Kelly Calèche

The opening is woody and green. Yes woody. The opener is supposed to be grapefruit but it's so deep and dark that it smells a like the damp sandalwood of a Santal 33 with some green leaves around it. The opening is reminiscent of other frags like Hermès' own Un Jardin Sur Le Nil and Memo's Kedu. It's almost a dead ringer for the former and similar with differences to the latter. While Kedu's grapefruit is accented with Bergamot and pink pepper, here it's deepened by narcissus. It's deep, dark, concentrated, leafy and serious but also beautifully blended. So beautifully blended that it smells like proper high end perfumery. There's also something minty going on in the background that reminds me a little bit of Balenciaga's Florabotanica. This sort of masterful blending is why Jean-Claude Ellena remains my favorite perfumer. I have to mention that like a few frags in Hermès' Jardin line, this will warm up your skin a little. It's nothing to be alarmed by. After about 10 mins the sandalwood scent disappears and the deep minty grapefruit takes over. At no point do I detect cheap ingredients. Everything smells high quality all the way. After 45 mins the minty grapefruit open is starting to fade. > 2 hrs in, the open is still holding on. It's almost gone and turning into a soapy (a very high end soap) scent but it's still refusing to give up the ghost. > 10 mins later it has completely gone soapy. Drydown is remarkably similar to Florabotanica's 7 hr mark. > 3 hrs in I started detecting pencil shaving notes which is usually the stand in for "leather" in leather frags geared towards women such as in Bottega Veneta's EDP, Armani's Cuir Amethyste and Goutal's Tenue de Soirée. In fact I think those are pretty much it's competition. > 4 hrs in, apparently this transitioned to florals somewhere along the line. I just didn't notice. It's so well-blended that the transitions are barely perceptible except for maybe a change in density. The floral heart accord also does a great job mimicking the grapefruit and narcissus top notes which help make the transitions seamless. The downside is it makes the Kelly Caleche seem linear. Based on how this is progressing, my guestimate for longevity is 5-6hrs but that remains TBD. I think this could be a unisex scent but leans fem. > 7 hrs in and it's still kicking. It's long been a skin scent and you need your nose up close but the fact it hasn't disappeared into the ether is a marvelous surprise. It's not very often you come across an EDT that outlasts many modern EDPs. Certainly skin chem plays a factor but I'm now thinking this is an 8hr-10hr frag. Recommend for anyone 25 and up or anyone in their early 20s that want to be taken seriously. UPDATE: Yup. Just about gone at 10 hr mark.

'Those horses are so spoilt I swear they sleep on straw strewn with rose petals.'. An equine huff of a laugh, he rears his head back, raises a riding crop from his side to tap a glowing forehead. He breaks a smile and with a click of the heals of long riding boots he turns, showing off his golden mane as he does and is gone. But it is he who smells of roses and leather and the early summer. It is he who smells exactly as you do. He came, a messenger from 'the Gods': the judges. Those venerated men and women in whose hands your equestrian fate now resides. How much simpler for the show-jumping powerhouses, projecting into the air with flair and barely controlled strength. Their task is merely to dazzle, to defy sense with their penetration and precision. They can be judged objectively: all they need to do is make no errors and achieve the required time. And the masculine three day eventers? As long as they stay the course and come up reeking of earth and animal and grass, well, who cares? Yours is the more difficult task. To harness horse sans Equipage into a wholly pleasing whole. Combine film star glamour and princessly Grace into three minutes of animal ballet. The final preparation for your dressage moments in the ring. You and the beast exchange whispers, with a flick his tail throws a shower of fine white powder in the air, you adjust the saddle: the finest French leather, cured and scented so not even an allusion to the abattoir might upset the ride. You mount and breathe deeply, the breeze brings the hint of wild yellow irises from the meadows lying fallow beyond the stately home. The same wind brings your name made tinny by tannoys. You bridle for a moment. Your desire to perform, the urge bring pleasure makes an anxious knot of your insides. Walk on. The arena, the illustrated sports photographers' flashing bulbs, the hubbub, the crowd, the swell and the excitement. First silence. The smell of his roses, your rose, the bridle and the horse. Then music. The dance begins. Kelly Caleche is a perfume that exists above all to bring a message of pleasure. Bright, gorgeously groomed citrus, yields instantly to early summer roses and the unmistakable hue of the most luxurious leather. This leather, is the distinct Hermes note, high and clear and carrying a fragility that is to my nose slightly haunting, or perhaps more precisely yearning. It is this quality and the sparseness - as one critic put it - of this relatively simple composition that raises this perfume above the thorny crowd. One for time when life is about giving and receiving or desiring pleasure.

