Today I Will Be Wearing: Cologne Bigarade by Jean-Claude Ellena for Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums.

-
Today I Will Be Wearing: Cologne Bigarade by Jean-Claude Ellena for Frédéric Malle Editions de Parfums.

I love a visit to our PR’s agency’s offices, with my partner Michael Donovan’s very learned, and encyclopaedic knowledge of luxury fragrances, each trip is a rarefied treat. I adore looking through his cupboards of testers of the amazing brands he represents and cherish the occasional opportunity for an anonymous and secret sniff of a soon to be released scent. Michael treats every new fragrance release like his baby, and his pride and passion is contagious – no wonder the world’s press holds him in such high esteem. 

In the office environment is possible to linger longer over the selection of scents than one might feel comfortable doing in a store and so invariably I discover a hither to unknown fragrance that I might not have picked up otherwise. 

As usual I made a bee line to the Frédéric Malle collection – one of my most admired range of perfumes.

However with cologne in its name I might well have passed over Cologne Bigarade (2001) but how wrong, and what an oversight, this would have been. Seeing the extraordinary Jean-Claude Ellena, the great nose behind my adored Terre d' Hermès (2006) amongst many other classics and being halfway through his book ‘The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur’, fuelled by Michael’s enthusiasm I put down the bottle of Geranium Pour Monsieur (a scent of which I cannot get enough) and spayed Cologne Bigarade.

It was love at first spray: a completely new olfactory sensation which conversely felt strangely familiar; the sign of a truly classic scent.

The sparkling sour top notes of orange blend beautifully with the base of hay and grass, which unusually is very much there in the opening. It is quite a frantic fragrance that calms beautifully on one’s skin, the warmth of which allows the fleshy heart of fresh rose to work its palpable magic. A subtle spicy pepper underlines the sensuousness of this luxurious scent. 

So it was straight off to town for a bottle of latest love and one of my old faithful available from Les Senteurs & Liberty. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Holy Trinity: Perfumes Made by Monks

-
Image
The rarefied aura that surrounds fragrance dates back to the remotest times of antiquity, when incense and fragrant oils would be offered up to the gods and deities of the ancient world. The Arab world is credited with introducing modern perfumery to the West, having preserved the ancient arts of distillation, evaporation, and filtration that had been lost to Christian society, and in turn heralding great advancements not only in the field of fragrance but of chemistry and science too. In passing this tradition on, Christian monks began to adopt the practice of creating fragrances as an expression of faith, before eventually the art form became available to the wider public, for a price. Today, most perfume is manufactured on a grand commercial scale; a far cry from the artisanal monastic traditions that gave birth to modern fragrance! However, some perfume houses still survive from this bygone age and serve to remind us of our industry’s history while continui
Read more

Bâtard Folding Picnic Knife by Lamson & Goodnow

-
Image
As author of The Best Bread Ever; Charles Van Over is expected to show everywhere up with an armful of bread. Whilst Charles enjoys breaking bread with friends; he does insist that the bread is properly sliced with a breadknife, not just ripped apart. The problem here is that bread knives are very long and with their serrated edges they are not the easiest of things to carry around. Charles wondered why a folding bread knife could not be produced and took his idea for a pocket bread knife to Lamson & Goodnow, American manufacturers of the LamsonSharp range. The Bâtard Folding Picnic knife is the result of this collaboration. At Roullier White we believe this may possibly be the best picnic knife ever made. The French word bâtard – and yes it does translate how you think it does – is a shorter and thicker type of baguette. The knife, of course, will cut everything including cheese, fruit, vegetables and as you cannot have a picnic without wine it also has an integral corkscrew. Rou
Read more

GQ Magazine: July Issue: My Style: Aman Singh: Alvarez Gomez

-
Image
Architect by day, music producer by night, Aman Singh tells us about his wardrobe staples and most-anted items. I get my haircut at Huckle The Barber in Shoreditch. They spray on the citrusy Aqua de Colonia Concentrada by Alvarez Gomez. £28 at Roullier White. We are thrilled to see this wonderful brand from Madrid featured in Aman Singh's personal style guide in this month's issue of the marvellous GQ magazine. More information on the Roullier White website  here .
Read more