Dominique Ropion for Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle: Portrait of a Lady

A couple of days ago, thanks to Guido, owner of the store "Profumo" (in central Via Brera, Milan), I had the happy chance to meet fascinating Monsieur Frederic Malle. Yes, the aesthete, the visionary pioneer who, in 2000, created the line “Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle to which all today’s best composers are contributing (and many of then are my favorites): Dominique Ropion, Jean Claude Ellena, Maurice Roucel, Pierre Bourdon, Olivia Giacobetti... not to mention Carlos Benaim and Sophia Grojsman, who composed fragrances of the brand new line of candles and scent diffusers scents for interiors. But I’ll write about all this and more in the next days, in the post-interview I’m preparing.
Now let me introduce you the new fragrance: Portrait of a Lady.
In fact, I’ll ask Monsieur Malle himself to introduce it: "This scents has a history of its own: we have practically built it upside-down! As users of Geranium Pour Monsieur (another Ropion's hit in this line), Dominique and I realized that the fragrance sits on a really nice base accord: musk notes along with incense, benzoin and patchouli coeur (coeur indicates a precise fraction of the distillation: only the result of the central part of the distillation process is defined “coeur- heart”. This central part shows warm, woody, dry notes without the moldy, earthy facets characterizing the “whole” essence). Since we both loved this accord, we decided this would be the perfect base of a brand new scent".
The accord was given a more “oriental” feel by surdosing patchouli, lowering sandalwood and adding Ambroxan (woody-ambery effect).
When it came to deciding the top and heart of the fragrance, they decided to give rose the starring role, and since it had to be very special, they turn to LMR (Laboratoires Monique Remy) which has a production site in Turkey where roses are still distilled in copper (the type of material used for the still impacts on the smell of the final output).
In Portrait of a Lady, rose has definitely the starring role, as is present in huge amount. “An obscene amount of rose" underlines Monsieur, visibly pleased with the result. A two-digit number, an important economic investment that, after smelling the result, seems entirely justified.
To connect the top with the base, spices were used (cinnamon and cloves), while an accord of red fruits softens any excesses.
It feels like a very short formula, with few elements, and he confirmed: "Dominique didn’t want to add Hedione, IsoESuper, Calone, or other molecules that would provide special effects. Now we're used to smell them, they’re in most fragrances and offer excellent results, but here we decided to focus on the beauty of materials we had chosen; this perfume is “essential" in the sense that we didn’t add anything to what proved to be absolutely necessary to make it work as we had in mind".
If I should be forced to label it, I would write “ Floriental”, that is a flowery oriental, with a quite powerful and diffusive rose, but without any aggressiveness. Moreover, here rose is so green, rough, doughy, dark that isn’t immediately recognizable as the typical rose smell, and that is why I think men are likely to love it even more than women -well, there are women, in fact, who believe “rose” implies a much richer and multifaceted concept than people usually imagine.
The result is an unique fragrance, highly sophisticated, expressing a refined taste completely out of the box. And above all, it smells real “Malle” style.
"I think Portrait of a Lady epitomizes nearly ten years activity of the brand: no copying the others, no compromises, but only the constant search for Beauty. We aim at creating uncompromising classics".
And in this case it's simply true: Monsieur Malle’s spent the last decade creating fragrances which prove that creativity and extreme quality can lead perfumery towards the spheres of art, his vision of perfumery opened new paths for both composers and perfume lovers (we will discuss more of it in the interview) so... congratulations for this brand new addition!

(Website Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle)

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