Fille en Aiguilles

I own a number of Serge Lutens creations by C. Sheldrake—a high price tag, to be sure. *Le sigh* But hey— the potions from this wizard are 100% worth every dusty penny. Out of them all, Fille en Aiguilles is my most treasured. Santal Majuscule and Arabie are close contenders, but neither of those incapsulate the feeling of autumn and winter festivities (my favorite time of year) as completely as my gorgeous Fille en Aiguilles does. It was a VERY happy day when I saw that FeA is now available in the bell jar. I prefer the bell jar flacon to the gratte—ciel (sky scraper) not so much because it’s less expensive (but it doesn’t suck that it is!), but because I love the way the witchy plum colored juice looks in the clear glass stoppered jar. The sky scraper flacons may provide a whopping 100 milliliters of fragrance, but I find them not as pleasing to look at and clumsy in my small hands to use. When you order a bell jar fragrance, the house provides a reusable travel sized atomizer along with a small funnel. You can pour the scent (carefully!) into this and spray the fragrance instead of dab. Because spraying it disperses the scent better, I find applying FeA this way helps the scent to “bloom”. And it’s certainly easier to carry in your bag than the bell jar! Don’t carry the bell jar this way, please ... it’s a heartbreaking and costly accident just waiting to happen! Out of my collection of Uncle Serge compositions, I favor wearing the lovely, translucent, incense smoke scent of L’Orpheline and herbal licorice of Douce Amere from late September though the first week of November. From November thru February, I love wearing Fille en Aiguilles. It’s such a warm and festive scent. Spices, pine incense, dried fruit and coniferous resins make this scent great to wear anytime, but especially during autumn and winter. The conifer scent here isn’t the fresh, sugary and sappy kind that one tends to associate with fresh cut Christmas trees. It’s drier and earthier, like the smell of the air on a walk through an alpine forest. The pine and fir smell warm and sunny, with just a smidge of camphor to cool your nose. Imagine sitting at a wooden table for an afternoon forest picnic in late summer or very early autumn. There’s sweet smoke from a nice hardwood fire burning. You’re eating a traditional holiday English pudding, the spiced fruit kind soaked in rum or brandy for weeks and brought to the table flaming. So you’re smelling the campfire and eating spiced fruit pudding while surrounded by dapples of sunlight filtered through pines, fir trees and turning leaves. THAT’S the scent of Fille en Aiguilles, and the longer you wear it, the deeper, sweeter and warmer it becomes. Around the 1 hour mark is when this scent truly glows on my skin. I know there are other great autumn/winter holiday fragrances out there. But if there’s a BETTER smelling one than this, I have not found it. Fille en Aiguilles is simply the GOAT. My only gripe is one that I see being echoed in reviews of FeA everywhere: Dammit! I WISH it lasted longer! This is one of several Serge Lutens fragrances that I really wish the house would commit to making into body lotions, for the simple fact that it just does not last anywhere near the minimum time frame an eau de parfum should. I only get about 3-4 hours of wear with FeA, which means it performs more like an eau de toilette than the eau de parfum (6-7 hours) it claims to be. For the price of it ($320 for the bell jar, $375 for the gratte-ciel) that’s very sad, because this really is a magically beautiful fragrance. Such a lovely yet frustratingly fleeting tease, she is. I haven’t yet found a similar fragrance with better performance that can eclipse Fille en Aiguilles. From mid autumn through most of winter, she is my one, my only top autumn/winter fragrance, and it’s looking like she probably always will be.

