The Actress

This is a beauty and what I expect from niche. Unusual combinations of quality ingredients with enough trail and staying power. The tomato leaf opening is delightful but doesn’t stay around for more than an hour on me. It then dries down to a creamy floral. Stand out notes to my nose are orchid, honeysuckle and cream. It has a subtle presence all day and doesn’t smell like anything else I own. I will use this as long as it is produced. Love it.

Shopping for Christmas gifts in Selfridges today and came across this brand. I’d never usually be able to choose a fragrance for a female. But I walked by when a member of staff sprayed this perfume, I had to buy it for my Mrs! It smells amazing 😍

Of course it’s called the Actress. A perfect blend of floral notes create such a light yet powerful fragrance. The Lily really sticks out in this with a hint of pear & vanilla. A head turner for sure, it’s addictive & alluring.

Beautiful scent..Notes of jasmine and sandalwood are present. Unfortunately not as long lasting as I would have liked. I have also tried the tycoon from this line..very popular and worth trying.

As soon as you apply, you know this fragrance is a show piece. A Swirling floral richness jumps out with tomato leaf, lemon, orange, and touch of basil. It's a vibrant opening. Fresh, dramatic and smells delicious. The tomato leaf is wonderfully rendered, and together with basil it makes for a really interesting zingy-green, slightly herbal opening. This passes in around 10mins. And a thick bouquet of Lily and Orchid begins to billow. Its got a velvety texture that feels like class and brings a decided opulence to the fragrance. A tentative honeysuckle note flutters around on top of this lily-orchid. The whole is very dynamic and super interesting. A pear note appears. But this is no pear drop; It’s pleasingly restrained and leans savoury. Nevertheless, it marks a shift in the experience from the alive green freshness and powerful florals to something more stable and reserved. The opulent Lily begins to subside and a cleaner Jasmine replaces it. There is a creaminess that's dusted with airy vanilla. It becomes reminiscent of summery desserts topped with white cream, but never becomes heavy nor particularly sweet. Unmistakably feminine, this is a reserved and clean edible-floral. But as time passes the drama and dynamism begins to wane, and The Actress settles into a Sandalwood/vanilla/Lily base. You have smelled this a million times before. It’s dull, its safe, its predictable. And it lasts. And lasts. In comparison to the organoleptic fireworks of the opening hour, this lack-lustre finale is completely uninspiring, and it actually makes up the majority of the experience. Rather than the feelings of glamour purported by the brand, this dry down produced a deep feeling of dissatisfaction in me. Forget her fabulous entrance, one hour is enough to know this actress is as mundane as they come. How could such a show stopper become so flat? *** If, as St Giles suggest, The Actress 'is a spotlight', what does it highlight? Donovan is a man with much experience in the perfume world, and with the wizardry of Duchaufour guiding the molecules, it seems unlikely that the veiled conservativism of The Actress was some form of creative oversight. Donovan himself has said he developed the range after experiencing many hours listening to the difficulties that consumers had trying to find the right perfume. In his words: ‘You can see that customers are like rabbits in the headlights when it comes to choosing a specific scent. I was thinking that the thing that the perfume industry doesn’t do very well is explain to people how a fragrance makes you feel.’ In the way he openly states the targeted niche of the St. Giles brand, Donovan provides an unusually candid point of view from inside an industry more closely associated with smoke and mirrors. St. Giles are for those consumers who don't know what they like; they just know they want to feel different. One concern for Donovan was how the names of perfumes as well as lists of ingredients that usually accompany them often speak to the consumer in a language that can be more obfuscating than enlightening: ‘A perfume isn’t a shopping list, you’re not making a curry – it’s a very different thing.’” Donovan’s marketing craft is to do away with obscure perfume names and notes. Instead he offers us quickly recognisable pyscho-stereotypes, along with matching colour schemes. Darkened, oblong bottles of frosted glass keep things on the straight and narrow for the unsure consumer. Shopping by numbers. All that is needed are scent profiles that match this careful marketing. St Giles might not be the only brand out there offering us the power of scent to bring about transformations to our emotional selves, but they might be the most explicit about their game plan. The St Giles line is a Selfridges exclusive, and in this, we get an insight into surely one of the most demanding of fragrant spaces – the shop floor. Everything about this brand tells us the most depressing thing about fragrance today – that the highest emotions to stir in the dog-eat-dog reality of niche perfumery start-ups, are those most ready to turn 0’s into 1’s in that short, contactless exchange. As for Duchaufort, it seems he has travelled full circle. Making a name at the altar of niche with his brilliant early creations for L’Artisan, he now winds up at the lowly dregs of ‘mainstream niche,’ hoovering up vacuous stragglers in the Selfridges perfume hall with his dazzling olfactory talent. Creating perfumes for those ‘consumers’ trapped in the headlights, minds muddled as they wade through clouds of synthetic oud, not knowing what they want, just hoping to feel different, trying not to be swamped by fellow shoppers also on a mission to haemorrhage their digital cash on the products that require the least possible time to decode. If that sounds bleak, it also sounds like the lowest of ambitions a perfumer could possibly have. In this regard, there is no denying the man has exceeding talent: The Actress aims low and hits the bullseye. con-scent.com