I sniffed this on a test strip a few months ago and thought - hmm too much grapefruit. I wasn't keen on Sur le Nil by Hermes and thought it might go too much in that direction. But! Seeing that it was available on Ebay for a song, and I fancied something fresh and elegant for spring/summer, I bought 50mls of the EDT and I'm enjoying it very much. I sprayed it on when it arrived and immediately said 'nice', then 'Oh!Very nice!' Though I'm a tad sensitive to grapefruit (and the opening is quite bracing) this is a very transparent grapefruit in the classic Jean Claude Elena style, but it's matched with a soft suede note, I immediately envisage blonde suede - not so much worn leather and definitely not the birch tar minimalism of Cuir de Russie's leather. Also, this suede note, even though it's mildly animalic, is by no means a synthetic sort of smell, as some suedey perfumes are. It has a sort of biscuit-like scent, mildly buttery.(actually that's probably the narcisuss which often smells a little buttery to me) The perfume as a whole reminds me of suede-toned eau de cologne, which in turn reminds me of travel and adventures. So if you can picture yourself on a morning flight to somewhere exotic, wearing your coolest trench coat, and loveliest leather bag, sipping a small glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit, you've got it. But there's also a note that seems quite tea-like to me - dusty/tanin-like. I also get echoes of Au The Vert, but Kelly Caleche has more 'body' I'd say I'm not really noticing rose/tuberose/lily of the valley, but they're obviously all blending together to give an elegant impression. Definitely unisex, as elegant cologne style perfumes tend to be. This is one I'm going to enjoy this summer. I can absolutely see why other people here describe it as 'signature worthy' -you can't go wrong with a perfume like this and it'll be a welcome alternative to my other easy-to-wear daytime favourite, Infusion d'Iris. A champagne-like perfume, uplifting elegance! Sillage and longevity seem moderate to me

I used to love this baby. It was the perfect fragrance to stand out in college when the girls at the frat parties all smelled like Lolita Lempicka, Britney Spears Fantasy or Angel. Where those were all powdery fruit, caramel and white chocolate, this was a leather corset on a bed of roses - a lady in the street and a freak in the bed. This was a scent that could hang with the boys, possibly drink them under the table - and maybe take one of them home to have her way with him. Very femme but down-to-business. Definitely a scent for a bold, sophisticated woman with a corner office - and a whip in the closet. This is definitely a modern woman. Alas, over the years those green top notes (likely the lily-of-the-valley) really started creating a pungent body odor smell on my skin, only made worse by the new-leather smell it opens with, so I gave this one up for a number of years. I tried a tester on my left arm recently for old-time's sake, but alas, the top notes were still pungent. I tested another on the other arm, found it more pleasant and bought that one instead (Marc Jacobs Daisy), but over the course of the afternoon while the inoffensive and girlish Daisy kept on with its breathy soprano, Kelly was settling in, the leather was wearing in like a vintage pair of boots, and I found myself sniffing my left arm more than my right. Kelly Caleche, that old sexy bitch, was drowning out Daisy with that leathery contralto, with curtain-call bouquets at her feet, and it was awesomeness! Both are floral and beautiful in their own way, but Daisy's the innocent girl I will grow out of and pass down to my daughter one day. Kelly Caleche is the chairwoman of the board, and doesn't give a shit what you have to say about it. She's the woman I want to mature into. The takeaway is this - don't give up on Kelly if she comes on too shrill and pungent at first. Try on that leather corset, and let her sink in. You will be rewarded.

It's funny I automatically thought I would fall for the parfum version of this over the toilette and while I like the parfum version I really love the toilette version the best. Kelly Caleche toilette smells exactly like my childhood farm on a very cool early spring morning. It is early the sun has just risen, the air is cold and damp. I can still see my breath as I breath in and out and start to absorb the beauty of a new day on our farm. Kelly smells of tree mosses, green shoots of plant life springing forth from a newly awakened ground. Mother Nature is working her magic and while I still felt the chill of winter deep in my bones it was really spring, and she has just arrived. I turn my head and to my happy surprise the jonquils and narcissus have just bloomed! Their scent is still very green almost like mint. They are young and quite virginal having just woken from a long winters rest. The smell of green new earth, the plants, the cool dampness of air mingling w/ saddle leather was a favorite smell of mine growing up. Kelly Caleche toilette captures the scent of the dawn of a new spring day on a farm in a bottle. The earth, the plants, the flowers, the leather scent of work gloves and saddles for horses. I am transported back to early spring rides on our horse Pal. I love this perfume beyond words. It has given me back the best part of my childhood memories. Full bottle worthy if you love the smell of cool spring country air and hints of supple leathers.