves Saint Laurent Y fragrance for women

I’ve spent years looking for the perfect dress, a dress I can wear in the winter with boots and a sweater, in the summer with sandals, with pumps to business meetings, and out at night with a Miriam Haskell necklace and hand-knit shrug. When wearing this dress, I won’t have to hold in my stomach or worry that my bra straps show. Slide the dress over my head and I’m done. Well, I haven’t found the dress yet, but I think I’ve found its perfume counterpart: Y by Yves Saint Laurent.

Y is a clean, soft green chypre that lays a gentle background. It is quiet and elegant, but still warm, and when you’re wearing it people notice you and not your scent. It stays close to your body. Someone crammed against you in an elevator when you’re wearing Y won’t think of perfume but will think you’re still warm from your morning shower and maybe have clipped a few flowers from the garden for your desk…

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