Robert Piguet - Petit Fracas

 The sparkling and flirtatious spirit of
Petit Fracas (Robert Piguet)
Picture: All Posters.com

Petit Fracas from one of my absolute favouritehouses, Robert Piguet, it seems as the RP fragrances gets very well with my skinchemistry, is created by the housenose Auerlien Guichard 2012. The Petit Fracas is meant to be the entry to the Grand Fracas, the Queen of tubereuses and it is said to be aimed to the younger generation. According to me, it suits all ages of those who likes a well crafted frutiy-floral.

Petit Fracas starts with sparkling fruity notes, dominated by the pear and contrasted by a cacao note. The cacao blended with especially the pear creates an impression of butterscotch. The pearnote is recognizable in another recent Robert Piguet fragrance, the sparkling tubereuse/white floral Douglas Hannant.  The gourmand impression of Petit Fracas is present already from the start and the cacao note is running through the whole fragance. It gently interacts with the notes of each stage, creating different gourmand impressions. As the name of the fragrance indicates, tubereuse is of course the star of Petit Fracas, even if the cacaonote comes close as the most important, contrasting note.

As Petit Fracas reach the heartnotes, the white flowers takes the command with the tubereuse as the leader of the team. The tubereuse is more sparkling and clean than the dark, dense and almost animalic version of it in Fracas The cacaonote in this stage, appears as more dry and less sweet as its performance in the topnotes. Petit Fracas in this stage, to my nose is more close to Douglas Hannant, (but DH lacks the gourmand notes as a clear floral fragance) than to Fracas. At least compared to my 10+ years old version of Fracas, I don't know if the current forumlation is weaker. The flowery gourmand accord developes beautifully when interacting with the warm sandalwood and the smooth, rounded musk of the base. The effect is almost creamy and there is very comfortable to wear Petit Fracas as it performs in its sweet, mouthwatering, delicious greatness for about 24 hours. Something in the texture of Petit Fracas later stages, reminds me of another great Piguet, Mademoiselle Piguet even if that one is centered around orangeblossom and also features some almost decaying vegetable notes, perfectly contrasted to the clean orange. Sillage is contemporary medium, not as bombastic as Fracas. To summerize: Petit Fracas is a real pleasure to wear and a good example that there are indeed good fruity-florals on the market. Something that parfumistas often tend to forget when discussing this taunted category of fragrance :-)

Madonnas Truth or Dare with its mashmallow note comes to my mind when it comes to the cacao - tubereuse combination in Petit Fracas. Both are gourmand tubereuses where Petit Fracas is the well-behaved and subtle, and Truth or Dare the bold and perky one. I also think that those how like the sweet beauty Tubereuse Couture by Parfumerie Generale will like Petit Fracas very much.

Rating: 5

Notes: Bergamot, mandarin, pear, tubereuse, jasmine, gardenia, musk, sandalwood, cacao

Fragrance(s) of the week (3) 2013

Photo: Mr Parfumista (c)

This week I had new experiences with two fragrances which until now have been a bit hard for me:

* Old Mitsi - Mitsouko. It seems as after almost ten years of experimenting I finally found the right dosage and right climat conditions etc as Mitsi now seems to fit quite well. Or at least I imagine so, as every true parfumista of course want this classic to fit. As I lunched with Fragrantfanatic that day, I got a professional opinion; the peaches over the moss was the main impression and that Mitsi smelled good.

* Today  (snowy as usual, - 20 C  :-) I percieved Douglas Hannant by Robert Piguet in a quite different way than when worn in the spring and summer. In the warmer months the pearnote takes the centerstage and DH becames fruity-floral in apperance with a touch of detergent. Today it performs as a bright, clearly tubereusedominated, white floral with just a light supporting pearnote and no laundry vibes. Delicious!

