Mon Parfum Cheri, par Camille

Mon Parfum Cheri, Par Camille! A wonderful tribute to Annick by Camille, just like Annick created years before Eau de Camille for her daughter. One, playful and young, for a little girl. The other, dark and nostalgic, a late tribute to one of the pioneers of the French niche scene. Mon Parfum Cheri is a tribute to patchouli with the aid of violet (one of very few fragrances where I actually love the note), Iris, plum and heliotropin. Underneath, the famous Prunol base which harkens back to wonders like Diorama and Femme de Rochas. All three could stand proudly together, scenting the black and white Hollywood movie stars of the early 30’s. Glamour like you don’t see anymore, in dark purple hues and heavy velvet drapes. MPC opens, shifts and ends with patchouli; raw, rich, earthy in full glory, avoiding hippy associations but instead showcasing notes and accords that accompany the note. Violet, a note I don’t particularly enjoy, lends its ozonic quality to provide bursts of freshness along the ride. There aren’t citrus notes like in so many fragrances; instead, violet provides the glass of water to this rich chocolate cake. Plum, a succulent and erotic fruit, provides juiciness and warmth, accompanied by peach and coconut lactones that together make the fragrance become creamier as the day progresses. Instead of sweet notes, these here provide the softness and slight sweetness that comes and goes, making MPC more approachable and less stoic. There are hints of cardamom, a cool spice, that provides hints of warm spiciness. Could there also be some cumin? The fragrance is slightly animalic; the smell of warm skin, lost kisses, embraces. Cumin is definitely there. Heliotropin, with a slight almond nuance provides the forbidden, the mystique. A fragrance that is dangerous is always more intriguing. Femme Fatale, Homme Fatal. Passionate and sensual. Iris, profound and solemn, rich and fatty in its orris butter facet, is threaded throughout the evolution. At times powdery, at times dark and rooty but always beautiful, Iris evokes the softness of a lovers kiss. Velvet gloves that are slowly removed to caress a peachy cheek. Softness and strength. MPC is a fragrance of emotions. More chypre in feel although not technically one, it is both heavily charged with associations of past creations due to its complexity and heft, but also because of the tribute behind it. Simple notes that are easily identifiable, deft in their combination and masterful blending. Evolving and evoking of loving memories, rich nuances and strong presence; it lasts easily a whole day with ever present sillage. And this is the edt! For me, one of the best Annick Goutal creations and one I was smart enough to buy 2 bottles of as soon as it was launched, fearing it couldn’t last too long on the market. Unfortunately, I was right. My ruby red bottles with black lace bow will have to last me for ever. Thankfully the 2/3 sprays one needs to stay fragrant for many hours will help achieve this. Lovers of vintage perfumes; absolute must try!

At first spray, this composition seemed disjointed- I could smell quite separately plum and the upper, medicinal notes of patchouli oil, but after 20 minutes, everything came together beautifully. Violet and heliotrope moved forward to fill in the gap, forming a purpled bridge between the plum-tweaked cassis and deep earth of patchouli; there are resinous woods (cedar), and bitter myrrh; a pale powdering of iris adds a star-like shimmer. The effect calls to mind candied violets atop a dark-chocolate cake- the color of the bottle's glass is quite fitting! Supremely elegant, yet at the same mystical, solemn, and dry, this is a unique fragrance that a spirited personality might dismiss as lacking in jubilance, but an introspective one, I think, would find it a worthy tool to emanate a restrained- but passionate- heart. ADDENDUM 2NOV19: Awhile back (in autumn of 2016) I managed to track down bottles of both the EDP and EDT in the original, wine-colored bottles. Prices since then have continued to rise to extravagant levels, especially since its discontinuation - such a shame! I know of no other fragrance quite like this... with its vintage, fruity-chypre feel, and yet very modern, boho-like structure.and sensibility. Absolutely unique and quite daring. While taking some time to compare the EDT to the EDP, I noticed that there is a subtle difference in balance between the two... The EDT is "drier", with stronger violet and heliotrope, and less plum-sweetness; the base of the EDT is also a bit "thinner" with reduced musk, myrrh, and whatever that low, woody-mossy note is that stands in for oakmoss - although the cedar seems stronger... By contrast, the plum in the EDP is richer, and the base is notably more full-bodied... and, overall, I prefer the balance of the EDP... and apparently so do others, as it is becoming more scarce than the EDT.

