La Prairie Life Threads

Unfinished business — I’ll be at Sniffa on Saturday, if you’re going to be there please come up and say hi! We’re wearing name tags, I am pretty sure.  I have zero face-recognition skills, I can barely identify my own children.  Please come up and stick your paw out and say hello, meeting folks from the Posse makes me so happy!

Okay, today’s post — La Prairie Life Threads fragrance collection.

Browsing in Saks on my recent sniffing trips, I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful new bottles displayed at the front of the La Prairie counter.  I know nothing about La Prairie – I’m under the impression they make skincare products I’m too cheap to buy, and a perfume (Silver Rain) I don’t care for – but these seemed worth stopping for, if just to look at.

I’m going to talk about the Life Threads bottles first, although I hope you’ll read past that.  The photo does not do them justice at all, they are gorgeous – heavy, sleek and elegant.  Just when I get to a point that I think I’ll never see another interesting, lovely bottle again, something like these show up.

At the counter they are displayed side by side in a matching Lucite stand, so the first funny piece of the puzzle is: I thought the Lucite exterior surfaces of the bottle were part of the stand, and the wire-wrapped glass bottles inside were what needed to be removed.  But they’re one piece, and the Lucite cap pops off.   The Lucite panels are on the front and back, with the sides open to expose the wired bottles, and again – if you have any sort of sleek, modernist sensibility in your bottle desires, you might want to look at these.

The Life Threads collection is about celebrating “the most cherished connections of our lives,” according to the lengthy brochure, if you’re into that sort of thing – hey, I’ve read worse.   A celebration of the many roles women play in the course of their lives, etc. They are called Gold, Silver and Platinum, with the threads reflecting the names (Platinum is the green-ish one with the darker threads).

So, how were the fragrances?

Platinum is the unisex frag, “an elegant and edgy chypre floral,” notes of plum, violet leaf, galbanum. jasmine, Persian rose, leather, cardamom, iris, Indonesian patchouli, vetiver, golden amber, oakmoss, labdanum.  It’s the one the SA told me women are buying for their menfolk, to go along with whichever of the other two they select for themselves.  Obviously a woman could easily wear this, and obviously yours truly did not find it “edgy,” a word I’d reserve for something … well, a lot edgier.  It’s cut somewhat from the same cloth as EL Jasmine White Moss, and/or Miyake A Scent.  I am now curious whether all the different companies are taking this opportunity to trot out their new faux-oakmoss patented ingredients now that (I think?) IFRA has banned oakmoss?  Or whether this is just a mini-retro trend now in perfumery.  Anyway, I approve.  It ain’t Cristalle, but it ain’t half bad.

Gold is “a seductive spicy floral” featuring tangerine, plum, clove, pepper, cinnamon peel, coriander, Kyoto rose, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang, cedar, patchouli, golden myrrh, vanilla and incense  It’s quite nice, if a little staid and not spicy enough for me.  I wish I got more plum, I adore plum.  I would consider this as an elegant fragrance gift for another woman who had more modernist but still conservative tastes.   I’m going to guess this will be their big seller.  It didn’t blow me away, but it’s very pretty and doesn’t smell like a vanilla gourmand, so hey – two thumbs up.   I’m going to retry it a couple more times because I love the list of notes.

Leading up to Silver, the one I personally found most interesting and compelling, although not necessarily on me.  I got a clue when the SA hesitated in that this-isn’t-for-everyone way as she was introducing the line.  She also put this last, which usually tells you either: it’s terrible, or the SA personally hates it.  In this case, I was grateful, because this thing is huge.  “An enchanting woody floral,” notes of bergamot, green leaf, tuberose, Indian jasmine, ylang-ylang, pepper, orange blossom, sandalwood, vetiver, solar musk, peppery moss.   Yo, shout-out to you White Flower Freaks – seriously, make me smile and go try this.  I know that I am sometimes the stank magnifier, but this is a parade-float-scale tuberose doing the dirty with a dirty, dirty jasmine.  Also it is a bit Roquefort-ish, like gardenia can be, although that isn’t listed.  The whole thing made me giggle; my teenager jerked her head away as if my forearm had bitten her.  It has some serious sillage, so I wouldn’t be spraying this all over on your lunch hour before you head back to the office, either.  It’s sort of Fracas-ish in feel… I mean, I’m not here to judge, but I wouldn’t wear this to most work places.  It’s very, very sexy.  Also, have I mentioned the sillage?  How about the extremely ripe jasmine?  It was like running errands in a silk peignoir and ostrich mules.  It is deeply fabulous, if very much not me, although I kind of want it to be me.  I really struggle with tuberose, but this I found lovely, and I admire the courage of whoever had the nerve to make such a big, niche-y scent.  If you’d told me this was from, I don’t know, The Different Company, I’d have believed you.

These are EdP, 50ml for $125 at La Prairie counters.  I don’t know whether they’re exclusive to Saks or not.