Oriza L. Legrand

Scotch Lavender by Oriza L. Legrand
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Scotch Lavender by Oriza L. Legrand

Hi there crew, Back in 2019 I got a bunch of samples with a big order from FIF. I gave them all a cursory sniff and wrote about a few in passing but then put the bag away and completely forgot about them. This is a constant theme in my life. part of having too much of just about everything because I’m a spoiled brat. Anyway, I rediscovered this bag of goodies while searching out something else and noted an Oriza L Legrand sticker on a paper envelope. Colour me excited already. These guys make perfume that sings for me.

Scotch Lavender by Oriza L. Legrand

Scotch Lavender Oriza L. Legrand

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Lavender, Thyme, Bergamot
Heart: Lavender, Geranium, Vetiver
Base: Tonka Bean, Benzoin, Amber

LAVENDER, cool, smooth, refreshing and calming, lightly sugared and set among some greenery. It’s simple, herbal and balm for my soul. Not 1000 miles from my all time favourite lavender, Caron Pour Un Homme. Less confectionary after the first minute and much more dark greenery. There is also that fabulous oily, inkiness, lightly salted that is what a lot of vetivers smell like to me. Matched perfectly with the spicy sharp rosiness of geranium.

The heart begins mildly medicinal. I’ve not smelled lavender treated quite like it. It’s a bit like lavender and an Asian apothecary shop had a baby. Beautiful and nose intriguing. Through the long lasting heart I’m compelled to come back and sniff myself, checking if it’s still so unusual. The base stays true to the heart but warms through with emery resins till fade.

Last week I went to the season launch of one of Australia’s biggest distributors. We sniffed dozens of things. My eyebrows tend to jump at the excitement of smelling something new or impressive. Sadly, though everything was lovely, I was among friends, was really ready to be excited and feeling happy within myself; almost nothing even registered an eyebrow lift. It was just more of the same boring lazy muck. It was a little soul destroying. Sure, I’m jaded, yes I’ve sniffed a LOT of perfume. Still, I’m usually enthused by about a quarter of the new offerings. Yesterday only Penhaligon’s: Constantinople and Maison Crivelli: Hibiscus Mahajád excited me. So, to find this beauty among an old baggie of samples has renewed my faith in modern perfumery.

Lavender seems to have made a renaissance in the last few years. I’m loving the different directions we are smelling come through. Scotch Lavender feels like an old theme reviewed and renewed for the 21st century.

Perfectly unisex and both sillage and longevity are moderate plus. The early hour is quite diffusive and its unusual timbre give it that, “um… what?” value too.

I’m pretty sure Oriza L. Legrand still sends to the world. If you’re shopping try their soaps as well. SO GOOD!

Do you have a lavender?
Portia x

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Le Regent by Oriza Legrand
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Le Regent by Oriza Legrand

Hi there ULG crew. I ordered some fragrance and soaps from Oriza Legrand back in November 2020. The world and postal services being what they are right now it wasn’t until late February the package finally arrived. Inside were some small soaps and a couple of fragrances. The Oriza boys had a fab deal going art that time that if I bought a 100ml bottle (I was buying 100ml of Heliotrope, review coming) they’d add a 50ml of my choice. Well, Le Regent is new from 2019, the notes sounded fabulous and it was a FREE GWP! Of course it’s the one I grabbed.

Le Regent by Oriza Legrand

Parfumo gives these featured accords:
Top: Peru balsam, Tolu balm, Benzoin
Heart: Vanilla, Benzoin, Ambergris
Base: Opoponax, Gaiac wood, Leather

The Le Regent bottles are super indie feeling. They are glass, heavy and simple so don’t have the usual luxurious Oriza feeling. Don’t let this put you off but I thought it important to say.

If you are a fan of Mona di Orio‘s Eau Absolue but always felt it was a bit too cool and detached then Le Regent will warm the cockles of your heart. All the same smooth resinous beauty but handled in a much more welcoming way. Also Le Regent is a much bigger, more potent perfume, it’s a bad ass showstopper.

From the Oriza L Legrand site: “Le Régent” 1st Tome of the Collection “Jewels of the Crown”, explores the 18th century archives of the Maison Oriza L. Legrand which was then called “Parfumerie Oriza de Fargeon-Aîné” at the Court of Roy Louis XV also called in Europe “The Perfumed Court”. 

One of the things I have loved about the boys at Oriza is that they always allude to fact that they are inspired by historic fragrance, not copying it verbatim. Which is impossible nowadays anyway because the way perfume and accords are created is so different, even some of the original ingredients have long gone.

