Celebrity Perfume review: Pharrell Williams Girl and Art Nouveau

 

Radioactive violet/orris topnotes with an incense base that reminds me (unsurprisingly) of Comme des Garçons’ incense line—a resinous smoky frankincense with a ground of patchouli. There’s a greenness too that rides the middle of the scent, a grassy powdery vetiver. This is harmonious, sophisticated, and olfactorily challenging perfumery; indeed, it’s what one would expect from this house. As it dries down, a peppery woody accord emerges from the violet smoke.

This is one of those fragrances that evokes a color, or even a color palette, in my mind. I see green, violet, of course, and a shimmering, opalescent gray! It strikes me as very French, very fin de siècle. It is the color of Nancy, the home of French Art Nouveau. The glasswork of that town was famous for its emulation of nature, and I’d say the kind of nature that decays, and subsides into the earth. Consider this vase, for example.

And this bed:

The bed is a gorgeous memento mori: the moth is born and flies into the light, its wings a comforting mantle of brief life and death, and the two shimmering ends of its lifecycle bookend the mauve bed. 

And consider this amazing summerhouse. This thing blew my mind when we came upon it on a walk around the grounds of the Museum

   Pavillon-aquarium du musée de l'École de Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle, France). Photo by Gzen92

The fish would swim against the glass and the people would eat their luncheon or drink their brandy or absinthe or champagne inside and watch the aqueous colors shift, darken and brighten, the golden-scaled fish glide through the lilypadded murk.

Whatever this scent is, it is not Girl-y. It is sophisticated, mysterious, decidedly unisex, a bit outré, and not a little old-fashioned. But it does make me very HAPPY