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6.8 / 10 37 Ratings
A perfume by Jardins d'Écrivains for women, released in 2012. The scent is floral-sweet. It is still in production.
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Main accords

Floral
Sweet
Green
Fresh
Powdery

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes Top Notes
GrassGrass NeroliNeroli Orange blossomOrange blossom
Heart Notes Heart Notes
TuberoseTuberose JasmineJasmine BlackcurrantBlackcurrant
Base Notes Base Notes
White muskWhite musk SandalwoodSandalwood

Perfumer

Ratings
Scent
6.837 Ratings
Longevity
7.034 Ratings
Sillage
6.134 Ratings
Bottle
6.134 Ratings
Submitted by DonVanVliet, last update on 01/15/2023.
Interesting Facts
This fragrance is named after the novel "Gigi" by the French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Claudine Colette.

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What the fragrance is similar to

Reviews

3 in-depth fragrance descriptions
BrianBuchanan

363 Reviews
BrianBuchanan
BrianBuchanan
2  
Coquette by Colette
Gigi is one of a trilogy from this house that deals with controversial literary subjects : [Oscar] Wilde – who was prosecuted for gross
indecency with another man, Orlando – a gender morphing poet in a Virginia Woolfe novella, and Gigi – a novel by Colette where a young girl is raised to be a courtesan.
Gigi’s story is said to be based on Yola Letellier (you can see her photo by Man Ray on her Wikipedia English page). Letellier married a man forty years her senior, who was a newspaper magnate and mayor of Deauville, the über swanky resort in Normandy where Chanel opened her first boutique.
With this kind of backstory, you might expect these ‘white flowers of the Belle Epoque’ to be different from the average, and they are.
Gigi opens with a strange exotic fruit, somewhere between citrus, lychee and peach; enticing but vulnerable, a lustrous milky green, pale, more bitter than sweet.
It develops an orange flower and tuberose bouquet, which is sweetly floral but harshly indolic.
It’s as if - as she grows – Gigi masters the art of seduction, but at a price. She remains the innocent, but has a difficult side to her worldly charms.
All three of the Écrivains trilogy are built around orange flower. The others are too dusty and dry, this is the only success; it stays open and luminous with a fine balance of sweet and sour.
0 Comments
Miapea

6 Reviews
Miapea
Miapea
0  
A great tuberose
This tuberose in a bottle was advertised to me as “young”, but I can tell you, even if she is young, she has her own morals, smokes, polishes it over with champagne, and goes out to party. All according to Colette’s character she was named after.
You probably will not be able to overspray it, I feel quite safe with four, or even five sprays, and it still does not break the bank, considering its price.
0 Comments
Seerose

