Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent
281 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Blackberry and cranberry burst forth with immediate tartness, colliding head-on with an unsettling vinyl plasticity that makes the sweetness feel deliberately disrupted—simultaneously refreshing and vaguely synthetic, like smelling fruit through a translucent polymer sheet. The citrus fruits fade quickly beneath this fruity-synthetic tension, leaving an oddly compelling sense of deliberate imbalance.
Damask rose and violet materialize softly, their peppery and powdery qualities threading through the fading berry notes with surprising restraint, creating a semi-transparent floral silhouette that neither dominates nor fully recedes. The sweet accord (76%) becomes more pronounced here, rounding the composition into something almost approachable, though the synthetic undertones prevent any genuine warmth from developing.
Musk, patchouli, and sandalwood attempt to establish themselves, but they arrive whisper-quiet—vetiver barely registers. By this stage, the fragrance has largely evaporated, leaving only the ghost of rose and a faint musky sweetness that dissipates within another hour, making this the most forgettable phase of an already fleeting composition.
Parisienne opens with a peculiar clash of synthetic sharpness and natural fruit—blackberry and cranberry arrive swollen and tart, but they're immediately undercut by something distinctly artificial: that vinyl note, which reads as a crisp, almost metallic plasticity rather than anything organic. It's deliberately discordant, the olfactory equivalent of a deliberately scuffed vintage leather jacket. This friction between the fruity sweetness (which does emerge genuinely, hovering around 88% in the accords) and the synthetic backbone gives the fragrance an intriguing contemporary edge that prevents it from settling into conventional fruity-floral territory.
As it settles, damask rose and violet emerge with surprising restraint—there's no competing with the fruit here, but rather a supporting role that adds depth without opulence. The rose is slightly peppery, the violet dusted and somewhat powder-soft, creating a semi-transparent floral veil rather than a declaration. This is where the fragrance's personality crystallises: it's neither purely sweet nor properly sophisticated. It exists in an unsettling middle ground, approachable yet somewhat distant.
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3.6/5 (160)