L'Original / Préparation Parfumée by Andrée Putman

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L'Original
Préparation Parfumée
Andrée Putman 2001

7.8 / 10 163 Ratings

A popular perfume by Andrée Putman for women and men, released in 2001. The scent is woody-fresh. It is still in production.
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Main accords

Woody

Fresh

Green

Spicy

Aquatic

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

White pepper

Water lily

Heart Notes

Coriander

Base Notes

Driftwood

Perfumer

Olivia Giacobetti

Ratings

Scent

7.8163 Ratings

Longevity

6.3130 Ratings

Sillage

5.4123 Ratings

Bottle

6.398 Ratings

Value for money

6.416 Ratings

Submitted by Lobelia · last update on 02/27/2026.

Source-backed & verified

Interesting Facts

In 2015 the scent was renamed to "L'Original" in coincidence with the re-introduction of the brand with 5 new fragrances.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Victrix

Navegar

Rain Wood

Eau de Lierre

Autoportrait

Reviews

11 in-depth fragrance descriptions

03/14/2012

8Scent 8Longevity 6Sillage

PBullFriend
314 Reviews

PBullFriend

Helpful Review 5

tranquility

A translucent dove-gray smell of lake (not ocean) driftwood and some peppery wild plant. (I’m surprised there’s no vetiver in here.) I picture myself walking on a forest trail toward a lake on a 55 F (13C) day, wearing an oversized plaid woolen workshirt that has been hanging in the fresh air, having all the time in the world. The lake is full of life - loons, beavers, trout snapping up to catch flies. (Although this is supposed to have waterlily in it, Northern US waterlilies I have smelled have a sharp greenness I don't smell here.) In one word: tranquility.

03/03/2018

10Scent 7Longevity 7Sillage

Can777
257 Reviews

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Can777

Top Review 41

The Way to the Lake

Come, let’s go to the lake! Give me your hand. Stay just as you are, now in this moment. The path isn’t far to there. Can you see it in the twilight? How beautiful the sky is. It glows in pink-purple-orange like a watercolor made of marble. Do you feel the gentle breeze? It rises, and with it comes the scent of silence. The fragrance of damp grass. Cool and moist like a caress, it flies in and whispers tender calm into your soul and mine. Quiet, it is so quiet here! Even the rustling of herbs and bushes has fallen silent. There it is, the lake! The last rays of the sun kiss its surface, and the breath of twilight carries its woody-spicy scent to us. Sit with me on the dock and let us enjoy the pulse of silence. Give me a kiss and don’t be ashamed, for only the water lilies can watch us. Let’s swim in the tender-simple soul of melancholy and dive down to the bottom of the water lilies. There where their cradle stands. And never surface again until the cry of silence wakes us!

Conclusion
How embarrassingly simple and beautiful can a fragrance be? How deep can one sink into a perfume of almost humble, pure simplicity? L'Original is so simple and beautifully made that one thinks they can hear pure silence screaming. An artfully crafted and delicate nervous system of pure and unfiltered, architectural perfume artistry. Quiet and embarrassingly modest, it lays itself like a fishing net over the irritated soul and fishes out all the bad until only the good remains. Spicy coriander, bitter and green like freshly picked, combined with light-dusty pepper nuances, give L'Original a magical-green aura. Like a watercolor of floral notes, the scent of waxy-sweet and caressing water lilies flows through the perfume. A moist-fresh wood accord described here as driftwood “swims” subtly and delicately, almost floating. But not salty like from the sea, rather sweet like from a lake or pond. A cool-spicy nuance beautifully plays around L'Original. L'Original is like the view of a cool and untouched lake at twilight or in the evening. Extremely simple, pure, and strikingly beautiful.

Longevity: 6 to 8 hours.
Sillage: Very fine, but well perceivable.
Gender: unisex.

L'Original by Andrée Putman is a fragrance that has personally shaken me to the core because it can heal wounds and break the darkness.
Not a perfume,... a mood!