Fille en Aiguilles is a perfume for the dendrophile, the tree-hugger. If you don't care for the smell of pine, or anything similar, stop here and move on. When you first spray Fille en Aiguilles, you immediately get a feeling of opening your eyes to find yourself standing in the middle of a sunlit conifer forest. Needles crackle under your feet, tall green and brown giants extend to the great blue above like the hairs of your arm rising from an ecstatic shiver. Hair raising. The sun streams through the cracks of the canopy in determined golden-yellow rays, illuminating the silvery metallic flake facet in the green conifer needles, and sparkling against the little bronzed gems of sap exuding from the bark. Your jaw drops; "how did I get here?... Where am I?... Did I pass in my sleep, is this heaven - a magically alive forest?" The shimmer and the sparkle add this otherworldly feeling to accords that are otherwise incredibly naturalistic. A caveat however, because there is a lot more going on than that. Dried needles on the ground; brittle and stiff and dusty smelling. Pine sap; sticky, aromatic, resinous, and a touch sweet. Damp black earth and mosses; loamy, sweet, and a bit "turned" like compost, and bright beige woods. As the sun begins to fade, the sparkle disappears to the ether, the magical forest cools and you smell the quieter figures that only come out at dusk. Plums, blueberries, black berries, and other blue and purple fruit let off oils from their skins, zesty and gently sweet, while the trees impart to them a quietly audible blessing of frankincense. Darkness comes, and the smell of the conifer wood is all that remains. Stepping back into reality and out of the fairy tale, a reiteration of the naturalistic qualities of Fille en Aiguilles. This doesn't smell of potpourri, cleaning agents, candles, or anything else of the sort: this smells like an actual conifer forest, just given some simple adornments that help it levitate into the air. You choose Fille en Aiguilles over the many perfumes that are conifer/pine/sap forward, and likely quite a bit cheaper, because of Christopher Sheldrake. Of the perfumes that go this accord-route there are too many that, in a sense, are too naturalistic because their materials are likely more natural than the ones used in Fille, but those other natural materials morph into more acrid and sharp versions of themselves during extraction. Sometimes "natural material" doesn't equate to "better smelling"; nature has a tendency to not like being messed with and to make things hard for us, particularly when it comes to material extractions. In Sheldrake's hands the materials chosen and coaxed lack the sharp, astringent stridency of those in peer perfumes, and come across as more naturalistic even though this likely means that they are less naturalistic strictly speaking. Sheldrake's choice of materials and masterful blending hand leaves no detail overlooked, no corner untouched, and no depth unplumbed. I have yet to find the titular girl, perhaps she's the spirit I feel in this forest, but that's no matter because this is one of the most beautiful pine perfumes ever made, and, honestly, I'm saying that to cover myself because, at this moment, I cannot think of one better.

I really enjoy Fille en Aiguilles, but I must admit that I get very poor longevity indeed from my gratte-ciel bottle, lasting only about 2 hours or so on my skin. It's possible it's just me, or olfactory fatigue (or climate change, who knows) but I can smell the fragrance weakening in just the first few minutes into a very gentle, faint scent. Though longevity isn't everything, this paucity of performance is a fairly big issue for a scent both as expensive as this but also for a scent as obviously resinous and dark. Fille en Aiguilles is a beautiful blend of pine resins, saps and dried fruits, which creates a sweet-ish melange of admittedly wintry magic. The later released (but tried earlier by me) La Couche du Diable owes its blueprint utterly to Fille en Aiguilles, and while they by no means smell sufficiently similar as to be redundant they is nevertheless a STRONG family resemblance between those two scents. Fille en Aiguilles, however, is quite a bit sweeter and less smoky than LCdD and is thereby less challenging, but I find FeA is still sufficiently interesting in its own right. The frequent comparisons to Christmastime, replete as it is with spices, dried fruit and sweet, pine-inflected balsams are of course completely apposite, so much so that it appears Lutens jumped the gun in trying to steer us away from this association by making reference to a stand of pine trees in "summer". Nobody is convinced, though unlike some of its Lutensian brethren FeA is not so sweet as to be rendered unwearable in the heat, quite the opposite. The fly in the pine amber, in this case, really is that weak longevity and low sillage, however. Is this because pine notes are restricted in perfumery, or is there another issue at hand? Whatever the case may be, this is a rare example in which I think the simple lack of strength would be enough to put me off seeking out a new bottle of FeA when my own runs dry (which will be soon given how much and how often I must apply to be able to smell it). In this regard its more gothic, younger sister, La Couche du Diable, has FeA beat (I'm sorry to say), as the former's potency is fantastic and it hits the very same emotional beats. Fille en Aiguilles, for its own part, is of course pulling on the same (or similar) dried fruit compote as the still older Arabie and, even further, Feminite du Bois, both of which remain in good shape to the best of my smelling. As far as dried fruits go I'd defer to these instead, as it is only in that sweeter, more edible element that La Couche du Diable will not fill one's stockings.