775 Reviews
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Seerose
Seerose
Very helpful Review 0  
Drama of a (very young) woman
Gigi is referred to as a comedy; in any case, this short novella has been adapted for a musical and a film. Gigi was also performed as a boulevard comedy with Audrey Hepburn on Broadway with great success. A comedy is a drama that takes a witty-humorous course and must end happily. Gigi is about a naive young girl whom a man wants to claim as his mistress through an intriguing "arrangement" with Gigi's sister. Of course, Gigi knows nothing about it. When she realizes what a treacherous game is being played with her, the man feels sorry and formally asks for her hand.
It is quite strange that this heterosexual short story by the writer Colette has become so well-known, primarily in the USA.
Colette was a talented, respected, and honored writer of the early 20th century. I read her books when I was quite young; it was just "in" to read them in my circle of friends. Especially one friend, whom I admired greatly, encouraged me to read her books. But I found them boring, and little of it stuck with me. It all seemed too complicated, and I didn't understand what it was really about.
Colette, like all the fragrances from the perfume series "Jardins d'Écrivains" that I have tested so far, is about writers whose love lives and sexual dispositions did not conform to the norms of bourgeois society, nor do they still conform.
Colette was married several times, but she also had a lifelong friend who was her lover after her first marriage.
She was also part of the Moulin Rouge variety show for a while and performed, among other things, the pantomime "Rêve d'Égypte," where the women passionately kissed each other. There was a commotion, the police had to come, and the play was canceled and banned.
As I know today, I did not understand the many allusions Colette made to homosexuality, particularly among women. What did I know about it 50 years ago? Nothing! But my admired friend knew a lot about it. I didn't get that either. She seemed so knowledgeable and grown-up, mature, so it seemed to me. I only vaguely knew that she and her sister had been abused and mistreated by their father. But one must not tell anyone about such things; one would have been cruelly punished for such indecent and corrupt fantasies. The adults stuck together, and if something did happen, it was the dirty child/teenager's fault, and appropriate measures were taken. Among ourselves, we knew what was going on and revealed nothing. Much later, I understood what my friend particularly wanted to convey to me with Colette's books.
She left for good after graduating high school, supposedly to Paris, but who knows? Sigh! I had completely forgotten about her until just now.
What would have come of this indirect advertising from my friend if I hadn't been such a goose like Gigi?
Namely, when I reread Colette's biography, first on Wiki and then compared it with what I had to know inside out from my standard literature history as a bookseller apprentice, I could recognize the deceitful and sordid biography and the similarly biased literary review of Colette's books from back then. If something more precise had been written in the literature history, I would have wanted to know it even better; that's how I was then and still am. I thought of my friend first, how she got me to read Colette's books, and then I remembered many other things we did together. She was very attractive to the young men of that time, which, understandably, left her cold. I remembered the resignation before she completely disappeared from my life. I didn't understand it; it seemed so tempting: Paris, studying, the wide world. And I stayed in this backwater in the gloomy, dusty bookstore.
But this is about the perfume "Gigi." The scent of and for a very young naive ignorant woman, for example, like I was back then? I perceive "Gigi" as a more mature scent.
I certainly would not have understood "Gigi" back then and would have rejected it if it had even existed in our stuffy world.
Now "Gigi" is for me a developing feminine floral scent that leans towards the agreeable.
The overture features a jasmine that smells quite penetrating to me. This lasts for a good while. In the meantime, I have finished my research. The scent releases a beautiful tuberose for me. The tuberose largely eliminates the jasmine; I smell a bit of immortelle. Now it was time to take a look at the listed ingredients. I was almost right. Orange blossom can also smell very overwhelming. Now, after almost 3 hours, I can perceive a slight green hint, and something citrusy has developed as well. Overall, I assess "Gigi" as a lovely, delicate floral scent with light fruity undertones. The sillage is not excessive; I can already categorize the longevity as good, as the scent has a development and remains delicately intense. White musk and sandalwood are listed. White musk is sweet to me; I cannot perceive it individually; it is likely mixed with the floral scents as a reinforcement and fixative. I cannot perceive sandalwood, which I do not miss in "Gigi."
For all those who love jasmine and floral scents in general, this is a well-made subtle fragrance with a distinct character.
"Gigi" has given me a memory of something very distant and repressed, though not through its scent itself, but through my engagement with the writer Colette. Nevertheless: I do not wish to own the fragrance.
5 Comments

Statements

9 short views on the fragrance
8
2
Feminine, creamy-intense, very green, slightly fruity, yet soft-focused tuberose scent. I like it.
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2 Comments
6
3
A tolerable, tuberose-dominated floral scent that becomes creamier with wear. Overall, it feels quite classically feminine. Elegant!
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3 Comments
8 years ago
6
2
The intense kohlrabi-jasmine note with a refined plastic undertone makes this scent a definite no-go for me!
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2 Comments
3
2
Phew, cut grass smells fresher. And better. Very sweet tuberose with plenty of fruit sugar.
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2 Comments
3
2
Elegant, powdery-sweet-green floral scent with a fantastic green top note, but later unfortunately has a slightly synthetic feel from the white flowers.
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2 Comments
2
At first, Gigi is fruity, then it evolves into a floral-powdery scent, and finally becomes sweet and creamy. A rather delicate fragrance.
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2
1
Tender-innocent, floral-sweet scent for the lady. Tuberose and jasmine remain subtle. Spring-Summer. Medium sillage. Successful.
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1 Comment
1
A mix of slightly soapy, clean musk and white flowers, with a light, dirty effect; only fruity at first.
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1
Tuberose and jasmine dominate from the start. Very soft, very sweet, beautiful. Black JB adds to the base. HB and SG unfortunately not good.
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