LA FILLE DE BERLIN

6/19/15

Rose. Pink Pepper. Violet.

Traditionally, I have found that testing a rose perfume can be a tough call. Heady, rose-heavy fragrance can make one feel languorous, and for me personally, sometimes like I have found myself in mass and someone is walking by swinging a thurible in my face, suffusing me with the somber incense contained within. This scent is almost the opposite of that, and I am totally playing favorites.

La fille de Berlin is a dirty-beautiful feminine rose scent. Having heard Chinese whispers of Marlene Dietrich as a possible inspiration, although only Serge Lutens may know for sure, this femme fatale first presents herself to you from the tippy-top of her rose-bedecked pedestal in the visual sense of the word. Deep red in pigment, luxuriantly-hued, it looks stunning in its simple glass bottle. Before you even remove the lid, even the most novice of perfume seekers can understand that there is fat chance that this will be an insipid fragrance. The full-bodied rose petals are slightly damp and touch-tacky with the congealed blood of a healing wound and so vibrant is the essence that it is though each flower used was plumped and injected with steroids of rose upon rose. But lo! Now you fall back against the wall as the witchy pepper sweeps to the fore like Maleficent to lay a spell on the winsome Aurora Rose and twist her into the fawning virgin that will now rake your back with her thorny nails.

This fragrance is gorgeously jammy with the additional compliment of violet slotting into the waiting open puzzle piece nicely. I am reminded of my childhood self again, looking up with not a small level of trepidation at those same Maleficents that flocked around the makeup counters in the occasional Harrods visits of years ago; chiseled and aloof in nature. They weren’t pretty. Pretty is approachable. These were queens that if they saw you stealing a furtive look at them in all your simplistic naivety, they could turn you to stone for your impertinence. I am only a mere bunch of wildflowers stuffed haphazardly into an empty jam jar in comparison to the exquisite bouquets of their memory, but I wear this scent in a fever of emulation; the art of dress-up. I get a toe-curling kick in slipping into la fille de Berlin, like the kid that gleefully slips into a pair of heels that are much too big for their tiny feet, checking themselves out in the mirror, twirling and snickering at their own brazen audacity.

Rating: 5 reckless plunges into the socialite’s costume box.