Manifesto is the feminine eau de parfum that Anne Flipo and Loc Dong composed in 2012 for Yves Saint Laurent, launched in September with Jessica Chastain as the face of the campaign and a film by Nicolas Winding Refn. A woody floral oriental for the house: jasmine, white flowers, lily of the valley and blackcurrant, over a base of vanilla, tonka bean, cedar and sandalwood. Jeanne Doré finds it the least disappointing launch from the house in some time.
The house, quoted by The Hollywood Reporter, states a woody floral oriental with notes of jasmine, white flowers, lily of the valley, blackcurrant, vanilla, tonka bean, cedar and sandalwood, without tiering them. The field keeps these eight materials and leaves in prose the grapefruit, peach, ylang-ylang, patchouli and inherited musks, unsourced.
Blackcurrant and green notes on top
Doré perceives an opening of blackcurrant and unripe green mango, somewhat sharp and sour, a forced move in her view to seem modern; the house names blackcurrant among its notes, alongside white flowers. The field places blackcurrant and the green note on top.
Jasmine and lily of the valley in the heart
The house names jasmine, white flowers and lily of the valley, which the field places in the heart. Doré does not name the flower there: she describes what follows as a creamy, milky, vanilla-tinged, almondy sillage, almost coconut, bordering on shower gel, not really off-putting.
Vanilla, tonka bean, sandalwood and cedar in the base
Vanilla, tonka bean, cedar and sandalwood close out the house’s list, which calls its fragrance woody. Doré closes on a coumarin-tinged sandalwood somewhat evocative of the 1990s, in which she hears Allure by Chanel; the coumarin from the tonka bean carries, for her, that memory.
What remains outside the declared accord
The green mango, almond and coconut that Doré describes do not appear in the house’s list; the grapefruit, bergamot, peach, ylang-ylang, patchouli and musks of the earlier version have no source. The ingredients list kept in the database comes from a retailer, with coumarin and hydroxycitronellal as the only markers.