Simplicity is the courage to focus on the essential.
-Helmar Nahr-

Updated on 03/04/2018

01/30/2019

9Scent 7Longevity 6Sillage

Anarlan
27 Reviews

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Anarlan

Top Review 35

Silence is so accurate

If Mark Rothko had not been plagued by his severe depressive illness throughout his life and torn apart internally, if he had not had to experience the flight with his family to the USA to escape anti-Semitic persecution as a ten-year-old boy, what would his painting have looked like?
These images that made him one of the most important representatives of American Color Field painting and Abstract Expressionism: Would there have even been a sufficiently strong neurotic drive within him to paint them?
Images that, intended as decorative art prints, are misunderstood in almost all cases and hang in every second government office. Images that in their original form sometimes create several square meters of vibrating color spaces, dark, violent, from which light is sucked out, and in which an all-encompassing darkness spreads. The painter intended them to be hung in darkened rooms, where the viewer should approach at a distance of 45 cm to directly experience their desperate emotional world - drama, tragedy, fate.
Had he been a cheerful, life-affirming man, this Mark Rothko, and his painting served as a testament to hope, not despair, his images would have become spaces filled with horizontally stacked light.
I imagine these reduced color fields of a mentally healthier, joyful Rothko, floating, white, gray, green, pastel, generating brightness, silence, and hope like a sunrise viewed on a foggy morning.
I am sure: These images would never have existed.
But there is L’Original by Andrée Putman.

“When I wear L’Original, I can instantly find peace within myself, no matter how agitated or troubled I was before.”

These wonderful words are not mine, but they describe very accurately how this fragrance works. I see its layers of color before me: An almost white surface, central, defining. White pepper. A much subtler, more precise quality than “peppery sharp,” better: aromatic, focused, defined.
Another color space, green, pastel, fresh, floating: coriander, which blends at the edges with the pepper but remains perceptible as a distinct green quality.
In the background, in the lower area of the image, a gray tone, wood of some kind, subdued, firm, matte, the base.
The color fields are surrounded by a rosy shimmer, a hint of a watery unsweetened floral scent.
I do not know what water lilies smell like. I own one, planted in a sawn-off whiskey barrel filled with water, currently in winter dormancy; it stands at the entrance of the house and delights me and our visitors all summer long with pastel yellow flowers. I have never perceived a scent, but the fragrance note designation “water lily,” perhaps also a reference to a thematic perennial in Impressionist painting, fits perfectly, even if it might be a figment of imagination.
I hardly know another fragrance that so reduced, simple, and noble creates such an effect of silence and focus. Similarly pastel floating, I remember Gypsy Water, but here a strong alcoholic juniper blue-green, over which lies a surface of rosy, powdery iris.
Especially at this time of year, I find this scent impression in its simple elegance and reduced nonchalance very appealing. One might be a bit tired of all the loud, resinous, incense-like, balsamic winter fragrances, the operatically elaborate compositions that one loves, and this scent sends a wonderful premonition of light, expansiveness, new beginnings, and gathering.

“Silence is so accurate.” - Mark Rothko

I thank Turandot for the opportunity to have experienced this beautiful fragrance.

Updated on 02/09/2019

08/24/2011

8Scent 7.5Longevity

Kory
5 Reviews

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Kory

Top Review 41

And somewhere in between...

Do I really have to jump to the aid of another poor, underrated little perfume again, wrapping my arms around the bottle in defense and whispering comforting words into the spray nozzle? Apparently, it's that time again.

I have little to no faith in objectivity in reviews or comments, at least when it comes to evaluations. I either like it, or I don't... there’s the ultimate punishment called "I don't care." or "Well, it's quite nice." in between. But before I get to the evaluation, there is certainly the possibility of presenting something like a subjective objectivity - a description of my own perception, that is. For example, if I clearly smell green grass and communicate it that way, another person might still say it smells much more like kerosene or cat pee, but in the end, the majority is on the same side in the same book, and we both smell freshly mowed green grass together. In this context, the comment below is misleading: I have no idea where the "strongly lemony" scent is to be sniffed, but I fear it is not about Préparation Parfumée. Nassing for ungudd.

Much more, Préparation Parfumée stands as the little brother between the two extremes "Victrix" by Profumum Roma and "Navegar" by L'Artisan Parfumeur. While Victrix moves in juicy, zesty, yet cozy and deeply rumbling circles, "Navegar" is the skeletonized version of that: here, nothing sprays or oozes, only an icy, crystal-clear, and almost sterile structure can be seen. As if one could hear the scent bones rattling. Préparation Parfumée sits exactly between these poles: it is just as clear in structure, distanced-modern and urban, but it has been tailored with a good amount of restrained warmth. A warmth that shimmers slightly grayish, keeping the wearer breathing in a closed system. But it never goes too far: carnival scents along with proletarian displays of flesh are for other people. Préparation Parfumée keeps its high-necked clothes on; it is intellectual, spatial. When the slightly graying architect from next door, with designer glasses and a perfectly fitting gray suit, lets work be work for once and decides to enjoy a milk coffee on the terrace of the chic café around the corner - he really has only one option left for his choice of perfume.

