Fragile, a shrieking, glass-shard perfume of flowers, piercing, (orange blossom, tubereuse artificielle): always seemed to tread a rather precarious tightrope.
Over crystal-sharp raspberry leaves, capsicum, pink pimento, and a psychological basenote of pernicious, reduced-fat cedar, a cruel, golden shower of excruciating artifice was released each time from the leaking hole of the atomiseur – providing it hadn’t broken (it usually had) – and a tressed up manicured contessa in the wings, waiting, aloof, would then take to the ice-rink gilded stage in cigarillo-wielding readiness.
Like the bottle, a wonderful, utterly impractical creation that had a hands-on-hips diva in little snowglobe clasped by invisible, power-hungry talons (which unfortunately, as I say, got damaged quite easily and was then, before the perfume was rendered extinct, replaced by a more pragmatic, if far less interesting flacon), the scent, released not quite at the optimum moment in time somehow (an unusually gauche faux pas from the self titled enfant terrible of fashion )- was always unsteady on its feet; resting somewhere on its red-lipped, fishnetted tightrope between perfumista artistry; whimsical wannabe, and banal, duty free seeking high street.
I used to quite like this perfume, I must admit, despite its screeching excesses and lack of any genuine fragility. There was a blinding sharpness in the blend there that had a feline, eye blinking extravagance that boded well, usually, for grand occasions.A purring, almost growling, Dita Von Teese: lacquered, pointed, a lamp-reflecting night neroli for flirtations and dressing up.
I suddenly miss it.
The Black Narcissus 