‘Who’s smoking a pipe? I could swear someone’s smoking a pipe’ said my Japanese colleagues as I sat, silent and embarrassed (but amused) at their reaction to my wearing Hot Couture to the teacher’s room one cold winter morning.
Trying to decide what I thought about this perfume (given to me by a friend who had found it just that bit too much), aromatic, flavoured (raspberry) tobacco was actually the first thing that had come to mind, so it was hilarious to have my initial instincts confirmed. Hot Couture, which came in a fantastically passé and non-ergonomic sculptured bottle – so eighties, so c h i c – is a peppery, aromatic and vanillic framboise: an unusual main note for a big house perfume, and perhaps the reason why, like all the best perfumes, it has disappeared (the eau de toilette is a fresher, floriental raspberry scent). From a distance, though, the eau de parfum really did smell exactly like pipe smoke; curls of thick, woody, vaporous raspberry.
Hot Couture is a pretty good scent I would say, worth picking up if you find it cheaply somewhere: nice on either sex, cosy and distinct, but with its atmosphere of smoke-infused nightclub cloakrooms – and swathes of thick, rising, dry ice on the dancefloor – I have to say it doesn’t leave much room to breathe.
The Black Narcissus 