I like to use Préparation Parfumée when I want to have time for myself, as it wraps me up beautifully like a cocoon that asks no questions and to which I owe no accountability, and when I also don’t feel like expressing my sometimes quite present misanthropy in such a way that I will end up as an old sack rotting away in a cold rat hole. For me, it covers a considerable emotional range. And by the way: it smells absolutely excellent! After a walk in the rain, along a small, naturally preserved little river, where frogs and trout live.

Clear and pure.

Simply nature.

Just as it is.

02/12/2013

10Scent 5Longevity 5Sillage

Chypienne

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Chypienne

Top Review

"A Muse of Timelessness"

Jack Lang referred to the interior architect and designer Andree Putman.

Since I first saw her works, I have been filled with wonder and admiration for this impressive woman and her creations.
For a long time, I have wanted to write a comment about Préparation Parfumée, but I never quite dared to.

Now she has passed away on January 19 at the age of 87 in Paris, and I finally want to take the plunge to describe this fragrance without letting my enthusiasm for the namesake carry me away.

What is so special about her, and what do I expect from the fragrance?

What she created as an interior architect and designer I find simply beautiful.
Her interiors thrive on the interplay of light and space, on the consistent line management, her reduced color palette, in which she connects the extremes of white and black through subtle shades of gray and sand.

The result is simple, intimate, timeless spaces that convey a calm serenity alongside great elegance.

As a designer, she shaped everyday objects from furniture to dishes, jewelry to shopping bags, with equally great mastery and reliably secure style sense.
She was always modern, with her own signature, deeply connected to the tradition of interior architecture and design, especially Art Deco.
I have learned a lot from her by observing and studying her works, and she has certainly had a significant influence on my perspective, my aesthetic awareness, and my sense of style.

Naturally, I was very curious about the perfume that was supposed to express her style and perhaps her essence, and I certainly did not expect anything oriental, sweet-fruity, floral, or anything extreme in any way.

"We talked about wood, wet wood, wood after the rain, driftwood, about water lilies and coriander leaves. I wanted it, the scent, light and fresh...." (A.P.)

And the word "driftwood" immediately releases images and feelings within me:
The empty expanse of a North Sea beach, clarity, cool freshness, the beautiful non-colorfulness under a silvery gray sky, serenity, calm, timelessness.... all associations that other works by A.P. also evoke in me.

And so the fragrance greets me:
I perceive silvery gray, but not sharp pepper and freshly crushed coriander leaves. And that is actually the only thing I can identify; otherwise, the fragrance is rather a tangible clarity, freshness, vastness. Cool with a very slight softness and a hint of warmth, a suggestion of floral notes, and yes, very distinctly wood, bright, damp wood.
A hint of salt in the air, on the skin?

Incredible, actually indescribable, delicious.

One can hardly expect longevity and sillage from such a fragrance, BUT: even here, PP is different. Both are certainly present, not always perceivable to me, but suddenly, with small movements, I clearly have the scent around me. A room I left some time ago and now re-enter greets me with fresh, crisp, soft clarity.

Simple, clear, elegant, restrained, present... as beautiful for women as for men -

Andree Putman (and Olivia Giacobetti) have wonderfully succeeded in translating the very special aesthetics of her designs into fragrance.
Preparation Parfumée is an ideal signature scent. It emphasizes personality; it does not replace it.

Now I naturally wonder whether, despite my undeniable admiration for A.P., I would have liked the fragrance in a blind test.

Yes, certainly, because it corresponds to my preferences.

But it is only the knowledge of the woman who made it part of her life's work, the two bottles she created for the refills, the perfumer she chose, that make the experience complete and turn the fragrance into the total work of art to which I have a very special relationship.

The comment has indeed become (too) long, but: to whom the heart is full......

My son-in-law, a man of few words from the Wesermarsch, would have used two words:

"It fits!"

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