She Went to Paris!

Carolyn just got back from a week in Paris. It was a huge bucket-list item – she hadn’t been, and she’s got some health issues that could have forced a last-minute cancellation. But they didn’t, and she dodged the crappy weather and the airports being shut down by the blizzards here. She went with a friend who speaks French, had a phenomenal time, and I was (and still am) thrilled for her.

Here’s a brief foray into her fellow-perfumista fragrance adventures via two scents of interest:

… some souvenirs

She went to Pierre Guillame and (finally!) treated herself to a bottle of Arabian Horse, right from the source, so to speak, after endless decants. What a magnificent scent. She sniffed every fragrance they had in the shop, and she brought back a sample of Le Chant des Sirènes. It’s listed on the PG website as “aquatic mineral,” from 2025, notes are rosewood (palisander) leaves, carambola (i.e., star fruit), opopanax, almond wood, sea fennel, sandalwood.

If you know what I like, you know that the above (starting with “aquatic mineral”) is very much not in my wheelhouse. This seems like something Portia (and maybe Tom?) would love. Which is why I’m so surprised by how delightfully odd and compelling it is on repeat. It starts off with the light fruity hint of star fruit and winds up as driftwood on the beach. Song of the sirens, indeed. I don’t think I’ve smelled anything quite like it, and I don’t need a bottle, but I’m trying not to use up Carolyn’s sample while I decide whether I need, say, a decant.

she said the guimauve was delicious

Of course no trip to Paris would be complete without a visit to Serge Lutens, where she smelled a fragrance so new they didn’t even have the proper signage for it yet in the store, they’d just unpacked the bottles the day before. I can’t find a single mention of it, including on their website (not that it would have been hugely helpful, from Uncle Serge.) It’s La Nuit Tombée – “nightfall” is the translation I think (or maybe “the night falls”?) – and part of the Collection Noir. Notes so far as Carolyn can remember are patchouli, iris, musk and sandalwood.

As you can see, she liked it enough she bought a bottle, so I don’t feel (too) guilty spraying it.

If those are in fact the notes, that’s pretty much what I’m getting. The iris is there at the start, along with a dab of patchouli, then the sandalwood, and what it lacks in development it makes up for in longevity. I racked my brain, trying to retrieve a scent memory, which I eventually did: it smells very much like my memory of the Jim Thompson house in Bangkok, a combination of old teakwood and dust and damp, loamy earth and vegetation. If this smell had a color it would be a deep purple, verging on brownish-black. What an interesting journey it was. It doesn’t smell like a “traditional” fragrance so much as the evocation of a particular place and time.

Does this pique any interest? There are a bunch from the line I haven’t even tried. Do you have a fragrance that conjures up a particular place/time for you?

cover photo: they took a three-hour tour of Paris in a Citroen, which was very informative and also a hoot.