Robert Piguet – The house and perfumes

Picture: Nouvelle Collection by Robert Piguet
Photo: Perfumes Robert Piguet (c), all rights reserved

As a long time admier and wearer of Fracas, which is as close to a signature flower scent as I can come, I’m very fond of the house of Robert Piguet with it’s classy fragrances featured in equally sleek, elegant black bottles. To make a long story short, the perfumes was a part of the fashionhouse Robert Piguet with the legendary Bandit and Fracas created by the legandary, one of the first famous female perfumers, Germaine Cellier in the 1940s as also Visa (together with Jean Carles) and Baghari 1950. As the fashion house had to close down in 1951 the perfume brand continued but with changed ownership over the years. In the late 1950s and during the 1960s Calypso, Cravache and Futur were launched. In the late 1990s the perfumes Robert Piguet was acquired by the current owner, Fashion Fragrances & Cosmetics, and the ardous work to restore the Robert Piguet perfumes to it’s former glory began. Judging from the impressions of my nose the strategy of Robert Piguet CEO Joe Garces is utterly successful: First the skillful reinterpretations/recreations of Baghari,Visa, Cravache, Futur and Calypso, where the fragrances are reinterpreted by the house perfumer Aurelian Guichard with respect to the intentions of the originals. I have tested all of them expect the masculine Cravache and I like them all very much, especially Calypso (loveJ) and Baghari. Last year, Perfumes Robert Piguet introduced its first fragrance which is not based on the classics, Douglas Hannant. This contemporary, gardenia, pear, Fracas light inspiered fragrance, was made in collaboration with American haute couture designer Douglas Hannant to create a signature fragrance for the fashionhouse. This year the house of Piguet has continiued to release new fragrances in the expressive, multifacetted, elegant, classical style of the house. The Nouvelle Collection which I have the pleasure to test and review with start on Friday (continued with coming entries during the autumn/winter) have some fragrances inspired of the perfumes of the Middle East. There is also a collection geared to the Asian market, The Pacific Collection being launched in these days. Also an easier to wear Fracas Petit Fracas will be launched  2012.

The perfumehouse Robert Piguet finally seeems to have reached the safe harbor that these beautiful perfumes, the style and the creative spirit of this classical house really deserves.     

Perfumed thoughts April 2012

Earlier this week I thought that this weekend would be the right time to publish my list of Spring-Spring perfumes in my serie Spring fragrances, see the earlier post Winter-Spring fragrances. But then Jack Frost returned for the weekend and I lost all the inspiration. But as always there is some perfumed thoughts:

* As the Robert Piguet fragrances is an old love to me I'm really looking forward to the release of the  five fragrances in the Nouvelle Collection created by the Piguet "house-nose"Aurélien Guichard at Givaudan: Bois Noir, Casbah, Mademoiselle Piguet, NoteS and Oud. Earlier, expect from Douglas Hannant by Robert Piguet, the house in collaboration with perfumer Aurélien Guichard  has new-interpreted their old classics Visa, Baghari, Calypso and Futur. Bandit, Fracas and Cravache I think are "regulary" reformulations of the original Germaine Cellier creations. The Nouvelle Collection will be tested and reviewed later if I can get my hands of some samples.

* Another release I have read about but are not sure it will be this year is some new fragrances from Vero Kern, Vero Profumo. As I love Rubj, Onda (swedish) and Kiki I know Vero will deliver.

* I'm also not sure about if or when the perfume/perfumes Mona di Orio was working on when she passed away in December 2011 will be released. As a great admier of Mona, although it is so deeply tragic, I'm waiting of the privilege to take part of her final creation(s).

* There is so many interesting fragrances around and it's hard to select what is worth to sample. As Denyse at Grain the Musc wrote in her post (controversial as she argues about the consequenses of the sharp increase of perfumebloggers)  Enchanted, disenchanted she can't waste time trying out scents that don't challange her. Therefore her strategy is almost only to test and review creations from houses/noses that she know almost always delivers from her point of view. I will try to practice this rule in the future, and I already do that (without thinking of it)  to some extent, but it's not a a planned strategy of mine. As I have many already written reviews "in stock" the mix of favouritehouse/noses and other will remain within the foreseeable future.

That's my perfumed thoughts by now :-)