Frederic Malle Heaven Can Wait

I was planning this week to write about the bottle for Hermes Twilly. I mentioned recently that I sprayed this on a blotter and it was fruity-floral and basically forgettable. It wasn’t the juice I’d set out looking for – I’d seen pics of the bottle and thought the presentation was outstanding. It’s not often you get really nicely done bottles in perfumery that show whimsy and imagination. The bottle for Twilly is nice solid squarish heavy-ish glass. That’s fine. The kicker is the bowler hat topper. Perfect. Amusing, without being cute or twee; an unusual graphic feature. Though the makings of the hat feel quite cheap, it still looks good. It’s the kind of presentation that makes you look twice, smile and maybe laugh a little bit. Someone in whichever department that does this sort of thing was trying and they got it right.

There you go. I’ve written about it.

We had our second storm of the season pass through last week (Scotland is still feeling it): Babet – pronounced like the French Babette. Sigh. Why not just call it Babette and make things easier?

Anyway. Big big winds, a load of rain over several days. The lawn is a sponge. And this is just the beginning of rainy season.

At some point on one of the really wet inside days I went looking for a sample of something specific and found it at Les Senteurs in London. I figured I could throw in another sample (even though I had planned not to sample anything until I made it up to London next month, but this sort of weather mucks with best laid plans) into the order and the new Malle popped up on the site. So, no contest. That would be it.

I wasn’t expecting the parcel for another few days, but it dropped through the door on Saturday and I thought I would have a go with the Malle first.

And that’s sort of where we start and end.

I sprayed my left wrist – quite excited I was. Shook my arm a bit. Then sniffed.

Uh, what? Before I get into my reaction here are the notes for Heaven Can Wait. Clove, pimento, ambrette, carrot seed, iris, peach, prune, vetiver. It’s supposed to be your own private heaven, whatever that means.

Ok, let’s go.

I managed around 20 minutes of this before I sighed, got up, and washed it off and then washed my wrist with rubbing alcohol. It’s now more than an hour later and what little I can still smell makes me slightly ill. So, I’m not smelling my wrist any more and when I’m done writing I’m going to try the rubbing alcohol again.

A couple of nights ago on my evening walk, after a day of heavy rain, the air smelled of incredibly cold laundry detergent. It was unpleasant and weird and that unsettling ozonic thing you get in a laundrette that’s seen better days rather than from doing laundry at home.

Heaven Can Wait doesn’t smell like this but it does smell incredibly cold on my skin. I’ve said in the past that my low body temperature sometimes modifies perfumes in unpleasant ways and I’m willing to bet that’s part of what makes HCW not work on me.

Truly, it does not smell good on me. At.All. A strangely cold anise aspect which was probably clove, iris and carrot seed plus vetiver. I really really don’t think that was what was meant to come through from the notes combo.

So, I’m afraid this didn’t get much time and thus I have no idea how it unfolds.

All I can say is I hope it is much better on other people because I have a lot of time for Malle fragrances – even those I don’t love – and the nose for this is Jean-Claude Ellena. Anyone have (I hope) a completely different experience?

Pic: Pexels