1876 Histoires de Parfums 2001

This is HISTORY! Founders of this perfume house knew, what they do want to create and narrate about the bygone epochs.

Old dusty books, lushy flowers dried between pages of old books, time-honored enamelled furnitures. Nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing modern. This is the real art of story-telling without words.

Destination: indoors, older people, both gender, for long conversations.

Although I found the caraway note a bit strong initially, Histoires de Parfums 1876 eventually smooths out into a gorgeous oriental rose reminiscent to my nose of Tauer UNE ROSE CHYPREE. There is lots of texture to this tightly woven composition which is not what I'd call a rose perfume so much as a tapestry of scents.

This reminds me of impressionist or pointillist paintings, which up close look like a bunch of individual brush strokes but from far away produce a whole much more meaningful than the sum of its parts. Beautiful! I'd love to add a bottle of this excellent creation—with great longevity and big sillage, too—to my collection.

Ok so I blind bought a 15ml for 20€ just because so obviously for this small amount of money I'm not disappointed !

For ME it starts with a fresh rose scent but kind of dewy, like a drinkable rose flavoured water, i assume it's the lychee note, I really like it!

Then, it starts getting more spicy and dry, I get a bit of carnation-like scent but not REAL carnation like I smelled in other perfumes, just a colder one.
Of course you still have the rose but more dusty with the carnation and the cumin that I recognise a bit.

All of those notes get intertwined into a smell I could only describe as a very old house or manor, dried flowers, a dusty velvety curtain or an old wooden box in the dry-down.

The only sad thing is that it only last a few hours, i wanted more...
But in a way it's perfect like that, a scent reminiscing something so old, it could only be a fading memory by now, lingering in my mind and fading off my nose...

A silky sarsaparilla rose, rooty and bit tooty-fruity, 1876 is another piece of intrigue from Histoires de Parfums. It has a bit of a candied sour pucker powder and a dash of baby aspirin Tic Tac tastiness in its opening, while still feeling rather opulent. The sassafras and Moxie gentian bite comes in as the rose unfurls, bittersweet and somewhat aloof, but oh so satisfying. This rose is a bit more fruity-damascone, just the way I like it, not too green, but also not so jammy that my teeth hurt. The contrast of bitter and sweet is what the children need more of these days.

A holy trinity of "look, but don't touch" carnation, violet, and iris accompanies this antique rose, echoing beauties such as Le Dix and Dans la Nuit, but this warm cumin and unctuous woody foundation pulls this into a someone more masculine: a plot twist! Reviewers throw around "grandmas" and "grandpas" because their scent association may be a bit naive: have compassion for them as the sands of time will have them rubbing their eyes and wondering why in a blink they're the ones who are now mocked and pitied. This doesn't give me any association like that, but maybe it's because I have a grandpa spirit anyhow; young folks can often make me feel that way, especially if they awkwardly misapply French in their Youtube usernames.

1876 was dedicated to Mata Hari, a Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan famously executed by firing squad during World War I for espionage. If this seductress with a crazy life could die without fear, perhaps we should learn to live without fear and learn to lean into uncertainty, because sooner or later, it will come creeping in anyhow. Sensory pleasures should be simple: fetishizing it, fussing over it, feigning disdain for fear of the Grim Reaper, well, isn't that a pity? Far more pitiful than our wise elders who could teach us a thing or two about how to grab life by the balls before it's too late.

I want to keep it brief. I tested the little spy Mata Hari yesterday.
OmG, she has something up her sleeve - or was it the décolletage?
The beginning hits you with citrus fruits, spices, and cumin all at once.
Intense, really! Then it turns green... Vetiver green and bitter. The rose is bitter and the guaiac wood. Cinnamon overshadows everything, and violet desperately tries to bring some calm into the mix. Whoever manages to stand out among all these notes... well, they are probably still arguing about it.
Then it gets quieter and somehow also naughtier. Or was it smokier? The scent doesn't really develop beautifully. But it's not really unpleasant either. It's such a mishmash. It smells like walking into a cold room where smoking took place the night before. The air is still "pregnant" with the spy's scent. It doesn't smell like what one might expect in a brothel. Not in that naughty way, but rather dangerous, and one should approach this lady with caution. It's a warm, vanilla, spice-heavy, and slightly sour scent that transforms into a cold diva standing in the room, smoking, and piercing you with her gaze from head to toe. She says nothing but wants to know everything.