Of all discontinued perfume, this one is the saddest of all for me. I think the beauty of this scent really reveals itself in the mid notes, & especially the dry down. I agree with other reviews, earthy patchouli, with the plum & purple florals that are more evident in the dry down. It does have a genuine proper vintage lipstick/make up vibe - it’s hard waxy floral, NOT sweet fruity or vanilla tinged greasy 80/90s glossy type make up. When it was released I first went to ask to sample MPCPC & the SA said “oh, it’s vile ...everyone hates it” Well I think it’s because it’s not immediately a crowd pleaser. No sugar sweet pretty top notes to “hook in” the short attention span that many customers demand before they dismiss & move on. It’s like an older classic style of perfume - requires patience & the desire to be in it for the long haul. I’ve caught people sticking their noses into my cardigans telling me how lovely they smell...well, that’s the dry down for you ...it is beautiful, unique, & unlike anything else I have. I have both EDT & EDP versions of this. They are slightly different. I find the EDP to be a little fruitier. They both perform well & smell high quality, but I prefer the EDT where I think the florals are more prominent. Patchouli in both is fantastic imo. Amazing (to me) that a perfume this good CAN still be made in the 2000s, esp when compared to some of the poor quality junk that gets pushed out nowadays. Just a terrible pity it wasn’t more appreciated. Still, the public gets what the public wants, & the public wants what the public gets...the thought of one day running out of MPCPC makes me want to weep.

Another olfactory masterpiece has been created by Annick Goutal This is my fourth AG acquisition and its the most beautiful and unusual IMO. This fragrance is a dark, earthy and dirty patchouli which smells like the taste of snails. The composition contains a sour and fermented plum, some iris, violet and heliotrope, which blends into a very grown up, very fresh and very beautiful scent. This is like nothing that I have ever smelled before. It has been described as 'hypnotising' and actually, I cannot think of a better word to use to describe this gorgeous perfume. The initial blast is boozy, dirty, earthy, sour and fermented, but this quickly morphs into an addictive fresh and beautiful orchestra of notes which keep wafting up my nose and causes me to inhale deeply and savour its olfactory beauty. I am in love!! This is just heavenly in every way possible. To me, AG frags are eccentric and quirky in a genius way! Only AG can put together these ingredients and get such art out of them The silage for the EDT is amazing and longevity is fantastic especially considering the fact that I only sprayed a small amount of this on my arm a few hours ago but can smell its fabulous aroma constantly. This is a perfume wardrobe must have for die hard patchouli lovers, wonderful!! Just wonderful!

The notes do not tell the whole story. Personally, I adore this fragrance but I can see why it is polarizing. This is not your typical powdery, lipsticky affair grounded by patchouli. So, if you were expecting that you are in for a rude awakening. First of all, this is totally unisex. Often powdery fragrances smell traditionally feminine, but not so here. This is first and foremost earthy, as in fertile topsoil. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was birch tar in this because the opening is very leathery. The opening reminds me very strongly of Byredo 1996, a fragrance I almost scrubbed off the first time I tried but have nevertheless come to love. I can see many having the same reaction here. As it dries down, the earthiness subsides revealing a luscious, spicy plum redolent of Femme Rochas. All the while, there is a lipstick/makeup bag accord holding it all together. So, this scent is a bit strange. My 6 year old son said it smelled like “an antique shop with broken clocks and weird furniture.” I can see that. It smells to me like the inside of vintage leather handbag caked with waxy residue, with a dash of earthy funk thrown in. It’s the perfect marriage of the old-school chypre and a lipstick fragrance. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, but it’s a masterpiece.

One of my favorite things to photograph the most is this old abandoned school building. It was built in 1902- It is a barbarous style one room building with arches resembling the gothic arches one sees on the cathedrals in Paris. The doors and windows are missing, the floorboards are damp and rotten infested with woodworm. The floors are weak and could easy give away under your feet. The once reddish bricks are now aged, they are deeper, blacker in color. Dust are caked-on the desks, chairs and the black board. The smell of the air is sickeningly damp. Unearthy moss and shrubs are growing on the building. I like to imagine a ghost of earth bound beauty living there waiting for her lover to return to her. Mon Parfum Chéri par Camille is an elegant but grim and gloomy fragrance. The composition while sparse in the number of notes is truly unique. The first scent is the beautiful powdery iris, along with the plum- the plum is sharp here. The misty heliotrope has a hint of vanilla to it and supported by the rich antique patchouli, in the end the drydown is powdery. The patchouli to me is like the lichen that grows on trees, very dry, earthy and bitter. I simply adore Mon Parfum Chéri it has an old-worldly quality to it.

