Paris Eau de Parfum

Robin, Now Smell This (2008)

Robin describes a fruity, bright and expansive opening of joyful optimism, and a heart of opulent roses veiled by Sophia Grojsman’s creamy violet. She finds Paris extraordinarily feminine and romantic, with nothing saccharine about it, a match for the broad-shouldered pink jacket of its commercial.

After an hour, the pink sky clouds over for her and lets the wistfulness of Après L’Ondée show through. She finds Paris very much of its era and prefers it dabbed rather than sprayed; Tania Sanchez, in Perfumes: The Guide, calls it “a brilliant, beautiful monster.”

Suzanna, Bois de Jasmin (2012)

Suzanna sees Paris as an exuberant, romantic reverie in which a fruity, almost jam-like and abstract rose meshes with violets that recall candied violets. It starts large, remains large and leaves only a trace of sandalwood behind as a keepsake.

She describes a spectacular bloom, alternately powdery and syrupy in the manner of a dessert wine, and a soapy facet that recalls the fine soaps of French hotels. She sees it as a fragrance of its time, with the grand staging of the 1980s.

Loyal to the eau de toilette, Suzanna finds the eau de parfum too concentrated: to her it smothers the airy space where juniper and hawthorn peek through. She concludes it is artifice elevated into art, of a sophistication she fears is gone.