How does Le Regent smell? Firstly, it’s BIG! An over the top, smooth, resinous beauty. Amber amped up by some fabulous bells & whistles that take it well up to the next level. The very slightly briny ambergris adds so much texture and depth. Scotty was over yesterday and he spritzed wildly and nearly asphyxiated himself. I could still smell Le Regent in the living room when I got up this morning. By then it had dried to a deeply burnished woodsy amber. So beautiful.

Unisex, extra large silage and longevity. Advised to use sparingly until you know how it blooms on you.

The Oriza boys have hit this over the fence.

Sound like you might like it?
Portia xx

 

 

 

Muguet Fleuri by Oriza L. Legrand
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Muguet Fleuri by Oriza L. Legrand

Hey there ULG, I know a lot of you are caught in the depths of winter so I thought we could look forward to spring through fragrance today. Muguet Fleuri is Lily of the Valley. That glorious harbinger of spring. On May 1 the whole of Paris smells of it and little bouquets and flowering pots can be bought on street corners. It’s heavenly.

In 2014 I first visited Hugo and Franck of Oriza L Legrand at their 18 Rue Saint-Augustin, Paris store. The brand is a modern resurrection of a long lost perfume house. They took us through their collection and I purchased some soaps and a bottle of Jardin d’Armide. This was the defining moment of my love affair with the brand. The space is gorgeous and chock full of soaps, candles and fine fragrance. Since then I’ve been back to the store a few times. Their affordable product and FREE postage over €100 to Australia means I often buy their soaps and fragrances for gifts.

Did you know that the original Oriza L Legrand patented the idea of solid perfume?

Muguet Fleuri by Oriza L. Legrand 2014

Muguet Fleuri by Oriza L. Legrand

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Green leaves, grass, lily-of-the-valley
Heart : Galbanum, angelica, violet leaf, lily-of-the-valley
Base: Lily-of-the-valley, oakmoss, lily

I love the calm feeling of a Lily of the Valley fragrance, dewy and air conditioned. The Muguet Fleuri opening is cool and slightly mentholated. I get nothing grassy particularly but much more like the juice of Aloe Vera (yes, got a bit sunburned helping my BFF Kath high pressure hose her dad’s driveway). Flore by Carolina Herrera has a very similar plastic Lily of the Valley note but in Muguet Fleuri I find it subtle and refreshing, helped by galbanum and angelica to keep everything super green. None of the modern cucumber/aquatic note like in Muguet Porcelain by Hermès.

It’s excellent to me how they keep the focus so firmly on Lily of the Valley in Muguet Fleuri. The scent feels luxurious and refined while creating  a very nice silage for the first hour or so. Fairly linear througfhout its life, there are slight increments of difference and a gradual earthing of the scent towards the end.

If you often, or even sometimes, wish for a fragrance as true to cut Lily of the Valley stems from the florist as possible but still interesting and beautiful then I would send you immediately to try Muguet Fleuri. Only the first two hours are fragrant, then it hums along quietly as a soft, background wash.

Muguet Fleuri by Oriza L. Legrand

Oriza L Legrand has a €30/choose your 6 x 2ml Sample Set (delivered worldwide). My review today is from an old sample I refound in my collection, looking for something cool and summery.

Are you a Lily of the Valley fan? Do you have a favourite?
Portia xx

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Which 20 Would Portia Keep?

Hi there Crew,

Recently Undina (What Are Your Top N Perfumes?) and Tara (My Perfume Collection – Top 15) have done their “which would I keep” posts, following on from from Vanessa (‘Be more Undina’). After you’ve read this go have a squiz at theirs too. Who doesn’t love lists, right? So, I’m thinking “Damnit! I want to do this too.” It’s such a mind blowing, freak me right out, dumb assed thing to want to try because invariably my head explodes. Then the next day I instantly start second guessing my choices and that can rattle around my head for a couple of weeks before my brain lets it go. BUT! I also love doing it, just to see what my head and heart come up with this time.

Jin and I have often talked of buying a van and travelling through Europe for a couple of years. As part of that adventure my mind instantly goes to “How many perfumes would I take and which would they be?” So I’m kind of experienced at it now. Problem is some of them change, HA! Impossible, right. Usually I say 25 bottles and a bunch of samples/decants but in all honesty I think it will more likely be 10. So today I’m formalising my ideas for you all and myself. Subject to change at a moments notice.