Decadently diva like and vintage in style, a perfume fit for a Vampire Queen. Mon Parfum Cheri, par Camille is not a fragrance for the feint of heart. It is mysterious, sophisticated and smouldering, a real femme fatale, she wears cat eyeliner and her lips are vermillion. (I despair that they discontinued this devilishly intoxicating witches brew). Lovers of the barely perceptible, clean or fresh zingy scents need not apply, this emphatically is not for you. This perfume is a beast, but what a beautiful creature. If it were an animal it would be a powerful, heavy boned, sensuous and angular black panther stalking through a humid and mulch strewn rainforest, it’s deadly jaws dispatching anything in its wake. Be warned, this scent is exceptionally polarising, you must love powdery iris notes, smoky plum and strong patchouli as these are the most prominent. Luckily for me I adore all of these. Take a peek at my perfume wardrobe for an idea. It is a very potent scent, both the silage and longevity are incredible and that’s the EDT concentration. I do not recommend it for daytime/office wear. It is a perfume of the night that blooms in the dark. I wear this perfume only when I want to seduce.

Mon Parfum Cheri,par Camille makes my boyfriend physically ill because he cannot stomach its non-sweet richness. This is only for serious iris lovers. I loved it. I tested the original edt iris-heavy formulation. Many have mentioned that this perfume reminds them of old fashioned glamour. I don't get that from it at all. This perfume is so creamy and sour/bitter at the same time it is truly unique. It also contains a large amount of deep dry earthiness, like parched black mud in powdered form combined with candle wax, and dark purple plum skins. The tang of plum balances the fatty orris and the dusty patchouli so expertly, I'm spellbound. The acid and alkaline components do not blend here. Instead, they remain separate and juxtaposed in an equilibrium that commands respect. I can't believe someone actually composed it! It's an olfactory assemblage. Truly perfume as art. Waxy, bitter, powdery, and addictive. This is not a welcoming smell. It comes off as something you know you shouldn't be smelling for your own health/safety, but you succumb to it anyway. Like drugs or fumes or magic. Seriously engaging.

Mon Parfum Cheri, par Camille Annick Goutal was sort of Black Horse fragrance to me, as it seemed weird and controversial...weird enough – to want to try it badly! I love weird people and weird fragrances. Opens similar as John Galliano – by dusty violets, almost like theatrical, heavy, velvety curtains before performance in provincial theatre. Those curtains move slowly, revealing, as other reviewer have mentioned ,– old woody floor, squeaky and which knew better times – iris is coming to perform. Its like this wonderful diva from the middle of the nowhere, make-up from 20-30s, with some classic forgotten play, which guests from capital are watching with eyes wide open Intriguing perfume with strangely vintage feel and lots of philosophy, you tired of drama, yet can't take your eyes off, when you just start rolling your eyes : “Ooooh , those damn violets!” - the patch with plum gives you such a drydown, that you are forgetting your own name, its daring, powerful, juicy-bitter-sweet, Gothic and melancholic at once. As a matter of fact – a masterpiece.

A perfume from a long-gone era, though very new... It smells like perfumes of the 40s and 50s. Perhaps ones that were used, and what was left on the bottom has this oily, off feel. Heavy, warm, filled with patchouli and plum, and overripe violet and iris. There's also a leathery note lingering somewhere. I truly get the lipstick vibe that some mentioned, it's actually the smell of a lipstick that's been in your etui for more than 20 years, and it's the first time i experience it in perfume. My mum said it reminds her of Vivre by Molyneux. I say it takes a lot of skill to create something new that smells like something that travelled through time. I enjoyed wearing it today, but am not sure if others around me didn't wonder whether i should keep my old treasures in the closet...

After all the soft scents from Annick Goutal, this is a most welcome creation. I must confess I was getting tired of all those soft, young girl, flowery creations - very beautiful indeed, very well crafted as only this great house could do - but so girly, at least to me, that I was almost disappointed. This is a lovely creation: elegant chypre with modern fruit and trasgressive patchouli. It has all the right ingredients a great creation must possess. It's not one direction only: it has the soft of the chypre tamed by the strength of patchouli and made modern by the fruity note. I love it, very very classy but not boring. Very refined but not "old lady". Very modern but not too trendy to be soon forgotten. PERFECT!

