Rêve d'Infini Eau de Parfum

Lalique only came to perfumery in 1992, with Lalique de Lalique, more than a century after the glassmaker's beginnings. Rêve d'Infini, created in 2015, belongs to the house's most classically feminine vein: a fruity floral that nothing seeks to unsettle, and which sets out to please rather than to surprise. The perfume only reached shelves at the very start of 2016, which explains why it is dated to one year or the other depending on the catalogue.

The name comes from a figure. The perfume is placed under the sign of infinity, that reclining figure eight found in the scrollwork of René Lalique's Art Nouveau jewelry, and the bottle's silhouette echoes its loop. It is one of the rare cases, at the house, where the concept rests on the design rather than on the material: the idea of the object precedes that of the juice.

The composition is signed Richard Ibanez, a perfumer at Robertet, who had given the house Living Lalique the same year. The kinship is audible: the heart lets a powdery, buttery iris show through, very close to the one structuring its elder by a few months. It is not a quotation, rather a hand that one recognizes from one bottle to the next.

Opinions are sharply divided, and both readings hold up. Some wearers describe a powdery floral, elegant and discreet, whose peach and rose last long without weighing it down. Others fault it for a synthetic, soapy construction, and a sweet musky base that crushes the fruity notes announced up front. The perfume is built for softness, and softness is precisely what divides.