You might want to grab a cuppa or a boozy bevy. This post is LONG! Continue reading →

Portia’s Mid Season Beauties 2020
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Portia’s Mid Season Beauties 2020

Hey there crew,

Mid Seasons are my favourites. I love the less extreme temperatures and the chopping and changing. Whether it’s Spring or Autumn, the days play similarly, and I find the same set of fragrances can often get some play. One day hot, next day cloudy, sunshiny days and chilly nights happen in both seasons. It does mean our easy reach fragrances need to be able to fit into more than a single weather mood. So I have a bunch of perfumes each year that are able to cross the borders comfortably. I pop them on the easy access tray with some all-year contenders. This year looks like it’s going to be fun.

 

 

Portia’s Mid Season Beauties 2020

Continue reading →

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The Royal Nonesuch of Perfume

Several years after we moved to the U.S., we found our friend F. who we knew back in our student days. He emigrated about 8 years before we did, and we lost each other. So it was great to re-connect. But since we settled down on the opposite coasts, we visited each other several times over the years, but mostly our communications were over the phone.

Most conversations with F. revolved around the topics of trips and theater attendance – mostly F.’s since my vSO and I, being new immigrants, weren’t traveling or going to theaters much. We would also talk about books and movies, and there we probably still had a lot in common, though sometimes during those calls I had that strange feeling as if I was being quizzed on how interesting our life was. Most likely, it was all in my head and F. was sincere in his attempts to share with us cultural experiences and impressions but I do remember the feeling and my limp attempts to keep up. And then one day F. told me about a wonderful new film they’d just seen: a very unusual, avant-garde and so forth…

Today I don’t have much patience to waste time on something I dislike, if I can help it. But 17 years ago I patiently sat through the complete 81 minutes of The Blair Witch Project, going through the stages of confusion, disbelief, annoyance, anger and – did I mention disbelief? I couldn’t believe F. actually liked that and recommended it to us! And he wasn’t the only one who raved about it: there were enough high ratings and favorable reviews and articles online. It was beyond my comprehension… And then something clicked: I knew what it was!

AT THE COURT HOUSE!
FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The World-Renowned Tragedians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
AND
EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
THE KING’S CAMELEOPARD,
OR
THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! !
Admission 50 cents.

LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED

I’m not sure if you were as impressionable as I was when I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to remember what that handbill was about, but I was so captivated by the psychological component of the scam that it stayed in my memory for decades.

In short, a couple of scoundrels announce that performance in a small town. First night, when it proves to be not much of a performance, the audience figures out that, in addition to losing money, they will be ridiculed by their peers. So instead of beating up the con artists right there and then, the first half of the town goes out and tells the second half how hilarious the play was. Then the rest of the town’s population pays for the same questionable experience. So the third night the whole town comes to the performance anticipating the revenge and armed with things to throw. But the con men disappear right after collecting the entrance fee.

My theory is that with The Blair Witch Project it just took too long for the “whole town” to watch it, so meanwhile the “first half” had time to cool down.

Recently, after reading Mals’ (Muse in Wooden Shoes) review of Oriza L. Legrand‘s Chypre Mousse, I started thinking that for the last couple of years I was participating in another adaptation of The Royal Nonesuch. And while it’s definitely not on the TBWP’s scale, I would say that it covers a population of at least several Twain’s towns.

The Royal Nonesuch

Mals was the first blogger (out of those whose blogs I read) who openly described how awful her experience with Chypre Mousse perfume was. Until then I read only positive reviews and I paid my “admission fee” (I got a 5 ml decant in a friendly split). The first test was such a shock! I actually hated the scent but suffered through the development hoping it would get better – it didn’t. Then it took me some time to get around testing it once again – the same result but that time I quickly retreated to the shower.

I do not plan to ever test Chypre Mousse again and, just in case, I will probably stay away from the brand altogether. But for some strange reason not only I didn’t write about that experience in my blog, I don’t think I’ve ever commented on any discussion of this perfume. I call it strange because I don’t have any loyalty towards this brand, I didn’t get it as a gift from somebody’s deeply loved bottle and it’s not even a small indie company, which I would be afraid to harm by saying something negative. Of course, it means I wasn’t saying anything good about it either so analogy isn’t complete but still I feel like with my silence I helped propagating the illusion of the consensus about this perfume being great, and one day we may end up in the “third night” crowd, as it was described through the eyes (nose?) of Huckleberry Finn:

I see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging or something muffled up under his coat – and I see it warn’t no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four of them went in.

 

Now, when I feel that I’ve done everything I could to warn “the rest of the town”, I do not mind hearing how great Chypre Mousse works on your skin. Does it?