Plaisir

Plaisir, Raphael's Plaisir, is a fabulous floral scent in THE iconic bottle from the 1950's. Plaisir and the other major Raphael scent, Replique, were displayed on pedestals, sometimes literally, in every major department store in the US, and probably in England and Europe as well. It was what women wanted for Christmas and little girls wanted when they grew up. Well little girls destined to become perfumistas anyway. I'm sure other little girls wanted other things. I was told succinctly by my mother that those perfumes were too expensive for little girls, or anyone really except the very rich, and Dana, Max Factor, Lanvin and Chanel No. 5 and other stuff you could buy in middle level department stores and drug stores were good enough for me and her. So I just kept gazing until the dawn of the Internet. I bought my first Replique parfum around 2000 and Plaisir not until probably around 2004. Worth the wait. And they still have some on eBay. I also have a bottle of the edt, or it may even be an eau de cologne, and it just seems a lot weaker than the parfum, more so than usual. Or the edt and or cologne hasn't held up as well. Plaisir parfum is fabulous just as the juice, but part of its appeal really is holding the bottle and dabbing it on. It's really floral, and like another reviewer reported, Fragrantica's list of notes for Plaisir are totally inadequate. The 1950's generally and Raphael scents specifically were full of notes; look at Replique's listing and get an idea. The other reviewer reported top notes of lilac, jasmine, rose, tuberose, and ylang-ylang, and I think all of them seem likely. I'd say lily of the valley too. I don't know how old my bottle is, but it's one that has a plastic coating on the lower part of the stopper. So maybe from the early 1980's? I don't know when Raphael stopped making this. My bottle had never been opened when I bought it around 2004, but I don't smell a lot of green notes either. Plaisir is a polite floral scent edging into floral bomb territory, with a fairly light base of sandalwood. Lasts at least 5 hours on my skin, then fades. I don't think it faded as much when I first opened the bottle. I haven't worn it for at least 2 years, but I saw it yesterday and I thought "what am I waiting for?" We're getting a couple of spring days now and the sun is glowing, and so is Plaisir.

A bit of a happy accident meeting this lady. Mine was unlabeled and sold as the grand dame Réplique instead. However, I'm not too disappointed by the mix-up. Roses and tuberose were the most prominent on me, followed by the shadow of a tropical flower - either jasmine or ylang-ylang, it is difficult to tell. The listed top notes [green notes, Italian bergamot, Sicilian lemon, cardamom, neroli, coriander, clary sage, aldehydes (from Cleopatra's Boudoir)] sound roughly similar to Réplique, but they don't appear much on my skin, if age is a factor here. Strictly flowers. Then a woody-amber finish, with the rose still hanging on its coattail. No spices or smoke. Any chypre character is enveloped by the florals, so instead of providing a crisp backdrop, it feels more like a deep subtropical garden drooping with humidity. It's almost medicinal if overdone. The bottle itself actually contained a 3-fluted stopper exactly like a 1940s-50s Réplique. Most online pics seem to show the 2-fluted one. I'd suppose my bottle heralds from the late '50s. Yet its chronological placement surprises me; I think it would've had a grand old time being a '40s scent and early '50s scent too. Réplique is a combination so far ahead of its release year, whereas Plaisir can show some datedness with this particular collection of floral notes. I personally prefer the former, but the latter is still quite sophisticated and shows just as much character as its counterpart. Plaisir's romantic, pink lipstick glamour to Réplique's daytime femme fatale. I'm giving the series Mad Men a watch right now, and the character that couldn't help popping in my head with this scent was Betty Draper. Proud to say Plaisir is now one of the more interesting, glamorous, almost emotional florals in my collection. Why couldn't Raphael be one of the big houses that stood the test of time? It's such a shame. The fragrances hold many untold stories...

I just used up what was left of the tiniest little sample bottle I've ever seen. At this point the "green" has pretty much gone but the florals were still good and there's an amber base that's quite pleasant. Not worth selling your first-born for but if you stumble across a bottle at a garage sale it's worth picking up.

According to parfumo.net, the notes for Plaisir de Raphael are: - aldehydes, bergamot, cardamom, coriander, clary sage, neroli, lemon - lilac, jasmine, rose, tuberose, ylang-ylang - benzoin, sandalwood, tonka bean, cedarwood, civet