It's Christmas season, 1988, in Twin Peaks, WA. Laura Palmer arrives home, long past sunset. Only she knows her whereabouts these past few hours. A chilly gust has followed her into the house, overwhelming even the warmth of the fireplace. Sarah, her mother, sits on the sofa with an embroidery hoop, the needle and thread spelling HOME SWEET HOME. She looks up at her daughter, out of breath, offering a slight nod and a pursed smile, an anxious edge in her eyes. Laura bends down to offer a silent, reassuring hug, nustling a shoulder. Her mother's cardigan is imbued with the scent of stewed fruits prepared earlier in the evening. Leland, père, interrupts this moment of quiet embrace. His voice raised to the point of aggression, he questions Laura about where she's been, why her seat was empty during dinner, this anger only ostensibly related to her absence. Lately, even the smallest provocation seems to unleash a sort of maniacal force within him. Once again, paternal needling prompts Laura to retreat to her bedroom. She closes the door behind her, lowers the needle onto a Smiths record. "Take me out tonight," Morrissey croons, as she collapses onto her bed, arms outstretched. The glimmer of a neighbor's Christmas lights twinkles in the window, and her mind drifts to the season. She imagines a baby Jesus in his hay-lined manger, cared for so lovingly by his parents, adored by others from afar. If only she could remember when her own home once held such care. Jesus's betrayal, his death, feels more relatable than his birth. If only a savior—someone, anyone—would come bearing gold, or frankincense, or mercy for her. These thoughts are too difficult now. Everything's too difficult now. Those nights in the forest—violence among the pines, needles against bare flesh—she yearns to leave all that behind, if only temporarily. Laura leans over the side of her bed, reaches into her backpack, grabs for that lifeline. Besides those holiday decorations, it's pitch-black outside, darker still inside this home. But the depth of Laura's darkness exceeds all. Now, she rides the white horse on a dirty needle. Warmth rushes through her veins. Again, Morrissey: "Take me anywhere, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care." In this haze, past and present, dreams and reality, meld together. And there, in the mind of Laura Palmer, where figments of comfort collide with doom, coalesces the scent of Fille en Aiguilles.

timid and withdrawn, like a gust of wind through the branches of the only green trees of the wintertime, i am drawn to this fragrance the way an adult is drawn to the tawdry ornaments that they once hung onto their artificial christmas tree as a child: with a sad nostalgia. i have not had this fragrance for that long (nor have i even worn through more than 15% of my bottle), and i yet feel as though i have lived a million lives with it! dried and stewed fruits, coniferous woods, scratchy pine cones, and churchyard incense all amalgamate into this fragrance that always manages to make me stop, relax my shoulders, and take a deep breath in. it is long lasting and yet quiet in silage, though i will say that - of all my scents - this one has received the most intimate compliments. i have been told i smell calming, that i smell like a candle, that i smell like i would give good hugs, and the like. it draws one in not by allure or otherwise bold attractiveness, but rather with love and with sagacity not unlike an elder reciting a story from their youth. wistfully sad and yet beautifully, joyfully recalled, fille en aiguilles speaks of happy memories that are remembered, if anything, due to their benefactor's sadness over the memory's distance. i have heard and read reviews where people say it smells of christmas and, while i understand and agree with that comparison, i may endeavor to add a clause to that idea: it smells like the nostalgia for christmas. like wrapping your own presents before bed on december 24th, like finding a scrap of that paper under the couch in that slow period between christmas day and new year's eve, like returning to school or work after the holiday season is over while wearing one of your presents, or like watching the fall of snow on a january morning, no longer associating it with festivities. dry hands in leather gloves, frigid legs in thick corduroy, and fluffy hair beneath fur hats. winter without the colored lights - well-heated living rooms in auburn glow set against bright gray windows and early dusk without the company of distant friends. sadness over the memory's distance. meditative and mitigating, o - how wisdom cries! <3