Bertrand Duchaufour is popping up everywhere. Now, according to Lucky Scent, he's the perfumer behind Ann Gerard perfumes.
Ann...who?
Enough, already.
I'll openly admit to being pissed that Frapin 1697 - what I perceived as a great Duchaufour masterpiece before I put it on my skin - fizzled out like a firecracker that never ignites. Dud City.
Perfume should never be better on paper than on skin.
Note to BD: Just because you can, doesn't always mean you should. Stop whoring yourself and churning out one just-above-average perfume after another for every perfume house or designer that will contract with you. Take a tip from Jean Claude Ellena, arguably the greatest perfumer of all time, and show a little restraint. Maybe the quality of your perfumes will improve.
Wow, little miss cranky pants feels better now.
image from fineartamerica.com
I really like some of BD's perfumes, but even if I wanted to try them all to see what the quality level was, or if I wanted to buy them, I could not! There are just too many of them out there! I saw he'd even done some for a Russian/Polish Avon-type brand that sells door-to-door. Ack! Maybe he has lots of formulae that he'd worked on over many years that simply never saw the light of day, and he's working those archives now??
ReplyDeleteHi Marla - there are zillions of BD perfumes out there and I haven't tried them all, either. Not even close. And I have to say I'm a little disappointed about some of his latest creations...they don't last and end up feeling mediocre at best. Plus, there's something about excess and volume that just feels cheap. Like seeing Joe Pesci on a Snickers commercial, which I did, last night. Wow.
ReplyDeleteYes, I feel the same way, even though I haven't sampled the BD plethora....And in general I've found so many niche fragrances that I've tried lately have started out A+ and then petered out to...a whiff of Ambroxan/IsoE/Verymoss/Cosmone...take your pick. Too many and too fast! Great perfumes take time to develop. You just can't get around that basic fact.
ReplyDeleteBD designed some fragrances I really love-- Aedes de Venustas (original), CdG Avignon, Timbuktu, Poivre Piquant, and my "forever-favorite" Flora Bella de Lalique. But I've said "meh" to an equal number of his fragrances-- and I fear that "meh" will start to outnumber "love". I still have many to try, but the sheer QUANTITY of what's yet to be sampled is definitely daunting. I could spend a whole YEAR sniffing my way through his catalog, which as you describe, just keeps growing in all directions. Do I really want to?
ReplyDeleteHi Olenska - I agree with you that BD has designed some masterpieces. Dzongkha and Piment Brulant are two that I love from L'Artisan. However, I find many of his recent releases boring, like Al Oudh and Frapin 1697. And let's talk sheer perception; if an artist of any kind churns out one creation after another, I assume they have not given each the proper amount of time and respect it deserves. There's something manic about it, like the need to produce has eclipsed the pursuit of quality. And the fact that one creates perfume for anyone and everyone makes me think one is living beyond one's means. BD would do well to just slow down, breathe and remember why he became a perfumer in the first place.
ReplyDeleteOh, honey, did you CALL it or what? Today's news about Duchaufour utterly floored me-- and called to mind everything discussed here. Now that we learn that BD is accepting commissions from the family members of brutal human-rights violating dictators, the sentence "Just because you can, doesn't always mean you should" has new meaning.
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