Week End

I really wanted to love this fragrance, but I just don’t think works with my skin chemistry or whatnot. It smells lovely in the bottle, but it’s all white floral on me. I was hoping the mint and basil would come through, and it does more on my clothes, but it turns into an old time body powder on my skin. I though the jasmine would be ok on me , but it overpowers everything else much like gardenia does. No more white florals for me.

Like a mid-end bathroom air freshener. I was hoping for the green contrast and leather edge everyone else describes, I got an offensive accord of what might be tolerably nice jasmine submerged in cheap apple-flavoured candies.

Parfums de Nicolai WEEKEND A DEAUVILLE 2011 initially seems rather MITSOUKO-like (unreformulated, that is...) until a leather note arrives on the scene, after which the composition becomes quite a bit darker and more masculine than I had been expecting—but only for a couple of minutes. In the end, this perfume might best be described as a lightly leatherized chypre. The leather note reminds me of the smell of a finely pebbled leather weekend bag, so the name takes on a sort of trip-to-the-luxurious-countryhouse (the kind with a full staff on hand...) meaning. There is a slightly bitter-green edge to this chypre, evoking fields of long blades of grass, the tips of which have been just slightly toasted under the sun and are waving gently in the ever-so-lightly humid wind which has grazing over a nearby lake. As I wore Parfums de Nicolai WEEKEND A DEAUVILLE it occurred to me that this really seems like classic Guerlain, back in the good old days before that house's creative management was taken over by industrial chemists and accountants. My understanding is that the Nicolai clan constitutes a limb on the noble tree of the Guerlain family parfumeurs, and I'd say that the proof is in the perfume! This creation smells splendid and definitely evokes memories of the halcyon times when only bona fide perfumes were called perfumes, rather than shower-in-a-bottle, office-ready fruity-floral frags, skin scents, and sugar sprays, along with just about anything else that can be purveyed via bottle as well. Those were the days, too, when perfumers were more apt to be artists than businessmen, what is no longer the case, it seems to me. At this point in the history of perfume, hacks are the rule, not the exception, so discovering something as well-composed and compelling as WEEKEND A DEAUVILLE is a real treat. 3.13.11

This is a review of the 2011 reformulation, Week-end. Once upon a time I worked with a man with an enormous crush on our co-worker down the hall. Every day after lunch said man would go the restroom to brush his teeth, reapply deodorant and spritz a little fragrance. On his way back from the restroom, toiletries in hand, he would stop and nervously talk to his object of desire, reeking of tooth paste and cologne. This is the main effect that I get from Week-end—nervous sweaty guy wrapped in a cloud of tooth paste and deodorant. On the other hand, Week-end isn’t as bad as it sounds and the minty breath and salty musk settle down after 10 minutes. A needy fragrance that forgets to laugh at itself 2.5/5

Hmm... this is one weekend that I could have done without. I first tried the original, which came via Paris, and fell in love. I recall it as being a full bodied diva, with a prominent green streak and cracking contrasts. This new edition is a weekend spent in the 'burbs, and what a shame. Cut lawn grass replaces razor sharp green notes, Glade plug ins replace the oily lushness, and a Japanese economy car parked next to a Ford rounds out the contrast. Hmmph.