Love molecules

The kiss - Auguste Rodin

Love stories never happen to leave us cold and whether they are fairitales or reality, dramas or happy ends, it doesn't matter. What's sure is many perfumers tried to bottle their essence. The 8th art is scattered with masterpieces inspired by love stories, first of all one of the progenitors of modern perfumery, the revolutionary Jicky. In 1889 Aimé Guerlain used the most beautiful natural raw materials like bergamot and lavender from Grass soaking them in an undecent load of civet. He joined also the most groundbreaking synthetics at that time, cumarine and ethyl-vanillin to conconc an abstract fragrance never seen before. Jicky, a nickname Aimé put to his nephew Jacques, was also the name of a young girl he fall hopelessly in love with while he was studying in England. At his proposal of marriage her parents refused, so he got back to France and never married. The golden aura of youth and the passionate struggling memory of this strong and unfortunate feeling relived in this brutal and sweet masterpiece.

While Jicky speaks about impossible love, many other scents celebrate the growth of love, from the heart throb of the first encounter to its climax, as it happens with Amour Amour, Que Sais-Je and Adieu Sagesse, born 1925, the first three perfumes composed by Henri Alméras for Jean Patou. The olfactory trilogy is adorable and shows the mastery of Alméras at dosing bases, for example Amarante (Givaudan) for the green facet or Dianthine (De Laire) for the carnation facet of Amour Amour, with new synthetics and naturals. The fragrances are sadly discontinued like many other treasures lying in the past of the House of Patou and would be a joy to see them recreated with the care Jean Kérleo used to bring them back to life in the '80s for "Ma Collection" that I have been lucky enough to smell.

Also nowadays, almost a century later, this throb still inspires beautiful creations like the brand new Jul e Mad fragrances. I must confess I was a bit sceptic of all this romance since today it often translates into something cloying. Nevertheless it's always worth smelling a perfume coming from Robertet at least to enjoy the top quality of their natural raw materials. Fortunately they're not fine knacks for ladies: Jul et Mad together with Dorothée Piot paint with brilliant hand a classic olfactory triptyc with an original twist given by contemporary textures and colours that confirm that the extrait de parfum is back in grand style. I had so much pleasure wearing them that I decided to tell you more about them in my next post.