OUR VERDICT

White floral fragrances are usually featured as pretty, oh so pretty, like “Miss Congeniality” undisturbed by innermost turmoil and wishing world peace on the planet as the token of congeniality and amicability.

Forget all that!

Jasmin et Cigarette is the most unusual, most contrasting fragrance of white flowers you have ever come across. Antoine Maisondieu revisits an old trope, the dry tobacco, ash tray remnants tinge that gave old classic chypre fragrances their compelling, seemingly androgynous and lived-in quality. You could feel it in vintage classic 1947 Miss Dior and Piguet’s green leathery Bandit, and you can feel it in Jasmin et Cigarette too.

The jasmine absolute, a precious essence that comes from the treatment of thousands of tiny petals with solvent extraction from an initially thick buttery “pomade”, takes on a soft hay note of newly mown grass, a touch of dark amber, and -crucially!- that ashy note that 1920s cigarettes used to hide with…well, specially-made perfume! Yup, cigarettes, held on long pipes from delicate feminine hands, were laced with actual perfume back then, when smoking was a glamorous and emancipating affair.

So much for progress. Thankfully with Jasmin et Cigarette we can keep only the glamour with none of the harm. Win-win.

Notes: Jasmine Absolute, Tobacco Notes, Apricot, Tonka Bean, Curcuma, Cedarwood, Amber, Musk…

EAU DE PARFUM 50ML