There are so many experiences you face
when you’re living in Paris; Eating fois gras and other traditional French
food, having to mime everything so that you are understood by the fruit vendors
in the open markets, riding bikes along the Seine River and visiting the Eiffel
Tower almost every other weekend. But out of all of these, one stand out
experience for me was visiting the Niche Perfumeries that are scattered all
around Paris.
Niche Perfume stores are in a
different league compared to the department stores like Sephora and Marionnaud
(in France) and Shoppers Stop, Westside and Lifestyle (In India). The perfumes
produced by them are limited and exclusive. The raw materials used are of the
best quality. Having this kind of exclusivity gives the perfumer the freedom to
use his creativity to the fullest. Generally when a perfumer is asked to make a
perfume, he has to stick to a perfume brief that is provided by the marketing
team of a company. This brief in a way sets the theme for the perfume as well
as the budget and guides the perfumer in creating it. But, for some niche
perfumeries, the perfumer is given the full liberty to create what he feels
like without having to worry about the parameters set by a brief.
So there we were; me and four of my
friends from ISIPCA – Kajal, Rawane, Nishma and Merve. Merve had made an entire
itinerary for us with information about metro stations, street addresses of the
niche perfumeries in Paris and also the time by which we should finish as we
had a date with the Eiffel Tower later on that day. Our first stop was Colette
near Tuileries.
Colette is an extremely
trendy store selling everything ranging from clothes to books to make-up and
perfumes. It’s located in a very expensive quarter of Paris on a street lined
with designer stores and boutiques. On the first floor, in one corner of the
store is the section for perfumes with brands like Comme des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, Boudicca etc. Kajal and
I, being from India, liked the Gardenia and Jasmine accord whereas Rawane fell
in love with the Oud fragrance.
The next store in our itinerary was Editions
de Parfums Frederic Malle. Once we entered the store we pushed Rawane,
the only one of us who was fluent in French, to introduce us to the lady at the
front desk. As soon as she heard that we were from ISIPCA, she smiled and said
that she was an ex-student of ISIPCA as well. She gave us a warm welcome and
asked us which fragrances we would like to smell. We each told her our
preferences – Kajal said she liked the white flower note, Merve preferred
perfumes created by Maurice Roucel, Rawane said she wanted to try something
oriental and of course with Oud and I wanted something with green notes. My
favourite perfume was “Dans tes Bras” which had a beautiful green and floral
aspect to it contributed by violet. The lady showing us the perfumes was so
happy with our interest in fragrances that she let us test one of them in a
fragrance evaluation chamber. She put one spray of Noir Epices in the
cylindrical chamber and asked us to evaluate it. It was a lovely medley of
orange, cinnamon, pepper and clove.
After testing almost all the perfumes in the store, we
thanked the lady for her time and walked out with a feeling of enthusiasm and
love for perfumes that we had never felt before. With this feeling we got ready
to go to our next stop – Maison
Francis Kurkdjian.
No comments:
Post a Comment