Imagine a dark boudoir, a woman in a burgundy gown reclining on a plush leather chaise lounge. The room is filled with the incense-like scent of patchouli and iris hovering in the air, gently wafting through the windows into the incrutable night sky outside. The regal fragrance of Mon Parfum Cheri puts you in the mood of someone noble, strong, mysterious, and very very classy. I have never been a patchouli fan, but this fragrance changes that. From the first sniff I am hooked! I placed a card into my handbag and the scent stayed there for 3 days. Finally after more than 2 months and endless thinking about it, I purchased my first bottle. Intoxicating and mysterious. And only for the classy and old-school!

This scent is a wonderful memory reviver for me, with quite some patchouli in it. So. What's the memory about: we went to the country, he and I. The road was blocked thanks to lots and lots of snow. And it kept snowing and snowing, and snowing, and... It was chilling outside. We spilt some spices on the kitchen floor and were picking them off the boards, trying to keep our jeans as spice-free as possible. The stove, so hot, so close... Hands. Boards, cloves, cinnamon... Every single knee spiced, but we managed to pick some spices off the floor, too. The wind quietened outside. The snow and the chill stayed. And we were so comfortable, so happy and so warm by the almost red-hot stove.

Nice balance between the "good" old tradition and a glimpse to the future. Rich, evocative, complex and velvety on one side while modern, a little sharp, sophisticated and "the more you smell the more you love it" on the other side. I know and appreciate A.G.'s fragrances and I confess that if I had only smelled it with my eyes shut I wouldn't have recognized that M.P.C. belongs to her atelier! It's out of the choir whereas many new fragrances risk to resemble one the others: finally only a little touch of plump. Great!: I was getting tired of all those "eadible, yummy-yummy, gourmand" scents...... So, I've already put it in my list!

Stevolution described it so well. It smells 'fatty & crayon-like' at first and surprisingly enough for an AG frag it last intesively for quite some time, so it's definitely not a daytime, office fragrance. But there's something captivating, dark and beautiful below the odd initial blast that did'nt let me rub it off. This is a fragrance that I simply cannot dismiss based on the incompatibility of chemistry. It's so puzzling & promising that I set my mind to learn to love it which is something I 've never considered before. For this effect alone I regard Mon Parfum Cherie, par Camille very unique and a must try for parfumelovers.

I used to have a decant of this but I swapped it because I couldn't stand it. It was way too dry and patchouli is always challenging for me. I did apreciate it because it was definitely one of a kind. Then recently I started thinking about this fragrance and actually started to crave this perfume. It's very dry, in an ancient kind of way and te plum and iris work very well together. The patchouli is nicely blended with the other notes. I don't really think this is a dark fragrance, but it has a melancholic and gothic (as in the era, not the subculture) feel. Needless to say, I have a bottle now.....

Yes la louve, I agree:) Very impressive, totally immune for market trends! Extraordinary! The first whiff is sharp alcoholic, somebody mentioned it as plum-schnapps:) and then comes a note which I don't like so much, it smells a bit like laundry which has spent a night too long in the washing machine:) but that note fades quickly. Then comes a glorious dark patchouli blast followed by the powdery fluffy irs and violet. A really dark flower powder scent for which I have nothing to compare it with!! Very unique and therefore I love Annick Goutal. A masterpiece !(in my nose)

I am so much in love with this beauty..the EDP is too strong for me, but the EDT is just perfect. The dirty patchouli with a touch of plum and some sweetness makes this stuff so incredible sexy..I swear I can smell patchouli with chocolate after a few hours.Sooo delicious and strange..absolutely one of my favorites! You will love it only if you are into old-school perfumes. I have to mention that the bottle tells everything about this beauty.

A UFO in the world of Goutal perfumes - as was the much missed "Eau du Fier", also discontinued. Inspired by a solid perfume that belonged to the writer Colette, and given to Annick Goutal a long time ago, "Mon Parfum Chéri" (a somewhat inappropriate name) is a dark, syrupy iris and patchouli scent, to put it simply - but it is so much more than that. In my humble opinion, the best sillage of all time. Masterpiece, if ever there was one.

Whoa. So unlike Goutal. Love the house and love this one. It's a big fragrance and what I smell dominant are violets and patchouli. So unique. As that settles in, the plum becomes evident. And the iris just lends a powderiness. In order, I would say patchouli, violet, plum, iris. The heliotrope is not evident to my nose. But, there is a floral quality that balances the herbal patchouli. Very unisex IMO.