Laine de Verre

I have decided for this scent to be my very first Fragrantica review because of its upside-down quality. And because it is August and the city has been melting down in a neverending heatwave. I clearly remember my first LDV sniff last spring: "OMG, who would like to smell like this?!". I took the sample though because it seemed to be a good joke to spray it on one of my friends constantly crying about how weird the niche parfumery can get. The real joke turns out to be the same me ordering the 100ml bottle and hoping for the quick delivery today. This thing obviously lacks some whole part of the usual perfume formula and it is everything but likable. No juicy citruses á la Annick Goutal (which I love). No childhood memories á la L'Artisan (in love with, too). No Mediterranian holidays. No emotions, actually. Just cold edges and surfaces and I can hardly express how surprised I get finding out I love it. What you get is - the idea of a stainless steel pool with extremely clean cold water - the smell of steel chips - the sensation of just ironed bedsheet - the touch of an ice cube on your burned tongue - ... The longevity is not really a problem, what might bother you is the rather weak projection. It stays really close to the skin. To the surface, one wants to say. It is clean and distanced, just like you want to feel on a crowded tram. P.S.: oh yes, notes: metal, water, cherry flower, synthetic citrus.

This is one of those perfumes that smell very different when sprayed on paper and on skin, producing very different results for different people depending on their skin chemistry. It was semi-blind buy for me. One of my perfume aficionado friends was selling it because he didn't like it. Because I been already wearing heavy evening perfume, I couldn't test it on my skin, so I sprayed it on paper and loved it both on the opening and dry down. However, when few days later I sprayed it on my skin it really does produced smell of some cleaning product. I even had questionable compliment "Somebody been cleaning his house today!" when I came to work wearing it. Test it on your skin before buying it! Edit: As I came to like it, I also realized what it smell like on my skin ... Suavitel Morning Sun fabric softener or dryer sheets. Not the way it smells from the bottle, but how clothes smell when they cool down.

Laine de Verre is by far the most interesting and my favourite from Serge Lutens' Les Eaux series. The opening is absolutely bewitching : screechy aldehyde creating a mineral texture, which reflects the name so aptly, paired with a really tart, almost salty melange of bergamot, lemon and mandarin. This combination doesn't seem that pleasant, but it works, magically! However, this phase doesn't last that long. It mellows after about 30 minutes, and after about 1 hour, what left is a gentle musky scent. And the overall longevity is not optimal, either. I got about 4 hours with close sillage. However ephemeral the opening and the overall scent is, I'm still enchanted. And I'd definitely recommend giving it a try for an interesting olfactory expereince. By the way, dear Santa, could you please drop a big bottle in July so that I can spray it abundantly again and again just for the wonderful opening? :-P

Reminds me of when I was a child and my mother would squirt too much liquid dish soap into our bubblebaths. This is a "spray-on-after-you-wash" kind of perfume. It tops off the cleanliness of a hot shower perfectly. I appreciate that Laine de Verre smells nothing like the sebaceous glands of human flesh. It's clean, white, and metallic. Innovative perfumes oughtn't be predictable, right? Some of my favorites are the androgynous kind that gently play peek-a-boo with my olfactory glands. And while it's true that you eventually go nose blind to it, the scent does waft in from time to time during the day.

I absolutely love it. I understand why people wouldn't though. It's first time I bought full bottle of Lutens and I've got only half the juice left. It starts cold, fresh, it's like an alert. It reminds me of a laundry put to dry outside on cold windy day. Close to 0C-32F. Then it gets citrusy. We can say like detergents :) the dry downs gets warmer, muskier, quieter but still clean. on my boyfriend it gets much warmer than on myself. It doesn't smell like anything organic, it's very unique and I think it's really pleasant at least to me.